There are several products out now for the iPhone (and some for the iPod Touch with a little hardware help) that will let you use your device as a GPS navigation unit, complete with turn by turn directions. Tom Tom and Navigon are a couple of the leading suppliers of software. There are some free alternatives, too. One that just became more of a contender is MapQuest 4 Mobile. MapQuest 4 Mobile is a free download, and a couple of days ago they added voice to the turn-by-turn directions.
This means unlike the in-built Maps application, you can concentrate on driving and just listen for your turns. So how well does it work? To find out, I decided to use it to drive to work while also running my Garmin Nuvi 765T. Now, I didn't expect it to blow away the Garmin – the Nuvi was somewhat expensive when I bought it last year (around $380) and the MapQuest app is free. But I wanted to see if it was at least passable should I be without the Nuvi.
Continue reading »
There are a few websites that have become favorites of mine over the years. Need a piece of software to do a specific task? There are two sites that have earned my loyalty for this. Version Tracker has been around the longest, and has divisions for Mac, Windows, iPhone & Palm, and even divides the Mac software by OS. Need to recover photos from a bad memory card? Plug "photo recovery" into their search window and it will come up with what's available.
MacUpDate is the second site. Works the same way, but, as the name suggests, it's limited to Mac and iPhone software. Both of these sites list and give links to freeware, shareware and commercial software. Use them to see if your favorite piece of software has a newer version or bug fix. There are also reviews on each app — from the average, everyday user. Unbiased.
MacSurfer's Headline News is a great source for all Apple related news headlines. An entire page of headlines, divided by topic, and easy to peruse. And yes, friends, the MacGroup Blog is generally listed. Click on a headline that catches your interest, and you will be redirected to the article. I've been known to hit this site a couple of times a day. It's updated frequently.
The last of my "must bookmark" sites is dealmac. Updated daily, this site will give you the best deals on just about everything tech-related, from the latest Apple refurbs to digital cameras to you-name-it. They list the newest free iPhone apps and Amazon's daily free MP3s. You never know what you'll find, but it's always a good starting place when looking for new peripherals.
I've pretty much adopted the Magic Mouse when I'm not using my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet. Although the Magic Mouse is not perfect, I do like it. I have one that resides in my computer bag for travel and I have one now on my production Mac which is a Mac Pro. However, there was one major issue with using the Magic Mouse on a Mac Pro. The metal casing of the Mac Pro, while stylish for sure, shields the Bluetooth signal a bit too much for reliable Bluetooth use. At least that's the case with the Magic Mouse. My Mac Pro is on the floor under my desk. Although Bluetooth has a range of 30 feet, the location of the case and more importantly the Bluetooth antenna on the Mac Pro lessen that range quite a bit.
Rather than give up on the Magic Mouse…
This week I am going to stray from data backup. But even though I won't be talking about it, it does not mean you should not be doing it. There is always time to backup. It always less time to backup than it is time to recover or worse cry because you did not have a backup.
Nuff said.
Now the backup I am talking about this week is a backup power supply for your iPod or iPhone and the best part is that you can get your power and stay green doing it.
Solar e Power II from Wagan Tech
My sister-in law gave me this nifty device as a gift. It allows you to run/charge your iPod or iPhone with power from the Sun. Great for the beach, park, camping or anywhere an outlet or USB charger cannot be found. A great backup power supply as long as the Sun is shining.
Compact
The Solar e Power II is about as thick as 2 iPhones taped together. It unfolds to receive the rays to give you the plays on your iPod or iPhone. So it's easy to pack in your bag or purse to carry anywhere. It stores nicely in the glove box in the car.
This week I will not be on the radio. It's the week of the City of Berkley Ice Show "Legends on Ice". The greater part of the show is made up of skaters from my club "The Berkley Royal Blades FSC" I will be doing the stage lighting and working with a great group of Dad's that man the 4 spotlights for the skaters ( John, Jeff, Mike, and Lou ). i will be back on The internet Advisor on WJR 760 AM on April 3rd 2010. Make sure you make it to the MacGroup meeting this Sunday Mar 28th. Get meeting details at www.macgroup.org
Musical Selection for the week-
Since I really like the 80's and some of the music of that era. Since it's Ice Show week and it's cool. It only seems fitting to go this way.
A young Jim Carey gone crazy. —- Have a GREAT Weekend!
►
Even with all the computer gadgets, books, and material on the web that fascinates me throughout my day, that keeps me utterly engaged, it’s wonderful to get away. To get away and interact with the world around me.
When I need to take a break from the ins and outs of computerdom I grab my camera and I take a walk. I take a walk or sometimes take a drive, and sometimes the outdoors comes to me. But, however it’s done, the trip is never disappointing.
:
:
Take for instance the trip that lead me to discover the Robin’s Nest right outside my window. I still have the wide-eyed wonder of a child when it comes to such things. And I hope to never lose it.
Continue reading »
Spring is here, which means spring cleaning can't be far behind. Do yourself a favor and do a little spring cleaning on your Mac as well as around the house. I don't know about you, but I tend to save a lot of files "just in case" I need them. This tends to clutter up my disk. I don't always realize how much stuff I've got until I take a look at a disk and see there's not a lot of free space left.
It can be hard to figure out just where all your disk space went. That's why a couple of years ago I was happy to pay for a great utility by The Omni Group called OmniDiskSweeper. These days, it's even better (it's free). You can use it to figure out where your disk space is going and to free up disk if you want.
When you start it up, you'll get a list of all your mounted disks:
Select a drive and click the button at the bottom (or just double-click a drive) and OmniDiskSweeper will begin looking at all the files – even the hidden ones the Finder normally won't show. (Often, some temporary file from the OS itself is eating up a lot of disk, but you won't see that in the Finder.) The program lists directories and files from largest to smallest so you know at a glance where the biggest disk users are. I've chosen a relatively small disk without a lot of files because scanning your disk can take a while.
Notice there's a "Delete" button at the lower left. Click on it and you get a stern warning:
When you delete a file here, it doesn't go to the Trash – that would defeat the whole purpose! It gets removed right away. So make sure you know what you're doing before you delete a file.
The folder to the lower-right will open the selected files/directories in the Finder if you want to see them there.
This program is very helpful in tracking down large files, especially ones you might not know about. I've seen a few systems where some background process goes nuts and starts writing log entries like crazy, until there's almost no disk left. You might notice your system is acting up and reboot, killing off the process, but leaving a huge log file lying around. Unless you know where on the system to go looking for such files, chances are you'll never find it with the Finder. But you will with OmniDiskSweeper.
OmniDiskSweeper requires 10.4 or greater, and is a Universal application, so it works on PPC and Intel machines. It's a great utility that you won't use every day, but when you need it, you'll be glad you have it. And with a cost of $0, there's really no reason not to get it. You might be surprised about some junk on your system you didn't know was there!
Amazon finally released their Kindle for Mac application last week, and I had to try it out. It's definitely a beta version, about on par with the first release of Kindle for iPhone, so I'm confident it will improve.
Select your book, decide on which device you want it on, and buy it. That's it. If you have more than one device with a Kindle app, all of your purchases will show up in the Archive section. To download one to your computer or iPhone or touch (or iPad — soon!) just double click on the icon.
Continue reading »
For the past 9 Weeks I've been doing a series called "10 Tip Mondays" where I've given 10 Tips on various Mac Apps or OS X features. I decided to round out this series with "10 Random Mac Tips". This will be 10 Tips off the top of my head and then of course followed by the links to the other 90 Tips to make the title of this post a true statement. So here we go in no particular order:
1. Partition a drive without reformatting
One of my favorite Snow Leopard features is the ability to partition a hard drive WITHOUT having to reformat it first. As long as you're not currently booted off that drive, you can plug it in, open Disk Utility and partition it without having to reformat it. I just did this recently on an external portable Firewire drive so that I could create a second boot partition for beta testing. It worked perfectly without losing the contents. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS BACKUP FIRST BEFORE DOING ANY WORK IN DISK UTILITY.
2. Multiple Time Machine Backups
Now you can have multiple Time Machine Backups. If you go to your Time Machine prefs and choose a different drive you can of course backup to it. However, if you later go back and set Time Machine to backup to the first drive Time Machine will pick up where it left off. This is great for creating offsite backups or going between two drives such as a Time Capsule at home and a portable drive on the road.
3. Use Font Book to check for damaged fonts
Weird things can happen including frequent crashes if you've got a damaged Font. You may never even know it if it's a Font that you don't use often. However, some Apps build their Font menus upon launch based on your installed fonts, so if one or more of them is damaged then you can experience issues. Luckily Font Book can check for damaged Fonts. Just select your fonts in Font Book and choose Validate Fonts from the File menu.
Continue reading »
I use a lot of USB thumb drives. They are really handy for doing small backups. Like under 8 Gig of data. What I really like are the USB or Firewire external drives. Especially the small notebook size ( 3.5 inch ) hard drives.
Low Price
The prices for these hard drives start in at $60.00 bucks for 250 Gigabyte capacity. That should take care of most people for a basic data backup.
Multipurpose
Not only can you use the drive for backup, but you can also partition ( divide ) the drive so that you can make it a bootable backup drive to your Mac using Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. That is if you have a USB 2.0 drive and a Mac that will allow you to boot from a USB external drive.
►
Tips on how to work faster or better are always valuable. Here are a few more tips for Mac OS Address Book to add to your growing list.
• Highlight Groups that a Contact belongs to:
Select a Contact and hold down Option key.
All the Groups that the Contact is a member of will highlight in yellow.
:
• Chatting with your Contacts
If a Contact of yours is online using iChat, a small green dot will appear next to their picture in Address Book. Clicking on the dot will open iChat, for you to start a conversation with that Contact.
:
Loading ...
