Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category

Social Networking with Your Mac

Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

Social networking is one of the hottest topics in the computer and Internet field today. It refers to online communities where people share and interact with friends and colleagues, often developing new relationships. Social networking first became popular with MySpace, a youth-oriented network, but there are now many online communities geared toward adults who seek connections with others in their professional fields. Examples of these kinds of networks are LinkedIn and Facebook.

Mac users, who tend to enjoy social connections with other users, as evidenced by the large number of Apple user groups, have become widely involved in online social networking. There are even social networks just for Mac users. In this article, I describe one of the social networks specifically designed for Mac users, as well as two of the general networks that have large followings in the Mac community.

Facebook Groups
Facebook (www.facebook.com) is one of the most popular social networking sites. When you sign up for a Facebook account, you’ll be able to create a profile that can include as much or as little information about your personal and professional lives that you want to share with others. If you have a business, you can create a separate section just for your business. For example, I have a page for my ebooks business that includes information about my company, current news about the business and my RSS feed. Other Mac and Apple-related companies, such as O’Reilly books, also have business pages on Facebook.

Like many other social networks, Facebook has groups that people can join. This is one area of Facebook that might be of special interest to Mac users because of the large number of Apple groups and members on Facebook. For example, the “A is for Apple” group has over 13,000 members and the “Apple” group has over 18,000 members. Once you join a group, you can write messages on the group’s wall or start a discussion thread. You can also invite friends to join the group. There is probably an Apple or Mac group on Facebook that addresses your interests, but if you don’t find the exact type of group you want, you can create your own group and invite others to join.

World Wide Mac
World Wide Mac (http://macusers.ning.com) is a social network, similar to Facebook on a small scale, that is just for Mac users. Once you join the network (it’s free to join), you can create a profile for yourself, upload photos or videos, and invite friends to join. You also get a free blog and an email account. Your profile page can include your biography, a photo and links to your websites. There are applications you can add to make your profile more interesting and more personal. For example, I’ve added my RSS feed to let people know about my work and a fun application that shows me random pictures of adorable dogs. Every profile has a wall and you can write messages on your own wall or on other people’s walls.

If you want to make new friends on World Wide Mac, just visit someone’s profile and send them a message. Or you can join or create a group and find new Mac friends that way. There are currently 229 members on World Wide Mac, but, unfortunately, the site does not get much activity. Maybe if everyone who reads this article joins, together we can make World Wide Mac the Facebook of the Mac world.

Twitter
Twitter is a unique type of social network. On Twitter, you send very short messages, called “tweets,” to people who are following your activities on Twitter. For example, you might send a link to an interesting article or video you’ve viewed. Your followers can respond to your tweets, either with another tweet that can be viewed by anyone who visits your Twitter page or with a private, direct message.

Twitter is very popular with Mac “gurus.” Most of the experts in the field of Mac computers have Twitter accounts and regularly send interesting and informative tweets. For example, I followed Jason Snell, editorial director of MacWorld magazine, during the keynote speech at the recent MacWorld conference. He was tweeting live from the conference room and anyone following him could get up to the minute reports on the keynote speech. To see which Mac experts are on Twitter, view my list of “10 Mac Experts to Follow on Twitter.”

Conclusion
There are many ways that Mac users can join the online social networking revolution. In this article, I’ve described three options – Facebook groups, World Wide Mac and Twitter – but there are other types of social networking sites popular with Mac users. For example, many Mac users enjoy online bookmarking networks like Delicious. Take a dip into this new phenomenon with one of the sites I’ve described or search for “Mac social networking” on Google and explore some of the other options and you’ll probably find one that meets your social needs.

Copyright 2009 Claire J Rottenberg
All rights reserved

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of ebooks on Mac OS X 10.5, Safari, Mail, iPhoto ‘08, iTunes, and Mac OS X 10.4. More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (www.cjrtools.com/ebooks). Claire can often be found networking on World Wide Mac (macusers.ning.com/profile/ClaireRottenberg), Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Mac-OS-X-105-Leopard-ebooks/ ) and Twitter (twitter.com/cjrtools).

Learning with iTunes

Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

Although iTunes is an excellent application for organizing music and video files, it is really much more than that. iTunes, in combination with the iTunes store, can be a great tool for learning. Using podcasts, iTunes U and audiobooks, you can broaden your knowledge on a vast array of topics, including politics, business and the arts. In this article, I describe some of the options available for using iTunes to extend your learning.

Podcasts

There are thousands of podcasts available on all sorts of topics, such as world events, computer technology and modern literature. Many of the podcasts are available for free directly through the iTunes store. For example, if you are interested in following the US 2008 elections, go to the iTunes store for the US and, using the store’s power search feature, search for elections. You will find dozens of podcasts, including those from most of the major television networks. Once you find a podcast you like, you can subscribe to it and have episodes automatically downloaded to iTunes. No matter where you live, you can access and subscribe to podcasts from any iTunes store. Just select the store you want from the bottom of the iTunes store window and search for podcasts.

You can also find podcasts on many special interest websites or from podcast directories, such as Podcast Alley. To add these podcasts to iTunes, look for a special “Subscribe to iTunes” link. If no iTunes link is available, copy the podcast’s link and add it manually to iTunes.

Once podcasts are downloaded to iTunes, you can listen to audio podcasts or view video podcasts directly in iTunes. You can even view video podcasts in full-screen or on a video capable iPod. Audio podcasts can be listened to on any iPod, including an iPod Shuffle.

iTunes U

Another great way to enhance your knowledge at no cost is to use the iTunes store’s iTunes U feature. Many top universities, including Stanford, Vanderbilt, Yale, and UCLA-Berkeley, have added free content to iTunes U. You can download complete courses or lectures on a variety of topics, such as music, art, business, and technology. For example, I listened to a complete course on “Politics and Music.”

To access iTunes U content, go to the iTunes store and click the iTunes U button on the left side of the window. A list of universities will appear and you can browse through the available offerings from any of the universities.

Audiobooks

A third way to learn using iTunes is with audiobooks. Most audiobooks are not free from the iTunes store, but if you have an iTunes account, you can purchase audiobooks, such as popular novels or biographies. There are, however, other sources for acquiring audiobooks, including some free sources. For example, the Gutenberg Project has many classic novels, now in the public domain, available as audiobooks. You can download these audiobooks and then manually add them to iTunes.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are several ways you can use iTunes to advance your knowledge. Take a trip to the iTunes store today and find some podcasts, iTunes U courses or lectures or audiobooks and sit back and learn.

Copyright 2008 Claire J Rottenberg
All rights reserved

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of ebooks on Mac OS X 10.5, iPhoto ‘08, iTunes, and Mac OS X 10.4. More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (www.cjrtools.com/ebooks). Members of Apple user groups can receive a 25% discount on all purchases from CJRTOOLS ebooks through the Apple User Group Vendor Discount Program. This special discount offer is valid through November, 2008 and more information on the offer can be found on the Apple User Group Offers web page (homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers.html).

Strengths and Weaknesses of Time Machine

by Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

Like many other Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) users, I use Time Machine for backing up data. As good as Time Machine is, however, it is not perfect and probably should not be the only backup option you use. In this article, I describe some of the strengths and weaknesses of Time Machine and offer suggestions for other backup options that can be used to supplement Time Machine.

Strengths of Time Machine

Time Machine’s greatest strength is probably its automatic functioning. Once you’ve set up Time Machine, you can forget about it because Time Machine will automatically back up your files every hour. It works quietly in the background so you don’t need to stop working on your computer while Time Machine is backing up your files.

Another advantage of Time Machine is that backups are cumulative and incremental. Once an initial backup is completed, Time Machine will back up only new or changed files so subsequent backups are quicker and take up less storage space than the original backup. In addition, Time Machine will keep making incremental backups until you run out of disk space on the backup drive. In other words, your backup drive can contain several months worth of files before some files need to be deleted. This can be a particularly useful feature for certain backup tasks, such as saving archived files of business or financial data.

Time Machine’s restore feature for individual files and folders is one of its greatest strengths. Time Machine lets you search for files by location and date or by using Spotlight. Once you’ve found the file you want, you only need to click a button to restore it.

A final positive aspect of Time Machine is that you can back up files from multiple drives or partitions to the same backup drive. This is an especially useful feature if you partition your drive or if you have several drives attached to your computer.

Weaknesses of Time Machine

Although Time Machine has some excellent features, it doesn’t let you create a bootable clone of your hard drive. If your drive dies or the system becomes corrupted, the process to restore your system with Time Machine can be long and complicated, especially compared to the ease of restoring with a cloning application, such as SuperDuper! If you’re backing up your entire drive with Time Machine, to restore the system, you have to boot into the Mac OS X Install disk and wait while your entire system is restored. If your hard drive has died, you are without a working system until you replace the drive. In contrast, with a cloned drive, you can boot into the backup drive and start working with it immediately.

Another downside of Time Machine is that the initial setup for Time Machine can be confusing and time-consuming. Instead of selecting files to include in a backup, which would clearly be the most logical way to set up backup files, with Time Machine you have to select the files to exclude from a backup.

Another weakness of Time Machine is that, over time, your backup files can consume huge amounts of storage space so you will probably need a large drive for your Time Machine backups. With the difficult financial problems many people are facing today, the cost of purchasing a large extra hard drive just for Time Machine can put a strain on an already limited budget.

A final weakness of Time Machine is that you can’t back up files to CDs or DVDs. Since it’s always a good idea to have off-site backups of critical data, it would be good if this feature were built into Time Machine.

Programs to Supplement Time Machine

There are several excellent free or low-cost backup programs you can download, as well as some Apple programs you might already own, to add backup features missing in Time Machine.

The first type of backup application you should have in addition to Time Machine is a cloning program. This type of program will let you create an exact copy of your main drive and, in an emergency, you can immediately boot into the clone and start working with it. Two excellent cloning programs are Carbon Copy Cloner (www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) and SuperDuper! (www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper). CCC is donationware and you can view some tutorials for using it on my Leopard Tips website (homepage.mac.com/cjrtools/mac-leopard-tips/leopard-tutorials/leopard-video-tutorials.html). SuperDuper! is free for basic cloning, but for more advanced features, such as incremental cloning, you need to pay a small shareware fee ($27.95).

If you are a MobileMe subscriber, Apple has provided you with Backup, an application that lets you back up files to your iDisk, a hard drive or CDs or DVDs. With Backup, you can create custom, scheduled backups so, as with Time Machine, the backups can occur while you’re working on other tasks.

If you use iTunes and iPhoto, those applications have built-in backup features that let you easily save your valuable music and photo collections to CDs or DVDs. A free alternative to iPhoto, Kodak EasyShare (www.kodak.com), comes with a built-in backup update feature that lets you know when you should back up your photo library to a CD or DVD.

Conclusion

Time Machine is an excellent, unique backup option, but it is missing features that can be easily supplemented with free Apple and third-party alternatives. So, even if you use Time Machine, you should consider adding a cloning program and applications for saving valuable data to CDs or DVDs.

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of Easy Guides to Mac OS X software (Safari, Mail, System Preferences, TextEdit) and Course Books on Mac OS X 10.5, iPhoto ‘08, iTunes, and Mac OS X 10.4. More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (www.cjrtools.com/ebooks). Members of Apple user groups can receive a 25% discount on all purchases from CJRTOOLS ebooks by using the Apple User Group program code, mug2008. This special discount offer is valid through November, 2008 and more information on the offer can be found on the Apple User Group Offers web page (homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers.html).

Is MobileMe Worth the Money?

by Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

If you’re not a subscriber to Apple’s online service, MobileMe, you might be wondering if the service would be right for you. Or maybe you are a subscriber and you’re not sure if you should renew your subscription. In this article, I briefly describe the main MobileMe services so you can decide if the service is worth the cost.

Syncing Feature

Apple has emphasized the syncing capabilities of MobileMe as the central element of the service. The syncing feature of MobileMe is easy to use and can be set to sync your computers and iPhone or iPod Touch to the online MobileMe application. You can sync your email accounts and messages, Address Book contacts, Safari bookmarks, and iCal calendars. Some third party applications may also let you sync data from them. Syncing can be automatic so that every time you make a change on your computer, the change will be automatically synced with the online MobileMe service or, if you prefer, you can manually sync your data by accessing an option from the Mac OS X menu bar. Although syncing does not work quite as quickly or smoothly as Apple first stated it would, it does work well for most setups.

Email Service

The MobileMe package includes an excellent IMAP email service. Although the new email account name (yourname@me.com) is not pleasing to all users, the service has advantages over other email services. I have several email accounts, including a Gmail account, and the MobileMe email service uses spam filtering that is far superior to that of other accounts. Unlike some other accounts that place all spam in a junk mailbox, MobileMe filters out the spam before it ever reaches your mailbox so very little junk mail actually gets to you.

In addition to excellent spam filtering, the MobileMe email service provides you with an enormous amount of storage space so you can keep all of your email messages in one account. Also, since the account is an IMAP account, you can keep your online and offline mailboxes always in sync.

Online Storage

Another benefit of MobileMe is the 20 GB of online storage space that comes with the service. Because your MobileMe iDisk can be mounted on the desktop, you can add photos, music files, videos, and other files to the iDisk just as you would to any hard drive. In addition, the new online interface has an upload option that lets you add files to your iDisk from any computer. Now, with MobileMe, you can have a safe, offsite location for storing your important data.

Web Hosting

A MobileMe account has one more useful feature – a web hosting service with huge bandwidth limits (200 GB per month). Although Apple only advertises its hosting service in combination with Web Galleries and iWeb, you can, in fact, use any web design or development application with MobileMe. Publishing a website to your MobileMe account can be done from within some applications, such as RapidWeaver, or you can simply drag a website folder to either the Sites or Web folder on your iDisk to create an instant, live website. MobileMe’s web hosting service doesn’t provide all of the special features of most dedicated web hosting services, but it is more than adequate for many users’ needs. And the 20 GB of storage space plus the 200 GB of monthly bandwidth make it perfect for photo album sites that you might want to share with your friends or with the world.

Conclusion

Is MobileMe worth the money? If all you want is a syncing program or an email service or a web hosting service, MobileMe is probably not worth the expense. But, if you want or need two or more of the services provided, MobileMe is a good value. For $99 a year, you get the ability to sync data on all of your computers and your iPhone or iPod Touch, a good email service with excellent spam filtering, an easy-to-use hosting service, and enough offsite storage for your email, websites and important data.

* Note – Since MobileMe is a new service, it still has some bugs in it that Apple is working hard to resolve. For example, while working on this article, my email account on MobileMe became inaccessible for a short period of time. Hopefully, Apple will work out the bugs soon and MobileMe will be the smooth working service Apple has promised users.

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of Easy Guides to Mac OS X software (Safari, Mail, System Preferences, TextEdit) and Course Books on Mac OS X 10.5, iPhoto ’08, iTunes, and Mac OS X 10.4. More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (www.cjrtools.com/ebooks).

Alternative Backup Options to Time Machine

by Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

If you use Leopard, you may be leaving all your backup tasks to Time Machine. With Time Machine, backing up can be mindless, but Time Machine has its limitations and it’s not necessarily the best backup option for all Leopard users or for all backup tasks. Some of the shortcomings of Time Machine include the need for a significantly large extra external hard drive, use of the Leopard Install disk to restore a complete system and backups that only occur automatically once an hour, although you can back up manually at any time. And, of course, to use Time Machine, you must be using Mac OS X 10.5. In this article, I’ll describe alternative backup options that can be used with Leopard as well as with older versions of Mac OS X.

Cloning a Boot Drive

Probably the most important type of backup is a complete backup or clone of your boot drive, usually to an external hard drive. The easiest way to create a clone is to download the demo version of SuperDuper! This application makes cloning a no-brainer – just select your source and destination drives, enter your user password and SuperDuper! does the rest. If you purchase the full program for $27.95, SuperDuper! can be scheduled to do automatic incremental backups so you’ll have peace of mind that you always have a perfect bootable backup of your drive.

If you don’t want to use SuperDuper!, you can clone your drive using Disk Utility’s Restore feature. However, I recommend SuperDuper! because Disk Utility’s Restore feature may result in a clone with permission errors. SuperDuper!, on the other hand, has consistently produced perfect clones for me.

Backing Up Specific Files and Folders

In addition to cloning your drive on a regular basis, you might want an easy way to back up specific files and folders, especially if you don’t store valuable data files on your boot drive. Many applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets and databases, include a special option for automatically creating a backup of your work every time you save it. If you use this feature, select a backup location on a second drive so your most important data will always be saved on two separate drives.

Another way to back up critical data is to use a program like Apple’s Backup, available for free for .Mac users. You can schedule Backup to automatically save data files to your iDisk so you’ll know that you always have an offline backup of the data. The full version of SuperDuper! also lets you save selected files and folders to an external drive on a scheduled basis.

Another easy option is to purchase a USB flash drive and manually transfer critical data files to it as necessary.

Backing Up to CDs and DVDs

Some applications, like iTunes and iPhoto, have built-in features that let you back up your valuable data to CDs or DVDs. This is the perfect solution for data files that are very large, such as a photo or music collection.

Large folders of data can also be easily backed up to CDs or DVDs using the Mac OS X 10.5 Finder Burn feature. Simply insert a blank CD or DVD into your computer’s optical drive, move files and folders onto it and click the Burn button on the Finder window Toolbar to create a permanent copy of your data. You can also use free applications, such as Burn or LiquidCD, to create backup CDs and DVDs of your data.

With so many easy-to-use options for cloning your system and backing up your valuable data, there’s no excuse for any Mac user to lose data and precious time trying to recreate or restore original files. And, if you use Leopard, you have the additional advantage of Time Machine.

Resources

SuperDuper!

Shirt Pocket
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper

Burn
Kiwi Fruitware
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/

LiquidCD
Maconnection
http://www.maconnect.ch

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of Easy Guides to Mac OS X software (Safari, Mail, System Preferences, TextEdit) and Course Books on iPhoto ’08, iTunes and Mac OS X 10.4. She is currently completing three new Course Books on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (http://homepage.mac.com/cjrtools/ebooks).

The Joys of Quick Look

by Claire J Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks

One of the great new features of Leopard, Quick Look, can change the way you view documents, images and video files. Before discovering the joys of Quick Look, I was constantly wasting time launching different programs to view files. Now, I just hit the Space Bar and have instant access to the content of most files. In this article, I’ll discuss the ways you can save time with Quick Look and how to enjoy this new Leopard treasure.

Viewing Text and PDF Files

Select a text or PDF file, press the Space Bar and the Quick Look window will open, displaying the first page of the document. Click a button on the bottom of the window and suddenly your document can be read in full-screen. Even multipage documents can be read – just move your mouse along the scroll bar on the side of the document to move through the pages. In less time than it might take to open a document in MS Word or Adobe Reader, you can read several pages of the document. Think of all the time you’ve saved if you need to read many documents.

Viewing Images

Images, too, can be viewed in full-screen mode with Quick Look. You can even view an entire folder of images as a beautiful full-screen slideshow. And, as you view the images, you can easily add them to iPhoto with just a click of a button. You no longer need to wait for that slow image editing program of yours to open when you want to find a particular image. Do a search with Spotlight, select all the images in the search results window and press the Space Bar to open up the Quick Look window. Click a button and icons of all of the images will appear in the Quick Look window or move through the images by pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard. Nothing could be easier for browsing through image files.

Viewing Video Files

Videos can be played directly in a Quick Look window and you no longer need QuickTime to view full-screen videos. Select a video, press the Space Bar, click the full-screen button, and sit back and enjoy your favorite video. It’s the quickest and easiest way to view videos. And, for even more control, the Quick Look window includes a slider that you can use to move to your favorite sequence in a video.

Using Quick Look in Time Machine

By now you might be impressed with Quick Look, but wait, this treasure has another great feature. Take a trip with Time Machine, Leopard’s automatic backup program, and you’ll find Quick Look also works in that environment. Select any file from any date, press the Space Bar and preview the file with Quick Look before deciding if it’s the file you need. With Time Machine and Quick Look, you’ll never restore the wrong file. Restoring files can’t get better or easier than this.

If you haven’t tried Quick Look, select a document, image, or video, press the Space Bar and discover the joys of this little treasure in Leopard.

Claire J Rottenberg is the author of Easy Guides to Mac OS X software (Safari, Mail, System Preferences, TextEdit) and Course Books on iPhoto ‘08, iTunes and Mac OS X 10.4. More information on her books is available on the CJRTOOLS ebooks website (http://homepage.mac.com/cjrtools/ebooks).