Mac Mode

A list of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts from Apple.com. How many do you know?

… maybe.

The Leopard installation has been on my To-Do list since Sunday when we bought Leopard. Went out the night of the Leopard launch but instead of buying that, I bought the PS3 game Eye of Judgment — and have already blogged about it over at Hmm (twice!).

It’s not that I’ve intentionally been procrastinating on the Leopard upgrade, but I wanted to wait until there was enough window of time to fully evaluate the feature set. Halloween is a trick or treat day and today one of my treats is being able to spend a little time with Leopard and see how it compares to Tiger.

Now, really, I’m going to open that Leopard box with the mesmerizing purple space … maybe.

Didn’t get Leopard yesterday but will be buying it soon. First needed to upgrade the memory from the 256MB RAM it came with to at least 512MB which is the minimum for Leopard. I stuck a 512MB stick of RAM to bring the total to 768MB RAM. Was a smooth operation and in the process I blew out the dust with a compressor (outside) and cleaned the Mac.

The following tutorials from Apple came in handy:
- eMac: how to install the optional stand. Need the right size allen wrench and you’re good to go.
- eMac: how to install memory. Only one screw to get to the memory compartment underneath.

The eMac is heavy, isn’t it?

Head’s up Howard Stern fans, it’s Eric the Widget! This is funny. For those who don’t follow the program Eric the Midget is considered among the most ungrateful wackpackers on the Howard Stern show. Now he’s really famous, he has his own Dashboard Widget.

Thanks Macenstein.

Since last September I’ve been a happy Sirius satellite subscriber. Today I went to plug my Starmate radio into the line-in jack on my eMac and while I saw signal, nothing was coming out of the speakers.

LineIn 2.0.3 (freeware) for the Mac solved this problem nicely.

From Apple Gazette comes iRing which sounds handy for those who are into ringtones. I’m not, heck I don’t even have a cell phone as of this writing, but I was thinking that when I do get back into the mobile phone game I might want to revisit something like this.

TechMixer describes the iRing:

An iphone ringtone creator application that automated converting AAC files into ringtones for the iPhone.

I like the design and idea behind My First Mac. Articles aimed at Windows users to help explain how to do similar tasks on the Mac.

How do you keep track of what’s free on iTunes? You can do it the hard way by checking iTunes or the easy way by subscribing to the Free iTunes Downloads blog.

The design is too splog-like, but the content is good.

You can subscribe via RSS feed and know when something cool to download is available like the pilot of Jericho as of this writing.

One of the best videos interviews I’ve seen in a long time — and a total must see for techies — is the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interview at D5 Conference.

Great stuff. Go download it now while it’s available and free. The video is almost 1GB.

Thanks Macenstein.

Moody is a free add-in for iTunes that enables you to tag your music in iTunes by color coded chart based on intensity and sadness to hapiness. At last count I had something like 1,200 songs so this might take awhile, but I like the idea that once everything is tagged I can choose a mood and it will take care of dispensing the tunes.

Probably noticed that I changed the theme for this blog to something more Apple-like. The author of the theme can be found in the footer of the homepage. This morning I read a good tutorial for how to create Mac icons:

I got tired of seeing the default white removable drive icon whenever I plugged in my CompactFlash reader. I decided to make a custom CompactFlash icon to use instead.

The Color Jack Dashboard Widget seeks to make it easier to pick out good colors:

simulates various forms of color blindness! Sphere uses color theory in order to provide you with visually appealing colors.

Need help keeping track of your application updates?

App Update:

can automatically check for updates to your installed software. It supports Apple’s software directory, MacUpdate and Version Tracker.

The Efficient Mac User offers 11 tips for returning your Mac to it’s new, efficient form:

1. Clean out Startup Items
2. Turn off Universal Access, Bluetooth, Speech Recognition, and Internet Sharing if You Don’t Use Them
3. Clean Out ‘Other’ System Preferences
4. Check Out What ‘Build’ Your Software Is
5. Clean Out Unnecessary Code
6. Get Rid of Languages and Translations You Won’t Use
7. Cool Off
8. Evaluate Your Widgets
9. Keep an Eye on Activity Monitor
10. Clean Off Your Hard Drive
11. Run OnyX

I just ran through half of these and will do the others on my next break. The Intel Mac stuff doesn’t help me on my eMac, but the other tips are helpful.

Isolator:

When you’re working on a document, and don’t want to be distracted, turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on it, as well as the windows of all your other applications.

This could come in handy during moments when trying to concentrate, but then why not just maximize the window to the whole screen?

The one thing about to-do lists I don’t care for is the time to prepare and manage them. Sometimes I can do everything I’d put on a to-do list in the time I’d put the list together and check it off. Perhaps a small exaggeration there but it feels that way sometimes.

Do it:

is a small application to manage categorized to do lists. Each to do item can be linked with a file on your computer, a URL, such as the address of a website, or a contact from your address book. The linked item can be opened directly from the Do It window. To do items can also include notes, priorities and deadlines, which can be set as reminders in iCal.

MP3 blogs are basically podcasts that send along mp3 music only. Peel wraps up mp3 blogs into a player, stream and mp3 blog reader.

Usually I don’t post about rumors here, but there are exceptions to everything.

Macenstein:

the Mactactic twist here is they use that data to create countdowns that predict the exact day each item will be updated. For instance, are you looking for a new Mac Pro? You’ll have to wait 1 month and 2 weeks. Mac mini? A new release is only 2 weeks and 6 days away.

Macenstein is talking about the Mac Buyer’s Guide which italicizes the warning that: This page is based on rumors and speculation and we provide no guarantee to its accuracy.

Freeverse Think:

Let’s limit our attention to one application–any application–at any time. Let’s make it easy to change focus when we have to. Let’s allow ourselves to bring other apps up quickly if we need them, but put them out of sight again just as quickly.

I’m not sure exactly what this does from a quick look, but I’m saving it to download and check out later.

IMified is available at http://www.imified.com/ I’m writing step-by-step instructions for how to use this and will be posting at http://www.makeyougohmm.com/ shortly.

Update 7:25am PST: The step-by-step at Hmm is here.