CosmoPod imports YouTube and DVD

Posted March 8, 2010 in Software, mac |

Cocoamug Software has announced the latest release of CosmoPod. CosmoPod 4.2.1, an intuitive Safari extension that lets you download Flash videos from all popular websites like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc. CosmoPod can automatically convert downloaded files to an Apple device friendly format, tag them and add them to iTunes so its there ready for your next sync. Best of all, it’s one-click simple!

Additionally, you can convert most video already on your hard drive with a simple drag and drop and CosmoPod is also a great tool to import your DVD collection to your Mac, iTunes, AppleTV, and iPhone.

* CosmoPod supports the most popular web video formats (FLV, DivX, WMV, MMS, RM, RTSP)
* Convert files already on your disk and DVDs by dropping them onto CosmoPod window
* Beautiful H.264 encoding for all your needs (Mac, iPod, iPhone & AppleTV).
* Works with Elgato turbo.264 and turbo.264 HD
* Set iTunes movie tags directly from CosmoPod
* Automatically detects HD Videos on YouTube
* Extract audio tracks from most video files and convert it to m4a
* Growl Integration
* CosmoPod perfectly blends into Safari. It’s just like an extra Download window, for your media.

System Requirements:
* Mac OS 10.4 or later
* Safari 4 or later
* Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel

Pricing and Availability:
CosmoPod 4.2.1 is shipping today for $12 USD. It is a free update for all CosmoPod 4 licensees. CosmoPod 3 and ealier users can upgrade for $5 USD

Cocoamug Software: http://www.cocoamug.com
CosmoPod 4.2.1: http://www.cocoamug.com/cosmopod/index.html
Download CosmoPod: http://www.cocoamug.com/cosmopod/cosmopod-4.2.1.dmg.

Tidy Up! — find duplicate files

Posted March 8, 2010 in Software, mac |

A Duplicate Mac Finder

Tidy Up! is a must-have utility for Mac users to reclaim disk space being taken up by duplicate files and packages. Tidy Up! locates duplicate items using a wide range of criteria including owner application, time created or modified, name, label, extension and content.

Tidy Up! has become a must-have utility for Mac owners seeking to reclaim disk space being taken up by duplicate files and packages. Employing a fast search algorithm that quickly scans any mounted drive volumes (hard drives, optical discs and portable drives) without writing an index, Tidy Up! locates duplicate items using a wide range of criteria including: owner application, time created or modified, name, label, extension and content.

Version 2.2 of Tidy Up! requires OSX 10.5 or greater, Snow Leopard full compatible; for machines running earlier versions of Tiger and Leopard, Tidy Up! versions 1.2.11 and 1.4.10 are still available. Continues the discount of the 23%, buy it now and pay only $30 (USD) instead of $39; users of Tidy Up! version 1.x can upgrade for $20.

Hyperbolic Software
Tidy Up! 2.2.0 http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html
Download Tidy Up!: TidyUp220.zip http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/programs/TidyUp220.zip

New portable hard drive from Western Digital

Posted March 2, 2010 in hardware, mac |

My Passport Studio
Ultra-portable Hard Drives
640 GB, FireWire 800, USB 2.0
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=783

My Passport Studio ultra-portable hard drive with customizable e-label is the high performance drive packed with features for Mac users on the go.

color picker secrets

Posted February 26, 2010 in Software, Tips, mac |

by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com

If you’ve used a Mac for any length of time at all, you’re probably familiar with the Color Picker. The Color Picker is a small floating window through which you can choose colors for text, objects, lines, and other objects (depending on which application you’re in when using it, of course). You can call up the color picker from any Cocoa application (TextEdit, Mail, Keynote, Pages, etc.) by hitting Shift-Command-C. Other programs, such as Word and Excel, don’t use Apple’s color picker at all, so the following tips won’t apply to those programs. Finally, some programs such as Photoshop offer the option to use either the Adobe color picker or Apple’s color picker. Obviously, you’ll have to be using Apple’s color picker in those programs in order to use these tips.

The first thing to realize about Apple’s color picker is that it’s a relatively complex interface element. You’re probably most familiar with the picker’s default look, which is the color wheel interface. But using the small toolbar at the top of the window, you can choose from four additional styles: Color Sliders, Color Palettes, Image Palettes, and (the most fun) Crayons.

The first tip is one that you may be familiar with—you can save often-used colors in the small white boxes at the bottom of the window. Simply choose the color you’d like to save, then drag and drop it from the color bar area into a white box at the bottom of the screen. But what if you want to save more than 16 colors? That’s also easy, if not quite so obvious: just drag the small dot at the bottom of the window downward, and you’ll reveal up to 10 rows of 16 boxes.

With space for up to 160 custom colors, that should be a large enough palette for nearly any project. If you use only a few of the available spots, you can even use blank cells to separate them—perhaps grouping color schemes by client, for instance. But if you have a number of different sets of colors you use, you’ll want to learn about custom color palettes a bit further on in this article.

What if you want to remove a custom color from one of the storage boxes? You can’t control-click on a color, and hitting Delete after selecting a color doesn’t work either. The hard way to erase a chosen color is to select white in the picker area, then drag the white color onto the cell you wish to blank out—that’s right, “blank” cells are really just white cells. The much easier way to do this, though, is to just drag any empty cell onto a colored cell, and that cell will also turn white.

Colors you place in the custom storage cells are global—that is, as soon as you add a color to a box in one application, you’ll immediately see that color in every other application that uses the Color Picker. Interestingly, though, the number of visible rows of boxes is not a global property, so you can have a ten-row custom color area in Keynote, and only a one-row area in Terminal, for instance.

Custom palettes

If you have a lot of custom colors, and you’d like a better way to keep them distinct from one another, consider using a custom color palette. To do this, first click on the Color Palettes item in the Color Picker’s toolbar—it’s the third icon on the toolbar, and appears as a series of three overlapping color boxes. This is the area in which you can create your very own customized color palette. If you click on the List drop-down menu, you’ll see that Apple already provides a number of palettes—Apple, Developer, AquaPro, etc. To create your own, select New from the bottom of the drop-down menu. The interface for creating custom palettes could be described as clunky, as you’re about to see. To name the newly-create palette, activate the List drop-down again, choose Rename, and enter the name for your palette.

To actually add colors to your palette, you’ll need to get a color in the color swatch first. You can do this using the magnifying glass tool and clicking on an on-screen color somewhere…or you can use one of the other Color Picker styles to set a color, then return to the Color Palette tool. One of the easiest ways to create a color palette is to use one of the other tools first, and load up on custom colors—pick every color you want in your palette, and put each one into a custom color storage box. Now return to the Color Palette tool, and drag the first color you stored into the color area below the pop-up menu.

This makes it really simple to add a lot of colors in a hurry. Unfortunately, as you can see, the name for each color is simply the name of your custom palette, followed by a sequential number. Renaming the colors in your palette is possible, but again shows the limitations of the Color Picker interface. To rename a color, click once to select it (double-clicking does nothing, argh!), then choose Rename from the lower Color pop-up menu. Enter the new name, click the Rename button, and repeat for all other colors to be named. The Color pop-up is also what you’ll use to remove a color from your list.

You can create as many custom palettes as you wish, making it easy to (for instance) have one palette for each client, or a palette for each type of Keynote presentation you create. The interface isn’t the friendliest thing to use, but it gets the job done.

How to: Calibrate your MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro battery

Posted February 26, 2010 in Tips, hardware, mac |

source: http://fairerplatform.com/2009/03/how-to-calibrate-your-macbook-macbook-airmacbook-pro-battery/

Proper care and feeding of your Apple portable’s battery can help you achieve longer run time and extend battery life. Here’s a quick tutorial on calibrating your MacBook (Pro, Air)’s battery.

You should calibrate your portable’s battery about once a month or so, and the methodology for getting the job is quite simple:

Fully charge then allow the battery to fully drain (that means the even reserve power is completely used, too).
Followed by a full, uninterrupted charge (i.e, don’t use your portable during this time).— See also: Knowledge Base Article HT1490

Reset your MacBook’s System Management Controller (SMC)

“Over time, the settings in the System Management Controller may become unusable, which can result in operational anomalies with the computer. Examples include not turning on, not waking from sleep, not charging the battery, or not recognizing the AC Adapter, among others”—Knowledge Base Article 1411

See also: How to: Get more life from your MacBook’s battery

There are directions for resetting the SMC for specific MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro (directions for older models are available, too) models in this KB Article 1411.

That said, neither calibrating your battery nor resetting the SMC are particularly challenging, but performing these task regularly and methodically can greatly extend the life of the Apple’s portable’s battery.

TinkerTool

Posted February 26, 2010 in Software, mac |

Marcel Bresink released version 4.0 of the venerable system utility TinkerTool, which adds a massive laundry list of new preferences to Mac OS X and brings full compatibility with Snow Leopard.

TinkerTool works by interacting with hidden preferences; these normally can only be changed by firing up a Terminal window and using the “defaults write” command. (Why does Apple hide preferences? Two reasons: to avoid massive checkbox-itis overload in System Preferences and elsewhere, and to hide features which aren’t fully completed and might have glitchy behavior.)

TinkerTool is freeware. Download it here: http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

MacJournal 5.1

Posted February 26, 2010 in Software, mac |

Journaling tool

by William Porter, Macworld.com

Do you keep a diary on your computer? Do you blog, but hate your blogging service’s editor? Do you find yourself using your word processor to write notes about a variety of subjects, and then find it difficult to locate those notes later? If the answer is yes to any of the above, you may be just the kind of person MacJournal 5.1.4 was designed for.
MacJournal is a journaling program—part word processor and part file manager. It’s kind of like iPhoto or Aperture, but for written documents rather than photos.

MacJournal can handle a variety of media including photos and videos, but at the heart of the program is a very capable text editor, built on Mac OS X’s outstanding text services and Quartz 2D Extreme.The editor is so good that you could use it as your main word processor, so long as you don’t need advanced formatting options like footnotes or columns.

MacJournal even has a full-screen editing view to let you write without distractions. Now, to that excellent rich-text editor, add a dedicated file manager that will help you keep track of your entries using a variety of metadata fields, including date, topic, status, labels, flags, tags, and more. It’s a powerful tool for organizing and filing your writings. And you can supplement your text with photos and drawings, audio files or podcasts, even PDFs and QuickTime movies.

More >> http://www.macworld.com/article/146160/2010/02/mcjour.html?lsrc=rss_main

Troubleshooting a Slow or Crashy Mac

Posted February 22, 2010 in Tips, mac, support |

Today we decided to make a guide to help you solve the two most common complaints people have: “my computer is slow” or “my computer/this application keeps on crashing”. There’s a good chance this could save you a trip to the Genius Bar so give it a try before you call Apple!

Read more …. Maintain – Blog – Troubleshooting a Slow or Crashy Mac

Stuck CD/DVD?

Posted February 18, 2010 in Tips, hardware, mac |

Stuck CD/DVD?

source: http://blog.maintain.se/2010/02/stuck-cddvd.html

So that CD you wanted to copy to iTunes got stuck in your SuperDrive and no matter how hard you press the Eject button it won’t come out? Don’t worry, here are a few easy things to try before you drop off the computer at one of Apple’s Genius Bars.

The problem is usually that Mac OS X sometimes prevents a disc from being ejected if it thinks the disc is in use. To force Mac OS X to eject the disc anyway try this first: open Disk Utility, which you find in the Utilities folder inside Applications. In the left pane of the window there is a list of all the drives installed on your computer. One of them will look like a DVD, simply select it and press Eject in the toolbar.

If that didn’t work it is time to get a bit more technical. Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal this time, you find it in the same folder as Disk Utility. Now you are presented with what is probably the scariest thing known to most computer users, an empty terminal prompt. Don’t worry though, just type in the following, press enter and the disk should be ejected:

drutil tray eject

Still stuck? The next few solutions requires you to restart or shut down your computer so make sure you save everything you have open then reboot your computer. As soon as the computer starts up, before the Apple logo shows up, press the left mouse button or click the touchpad and keep it pressed until the disc is ejected. Failing that you can also try to hold the Alt (option) key immediately when the computer powers on. This will display all drives your Mac can start from, including the Superdrive. Select the DVD then press and hold the Eject button until the disc comes out.

For you guys with laptops there is one last thing to try before you give up. Turn off the laptop and put it in a cool place for a few minutes. After the computer has cooled down, switch it back on and immediately eject the disc using any of the methods we mentioned earlier.

If you have gotten this far without being able to eject the disc there is a good chance that it is physically stuck in the drive and won’t come out no matter how many times you try. Unfortunately the only solution in this case is to open the Superdrive, something you can’t do on your own without voiding your warranty. The best thing to do now is to book an appointment with Apple who should be able to get it out for you.

Drive Failure in Action!

Posted February 17, 2010 in Tips, hardware, mac |

Drive Failure in Action!
By Rebecca Kraemer, rebeccak@smalldog.com

If you’re a faithful reader of Tech Tails, or even an occasional reader, you’ve
probably noticed that rarely an issue goes by without some reminder to our
readers to back up their data. Data backup has become such an integral part of
being a computer owner that Apple has built automatic backup, Time Machine, into
their latest operating systems and we offer bundles with external hard drives on
almost every computer we sell. In our minds, a computing system is not complete
without a backup solution.

Unfortunately, this is still not a perfect world and as a technician I’m faced
with telling at least one person per week that all of his or her data is gone.
I’ve been screamed at, sobbed to, and even had people beg that ‘there has to be
something [I] can do.’ While Small Dog does use some great utilities for data
recovery, we do not fall into the very specialized category of ‘Data Recovery
Specialists.’ For that job, we refer people out to some of the Apple Authorized
Data Recovery Specialists in the country, and the top dog has always been
“DriveSavers.”:http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

“DriveSavers”:http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ is a leader in their
industry and I’ve seen them recover data from incredibly damaged drives. While
the fee for that service might cost you more than the computer itself, if you’re
serious about getting your data back these are the folks to speak to. This is
also why it came as no surprise when one of our fabulous South Burlington techs,
Ian Ray, discovered that they recently released an awesome free app for the
iPhone and iPod touch demonstrating drive failure and discussing proper backup
strategies. “Check it out in the App Store under
DriveSavers.”:http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=317700244&mt=8

As a technician, I’m constantly trying to find ways to educate my customers on
how a hard drive works so they can understand why failures are so prevalent. My
usual routine is likening it to a record player; it’s a spinning disk with a
needle reading the data off of it. Just like when a record player is bumped and
the needle digs into the record, when a hard drive is bumped, it can have a
similar effect. At the last shop I worked for, we also had a drive that was
taken apart so we could give a better demonstration of the different types of
failures. We basically try anything we can to help educate our customers so
they understand that all hard drive, regardless of manufacturer, will eventually
fail and it’s so important to have data backed up.

DriveSaver’s new app does a phenomenal job of really demonstrating what a hard
drive is, how it works, how it can fail and what noises you can listen for if
you’re concerned the drive might be failing. It’s visually interactive and
filled with enough information to educate even the most technophobic user
without being overwhelming. They even demonstrate that flash drives, while
better, are not perfect and can fail too. Their section on ‘Protection
Strategies’ also does a great job explaining proper backup techniques, though
I’ll admit with that section being all text-based it might be easier for the
average user to glaze over.

If you have an iPod touch or an iPhone, I highly encourage you to head on over
to the App Store to download the
“DriveSavers”:http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=317700244&mt=8
application! Don’t have an iPod touch or iPhone? No problem, they have a “new
flash version of it on their
website.”:http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ep/drivesaver-the-first-online-hard-disk-drive-simulator/
There… now you have no excuses, so go check it out!!