Guruville

Adding an Email account in Mail.app

admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:09:28 +0000

Step 1: Open Mail Preferences

Click on the Mail menu and select “Preferences”

Step 2: Add Email Account

Click the + sign to add a new email account

Step 3: Enter Basic Account Information

Type in your name, email address and password. Then click the “Continue” Button.

Step 4: Enter Incoming Server information

Select POP or IMAP from the Account Type menu. Enter in a descriptive name for the account. Enter the incoming server, username and password that you were assigned or if you changed your password through webmail, use that password instead. Then click the “Continue” Button.

Step 5: Enter Outgoing Server information

Enter in a descriptive name for the account. Enter the outgoing server, username and password that you were assigned or if you changed your password through webmail, use that password instead. Click to check “Use only this server” box. Click to check the “Use Authentication” box. Then click the “Continue” Button.

Step 6: Account Summary

You should have a dialouge box similar to this one. Click to check the “Take account online” box if not already checked. Then click the “Create” button.

Step 7: You are Done!

Note the newly created email account in your list. Click the red X in the upper right hand corner of the window to close.

Running Snow Leopard Apps on Lion 10.7

admin — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:48:00 +0000

So you’ve upgraded to Lion and now there are one or more applications that you rely upon that do not run. What do you do? Well, you have a choice:

Do without those applications
Downgrade your Mac to Snow Leopard
Use another computer
Install Snow Leopard on an external hard drive and boot your Mac from it

This lesson will show you how to perform option #4.

So find or buy a hard drive that is at least 32 GB or larger (depending upon the size of the applications and data that you want to run on it) and is not being used for any other purpose. And follow the steps listed in this video:

Then follow the instructions in the next video:

Boot off of the external drive and install any applications that require Snow Leopard to run and … ENJOY!

winmail.dat attachement will not open on my Mac

admin — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:29:01 +0000

Have you ever had that happen? Someone sends you an attachment and what you get is something called “winmail.dat” This is due to how certain email servers deal with attachments. Fortunately, there is a plug-in for Apple’s Mail.app. It’s called letter opener and can be downloaded by clicking here.

Download and install.

iContact for Free

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:24:26 +0000

They now have a free edition to their software … there is now no reason to resist trying it.

No more mass emails. No more clumsy looking emails with bunches of private email addresses in the message. Instantly track who is opening your messages and which ones are being bounced or unsubscribed.

Have a look at iContact.com

Mac OS 10.7 Lion — Upgrading — Please Wait

admin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:41:32 +0000

Some software vendors have announced which versions of their software are compatible with Lion and which are not. Most have not including some heavy hitters. Note: All of the testing, either by the vendors or individual users has been on what Apple calls the Golden Master (GM) which is the latest beta version of the software. Apple can still make changes to Lion prior to the final public release of the software.

Microsoft Office:
There has been no official word from Microsoft, Office 2011 seems to work for the most part but with some glitches that most likely will be fixed in a future update. Office 2008 is a Universal App (PowerPC and Intel) and will probably work with some bugs, but the installer requires Rosetta.

Quicken:
Quicken 2007 and earlier will not run on Lion. Quicken Essentials for Mac with the latest update will run, but most people we have talked with find the reduced feature set and user interface to be unacceptable. Look for a forthcoming article which will cover financial solutions for the Mac.

Quickbooks:
QuickBooks 2011 for Mac is compatible with Lion with the R10 update. That said, as we mentioned earlier, the testing has only been done on the GM and not on actual release version of Lion. Our advice is if you rely on Quickbooks, don’t upgrade to Lion right away. QuickBooks 2010 for Mac and earlier versions are not officially supported on Lion.

Daylite:
Daylite will run fine for locally hosted personal databases. For those running Daylite on a server, syncing over the internet and/or VPN do not work. Syncing over the local area network does work.

Billings Pro:
Billings Pro will run fine for locally hosted personal databases. For those running Billings Pro on a server, syncing over the internet and/or VPN do not work. Syncing over the local area network does work.

Adobe Creative Suite:
CS3 and earlier were designed for PowerPC only and will not operate on Lion. Creative Suite 5 and above should work fine with updates.

Sophos Anti Virus:
According to Sophos, version 7.3.1 is working with the latest developer release of Lion.

Printer and Scanner Drivers:
Many times, scanner and printer drivers break in just the incremental .x updates which was the case with the 10.6.4 update as well as the latest Snow Leopard update 10.6.8. Most peripheral companies wait until the software is released before they will release compatibility information, let alone patches to correct any issues. The only safe bet is to wait for the Lion release and see if people are finding any issues and then testing them on a non-vital machine prior to rolling it out to machines you rely upon for your personal or business use.

These are but a few examples. Again, with any major update, you will want to make sure that software and devices that you rely upon will work after you upgrade. There is a good, semi-complete listing of Lion compatibility at roaringapps.com. When Lion gets released and people actually start using it, much more information will be available here and elsewhere.

If you have any questions at all, please contact your computer consulting firm.

Free Sophos Antivirus for Mac

admin — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 06:55:46 +0000

Sophos has now decided to offer it’s antivirus for Mac home users …. FREE! Amazing! Get yours while you can and get protected. Click here to download the installer. Run the installer and then click on the shield icon in the menu bar and select “Update Now”. Then from that same menu, select “Open Preferences” and set the preferences as shown below.

Close the preferences window and from the same menu, select “Open Sophos Antivirus” and scan your Mac.

Enjoy your free protection!

Make your own training videos

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:47:32 +0000

Here is a great piece of software that will allow you to make quick, professional videos directly from your computer. It is called Screenflow.

Screenflow is an amazing application that not only allows you to capture the video and audio from your computer, it will capture the video and audio from your built-in or external camera and microphone and allows you to edit transitions from you presenting and the material on your computer screen. It also allows you to import external media such as video or audio clips and has a ton of special effects including:

The Best Capture

ScreenFlow has the best screen capture available. Using a custom multithreaded SSE & Altivec accelerated, 64-bit enabled compression system, ScreenFlow can handle everything from capturing DVD video & audio to fast moving Keynote presentations.

Record Everything
You don’t need to pick an area of the screen for capture, ScreenFlow has advanced algorithms that only encode areas of change on your screen. The application is powerful enough to simultaneously record from your iSight or DV camera at the same time as your screen (and your microphone and computer’s audio!).

Highlight
During your screen capture, ScreenFlow tracks where your mouse cursor is, when you click and when you press a key. This allows you to add mouse click effects (both visual and audible), an overlay showing your keystrokes and even lets you zoom the mouse pointer up & down.

Edit
Once your screen capture is complete, you’re transported to the ScreenFlow editor. Using a familiar timeline interface, ScreenFlow lets you easily add zoom & pan effects, trim clips, add drop shadow & reflection, adjust audio levels etc. You can even combine existing media into your screencast.

Callout
Callouts let you highlight & focus in on the mouse or front most window. Want to circle the area around the mouse? What took an experienced user minutes or hours in Final Cut Pro or After Effects is now a couple of clicks away.

Customizable Cursors
Customize your cursor’s shape, size, opacity and use your own PNG file to personalize and brand your demo presentation.

Motion
ScreenFlow introduces actions to the editing interface. These make it very quick & easy to modify parameters of your screencast over time. For example, adding a video action lets you put zoom & pan effects on your clips, while the audio action lets you adjust volume at different points in your screencast.

Format Support
ScreenFlow lets you share your screencast with the broadest audience to be viewed in any media player. ScreenFlow supports export to any QuickTime format, including H.264 MOV for playback in the Flash media player. It also supports direct export to Windows Media video with the Flip4Mac Windows Media component. The variety of export formats allows you to produce content for any user, regardless what media player they prefer.

Powerful titling
ScreenFlow supports titling and text objects, including multiple fonts and styles that enables you to add striking titles to your screencasts.

Picture-in-Picture
With the simultaneous recording of computer desktop and camera, and with the support for various layers, you can easily include a picture-in-picture effect in your ScreenFlow video recording. While demoing a software, or presenting slides you can have a smaller picture of the demo artist or the presenter on top of the actual demo/presentation to make the experience for the viewer even closer to a real world presentation.

Export Quality
When resizing high resolution screen content into a QuickTime or Windows Media movie, ScreenFlow uses custom GPU algorithms to give your finished movie the best possible quality. You’ll find even small text suddenly becomes legible for your viewers.

This allows you to easily make video podcasts, Youtube, tutorials .. the list is endless.

And the really cool thing is that anyone can use it! Check out Screenflow We will be posting some tutorials later on … for now, check out the ones that they have on their site.

Two Cool Products shown at MacWorld

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:03:40 +0000

FastMac U-Socket

This is a cool dual USB power socket contained in a standard two plug power outlet. Now you can charge any 5 volt USB powered device (like an iPhone) without needing any kind of power adaptor. Also, the USB plugs turn off when nothing is plugged into it saving energy and money. Traditional USB wall warts are energy vampires slowly draining energy and money from you.

Verbatim Titan XS

These are tiny powered USB hard drives in a rubber case. Perfect for portable backup systems and transporting files. Available up to 1 TB sizes.

These both are definite must-haves for us.

Check out this video review from MacWorld.

Type Less … Talk More … Be More Productive

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:34:22 +0000

This is one of our MacWorld 2010 Guru Gems of the show. Scribe turns your Mac into your own personal transcriptionist. Simply dictate into any digital recording device, save the file and let Scribe convert it to text. So now you can not only dictate into your computer, you can turn any recording into text.

Cool applications for this are transcribing:

Class notes into study guides
Presentations and turning them into workbooks
Training classes into manuals
Verbal notes throughout the day into emails
Teleseminars into ebooks

The list is endless! We were just pricing out transcription services and this product will save us thousands of dollars. Way to go MacSpeech! Click the icon below for more information.

MacWorld 2010

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:59:31 +0000

The trade show was also a success. It seemed to get back to basics … developers and vendors being able to interact with the people who specify, install, sell, service and most of all USE their stuff. And Apple ® not being there actually helped that cause.

We found many cool new tools and toys. Over the next couple of days we will be posting what we found to be the highlights of the show … our 2010 MacWorld Guru Gems of the show.

Keep checking in as we found some really cool new stuff and rediscovered some that we may have … well … forgotten.

Looking forward to next year!