I love it when it's cheap and easy
Sometimes we get so engrossed in the new technology that we overlook the simple and easy solutions right in front of our faces.
Now there is going to be a flurry of comments on the reliability of this backup suggestion but this is just a quick and easy solution to do in between serious full backups of your Mac or PC.
I have found that if you are not a real heavy user of your computer, you might just have only 2 or 3 gigabytes of data in your home folder. If you are that type of user, you can use this type of backup.
Easy Sqeezey Lemon Peezy
All you need is a blank DVD. A DVD disk will hold 4.7 Gigabytes of information. Insert the DVD in your Mac, when it shows on your desktop, click OK in the dialog box. Next find the folder of data you would like to back up. Right mouse click on that folder and select "Copy". Now double click on the DVD icon to open it. Once open, right click in the window and select "Paste". Now after the paste, you can click the "Burn" button in the right side of the window. The finder will now write your files to the DVD. Once the copy is complete, you'll have your folder of files backed up to DVD disk.
That wasn't hard to do and easy to do with the hardware you already own.
Now it's time for our weekly musical selection
Join me, I will be guest hosting on the Internet Advisor Show this Saturday 2-27-2010 between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM on 760 AM -- WJR. So it's a good weekend to have fun tonight. Enjoy
Of course I will see you on Sunday 2-28-2010 for our regular monthly MacGroup meeting. You'll want to be there!
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Sharing our Contact Information has become quite commonplace.
When it comes to passing this information out, we write it down, we type it in, or we open our Address Book and attach our file (vCard) to an email and send it off.
This electronic information, called a vCard (.vcf) allows us to email our own contact information to others, so that it can be easily imported into their address book, without either party having to manually retype or re-enter the info.
Within Mail.app you would drag your contact info from Address Book into the body of your email or signature area. A vCard icon displays and is sent with your email. It’s that simple. Remember, we like fast and easy.
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I've been using Quicken since it was on DOS (and was printing checks fun in that environment, futzing with Quicken printer drivers!). I used Quicken for Windows until I switched to Macs, and then (sort of) imported my files from Windows to Quicken for Mac when I switched in 2003 (it didn't do a great job, and I had to do a lot of manual cleanup). I've been using Quicken 2006 since it came out (I didn't see any compelling reason to go to 2007). I've never been as happy as with the Windows version, which seemed to have better features (and a less cluttered interface). Also, I never had Quicken crash on Windows, but it does all the time for me on my Mac (in fact, I know one way to cause a crash – just save your file 6 times in the same session without closing the program – boom!).
So I was happy to hear that Quicken was (finally!) releasing a newer version of Quicken for the Mac tomorrow – at least until I looked it over.
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So, last week I gave an overview of what's in my repair kit. One of the things I mentioned was a flash/thumb drive. This week I'll tell you how I created my repair drive and how I use it.
If you have a brand new computer that will only run Snow Leopard, be aware that your repair drive must be at least 16 GB. You can't install Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) on anything smaller. Both of my computers, and most of the other computers I maintain, can go back to Tiger (OS X 10.4), but I decided to install a minimal Leopard (OS X 10.5) on the 8 GB drive I had handy.
Before you start installing things on the drive, you'll need to reformat it so that it will be able to boot the computer in question. The formatting protocol for Intel systems is different than the one for PPC systems. You don't want to go through the work of putting together your repair drive only to have it not run your computer. Remember, you can't do most repairs to the drive that holds your currently running system..
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I've been an iTunes fan even before it was bought by Apple and turned into iTunes. I actually remember the foundation being SoundJam by Casady and Greene. Putting the history lesson aside, let's take a look at 10 of my favorite iTunes tips.
1. Rate your songs
I've been rating my songs pretty much since day one. Although you can do 1-5 stars, I typically do the good, better, best method (3, 4 or 5 stars) to denote my favorite songs. Once rated you can easily sort the rated column to play songs by order of your favorites or add them to smart playlists based on your tastes.
2. Add your own Comments
It's great that you can use smart playlists to create playlist based on things like genre and artist. However, what if you wanted to create a smart playlist that eliminated songs containing "explicit lyrics" or you wanted a playlist of YOUR favorite "slow dance" tunes? If you select a song and hit command-I, you can switch to the Info tab and type in whatever you want in the comments. You can words in like "party" or "dance". Once you've described specifics about the song, you can click OK. See tip 3 on how to use this custom info.
3. Create Smart Playlists
Now that you've seen tips 1 & 2, it's time to put them to use in your Smart Playlists. I LOVE SMART PLAYLISTS! If you hold down the Option key and click the little gear/wheel at the bottom left of your left sidebar you can click it to create a Smart Playlist. Now you can create various Smart Playlists based on your favorite songs (using ratings) or on your custom comments. For example, let's say I want to create a Best of the Best playlist that's "clean". Here's what it would look like.
Hello Mac's and Mac'ettes!
Often I am asked by people how much should I spend on a computer system. Many times, folks have set aside monies for the computer and the peripherals but not money for the 2 accessories that they need just as well as any other.
Here are some of the things most people set aside monies for
Extra Memory
Large Monitor
Fancy Drawing Tablet
Larger hard drive
The list could go on. However more cases than not, the purchaser does not set aside monies or even think about the 2 items that they may need the most.
What are those 2 vital items?
That would be some sort of external storage and software to put their data on that external storage.
Let me give you a simple example of what a Mac user needs to keep in mind when buying a new Mac. This can also be applied to a PC user with PC software.
1) Buy 2 external USB or Firewire hard drives
2) Buy 1 copy of Super Duper cloning software
That is it. That's all you need.
So what do you do with these 2 items for your Mac?
Let me give you an example on how to use these 2 simple items to keep your data backed up and safe.
- Install Super Duper on your Mac
- Connect 1 of the 2 External hard drives to your Mac.
- Backup you Mac to the external hard drive
- Take that external hard drive and store it offsite in a safe place from your Mac
- One month later, connect the second external hard drive to your Mac and run the Super Duper backup again.
- Take external hard drive number 2 and take it offsite where you have stored external hard drive number 1. Bring external hard drive number 1 back to where you Mac is.
- One month later, run Super Duper again with external hard drive number 1
- Repeat the backup process alternating external hard drives drives each month
Now you are protected and you can only lose a months worth of work. If you cannot stand to lose that much, then perform this backup procedure more frequently.
Musical Selection for the week
Backing up is the key to keep your world from turning upside down like this video. I love the late 80's early 90's "Big Hair" era. Also 2 of my many favorite comedians are in this video…. Enjoy!
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Have you ever wondered how much you’ve spent at the App Store?
Well, I never really did until I saw this app.
Then I was intrigued.
Then I was shocked.
“I’ve spent that much!”
Then I was amazed. I would have never thought that much had flowed from my pockets for apps. Now it wasn’t really that much, say in the range of $100. But I would have guessed half that much since I have a lot of free apps. I can now just imagine what the total is for downloaded songs and audio books.
I'm driving down a stretch of highway, and after coming around a corner, I see an odd speed limit sign that says "Don't drive too fast." That's it, no speed listed. So I start doing 85 and few minutes later, a police officer pulls me over.
I started thinking about the tools I tend to carry, especially when I venture out to help someone with a problem or new computer. They generally are in my biggest laptop carrying case, rather than one of my desk drawers, just so that they are easy to grab when needed.
First are my tiny screwdrivers, I have a modest number of tiny straight and phillips blades, as well as a bunch of tiny hex bits. Hint: you can find most of them in the tool department at Sears, and for less than you'd spend at an electronics store.
Next are my cables. I carry ethernet, USB and Firewire cables, and I have several adapters for the Firewire cable. In addition to the old standard 6-pin Firewire 400 connectors, I also have adapters for mini video camera connections, the wide iPod connection and the newer Firewire 800 connector. The last one is a new addition, necessary for working on the newer computers.
Finally, I have a tiny 4 gig Firewire drive that I've used in the past for all of my diagnostic/repair software. I started using that when it wasn't possible to boot up a Mac from an external USB drive. Today, with high capacity USB thumb drives being so inexpensive, It's time for me to upgrade. Amazon currently has a SanDisk 16 GB for under $30. I plan to install a minimal system, then add SuperDuper! and DiskWarrior.
With all of these things, I can usually handle just about any job, be it transferring files to a new computer or installing a new drive or more memory. And before someone jumps on me for not having an antistatic strap in there, I don't use them. Never have. Before I touch the inner workings of anything electronic, I touch something metal to discharge any possible static. My father taught me to do that when I was 7 or 8 years old and working on old radios and TVs.
So, what's in your tool bag?
1. Use Tabbed Browsing
With Tabbed browsing turned on in the Safari preferences (I enable all 3 options), you can have two or more sites open at the same time in the same window and simply tab between them. This is great when you want to read the content of one site and then go check something in another site. I use Tabbed browsing all day long. Couldn't imagine not using it. Another bonus tip is to right click on a link on a page and then have that link open up in a New Tab. This way you can still have the original page open while you read what was in the other link.
2. Mail this page
I use this option at least once a day. You can email someone a link, but you can't guarantee that they'll actually click on it. So in some cases I find it better to actually email them the entire page. This way the get the page that I want them to see and all of the content is live to be drilled down on further if they want. You can find this option under the File Menu, but I actually prefer to simply hit Command-I on the keyboard once the page loads. This will take you over to Apple Mail, create a new message and then put the page in the body of the message. At that point you can even edit out sections that you don't want to send like ads.
3. Use the Built-in RSS reader
Before Apple blessed Mail with an RSS reader, Safari was actually my RSS reader of choice. I created bookmark folder called RSS. Then I put subfolders in it for each category of feed that I was interested in. Then I would navigate to a site, and bookmark it's feed to that folder. Safari gives you a numeric badge count of the number of sites that have updated content since the last time you looked.
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