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Turn the iPhone Camera Into a Macro Lens Using a Water Drop

Mar 12, 2012 - 18 Comments
Dollar zoom with water on iPhone lens

Want a free instant macro lens for your iPhone camera? Carefully apply a tiny drop of water to the lens, flip the iPhone over, and voila, you can suddenly take extreme close ups of just about anything. I know that sounds a little weird, but it works, and the results are fairly impressive.

Download SoundCloud Songs as MP3 with a Bookmarklet

Mar 12, 2012 - 6 Comments
Download Mp3 from SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a popular online music and audio sharing service where a lot of bands and musicians will post their music for others to listen to. Frequently they’ll include a download link to songs, but depending on the posters account, they often have download limits that can be quickly maxed out on popular songs. The … Read More

Convert Text to Emoji Automatically in Mac OS X

Mar 12, 2012 - 7 Comments

Now that the Mac has native Emoji support, you can set up text substitutions to automatically convert specific text to emoji when typing shorthand, abbreviations, or emoticons. Here’s how to configure the text-to-emoji conversions:

Maintain File Ownership & Privileges When Copying With Duplicate Exactly in Mac OS X

Mar 10, 2012 - 3 Comments
Duplicate Exactly in Mac OS X

Modern versions of Mac OS X include a nice new ability to be able to duplicate and paste files exactly. Basically this means that if a file is owned by another user, Duplicate Exactly and Paste Exactly will preserve the files original ownership and permissions, rather than copy the file with the current user becoming … Read More

13 Must-Know Spotlight Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac

Mar 9, 2012 - 18 Comments
Spotlight icon

Spotlight is the powerful built-in search engine on Mac. Not only will it find just about any file or folder buried on your file system or attached drives, but it also doubles as a fantastically quick application launcher, dictionary lookup tool, and so much more. If you aren’t using Spotlight on a regular basis yet … Read More

Can’t Download iOS 5.1? Try These Fixes

Mar 9, 2012 - 80 Comments
IPSW

iOS 5.1 was released a few days ago but some people are still having problems when trying to update. The download can time out, not start at all, or sometimes throw an error message saying “Unable to Check for Update. An error occurred while checking for a software update.” or “The network connection could not … Read More

Convert Bit Rate of Songs on iOS Devices with iTunes

Mar 9, 2012 - 5 Comments
Convert Bit Rate of Songs in iTunes

iTunes now allows you to convert higher bit rate songs to three options: 128 kbps, 192 kbps, and 256 kbps. Enabling this option lets you save storage space on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad by compressing the music stored on the device. While intense audiofiles and those who want the absolute highest audio quality … Read More

How to Use the Lock Screen Camera in iOS 7 & iOS 8

Mar 8, 2012 - 39 Comments
swipe camera ios 5.1

You may have noticed that with new versions of iOS on iPhone and iPod touch, the behavior changed for how to access the lock screen camera compared to iOS earlier versions. That camera change actually happened with iOS 5.1 and has carried forward to iOS 6, iOS 7, and iOS 8, and it has has … Read More

Quickly Email Current URL from Mac OS X

Mar 7, 2012 - 3 Comments
Quickly Share Current URL

The next time you’re reading a web page that you want to share with someone else through email, just hit Command+Shift+I while viewing that website. A new email draft will open in the default email application, with the web pages title as the message subject, and the URL contained within the message body. The keyboard … Read More

Add Artwork to an Album or Group of Songs in iTunes

Mar 6, 2012 - 9 Comments
Get Info in iTunes

You probably know by now that you can get album art from iTunes via the Advanced menu. That will fill in most missing album covers, but bands that don’t sell their music through iTunes or music downloaded from Soundcloud and blogs often don’t have any artwork attached. In this case you can manually add artwork … Read More

Track Shipments & Packages from iPhone or iPad Quickly

Mar 6, 2012 - 4 Comments
Track Shipment in iOS

Want to quickly track a shipment from iOS or iPadOS? The iPhone and iPad can automatically detect tracking numbers from shipments and packages that are found in emails, notes, and messages, and the data detection then turns those tracking numbers into clickable links to help you instantly track a package or shipment. This is usable … Read More

How to Resolve a “Partition Failed” Error in Mac OS X

Mar 5, 2012 - 107 Comments
Partition Failed error

If you have attempted to partition a drive from Mac OS X and received a “Partition failed” message with the error “Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed.” you can fix the problem with the file system check command line utility. To issue the file system check and repair function properly, you’ll need … Read More

Clear iMessage Chat History in Mac OS X

Mar 5, 2012 - 40 Comments
Clear iMessage Chat History

The Messages app for Mac keeps track of all chat history through iMessage and SMS, providing you with a lengthy record of conversations in an easily reviewable and scrollable chat log. Unlike iOS, there isn’t an in-app method to delete the chat history in Mac OS X, and though you can close a window it … Read More

4 Simple Mac Maintenance Tips

Mar 4, 2012 - 45 Comments
Clean Off the Mac Desktop

Macs are notoriously trouble-free and easy to maintain, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore system maintenance entirely. Here are four simple Mac maintenance tips that will help you keep your Mac in tip-top shape, running at its best.

Enable the iPhone Camera Grid to Take Better Pictures

Mar 4, 2012 - 7 Comments
iPhone camera grid

Turning on the iPhone camera grid makes it easier to take better pictures by offering a simple visual grid guide to improve photo composition. We’ll show you how to enable the grid on iPhone camera, and also how to use the grid to compose photos.

Try Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a Mac with VirtualBox

Mar 3, 2012 - 35 Comments
Start the VirtualBox VM with Windows 8

You probably know by now that Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released recently. This is what Microsoft is betting their future on, combining their traditional desktop experience with the all new tiled Metro interface, aimed at tablets and portable computers. Thanks to virtualization, anyone can try Windows 8 easily right on top of their current … Read More

10 Ways to Get OS X Mountain Lion Features on your Mac Right Now

Mar 2, 2012 - 10 Comments
Growl Notifications

Can’t wait for OS X Mountain Lion to be released this summer? You can get many of the features of the next generation Mac OS X version right now. Whether you are running OS X Lion or to an extent, OS X Snow Leopard, read on to find out how to get everything from notifications, … Read More

7 Ways to Force Quit Mac Applications

Mar 2, 2012 - 32 Comments
How to force quit apps in Mac OS X

Do you need to force quit an unresponsive Mac app? Is your Mac seeing the infamously dreaded spinning beachball of death? Is an app failing to respond to any input? Maybe you have an errant process or two? When any of the above happens, you’ll probably want to forcibly quit the application in question, and … Read More

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