by on October 26, 2009 Leave a Comment

Drag and Drop in Finder Stopped Working

mac toolsIf you spend anytime on this site, you know that I am a Windows XP to Mac OSX convert. I generally espouse how awesome a Mac is because it always just works. Well, a bit of kink in the armor came today when I tried creating a new demo video and could not get drag and drop to work.

I tried to take files from a Finder window and drag them onto the desktop. When I began to drag, I expected to see the green plus icon over the application icon. Didn’t happen. I tried numerous with various destinations and still couldn’t get it to work.

I became more concerned when I tried to copy and paste a file between folders.

Thankfully, things are back to normal now. My solution? Restart the computer. It’s as good advice for a poorly behaving Mac system as it is for Windows. Rebooting the system solved the problem.

I think I was stumped for so long because I rarely need to reboot the system because of a problem. That was usually my goto response for a problem in Windows XP or Vista. So class, the lesson is remember to restart your system if something is behaving poorly. It’s a good first step to solving your Mac problems yourself.

Do you have any goto troubleshooting advice? Please share it here.

by on October 7, 2009 2 Comments

Word Definitions as simple as Cmd+Control+D

This tip came by way of OSXHelp, another great site dedicated to helping you get the most out of your Apple Mac.

We’ve discussed Mac keyboard shortcuts before. Here’s one I didn’t know about. Mac OSX has a built in dictionary which you can access by hovering over a word and pressing Cmd+Control+D key. When you do, a pop-up window appears with the definition of the word.

Pop-up a dictionary with a simple mouse click.

Pop-up a dictionary with a simple mouse click.

by on October 2, 2009 3 Comments

Access 1Password from Anywhere on the Internet

1Password IconWhen you create accounts on a website, it’s important to use unique passwords on those sites. There are many tragic examples of stolen passwords on one hacked website used to gain access to another site. I, like most people do not always follow best practices.

I’ve mentioned before how much I like
the 1Password password manager product. One of it’s great features is that it will create unique, secure passwords that you can use when creating accounts online.

While this feature is great, it becomes a hassle when you need to access a website from a remote machine. How do you retrieve your password?

The 1Password blog revealed that they are going to provide a solution to access your key chain anywhere in 1Password 3. The feature called Anywhere will allow you to have access to your key chain from anywhere on the Internet.

Rather than keep your key chain on a website, 1Password Anywhere assumes that you will manage the location of the key chain yourself. If you are traveling, you can store your key chain inside a Dropbox or on a USB drive. The point is, Anywhere only will decrypt the key chain eliminating a potential security hole of having your keychain stored on their website.

It’s a cool feature I’m looking forward to trying. In the meantime, this video shows you how it works.

by on September 30, 2009 2 Comments

Use iTunes With Other Devices

If you have a portable media player that isn’t an iPod, you know how frustrating it can be if you own a Mac. Apple has done a great job creating an iTunes, iTunes Music Store ecosystem. This is great if you have an iPod or iPhone but it is really frustrating for the millions of other people who own Blackberrys, PSP, Android and other devices.

Now, new software is availalble from a company called doubleTwist which will let you use your devices on your Mac, in iTunes.

A quick video demonstration of it’s capabilities are below.

The software was developed by Jon Lech Johansen (aka DVD Jon). He is the same guy who cracked the DVD copy protection scheme. If anyone can figure out the interoperability problem, it’s him.

by on September 26, 2009 2 Comments

Attaching Finder Files to Mail with Services

In an earlier post, we introduced you to OSX Services. These application services provide a way for applications to communicate with each other.

One particularly useful way to use Services it to send file attachments through Mail. The typical workflow for attaching a file to an email message is to open Mail.app, create a new draft, open the Finder to the folder with the file you want to attach and drag it to the email draft. With services this is much easier.

I was going to create a video illustrating this but found this instead.

As you can see, it’s simply a matter of selecting the file in the Finder and choosing the Services Send To menu.

If you have other ways to use Services to make computing easier, let us know.

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