Apps
Keep Track of People with Address Book
Eric Buczynski April 6, 2007
Every Mac ships with a great little organization application called Address Book. This Apple program can help you keep track of friends and family, and it integrates seamlessly with other Apple applications, like Mail. If you’re new to Address Book, you’ll find it to be a very comprehensive way of keeping track of contacts, friends, email lists, and more. There’s so much power packed into Address Book that you’ll wonder why you didn’t use it sooner!
Sherlock: The Forgotten Mac Application
Eric Buczynski March 29, 2007
It was a big hit in Mac OS 8 and 9, an interesting application in Mac OS 10.2 and 10.3, and now it’s been all but forgotten. I’m talking about Sherlock, of course – Apple’s file and web searching tool. Sure, you can search your Mac with Spotlight and get Internet information with Dashboard Widgets, but Sherlock can still come in handy. Look for it in your Mac’s Applications folder.
How to Use Comic Life in the Classroom
Charles Thacker March 7, 2007
There’s a long history of comics in the classroom, and the list of references at the end of this article is a great starting point for learning about this concept. While there’s still resistance to this medium being used in education - whether by staff or students - there is also a growing movement to use every valuable tool available. Comics have some great uses in the classroom and in a variety of curricula.
TextWrangler: The Best Free Text Editor
Matt Cone March 1, 2007
I don’t care what Justin Long and John Hodgman say in the Get a Mac commercials. The best thing about Macs is all of the quality freeware and shareware software. Sure, Mac users often take this software for granted, but if you really use PCs - and I mean really use them, not just play around with them at BestBuy - you’ll quickly find yourself missing the third-party Mac applications.
An Absolute Beginner's Guide to the Terminal
Ric Getter February 12, 2007
Sitting discreetly in Utilities folder (nestled nearly unnoticed amid your applications) is one of the most powerful tools ever created for the Mac. It is simple and elegant, yet can be intimidating (if not terrifying) and has the power to cure some of your computer’s most puzzling ills. It also possesses the fearsome ability to wreak unimaginable havoc on your system. We are talking, of course, about the Terminal, that magnificent gateway to the hidden underpinnings of the Mac OS.
How to Print Borderless Photos with iPhoto
Dave Strom February 9, 2007
We use iPhoto for our digital photos. (Who doesn’t?) For this tutorial, we wanted to perform two iPhoto tasks: print 8.5x11 photos, and crop a portrait photo from a landscape original. We used iPhoto ‘06 on Mac OS 10.4, with a Hewlett-Packard 7960 Photosmart printer. Differences in printers and in the iPhoto and OS versions should not make for too dissimilar of a process, provided the OS is in the 10.
How to Create Slideshows Using iDVD
Dave Strom February 5, 2007
Do you want to show off your photos on something besides your Mac? Then you need to create a slideshow and burn it to a DVD! You’ll be able to play your slideshow on any DVD player. Why do we use iDVD instead of iPhoto to do this? We tried creating slideshows using iPhoto with our 800MHz G4 iBook (1 GB of RAM and a SuperDrive), and with a 1.5 GHz G4 desktop.
Introduction to the OS X Terminal Application
Wayne Linder January 22, 2007
The Terminal is an application from Apple used to gain access to the power that is “under the hood” of the operating system. Historically, there have been two ways to access the operating system; a Graphical User Interface (GUI) shell, or a command-line shell. The Mac OS graphical interface allows us to do our daily computing tasks in a manner that is familiar to us – if we want to throw an item away, we drag it to the trash.
Finding Mac Freeware and Shareware: A Beginner's Guide
Wayne Linder January 18, 2007
Why would anyone need low-cost software? I’m sure that some people, after switching from the PC, realize that they need some software to put on their shiny new Mac and their pockets are now empty. Or how about students, who, after spending their last bit of pocket change on some yummy ramen noodles, don’t exactly have a few hundred dollars left for a graphic-editing application. Then you have people like me.