Archive for the 'Tips' Category

Syncing iPhone Calendar with Google Calendar on OS X is easier due to Apple iCal. iTunes supports calendar sync only with Outlook in a Windows environment. This tip will take a look at bi-directional sync options, 2 of which are completely free, to keep iPhone calendar in sync with Google Calendar.

Most Mac OS X files are actually bundles. If you try copying and pasting bundles outside of OS X, they will copy in segments, ie: each piece of the bundle. This can cause unexpected behavior when uploading or emailing files that are actually bundles.

RSS Popper is a feed subscription plug-in for Outlook and Outlook Express users that bring RSS, RDF and Atom support, as well as auto-add from Internet Explorer and synchronization support with other readers like Bloglines.

While browsing the web - it’s a luxury that we don’t have to manually type in a URL, because our favorite sites are already saved as bookmarks. But sometimes it’s necessary to go in and manually edit a URL in the address bar.

Launchy is a keyboard application launcher for Windows. Keyboard launchers are generally considered easier and faster at launching applications because a user’s hands never leave the keyboard. I’ve been using Launchy at home and at work for a couple of months, and could not go back to using my computer without a keyboard launcher. Launchy consumes just 12MB of memory (on my system), and becomes a natural way to open applications or perform other simple tasks because it is so fast. Launchy is open source and is designed to be skinnable and highly extensible.

Sometimes it’s helpful to change the location of your iTunes music library.

For example, I currently use Amazon S3 to store my music through iTunes, but since it’s a network drive, it’s really slow when importing CD’s, or downloading songs from the iTunes Music Store.

The reason is because it has to upload at the same time it downloads. I’ve seen some strange things happen when I attempt to do this, so to be safe, I always change my iTunes music library to somewhere local before I try any of those tasks.

Lately I’ve been bothered by a couple of things, regarding my digital music library:

1. I have to keep upgrading my external hard drive storage capacity, because new music is consistently being added.
2. My music is only accessible from wherever the external hard drive is, which means I have to lug it around to work, on vacation, etc.

There are three things I wish to accomplish:

1. Eliminate the limit on my music storage capacity.
2. Access my music from anywhere in the world.

I’ve always been interested in selling some of the technical books that I’ve amassed over the years. Some books are outdated or just don’t pique my interest anymore.

Rather than continue to use them as “door stops,” or squashing large bugs - I’ve decided to scrape the bug guts off them, and sell them through the Amazon Marketplace.

Google Video Player lets you download and watch videos in full high-resolution quality instead of the low quality streamed video available at video.google.com. Videos that contain detailed visual information (like application demos or code samples) must be viewed in their native resolution to discern fine details. This player combined with downloaded video solves the problem of “fuzzy” (but fast) streamed video available online. Google makes a downloadable player for Windows and Mac (though I didn’t test this).

There comes a time when having something in PDF format is a necessity. It may be that PDF is the preferred format for your email recipients or maybe it’s that you want to give someone a document but do not want them to have direct editing privileges. Whatever the case may be PDF Online comes to the rescue…and it’s not limited to just documents.

PDF Online Basics