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

Prior to installing sync software, prior to various software updates, prior to troubleshooting any problems with your email software, your techs may be, should be! recommending you backup your mail.

A free way to do this with Mail.app in Apple’s OS X 10.4 is here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301239#mail

An almost free way to do it ($10), and do it automatically, scheduled, with Apple Mail as well as Entourage and Thunderbird, is here:

http://homepage.mac.com/minge/emailbackuppro/index.html

Everyone’s talking about the iPhone (although no one is talking with it yet), and while this article is about communication, this is the last sentence that will mention the iPhone. For the moment, pass on, you hordes of latest gadget-lovers! We have other fish to fry. Last Website Wednesday Night we had a caller bring up the question of video conferencing between Macintosh OS X and Windows XP. In the past we’ve promised we’d share at least one way to make this work, and today is that day.

Forwarded to me by an old friend of mine and my parents who has worked for the IRS for many, many years, this is True, although it’s been floating around by e-mail, and I had doubted it, if you’re a US tax filer, it will make you at least $30 if you follow its straight-forward instructions. What’s more, if you’re a business, you can get quite a bit more. “Businesses get a bigger refund, based on the actual phone bills,” says Greg Mermel, CPA, whose column on the subject will be posted on 12/22/06.

If you have attempted to partition an external drive to include an OS boot disk on a new Intel Mac, you may have noticed a few options. In Disk Utility, you have three options for partitioning.

GUID Partition Table - used to create a boot disk for an Intel-based Mac.

Apple Partition Map - used to create a boot disk for Power PC Macs, or non-startup disk for any Mac.

Master Boot Record - used to create a boot disk for DOS/Windows machines.

Ever wonder what the /Library directory is for, and why there’s more than one of them?

The time has come. The time is now. I’m reviewing the basics, getting ready to recertify as an Apple Certified Systems Administrator (ACSA) for 10.4, Tiger, yes, just about in time for Leopard, 10.5 to come out (Spring actually seems very, very far away at the moment). It actually doesn’t come at too bad a time, I’m working less this week to help my wife with our new, third baby, and I’ve got time at all sorts of odd hours now to review technical details, and share tidbits with you!

A good thing to do prior to first synchronizing your calendars and address books with .Mac or Zimbra here’s how to back up Apple’s iCal & Address Book data in Mac OS X 10.4.

Backing up iCal:
First, launch iCal and select File > Back up Database:

A window will appear in iCal requesting where to save the backup file to:

This will create a backup file of iCal:

After creating your backup file, store it safely on an external hard drive or burn the data to CD/DVD. To recover from your backup file, simply navigate to File > Revert to Database Backup and select the backup file.

The application iPhoto is used to manage digital photographs and quicktime videos taken on your digital camera.

I use iPhoto for offloading digital pictures and video clips from my camera and modifying the pictures and cataloging the videos on it. The Quicktime videos can be moved to iTunes for cataloging and playback. You can also use iMovie for digital movie clips and stills.

The secret editing mode gives you much better control over the Red Eye and Retouching tools. You can adjust the size of the Redeye and Retouch tools and the intensity of the Retouch tools. The Redeye tool now shows up as a round center in a oval cross hair. The Retouch tool now allows you to control the size and of the tool and the intensity.

The next time you set an iCal alarm, instead of a boring alert sound, have it play one of your favorite tunes.

First select an event in iCal. In the Info panel click on “None next to alarm and choose Open File from the pop-up menu. A new field appears directly below alarm. Click on the new field and choose Other from its pop-up menu. In the Open dialog box that appears go to your music folder, find the tune you want and select it. Now choose when you want the alarm to go off and you’re all set.

The Slide Show command in Mac OS X is a really cool way to look at photos.

Let’s say you’ve downloaded a bunch of images from you digital camera onto your Mac. Select some or all of the images, Control-click (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse) on any image and choose Slideshow from the contextual menus. (In case you didn’t know, Mac OS X is LOADED with contextual menus). Ta-da! A full-screen slide show, complete with smooth dissolve transitions, appears on your screen. To end the show, press the Escape (esc) key on your keyboard.

Photoshop’s Photo Filter command acts just like a colored lens filter. The built-in Warming filters makes images warmer by adding more yellow. The Cooling filters makes images cooler by adding more blue.

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