iLifeZone Episode 31
The Return of the Tip Monster
Run Time: 46:24

Scott Bourne www.podcastingtricks.com and www.podcastgearguy.com
Chris Breen MacWorld and Playlist Magazine
John Foster Beerschool.com
Craig Syverson Grunt Media
Kenji Kato Kenjikato.com

Let's get rockin' with the tips!!

Scott: Needed to delete stuff from the trash can and found that you can force it to delete even if it's stubborn. One way is to use the terminal. In a new terminal window, type the following: rm -rf ~/.trash/*
That will manually empty your trash no matter what's in it. If you would rather not dabble in the command line, you can also hold down the Option key while you're emptying the trash. In some cases, the Option key method won't work, though, so you may have to dabble in the terminal. PLEASE BE CAREFUL IN THE TERMINAL. YOU CAN DO A TON OF DAMAGE IF YOU'RE NOT CAREFUL.

Chris: Chris recommends Batchmod which is donationware and includes an option to "Force Empty Trash" even if there is a locked file. It has a lot of other functions too, including the ability to change permissions on groups of files.

John: Uses lots of networks and gets tired of setting up the networks preferences for each one. He recommends using locations in the Network preference and you can make changes specific to the networks you use right there.

Kenji: When you want to switch, you can change locations directly from the Apple menu.

Craig: In many Apple applications, you can customize the toolbar. That's often a good way to learn about the app and its features. You can usually find it under the View menu.

Kenji: If your machine won't boot, hold the option key then press the power button. You can then pick what device you want to boot from. Besides giving you different boot options, this will also clue you in to whether or not your internal drive is being detected at all.

Scott: If you've ever sent someone an e-mail and they can't open a url in it, it's probably because the URL is longer than 80 characters. If you want to make sure your recipients can always open your e-mailed links, enclose them in angle brackets and you should be fine.

Chris: In iTunes, if you're at the iTunes store, there's always a link. You can click and drag anything from the store to your desktop to create a URL alias. You can then send that alias anywhere. (From Vinny: Another tip would be that you can right click any item in the iTunes store and click Copy URL to get the direct URL)

John: To connect to a server without an FTP tool, go to the Finder, pull down the Go menu, and select Connect to Server. You can type the url of a server, etc. Click Ok or Connect. Type the username and password. The volume will open on your desktop right alongside any other drives. If the server has WebDAV, you can write to it also, no FTP included.

Craig: When Craig has a long URL, he recommends selecting the word and clicking "edit link" where you can then add a link to a site instead of using the URL in the message.

Kenji: Sometimes you can repair some Mac grief by zapping the Parameter Ram (or P-Ram). To do it, while you're booting, hold down the Command, Option, P and R keys. After the system bongs a third time, let go and let the system boot.

Scott: When copying a folder from one drive to another, make sure to copy the files inside the folder and not the folder itself. That's a listener tip (From Vinny: David! That tip was on our site in one of our followup posts to the switcher shows! In fact, it was tip #1!). Either way, folks, be careful. On the Mac, always copy the contents of the folders and not the folders themselves. In Windows, it merges. On the Mac, it copies over.

Chris: In iTunes, if you have a lot of playlists and sources, they scroll beyond your view so you can't drag and drop into a playlist. The easiest way to add something to a source you can't see is to right click (or Control click) the item and click Add to Playlist, then select the playlist you want the song to be added to.

John: Big fan of GTD . If you need an easy timer, go into System Preferences, Desktop and Screensaver, and select the folder you want to use, and then you can set it to change the picture every X number of minutes.

Craig: In Keynote, there's an option for Web View which lets you drop a webpage into a Keynote presentation that's live! They'll work like any other object in Keynote and at the same time, they'll be live content.

Kenji: If you're looking to repair a hard drive, Data Rescue II does a great job.

Scott: A tip from Australia! Lisa suggests that you look into Omniweb . Omniweb is a very customizable alternative browser. Scott's favorite idea is the tab drawer which lets you store multiple tabs under one spot. Scott finds it performs better than Firefox on his systems.

Chris: In iTunes, sometimes you want to know what doesn't belong to a playlist. You can now create folders inside the source list. Create a new folder and drag all your playlists into it. Then create a new smart playlist. The condition will read PLAYLIST -- IS NOT -- (NAME OF YOUR FOLDER). Any song that isn't in that folder you created will appear inside that Smart Playlist.

John: Just finished recording, framing, and editing his podcast. Now he needs to find that file. You can right click on the file and click Show in Finder to see the location of the file on your hard disk.

Craig: Change your filenames before you drop your podcasts / files into iTunes to change ID3 tags, etc. Once you've done all your iTunes stuff, you can drag it from iTunes to the finder, so you can control where the file is and where it goes. Also, don't use spaces in your filenames. Use underscores for compatibility purposes.

Scott: Keep the podcast names short. Scrolling is not cool!

Kenji: If you hold down the option key, you can drag your links in the link bar around.

Scott: In Aperture, when you're working in the Light Table view, you can't have a photo in there twice. To work around this, in Aperture, clicking Option V will create a new version of the picture. Then hit Shift Command K to unstack it. Now you can move the original image onto the light table and underneath it will be an identical copy!

Chris: In Garageband, to export your podcasts as AIFF, delete the Podcast track after everything is arranged. After you do that, share it to iTunes and it will be an AIFF file.

John: In Safari, if you press Command I, it will send the entire page in the body of an e-mail. (Note: You need to be using Apple Mail)

Craig: In Pages and Keynote, you can't increase the size of the Inspector Window. You can, however, have multiple Inspectors! Under the View menu, click New Inspector. You can open multiple inspectors for different functions.

Kenji: On rare occasions when you have to fax something, you can go to the File Menu, go to Print, and in the lower left corner, hit the PDF button. Fax PDF is an option, you can put a number in, and voila! Any app that uses the standard Mac printing menu will work.

That's a wrap for this week! We'll see you soon with another Tip Monster!

This episode was sponsored by Rogue Amoeba and ShieldZone .

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The next show lands on May 1, 2007. For more information (or to send us your tips so Scott doesn't have to do any work for the next Tip Monster) email us at info@ilifezone.com.

Thanks to Libsyn for hosting services.

Thanks also to Vincent Ferrari for the shownotes!

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