The Mac Experience in Business & Home: Help, Tips, Discussion & Radio Show Notes

We like Firefox, for all platforms, especially when used in conjunction with Zimbra, the enterprise e-mail, calendaring, contact and document sharing software. And we all know how easy it is to take screenshots on a mac. But have you ever wanted to take a screenshot of an entire webpage, especially one that scrolls beyond the size of your screen? And what about when using Firefox on a PC using WindowsXP or Linux? Well, now you can, with Pearl Crescent, a new Firefox extension. You can get Pearl Crescent here . It comes in both a free basic version, and a Pro version for $15. For independently written software, those are great prices, especially for what it can do. We know around here we are going to be recommending this often to our users.

I’ve had this wonderful little freeware application for many years now. And, since I had to yet again refer to it to definitively answer a call that just came in to the OnDeckTech helpdesk, I thought I’d pass it along to y’all as well. MacTracker is a database with a nifty-looking front end, that does just as it says. It gives you information about every model of Macintosh computer ever made. It even does iPods now as well. You can read more about it, and download it here . And, since it is freeware, if you find yourself relying on it, please consider donating, so that the authors can continue to develop it.

Panic Software , the makers of the fantastic FTP application Transmit (and other Shockingly Good Mac Software) have outdone themselves with their newest product Coda . If you are the hand-coding type, Coda is a wonderful way to improve your workflow. It combines everything you need for web development (file manager, text editor, preview, CSS editor) and then some (a terminal window and a great help book ) into one window. Coda is $79, or, if you already own a license for Transmit 3, $69. That’s a pretty great price for such a complete product, from an independent Mac software developer. If you’d like to try it, you can download a demo here .

It’s kind of like faster-user switching, but staying within the same Account!

A prospective customer of ours, new to the Mac, found, downloaded and is enjoying the software, and wrote us:

The website is here:
http://virtuedesktops.info/index.php/downloads/

The actual download is not easy to see.
It is here.

http://virtuedesktops.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/VirtueDeskt

This is a beta and a non-apple solution.  The upcoming release from apple (leopard) is supposed to have this function built in.  This beta has worked well for me.  The worse thing that has happened is that it has quit once or twice.  So I keep a copy on my desktop to restart it.

There are so many different ways to set something like this up. This final installation of this blog series if going to mainly focus on what I’ve experienced so far, and what I plan on doing with my network.

So, my network at this time includes:
Airport Extreme
Airport Express
Cable Modem
Epson R200
LaCie 250GB External
Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
Core Duo Macbook
tv or Mac Mini eventual purchase

As you may have noticed by now, I’m pretty serious about this project. I have been ripping DVDs every day since the tv was initially announced back in September under the code name “iTV”.

I had no idea where I would end up when I started, but now that I am finished with Parts One and Two, I know what I need from here. I will share with you know some things to consider.

At this point, you are either finished with, or well on your way to having all of your media ripped into Quicktime format, and assembled into a massive iTunes Library. You will start to get an idea of how large your Library will be, and should be planning accordingly regarding a means for storage (more on this in part 3).

Right now, we are going to focus on organization - getting all your music and video in the same library, and properly tagged.

Since you have no doubt heard by now that the tv has been delayed, I thought this would be an excellent time to share some tips that will make your impending digital home theatre experience all the more sweet. As an added challenge, I will try to subtitle each entry with a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers song. So, here we go!

In this installation, I want to tackle content. Apple offers movies on the iTunes Store now, but who wants to pay for iTunes-compatible versions of movies they already own? Who wants to wait for all the legal battles to be fought so that they can finally download their favorite films on iTunes? Not this Mac addict.

We had a listener write in with a problem that sounds like it could be solved by a download and update from Apple:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbooksmcfirmwareupdate11

This updates the firmware of MacBooks to version 1.1, solving a heat and freeze issue.

Safe Boot (aka “Safe Mode”) allows you to start up your Mac with a simplified operating system, helpful for identifying and circumventing minor corruptions to startup items, extensions and fonts. Here’s info from Apple’s website on Safe Mode on the Mac, since it was discussed, too, press Shift during start up to enter safe mode on Mac OS X:

From time to time, for a plethora of reasons - we may lose connection with Mail. No, that sentence was not just an excuse to use the word plethora. Your Mail settings may have changed, you could be having issues with your ISP, but regardless of the issue - Mail troubles can be confusing and frustrating. But there’s help!

Under the Window menu in Mail, is a little tool called Connection Doctor. This feature arrived with Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” , and was designed to diagnose and fix networking issues directly from Mail.