Want to time stamp a conversation or a message in the iChat messaging client? You can do that quickly with a keystroke on the iChat app in Mac OS X.
You can block all the Facebook ads and reskin the site into a more simplistic interface (similar to Twitter really) by installing a third party browser extension called Facebook Neue. Along with blocking the sites ads, it moves the UI into a two column layout, hides a few of the sidebar options, removes application links and language settings, and even rounds image avatars, creating a more simplified and less busy interface for the popular social networking site.
The Facebook Neue extension is available for Safari 5 and Chrome, you can download it here.
You might want to check out the Facebook desktop notifier too, it brings Facebook messages and activity to your Mac desktop through Growl notifications.
LittleIpsum is a handy app that will automatically generate latin text (the famous lorem ipsum dolar) directly from the Mac OS X menubar. It’ll generate full latin sentences, words, and paragraphs, and will even wrap the latin text in HTML tags, which is an extra handy feature for web developers.
LittleIpsum is a free download, you can get it here.
Generating random latin text is one of those things that developers and designers often need to do. Typically we just go to the web for this service, but it’s great to see it can now be done directly in Mac OS X which is sure to save some time.
Some users report variations of a “Network Connection Timed Out” error when trying to update their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a newer version of iOS or even when attempting to connect to the iTunes Store. Errors include but are not limited to:
These are usually pretty simple errors to fix and we have several methods below.
Before going any further to troubleshoot this error message, make sure the following is true:
If you’re still having problems, here are some troubleshooting tips to fix and resolve various iTunes and iOS software update connection errors:
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Last week I posted a deal to get an 8GB RAM upgrade kit, the price was too good to resist and I went ahead and bought the upgrade myself. Here’s my review and impressions on upgrading a Mac to 8GB of RAM. If you have ADHD and don’t want to read everything below, here’s the Readers Digest version: buy an 8GB upgrade, it rocks.
The RAM I got was the Kingston Apple 8GB Upgrade Kit
, it works on most new Macs, all the new MacBook Pro’s, Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook. I imagine all those machines would see the same performance increase as I did. Anyway, I put the 8GB upgrade in my base model unibody 2010 MacBook Pro 13″ with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, which otherwise comes standard with 4GB of RAM.
Installation is so easy it’s barely worth mentioning, upgrading RAM in the MacBook Pro is a matter of undoing a few screws on the bottom of the Mac, lifting off the aluminum case, removing the old RAM, and popping in the new memory. From start to finish it takes maybe 10 minutes at most.
So now I’ll try to answer some common questions about having a Mac with 8GB of RAM:
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Mac users can now pre-order the Grand Theft Auto Triology from Amazon
, the trilogy includes the wildly popular original Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The series has been somewhat controversial due to it’s mature content, which is also why it has an “M” rating.
Amazon offers free shipping for the November 22 release date, and includes a price guarantee meaning if the price drops before shipping you will be refunded the difference.
Gaming on the Mac is undergoing a bit of a renaissance with some pretty major titles coming to the Mac platform in time for the holiday shopping season, and the release of the GTA trilogy is just another example of the renewed interest in the platform.
Transmission has a built-in IP blocklist for what are determined to be “bad peers” and it should be enabled if you use Transmission with any sort of regularity. The blocklist helps to insure a better experience with torrents and also helps to protect your privacy.
What exactly connotes a bad peer remains open for interpretation, but generally people who are excessive leechers, those who intentionally seed corrupt or falsely represented files, and even some P2P monitoring services are considered ‘bad peers’ to most IP block lists.
Update: Apparently this applies to older versions of Transmission, recent updates of the application require an external IP block list to be added on its own.
If you need to record screen activity on a Mac, you don’t need to download any additional software because the functionality is built directly into Mac OS X with the QuickTime app. Yes, the same QuickTime video player app that lets you watch videos also lets you record the screen of the Mac, and it’s remarkably simple to use. This is a great solution for most use cases since it’s free and bundled right into all versions of OS X.
Apple’s big iTunes announcement today was The Beatles joining the iTunes family, this was one of the predictions offered yesterday, later to be solidified by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
Apple has crafted a heavy promotional campaign for the announcement, including a Beatles-centric section of the Apple website. Reaction around the web has been a mixture of excitement and boredom, it looks like the majority of people let down by the announcement were hoping for iOS 4.2 to be released instead. Todays announcement did trigger a price war of sorts, as Amazon responded by cutting the price of The Beatles Stereo Box Set 50% to $129.99
, which gives you physical CD’s rather than digital content.
Apparently part of the deal to get the Beatles catalogue was to have a large advertising push, which might explain the huge hype around the announcement. As part of the marketing campaign, Apple has crafted several Beatles & iTunes commercials, here’s one of them featuring the popular song “Here Comes The Sun”
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I use TextEdit often for simple text editing and note taking, but you can also use TextEdit as an outliner and avoid downloading another application. Yes seriously, the TextEdit that comes on all versions of Mac OS X can function quite well as a basic outline app.
You can fast forward or quickly rewind any video playing in QuickTime Player in Mac OS X (or Windows if you go that direction) by using a trackpad or magic mouse.
This is really easy to use but it’s best followed along and tried out yourself than just reading a tutorial, so launch QuickTime Player with a movie of some length so that you can test this out yourself. The QuickTime app is located in the /Applications/ folder of OS X, older versions may be stored as QuickTime Player in the Utilities folder too.
Resetting your PRAM (or NVRAM) is a common troubleshooting technique when a Mac is misbehaving. We’ll cover how to reset PRAM on any Mac, as well as providing some additional information about PRAM and what it is to better help you understand when and why you’d want to reset it.
Apple’s homepage is featuring a teaser message that suggests a major iTunes announcement is on the schedule for tomorrow. So what could it be? The Apple Rumor Mill has their imaginations running wild, with claims all over the board.
Here are some possibilities for Apple’s iTunes announcement tomorrow:
This is a neat trick that lets you mute your Mac audio and adjust sound output on a Mac from your iPhone. It’s a little involved so it won’t be for the average user, but it is kind of interesting anyway.
If you have a jailbroken iPhone 3G or iPhone 2G, you can dual boot between Android OS 2.2.1 Froyo and iOS 3.1 to iOS 4.1. The installation really isn’t that difficult, especially if you already have a jailbroken iPhone (apparently it must be jailbroken with PwnageTool, redsn0w, or blackra1n, not quite sure why), it’s basically just a matter of downloading a few apps (Bootlace and OpeniBoot), and then installing Android onto the iPhone.
The following video walks you through the installation process, it’s pretty short and easy to follow, courtesy of RedmondPie:
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The popular LetterBox plugin for Mac OS X’s Mail app has been updated to be compatible with the release of 10.6.5. Prior to the plugin update, Letterbox required a manual fix for Letterbox to work with Mac OS X 10.6.5. The new version prevents the need for the hack.
If you’re interested, you can head over to the developers site to get the newest version with full 10.6.5 compatibility.
Want to fall asleep when listening to music on a Mac, and then have your Mac automatically stop playing music? You know, kind of like a sleep timer for iTunes? Well you’re in luck, Sleepytime does exactly that for Macs!
Sleepytime is a simple app that functions as a sleep timer for iTunes and your Mac.
You set a time for iTunes to stop playing and then set a fade interval, and your Mac will stop playing iTunes gradually, before finally sleeping your Mac.
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You can easily determine if your iPhone can be jailbroken or unlocked using a tool called f0recast. The f0recast utility works for both Mac OS X and Windows and lets you quickly identify if your iOS device qualifies for hacking. The tool works with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and all the iPod touch models.
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