Do you have boxes of papers that you’d like to scan so you can empty your closet or storage area so you can easily access them on your PC or laptop when you travel?

Do you have some large blueprints or drawings that don’t fit on your office scanner? Do you want to convert microfilm to be read on your PC?

In any of these cases, you should check out US Archive and Imaging Services (USArchive.) They are an Issaquah-based company that can help you with your scanning, document management and shredding needs while using their standard and large-format, high-speed scanners to scan any of your documents. They will prep your documents first by removing staples, sticky notes and even paperclips then they will turn your documents into searchable PDFs or any other file type you desire. US Archive offers cloud-based and on-premise document access and storage solutions as well.  Once the scanning is finished you have some choices. They will return your documents to you in the exact order that you gave them to them, or, if you’d like, they can securely destroy (shred) the documents.

There are several factors that affect the cost of your job, but in general, a rough cost would be around 9 cents per page (this including prep, scanning and indexing.) Note, a standard records box holds about 2,200 sheets of paper.  I recently had them scan a box of my records and found them to be very responsive and friendly. If you’d like to learn more about US Archive and their services, check out their Frequently Asked Question web page.  Another interesting note is that US Archive has partnered with AtWork. AtWork is a 50 year old local non-profit which focuses on finding work for people with disabilities. Hiring US Archive supports AtWork’s efforts to help teach new skills to these individuals and help them to get meaningful employment. So check them out here.

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One of the greatest sources of confusion for computer users is the difference between a computer’s memory and its storage space. The confusion is not entirely the users’ fault. Overlapping terminology contributes as does poor word choice. I’ll try to reduce confusion by differentiating the terms as well as talking about their overlap.

A classic example of this confusion is when a person receives an error message which states something about insufficient memory and the person thinks that they need to delete files from their computer to make more memory available. This is  not the right action to take. Taking the error message at its face value, the proper response would be to close applications and files to free up memory. Alternatively, one could buy more memory for the computer. Let’s start to examine these terms.

Computers have two kinds of storage — temporary and permanent. A computer’s memory is used for temporary storage while a computer’s hard drive is used for permanent storage. Whoever selected the term memory for temporary computer storage did the world a disservice since people tend to permanently store information in our memories. If I asked you to recall your first grade teacher’s name, you could, most likely, tell me because that piece of information is stored in your memory, right? This is not how computers use their memory. A computer’s memory is also called RAM which is an acronym for Random Access Memory. A computer’s memory is where information is temporarily stored while it is being accessed or worked upon. For example, if I’m updating my resume, then I double-click its icon to open it. This process of opening the file, copies it from its permanent home on the computer’s hard drive, into the computer’s memory. Once in memory, I can edit it. If the computer loses electrical power while I am updating my resume, the most recent changes I’d made would be lost. This is because, the information in a computer’s memory is only kept there while electrical power is supplied. To avoid losing my most recent changes, I would need to save the file. The act of saving a file copies the file back to the computer’s hard drive. The contents of a hard drive remain intact even if the computer is turned off or it loses its electrical power some other way.

A simple analogy I use to help remember these terms is that memory is like your desk’s work space and your hard drive is like a filling cabinet. Your filing cabinet is typically large enough to store hundreds of file folders and thousands of pieces of paper. Your desktop work space is not large enough for all of these file folders and papers.

Both temporary computer storage (memory or RAM) and permanent computer storage (hard drives) are measure in bytes. These days they are measured specifically in gigabytes (GB). If you’d like to learn more about bytes and gigabytes, please read this previous Tech Tip. This overlap in measurement systems contributes to some of the confusion.

In early 2012, a new Mac might be equipped with 4 GB of memory and a hard drive whose storage capacity is 500 GB. The primary reason for this great disparity is cost. Memory, RAM, is much more expensive then hard drive storage space. Here’s a rough comparison. 1 GB of RAM costs about $8 while 1 GB of hard drive storage space costs about 10 cents. In other words, RAM costs about 8000 as much as hard drive storage space. Wow.

This price differential explains why we can have much more hard drive storage space compared to memory (RAM) storage space, but why do we need both? Why are computers designed this way, constantly copying data back and forth, into memory and then back to the hard drive? The primary reason is that RAM is much faster then hard drive storage space. I don’t have exact number,s but RAM is thousands, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of times faster then a hard drive. This is true for both mechanical hard drives, which have been used for decades, as well as solid-state drives (SSDs) which are becoming increasingly common. Apple uses SSDs in all iPhones, iPads and MacBook Airs. SSDs are an option in the iMac, at present.

The prevalence of confusion between (temporary) memory and (permanent) hard drive storage space is so great that the occurrences of misuse of these terms is greater then the proper use of these terms. For example, a discussion from January 2012 is about how much memory is enough in an iPhone. The original poster’s question should be how much storage space is sufficient in an iPhone. It’s tough to use these terms correctly when so many don’t. I feel like a fussbudget grammarian when I correct a person or clarify a person’s question. Now that you have a better understanding, help me out and use the terms properly!

Note: Since I’m a strong advocate for everybody backing up their computer’s hard drive, I should point out that hard drives should be thought of as only semi-permanent storage. This is because hard drives fail. Every hard drive will eventually fail. It’s only a matter of time. Drives can fail in a number of ways so some fail sooner then others. Sometimes they give warning signs and other times they don’t. Consequently, it’s necessary to backup the contents of a hard drive. Ironically, we often backup one hard drive onto another hard drive! In previous Tech Tips, I’ve recommended backing up your data to at least two different drives and haivng one copy of your data stored in an off-site location.

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Here are instructions on how to share a file or folder inside your Dropbox folder with another person. In previous Tech Tips, I gave an overview of Dropbox and give instructions on how to share files that are too large to send as an email attachment, even with people who don’t have Dropbox accounts, using the Public folder in your Dropbox folder. This week, I cover two more features of Dropbox:

Feature 1. How to share any file, in any folder, inside your Dropbox folder, with another person even if that person doesn’t have their own Dropbox account.

Feature 2. How to setup a shared folder with another person so the two of you can easily exchange files on an on-going basis.

The instructions below assume that you’ve already signed up for your Dropbox account and have installed the Dropbox application on your Mac.

Feature 1 – If you have a one-time need to share a file with a person who doesn’t have their own Dropbox account then you can use Dropbox’s Get Link feature. Here’s how:

• Click once on a file in your Dropbox folder to select it. Then right-click (or control-click) on this file. A menu will appear, select Dropbox and then select Get Link from the sub-menu. (See photo below as a reference.)
• Your web browser will open and a preview of your document will appear. Copy the address which appears in the address field, (https://www.dropbox.com/….)
• Go to your email application, compose a new email message and then paste this address (aka link) into the email message and send the message.
• The recipient can click on the link to be taken to a web page which will let them download the file. Here’s a sample link to one of my files in my Dropbox folder. https://www.dropbox.com/s/skifcwwnajlzn77/Darts-Practice.rtf

I want to emphasize that the recipient is able to download and then edit the file, but this feature doesn’t give them a way to easily send the file back to you. So, this is more of a file distribution capability. It doesn’t offer two-way file exchange. This feature is very similar to sharing a file using the Public folder. In fact, I see only one primary difference. This Get Link feature allows you to leave a file inside of a shared folder while also sharing it with a person who typically can’t access files in that shared folder. Additionally, the

Dropbox has their own article about using this feature.

Feature 2 – If you regularly want to be able to do two-way file exchanges with another person then you’ll want to setup a dedicated shared folder with that person in your Dropbox account. Here’s how:

• Create a folder in your Dropbox folder. For this example, I want to share a folder with a friend named Tom so I created a new folder named Tim-Tom
• Right-click (or control-click) on this folder. A menu will appear, select Dropbox and then Share This Folder… from the sub-menu. (See photo below as a reference.)
• Your web browser will open and you’ll be taken to the Dropbox web site. Login to your Dropbox account if you aren’t already logged in.
• In the field named “Invite collaborators to this folder” type in the email address of another person. I entered Tom’s email address.
• Type in an optional personal invitation message and then click the “Share Folder” button. This will send an email that includes the invite.
• The email recipient can click on a link in the invite email to accept the invitation which grants them access to this folder. If the recipient doesn’t already have their own Dropbox account then they’ll be prompted to create a free account.
• If your invitee accepts your invite then you’re notified via email.

At this point, you’re ready to easily share files with your invitee via this folder. Every time a file is adding, edited or deleted then a notification will pop-up on your screen. This invitee can’t see any other folders that you have in your Dropbox account. Happy file sharing.

Dropbox has their own article about this feature.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about this folder sharing feature. This information is taken from Dropbox’s help article.

• You can’t share a folder from within your Public folder. You can share a folder within the Photos folder
• You can’t share a folder inside another shared folder. Attempting to share a folder within a shared folder will automatically send you to the sharing options of the top level shared folder
• Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can then add, delete or change files within that folder
• Anyone you’ve invited to a folder can also invite others to join the folder
• Only the creator of the shared folder can remove people from the folder
• If two people both open and edit a file in a shared folder at the same time, Dropbox will save both of their changes, but in separate files. It does not try to automatically combine or merge changes. Read our help article on conflicting copies to learn more about how this works

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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 below 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 actually 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.

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Our computers, peripherals and gadgets use a range of batteries including alkaline batteries, rechargeable batteries, button batteries and UPS batteries. In previous Tech Tips I mentioned that UPS batteries can be recycled at Staples and Interconnection will take laptop batteries but if you want to find one location that’ll take just about every kind of battery then check out the King County Solid Waste Division’s web site. This web page let’s you locate organizations that’ll let you recycle batteries. In fact, their web site helps to find locations to recycle many items including: appliances, carpet, Christmas trees, cleaning products, electronics, fluorescent lights, furniture, microwave ovens, paint and many other items.

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If you connect your Mac to your TV you might need to deal with TV Overscan. Explaining what TV overscan is and why TVs do it is complicated, but recognizing it is easy. If  your TV screen cuts off the outer edges of your Mac’s image then you’re suffering from TV overscan. For example, you might not be able to see all of the menus at the top of your Mac’s screen or the lower half of the Dock icons might be cut off. If this is the case then you should figure out how to turn off the overscan feature on your TV.

If you want to understand what TV overscan is and why TVs do it then I’ll direct you to these articles from Wikipedia and Graham Hughes.

My focus is try give you some guidance on how to turn off this feature. I recommend using your TV’s manual since television manufacturers use different terms and the exact process varies from model to model. For example, I have a Samsung LCD TV. I eventually found a Picture Option named Just Scan.It turns out that this turned off overscan. The only clue that I was a parenthetical phrase in the manual which read, “Use the function to see the full image without any cutoff when HDMI, Component or DTV signals are input.” The feature’s name clearly didn’t give me a clue about what it does. I’ve learned that Samsung also sometimes calls the feature Screen Fit. Pioneer apparently calls this feature Dot by Dot. If you don’t have your TV manual hand you might be able to download one online. I typically find manuals by doing a Google search terms like this, “download Samsung LN42A550 manual”. Often the results will take me to a download link from the manufacturer’s site or a third party site which compiles user manuals.

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The purpose of this article is to help you assess the strength, and thus security, of your password and to encourage you to start using more secure passwords. As a consequence of the fact that we all need to keep track of many passwords, many people use just one or two passwords over and over again. If this is true for you then please make sure that those few passwords are very difficult to guess. Go to How Secure Is My Password and type in your commonly used passwords to see an estimate of how long it would take a computer to determine your password using a brute-force attack. A brute-force attack is one in which a person tries repeatedly to guess your password. Such attacks often start by using some of the most commonly used passwords like 123456, password, cactus, andrew and turtle.

Okay, now that you realize how weak your password is, here are some tips on picking stronger passwords. Most likely, you’ve heard the advice of making your password longer, adding numbers and punctuation marks as well as a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. All of this is good advice, but many people seem reluctant to incorporate this advice. Use the How Secure Is My Password to see how much longer it would take to guess a strong password by typing in a few varients of your password. You’ll soon see that password length make a huge difference. The longer your password is the more secure it is.

For example, if your password is cactus, you’ll see that this word is one of the 2000 most commonly used passwords so it can be guessed very easily– within seconds or minutes. However, if you were to change your password to cactuscactus then you’d see that the web site estimates that it would take about 12 years for a computer to guess or figure out that password. If your changed your password to cActuscActus then the estimate increases to 49,000 years. If you changed it to cActuscActus2012 then the estimate rises to 6 trillion years. Wow!

As you select more secure passwords, please make sure that they are still easy to remember. For example, if you currently use your child’s name or birthday as your password you could change your password to Andrew’sBirthdayIs12/15/80. That’s still easy to remember, but it’s so much more secure since it’s long, has a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation marks.

Below are some other suggestions of strong passwords to help you get your creative ideas flowing. Create phrases or sentences which naturally incorporate punctuation marks and captalize each word in the phrase.

2%MilkHasLessFat

$100HaircutsAreExpensive

5¢CokesAreAThingOfThePast

Now that you’ve picked one or two strong, secure passwords please start to update all of your accounts. As you go through your day in the coming weeks, take a minute or two to update your accounts when you log into them. You might also want to maintain a list of your accounts and their passwords. You can store this information on your Mac by using a secure disk image. Read this previous Tech Tip about how to create a secure disk image.

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Here are instructions on how to connect your Mac to your flat panel TV to send both audio and video to it. There are a number of reasons why one might want to do this including showing an iPhoto Slideshow, watching a Netflix movie or TV show from Hulu. I’m only providing information about connecting Macs with Intel processors since this covers all Macs back to 2006. Here’s a quick description of what’s involved in connecting your Mac to your TV. First, you need to determine your Mac’s Model Identifier, then you need to buy one or two cables and maybe an adapter. However, there are also a few idiosyncrasies of which you should be aware.

Overview – The types of ports on flat-panel TVs varies 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, whenever possible, I recommend using a TV’s HDMI port.

For most Macs made between 2006 and the end of 2008 one will need to connect two cables, one cable to carry the video and a second cable to carry the audio. When Apple switched to using 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 is that 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. I’ll address this in a future Tech Tip.

Model Specific Details – For most Macs you can use either Method 1 or Method 2 listed below. For each of these methods I list the Model Identifier for each specific Macintosh model which can use this method. If you don’t know how to determine your Mac’s Model Identifier please read this previous Tech Tip. To buy the cables listed in the method click on the cable name which is a link to a web site which sells the cable. I also list variations on each method that are either required or optional for certain Macintosh models.

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 (aka headphone) port on your TV.

Specific Macintosh models supported by this method: 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.

Variation 1 – 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: All of the Mac minis, MacBook 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 in order 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 and then you connect the HDMI cable to it. The other end of the HDMI cable connects to an unused HDMI port on your TV.

Specific Macintosh models supported by this method: 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 that have 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.

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In previous Tech Tips, I’ve recommended that you donate your old computer and computer peripherals to Interconnection. I like this group so much that I’d like to tell you more about them.

Interconnection is a non-profit based in Seattle. They are more then an electronics recycling company. They are Washington State’s largest computer refurbisher. They have sent 25,000 refurbished computers to 40 countries by teaming with World Concern, the Peace Corps, World Vision and other non-profit groups. Additionally, they have given 4,000 low-income people computer maintenance and repair skills. They are a very responsible recycler and are the first recycle in the US to have earned both R2 and ISO 14001 certifications.

Interconnecvtion often offers special deals on slightly used computers for low-income people. Currently, they are selling laptops for $170 and reduced Internet service through CenturyLink, a local phone company.

You can donate the following items for free: computers, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, cords, memory modules, hard drives, small speakers, cell phones, ink cartridges, television sets, printers, scanners and other computer peripherals. Check their web site for a list of items that they do and don’t accept.

Interconnection offers free secure erasing of your hard drives which over-writes all of the data on the drive, if the drives is operable. If not, they will physically destroy the hard drive. They offer free pick-ups for business customers with 3 or more computers.

Interconnection moved in 2011 to 1109 35th St in the Fremont neighborhood. They are right off of Stone Way.  No appointment is needed. Simply make your donations between these hours: Mon-Fri 10-6 or Sat 10-5. They are closed on Sunday. Also check out their retail store of used computers and peripherals. Check their web site for any changes to their hours of operation or location.

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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, 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.

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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 and 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.

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Would you like to free up some desk space by retiring either your stand-alone fax machine or multi-fuction printer which has faxing capabilities? Or, if you’re paying for a dedicated fax line, would you like to reduce you phone bill by dropping that line? If so, here are a few alternatives which you could consider. I’m surprised that faxes haven’t faded away completely and I’m convinced that it’s because many people don’t know how easy scanning can be. Personally, I find that I need to receive or send at most a handful of faxes each year, but in some fields, especially healthcare faxes seem to be going strong. One reason why faxing is strong in the healthcare field is the need to comply with HIPAA or other laws. I highlight HIPAA-compliant Internet fax options below. Whether your faxing needs are light or heavy here are some alternatives for you to consider.

Option 1 – This is the easiest option to setup but not necessarily the most cost-effective or convenient. You could out-source your faxing needs and use a FedEx Office store or, if you live in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, a business like Sip and Ship. Both of these businesses will let you send or receive faxes and charge you a fee per page.

Option 2 – Sign up for an Internet fax service like Faxaway or RingCentral. I have experience using both of these services. When you sign-up for a Faxaway account you’re assigned a fax number in the 206 (Seattle-area) area code. For a monthly fee of $1 you can receive unlimited incoming faxes and send faxes at a cost of about 10 cents per page. Faxes sent to your fax number are forwarded to you as email attachments. You can then save the attachment and open it on your Mac. Print a copy if you’d like. I like to receive my faxes via email since I can then save them or forward them easily. You also send faxes via email by using the fax number as part of  the email address, for example, 12065551212@faxaway.com. Faxaway is a good option if you’re a one person business with very light faxing needs.

If your business has a few employees or your have heavier faxing needs, the one of RingCentral’s plans might be a better fit. You can sign-up for a free trial account to test RingCentral. Their entry-level plan costs $8/month which gives you a local or toll-free fax number and 500 pages of inbound or out bound faxes. RingCentral provides a Macintosh application which you install on your Mac. You use this app to both send and receive faxes. This application also makes it easy to send documents as part of your fax, but it, unfortunately, doesn’t tie into your Mac’s Address Book application. Therefore you’ll need to either enter your fax numbers by hand or using “copy and paste”. Your RingCentral fax service can easily be shared by several people. In a future Tech Tip I’ll write about how you could use RingCentral to replace your existing phone system.

If you’re in a business that needs to comply with HIPAA regulations or other security or privacy regulations then you could check out Sfax, InterFAX or FaxSolutions. These companies fax services cost more then the previous Internet fax services I mentioned. I haven’t personally worked with this companies to know how user-friendly they are.

Option 3 – This is my favorite and most commonly used solution. When a person asks me to sign a document and fax it back to them, I simply ask if I could scan it and return it to them as an email attachment. With rare exception, the person is perfectly happy to receive the document as an email attachment. In a previous Tech Tip, I talked about how I much I love my Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner. It turns a pile of pages into a PDF which I can then easily attach and send via email. I like this method since I then have a digital copy of the document on my computer in case I need to refer to it later on. Also, I have a more detailed paper trail then if I’d sent a fax since my sent mail folder will have a record of when I sent a document and to whom.

Hopefully, one of these options will be a good fit for your faxing needs.

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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 client as well as me use iDisk and MobileMe Gallery so one needs 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, straight-forward 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 including: 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 also integrates with iPhoto to allow easy uploading of the photos from iPhoto. ZangZing offers all the features that I need and more. If you’d like to learn more read this Tidbits article about ZangZing.

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Clients are often unsure how to properly use the term streaming or unsure about what this term means. In a slight misuse of terms, you could substitute broadcast for stream. For example, you might hear a person say, “Last night, I streamed Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino on Netflix”. You could think in your head, “Last night, I broadcast Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino on Netflix”. It isn’t 100% accurate to think this, but it could help you while you work on getting your head around the term streaming.

A proper definition of streaming is transmitting a continuous flow of audio and/or video data while earlier parts are being used. The term refers to the delivery method of the data rather than the data itself. Another common delivery method for audio and/or video data is downloading the data onto your computer so the data ends up being stored on your computer. Streamed data is not stored on your computer, at least not the entire data file all at one time. When audio or video is streamed to your computer, the data is being continuously sent to your computer and your computer displays earlier parts while subsequent parts are being received. Once the earlier parts have been displayed they are typically discarded. Downloading and streaming data are two contrasting ways of obtaining audio or video data.

Looking back at our movie example, if a person downloads a copy of Clint Eastwood’s movie onto her computer so she can watch it again and again then she is not streaming the movie when she watches it. However, if this same person goes to her Netflix account and clicks a button to begin to watch the movie then Netflix begins to stream the movie across the Internet to her computer. This transmission is more fleeting. At any one point in time, only a small portion of the movie is on her computer.

There are a variety of streaming media currently available. These days, one can stream movie trailers, Internet television and radio, YouTube videos and much more. Let’s look at some examples. If one lives in Boston, but wants to listen to a Seattle radio station, like KUOW, then one could go to www.kuow.org to listen to an audio stream that is identical to the radio station’s FM broadcast.  Streams can be live or on-demand. KUOW’s Internet audio stream is a live stream. Similarly, when Apple Inc. introduces a new product they will often hold an event in an auditorium and invite the press. To increase the event’s exposure they would often send out a live video stream of Steve Jobs’ presentation. Subsequently, they also often allow visitors to their web site to watch the video presentation streamed to them on-demand.

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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.

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Do you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro? Have you noticed that its keyboard doesn’t have a “Forward Delete” (aka delete to the right) key like the one that exists on an iMac’s keyboard? This tip tells you how to perform a forward delete. Simply hold down the Function key, which is labeled “fn” while pressing the delete key. The fn key is located in the lower left corner of the keyboard.

In case the phrase “forward delete” is confusing, let me elaborate. We all know that the delete key, aka the backspace key, deletes the character to the left of the insertion point. The forward delete button does the opposite. It deletes the character to the right of the insertion point.

Forward delete is not a new feature for Macintosh laptops. All Macs laptops have supported this feature for many years, but because this feature isn’t obvious or well-documented many users don’t know about this feature.

If you would like to learn about more keyboard shortcuts you might find this Apple web page helpful.

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Here’s an easy way to determine the default password for many routers. You might need to know your router’s default password if you forget or don’t have a record of your router’s current password and end up resetting the router to its factory defaults. You can visit the Open Sez Me web site to locate your router and determine its default login information. I recently had to use this web site for a client whose router had been setup by a friend a few years ago. My client didn’t have any record of the password. I guessed that the friend hadn’t changed the password from its default. So, I used the Open Sez Me web site to locate the particular model of router and its default login information. Sure enough, it worked on my client’s router.

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Do you have an old UPS (uninterrupted power supply) that you need to recycle? How about a paper shredder? You can recycle both of these items, as well as other items at your Staples office supply store.

I use a UPS, also known as a battery backup, to protect my Mac from power spikes and to keep it running during brief power outages. After years of use, my old UPS died so I wanted to recycle it. Apparently, Staples has teamed up with APC, a manufacturer of UPSs to recycle them. Yesterday, I dropped off my worn-out UPS at a Staples here in Seattle. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no cost. Staples’ web site indicates that there’s a $10 recycle fee, but Staples has a special through the end of the month which includes waiving that fee. If you don’t have a Staples near you, you might be interested to read about APC’s own UPS recycling options.

I also had a paper shredder which had died on me. Staples also took the entire shredder and pledges to recycle it responsibly. The typical $10 recycle fee was waived. The Staples employee also indicated that they’ll offer a slight discount on the purchase of a new paper shredder if you bring in an old one for recycling.

Staples will also recycle rechargeable batteries, digital cameras and GPS devices. They’ll also accept computers, monitors and printers, but indicated that there is typically a $10 recycle fee for these items. This was a bit surprising since Washington enacted a law a couple of years ago which allows for free recycling of such items. As I’ve mentioned in a previous tech tip, I typically recycle my computers and peripherals at Interconnection since they do their best to re-use the equipment rather then simply recycle it.

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Intuit recently announced that it plans to release an update to Quicken 2007 that’ll make it compatible with Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion. This news is a big relieve to a number of my clients who have intentionally held off on updating to Lion since they use Quicken 2007 and migrating to another application is not a simple task. iBank and Quicken Essentials are two applications that users could consider as a replacement, but an update to Quicken 2007 simplifies the entire situation.

When Lion was released in July 2011, Tidbits had an article talking about finding a replacement for Quicken. One colleague switched to iBank but due to differences in how iBank handles investment accounts, he spent many hours cleaning up his Quicken data after it was imported into iBank and needed assistance repeatedly from iBank’s tech support staff. A few of my clients who used only the account registers and reporting features in Quicken were able to Quicken Essentials. Quicken Essentials for Mac was released in 2010. It is not really an update for Quicken 2007 users. Instead, you could think of it as a successor to Quicken 2007, but one that lacks some of Quicken 2007′s features. As its name implies, it is a bare-bones financial management application. It is enough for some but not for all Quicken 2007 users. Thus, the news of this Quicken 2007 update is welcomed news.

Intuit indicates that this Lion-compatible update will be available “soon”. Elsewhere, I’ve read that it’ll be early-spring 2012. Users will be able to update their Quicken 2005, 2006 and 2007 data files into this updated version of Quicken 2007. Please read Intuit’s note about this update as well as Tidbit’s article about this Quicken update if you’d like more information.

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Do you have a pile of old zip disks, floppy disks or videotapes that you want to get rid of? If your pile isn’t too large then you could hand it to me at our next appointment and I’ll send it on to GreenDisk. If your pile is larger or you aren’t one of my clients then you can mail it to GreenDisk. GreenDisk is located in Sammamish, Washington, but they don’t have any drop-off centers. For $9.95 you can ship up to 25 pounds to Greendisk.

GreenDisk actually accepts a wide range of technotrash via their mail-in service. Their web site includes an up-to-date list of everything accepted by GreenDisk. Currently they accept the following:

• Media: CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVDs, Blu-ray, 3.5” and 5.25” floppy disks, zip and jazz disks, and cases

• Tapes: VHS, audio cassette tapes, DAT, DLT, Beta, and Digibeta

• Computer drives: Hard drives, zip, jazz, floppy, CD-ROM, DVD, jump drives

• Communication devices: Cell phones, pagers, PDAs and their chargers, cradles, and headset accessories

• Batteries: Rechargeable batteries and chargers only – no alkaline batteries. See instructions on packing batteries for shipment.

• Small electronics: MP3 players, iPods, hand-held CD and cassette players, and digital cameras

• Ink: Inkjet and toner cartridges (All cartridges must be in a sealed bag to prevent spilling)

• Film:

- Photographic film negatives, instant film, sheet film, Advanced Photo System, slides, Disc film, 110, 126, 127, 120/220

- Black and white or undeveloped only: Motion picture film, film reels, Super 8, 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm

- Medical x-ray, industrial x-ray, lithographic, micro film, microfiche

• Miscellaneous items: UPS units, AC chargers, keyboards, mice, modems, routers, headphones, cords, adaptors, cables, boards, and chips

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In previous tech tips, I’ve talked about ways to donate your computer and peripherals to groups that’ll reuse or recycle them. In some instances your used electronics may still have some value. Here’s an overview of options you have to resell your used electronics to a company, which, in turn, will refurbish and resell or recycle your items.

Recently, there has been a proliferation of companies that will buy your used electronics, including Gazelle, FlipSwap and BuyMyTronics, to name a few. These companies tend to claim to offer the best price, but they can’t all be right. Enter uSell, which offers to help consumers find the best price by comparing quotes from numerous companies. uSell may not include quotes from every company but they offer a guarantee if you can find a lower price.

I recently sold some of my used electronics to Gazelle and FlipSwap. In each case, the process was quite easy. I typed the name of my product into a search field on the company’s web site. The search results let me pick my particular model. I then answered a few questions about the product’s condition and accessories. I then accepted the price that was offered. Finally, there was a short check 0ut-like process. Gazelle offered to send me a box and return shipping label or I could ship it in my own box. FlipSwap provided me with a shipping label and instructed me on how to securely wrap and ship my item. Once the company received my product, they assessed the item and then sent my payment. In Gazelle’s case, I chose to receive an Amazon gift card instead of a check since Gazelle would add an additional 5%.

The New York Times’s Gadgetwise Blog has articles about uSell and Gazelle, if you’d like to get their take on this subject

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There are a few ways to enlarge the text displayed on the iPhone. Each method is useful in different situations. You may already be aware of some of these options, but I’ll bet you don’t know all of them.

• When viewing web pages using Safari or email messages, you can spread your fingers to enlarge the text size. The “Spread” gesture entails placing two fingers on the iPhone screen and then sliding them apart from each other. To reduce the size of text, you pinch your two fingers back together. For more details on how to execute these finger gestures check out this helpful web page on finger gestures.

The next two options require an iPhone 3GS or newer.

• Turn on the Zoom function. You enable this feature by opening the Settings application, then selecting General, then Accessibility.  Finally, click on Zoom and turn it on. Zoom magnifies the entire screen whenever you double-tap the screen with three fingers. Double-taping with three fingers a second time turns off the zoom function. You can move around the screen by pressing three fingers on the screen and dragging them around.

• Turn on the Large Text function. You enable this feature by opening the Settings application, then selecting General, then Accessibility.  Finally, click on Large Text and select a text size. This feature makes text larger in the following applications:  Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Messages and Notes.

I should mention that the iPhone actually includes a great number of features that make its usability and accessibility by people with limited vision, hearing or other impairments. Apple describes them all on their web site. 

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Do you use Apple’s Mail application on your Mac? It’s a capable email application and one of its best features is that its abilities can be extended 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.

SpamSieve offers better spam protection then Mail’s built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It require 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 http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn_files/Virtual%20Tour.mov and video review http://media.macworld.com/media/vodcast/mwvodcast75.mp4 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 version 5.0 of Mail 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 dozens more at the Hawk Wings web site.

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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 then you can use the App Store to buy it 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 one and added a new text box and linked it to the other box on page 1. I then 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.

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Recently, a client presented me with a new problem. I devised a solution and wanted to share what I learned. My client bought a new Panasonic 55 inch flat panel TV, model Viera TVP55VT30. After he’d set up the TV in his home, he looked for a headphone jack and was surprised that he couldn’t find one. This particular model of TV only had a digital audio output connector! It did not have an old-fashioned analog audio connector, aka a mini stereo jack, which would accept the plug on his headphones. After spending time talking to Panasonic’s support staff and doing some research via Google, he was confused by the lack of a simple and affordable solution. Numerous people had directed him to find a digital to analog converter and the appropriate cables to connect everything but nobody could identify exactly what he needed and the items that he found would have cost over $100. I did some research and pieced together a solution that cost about $27.

We bought a $23 digital to analog converter and two cables which each cost about $2. The digital analog converter converts either coaxial or optical (Toslink) digital stereo audio signals to analog stereo audio. My client’s Panasonic TV had an optical Toslink connector so we bought a 6 foot Toslink cable, but some televisions may require a digital coax cable. I list both cables below. Finally, we used a 6″ adapter which connected to the digital to analog converter’s dual RCA (aka phono) connectors and had a stereo mini jack on the other head which would accept his headphone’s plug.

Digital to Analog converter for $23 from Monoprice.com

Optical Toslink cable for $1.94 from Monoprice.com

Digital Coax cable for $1.28 from Monoprice.com

Stereo Female to Dual RCA Male cable for $1.79 from Geeks.com

I was very surprised that a TV manufacturer wouldn’t include an inexpensive analog audio jack for headphones. If you find yourself in this pickle some day, please know that there is an affordable solution.

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This week’s Tech Tip is written by our guest blogger, Elizabeth Bowman, President of Innovatively Organized.

Are tasks slipping through the cracks? Feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities on your plate?  There are lots of tools to help you manage your to-do list, but how do you know which tools are best?  You’re in luck!  At Innovatively Organized we have put together a list of 4 tools to help you manage your to-do list electronically.  Now, you will be able to access your tasks from home, the office, or on the go from an Internet browser or your mobile device!

Keep in mind, it’s not about having the perfect to-do list, it is about picking a tool that will work for you and using it consistently.

1. TeuxDeux

Compatible with:

• iPhone or iPad

• Internet

• Mac or PC

Highlights:

• Simple design

• Basic list tracker

• Cross out tasks when complete

• Moves un-finished items to the next day automatically

Toodle Do's Interface

2. Toodledo

Compatible with:

• iPhone, iPad, Palm, Blackberry, Droid

• Internet

• Ability to sync with Outlook & TaskAngel

• Has ability to print to-do list neatly

Highlights:

• Comprehensive and robust features

• Offers ability to delegate and email tasks directly

• Can filter and run reports on tasks

• Includes a timer to help you stay on task

3. TaskAngel

Compatible with:

• Native PC software download

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Matches Toodledo’s comprehensive task tracking details

• Runs fast on your PC helping you stay productive easily

• Can export your to-do list to Excel

4. 2Do

Compatible with:

• iPhone & iPad

• Ability to sync with Toodledo

Highlights:

• Option to color-code tasks by category

• Provides tabs in the interface on an iPhone and iPad

• Has lots of fields to enter your tasks easily from a mobile device

For more organizing and productivity tips, check out the Innovatively Organized blog!

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Safari version 5 introduced a new feature named Top Sites which automatically displays your most frequently visited web sites. Top Sites displays thumbnail depictions of each web site in a grid of several rows and columns. This tech tip tells you how you can customize Top Sites.

You can permanently add a web site to Top Sites by going to the Bookmarks menu and selecting Add Bookmark. Then select Top Sites from the pop-up menu near the top of the small window that appears. Then click the Add button, as depicted below.

By default, Safari 5 displays Top Sites when you open a new window. You can manually display Top Sites by clicking the grid icon located near the upper left-corner of the Safari window. This grid icon is highlighted in the red circle in the picture below.

When the Top Sites grid is being displayed, you can click the Edit button in the lower left corner. Then, in the lower right corner you’ll see that you can switch between Small, Medium and Large. These choices will cause Top Sites to display 24, 12 or 6 thumbnails respectively.

You can also drag the thumbnails around in the grid so they appear in the order that you prefer. Additionally, you can click the Push Pin icon or the X icon located in the upper left corner of a thumbnail to permanently add or remove a web site from your top sites. When the Push Pin icon turns blue then you’ve permanently added the web site.

 When viewing Top Sites look for a star icon to appear in the upper right corner of a thumbnail. The star indicates that the web site has added content since you last visited the site.

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There are a number of easy ways to convert an .mp3 song file to a ringtone for your iPhone. I typically use Garageband since the method is quick and easy, but I realize that not everybody owns Garageband so I’m pleased to share this other free method. Compared to using GarageBand there are more steps, but it’s not difficult to do.

Important: This process doesn’t work for copyright-protected songs (.mp4) purchased from the iTunes store.

• Open iTunes, go to the iTunes menu and select Preferences.
• Click on the General button and click the Import Settings button.
• From the pick-list next to “Import Using” select AAC Encoder. Click the OK button. Click the OK button a second time to exit out of Preferences.
• Play the .mp3 song file you want to convert in order to identify the 20-30 section of the song which you’d like to use for the ringtone. Specifically, you’ll need to write down the start and end time of your desired section. You can do this by watching the timer that iTunes displays near the top of its window.
• Click once on the mp3 song file and go to the File menu and select Get Info
• Click on the Options button so you can enter the Start and Stop times to set the 20-30 section that you want to become your ringtone.
• Go to the Advanced menu and select Create AAC version. This will cause a duplicate copy of the song file to be created. This duplicate copy will only be the length you selected when you set the Start and Stop times.
• Before you forgot, return to the original mp3 song file and clear the Start and Stop times. You don’t need to re-enter the original times. I simply leave these fields blank and iTunes will automatically know to play the entire song.
• Click on the newly created AAC song file to select it.
• Go to the File menu and select Reveal in Finder. This will open a Finder window showing you this AAC song file. Leave this window open. We’ll return to it in just a minute.
• Go to iTunes and make sure your AAC song file is selected.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Delete.
• You may be asked if you’re sure you want to remove this file from your iTunes Library. You’re sure so click the Remove button.
• Next, you’ll be asked, “Do you want to move the selected song to the Trash, or keep it in the iTunes Media folder?”. Click the Keep File button.
• Return to the Finder window that you left open. You’ll see the AAC version of the song file. You can identify it since its filename ends with .m4a file.
• Change .m4a to .m4r
• Drag this .m4r file onto the iTunes on the Dock. This will import this .m4r file into iTunes and it’ll show up in the ringtones section.
• Sync your iPhone and make sure that you’ve selected to sync all Ringtones. This will add the ringtone to your iPhone. Then you can assign it to a particular person listed in Contacts.

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Do you ever have a problem sending files to a colleague or friend because they are too big to be sent as email attachments? If so, you could use DropBox’s Public Link feature. In a previous Tech Tip I spoke about the convenience of DropBox’s files sharing services. Most of these services require each person on your team to have their own DropBox account. Conveniently, DropBox’s Public Link feature does not require that everybody have a DropBox account. Thus, it’s a great way to share large files with friends or family. Here are some step-by-step instructions.

Note: These instructions already assume you’ve signed up for a DropBox account and have that setup and working on your Mac.

Tip:. I often use this method to share a handful of files like photos. Since I want to only send one Public Link I’ll put all of the photos into a folder on my Mac and then right-click (or control-click) on the folder and select Compress <folder name> (on older versions of Mac OS X, the command will read “Archive <folder name>”). This compressing will create a .zip file. I then put the .zip file into my Public Folder in DropBox.

1. Open your DropBox folder

2. Open the Public folder.

3. Put the large file into your Public folder. This will trigger the automatic upload of this file onto the DropBox server.

4. Right-click (or control-click) on the filename of this large file. A menu will appears. Select DropBox from the menu and then select Copy Public Link from the sub-menu.

5. Open your email application and compose a new email message. Address it to your intended recipient.

7. Go to the Edit menu and select Paste to past the Public Link into the email message. The link will look similar to this:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1234567/bigfile.zip

8. Send the email.

9. The recipient can simply click on the link to download the file.

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Do you ever have the need for a transcription service? SpeakWrite is an affordable online transcription service which uses live typists to transcribe your work and send you the finished work within 3 hours. You can submit your work by dictating over the phone, sending a fax or mailing recorded tapes. They even have an iPhone app for submitting your work. The service is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The price for general transcription is 1.25 cents per word. Legal transcription and group conversations cost 2.0 cents per word. There aren’t any additional costs. You can use the service frequently or infrequently.

I’ve had a few clients who have used this service and they speak very highly about it. You can try it for free, one time. Simple go to their website, call the phone number listed and follow the prompts. You can record a message up to 10 minutes in length. You’ll receive the completed transcription via email within 3 hours.

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Sometimes an application stops behaving properly and doesn’t respond to menu commands or keyboard commands. When this happens you’ll often want to use the Force Quit command to force the application to quit. There are several ways to issue the Force Quit command.

1. The easiest way is to click on the Apple menu and select Force Quit. A window will pop up listing all of the applications which are currently open. Click on the one that you want to force quit and then click the Force Quit button in the lower right corner. You’ll be asked if you’re sure that you want to do this. Click the button to indicate that you’re sure.

If the Apple menu is not responsive then you may not be able to use this method. In this case, try the next method.

2. Hold down the Option key while simultaneously clicking on the Dock icon for the application which you want to force quit. A menu should pop up after a couple of seconds. Select Force Quit from this menu.

If the Dock is not responsive then you may not be able to use this method. In this case, try the next method.

3. Simultaneously press the following 3 keys, Command, Option and Escape. The Escape key is labeled “esc” and is above the “1″ key. A window will pop up listing all of the applications which are currently open. Click on the one that you want to force quit and then click the Force Quit button in the lower right corner. You’ll be asked if you’re sure that you want to do this. Click the button to indicate that you’re sure.

If none of these methods work then you aren’t able to force quit applications. Typically, the only option at this point is to force the computer to turn itself off. This is accomplished by pressing and holding the Power button for 5 seconds. The power button is the round button you use to typically turn the computer on. Hold this button for 5 seconds. The entire computer will turn off and the screen will go dark. Then press and release this power button to turn on the Mac.

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Firefox and Safari for Mac are the two most popular web browsers for Mac users. At times, both of them can act up and not perform properly. When this happens, here are a couple of basic troubleshooting steps which you can take.

In Safari, go to the menu named Safari and select “Empty Cache”. This will remove the locally saved (cached) copy of recently visited web sites. This might be all you need to do to fix your problem. If not, you can continue by going to the Safari menu and selecting ”Reset Safari”. This is a very handy feature since it lets you easily remove some of the information which it saves which can get damaged and cause Safari to misbehave. By default, all of the options are checked in the Reset Safari window. Typically, I recommend that you only select and reset the following since they seem to cause the most problems:

• Remove all webpage preview images
• Remove all website icons

If your Safari problem is not resolved then you can go ahead and select other items to reset, but be aware that removed saved names, passwords and AutoFill data can mean that you’ll be prompted to re-enter this information down the road. Consequently, I try to reset these items last.

Firefox doesn’t have a handy reset feature the same way as Safari. However, you can empty its cache by doing the following. Open Firefox and go to the Firefox menu, select Preferences, click on Advanced and click on Network. Click the “Clear Now” button in the Offline Storage section. To do more advanced troubleshooting in Firefox, I recommend checking out this helpful troubleshooting article written by the makers of Firefox.

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Do you ever want to do any of the following tasks?

• View two Word documents side-by-side so you can compare them or more content between them
• View two Finder window side-by-side so you can move files from one folder to another
• Make a window fill your entire screen

If so, Cinch ($7) is an easy to use application that lets you accomplish these tasks. I regularly need to file documents that have accumulated either in my Downloads folder or on my Desktop into folder elsewhere on my Mac. In order to do this easily, I’ll open two Finder windows and then move them to one of the edges of my screen which triggers Cinch to automatically get them to re-size to fill half of my screen. With the two windows sitting side-by-side, I can then easily file my documents. If my brief description isn’t sufficient, please check out the brief but excellent video demonstration.

You can download Cinch and try it for free from the Irradiated Software web site. Irradiated Software also make a slightly fancier window management utility named SizeUp($13) that lets you accomplish the same tasks using keyboard shortcuts and it adds additional features.

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Do you give a lot of computer-based presentations or training? Do you need you audience members to be able to easily view and track your mouse, see when you click the mouse and see the keyboard shortcuts that you press? If so, Mousepose, could be your best friend. In previous Tech Tips I’ve talked about other ways to highlight the mouse and its clicks using MouseLocator and display keyboard shortcuts. using KeyCastr. Unlike Mouse Locator and KeyCastr which are both free, Mousepose costs money ($17), but it offers additional features. For example, it can be controlled and customized using AppleScript and it can dim the screen and put a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer. If you give computer-based training you might really like Mousepose.

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Do you use multiple web browsers on your Mac? Do you use only one browser but you use multiple Macs? Do you want all of your browsers to have the same set of bookmarks? If so, you should checkout Xmarks, a free bookmark syncing tool that works with the most common web browsers on both Macs and PCs.

Setting up Xmarks is fairly straight-forward, but it’s beyond the scope of this article since there are a lot of combinations to consider since Xmarks works on both Macs and PCs and supports Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. In general, the setup process includes creating a free Xmarks account and then installing the Xmarks plug-in for each web browser you use on each computer you use. When you next open your web browser, you’ll typically be greeted by the Xmarks setup assistant which’ll give you guidance in configuring and using this tool.

Before you start the install process, it’s always prudent to have a backup copy of the bookmarks from each of your web browsers since it’s possible to over-write your bookmarks if you click the wrong button. If you use Time Machine to backup your Mac then the Time Machine backup will contain backup copies of all of your web browser bookmarks, but they aren’t readily accessible since they are tucked in the ~/Library folder.

Once Xmarks is installed, it can be setup to automatically sync your bookmarks. You can view your bookmarks via the Xmarks web site. There you have access to tools that will help you find and delete duplicate bookmarks as well as empty bookmark folders. By default, Xmarks only encrypts the login process so your bookmark data is being sent in an unencrypted manner to and from Xmarks’ servers. Thus, in theory, somebody could capture and view your bookmark data. This likely isn’t a big security threat but it’s something to be aware of. You can change Xmarks’ configuration to have it encrypt the transmission of your bookmark data. The basic version of Xmarks is free, but the developers offer paid versions that offer more features.

I looked at other bookmark sync tools including BookIt, URL ManagerPro and BookMacSter but found that I liked it the best. URLManagerPro and BookIt have not been updated to work with current web browsers. BookMacSter is current but I found it interface un-intuitive and jargon laden. It’s definitely powerful but I don’t need all of it’s features and I don’t want to learn a lot just to use the basic features. I also didn’t want to use a separate application to manage my bookmark syncing. I just want the syncing to happen automatically in the background. Thus, Xmarks was the best choice for my needs.

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I regularly provide small group training and I want audience members to be able to know when I use keyboard shortcuts. This way, they can see how I made something happen. For example, I might press the Command key and the P key to tell an application to print a document. Since the audience can see my screen, but not my hands, it’s very useful to have an application display my keystrokes on screen. KeyCastr lets me do this easily. KeyCastr is a free application, but donations are welcomed via PayPal. The developer of KeyCastr has not released a final version of the application. In other words, it’s still in beta-testing, but it’s been this way for a couple of years. In my use of it, I haven’t encountered any problems.

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Do you listen to either music or audio books on your iPhone or iPad as you fall asleep? If so, you could set the iPhone or iPad’s timer to put the device to sleep when the timer expires. Here are instructions.

• Open the Clock application your iOS device (iPhone or iPad)
• Click on the Timer button
• Spin the hour and minute dials to the desired time, such as 30 minutes or 1 hour.
• Click on the “When Timer Ends” button and scroll to the bottom of the list of options and select “Sleep iPod”
• Click the Start button to start the timer.
• Click the Home button to exit the Clock application.
• Open the iPod application and listen to your music or audiobook.

When your timer ends, your iPhone or iPad will go to sleep.

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A few months ago a representative of Stellar Data Recovery contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in reviewing their product Stellar Phoenix Macintosh, a data recovery application. I was happy to oblige. At long last, here’s my assessment.

If you’ve read many of my tech tip articles you may know that I’m a staunch advocate for setting up robust, redundant and automated data backup systems. If one has such systems in place then one’s likelihood of actually needing a tool like Stellar Phoenix Macintosh should be slim. However, the need for such tools can still arise for a myriad of reasons. Maybe one hasn’t yet copied photos from their camera’s SD storage card to their computer. Maybe one uses a USB flash drive to move files around and doesn’t backup this drive. Maybe one’s backup is misconfigured and it isn’t actually backing up an important folder. Any such drive could fail or a user could accidentally delete a file. Thus, anybody could end up needing a data recovery tool such as Stellar Phoenix Macintosh.

Stellar Phoenix Macintosh has a simple user-interface which includes buttons to let you try to recover data from various types of drives including iPods. It also has a button dedicated to photo  recovery. Within the main Drive Recovery section it provides options to try to recover deleted files, files from re-formatted drives and from drives which don’t mount. I happened to have two non-mounting drives sitting around. One was an external firewire hard drive and the other was a USB flash drive. Both were personal drives which I’d used for years. They’d each stopped working properly in the past six months. Nothing critical was on either drive so I’d only made half-hearted attempts to figure out what was wrong with the drives previously. I’d been unable to get either drive to mount. Not surprisingly, Stellar Phoenix Macintosh wasn’t able to see them or recovery any data from them. I didn’t really expect that it would since I suspect that there were physical problems with the drives. If I had really needed to get data from these drives I would have sent the drives to a professional data recovery company, like Drive Savers which has a strong track record of being able to recover data.

Next, I took a fully-functioning external firewire drive that contained a backup copy of some of my music and movies. I put all of my files into the Trash and emptied the Trash. Then I asked Stellar Phoenix Macintosh to try to restore the files. I used it’s Deleted File Recovery feature. I showed it the external drive and I let it scan the entire 60 GB drive. Understandably, this is a time consuming process since it needs to scan every block. I don’t know how long it took since I went to bed, but I’m sure it took more then an hour. By morning it had finished, but I didn’t have time to finish restoring my files so it conveniently let me save the scan file, presumably some sort of directory of the drive. Subsequently, I used Stellar Phoenix Macintosh’s Resume Recovery feature. This let me pick up where I left off.

Stellar Phoenix correctly listed the folders which I had deleted. I started to navigate through this folder list and it correctly listed the names of sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. What was annoying was that Stellar Phoenix’s window could not be re-sized. Additionally, the 3 sections within it’s window could not be re-sized either. This made it cumbersome to navigate through the folder hierarchy. This is a significant short-coming of the application’s user-interface. Up to this point, I’d like the interface. It had been simple, buttons well labeled and explanations of their function were frequently listed on screen. So it was quite jarring and annoying to suddenly realize that I couldn’t resize the window at all. However, I continued with the data restore. I selected about 10 mp3 files as well as a number of PDF documents and Microsoft Word files. I clicked the Recover button, waited a few seconds and the files were saved to a new folder on my Mac’s Desktop. I was then very disappointed when I tried to open these files and not a single one could be opened properly. I’m not sure why. Stellar Phoenix had done an admirable job of seeing the deleted files as well as their file names and folder structure. All of this is important, but it failed in the final and most important step of successfully recovering the files.

I wanted to give Stellar Phoenix another chance so I took a healthy 1 GB USB flash drive, formatted it, copied a few files onto it and then deleted them a few minutes later. I then had Stellar Phoenix scan the drive which took about 10 minutes. It was not able to recover the folder structure or the file names, but it did create folders for each type of file which it found. In other words, it created folders for PDFs, JPEGs, Word and RTF files, for example. I then asked Stellar Phoenix to recover the files. It did so and all of the files opened properly. I was pleased with the results in this simple test. I should mention, however,  that in a real world situation in which one might need to only recover a few files from a hard drive that has been used for years, the inability of data recovery software to recovery filenames and folder structures can mean that one could have to spend a fair amount of time locating the few desired files from a larger pile of recovered files.

In conclusion, Stellar Phoenix could be useful as a data recovery tool, certainly for recently deleted files and possibly in other situations. However, the lessons that I take away from these experiments are that data recovery is not always possible. Even when it is possible it can be time consuming to conduct drive scans and then locate the particular files you need. If you need to employ a professional data recovery service, it can be very expensive. Thus, I think it’s more prudent to setup, monitor and test robust, redundant and automated backup systems so you can hopefully avoid having to rely on data recovery products.

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Here are some simple instructions on how to enlarge the size of text on a web page when you’re using Safari, Firefox or Chrome on a Macintosh computer. I use this feature on a daily basis since web sites use a variety of font sizes. This is especially handy in low-light settings or if typically needs glasses but the glasses aren’t handy.

All three of these web browsers support the same keyboard shortcut. While viewing a web page, press Command + (plus sign) to enlarge the text size and Command – (minus sign) to reduce the text size. If you prefer to use menu commands then go to the View menu and select Zoom In, which makes the text size larger or Zoom Out which reduces the text size.

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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 below.
• 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 Apple start page

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.

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Are you wondering how long your Mac will last or how frequently you’ll need to replace it? This is a very difficult question to answer since many factors can affect the durability, longevity and compatibility of a computer, but I’ll do my best to provide some concise and useful guidance.

My shortest answer is that I find that many clients replace their computer about every 5 years. Some clients, who have high-end needs might replace their computer every 3-4 years and it’s worthwhile for them to migrate to Apple’s latest and fastest hardware every few years. I have many clients who have been able to stretch their computers to last 7 years or more.

Often customers will replace their computers because their previous computer’s compatibility or performance is no longer adequate. Macs will typically function for many more than 5 years, but if it breaks after 5 years it’s not always cost-effective to repair it so this can lead to replacing it. Needing to make significant upgrades to a Mac’s hardware can also lead to replacing it. The most common upgrades needed are adding memory, installing a larger hard drive or installing a newer version of Mac OS X can be cost-effective if one is able to do the work themselves, but if one has to hire somebody to do the labor, then the labor cost can make it no longer cost-effective.

In recent years, I’ve found that web browser compatibility often drives one to replace their computer. The two most common uses of a computer are sending emails and viewing web sites. The people who make web sites, like banks, often employ ever newer web site technologies to keep their web sites current and secure. These changes often require ever newer versions of web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. As these web browsers get upgraded it becomes necessary for their developers to occasionally drop support for older versions of Mac OS X as well as older or slower processors. For example, Macs using older PowerPC processors like the PowerMac G5 and iMac G5 can no longer run current versions of Safari, Firefox or Chrome. This means users might not be able to properly view or access some web sites. Thus these computers increasingly will need to be replaced since they would become less and less useful. Interestingly, PowerMac G5 ands iMac G5s were made between 2003 and the end of 2005 so they are more then 5 years old so it shouldn’t be too surprising that they need to be replaced.

I don’t have any specific data to support the following claim, but I think the rate of replacing computers is increasing. I think that customers used to replace their computers less frequently then every 5 years. These days, a new Mac has a minimum cost of about $1000 so it’s not easy for many people to replace their computer every 5 years. With the recent advent of the less expensive tablet computers, like the iPad, I find some hope. These devices and their capabilities are rapidly evolving. I think that in the coming years many casual computer users will be able to use an iPad for their email and web browsing needs. Thus, when one next replaces their Mac, you should consider if you could replace it with a less-expensive iPad. Then, if you were to need to replace your iPad every 4-5 years, it would be a less expensive proposition.

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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 a Mac it’s typically best to do some research and make sure that all of the applications and peripherals which 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’re 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.

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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, so 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” and then 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 then 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, then you may want to rename them so they sort in a particular order as I’ve done by adding number prefixes.

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I strongly recommend the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP) for all MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac and MacPro purchases under most circumstances. I know that, in general, extended warranties have a poor reputation, but I think AppleCare is a good value for most Mac models.

Every Mac computer comes with 90 days of telephone tech support and a 1 year hardware warranty. By purchasing APP, the telephone support is extended to 1 year and the hardware warranty is extended to 3 years. AppleCare protection covers the cost of both parts and labor in the event of a repair. For the rest of this article I’ll simply refer to the AppleCare Protection Plan as AppleCare.

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 should sell your Mac within 3 years of initial purchase, the 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 does not cover accidental damage. AppleCare is available for all new or refurbished Macs bought from Apple.

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. So, if your laptop is outside of it’s one-year hardware warranty and it breaks then one repair would have paid for the cost of Applecare protection. 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. On one of them the CD/DVD drive and a fan was 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 and it covers an external monitor if you purchase it at the same time that you buy a Mac, such as a MacPro, Mac mini or Mac laptop.

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 MacPros. 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 if 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 then require a repair due to a part defect.

If you buy your Mac using a major credit card then 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 and they were subsequently reimbursed after submitting the requisite paperwork. So, 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.

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Would you like to learn to use iMovie better? Here’s a list of some online information that can help you to learn how to use iMovie. 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 of iMovie, iMovie ’11. The interface overhaul has thrown experienced iMovie users for a loop and confuses many novice users. Consequently, I frequently provide iMovie training to help users get oriented. However, there are some very good online resources to help you get started with learning how to use iMovie.

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 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.

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Adding memory (RAM) to a computer is one of the most common upgrades made to a computer so many people think that this will speed up a computer. Adding memory to a computer can slightly improve its performance if the computer didn’t previously have sufficient memory installed to accommodate the applications which were simultaneously used. Let me elaborate to add some clarifying detail.

A computer’s processor (CPU) is a chip which carries out the instructions of an application. The faster the processor the faster tasks can be completed. Currently, common processor chips are the Core Duo, Core 2 Duo and Core i3, i5 and i7. These processors typically run at speeds around 2.0 to 3.0 Gigahertz (GHz). The speed of a computer’s processor is typically the largest factor in the computer’s performance. Typically, it’s not possible to either speed up or replace a processor in today’s desktop or laptop computers. Thus, people have to make other changes to try to improve a computer’s performance.

Applications, like Microsoft Word, are permanently stored on a hard drive. When one opens Microsoft Word then large parts of it are copied into memory (RAM). As one opens more and more applications one uses up all of the available memory in a computer. Eventually, the computer will start to use virtual memory. It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain virtual memory but, trust me, whcn I indicate that it’s slower then regular memory.

If one were to add more memory to a computer then the computer would need to rely on virtual memory less, when a lot of applications are open simultaneously. Consequently, the computer’s performance is improved. It’s common to need to add memory to a computer a few years after it was purchased especially if one has installed updated versions of applications like Word or the Mac operating system, Mac OS X. This is because new versions typically require more memory then their predecessors and thus utilize the computer’s memory faster and cause it to start to use virtual memory sooner.

Here are a few Wikipedia articles which could be useful if you want to dig deeper to try to understand some of the terms that I mentioned above: RAM (random access memory), CPU (central processing unit), GHz (gigahertz), virtual memory.

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Are you looking for an iPhone holder which’ll move with you between cars and will work with various iPhone models? If so, you should take a look at Tetrax’s XWAY.

This holder clips to the louvers on one of your car’s vents using four grips which you tighten onto the louvre by spinning the knob at the center of the XWAY. At the center of this x-shaped knob is a strong magnet with a concave center. The XWAY comes with several thin magnetic discs which each have a central buldge. After affixing one of these disks to the back of your iPhone or iPhone case then you can easily connect it to the magnet at the center of the XWAY. The buldge on the back of your iPhone will fit snugly into the concave center of the magnet on the XWAY. When you want to detach your iPhone it’s best to slide the phone to the left or right. If you attempt to pull it straight off the XWAY, you run the risk of pulling the XWAY off the vent’s louvre.

I like this clip because you can unscrew it and easily move it from one car to another. Additionally, since it holds an iPhone in place via magnets it can work with any model of iPhone. In fact, it could be used to hold other small electronic devices like GPS units.

In my car, I attached the XWAY to a vent that is near the middle of the steering wheel. This way, I can easily glance down to see the caller ID information displayed on the iPhone’s screen. Additionally, the vent is within reach of my car’s cigarette lighter and the Belkin iPhone charger which I keep plugged into the cigarette lighter. This way, I can recharge my iPhone as needed. The magnets on the iPhone are strong so they hold the iPhone firmly in place which I appreciate. I don’t want a loose iPhone to sliding around on me.

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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 had visited Apple’s headquarters, he’d seen a room full of people who were reading and processing all of the feedback which they received.

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I recently discovered a bug in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. If you insert a movie file into a PowerPoint presentation and you’re using the older .ppt file format then the link to the movie break when you close the file.  I’ve confirmed that this problem occurs with .wmv and .mov movie files and I assume it occurs with any other type of movie file. I’ve had a couple of clients encounter this bug. I reported this problem to Microsoft but it hasn’t been fixed as of the time of this writing. There is an easy solution to this problem. Use PowerPoint 2011′s native .pptx file format instead of the older .ppt file format.

Here’s what I did to fix the problem.

Open the .ppt PowerPoint file.

Go to the File menu and select Save As

In the Format section, select PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx)

Click the Save button. This will convert the presentation from .ppt format to the newer .pptx format

Go to the slide where you’d like to place a movie.

Go to the Insert menu and select Movie and then Movie From File

Navigate to the folder on your Mac which contains the movie file you want to insert into your presentation.

Select the movie file and click the Insert button.

Go to the File menu and select Save. The movie has now been imported to your presentation and will be saved within your PowerPoint file. You can check the size of your PowerPoint .pptx file to see that it has grown significantly now that the movie is saved inside it. When I was figuring out what the problem was I noticed that the file size of the .ppt file didn’t grow after I inserted the movie and saved the file. This told me that it wasn’t working properly. I also knew that I’d seen this feature work in other PowerPoint 2011 presentations. I then realized that the difference was that some files were .ppt files while others were .pptx files. That’s when I realized that this insert movie feature failed to work whenever I used the .ppt file format.

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Here are instructions on how to restore one or more files from your CrashPlan online backup archive.The instructions work for both CrashPlan and CrashPlan Pro. In my opinion an untested backup system is next to useless. Only by testing it do you know for sure that your backup system is owrking properly. By testing it you also learn how to restore a file which will enable you to be a bit more calm in the event of an actual disaster

If you’re a visual learner you might like to watch my video demonstration of how to preform a restore from CrashPlan.

• Open the CrashPlan (or CrashPlan Pro application) by clicking on its icon on your Dock or in your Applications folder.
• On the left-hand side you’ll see five sections, click on Restore.
• You’ll see the CrashPlan Central Destination listed at the top as well as the time of the most recent backup. If you want to restore from a backup other than the most recent backup then click words “most recent” which appear at the bottom of the window. From the calendar that appears select a previous date and time and click “Ok”.
• Next select the files or folders you want to restore by inserting a checkmark in the checkbox to the left of the file’s name. You can either use the search field to locate your file or you can click the arrows to the left of folder names to see the contents of the folder. Using these arrows you can navigate down several layers of folders to locate the files or folders that you see.
• By default the files will be restored to the Desktop. If you prefer, you can click on the word “Desktop” near the bottom of the window to select another location.
• Finally, click the “Restore” button.
• “Restore Status” information will be listed at the bottom of the CrashPlan window. Depending upon how many Kilobytes of data you select it can take a while for CrashPlan to retrieve the files and send them to your computer. When the restoration is complete the status message will list the time at which that the files were restored to the destination on your Mac.

It’s also possible to restore files from CrashPlan’s web site. This option could be useful if your laptop was stolen or if you’re traveling without your laptop, but need a file. Restoring files from the CrashPlan web site limits you to restoring a maximum of 500 MB.

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Zamzar, an online file conversion service, is an easy way to save a copy of a YouTube video on your Mac. To do this you enter the YouTube video’s address at Zamzar’s web site and it will convert the YouTube video into a file type which you choose and then send you an email containing a link to download the  converted file.

Zamzar is actually a very versatile file conversion service. I’ve used it to convert Microsoft Visio drawings, Microsoft Works files and Microsoft Publisher files. To read Zamzar’s huge list of supported file types visit this web page.  Zamzar offers several levels of service. Their free accounts are ad-supported. Free accounts are limited to processing upto 20 files per day which add up to not more than 500 MB. Paid accounts let you overcome these limitations as well as offering additional features.

Update: Here’s another possible option. Jaksta is a commercial application which claims to let you save a copy of any audio or video file that you stream in your web browser.

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Seattle City Government recently passed a law requiring companies that print the yellow page phone books to honor opt-out requests by Seattle citizens. If you’d like to opt out of receiving phone books from Dex, Frontier, Super Pages and others then you’ll need to do the following.
Go to Seattle City Government’s web site to read the details of this new system. You’ll be prompted to visit the Catalog Choice web site to create your own account. Once you’ve created your account you can click on the Phone Books button at the top of the web site to select which phone books you would or would not like to receive. You can subsequently opt out of receiving catalogs from other companies as well.

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