by Steve
on September 13, 2011
Mac OS X has a handy feature called the Dashboard that lets you quickly see a variety of information as a semi-transparent layer over your Desktop and open windows. I use mine for easy access to the weather in three towns, tracking a handful of stocks, monitoring my system, a handy calculator, a little calendar, and what movies are playing in my area. But yours could have a completely different set of tools, which are lovingly called “widgets”.
Watch this video to see three ways to display the Dashboard and how to add, configure, and remove the information widgets on it. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on September 13, 2011
Does your Mac run slowly, sometimes turning your cursor into that darn spinning beach ball? 
It may be because your running applications have used up all your memory. In the video below I show two tools you can use to check how much of your Mac’s memory is being used, and what numbers to look for.
As a bonus you’ll also see how easy it is to download and install a new widget on your Dashboard. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on August 19, 2011
Inside: Free music, ebooks, Lion survey results
I’ve got a bunch of news, but if you’re itching to watch videos, here are the ones mentioned in this newsletter:
How to get 13 free iTunes songs at Starbucks
How to take a screen shot
How to add icons to your Dock
[continue reading…]
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by Steve
on August 18, 2011
Whenever I’m in Starbucks I always look for the Starbucks “Pick of the Week” cards that gives me a free song from the iTunes Store. Although it’s a rare week (or day for that matter) that I won’t visit a Starbucks, sometimes the week’s pick is gone before I grab one.
That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find that if you use your laptop to log into their WiFi, you can download the picks from the last 13 weeks. And you don’t even need the cards. Here’s how…
[continue reading…]
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by Steve
on July 28, 2011
Inside: Lion incompatibilities, right-clicking
I know it’s only been two days since my last newsletter but I wanted to try to catch you before you possibly caused yourself some grief by upgrading to the new Mac operating system, OS X Lion. It sounds like Apple has added a ton of new features to Lion BUT I need to warn you about what they’ve taken out. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on July 28, 2011
If you are thinking of upgrading your Mac to OS X Lion, hold your horses (or would that be zebras?). Many people are finding (sometimes too late) that software applications they use everyday will no longer run on Lion. So, before upgrading, watch this quick video to see if some of the software that you can’t live without can’t live with Lion. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on July 26, 2011
Inside: iPhoto color enhancing, cropping, exporting
It’s been an exciting week for me and for Apple. I attended my 30th high school reunion last Saturday and Apple released a bunch of new products last Wednesday, including a new operating system upgrade, Mac OS X “Lion”. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on July 26, 2011
Newsletter subscriber Larry submitted a question asking how to do a right-click on his MacBook Pro. That’s a common question for many Mac converts (myself included) who were used to using Microsoft Windows PCs. Since most Macs don’t have a right button on their mouse or trackpad, it’s at first not obvious how to open a contextual menu (little pop-up menus that relate to a particular object or area). In this video I cover five ways to perform what is more property called a “secondary click”. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on July 26, 2011
You’ve cropped a photo using the methods discussed in “How to crop photos in iPhoto”, but you need to export it to a file so you can upload it to a website. How do you control the actual dimensions of the exported file? Watch this video to find out. [continue reading…]
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by Steve
on July 26, 2011
Even the best photographers need to crop their photos sometimes. The photos the rest of us take can almost always be improved by a little cropping, and maybe a bit of straightening. Sometimes cropping is just for effect, other times you need to get your photo into a certain proportion, possibly for a postcard, a particular frame size, or maybe to perfectly fit your computer display or iPhone. In this video I show how to use iPhoto to straighten, crop, and even add some edge effects if you like. [continue reading…]
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