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

Head over to Safari!

As discussed on the show tonight, unlike Windows where you go to the Tools to set the default web browser, in OS X, no matter which browser you’d like to use, set the default within the General preferences of Safari, Apple’s own, free web browser.

You’ll see the first pop-up menu is called “Default Web Browser:” and it should show any and all browsers you have installed on your system.

After the Adium post, Cody writes I’ve got to try Meebo:

http://www.meebo.com

“… It’s web based, does msn, yahoo, jabber and aim coded in ajax and it runs reallllly smooth”

http://www.adiumx.com/

Recommended to me by Todd Dailey, wonderful human being that he is, during a discussion about encryption. Adium allows you to log into multiple services at once (ie: AIM *and* .Mac), use tabbed windows, and what brought me to Adium, is it’s most excellent encryption (OTR, or “Off the record” messaging).

Oh, the graphics are really cute, too.

A top OTR link is here, if you’d like more info on it:

http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/

Ed called in looking for a good laptop to use in his truck, that uses wireless GPS, here are two that work on the Mac:

http://www.macgpspro.com
http://www.gpsy.com

Thanks Keith!

Boris called in for help again tonight. We have two suggestions for tools to convert real player files to mp3s for OS X:

From James: http://www.allformp3.com/
From Keith: http://www.mycoolmedia.com/audioconverter.php

Boris called in with a question about having had a problem with MicroMat’s Tech Tool Pro and Tiger.

Micromat says only 4.0.4 or later of TTP should be used with Tiger, Boris has unfortunately used 4.0.1 on Tiger. Our recommendation is to register TTP at Micromat’s website, which will enable access to their support, where you can find out if there’s a fix for the problem that the incompatibility has caused, as this is a known problem, perhaps there’s a known solution?

But has this update actually fixed the incompatibility?? Here’s someone else (among others) that’s reporting a problem recently (two weeks ago), using 4.1.1 on 10.4.4: http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=4307

Luke! Here’s a link to About.com, top 10 game pads, starting with a wireless one! We tried looking up some on Amazon.com, and found review after terrible review confirming our worst fears about wireless game pads (high latency, short battery life), so caveat emptor:

http://compactiongames.about.com/od/hardware/tp/gamepads.htm

We had a caller asking why Apple has discontinued the e-Macs and he’s looking to do video production and wants to spend under a $1000. Take a look at the auctions on e-bay, using the search criteria (without the quotes) “apple tower g4” and you’ll come up with a number of alternatives to buying a new mini, which may not have a big enough internal hard drive for you. We found 14 active auctions tonight. Note you *could* always add an external firewire hard drive!

That problem sounds like a drag!

Here’s a link to fixing problems with 10.2: http://www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html#Anchor-58320

Pay particular attention to 6. Can’t Drag And Drop/Corrupted Preferences

If this doesn’t fix your problem, please visit http://forum.ondecktech.com and leave your questions there, we’ll do our best to help you!

Thanks to Cody for this suggestion.

Forrest called in with a problem with his e-mail. Using Entourage, he’s getting an error when checking mail: “Error 3176 cannot retrieve mail. The server cannot be found be sure the mail server info is entered correctly in the account manager and that dns settings int he network control panel are correct.”

From the Tools pull-down menu, select Accounts. Select the account in question, click Edit. Make certain that the POP (post office protocol) server is correct. For Forrest, who has a Yahoo account, we believe it should be:

pop.mail.yahoo.com

We had a caller ask for a recommendation on a good network security book. My favorite basic overview, which happens to contain plenty of depth, too, is Network Security for Dummies, by the wonderful Chey Cobb (she’s incorrectly referred to as “he” in the official Amazon review): Click here to see reviews

Tom also called in asking about his iBook g3, infortunately getting 3 beeps, indicating bad RAM. Here’s a run down of the meaning of the “beeps” when it comes to more recent Apple computers (macs):