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Open A File in A Different Program on Your Mac

Tue, 6 May 2008 08:14:44 -0500

Have you ever had a file you wish you could open with a different program? Sure you could go to the application and click file, open, etc., but there’s a much quicker way to control what application a file opens in.

Just navigate to the file in question, and right click on it. One of your options in the dialogue box will be “Open With.” When you select “Open With,” another dialogue box will appear with a list of programs that can open that file. Select the one you want and you’re done.

Note: This will not change the default program to open the file. If you go to open it in the future it will still open in it’s default program. Want to change a file’s default program? I’ll show you in tomorrow’s tip.

Manage Passwords With Ease

Mon, 5 May 2008 15:07:40 -0500

It seems like almost every website these days forces you to setup a FREE account with them just to access the information or service you’re in need of. If you need to access it bad enough you’ll go through the tiresome process of entering all your information once again and making up a login name and password. Not to mention logins and passwords for email accounts, online banking, credit cards, and more.

I recently ran across one of the most simple and helpful downloads I think I’ve ever found for my mac. 1Password in it’s simplest form is a password manager, but it’s really so much more. Here’s a few of the things I love about 1password:

It stores all of your passwords in one location accessible by one master password
When the program is open it will automatically ask you if you want it to store a login and password when you enter one. So, you don’t have to spend a lot of time adding all you id’s and passwords. Your password database will automatically build as you visit websites where you have accounts.
If you’re creating a new account at a website, it will automatically generate a unique & strong password for that account and remember it. No doing the dangerous but easy act of using the same password for every online account.
1password has features called wallets and ids: Wallet will store your credit or debit card information which you can use to automatically enter when purchasing something online with a credit card. Id’s allow you to save personal information, you can then use to enter when using a website that asks for info such as name, address, email, etc. You can have multiple id and wallet entries.
1password uses browser extensions for most popular mac browsers so you can access all this information from within the browser. No need to go to the program each time.

I encourage you to give 1password a try. I think you’ll like it. It’s not freeware but the trial doesn’t seem to have any limitations, but if my trial does expire, I’ll definitely spend the $30 some dollars to keep this program.

Download 1password by clicking here

Monitor Your Mac

Sat, 2 Feb 2008 13:42:44 -0600

When I was on a PC One of the most used functions for me was CTRL+ALT+DEL. This would let me close out a program or restart a frozen computer, but it also showed you what programs & Processes were going on and how much of your system resources each was using. As I posted earlier, you can see what programs are running and “force Quit” them by pressing Option+Apple+Esc.

This still was not quite the same as CTRL+ALT+DEL, since you could not see everything that was going on. I knew there must be way to see such data on a MAC. With a little research I stumbled across the Activity Monitor, buried in the utilities folder of my mac. The Activity Monitor will show you all the processes that are taking place on your mac and allow you to quit any of them. It also shows the % of CPU power they are using and how much Real & Virtual memory they are using; Very useful if you want to find out which programs are memory hogs.

The Activity Monitor will also give you data on your hard drive space, networking, system memory, and more. No download is needed; it’s already on your mac. To open The Activity Monitor, simply go to your applications and look in the utilities folder, or you can just search activity monitor in Spotlight. Happy Mac Monitoring!

Microsoft Office Alternatives - Part 2

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:19:07 -0600

The last post looked at openoffice.org and while it would suffice in a pinch, it leaves mac users with much to be desired in terms of it’s look and feel. Neo office is developed from the open office platform, but you’d never guess that from using it. Neo Office is like OpenOffice.org on steroids. It looks much more like you’d expect a mac program to act, that’s likely because it was developed specifically for mac. Another significant difference is you don’t need X11 to run Neo Office.

Neo Office includes:

Writer - Word Processor, equivalent to MS Word.
Calc - Spreadsheet, Equivalent to MS Excel.
Impress - Presentation Software, Equivalent to MS Powerpoint.
Draw - A Nice Design program, probably most like MS Publisher, though publisher is not available for Mac.
Base - A Database program that would be similar to MS Access which is not included in Microsoft’s Office for Mac.

Neo Office will open all Microsoft documents, and in my experience the formatting transfered fairly well, though you will want to make sure and check it, as some formatting may get lost. You are also able to save your Neo Office Docs as their microsoft equivalents, and you’d definitely would want to do so before sending a doc to someone else.

All in all Neo Office is a suitable replacement for MS office for mac. It has a surprisingly familiar feel, and even offers some programs not included in Microsoft Office for Mac.

Click here to download Neo Office.

Microsoft Office Alternatives - Part 1

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:51:29 -0600

Let’s face when you get your mac there’s not much included for word processing. When Text Edit can’t quite cut it, and you’re not able to fork out almost $400 for Microsoft Office For Mac, one is forced to search for cheap or free Office Suite Alternatives. The next few posts will look at some options for mac users who don’t want to break the Bank for Microsoft Office.

One of the most popular Open Source programs for word processing is OpenOffice.org. So I decided to give it a Try. To Run OpenOffice.org, you’ll need to download a program called X11 which is needed to Run OpenOffice.org. You can download X11 Here.

I had no problem downloading and installing OpenOffice.org. It has all the basic Word Processing features you would expect, though the feel is more like a PC program, not as smooth and visually appealing as Apple programs, but then what can you expect for Free. OpenOffice.org allows you to save documents as Word files as well as export to PDF. Some nice features that I was pleasantly surprised to find were mail merge options as well as document recovery.

If you’re in need of free word processing definitely check out openoffice.org for mac. Check back for some more inexpensive office options for mac.

Click here to download openoffice.org for mac. Don’t forget to download X11 first!

Microsoft Office for Mac

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:44:31 -0600

No, I’m not able to provide a secret link for a free copy of microsoft office for mac. This is a tip & reminder for those of you using Office for Mac 2004. Several weeks ago I noticed that for one week all my calendar items in Entourage (The mac equivalent to outlook) were scheduled one hour earlier than they should have been. I realized that this had to due with Day Light Savings time being extended by one week, but was unable to fix it.

I finally realized that my microsoft office for mac had not been updated in a long time. When you run software update to update Mac OSX and other apple programs, Microsoft updates are not included. In order to update Microsoft Office for Mac, you must run Microsoft AutoUpdate. You can do this by opening your applications folder and looking for Microsoft Autoupdate. It will automatically search for and install updates to office for Mac. You can also choose for autoupdater to automatically search for updates.

Once I updated my Microsoft Office for Mac, my calendar problems were fixed, as well as some other yet to be discovered flaws i’m sure.

Can’t afford Office for Mac? Look in coming posts for some free or low cost alternatives to Microsoft Office for Mac.

Apples Sherlock A Hidden Treasure

Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:26:21 -0500

I had seen the icon above in my application folder countless times before I ever bothered to find out what it was. Come to find out Apple’s Sherlock program is quite the treasure. No, it’s nothing groundbreaking or innovative really; in fact I believe it’s a leftover program from Apple’s OS 9, but it’s useful nonetheless. So, what exactly does it do? As it’s name suggests, it sleuths down handy information from the internet.

Once you Open Sherlock, you’ll see a variety of icons at the top of the screen, such as Movies, Ebay, Translation, Dictionary, Stocks, and a few others. One of my favorite parts of it is the Movie Sleuth. It will Find movies playing in your area and even pull up a description and trailer right inside the program.

The best way to find out if sherlock will be useful for you, is to simply give it a try. It’s already on your mac. Just go to applications and find sherlock or type “sherlock” in spotlight.

Free Your Movies From the DVD!

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:56:16 -0500

Have you ever wished you could rip DVD clips to your computer like you can rip music tracks in Itunes? There have been many times I wished I could Take part of a DVD and put it on my phone or electronically send it to someone or put it into presentation software such as keynote or powerpoint.

With Handbrake, now you can. Granted, it’s not quite as simple as ripping a CD in Itunes but with some practice and patience it can be done. Handbrake has tons of custom settings for ripping your dvd’s and can rip them to MP4, AVI, and other formats. It also has many preset options such as settings for Iphone, PSP, Apple TV, and many more.

If you’d like to rip some DVD’s, I highly recommend HandBRAKE.

Click Here to Download Handbrake

Please note: Don’t break any copyright laws when ripping DVDs.

If You Like Spotlight, Try Inquisitor

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:38:14 -0500

Hopefully you’ve discovered the spotlight feature in Mac OS X. It’s that magnifying glass encased in a blue circle in the top right hand corner of your screen. I must admit it’s been one of my favorite mac features as it let’s you search for anything in your computer or on a network in a blink of any eye.

If you like spotlight, I think you’ll like today’s download, Inquisitor. Inquisitor takes your safari search box and turns it into a spotlight like search for the web. Cool huh? As you type it displays relevant results, and will give you search variants. It displays 3 entries by default but it can display up to 6 by changing it in safari preferences. You can also choose between having it display results from google or Yahoo.

Click here to download Inquisitor

Tour the globe on your Mac

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:28:01 -0500

So your childhood dream of becoming astronaut doesn’t look likely to come to pass; the next best thing is Google Earth. If you’ve never seen google earth, you need to check it out. With google earth for your mac you can zoom into any place on the planet, view pictures from all over the world, see crime stats for certain areas, map out a travel route, and much more. Google earth will even let you look at the stars with it’s sky view. You’ll never view the world the same again. Seriously, check out Google Earth for mac.

Click here to download Google Earth.

Note: Google Earth does take up quite a bit of RAM and may run slow on older macs.

Tell Your Mac Screen to Say Cheese!

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:43:17 -0500

Have you ever just wanted to take a picture of something that was on your Mac screen? Computers have long had screen capture features that would print or take a picture of the entire screen. You can do this easily in Mac OSX as well.

To take a picture of your entire screen use: Command+Shift+3
Note: Command key is the key with the apple logo on it to the left of the spacebar.

To Take a picture of only a portion of your mac screen use: Command+Shift+4 and a cross hairs will appear. Drag the cross hairs over the section of your screen you want to capture.

With both of these functions you will hear a snapshot sound effect and find the picture automatically on your desktop labeled “Picture 1” Subsequent screen captures will be saved on the desktop as “Picture 2. “Picture 3,” Etc.

When I first learned this tip I thought I’d seldom use it, but I actually find myself using it quite a lot. Another great feature of MAC OSX. The Picture in this Post was Taken with MAC OSX Screen Capture.