Do you want to remotely access your Mac so you can open applications and edit files on it? This is an increasingly common request. Here’s a quick overview of a few ways to remotely access your Mac.

Back To My Mac

Apple’s iCloud service includes a feature named Back To My Mac. While Back to My Mac doesn’t work in all circumstances, it’s a powerful and free option that lets you remotely access your Mac. MacLife has written a succinct overview of Back To My Mac. Apple has written articles about troubleshooting Back To My Mac and related security considerations. I should note that Back To My Mac requires that you use a Mac to remotely access another Mac. In other words, you can’t use an iPad, iPhone or PC to remotely access your Mac with this feature.

LogMeIn

LogMeIn is one of many products which offers remote access services for both Macs and PCs. LogMeIn offers a free version as well as a paid version called LogMeIn Pro that offers more features. This MacFormat article gives a good overview of LogMeIn Free and LogMeIn Pro. LogMeIn supports remote access of Macs from a PC and vice versa. Additionally, there is a LogMeIn iOS application which works on both iPads and iPhones, though I can’t imagine using it on the iPhone’s tiny screen. The iOS application lets one remotely access either Macs or PCs.

I use LogMeIn to provide remote support to many of my clients. One can download and install the free LogMeIn client software from my web site to give me remote access to their computer.

Apple Remote Desktop and  VPN

Small business clients often prefer to setup their own VPN (Virtual Private Network) and use Apple Remote Desktop or Apple’s free Screen Sharing application to remotely view and manipulate Macs on their office network. Setting up a VPN requires purchasing a router which supports VPN capabilities. Screen Sharing is a free tool built into the Mac operating system starting with OS X 10.5. Apple Remote Desktop costs $80 and provides advanced features to install upgrades and created detailed reports.

Messages’ Screen Sharing

The first three methods listed above require the remote Mac to be awake, but nobody needs physically to be at the remote Mac. If, however, you have a friend or family member at your remote Mac then you could use Messages’ Screen Sharing application. Messages used to be named iChat, which offered this feature for a number of years. Messages was introduced in OS X Lion and works in OS X Mountain Lion. If both of your Macs are using Lion or Mountain Lion then this Apple article gives you an introduction on how to initiate screen sharing.

Would you like to quickly reduce the size of a PDF file so it’s small enough to send as an email attachment? Here are some easy step-by-step instructions to do this on your Mac.

• Open the PDF file using Apple’s Preview application. (If Preview isn’t the default application, then you’ll first have to go to your Applications folder and open Preview, then drag your PDF file onto Preview’s icon on your Dock.)
• Go to the File menu and select Export, if your Mac is using OS X 10.7 or 10.8. (If your Mac is using OS X 10.6 or earlier then go to the File menu and select Save As)
• From the pop-up list next to Quartz Filter, select Reduce File Size. Use the image below as a guide.
• Click the Save button.

The file size reduction is primarily achieved by reducing the quality of images in the PDF file. Please review the resulting file to make sure the image quality is satisfactory.

It turns out that one can make their own custom “Reduce File Size” filters to control the amount of image quality reduction. This helpful tutorial explains how and also indicates subtle changes that apply to older and newer versions of Mac OS X.

If your PDF file is still not small enough to send as an email attachment or if you have a handful of PDFs, which collectively are too large to send as attachments, then you should consider using DropBox. I have a tech tip about using DropBox this way.

Would you like  to turn a word in an email message into a web page hyperlink? If you use Apple’s Mail, use these simple instructions.

• Open Mail and compose a new email message.

• Address the message and start to type the message.

• Select one or more words in your message.

• Go to the Edit menu and select Add Link.

• In the box that appears paste the web page address (aka hyperlink) and click OK. Use the picture below as a guide.

Pasting a web page address directly into your email is possible, but long addresses can really break up the flow of an email. If the web page address gets divided onto two lines then it can even break and not work when the recipient clicks on it. For example, imagine that you want to send a friend a link to a book available on Amazon’s web site. You could list the address, but it can be long and ugly. For example:

<http://www.amazon.com/The-Mac-Not-Typewriter-Edition/dp/0201782634/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361854496&sr=8-1&keywords=the+mac+is+not+a+typewriter+by+robin+williams>

Using the technique I list above, you’ll be able to hide that entire address by making it a link, like this.

Do you dislike the keyboard that came with your Mac? For the past few years, Apple’s primary keyboard has been the Apple Wireless Keyboard. It’s a good keyboard, but it’s not perfect for everybody. Some people lament the lack of a keypad. Others dislike having to replace the batteries that power the keyboard. Some folks don’t like the very flat nature of the keyboard and limited up-down movement of the keys. Last week’s tip listed ways to add a keypad. This week I describe some alternative keyboards.

Solar-powered – Logitech makes the Wireless Solar K750 keyboard. Indoor or outdoor lighting will keep this keyboard charged, so you won’t have to replace batteries. This keyboard is very thin, just like Apple’s current models. A couple of my clients bought it and like it.

Wired, backlit keyboard – Logitech makes the Illuminated Keyboard. It’s also a very thin keyboard but is not wireless. Its distinctive feature is backlit keys. A sensor measures the ambient light and illuminates the keys in low light situations. If you like to type in the dark or have a keyboard shoved in a dark closet, this is for you. I use this one in my office. It’s great for early morning work when I only turn on the desk lamp that is pointed at my monitor.

Wired keyboard with big keys – Matias’ Tactile Pro 3 Keyboard appeals to people who prefer a wired keyboard with more key motion than Apple’s current flat keyboards. The Tactile Pro is based on Apple’s design of their Apple Extended Keyboard. The Extended keyboard was beloved by many Mac users during its reign in the late 80s and early 90s. The Tactile Pro keyboard is a solidly built keyboard with large keys, large key motion, space between the keys and curved tops of some keys to help keep your fingers on the home row. Another keyboard which has some similarities in its design is the Das Keyboard Professional.

Wired ergonomic keyboards – If you’re looking for a more ergonomic keyboard then check out Kinesis’ 3 ergonomic keyboards, the Contoured, Maxim and Freestyle 2. I have one client who uses the Maxim and likes it. The change in arm and wrist angle or motion reduced the pain he used to feel in his arm.

Wireless mini keyboard with touchpad – SMK Link’s Wireless Ultra-Mini Touchpad Keyboard is a very compact keyboard that could be used to remotely control a Mac from across the room. It has an integrated trackpad (aka touchpad) which can be used to move the cursor on your Mac. If you give PowerPoint or Keynote presentations you might find it useful to manipulate your Mac from afar. Maybe you’re at the front of the room and your Mac is not within arm’s reach. Similarly, if you have a Mac mini setup in a your living room as a media center, this keyboard would let you control your Mac from a comfortable seat across the room.

Do you wish your Mac had a 10-key numeric keypad? Yes, some people actually use them! For the past couple of years, Apple’s primary keyboard has been the Apple Wireless Keyboard. It’s a very nice keyboard, but it’s not perfect for everybody. Some people lament the lack of a numeric keypad. Others dislike having to replace the batteries that power the keyboard. Some folks don’t like the very flat nature of the keyboard and limited up-down movement of the keys. In a series of tech tips, I’ll offer products that address these criticisms.

If you’d like to add a keypad consider these options:

Cropmark’s LMP Bluetooth keypad is a keypad that is designed to connect to Apple’s wireless keyboard to give you one integrated keyboard.

SMK-Link’s VP6273 Bluetooth keypad lets you switch between using it as a standalone calculator or a keypad for your Mac.

Apple sells their own keyboard which includes a keypad. It has an elegant and clever name, Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad.

Adding a keypad can really increase your productivity if you enter numbers regularly. Check out the options above. I think you’ll find one that you like.

Would you like your iPhone to give you audible driving directions? If so, you should check out MapQuest. It is a free, turn-by-turn GPS navigation app for the iPhone and iPad. MacWorld wrote an extensive review of GPS apps in 2011. After reading the article, I purchased Navigon for $40. (It price has now risen to $60.) I used Navigon for a few months and liked it, but found the interface cumbersome. After a client praised it for its easy-to-use design, I tried MapQuest. It had also been highly rated in MacWorld’s review of GPS apps. While MapQuest doesn’t have all of the features offered by Navigon, I prefer it for its relative ease of use.

I’m surprised how often I’m asked how to remove an app from an iPhone or iPad. Consequently, I decided to write this short tech tip since there are, no doubt, many other people out there wondering the same thing.

There are numerous ways to remove an app, but here’s one simple method:

Tap and hold on the icon of the app that you want to remove. After a couple of seconds all the icons on your iPhone or iPad will start to jiggle side-to-side.

Tap the X that appears in the upper-left corner of the app. The X is a delete button. It will remove the app from your iPhone or iPad.

For example, let’s imagine that I want to remove the app named Navigon from my iPhone. I would press my finger on the Navigon app (see picture below) icon and hold it there. After a second or so, all icons on my iPhone start to jiggle. I can then tap the X button to remove Navigon.

Note: This technique only works for third-party apps that you’ve added to your iPhone or iPad. Apple doesn’t let you remove the core set of apps that come with the iPhone or iPad. If there are some Apple-provided apps which you don’t use often, the best you can do is to put these apps into a folder. What? You don’t know how to create a folder for your apps? I guess that’ll be next week’s Tech Tip.

Update: A reader asked how to remove an iPhone or iPad app when it’s listed in iTunes on your Mac. Here are two methods. The first method is remove the app from your iPhone or iPad as described above. Then, sync your iPhone or iPad to your Mac by connecting the USB sync cable to connect the two devices. As long as app synching is enabled the app will be removed from your Mac since you deleted it from the iPhone or iPad.

If this first method doesn’t work, here’s another option. Open iTunes, on the left-hand list click on Apps. Select the app you want to delete by clicking on it. Go to the Edit menu and select Delete. Click the “Move to Trash” button to fully remove the app from your Mac.

Update: December 2012. JCD Repair has opened a Bellevue store which is located near the intersection of I-405 and I-90.

Does your iPhone have a cracked screen, a broken camera or need to have its battery replaced? If so, you might want to consider JCD Repair. JCD Repair offers affordable, quality repairs for iPhones, iPad and iPod Touches as well as some Verizon Droid phones.

If your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch is under warranty, you should obviously take it to an Apple Store. However, if your device is out of warranty or the damage wouldn’t be covered by warranty, then you should consider JCD Repair. In recent months, I’ve had a couple of clients get their iPhone 4s repaired by JCD Repair and they were very pleased with the service and results.

JCD Repair  has 3 stores in Seattle, WA; Chicago, IL and Madison, WI. The Seattle store is in the Wallingford neighborhood. If you don’t live in Seattle or these other two cities, JCD Repair also offers mail-in repair service. Most in-person repairs can be done in about 45 minutes. Schedule an appointment via their web site or by phone. They prefer that you schedule an appointment but apparently walk-in visits are allowed. Their web site lists all of the repair services that they offer as well as the cost including parts and labor. They are open 7 days a week. Their repairs are covered by a 90 day warranty.

Check out JCD Repair and post your comments about your experience.

Would you like to be able to have your iPhone automatically dial an extension? The iPhone originally wasn’t able to do this, but Apple added the feature a few years ago. Here are some helpful instructions on how to use it. You can enter a person’s extension number whether you’re adding this person directly on your iPhone or adding them in Address Book on your Mac. It’s also possible to have your iPhone store the person’s extension number and then give you a way to  quickly dial it by pushing one button. I typically use this method since it lets me control exactly when the extension is dialed. This can be helpful when dealing with complex voicemail menu systems.

How to enter a person’s extension number when you add a person directly on your iPhone.

When you’re adding a person’s phone number on your iPhone, you’ll be typing their phone number using the keypad. When you’re ready to add an extension click the key labeled *+# (asterisk, plus sign, pound symbol). This key is located below the number 7 as depicted in the photo below.

After pressing this key, you’ll see some new keys available to you. This includes keys labeled Pause and Wait. (See photo below.) If you click the Pause button this will insert a comma into the phone number. This comma translates into a 1 second pause. (Note: It may be necessary to enter a handful of pauses to make sure that your iPhone waits long enough for the phone call to be answered and for the callee’s phone system to be ready to receive the extension.)

Next, press the key labeled 123 to return to the main keypad. From there you can type the person’s extension. Finally, click the Done button.

When you call this person’s number, your iPhone will automatically dial their number, pause for the indicated number of seconds and then automatically enter the extension number.

Pause vs. Wait

While the above method works in many situations, it doesn’t work in all situations. Consequently, I often use the Wait key instead of the Pause key. When you press the Wait key you’ll see that a semi-colon is inserted into the phone number. Then, when you dial the person’s phone number, your iPhone will NOT automatically send the extension number. Instead, the iPhone will wait an indefinite amount of time after dialing the phone number. It then gives you a “Dial…” button that you press for the iPhone to send the extension number listed. This is illustrated in the photo below. This feature is helpful when dealing with complex voicemail menu systems or lengthy voicemail messages.

How to enter a person’s extension number when you add a person in Address Book on your Mac.

If you are adding a person’s phone number using your Mac’s keyboard and the Address Book application. You can easily enter Pauses or a Wait by simply typing commas or semi-colons in the number.

What is iCloud? iCloud is a cloud computing service offered by Apple since October 2011. In a recent Tech Tip we got a brief overview of cloud computing. Now let’s look specifically at Apple’s iCloud. There are a lot of answers that one can give to the question, What is iCloud?

iCloud is a free data synchronization service that connects your Mac (or PC), iPhone and iPad. While the core iCloud services are free, there are optional features which cost money. Apple describes iCloud this way. iCloud stores your music, photos, documents, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices. Automatic, effortless, and seamless — it just works. You can watch Apple’s video demonstrating iCloud.

iCloud is the successor to Apple’s MobileMe service. iCloud is really the fourth iteration of Apple’s online service. Wikipedia’s article about iCloud reviews this history. MobileMe had a shaky reputation in terms of reliability. When it first launched there were many incidents of slow performance and lost data. Personally, I’ve seen MobileMe data get corrupted that caused syncing to stop working. Apple redesigned and built iCloud from the ground up. It hopes to impress us with its rock-solid reliability. So far, I’ve been pretty pleased but I feel it’s a touch early to pronounce my final judgement.

According to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, iCloud is more than a product. It’s a strategy for Apple for the coming decade. Cook implies that iCloud will grow over the coming decade to offer more and more services.

iCloud offers an array of services which I won’t list here. Many others have already covered these services thoroughly. Here are links to two such articles I think do a particularly good job of describing iCloud’s current services. David Pogue’s blog post about iCloud and Gotta Be Mobile’s blog post about iCloud.

Do you use GMail, Google Docs, Dropbox, Facebook, CrashPlan or iCloud? If so, then you use cloud computing. It’s not essential that you have an in-depth understanding of cloud computing, but here’s a brief overview.

Cloud Computing is often misused as a synonym for the Internet itself.  This is an incorrect use of the term. However, the term was inspired by the common use of a picture of a cloud to represent the complex infrastructure of the Internet in diagrams. Consequently, this incorrect use is somewhat understandable.

Broadly, cloud computing refers to computing resources that are offered as a service rather then a product. More specifically, these cloud computing services also need to meet certain characteristics including wide access, measured service, as well as pooling of storage space and computing horsepower.

Let me illustrate this with an example. In the past, if you wanted to use a word processor you would typically buy a product, like Microsoft Word, and install it on your Mac. In a cloud computing world you might, instead, sign up for a free (or paid) service, like Google Docs, and use its word processor. Google Docs is broadly available and behind the scenes Google’s system can bring more computers online to handle surges in customer use of  the service.

Cloud computing has become possible because it’s cost-effective for companies to build huge data centers where computing and software can be provided remotely at massive scale and rented out, like a utility service. Other factors include the lower prices of computers and smartphones and the growing pervasiveness of fast Internet connections.

For those interested in a more in-depth description and definition of cloud computer I direct you to this excellent Tidbits article on cloud computing. It covers the essential characteristics, service models, and deployment models for cloud computing in more detail. With this basic understanding of cloud computing, we’re ready to look at Apple’s iCloud service. We’ll address the question, What is iCloud? Look for this in a future Tech Tip.

After owning an iPhone for several years, I was pleasantly surprised when I recently learned a new iPhone shortcut that I now use everyday. You can jump to the top of your Contacts list by simply touching the “top bar” which is where the time and battery level indicator are. See the picture on the right to understand this more easily. Simply touch where I put the red mark in the photo.

I use this feature to jump to the top of my Contacts list so I can easily get to the Search field. I have a lot of contacts ,so I find the fastest way to locate the individual record that I need is to use the Search function. I can now easily get to it by tapping the menu bar.

This feature is available on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. It works on any long list. If you have many email messages in your Inbox, for example, you could tap the menu bar to jump to the most recently received email message.

Would you like to stream a movie from Netflix to your computer and watch it on your TV? Would you like to show iPhoto pictures on your TV? If so, you’ll want to read about how to connect your Mac to your flat panel TV to send both audio and video to it.

Don’t be intimidated by the length of this article. You’ll only need to read part of it. All you need to do to connect your Mac is this:

1. Determine your Mac’s Model Identifier, which lets you figure out if you should follow Method 1 or Method 2.
2. Buy one or two cables and maybe an adapter as specified in Method 1 or Method 2.
3. Be aware of idiosyncrasies and variations for various Mac models that I list within each Method.

Important Note About Cables and TV Ports - The types of ports on flat-panel TVs vary from model to model. I’m only going to address VGA, DVI and HDMI ports since they are the most common types. VGA and DVI cables only carry video signals while HDMI cables can carry both audio and video. For this reason, I recommend using a TV’s HDMI port whenever possible.

Most Macs made between 2006 and the end of 2008 will need two cables, one for video and a second for audio. Because Apple switched to Mini DisplayPort connectors in 2009, most Macs can now use just one cable to carry both audio and video from the Mac’s MiniDisplay Port to the TV’s HDMI port. One idiosyncrasy to be aware of: when using HDMI or DVI to connect your Mac to your TV, you might have to change your TV’s display settings to turn off overscan.

Determine your Mac’s Model Identifier - If you don’t know how to determine your Mac’s Model Identifier please read this previous Tech Tip. Then, find your Mac listed in either the Method 1 or Method 2 sections below.

Method 1 – Buy a DVI to HDMI cable and a 3.5 mm analog stereo audio cable.

The DVI cable will carry the video output from your Mac and connect to the HDMI port on your TV. The 3.5 mm (aka 1/8″) stereo audio cable will carry the audio from your Mac to the audio in port on your TV.

Use this method if your Mac’s Model Identifier is in this list: Macmini 1,1; Macmini 2,1; MacPro 1,1; MacPro 2,1; MacPro 3,1;  MacBookPro 1,1; MacBookPro 1,2; MacBookPro 2,1; MacBookPro 2,2; MacBookPro 3,1; MacBookPro 4,1; MacBook 1,1; MacBook 2,1; MacBook 3,1; MacBook 4,1; MacBook 5,2; iMac 4,1; iMac 4,2; iMac 5,1; iMac 5,2; iMac 6,1; iMac 7,1; iMac 8,1; MacBook Air 1,1.

Variation 1 – If your TV has a digital audio input port, sometimes called Digital Optical audio or Toslink, you could substitute a digital audio cable for the 3.5 mm analog stereo cable. Recently I’ve encountered some TVs that only have digital audio input ports, so you may have to use this digital audio cable instead.

Idiosyncrasy: All of the Mac minis, MacBooks and MacBook Pros have a combo audio output port that can accept either an analog 3.5 mm audio cable or a digital Toslink audio cable. The MacPros have separate analog and digital analog ports, so make sure you use the correct one.

Variation 2 – If your TV’s HDMI port(s) are already in use then you could use a DVI to DVI cable in place of the DVI to HDMI cable as long as your TV has an unused DVI port.

Variation 3 – If you have one of the MacBook or iMac models listed below then you can use the two cables listed in Method 1 and just add a Mini DVI to DVI adapter in order to connect the DVI cable to your MacBook. Model Identifier: MacBook 1,1; MacBook 2,1; MacBook 3,1; MacBook 4,1; MacBook 5,2; iMac 4,1; iMac 4,2; iMac 5,1; iMac 5,2; iMac 6,1; iMac 7,1; iMac 8,1.

Variation 4 – If you have a MacBook Air, model identifier MacBook Air 1,1, then you can use the two cables listed in Method 1 and just add a Micro DVI to DVI adapter to connect the DVI cable to your MacBook Air.

Method 2 – Buy an HDMI cable and a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

The MiniDisplayPort adapter plugs into the Mini DisplayPort port on your Mac, then you connect the HDMI cable to it. The other end of the HDMI cable connects to an unused HDMI port on your TV. Apples current Macs currently have Thunderbolt ports which are identical to Mini DisplayPorts, but with extra features.

Use this method if your Mac’s Model Identifier is in this list: Macmini 3,1; Macmini 4,1; Macmini 5,1; Macmini 5,2; Macmini 5,3; MacPro 4,1; MacPro 5,1; iMac 9,1; iMac 10,1; iMac 11,1; iMac 11,2; iMac 11,3; iMac 12,1; iMac 12,2; MacBook 5,1; MacBook 6,1; MacBook Air 2,1; MacBook Air 3,1; MacBook Air 3,2; MacBook Air 4,1; MacBook Air 4,2; MacBook Pro 5,1; MacBook Pro 5,2; MacBook Pro 5,3; MacBook Pro 5,4; MacBook Pro 5,5; MacBook Pro 6,1; MacBook Pro 6,2; MacBook Pro 7,1; MacBook Pro 8,1; MacBook Pro 8,2; MacBook Pro 8,3.

Idiosyncrasy: Typically this configuration will carry both audio and video from your Mac to your TV. However, the first few Mac models with Mini DisplayPorts port do not carry audio signals. They only carry video signals. I’m not sure why Apple designed these Macs this way since Mini DisplayPort ports can carry both audio and video, as evidenced by subsequent models. Apple doesn’t clearly list which Mac models with Mini DisplayPort ports only carry video so if you find that your Mac is one of them then you’ll need to use either a 3.5 mm analog stereo audio cable or digital audio cable to carry audio from your Mac to your TV.

Note: MacBook Pro models 8,1; 8,2 and 8,3; iMac models 12,1 and 12,2, as well as Mac Minis model 5, 1; 5,2 and 5, 3 all have Thunderbolt ports instead of regular Mini DisplayPort ports. Thunderbolt ports look and act the same as regular Mini DisplayPort ports, but they offer additional features as well.

Variation 1 - Macmini models 4,1; 5,1; 5,2 and 5,3 have HDMI ports (as well as MiniDisplay Port ports) built-in so you don’t need to buy the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. All you need is the HDMI cable.

Variation 2 - If your TV has a digital audio input port, sometimes called Digital Optical audio or Toslink, then you could substitute a digital audio cable for the 3.5 mm analog stereo cable. Recently, I’ve encountered some TVs that only have digital audio input ports and no longer have a headphone port so you may have to use this digital audio cable instead.

Idiosyncrasy: Using a digital audio cable is not an option for MacBook Airs 2,1; 3,1 and 3,2 since their audio output port is analog only.

There are a number of instances when it could be really useful to know exactly which model of Macintosh computer you own. Here are instructions to identify which model you have.

Did you know that Apple has made Macintosh computers named iMac since 1998? That’s 14 years and counting of various iMac models. Do you know which specific iMac model you own? You may know that you have an 20″ Intel iMac, for example, but there are actually 4 different versions of the 20″ Intel iMac.

To distinguish your Mac from all of the similarly named Macs you need to know its Model Identifier, which can be found by doing the following.

• Click on the Apple menu, then select About This Mac.
• In the window that appears click either the More Info or System Report button. (You’ll see More Info if you’re Mac is using Mac OS X 10.1-10.6. If your Mac is using Mac OS X Lion then you’ll see the System Report button.)
• In either case, you’ll be taken to the Hardware Overview which will list your Model Identifier.

The Model Identifier lets you or others determine the nitty gritty details of your model. The Model Identifier is useful so the proper accessories or cables for your Mac can be provided. It lets you know specifically what type of memory (RAM) you need to buy for your Mac. It also helps you determine the age of a Mac in case you’re looking at a used Mac. I don’t have all of the nitty gritty details memorized for each model. Instead, I use either the MacTracker Mac or iOS app or the EveryMac web site to lookup the details once I know the Model Identifier. In March 25′s Tech Tip it will be important to know your Mac’s Model Identifier so you can buy the correct cables to connect your Mac to your TV.

Do you receive a lot of packages in the mail and want to have one place where you can easily monitor their status? Then you need Delivery Status by JuneCloud.

I frequently order products on behalf of my clients and I want to be notified of their shipping progress and when they are delivered. Delivery Status lets me do this easily. Initially, I used the free Delivery Status widget. When I received a vendor’s email with a tracking number, I’d add this item to the Delivery Status widget. It can track packages from USPS, DHL, Fedex, OnTrac and many other shippers. Delivery Status would then send me status updates via Growl every time the package made progress towards my door. This was great, but I realized I only got updates when my Mac laptop was awake and connected to the Internet. Sometimes I wanted to be notified in the middle of the day as I was moving between client appointments. Consequently, I decided to buy the iPhone/iPad Delivery Status app ($5). Now I get notifications on my iPhone since this app can sync with the widget if one sets up a free account at the JuneCloud web site.

I’ve been using DeliveryStatus for about a year and have been very pleased with its performance. Check it out.

Update June 27, 2012. Today I received an email from ZangZing indicating that they will be permanently closing. “On August 31st, we will be shutting down ZangZing and permanently deleting all photos, contact information, and account information.” It’s back to the drawing board to find a replacement. Recently, Apple announced iOS 6. This is an update to the operating system software that powers iPhones and iPads. iOS 6 will be released in the fall of 2012. Apple indicates that it will include a photostream sharing feature. Maybe this will be a suitable replacement for some people.

If you’re looking for a replacement for MobileMe Gallery you should check out ZangZing.

If you’re a subscriber to MobileMe you likely know that Apple plans to shut it down in June 2012. They are replacing MobileMe with iCloud which has been available since late summer 2011. While iCloud offers many of the same features as MobileMe there are a few conspicuous exceptions. iCloud will not include iDisk, MobileMe Gallery, iWeb Publishing or syncing of System Preferences, Keychains or Widgets. A number of clients and I use iDisk and MobileMe Gallery, so we need to find suitable replacments. Dropbox is a great replacement for iDisk. I’ve been using it in place of iDisk for close to two years and I wrote a Tech Tip about Dropbox nearly a year ago. Dropbox offers some rudimentary photo sharing features which I thought I might use as a replacement for MobileMe Gallery, until I found ZangZing.

ZangZing made it very easy to switch from MobileMe Gallery. I created a free ZangZing account which gives me 2 GB of free storage space. More storage space can be purchased or acquired by inviting friends to join. After joining, I clicked the Import button and clicked the MobileMe button. This lead me through a short, straightforward process to import all of my existing photo albums from MobileMe. Within minutes I’d completed my migration to ZangZing. ZangZing lets one import photos from many other photo sharing services such as Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Dropbox, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Instagram, SmugMug and PhotoBucket.

ZangZing allows you to easily share a photo album with the entire world or you can restrict to a handful of people, but each of them would need to sign up for their own free ZangZing account. You can let visitors upload or download individual photos or the entire album. Visitors can also buy prints. ZangZing integrates with iPhoto to allow easy uploading of the photos. ZangZing offers all the features that I need and more. If you’d like to learn more read this Tidbits article about ZangZing.

Here are some products which can make it easier to sync your iPhone or connect it to other accessories.

iStubz are short iPhone syncing cables - The white sync cable which Apple includes with all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches is about 3.5 feet long. I find it too long and cumbersome at times. Instead of using this long cable, I now carry an iStubz cable which doesn’t get tangled. iStubz are available in two sizes 7cm and 22 cm which are about 3 inches and 9 inches, respectively.

Apple iPhone Dock –  I like to have my phone standing upright when my phone is sitting on my desk so I can easily see and read the screen. One way to keep the phone upright, while also charging and syncing the phone is to use an iPhone Dock. Apple sells the Universal Dock which works with all iPhones and iPods, but they also only sell the iPhone 3G/3GS dock and an iPhone 4/4S dock.

If you want to learn more about the features and capabilities of these Docks, please read this Universal Dock review and this iPhone 4 Dock review from iLounge.

dockStubz and dockXtender – If you keep your iPhone in a case, you may find that the case makes the phone too thick to fit into a Dock. Alternatively, the iPhone’s 30-pin Dock connector might be too recessed inside the case for some iPhone accessories, like a car charger, to be able to reach it. dockStubz is a short extender which would let you connect the car charger or other accessory. The dockXtender is a short cable which would let you connect your thick iPhone to connect to an Apple Dock or other accessories.

Do you use Apple’s Mail application on your Mac? It’s a capable email application. One of its best features the ability to extended its functionality using plug-ins. These plug-ins let you customize Mail so it can better meet your preferences and needs. Here’s a list of 10 plug-ins for Mail that’ll let you increase your productivity.

MsgFiler lets you quickly file email messages into one of your existing Mailboxes (aka folders). Using either a menu command or a keyboard shortcut you can file a message into a folder. Simply type the first few characters of the mailbox’s name and select the desired mailbox from the list of matches.

GrowlMail temporarily displays a small notification window on your screen every time a new email message arrives. By glancing at this notification you can monitor your Inbox while you’re working in another application. [Update March 2013: This functionality has now been included in Mountain Lion, OS X version 10.8, as a part of the Notifications feature.]

SpamSieve offers better spam protection than Mail’s built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It requires some initial training, but it’s very effective.

MailAct-On is an incredibly robust plug-in which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to quickly file, label or flag incoming or outgoing mail messages. That is an over-simplified description of its capabilities. This video introduction and video review will give you a more complete understanding of it’s capabilities.

MailTags let’s you assign keywords, priorities, categories and due dates to actions mentioned in an email. It lets you escape the constraints of folders by allowing you to organize and find your messages by keyword or other metadata that you’ve assigned. Made by the same developers, Mail Act-On and MailTags can be used together or separately.

WideMail reconfigures Mail’s layout. It moves the message preview area from below the list of messages to the right of it. This layout uses your screen’s space more efficiently. Apple realized this layout was very popular, so they made it the standard layout in Mail 5.0, which comes with Lion, Mac OS X 10.7.

Attachment Tamer gives you control over Mail’s handling of attachments that you send. Be default, Mail will display an attachment, such as an image, in the body of the email that you’re composing. Attachment Tamer lets you change this behavior and send the image as a regular attachment instead.

MessageFont lets you set Mail’s default font when you reply to or compose a new email message. Mail’s preferences appears to let you set the default font, but this affects only what you see, not what the recipient sees. MessageFont changes which font is seen by the recipient.

MissingAttachments scans an email message and notifies you if you have referred to an attachment, but forgotten to attach a file. Unfortunately this plug in hasn’t been updated to work with recent versions of Mail.

MailUnreadStatusBar displays an icon to the upper right corner of your screen which lists the number of unread email messages you have. You can customize it to track multiple folders. Its icon then displays a menu listing the unread message count for each selected folder and lets you go directly to any of the listed folders.

In my opinion, these are some of the best plug-ins for Mail, but you can read about many more in this Macworld article.

Do you send out annual updates about your family around the holiday season? If so, MacWorld has written a good article about how to create a newsletter using Pages. Pages is Apple’s word processor which competes with Microsoft Word. It comes bundled with some Macs, so you may already have a copy. If not, you can buy it as part of iWork. Or, if you have Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher on your Mac, you can use the App Store to buy it stand-alone for about $20. I used the MacWorld article as a guide to design our holiday newsletter this year. Here’s a brief overview.

Start by opening iPhoto and identifying which photos you want to include in your newsletter. I found it easiest to put my photos into an album so I would be able to find them again easily when using Pages.

Next, I opened Pages and selected the “Informal Newsletter” template. I clicked on the Media button in Pages’ toolbar. I clicked on Photos and selected the iPhoto Album containing my selected photos. I then dragged the images on top of the placeholder images that appear in the template.

I clicked on the text box on the first page, selected all of the text and deleted it. Then I typed in our content.

We wanted to add a second page so I went to the Insert menu, selected Pages and added a “Back Page” since it has pre-defined locations for text and photos. I linked the text boxes on page 1 and page 2 so the text would automatically flow between them. I replaced the placeholder photos, of course, as well.

Finally, I realized that I needed more room to fit all of the text so I had to adjust the template’s layout some. I removed one of the photos on page 1 and added a new text box then linked it to the other box on page 1. After that, I changed the font and font size a bit to get everything to fit. Finally, I was satisfied with the layout. Pages is a pretty elegant program to use for tasks like this and the templates are really professional, so it made this task easy to do.

Would you like to change Safari’s Home Page? Apple typically sets Safari to open to this page on their own web site.

You can easily configure Safari to show you any web page you’d like. Here’s how:

• Open Safari
• Go to the Safari menu and select Preferences
• Click on the “General” button
• In the box next to “Home page” type in the address of the page that you’d like. See examples at the bottom of this tip.
• Click the red dot to close that window.
• Go to the Safari menu and select Quit.
• Go to your Dock and re-open Safari. You should now see the start page you just set.

Web pages you might like:

In the past people often set Safari to open to Google, but this is no longer necessary since there is now a Google search field in the upper right corner of Safari’s window. Instead, you might like to configure Safari to take you to a news web site like the New York Times or Google News. Their addresses are http://www.nytimes.com and http://news.google.com, respectively.

On July 20, 2011, Apple released Lion, their newest version of Mac OS X. One should plan their upgrade to Lion and not rush into it. Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, costs less then many previous updates to Mac OS X. If you purchase Lion from the Mac App Store it costs only $30. Apple doesn’t sell it on disc any longer, but they indicated that they’ll make it available on USB flash drives in mid-August for $69.

Lion introduces a number of new features and changes, some of which are confusing when you first encounter them. Thus, the first step in planing the upgrade is to read about these new features either on Apple’s web site or in this excellent PDF-book Take Control of Using Lion ($15).

Next, wait for Mac OS X 10.7.1 or 10.7.2. Inevitably, all new products contain bugs. Some minor, some major. If your Mac is currently pretty stable then I would hate to see you lose productivity by upgrading to Lion and then encountering bugs, so let Apple release one or two minor releases which’ll address the most significant bugs. If the past is any indicator of the future, I would expect 10.7.1 to be released about a month after 10.7.0 was released.

Before upgrading your Mac it’s typically best to do some research to make sure that all of the applications and peripherals you use throughout the week are compatible with Lion.

Roaring Apps is building a list of application compatibility information based on submissions from users like you and me. Apple has an article listing printer and scanner compatibility information. Additional research for applications or peripherals can be conducted at the manufacturer’s web site.

Once you’ve read about Lion’s new features, waited for Apple to release some bug fixes and determined that all of your applications and peripherals are compatible then you’re ready to upgrade to Lion.

RSS is a convenient way to stay abreast of news stories or articles added to a particular web site. Rather then needing to visit your favorite web site over and over, you can use RSS to be notified when a new story or article has been added as well as read some or all of that article. I like to read my RSS feeds in my email application, Mail.

Below are instructions on how to add an RSS feed to Apple’s Mail application.

1. Open a web browser, like Safari, and go to a web site that offers an RSS feed. I’ll use Tidbits.com as my example. Go to http://www.tidbits.com .

2. In the right-hand end of the address field you’ll see an RSS icon as depicted in this picture. Click on the RSS icon.

3. If the web site offers ONLY 1 feed then the address of the feed will be listed. In this case, Tidbits.com offers 3 feeds so I choose the “Full Text Feed.” Then you’ll see a window like this one:

4. Copy the feed address, feed://tidbits.com/feeds/tidbits.rss by highlighting it and selecting Copy from the Edit menu.

5. Open Mail and select “Add RSS Feeds” from the File menu.

6. In the Add RSS Feeds window select “Specify the URL for a feed” and select Paste from the Edit menu to paste the feed address (aka the URL) into the field. Use the picture below as a guide.

7. Click the Add button.

8. In a few seconds, you’ll see the Tidbits feed listed on the left-hand window of the Mail window under the “RSS section” as depicted below. The number to the right of the RSS feed’s name is an indication of the number of unread articles.

9. If you have added a number of RSS feeds, you may want to rename them so they sort in a particular order as I’ve done by adding number prefixes.

I strongly recommend the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) for all MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac and MacPro purchases under most circumstances. I know that extended warranties have a poor reputation in general, but I think AppleCare is a good value for most Mac models. For the rest of this article I’ll simply refer to the AppleCare Protection Plan as AppleCare.

Every Mac computer comes with 90 days of free telephone tech support and a 1 year hardware warranty. By purchasing AppleCare, both the telephone support and hardware warranty are extended to 3 years. AppleCare covers the cost of parts as well as labor in the event of a repair.

It’s very useful to know that you can buy AppleCare as long as the original 1 year hardware warranty is still in place. Additionally, AppleCare is transferrable. If you sell your Mac within 3 years of initial purchase, AppleCare coverage transfers with the computer. This can slightly increase your Mac’s resale value, but it also gives the buyer some reassurance should they detect a hardware issue after they purchase it. AppleCare is available for all new Macs or refurbished Macs bought from Apple. It does not cover accidental damage.

MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs – The price for AppleCare is currently $249 for every laptop model except the 17″ MacBook Pro. For this model the price is $349. Apple has tiered flat-rate pricing for all laptop repairs. The last time I checked the lowest price was about $300. If your laptop is outside of it’s one-year hardware warranty and it breaks, one repair would have paid for the cost of AppleCare. Since laptops are typically carried around, they can sustain a lot of wear and tear. One repair within 3 years is not at all uncommon, thus I think it’s worthwhile to purchase AppleCare for MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. Over a dozen years, I have owned 4 Mac laptops. I know that I’ve bought AppleCare for at least the last 3 and used it on each of them. One had the CD/DVD drive and a fan replaced. On two of them the motherboard was replaced. All of these repairs were fully covered by AppleCare.

iMacs and MacPros – AppleCare for iMacs costs $169. AppleCare for MacPros costs $249. iMacs and MacPros repairs are not tied to tiered, flat-rate pricing. Each replacement part is priced individually. While fans and other small components may be inexpensive, Apple’s labor rate is around $90-100 per hour. So again, AppleCare quickly pays for itself. AppleCare covers the monitor built-into the iMac. In addition to the computer itself, AppleCare also covers an external monitor purchased at the same time as the Mac.

Since AppleCare can be purchased at any time within the first year of initial purchase, I have some clients who don’t purchase AppleCare initially for their iMacs or Mac Pros. Instead, they wait 6 to 9 months to see how the Mac performs and then make a decision. The first 6 months of a computer’s life is not necessarily a good indication of how it’ll perform after 2.5 years of use, but if the Mac has problems in the first 6 months then it seems prudent to buy the insurance of AppleCare in case other problems develop.

I typically don’t recommend AppleCare protection for Mac minis as strongly since AppleCare costs $149 but the price of the mini might be as little as $600. If a business were buying a Mac mini server or if a person were purchasing an Apple laptop at the same time as the Mac mini, then I would recommend it more strongly.

I don’t recommend AppleCare for iPhones, iPods, iPads or AppleTV either due to the relatively low price or the fact that the devices are more likely to be dropped or stolen than require a repair due to a part defect.

[Update March 2013: AppleCare for iPhones and iPads is now AppleCare+. These plans now cover up to two incidents of accidental damage for a service fee of $49 each incident. Coverage may be purchased within the first 30 days of ownership, but purchased at a different time than the device, the device will require a Genius Bar appointment prior to AppleCare purchase to verify that it is in undamaged condition before being covered. For more details you can visit the AppleCare page for iPhone or iPad.]

Another option for iPhone and iPad repair in the Seattle area is JCD Repair. They let you schedule an appointment and tell you the full repair price up front.

If you buy your Mac using a major credit card, the credit card company might double the manufacturer’s warranty. Please call your credit card company to verify and get the details. One client was able to get their iMac’s replacement motherboard covered by their credit card company due to this coverage. The client had to pay for the repair up front, then they were subsequently reimbursed after submitting the requisite paperwork. Utilizing this coverage is not as quick and easy as AppleCare, but this protection could help you if you didn’t buy AppleCare within the first year.

Some homeowners insurance policies or specific riders might be a reason to not buy AppleCare. Some insurance policies even cover accidental cover that is not covered by AppleCare.

Would you like to learn to use iMovie better? Here’s a list of some online information that can help you. iMovie has grown and evolved since it was introduced in 1999. In 2007, Apple gave iMovie’s interface and workflow a complete overhaul with the introduction of iMovie ’08 (aka version 7). This same general interface is still present in the current version, iMovie ’11. The interface overhaul throws experienced iMovie users for a loop and confuses many novice users. Consequently, I frequently provide iMovie training to help users get oriented. There are some very good online resources to help you get started learning iMovie as well.

Apple offers some free how-to videos for iMovie. Apple also has a list of iMovie keyboard shortcuts which can really speed up your work in iMovie.

Ken Stone, a professional photographer who uses Apple’s high-end video editing application Final Cut Pro, has written a detailed overview of iMovie ’09. While he approaches some things from his own perspective and personal needs, I found the article very informative.

Lynda.com is an online computer training business which has been around since the late 1990′s. It has an extensive collection of video tutorials. For a relatively low monthly subscription fee you have access to the entire library including their iMovie training videos.

Have you ever wanted to report a bug or request a feature for an application made by Apple, Adobe or Microsoft? Each company offers you the opportunity to do just that. Use the following web page addresses to submit your bug reports or feature request.

Apple Product Feedback and Feature Request

Microsoft Product Feedback and Feature Request

Adobe Product Feedback and Feature Request

I should mention that you shouldn’t expect to receive any feedback when you fill out one of these forms. I had a conversation with an Apple Store manager who mentioned that when he visited Apple’s headquarters, he saw a room full of people who were reading and processing all of the feedback they received.

You can use Apple’s infrared (IR) remote control to control slideshows in PowePoint 2004, PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011. Here are some instructions for getting this setup. PowerPoint 2008 and PowerPoint 2011 both include support for Apple’s remote. PowerPoint 2004 does not natively have this capability. Instead, you need to use one of the third party applications described in this other article. Personally, I’ve used the free iRed Lite.

First, here’s a little background. Starting in 2005, Apple started to ship remote controls with their iMac G5 computers. They then included it with MacBooks and MacBook Pros as well as the Mac mini. Apple’s intended users to use them to control FrontRow which lets user view movies (DVDs), photos and music. I think Apple must have realized that few people actually used the remote controls so they stopped including them with new Macs but they continue to sell the remotely separately for about $20. In 2009 they replaced the original white plastic remote and with a taller, thinner aluminum version. The remotes do have some uses beyond controlling FrontRow. Most commonly, I see them used to control PowerPoint slideshows. For a more thorough history of the Apple Remote check out this Wikipedia article. To learn about third-party products that allow the remote to control more applications and extend its capabilities in other ways, check out this article.

Here are instructions on how to setup the Apple Remote to control PowerPoint 2008:

• Hold your remote control a few inches from your Mac.
• Simultaneously, press the Menu and Next (right-point arrow) buttons for 5-10 seconds.
• Open your PowerPoint presentation and click the Slideshow button to put it into slideshow mode.
• Press the Forward and Back buttons to move through the slideshow. Pressing the Pause/Play button will also advance to the next slide.

If you ever want to unpair your Mac from a given remote you can go to the Apple menu, select System Preferences and then Security and click the Unpair button.

I should also mention that the IR receiver is on by default in all Macs. This means that other people could walk up to your Mac, pair a remote with it and start to control it. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it could cause confusion. What really causes confusion is when there are multiple Macs in the same room and one person suddenly starts to use one of Apple’s IR remotes. The remote starts to control all of the Macs simultaneously. I assume this only happens if the Macs have previously been paired with another Apple remote. In these situations it’s useful to know that the Security System Preference pane mentioned above lets you check a box to disable the IR receiver in your Mac.

Is your Time Capsule full? Would you like to free up some room for either newer backups of your data or to add another computer in your home? If so, here are some instructions on  this process.

[Note: You need to be comfortable using Terminal and issuing some basic Unix commands in order to free up storage space. You can really mess things up if you use Terminal and are not sure what you're doing, so hire a consultant if you're unsure.]

Time Machine uses different methods for storing data on local (USB or Firewire) hard drives versus the hard drive in a Time Capsule. On a Time Capsule hard drive, Time Machine stores your backup files in a special type of disk image known as a sparsebundle. You don’t need to know what a sparsebundle is, but it’s important to understand that it has important implications when it comes to freeing up space on a Time Capsule hard drive.

On a local hard drive, if you want to delete some of the backup data, you open Time Machine and select the date of a particular backup. Then, click on the Action menu icon, which looks like a gear in the Finder window, and select Delete Backup. Time Machine will proceed to delete the files in that particular backup and this will free up space on the local hard drive.

On a Time Capsule hard drive, when you follow this same procedure to delete the files in a particular backup, you don’t free up storage space on the Time Capsule since the sparsebundle disk image does not change in size. To reclaim the storage space you need to issue a command to shrink the sparsebundle disk image. Here are the steps:

• Open the Terminal application and type cd /Volumes/
• Select your Time Capsule hard drive and navigate into its subdirectories to find the correct .sparsebundle file. The sparsebundle file will have the general form of ComputerName MACaddress.sparsebundle. Write down the name of this file, as you’ll need it in a second.
• Type the following command in Terminal: hdiutil compact SparsebundleName.sparsebundle
• Now sit back and wait. Depending upon how many backups you deleted and how large your sparsebundle was when you started, this compacting could take anywhere from a few minutes to overnight.

When the compacting is complete you’ll see that you have more storage space available on your Time Capsule.

Update March 2013: Added instructions for OX 10.8, Mountain Lion.

Did you know that Mac OS X has a built-in zoom feature? This feature lets you zoom in on your screen so everything on the screen is larger. Of course, when you zoom in you can only see part of the screen on your monitor. You’ll need to scroll around to see the other parts of the screen.

I use the zoom feature frequently when I’m giving presentations especially when I provide Mac training. I project my Mac laptop’s image onto a wall or screen using a projector. Then when I want to show audience members something on the screen, I zoom the screen so that everybody in the audience can see what I’m trying to highlight on one part of the screen.

Zoom is off by default. For Mac OS X 10.4-10.7, follow these instructions to turn it on:

• Go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences.
• Click on the Universal Access icon.
• Click on the Seeing button.
• In the Zoom section set the button to On.
• Optionally, click the Options button and make sure in the section titled “When zoomed in, the screen image moves:” that it is set to “Only when the pointer reaches an edge”. Click Done. The other options lead to too much screen movement which I find distracting or even annoying.

For Mac OS X 10.8, follow these instructions:

• Go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences.
• Click on the Accessibility icon.
• Click on Zooming in the left-hand column.
• Check the box “Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom.”
• Check the box next to “Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom.”
• Optionally, click the More Options button and make sure in the section titled “When zoomed in, the screen image moves:” that it is set to “Only when the pointer reaches an edge.” Click Done. The other options lead to too much screen movement, which I find distracting or even annoying.

Once the zoom feature is enabled then you can invoke it at any time to zoom in on your Mac’s screen by simultaneously pressing these 3 keys: Command, Option and the Plus Sign (which is typically the same as the Equal Sign key). Each time you press these three keys your Mac will zoom in a little bit more.

To zoom out simultaneously press these 3 keys: Command, Option and the Minus Sign key which is typically to the left of the Plus Sign key.

All batteries will eventually experience diminished efficiency, storage capacity and will need to be replaced. However, regularly recalibrating your Lithium-ion battery will help to prolong your battery’s life and health, which will help reduce the frequency with which you’ll have to buy a new battery.

Apple recommends recalibrating your battery at time of purchase and then every few months after that. Battery University recommends recalibrating your battery every 30 charge/discharge cycles. Apple provides written instructions on how to recalibrate your battery. For years, I had a repeating event on my iCal calendar that sent me an email reminder which included a copy of Apple’s instructions. Recently, I started using Watts (30-day free trial, then $6.95) which lets me monitor the health of my battery, reminds me to calibrate my battery, then guides me through it.

Apple indicates that one should expect current Mac laptop batteries to retain 80% of their charge capacity after 1000 full charge/discharge cycles. Watts lets you keep an eye on this and alerts you if your battery is unhealthy and needs to be replaced. If you have the Growl notification application installed, Watts can be configured to display useful notifications and reminders to recalibrate your battery. I recommend Watts. Check it out, you might find it helpful.

Here’s a copy of Apple’s current instructions for recalibrating your battery if you own a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or PowerBook G4 with a dual-layer DVD drive.

• Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
• Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
• Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
• At this point, save your work.  Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
• Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
• Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Personally, I find it inconvenient to try to incorporate the above recalibration process into my day-to-day use of my laptop. Thus, I tend to do this on a Friday evening, when I’m done using the computer for the night. I save all of my documents and quit all applications on the laptop. Then, I open a QuickTime movie and set it to loop continuously. I then disconnect the power cord so the laptop is running on battery. Sometime during the night, the laptop’s battery will be depleted and the laptop will automatically go to sleep. Then it can sit there for a number of hours. On Saturday morning, I”ll connect the charger to charge it up, which can take a couple of hours. When I’m ready to use the laptop the battery is fully charged and ready to go.

Do you want to check to see if your Mac is still under warranty from Apple? The technical support section of Apple’s web site lets you easily check to see if your Apple device is protected by either its built-in or the extended hardware warranty. Here are simple instructions on how to do so.

All Macintosh computers as well as iPhones and iPad come with a standard one-year hardware warranty. Apple offers an optional extended warranty named AppleCare Protection Program. This extended warranty can be purchased anytime during the first year while your Mac is still protected by it’s built-in warranty. To determine if your Mac  is covered do this:

• Obtain your Apple device’s serial number. It is printed on your device but it can sometimes be hard to locate, so use this page from Apple which explains where to find your device’s serial number. If you have a Mac that starts up you can follow these instructions instead.
• Go to the Apple menu and select “About This Mac”
• In the window which appears, click the “More Info” button which opens System Profiler application.
• The “Hardware” section will be selected on the left-hand side. In the right-hand side, near the bottom of the Hardware Overview, you’ll see the serial number listed. Select it and copy it.
• Go to Apple’s web page for checking your warranty coverage.
• Paste your Mac’s serial number into the field and click the Continue button. Your hardware coverage will be listed shortly.

You can use these instructions to retrieve any saved password from your keychain, such as the password to your wireless network. The keychain is a secure place to store passwords. When you initially connected to your password-protected wireless network, your password would have been stored in your keychain if you checked “Remember this network.”

• Go to /Applications/Utilities and open Keychain Access. This application lets you view the passwords (keys) stored on your keychain. You’ll notice that the application’s icon is a ring with keys on it.
• Use the Search field in the upper right corner. Type in the name of your wireless network.
• Click on the name of your wireless network from the list of found items. Here are some clues on how to find the right one if there are multiple items with the same name. It’s Kind will be Airport Network Password. It’ll be on the “login” keychain.
• Go to the File menu and select Get Info.
• In the lower left corner of the Get Info window check the box named “Show Password.”
• You’ll be prompted to enter your administrator account’s password. (This is your main computer password. This is the password you use when installing software updates.)
• Click the “Allow Once” button.
• The password is displayed.

Update Oct 2010 – Backing up to multiple hard drives is easier to setup if your Mac has Mac OS Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.x) installed.  One no longer has to go through the rigamarole that I describe below when you swap between two or more hard drives. Instead, Time Machine will remember that you want it to be ready to backup to two or more hard drives. When you swap the hard drives it will automatically start to backup to the hard drive that you just attached. It’s easy to configure Time Machine to backup to multiple drives. Read this article from MacObserver for instructions.

Here are instructions on how to have Time Machine switch between two backup hard drives.

My recommendations for setting up a comprehensive backup system for your Mac include swapping between two external hard drives. While one hard drive is being used to backup your Mac the other drive is kept off-site in a secure location. Using multiple drives provides protection against fire, floods and burglars, which could affect both your Mac and the backup drive sitting next to it.

In last week’s Tech Tip article, I described how to configure Carbon Copy Cloner to perform a full bootable backup whenever the backup drive is reconnected. If you swap your two backup drives on a weekly basis then Carbon Copy Cloner will automatically update it’s full backup each week. In other words, Carbon Copy Cloner can be configured to backup to multiple drives. On the other hand, Time Machine can not be configured to backup to multiple drives. Instead, each time you switch your hard drives you’ll need to manually select the currently attached drive and configure Time Machine to use it.  The good news is that Time Machine will look at the attached hard drive and see that it has stored backup data on this drive previously and will pick up where it left off. It’s important to understand how Time Machine performs its backups.

Time Machine performs automatic incremental updates. Time Machine is scheduled to run automatically every hour as long your Mac is turned on and awake. The first time it performs a backup it can take many hours since it is backing up all files on your Mac. It actually skips some files including items in the Trash, cache files, log files and a few other files. Subsequent backups take much less time since Time Machine only needs to backup modified and new files. It’s also useful to know that Time Machine doesn’t hold onto every hourly backup forever. It performs some automatic deleting of backups. It saves hourly backups for the last 24 hours. Beyond that it saves daily backups for the past month and weekly backups until your hard drive is full. Once a backup drive becomes full then it deletes the oldest weekly backups to make room for new backups and notifies you when it does this.

When you swap backup drives, Time Machine performs a scan to determine what files are new or have been modified since the last time Time Machine performed a backup to a particular drive. In our case, when you swap the drives, the most recent backup would be about a week ago. Time Machine thus performs an incremental backup of all files that are new or have been modified during the past week.

Specifically, here are instructions on how to re-configure Time Machine each time you swap your backup drives. Let’s assume you have two backup hard drives named “Time Machine Red” and “Time Machine Green”. For simplicity, I’ll just call them Red and Green.

1. Let’s assume that Green is currently connected to your Mac. In this case, you’ll see an icon named “Time Machine Green” on your Desktop.
2. Drag this icon to the Trash this tells the Mac to unmount (logically disconnect) the hard drive.
3. It’s now safe to physically disconnect the hard drive from your Mac. Unplug the FireWire or USB cable and power cord, if present, from Green.
4. Connect the power cord, as needed, and FireWire or USB cable to Red.
5. In about 15 seconds you’ll see an icon appear on the Desktop named Time Machine Red. (If your drive is partitioned for use with Carbon Copy Cloner then you’ll see two icons, one for each partition.)
6. Go to the Apple Menu, select System Preferences and click on the Time Machine icon.
7. Click Select Disk
8. Select Time Machine Red from the list of available hard drives.
9. Click the “Use for Backup” button
10. Close the Time Machine Preferences window. Time Machine will start to perform its backup shortly.

Whenever  you swap between Red and Green simply follow these same instructions but replace every occurrence of Red with Green and vice versa. Once you’ve done the swaps a couple of times you’ll see that there’s nothing to it.

In a previous Tech Tip article I encouraged users to setup a comprehensive backup system by partitioning a hard drive into two pieces and then configure Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine to  backup to the two partitions. Here are some more detailed setup instructions.

Connect a FireWire or USB hard drive to your Mac with a cable, turn it on and wait for its icon to mount on the Desktop. Go to /Application/Utilities and open Disk Utility. Select the hard drive from the left-hand list. The hard drive is typically named by its size, manufacturer and sometimes a model number. (In the image below you can see that I’ve select the drive named 750.16 GB OEM.)

Paritioning in Disk Utility

Next, click the Partition tab. In the Volume Scheme section select 2 Partitions. Fill in appropriate names and sizes in the fields on the right-hand side. I recommend making the first (top) partition your partition for storing Time Machine backup data and the second (bottom) partition your partition for storing your Carbon Copy Cloner full bootable backup. The reason for putting the Time Machine partition on top is so that you can more easily make the second partition larger, as needed, in the future.

To determine appropriate sizes you should click on your Mac’s hard drive icon on your Desktop. Then go the File menu and select Get Info. Look at how much space, measured in gigabytes (GB) is being used and look at the drive’s total capacity. At a minimum the size for your Carbon Copy Cloner partition needs to be large equal to the number of gigabytes currently used. I typically make the partition at least 10-20% bigger to allow for growth in the amount of data on your hard drive.

I suggest naming the partitions something like Time Machine Backup and Full Backup. If you’re going to follow my recommendation and switch between two backup hard drives then you should add letter or number designators in the partition names, such as Time Machine Backup A.

Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Click the Options button and make sure you select GUID Partition Table if the drive is connected to a Mac with an Intel processor. Select Apple Partition Map if the drive is connected to a older Mac using a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor. Click the Apply button so the drive will be partitioned and then formatted. When Disk Utility finishes the drive is now ready for use. If my instructions are too brief, you might benefit from Ken Stone’s detailed instructions with lots of pictures.

Two icons representing the two hard drive partitions will appear on your Mac’s Desktop. Go to the Apple Menu, select System Preferences and click on the Time Machine icon (Mac OS X 10.5 or newer is required). Click the Select Disk button and pick your Time Machine and then click the Use for Backup button. Apple offers a succinct introduction to using Time Machine.

After you download and install Carbon Copy Cloner, open it from your Applications folder. In the Source Disk section select your Mac’s internal hard drive which is typically named Macintosh HD. In the Target Disk section select the smaller partition which you created in Disk Utility. Click the padlock icon in the lower left corner and enter your Mac OS X administrator password, then click the Save Task button. In the Scheduler window that appears enter a name for the task in the Scheduled Tasks section. On the right-hand side, in the “Run this task:” section select “When Target  is Reconnected.” Click the Save button in the lower right corner to save this configuration. The developer offers lots of support and instructions for Carbon Copy Cloner.

Carbon Copy Cloner

You have now partitioned an external hard drive and configured Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner to backup to each of the partitions. If you follow my recommendation of buying two external backup hard drives then you’ll want to repeat this setup procedure for the second drive. Next week I’ll provide instructions on how to swap between two hard drives and have Time Machine backup to both hard drives.

Did you know that Apple’s Mail application automatically builds a list of all recipients to whom you’ve sent email? I think it’s very useful to review this list a few times each year. By reviewing this list you can easily add useful email addresses to your Address Book and delete outdated email addresses or ones that contain typos.

Before we review this list, it’s important to understand how it is used by Mail. When you are creating a new email message and you begin to type a person’s name or email address in the To: field, you’re typically presented with a list of email addresses which match the letters that you’ve typed. This list of email addresses is a composite of email addresses from your Address Book as well as addresses listed in your Previous Recipients list.

If you ever made a typo in an email address and then sent the email message, this incorrect email address was likely added to your Previous Recipient list. By reviewing this list you can remove such undesirable email addresses.

To view your Previous Recipient list, open Mail, click on the Window menu and select Previous Recipient. You can search this list using the search field in the upper right corner. You can also sort this list by any of the columns listed: Name, Email, or Last Used. You can also sort by the left-hand most column which is not named. This column indicates if the email address is saved in your Address Book. If it is then you’ll see an icon which resembles a Rolodex card. If the address is not in your Address Book, this space will be blank. I like to sort by this column to find common recipients whose email addresses I want in my Address Book. I then select them and use the Add to Address Book button. If you don’t typically add people to your Address Book, this can be a fast way to add a whole lot of people to your Address Book.

In order to remove an email address containing a typo, I often use the search field to locate it. Then I’ll click on the address to select it and use the Remove From List button.

I like to sort the list by the Last Used date. I review the oldest addresses listed and if I don’t recognize them then I select one or more and remove them from the list too.

Here are instructions on how to remove and re-add a print queue. I commonly do this to fix printer issues. Somehow the old queue gets “damaged” and stops working properly. As long as you don’t mind losing any of the print jobs which may be sitting in the queue, go ahead and do the following:

1. Go to Apple menu, select System Preferences, click on Print & Fax.
2. On the left-hand list of print queues, click once on the print queue you’d like to delete. For this example, let’s assume the queue is named Brother HL-5250. Click the minus sign icon below this list to permanently delete this print queue.
3. Click the plus sign icon (next to the minus sign) to begin adding a new print queue.
4. A window will appear listing all printers directly connected to your Mac or available via your network. You should see the Brother HL-5250 printer listed. In order to appear, the printer would need to be turned on and directly connected to your Mac using a USB cable or connected to your network using an ethernet cable. (If you don’t see the printer then you’ll first have to figure out why it’s not showing up.)
5. Click once on the Brother HL-5250 printer to select it. Wait a few seconds while a conversation occurs between your Mac and the Brother printer. Once the conversation is complete, then the printer driver will be selected and listed at the bottom of this window. Once the “Add” button becomes active, click it.
6. You’ll be taken back to the printer list in Print & Fax. You should see the Brother HL-5250 on this list now. Close this window by clicking the red dot.
7. Send a print job to the Brother printer to test it.

Here are some examples of how I use QuickLook. I often have a Word or Excel file which I need to reference. I don’t need to make a change to the document I just want to read some information from it or remind myself of some details. Rather than double-clicking the file and waiting for Word or Excel to open, I simply use QuickLook. When I’m cleaning up my Desktop, I’ll often select multiple files at once by Command-Clicking on them and then I invoke QuickLook. QuickLook lets me view each file one by one so I can see their contents and determine where they should be filed or if I can put them in the Trash. Not every type of file can be viewed with QuickLook, but the most common file types can such as .doc, .xls, .pdf, .mp3, .jpg and many others. As developers update their applications they can add support for QuickLook, so over time more file types will be supported.

Apple produces their own technical tips for the Mac and iPhone. They are short how-to videos. Check them out. I’m sure you’ll find one or two that will teach you a new trick.

Over the years, I’ve chided Apple for never providing a legend or explanation for the symbols they list next to a menu command which indicate the keyboard shortcut for that command. Well, at long last, Apple has a written technical note that explains the most commonly used hierglypic symbols and tells you the keyboard shortcut for a command. Check it out.

If you aren’t satisfied with this brief visual explanation of the keyboard symbols then you might like Dan Rodney’s chart which is a more thorough list of the keyboard symbols.

Mac Keyboard Symbols from Dan Rodney

The focus of this article is to describe the essential components of a comprehensive backup system for your Macintosh computer. This article’s recommendations are appropriate for anybody with between one and a few Macs which they would like to backup. If you have a larger network of Macs, then other applications and approaches would be more appropriate.

I believe that there are two types of people in this world. Those who have lost data and those who will lose data. Thus, I feel strongly about the importance of backing up your computer. A comprehensive backup system will help you minimize the amount of data that you could ever lose.

We all store valuable files on our computer, though what is valuable varies by person. For some it is email messages, calendar data and address book information. For others it is their Quicken or QuickBooks information. For others still it is their digital pictures, home movies and music. For some it is all of these kinds of files. We increasingly rely on computers, so minimizing downtime and recovering quickly from problems need to be incorporated into a comprehensive backup system.

In some ways, a backup system is analogous to an insurance policy. We hope we never need to rely on it, but we’re very glad that we have it if it is needed. Just as different types of insurance policies provide different amounts of coverage, not all backup systems provide the same levels of protection. However, any level of protection is better then no protection at all. Here is a list of the essential components in a comprehensive backup system.

• It should backup all files on your computer
• It should run frequently and automatically
• It should produce multiple backup copies of your files. The old rule of thumb is that if it’s important enough to backup once then it’s important enough to backup twice.
  
• The multiple copies should be kept on multiple disks which are securely stored in multiple locations. One of these locations should be off-site or, if on-site, in a Class 125 fireproof safe.
  
• You need to monitor the backup system at least weekly to ensure that it is making backup copies of your data.
  
• You need to test your backup system a few times each year to ensure that it’s working properly and so you’ll know how to use it to restore a file under pressure when a problem arises.

The Tao of Backup web site does a very good job of describing the importance of each of these components in an entertaining and educational way.

Backup systems allow us to recover from a range of problems that can occur. The most common type of problem is accidentally deleting a file and needing to get it back. Another all to common problem is hard drive failure, in which case we’d need to recover all files. Although rare, burglaries, fire, flood and theft all occur and would require us to recover all of our files too. To recover an accidentally deleted file or to recover from a hard drive failure all one needs is a local, on-site backup copy of their files. However, to recover from a burglary, fire or flood can often require having an off-site backup copy of your data.

While I encourage everybody to setup a comprehensive backup system, I understand that not everybody has the time or money to commit to such a system. I’ll re-iterate that any level of protection is better than none at all and a pretty good backup can be surprisingly affordable.

In more practical terms, here is a simple, comprehensive backup system for one Mac. Start by purchasing two external hard drives. Partition each drive into two parts. Configure Carbon Copy Cloner (donations requested) to make a full bootable backup of your Mac to one of the partitions on each of the external drives. Carbon Copy Cloner can be scheduled to perform automatic backups whenever the hard drive is connected. Configure Time Machine, which comes included in Mac OS X 10.5 and higher, to perform automated hourly backups of all files on your Mac to the other partition on each of the external drives. On a designated day each week you can switch between the two hard drives. The idle drive should be stored off-site at a secure location across the street or across town. If you’re not inclined to buy two backup hard drives then you could supplement your one on-site hard drive with off-site backups made by CrashPlan. CrashPlan is an online backup system. They have different pricing for personal and business use. (I’ve now written Tech Tip articles about using CrashPlan for either personal or business use.)

The reason to use both Carbon Copy Cloner and Time Machine is that even though Time Machine backs up all files on a hard drive, it does not do so in a manner which lets one start (boot) their Mac from the Time Machine backup drive. Thus, Carbon Copy Cloner is a nice supplement to Time Machine since it’s focus is making a bootable backup drive. Having another hard drive from which one can boot their Mac can minimize downtime and can be helpful in the event of problem with the internal hard drive.

Monitoring the system is easy. To monitor Time Machine simply click on its Menu Bar icon to see when it last ran and/or look for its Menu Bar icon to spin while it is performing a backup. When you swap the backup drives you should see Carbon Copy Cloner automatically start.

Apple has an article which provides instructions on how to restore files from a Time Machine backup. Practice this a few times so you have confidence that Time Machine is working and so you’ll be calm if you need to rely on Time Machine for real. An important test of the Carbon Copy Cloner backup is to go to the Startup Disk System Preference, select this disk and then restart your Mac to ensure that you can boot from this backup. To determine which drive was used to startup your Mac, go to the Apple menu, select About This Mac and see which disk is listed as the startup disk or use Disk Utility.

A few final notes. Archives are different from backups and I think you should archive your more important data as well. I’ll talk about archives in a future article.

TidBits’ has written a couple of excellent Take Control PDF books about backing up Macs. Check them out:

Take Control of Mac Backups and Take Control of Easy Mac Backups

This article is the first in a series of articles that talk about Macintosh backup systems including specific products. Check my Tech Tip blog regularly for more articles in my Backup category.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap is a compact, easy-to-use scanner which will scan a stack of two-sided pages and turn them into a searchable PDF with the press of just one button. I use my ScanSnap several times throughout the week to scan documents as well as receipts of various sizes. I highly recommend the ScanSnap.

I bought my first ScanSnap, the S510M, in January 2007 and it’s still going strong after 2900 scans. Fujitsu has replaced this model with the S1500M and the S1300.

I was fortunate enough to win an S1300 in a recent give-away by a Fujitsu representative. The S1300 can be powered by either a power cord or via a USB port on your computer. (It needs a second, separate USB port for transmitting the scanning data.) The software bundled with the S1300 includes some new features and is compatible with my three year-old S510M. If you own an older ScanSnap you can download the current ScanSnap software which is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.

The bundled Macintosh software includes Fujitsu’s own ScanSnap Manager as well as two third-party applications — Abby FineReader 4.1 for ScanSnap and ReadIRIS’ CardIRIS 3.6 for ScanSnap. FineReader is an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) application that let’s you turn your PDFs into searchable PDFs, editable Word or Excel documents. CardIRIS also does OCR, but is intended for business cards. It lets you scan a business card and turn it into a record in Apple’s Address Book.

The S1300 is also the first fully cross-platform ScanSnap model. In the past, ScanSnap scanners have been bundled with either Mac-compatible software or Windows-compatible software though the scanner hardware itself works with either Macs or PCs. The S1300 comes with one DVD which contains both Mac and Windows software.

Fujitsu has added a host of other appealing features over the past few years. Here are a few highlights.

• Right-clicking on the Dock icon let’s one select either Simplex (one-sided) or Duplex (two-sided) scans in case you don’t want to scan the back-side of a document such as a store receipt.

• ScanSnap Manager’s Application section lets you scan a document directly to a number of destinations such as iPhoto, your printer or an attachment in a new email message.

• Marking text with a highlighter pen will turn that text into a keyword in your searchable PDF.

The paperless office that has been prophesied has not appeared, but my ScanSnap lets me reduce the amount of paper records that I have in my filing cabinets. I scan most documents so they are always available on my laptop. Of course, a robust backup system is important if you’re going to entrust all of these documents to your computer.
Note: ScanSnaps do not conform to TWAIN, ISIS and WIA standards.

Update 03-2011: I recently learned that Fujitsu has created a number of ScanSnap Tips and Tricks including one on how to clean your ScanSnap and how to replace the consumables.

Update: 01-2013: MacWorld recently published a comparison between ScanSnap’s current high-end scanner, the ScanSnap iX500 and Neat’s NeatDesk.  Read the comparison yourself, but I’m glad that I have a ScanSnap. I might check out Neat’s software for Mac. If I like it, I can configure it to use my ScanSnap.

Would you like to schedule automatic email reminders to yourself for iCal appointments? Here are instructions on getting this set up.

1. Open Address Book, click on the Card menu and select Go to My Card. Make sure that the My Card exists and that it contains your name and the email address at which you’d like to receive email reminders. You can add multiple email addresses if you want some reminders to go to one address and have other reminders go to another address.

2. Open iCal, click on the File menu and select Add Event. Type in a name for the event.

3. Double-click the event to see the event’s details if you use OS X 10.5 or later. If you use OS X 10.4 then single click on the event to view the details in the Info area. In the Alarm section click on the word None to view a list of options. Select Email from that list. Then, below that, you can select from multiple email addresses if you have them listed in your My Card. You can also set how far in advance you’d like the email reminder to be sent.

4. You can set multiple email reminders. For example, maybe you’d like a reminder 12 hours in advance and then again 1 hour in advance. If you use OS X 10.5 or later then a second Alarm field automatically appears so just repeat the instructions in step 3 to add a second alarm. If you use OS X 10.4 then you’ll have to control-click on the word Alarm and select Add Alarm from the menu that appears.

Do you often want to get driving directions from Google Maps for somebody’s address which is stored in Address Book? If so, then you should use Brian Toth’s Google Maps Address Book Plugin. I’ve used this great little utility for several years and rely on it regularly to get driving directions either from my office to a client’s office or from one of my client’s office to another client’s office. You can try the plugin for free. If you like it then please send a donation to Brian Toth, the developer.

Installation is easy. Click the download button on the developer’s web site. You’ll start to download the compressed zip file. Your Mac you automatically unzip this file, if not you can double-click it to get your Mac to unzip this file. You’ll then see the Google Maps Plugin installer application. Double-click it to install it.

It’s easy to use as well.

1. Open Address Book and hover your cursor over the “work” or “home” address label.
2. Click on the address label and select Google Directions.
3. To change the starting address click on the pop-up list near the top of the window to select your starting address. Then click the “Map” button.

Your default web browser will open and you’ll be shown Google Directions for the selected addresses.

Here are images to illustrate these instructions.

Google Maps Plugin Instructions

Extra Tip – I also use Brian Toth’s PostCheck plugin for Apple’s Address Book. PostCheck will fill-in an address’ missing zip code or verify that you have the correct zip code. You’ll notice that once you’ve downloaded and installed it that you can select it from the pop-up menu. Just look for PostCheck.

[Update 2012: In case you haven't backed up your Entourage database, I just learned about a third party data recovery product, Stellar Phoenix Entourage Recovery. It claims to be able to recover email messages and other types of data from damaged Entourage databases. I haven't personally used this product but it's made by Stellar Phoenix and I tested and reviewed one of their other data recovery products previously. Colleagues have reported having success using it. A demo version with limited capabilities is available. The full version costs $149 currently.]

If you use Entourage 2004 or 2008, I believe that it’s critically important that you backup your Entourage database daily or even more often.

Entourage stores all of your email messages, calendar events and address book contacts in the database file. As this database file gets larger it becomes more and more prone to getting damaged. Some damage can be repaired, but it’s not uncommon for some databases to be damaged beyond repair. At this point there are typically only two ways to deal with the situation. The first option is to manually rebuild your database which is very time consuming and almost certainly ensures that some email messages or other data will be lost. This process requires you to manually export your address book, calendar events and then export each mail folder one by one into individual mailboxes (mbox). The second option is to restore your Entourage database from a recent backup. Your backup copy of  your Entourage database will still be large and in need of some housekeeping, but hopefully its not damaged so you can do this clean-up and avoid future problems. The more frequent your backups the better since we want to work with a recent database.

I should also emphasize that it’s important to deal with a damaged Entourage database at the earliest sign of problems. In some cases Entourage will display a message indicating that your database is damaged. In other situations you’ll notice problems. Entourage might display multiple copies of the same email message in your inbox. Or, it might display the header information for one email message while displaying the body of a different email message.

You can manually start Entourage’s built-in Database Utility by holding down the option key while opening Entourage. It’s recommended that you choose the “Verify” option to check the health of your Entourage database.

Be aware that if you use Entourage 2004 the “rebuild database” option in the Database Utility removes all category information that you’ve assigned to contacts and email messages. I believe it also deletes all of your Notes. These problems were apparently fixed in Entourage 2008, though I haven’t verified that personally.

Entourage stores its database in this location:

/Users/<your username>/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office Identities 2004/Main Identity

Note: If you’re using Entourage 2008 then the folder name changes to Office Identities 2008.

To backup the database I recommend copying the entire Main Identity folder. Look inside this folder to make sure that the database file inside was modified today. This way you can be more certain that this is your current database. Entourage lets users create multiple Identities so you could have more then one identity folder. If you’ve used the Database Utility to repair your database then you may find more then one database inside the identity folder.

Is your Mac’s screen cluttered with too many windows? Do you drag windows left and right, up and down, trying to find the window that you’re looking for? There is a better way to manage window clutter on your Mac. Apple offers a number of tools and techniques including Spaces, Expose, Minimize Window and others. This article talks about my preferred method. I use three different keyboard commands – hide application, Application Switcher and cycle through windows. Let me explain how to invoke each keyboard command. Then I’ll explain how to tie them together.

Hide Application – Nearly all applications can be hidden by pressing either Command-H or selecting Hide <Your Application’s Name> from the Application menu. For example, if you’re reading this article using Safari then click on the Safari menu at the top of your screen. Half-way down the menu you’ll see Hide Safari listed. Alternatively you can press the Command key and the H key to hide Safari.

Application Switcher – Not surprisingly, the purpose of the Application Switcher is to let you easily switch between applications. To invoke this feature simultaneously press the Command key and the Tab key. Then, release the Tab key. You’ll see a row of big icons appear across the screen. This row of icons is the application switcher. To use it, continue to hold down the Command key and then press and release the Tab key. Each time you press and release the Tab key you’ll see that the next application in the list is selected. If you continue to hold down the Tab key then you’ll rapidly advance through the list of applications. When you’ve selected the desired application from the list, then release all keys and the selected application will come to the fore-front. Hint: If you want to move through the list in reverse, then press Command-Shift-Tab.

Cycle through windows – Within a specific application, one can easily flip through all open documents and any other windows by simply pressing Command-tilde. The tilde key is the key to the left of the 1 key. The tilde is the accent mark that goes over an “n” in Spanish. To use this properly you need to depress the Command key and then press and release the tilde key each time you want to advance to the next window. Go ahead, give it a try.

Using all of these commands together. When I’m done with a given application, for a least a minute or two, and I want to switch to another application then I press Command-H to hide the current application. Then I press Command-Tab to invoke the Application Switcher and use it to switch to the application that I want to use. If I have many windows or documents open in this application then I just press Command-tilde to quickly find the document that I want. Then again when I’m done working on that document or application, I hide it and switch to the next application.  This lets me reduce window clutter and quickly find the document that I need.

Last week Apple released an update to their Backup application which is available to all MobileMe subscribers. This new version, Backup version 3.2, is recommended for everybody but adds some new features. Apple describes the new features in this technical article.

The most important, and in my opinion, useful enhancement is that backup data stored on one’s iDisk gets recycled automatically. There are, however, some important details that one needs to understand. Recycling means that old copies of backup data will be removed automatically from one’s iDisk. I think this is a positive development since in the past Backup would simply fill up one’s iDisk storage space and then fail to complete successive backups. Worse yet, it would hardly notify you. This was a big problem in my book. Therefore, I’m pleased that data recycling will occur. However, it’s important to know the following details.

Data recycling can not be turned off. Data recycling occurs only for backup data stored on an iDisk, not for data stored on a local hard drive or CD/DVD. Data recycling apparently does NOT occur if one’s backup schedule is for monthly or quarterly backups to iDisk. Data recycling occurs after 30 days for daily iDisk backups and after 12 weeks for weekly iDisk backups. It’s unknown if Backup notifies you when data recycling occurs. If you store your backup data on your own external hard drive then you can choose from the following recycle schedules: every 4 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years or only when the drive is full.

Dealing with spam or junk email in your Inbox is a waste of time. If you run a small business, the time wasted identifying and deleting email can add up over weeks or months. This is true whether you are one person or a multi-person team. Here are a couple of ways to reduce the amount of spam that you receive in your email Inbox.

First, make sure that your email provider’s email filtering feature is turned on. Almost every email provider has such a feature so let’s take advantage of it if it’s offered. Many of them, however, are not very capable and thus I often recommend an additional layer of spam filtering such as SpamSieve or Big Mountain’s spam filtering service. Both of these services are described below.

For the general Mac user I recommend SpamSieve. SpamSieve is an application which gets installed on your Mac and it has plug-ins to let it work in conjunction with your email application. You can try SpamSieve for free and, if you find it effective, then buy it for $30. SpamSieve works with the most common email client applications including Mail, Entourage, Eudora and Thunderbird. This is a good solution for individuals. SpamSieve is a good option if you don’t have your own custom domain name. In other words, SpamSieve is a good choice if you have an email account provided by AOL, Comcast, Earthlink or other major email service providers.

If you own your own domain name then you have additional options to consider. You could sign up for a email filtering service such as Big Mountain Hosting’s MailFoundry spam filtering service. In order to set this up you need to modify the MX (mail exchange) record within your DNS (domain name system) records. Specifically, you set your MX record to deliver all incoming email to the email filtering server. The server then scans all email messages and delivers legitimate email messages to your Inbox. All email messages that were identified as spam or contain a virus are put into a quarantine. You then receive one email that lists all quarantined messages. If a legitimate email was quarantined then you can  click a button to release the message from its quarantine and have it delivered to your Inbox. I use Big Mountain’s spam filerting server and find it highly effective. Their plans start at $2 per month per mailbox. They have tiered pricing for larger groups of users.

If you own your own domain name but only want to filter some of your email accounts then you could consider GFI’s MaxMail Protection. This is also a robust spam and virus filtering tool. The setup and day-to-day operation is very similar to Big Moutain’s MailFoundry, but GFI MaxMail Protection offers a unique feature of allowing you to filter only some of your email accounts. Thus, you also only get charged for each email account that you filter. The cost is about $2 per month per mailbox (aka email address).

As expected, Apple announced their first tablet computer in January. They call it the iPad. What is the iPad able to do and how is it innovative compared to PC tablets?

The iPad is a new class of device at least for Mac users. It’s a tablet computer, and it fits somewhere in between a smartphone and a laptop. PC manufacturers have made tablets for over a half dozen years. These tablets typically required users to use a stylus or an on-screen keyboard for input and never sold well since they cost as much or more than a comparable laptop. The iPad differs from these PC tablets in two obvious ways. The iPad is a touch-input device and it costs less than a Mac laptop. The price range for iPads is $499 to $829 depending upon features and storage capacity. One primarily uses finger gestures and an on-screen keyboard to control the iPad.

The iPad is a versatile device that could replace a laptop for some users. This initial model’s strengths are in entertainment. It’s oriented towards consuming data not producing data. It’s capable of letting you listen to music, view photos and watch movies like an iPod and read books like a Kindle. It also has the ability to send and receive email messages and view web pages like an iPhone or a laptop. It also lets you view web sites and access your email. To increase typing speeds one can buy a special full-size external keyboard or use an external bluetooth keyboard. For a thorough description of what the iPad can and can not do, please refer to this MacInTouch article.

There are some important limitations and omissions based on the information that Apple has currently released about the iPad. While it will let you view and compose email messages, it’s unclear if you’ll be able to edit attachments. Apple has not indicated that it will be able to print. Curiously, it does not include a camera though it seems likely that this will be added in the future.

The iPad’s ability to handle Word and Excel documents is unclear. Not surprisingly Microsoft has not had time to develop versions of Word and Excel for the iPad. Apple has announced special iPad versions of Pages and Numbers, but their versatility remains to be seen. It’s unknown if they’ll be able to open and edit Word and Excel files.

Over the coming years the iPad will evolve and eventually could become a suitable replacement for a laptop for business users if these shortcomings are addressed. Currently, however, it only seems that it’ll replace a laptop for more casual users whose primary uses for a laptop are personal email, viewing web pages and handling music, photos and movies.

Apple’s search tool, Spotlight, does not search every folder on your Mac’s hard drive. Apple configures it to skip some folders that it thinks you won’t want to search. For example, Spotlight doesn’t search inside the various Library folders on your Mac. If you’re looking for a font, such as Helvetica, Spotlight won’t find it for you.

I supplement Spotlight with a handy application named Find Any File which truly does search inside of all folders on your Mac. It’s not a fast as Spotlight, but that’s a worthwhile trade-off in my mind. Find Any File’s interface is based on Apple’s Find File which was part of older versions of the Mac operating system from the mid-90s, so FindAnyFile’s interface might look familar to long-time Mac users. It’s interface is easy to use, regardless.

It’s important to know that due to Mac OS X’s permission structure when you first open Find Any File it’s only able to search files that you own. If you want to search all files on the hard drive then hold down the Option key while clicking on its Find button. You’ll be asked for an administrator password and then Find Any File will restart with root permissions. This means that it’ll then be able to really find any file on your Mac’s hard drive.

Do you access your email account from multiple computers? Have you added a smartphone to the mix as well? If so, you should be aware of IMAP. IMAP-enabled email accounts offer better email handling than old-fashioned POP email accounts.

Both POP and IMAP are communication methods used between email programs, like Apple’s Mail or Microsoft’s Entourage, and an email server. POP has been around for many, many years. It works just fine, but it’s model is outdated. IMAP was developed around the realization that people increasingly want to check their mail from multiple computers (or cell phones or other devices). Thus, some or all of your email is stored on the server, not on just one computer. Then you can setup a home computer, a work computer and a smartphone to all access (view) that email (using IMAP). You’ll see the same list of messages on each device plus you’ll see which messages are “new” or have the “replied to” mark next to them. If you delete a message from one device, it’ll be deleted from the server, then subsequently from each of the other devices when they next talk to the mail server.  In other words your Inbox stays synchronized across multiple devices. This same type of synchronization can be setup for other mail folders like Drafts, Sent, and Trash, as well as saved messages.

IMAP is very useful. Personally, I think everybody should be using IMAP, even if you’re only using one computer currently. If you’re interested in using IMAP you could contact your email provider. Not all email providers offer IMAP service. Or if they do offer it, they sometimes charge more since IMAP requires increased storage space on the server and increases the server’s workload.

There is a common myth that if one uses IMAP that email messages ONLY reside on the mail server. This is not true. Each computer will store it’s own local copy of email messages on its hard drive. This way you can read or review email messages even if you don’t have internet access, such as while on a train or plane.

This recent article in TidBITS gives some more detail about IMAP and its features. You don’t have to read the entire article, just a few paragraphs about how IMAP works.

MsgFiler (read “Message Filer”) is critical to me. Recently, I held off on upgrading my Mac to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) until MsgFiler had been updated to be compatible with the new version of Mail in Snow Leopard. I should note that Mail uses the term Mailbox instead of mail folder, but in this context they are synonymous.

MsgFiler is a plug-in for Apple’s Mail application. It lets me quickly file email messages into mail folders which I have already created using only keystrokes.  This way I don’t have to waste time moving my hand onto the mouse to open a folder or sub-folder. Here’s how it works: I select one or more messages in my Inbox. I then press Command-9 which brings up the MsgFiler window. Next, I type the first few characters of a folder name. MsgFiler displays a list of folders whose names match the characters I’ve typed. I can either type a couple more characters until the list of matches is only one folder or I can use the arrow key to select the folder from the matches. Pressing the Return key then moves the email message into the selected folder. MsgFiler gives me the option of copying the message if I prefer that instead of moving it.

MsgFiler can also be used to quickly open a mail folder using only keystrokes. This is a fast way to open a folder that is buried inside several levels of folders.

You can watch a short video on the developer’s web site to see how MsgFiler works. You can download and give it a try before you pay ($8) for it.

It seems pretty likely that Apple will be releasing a tablet computer in 2010 since there have been many articles in the past few months speculating about such a device. Tablet computers can be thought of as small, lightweight laptops without a traditional keyboard. Instead, the user typically interacts with the computer via a touchscreen or a stylus. Tablet computers have been around, in the world of Windows-based computers, for the past half dozen years but they have never experienced wide appeal.

Apple has scheduled a media event for January 26th where it is widely suspected that they will announce their new tablet computer. However, it won’t likely ship until a few months later. Here’s a link to a story that summarizes the breadth of speculation written in the past months about Apple’s tablet computer. I’m more interested in knowing what Apple’s tablet will be able to do and how Apple intends to innovate tablet computers to make them mainstream devices. This article has some interesting thoughts about that topic. Check it out.