PMUG Blog

I was catching up on reading the news feeds this morning when I came across a post on the smoking apples blog about a new text editor called OmmWriter. I’m not sure why I downloaded it. Maybe because of what OmmWriter’s cleanly designed web site promised. So here I am writing this blog post in what so far, has been the most ...

For me the word Chrome evokes images of the shiny, the futuristic and the fast. Clean, efficient and well built. Google Chrome developer preview doesn’t disappoint. Google has taken WebKit, the same Open Source browsing engine that Safari is built on, and in a very short time developed a browser for Mac and Windows that is winning converts everywhere. On ...

OS X Daily posted a tip on how to find the largest file in a directory.  I have my own that uses the du UNIX utility.  The du utility displays the file system usage statistics for each file and directory argument. To use it, type du in a Terminal window. The first column of output is the number of bytes and the ...

On August 26 Apple released the latest version of it’s MacIntosh operating system, OS X 10.6, code-named Snow Leopard. Some have called it a service pack while other say it is a foundation for something bigger. Whether a service pack or future proof update, the sales figures have Wall Street buzzing causing Apple’s share price to soar. Good for my IRA ...

I’m working on blog postings about Snow Leopard and iTunes 9. There is so much to cover that it is taking longer than I expected. In the mean time here’s some information I culled from Wikipedia.org. The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first “killer app” of the business world—the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. In December 1980, Apple launched ...

I wrote an blog post back in March explaining how iPhone and iPod Touch users could sync Address Book with Google and Yahoo on Leopard. Well … Snow Leopard removes the iPod Touch/iPhone requirement. Here’s how you do it. Open the address book application Open the address book’s preferences Click the accounts tab Check the synchronize with Google Click the configure button. Fill in the information Let the address book do its ...

One of the things mentions in its online, print and television ads is how easy it is for Macs to exchange data with Windows based PCs. Macs can network with Windows over standards based networks, connect to Windows based files servers, and communicate using Microsoft Exchange email servers. They can even run Windows. This ease of integration with the Windows world is ...

Last year my friend had to deliver some distressing news to his wife. The external hard drive on which he had been storing their family photos failed. The problem had started a few weeks earlier when his wife mentioned that the hard drive was making some strange noises. My friend had planned on backing up the disk to DVD but being ...

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that upgrading to iPhone OS 3.0 enabled previously hidden Bluetooth functionality on my second generation iPod Touch. After upgrading (the iTunes servers were jammed so I did it after midnight) I noticed a small Bluetooth icon in the upper right hand corner of the home screen. So I went straight into Settings->General and … what do you know, ...

Being able to get a robust wireless network signal around my house was something that I struggled with for some time. My Comcast cable broadband connection came in through my garage and basement so that is where I had placed my wireless access point (WAP). The cable coax connected to the broadband bridge which was then connected to my 802.11n Apple Time Capsule ...