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

I love to listen to my iPod when I’m walking to work. One problem that I have is volume control. One song is too loud, the next one too soft. And sometimes I have my hands full and I can’t manually adjust the volume. That’s why I like Sound Check.

Sound Check tried to maintain a consistent volume level for all the songs on your iPod. To use Sound Check, first you have to enable it in the Audio pane of the iTunes Preferences window. iTunes adjusts the volume of the tracks in its Library. When the songs are uploaded to the iPod, the Sound Check settings are maintained.

I was working on a calendar in InDesign recently. I pasted my text into a text frame and wanted to fill the frame with a swatch color. To do that, I needed to switch from the Type tool to the Selection tool. But there’s a problem using the keyboard shortcuts.

Since I had been using the Type tool, pressing V (the keyboard shortcut for the Selection tool) added an extra letter to my text. The trick: press the command key and click on the frame. Now press V to switch to the Selection tool.

During the course of my workday, I find myself constantly having to switch between applications. Sure, I could use the Dock or Expose. But there’s a handy keyboard shortcut that I like that lets me quickly switch applications.

Hold down the command and tab keys to bring up the application switcher. Use the tab key to cycle forward through the open applications. Use the tilde key to cycle backward through the open applications.

But that’s not all, folks. If you want to quit an application, while still holding down the command key, press the letter Q.

Say that you work in an application like Microsoft Word every day, all day. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the application open every time you start or log in to your Mac?

No problemo. Find the application alias in your dock, then either Control-click (or right-click if you happen to have a two-button mouse like I do) and choose Open at Login from the contextual menu.

If you need to take a screen shot — and in my 10 years as a trainer I’ve had to take LOTS of them — here’s a nifty keyboard shortcut.

Press Shift-Command-Spacebar-4, which is a bit ackward (I had to use both hands) and your cursor changes into a crosshair (sometimes it changes into a camera icon). Just click and drag a bounding box around what you want to capture and release the mouse button to take the picture, which shows up on your dekstop as Picture 1 (or 2 or 3 depending on how many pictures you take).

Use Safari’s Mail Llink command to email a webpage to friends and family.

Let’s say you that you find a webpage that you want to share with a friend. Just choose File > Mail Link to this Page or press Command Shift I. The command automatcially opens a new Mail document with the link neatly in place.

If you want to send them the entire webpage choose File > Mail Link to this Page or Command I instead.

You have a digital image that measures 2202 pixels x 1704 pixels. You want your final print to have a resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi). What’s the largest print you can make? Use Photoshop’s Image Size controls to find out.

Open your image in Photoshop. Choose Image > Image Size and deselect the Resample Image option. Now type 300 in the Resolution field and Photoshop shows you the size of your image in inches.

Now if a train going 60 miles an hour leaves Chicago at 11:30…

Know what I miss about old-fashioned adding machines? The paper tape that allowed me to quickly check my figures. Especially if I’m adding a long string of number.

If you miss paper tapes too, you’re gonna love the Paper Tape feature in Calculator. It keeps a record of every calculation you make, which can be printed or saved from the File menu To use the Paper Tape, choose View > Show Paper Tape.

Ever lost track of where your cursor is on a cluttered screen? This has sure happened to me, especially with higher screen resolutions. Well, I just read about a program called Mouse Locator (www.2point5fish.com ) that solves this problem.

After a certain period of time of not moving your cursor, you get a big green bulls-eye graphic around the cursor the next time it’s moved. The application is free, so I decided to give it a shot. And it works! You’ll want to set the amount of time of not moving the mouse before the bullseye appears. To change the settings, go to System Preferences. Pretty handy for those of us with less than perfect vision.

If you ever wanted to add extra character spaces in Dreamweaver just like you do in Word (by pressing the spacebar), you can by changing a preference setting.

Go to Dreamweaver > Preferences (Command U). In the General section, go to Editing Options, select Allow Multiple Consecutive Spaces and click OK. That’s it. Now whenever you want an extra space, just press the spacebar. And you got ‘em.

Check “Allow multiple consecutive spaces”