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Average Joe's Tips

Average Joe’s Biweekly Tips and Tricks

Hello eager readers! Today I have a couple new tips for you.

To start, I have a new tip that sets up notifications to remind you about upcoming iCal events.

Next, a notification application that keeps you apprised of the activity of certain running applications.

First, I would like to talk about the iCal reminder tip. To start, fire up iCal and select the event about which you want to be reminded. Click (Command + I) or double click. Next, select the style of message to notify you. I usually use the message with sound, which will display a window above all running windows. In the window, it alerts you with the sound of your choice. If you pick the Email option, it will send an email to the desired address. Ergo, the “Email option.”

The other tip that I would like to provide is about an application that I currently use on my Mac everyday!

The application is called Growl. Growl assists in a variety of ways: notifying when a file has been downloaded, or when an iChat buddy comes online. After installing Growl, it will install to System Preferences and be added as a pane. From there you can customize away!

Have a tip or trick, leave a comment!

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Make MacBook and MacBook Pro Backlight Keyboard Dance

Here is a neat Monday trick. Have you every wanted to make your MacBook or MacBook Pro keyboard dance? Even thought about it? Neither did I, but after I saw this neat trick I had to write about it!

iSpazz is a plugin that you install by uncompressing the .zip file and moving the plugin to ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins. If you are new to Mac OS X, the ~ stands for your home folder. So, on my computer where I would copy the iTunes Plugin would be Nick/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins. It is an extremely cool plugin because your keyboard will light up in sync with your currently playing track. Pretty cool!

Once you add iSpazz, in iTunes go to View>Visualizer>iSpazz. Play a track, and prepare to party. If you are a DJ, this would be extremely cool, especially if you are using a Mac to power your media.

Image Source: OSXDaily

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Insane Mac Home Office

Most kids have dreams of what they’ll do or be when they grow up: some dream of becoming doctors and curing cancers, others of becoming police officers and catching criminals. But, I do not know how many people dream of having a home office like Mitch. If they haven’t, they might well soon!

Because Mitch spends most of his time telecommuting with his coworkers, he decided to build a home office that fit his needs, and then some! This home office is amazing! It comes complete with small data center, snack bar, reading area and, of course, a place for his magnificent army of computers!

The envy of any computer geek, he has a Mac Pro with 12GBs of ram, 8TBs of storage and 3 video cards. That does not include his MacBook Pro connected to a 30″ monitor and a 80″ projector that he repaired! Over the top? NEVER!

Kindly enough, he has written a FAQ about his home office in case YOU want to remake his office.

Souce: Mac OS X Tips and Tricks

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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Sync iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod with Multiple Computers

A reader sent in a question today regarding how he could sync his iPhone with his Mac and PC. This will work for Mac to Mac or Windows PC to PC. Ron writes:

“I have an iPhone that is synced with my PC, but I also use a MacBook Pro.
How do I sync with both PC/Mac? When I tried to sync with my new Mac, it
warns me everything on iPhone will be replaced by Mac (which is
empty).

I would like to use both PC/Mac and use my iPhone as “master” to sync
back. Is this possible?

Thanks,
Ron”

Prerequisites:

– 10 Minutes of your time

– On iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod (Repeat for all devices you wish), select “Manually mange music and videos”

– Backup of iTunes Music

– iTunes closed

– Ability to find your iTunes folder: in Windows XP, its default location is in “My Music” and, for both Windows Vista and Mac OS, it is located in “Music”.

– Knowledge of how to open a file with a desired application on both Windows and Mac (however, you do not need to if using Mac to Mac).

– Download HexEdit for Mac or UltraEdit for Windows for the secondary machine with which you wish to sync

On the Primary Computer (with which the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod was first synced):

– Make sure iTunes is CLOSED!

– Backup the iTunes Library on the machine with which you wish to sync. Backup “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “iTunes Music Library” (or iTunes Music Library.itl on Windows). It is important that you back these files up to a safe location because we will be modifying the files.

– Retrieve your iTunes Library ID. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” with a text editor (TextEdit on Macs, Notepad on Windows). Find the entry after <string></string> tags, after “Library Persistent ID”. In the screenshot 8B6C633F7DACB74B is my iTunes Library ID. Copy this entry exactly to a piece of paper or email this to yourself. After you have stored the iTunes Library ID you may close the file.

On the Secondary Computer:

– Make sure iTunes is CLOSED!

– Retrieve your iTunes Library ID. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” with a text editor (TextEdit on Macs, Notepad on Windows). Find the entry after <string></string> tags, after “Library Persistent ID”. In the screenshot 0E958526D15C67FAis my iTunes Library ID. Copy this entry exactly to a piece of paper or email this to yourself. Do NOT close the file yet!

– Replace the the iTunes Library ID, in my case 0E958526D15C67FA with the one from the computer (8B6C633F7DACB74B-iTunes Library ID from the Windows machine) the iPhone is already syncing with. Save the file, then close it.


– In Hex Editor open “iTunes Music Library” (iTunes Music Library.itl on PC)

– Choose “Find and Replace” from the Edit menu. Make sure the “Hex” matching is selected not ASCII. Find the iTunes Library IDs you found from both the primary and secondary computers.

– In the “Find” section, enter the iTunes Library ID of the secondary computer and, in the “Replace” section, enter the iTunes Library ID from the primary computer. There should be one match. Save the file and close.

Success!

You should now be able to sync your devices with two or more computers. Now, you will not be alerted by the annoying “Erase Your Data” prompt from iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them here. Tell us about your experience!

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Average Joe's Tips

Average Joe’s Biweekly Tips and Tricks

This week, I have two handy tips that I would like to share: how to make Safari run faster and how to make your Mac run faster. sophie rain of leak One way to boost Safari’s speed is to empty your cache.

To empty your cache, navigate to the top bar and click on Safari. Then click on “Empty Cache….” Safari will automatically launch a new window. Because the cache is a file that stores data from all the previous websites you’ve visit, emptying it makes pages load quicker. So, the next time you visit websites, data loads faster.

Another good way to make your computer run faster is to verify your disk permission and repair disk permission.

In order to do this, fire up “Disk Utility” (Applications>Utilities) and select Macintosh HD (or name of your hard drive). Then, click “Verify and Repair Disk Permission.” Repairing permissions helps prevent errors from happening or fix the errors that already exist.