Sort your mail
September 23, 2008This could be useful if you have large amounts of email.
Open Mail and find the + icon in the lower left corner of the window. Clicking it will open a menu. Click New Smart Mailbox....
A new menu panel will have opened. This panel allow you to apply sorting criteria to your mailbox. Today we will make a smart mailbox that collects only unread messages, so that you may concentrate on just the mail that needs your attention. There are, of course, many other things you can do with smart mailboxes - sort out spam for example.
You may now name your mailbox - in this case Un-read mail.
Next, click on the menu labeled From. Choose Message is Unread. Then click OK.
You have just created a smart mailbox that, when opened, will only show mail you have not yet read. If you decide you don't want to keep the smart mailbox, click the mailbox in the sidebar, then click the gear icon in the lower left corner and select Delete Mailbox.
Free Software
September 22, 2008
There is nothing better than software that works, except maybe software that works and is free. I discovered this one at Pure-Mac.com.
I have over two thousand fonts on my computer (don't ask - I have no idea how I got so many). Most text applications allow you to choose a font, but they do not usually provide a preview of how the font looks. You can open Font Book and see samples, but you can only see one font at a time. When you have a lot of choices, it can take a long time to view them all one by one, and it becomes tedious because so many of them are so similar. I went looking for a font viewer and found FontDoc. It surprised me because it did exactly what I wanted it to do, offered me a feature I didn't know I wanted, and it was free. It just doesn't get better.
FontDoc displays each font in your computer with a sample line of text. When you are selecting a font it is often for a specific word or phrase, and not necessarily for the entire document. It is therefore desireable to be able to preview how that word or phrase looks in the different fonts, which is just what FontDoc allows you to do. It goes one step further and allows you to save the preview as a text file. The text file can then be opened at any time or printed so that you have a permanent hard copy of all your fonts and their names. Pretty cool.
FontDoc by Allen Smith
Passwords
September 20, 2008How to remember difficult passwords. From Rev. Dr. Bobby Newton, of the Church of Mac. I like this guy.
Church of Mac
More videos
Here is another idea for making a secure password:
Hackers use software that tries every possible combination of characters until the combination is discovered. For example, if you only used the numbers 1234, the software might start by testing each number in order 0000, 0001, 0002 and so on. Since computers can do this so quickly, it would get to 1234 in just seconds. If the number were bigger it would take longer, so longer passwords are better. Now if you included letters and numbers there would be many more possible combinations and it would take the computer even longer to try all of them. As far as computers are concerned z and Z are two different characters, so if you mix upper and lower case letters with numbers you have vastly increased the possible number of combinations. If you can use eight characters (numbers and upper and lower case letters with no character repeated) you can be reasonably assured that no software will ever crack your password because it will take years to run through all the possible combinations. If you are allowed to use special characters - %$#@ - they too will increase the number of possible combinations and make your password more secure.
more information here
A Better Finder: Make it Work Harder
September 19, 2008by Justin Busch
With all of the wonderful work that Apple has done with Mac OS X to make navigating the computer simple, it’s time to make the Finder work harder for you. You’ve customized the dock, gotten accustomed to the column view, and are finding you work faster with Spotlight. Now, tweak those Finder windows to speed up your workflow even more.
Like many applications in Mac OS X, you can customize the Finder’s toolbar by control + clicking (right-clicking) the toolbar to show a contextual menu. Select Customize Toolbar to open the available tools that can be added (or removed) from the toolbar.
To make changes, simply click and drag a tool from the panel to any location in the toolbar. For example, we like to have the Get Info button in the toolbar for times that it’s inconvenient to go to the menu (or hit the keyboard shortcut). To keep things balanced, we’ve added another Flexible Space and the Get Info tool in the middle.
The Finder’s toolbar can also act as a mini application launcher. To add an application, click and drag the applications icon to the area at the far right of the Finder’s toolbar until the Plus icon appears. Release the application to add it to your toolbar.
Add some common applications that you use frequently for a quick one-click or drag-and-drop launch. Applications such as word processors, internet utilities and of course Preview work wonders in the Finder’s toolbar.
Meet Your Macinstructor -
Justin Busch is an educational technician in the Distance Learning Program at the Community College of Allegheny County. He is currently a graduate student at Seton Hill University, where he is working towards his Masters Degree in Education with an emphasis on Instructional Systems Design. He has been a Mac user since 1994.
Copyright © 2007 Macinstruct and respective authors.
Where are they?
September 18, 2008
OS X comes with some beautiful screen savers. But isn't it disappointing that they only appear when your computer is idle? Don't you wish that you could have those beach scenes as your desktop image? The photos are in your computer, you just need to find them. Where are they?
The stock screen savers can be found in your System folder (Macintosh>System>Library>Screen Savers). Screen savers that you may have downloaded and added to you computer will be in the Library folder (Macintosh>Library>Screen Savers).
That sounds easy enough. But when you open the Screen Savers folder you see this:
And if you double click one of the icons, it doesn't open an image file, it opens System Preferences. How do you get the photos out of them? You need to control/click or right click the icon which will open a menu. Click Show Package Contents. That will open a new Finder window. Double click the Contents folder. Double click the Resources folder. You should now be looking at the photographs. Simply drag the image (or the entire Resources folder) to your desktop.
To use the image(s) for your desktop image, create a folder named Beach, place the image(s) in the Beach folder, place the Beach folder in your Pictures folder, then open System Preferences>Desktop & Screen Saver and click the + beneath the menu (lower left). Select the Beach folder and you should now have beach photos on your desktop.
Menu Meters
Have you ever wondered what your computer was doing? Sometimes it just sits there unresponsive. Other times it seems sluggish. What is going on inside? This little tool might give you a clue. There are four mini-applications in this package, but I am only using one of them - the CPU Meter. You can see it in the menu bar showing 31% CPU usage. What does that mean? It means the processor in the computer is running at 31% of its capacity. Sometimes the processor gets overwhelmed and it will be running at 100% and it still can't get things done quickly enough. That means that something has to wait - usually you. So instead of wondering if something is stuck, or broken, the CPU Meter can help you understand how hard your computer is working to accomplish the task you have given it.
Clicking the percentage icon will open a menu from which you can open the Activity Monitor utility, which can give you further diagnostic information.
Menu Meters free from Raging Menace
Mac Apps
September 17, 2008
I recently discovered an interesting piece of free software on the Apple website. It is called EasyFind. It has been around a while, but it is new to me. EasyFind searches your computer for things you can't find. It functions the same as the search feature in Finder and Spotlight, but you can define your search parameters in ways that may not be possible in those apps. EasyFind truly is easy. Just type in the name or keyword in the search box and click the magnifier icon in the right corner and wait for the results to appear in the list. You can then double click any item in the list to open the file.
EasyFind - free from Devon Technologies.
Caboodle is a note taking, note keeping, note organizing application that is very easy to use. I use it to store small snips of information that would otherwise get lost in my computer. But it is equally suited for large documents, photos, lists, tables, or anything you can think of - a recipe file perhaps. Most of the features of a word processor are available in Caboodle. You can change fonts, colors, page formating and send the result to your printer. What I particularly liked about this software is the ability to encrypt your infomation. That is a great feature if you want to keep passwords (or maybe tax information) in your computer, but don't want to risk them being discovered.
Caboodle from Dejal Systems. Free trial download. On sale at MacUpdate Promo, regularly $14.95; now just $10.46
Got a question about your Mac? I don't know everything, but I'll help if I can.
Look for a link to this website in the navigation menu of Coquina Daily.
There may not be something new here everyday, but I am going to try to have something new at least three times per week. As always, you are welcome to make submissions.