Have a Little Google Fun

The Google search engine has quite a few hidden secrets, called Easter Eggs. To get the most fun out of them, go to www.google.com and type in the suggested search words. Then click the I’m Feeling Lucky button to activate the Easter Egg.

If you don’t see the I’m Feeling Lucky button, click on the gear in the upper right corner, click Search Settings, then, under Google Instant, choose Do Not Use Google Instant, then scroll down to Save Preferences in the bottom right corner.

1. Google Tilt: Search the term “askew” and you’ll get more than just the definition…

2. Google Gravity: Search “Google gravity” and then click the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Whoa!

3. Google Sphere: Search “Google sphere” then click the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Yeah.

4. Barrel Roll: Search “do a barrel roll” and hold onto your stomach!

5. Google Rainbow: Search “Google rainbow” and then click I’m Feeling Lucky. Can you see the rainbow?

6. Ask Google “where is Chuck Norris?” and click the I’m Feeling Lucky button.

7. Pig Latin Google: For some Pig Latin fun, Google “ooglegay igpay atinlay”

8. Google Pacman: View the awesome Google Pacman Doodle by searching “Google Pacman” and click the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Use your arrows to play a real game!

9. Google Guitar: Search “Google guitar” and click I’m Feeling Lucky. Strum away with the musical Google Doodle to honor Les Paul’s 96th birthday.

10. Google Pirate: Arrr! Search “Google pirate” and click I’m Feeling Lucky. (This one made me giggle.)

11. Google Hacker: Google gets hacked! Type in “Google hacker” and then click I’m feeling lucky.

12. Google Loco: Search “Google loco” and uh, it gets a little crazy. (Try searching something now!)

13. Weenie Google: Search “weenie Google,” click the I’m Feeling Lucky button, and watch it shrink away!

14. Epic Google: Or, search “epic Google,” click the I’m Feeling Lucky button, and see what you get.

15. Gothic Google: Feeling a bit dark? Search “Google gothic” and click the I’m Feeling Lucky button.

16. Google Flight Simulator: Enjoy the Flight Simulator when you go to Google Earth, click on Tools > Enter Flight Simulator and you’re off!

17. Ask Google “what is the loneliest number?”

iPad and iPhone Tip of the Week

This month’s apps are all about pure, simple, no experience necessary FUN!

MyPaint Free requires no artistic talent. Just pick a color, adjust the thickness of the brush and drag your finger on the blank page to create your very own masterpiece.

Taiko brings a set of Japanese Taiko drums to your iPad. The harder you hit the drums, the louder the sound. Swirl your finger for faster or slower rolls. For one or two drummers!

Songify turns speech into music, automatically. Speak into your device, choose a rhythm, then sit back and laugh.

Note: Even if an app is only available for the iPhone, you can still install it on the iPad and even enlarge it to full screen!

——————–

How to Back Up Your Address Book

Even if you use Time Machine to backup your computer, it’s a great idea to have a separate backup of just your Address Book that you can save onto a flashdrive, just in case.

Here’s a free video lesson that will teach you how to do this!

iPad and iPhone Tip of the Week

Emailing More Than One Photo

It’s pretty simple to email one photo:

1. Tap the Photos icon on the Home screen

2. Tap the Photo

3. Tap the arrow icon in the top right corner

4. Select Email Photo

To send more than one photo at a time:

1. Tap the Photos icon on the Home screen

2. Tap the arrow icon in the top right corner

3. Now tap the photos you want to send and a check mark will appear on the photos

4. Tap Share in the top left corner

5. Choose Email

——–

Private Browsing with Safari

Are you doing a lot of online shopping for the holidays and don’t want your family members to see what you’ve been buying?

You can set Safari to NOT include your visited websites in the History.

From the Safari menu, choose Private Browsing

Done. No more snooping or spoiled surprises.

 

iPad Tip of the Week

Typing an Apostrophe

How often do you need to type an apostrophe. It’s such a pain to press the ?123 key to switch to the punctuation keyboard.

Here’s an easy trick:

Press and hold on the ,! key and the apostrophe key will appear. Just slide your finger on it to use it.

ATTENTION iPOD NANO USERS

Some 1st Generation iPod Nanos have Faulty Batteries

Apple is recalling a series of 1st generation iPod Nanos and replacing them, free of charge. The affected products were sold between September 2005 and December 2006 and have the risk of overheating and possibly even catching on fire.

 

Click here to determine if your iPod is one of the affected units and for all of the details on replacement.

—————-

Changing What Appears When You Re-Open a program

Lion’s Resume feature automatically re-opens all of the windows you were working in when you Quit the program. This can be a handy, time-saving feature for some people, and an annoyance for others.

To turn off the Resume feature in only certain programs, hold down the Option key when Quitting and the choice will say “Quit and Close All Windows”.

To disable Resume for all programs, in System Preferences, choose General. Below the choices for Number of Recent items, remove the check mark next to “Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps”.

iPad and iPhone Tip of the Week

Auto-Complete Text

Do you type the same phrases all of the time on your iPad or iPhone? The new iOS 5 has a slick new feature to help you with this.

Let’s say you often type “Love you much” in your emails. You can create a shortcut so that, when you type LYM it will automatically type the complete phrase.

1. Tap Settings

2. Tap General

3. Scroll all the way down to Keyboard

4. Scroll down to Shortcuts

5. Tap Add New Shortcut…

6. Type in the complete phrase, ie: Love you much!

7. Next to “Shortcut” type the letters you want to use for that phrase, ie: lym

8. Tap SAVE

9. Open up Mail and try it!

10. You can create many different shortcuts. I’m not sure if there is a limit to how many you can create.

—————-

Reading Articles in Safari Just Got Easier

Have you found an interesting article to read, but you find all of the ads on the screen so distracting?

Safari has a built in READER feature that will open most articles in a new window with just the article. No distractions.

1. Find an article in a newspaper

2. Click on the word READER that appears at the far right side of the page’s address (this may not be available for all articles)

3. The article will open in a new window

4. Click READER again to get back to the full page in Safari

iPad and iPhone Tip of the Week

Format Text in Mail with iOS5

It’s true. Now you can bold, italicize and even underline text in Mail. And you can indent paragraphs too.

1. Select the text you want to change

2. Tap the right arrow at the far right of the Cut, Copy, Paste menu

3. Tap BIU to change the format or Quote Level if you want to indent

4. Tap your desired format choice

5. Tap on the page to get out of the menu

 

 

 

Change the Size of Things on Your Desktop

If you save a lots of things to your Desktop, it can often be hard to find what you’re looking for. Maybe the icons are too small or you can’t read the words.

In the Finder, under the View menu, choose Show View Options.

In this window you can drag the slider to make the icons bigger.

You can change the size of the text that appears under the icon. You can even choose to place the text label on the side of the icon if you prefer.

In this window you can also choose Arrange By… to automatically arrange your icons by date, by name or manually.

——–

Warning: Ignore Any Messages on Internet That You Have a Virus

If you ever see a pop up window on Safari or recieve an email warning you that your system’s security has been compromised, or that you have a virus, and you should click on a link to fix it, IGNORE IT! It is a scam to get you to run a program that may, in fact, GIVE YOU a virus.

An Easier Way to Browse Music in iTunes

We all look through our music differently. Sometimes you’re looking for a particular artist or a favorite album. Sometimes you may want to find all music of a certain genre.

I find that using the Column Browser makes it easier to navigate through my music library.

in iTunes, under the View menu, choose Show Column Browser. Go back up to the View menu, and choose to show it on the Top or Left side. You can also select which columns show in the Browser.

I’ve chosen Genres, Artists and Albums and, in the bigger, bottom pane, I have my music sorted by song name.

Now I can quickly browse and find music by any of these columns.

Yes, you can also type what you are looking for in the Search Music box in the top right corner.

——–

How To Add Numbered Lists in an Email

Sometimes you may want to add a list in an email and you’d like to number or bullet the list so that it stands out and indents and lines up perfectly when it wraps.

In a new email message, begin typing your regular text. When you’re ready to start your list, go up to the Format menu and choose Lists. Slide over to choose either a Bulleted List or a Number List. Begin typing.

Mail will automatically number or bullet each line when you press Return. To stop the numbering, press Return a second time.

——–

Secrets of the Scroll Bar

The scroll bar, on the right side of every window, allows you to move up and down the window to see the contents.

Dragging the scroll bar moves you fast, sometimes too fast. But Dragging the scroll button is the quickest way to go all the way to the top or bottom of a window.

Clicking the up and down arrows at the bottom of the scroll bar will move you a line at a time. This is great if you are reading a document line by line or looking at individual photos.

In the System Preferences, under Appearance, you can set the Scroll Bar to either jump to the next page or to the spot that’s clicked.

This is handy when you are scanning a document or wanting to quickly navigate through a section of your photos.

BONUS: In Safari, pressing the Space Bar scrolls the window a screen at a time.

——–

Cleaning Your Keyboard and Mouse

Keyboard:

If your keyboard is wired, first disconnect it from your computer. If it is wireless, turn off the power on the keyboard and remove the batteries.

Use a lint-free cloth lightly moistened with water. Don’t get moisture in any openings and don’t use aerosol sprays, solvents, or abrasives.

Mouse:

If your mouse is wired, first disconnect it from your computer. If your mouse is wireless, slide the power switch to off and remove the batteries. Clean the outside of your mouse or trackpad with a lint-free cloth lightly moistened with water. Don’t get moisture into any openings and don’t use aerosol sprays, solvents, or abrasives.

If the scroll ball on your Mighty Mouse has become discolored or dirty, use a clean, lint-free cloth lightly moistened with water to clean it.

Wipe the ball and the surrounding area, making sure to rotate the ball itself to ensure complete coverage.

If the scrolling feels rough or if the scroll ball isn’t scrolling up, down, or side-to-side, hold the Mighty Mouse upside down and roll the ball vigorously while cleaning it to help dislodge any particles that may have collected on the internal hardware.

 

Clearing Safari’s Auto Fill-In

One of the many great features of Safari is the Auto-Fill function. You begin typing and it fills in the rest. This is helpful for forms with your name and address, but what about all of those sites you’ve googled that automatically re-appear every time you search?

You can clear out all or some of the auto-fill items.

1. Under the Safari menu choose Preferences.

2. Click on the Auto-Fill icon. Your personal information is pulled in from your Address Book card and everything else is stored under “other forms.”

3. Click Edit next to Other forms to see a list of all the websites with stored information. To clear out the fill-in information, click on the site and click Remove or choose to Remove All.

4. For example, to clear out the google search fill-ins, click on google.com in the list and click Remove.

The next time you search, nothing will automatically fill in but it will begin remembering your new entries.

—————

Setting Your Mac to Automatically Turn On and Off

Turning your Mac on and off several times in a day is not very energy efficient. But it’s good housekeeping to restart your Mac regularly. Restarting takes care of all kinds of behind the scenes file maintenance to keep your Mac working efficiently.

Many of my clients forget to do this and so here’s a way to schedule a daily or weekly shutdown and start up. This is also great if you turn off your computer every night and don’t like waiting for it to start up in the morning.

1. Under the Apple menu, choose System Preferences

2. Click on the Energy Saver icon

3. In the bottom right corner, click on Schedule

4. Put a check next to Start or wake up and choose your preference for how often from the pulldown menu.

5. Set the time.

6. On the next line, choose Shut Down from the pull down menu and set those preferences.

7. Click OK, close your System Preferences.

Restarting will perform the necessary housekeeping duties. Shutdown will also save energy and even give the computer a chance to fully cool down.

—————

Skype Security Preferences

It used to be that long distance phone calls were the only way to stay in touch with faraway family and friends.

Now there’s Apple FaceTime and iChat for video chatting with Macs and iPhones and iPod2 users and also Skype, which works with anyone on any computer.

As with any program where you communicate with the world, it’s important to check your privacy settings and ensure the safest, most secure situation.

Today’s tip offers some Skype Security Settings to keep your online identity safe and secure.

When you first sign up for your Skype account, you have to fill in your name, email address.

Only fill in the required information, noted by an asterisk. You do NOT need to share your address, sex, birthday or anything else that doesn’t have an asterisk.

Once your account is set up, it’s important to set your Privacy Preferences.

1. From the Skype menu, choose Preferences.

2. Click on the Privacy icon.

3. I recommend changing all of the choices to ONLY SHARE INFO with people on your contacts list.

—————

Changing How You Choose Colors

You can apply colors to text in email, your calendars in iCal, as well as within your other programs.

When you click on the Colors icon, a palette of colors appears.

But did you know you can change how you choose your colors?

Across the top of the Colors window are five icons, for the five different ways to view colors.

The furthest left icon is for the Color Wheel. You can slide the vertical scroll bar up and down to adjust the intensity of color.

The second icon is for the Color Sliders that allow you to adjust the values of a color, adding and removing red, greed and blue until you get the desired color.

The middle icon allows you to choose colors by Palette.

The fourth icon shows you all of the colors as a Spectrum.

The icon to the far right is the simplest way to choose color–from a box of Crayons. The Crayon Box is also the easiest way to get back to using black.

BONUS:

You can also create and save your own colors.

Try this:

1. Go to the Color Wheel and click to choose a color.

2. Slide the scroll bar to get the perfect intensity.

3. The color chosen appears in the rectangular box at the top.

4. Drag the color from that box to one of the small squares at the bottom of the window and that color will now be available in every color tool and in every application that allows you to use colors.

 

Click here to get the free Mac Tip of the Week in your Inbox every Tuesday.

SAFARI: CUSTOMIZING THE TOOLBAR

Safari’s Toolbar contains the minimal tools needed to surf the internet.

To add, rearrange and remove icons from Safari’s Toolbar:
1. In Safari under the View menu choose Customize Toolbar.
2. Drag any desired icons from the window onto the Toolbar.
3. You can also rearrange the icons in the Toolbar and remove the ones that you don’t use by dragging them off the Toolbar while you have the Customize Toolbar window open.

Some Tools I like to add:
Smaller/Bigger Big A, Little A because some pages are too small to read and so, adding this tools lets me make content bigger as needed.

I also like to have a button to quickly get me back to my Home Page.

MAIL: CHANGING THE BACKGROUND COLOR OF THE PAGE

Yes, you can change the background color of your emails. With your cursor in the message area, click the Fonts button in the Toolbar. The fourth icon from the left that looks like a dog-eared page, is the tool for the Document Color. Click it and then choose a new color.

To change the way you view your color choices, click on the different icons in the Color window. I prefer the crayon box, the tool at the far right.

iPHONE RECEPTION ISSUES

Cell phones send and receive signals from cell towers. As you drive around town, the signal connects to various towers, handshaking from one to the other. If you drive through an area without a tower (along the 51 through the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, for example) your phone loses connection from the system, if only for a brief minute, and even when it reconnects to the next tower, the signal may not be a 100% handshake. You may notice more dropped calls or voicemails that show up on your phone hours after the call.

To resolve this issue, AT&T recommends turning off/on your iPhone after you drive through an area with no towers, and also turning your phone off and on at least every two weeks to re-establish full handshaking. Some people get into the habit of turning their phone off every day to ensure the best reception.

To turn your iPhone off, push and hold the sleep button on the top of the phone until you see a screen with the option “slide to power off.” If you continue to have problems with delayed voicemails and dropped calls, contact AT&T.

 

Sign up to receive free weekly tips in your Inbox by clicking here

ZOOMING YOUR SCREEN

Do you ever want to quickly enlarge your screen so you can see something bigger?

1. Under the Apple menu, choose System Preferences

2. Click on the Mouse icon

3. Click to put a check mark next to Screen Zoom.

4. Click the Options for more choices.

5. It is set to use the Control key but you can choose a different key if you prefer.

6. You can also change how the screen moves when you zoom. Play with the different choices to see which works best for you.

7. Click Done

Now, anytime you hold down Control key and scroll with the mouse button, you’ll be ZOOMING! Try it.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS IN SAFARI

Instead of using your mouse’s scroll wheel or dragging the blue scroll bar, you can move down the page by pressing the Space Bar. Move up the page by holding down the Shift key and pressing the Space Bar.

To go Back to the previous page, instead of clicking the Back Arrow, press the Delete key.

HIDING PICTURES IN iPHOTO

If you have your Desktop Screen Saver set to use all the pictures in iPhoto, you may have certain pictures that you don’t want to include. Instead of creating a separate album specifically for the Screen Saver, you can hide selected photos.

In iPhoto, click on any picture you want to hide from view.

From the Photos menu, choose Hide Photo. An X will appear in the top right corner, indicating it is marked as Hidden.

If you don’t want to see Hidden photos in iPhoto, under the View Menu, re-select Hidden Photos to remove the check mark.

The picture is still in your Library, you just can’t see it.

To Unhide it, first, from the View menu, choose to show Hidden Pictures

Then select the photo that has the X on it and choose Unhide from the Photos menu

For more great iPhoto tips, check out the new video training series, Maximize Your Mac.