Written by: hexley on Friday April 18th 2008, 5:41 am
iTunes has gone from a simple music management application to a full-fledged media management tool. Gone are the days of just managing your music files, iTunes now takes on the roll of managing video, audio, and can even help organize pdf files.
With all the power iTunes offers, it can become overwhelming. iTunes desires to be your default player for near all media types. An amusing audio clip from Family Guy or The Simpsons ends up getting imported into iTunes. This audio clip then relentlessly follows you around and makes its way to your iPod and iPhone on your next synchronization.
Let’s see what we can do to keep iTunes clear of cruft, and only contain the data you want imported into it.
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Written by: hexley on Wednesday April 16th 2008, 3:35 am
It’s just a clock, how in the heck can it be used to tell you if your system is locked up? To be honest, it really can’t. However, I have used this tactic since way back in the OS 9 days, and it still works pretty darn well under OS X.
First I will start with the basics, customizing the clock, what you can change, and why you may want to. After a small history lesson in how OS 9 was not as smartly multi-threaded as OS X, I can then explain just how you can use your clock as a visual aid to tell you if your computer is stuck.
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Written by: hexley on Tuesday April 15th 2008, 5:52 am
With OS X Leopard 10.5, Apple brought forward a pretty strange change to the menu bar. The main menu bar had a mandatory translucency applied. This meant you could see your desktop image through the menu bar.
The internets were quite upset about this “feature”. In my opinion, rightly so.
Luckily, so much noise was made about the change, that as long as you have ran your software updates, you can finally turn this “feature” off.
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Written by: hexley on Sunday April 13th 2008, 7:03 pm
A few days ago, one of our readers sent in an email asking if I had any idea why Internet Explorer would not load web pages in his installation of Virtual PC. Every now and then I will take an interest in a users problems and see if I can not help them troubleshoot the issue.
We had a few rounds of email, over the course of a few days, in the end, I was unable to help. A solution was found, but not by myself, rather the user figured it out on their own. The solution was simple, and one I usually try as a first step, as should everyone. This time, it never crossed my mind, as I wrongfully assumed the user would also try this method as a first step.
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Written by: hexley on Thursday April 10th 2008, 11:53 pm
There have been a few comments on the site asking for us to cover RSS. I have several direct emails from readers asking the same. Today, we will explain what RSS is, how it can help you keep up to date with the rapidly changing web, and in general, what a near mandatory tool it is.
My gut tells me new users have no idea what RSS is, let alone the value it holds. I suspect that since there are links to RSS feeds on nearly every site, people are curious, but just have no idea where to turn to for good advice.
A Google search will show you nice definitions of RSS. You may walk away understanding that it is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. Even knowing that, to this day, those three words do little to help me in knowing what the heck RSS is good for.
Let’s fix that right now.
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Written by: hexley on Wednesday April 02nd 2008, 3:17 am
Every now and then, you are writing and will get stumped on how to spell a word. Perhaps you know the beginning letters, and not the ending letters. Or perhaps you just want some hints.
OS X has a built in system for pulling words out of its dictionary, and showing you a list of those words. While not something I use all the time, it can be handy once you learn how to access it.
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