InterNetWorkingSolutions Support Site

SPACES
Quickly switch between groups of windows to make your desktop much less cluttered.

I’m a fan of this, because I tend to work with certain groups of applications at the same time, while ignoring the others. It will be so nice to have separated sections such as a “design group,” which could consist of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, or a “web group” (Dreamweaver/Coda, Fireworks, Flash), without having to have all of my applications in the Dock at the same time. (Let’s face it, I don’t always have access to my wonderfully large display at work, so I would love to conserve screen space!)

Plus, Spaces allows for you to customize your workspace ‘til your heart’s content. You can add rows, rearrange windows, set different actions with function keys. You will be able to toggle back and forth between different work areas, so you’re only looking at what you want to see, and nothing more. It looks like Spaces will have the look and feel of all your favorite OS X features. Sure, it’s eye-candy, but when it’s functional, who could complain?

See more features here.

One of the great features of the iPod touch 8GB and 16GB models is the product’s ability to connect to an available and authorized wi-fi internet connection. This is great for Safari browsing and YouTubing, but it also makes it easy to buy music via the built-in iTunes Store. Talk about instant gratification—with only a few touches you can purchase any of the millions of songs available from the iTunes Store.

While demoing one of our beautiful iPod touch units recently at our flagship South Burlington retail store, I noticed that the iTunes Store on the unit was set up and ready to buy music. I was curious whose credit card would be charged if customers decided to test-drive a song purchase. I was surprised to see at the bottom of the screen that my personal account (and billing information) was registered to this unit. Obviously this concerned me from a fiscal and privacy standpoint, so I began researching how to log an iPod touch out of the iTunes Store.

The Apple Support pages only had information on how to switch iTunes Store accounts, not on how to disable or log out of an account. These documents noted that the iPod touch will automatically pull the account information from whichever account is logged into the iTunes Store on the computer at the time the iPod is synchronized with the Mac or PC. After some trial-and-error, I discovered that by simply logging out of the iTunes Store on the computer then syncing the iPod, I was able to disable the song purchases from the iPod touch. Only the purchasing option on the iPod will be disabled, so the iTunes Store can still be browsed. Perfect!

I love to use tabs in Safari. I find it much better then having 10 or 20 windows open for each website I am using. In Safari 2 there was a checkbox in the Safari Tab preferences, but it’s now missing from there. A quick Google lookup turned up a nice hint on MacOSXHints.com. According to the hint you have to find the Safari property list and hack around a few strings. Sounds like fun, huh?!

Fortunately someone left a comment with a much easier solution. Just go to the View menu and select ‘Show Tab Bar’. Now that sounds a lot easier!

Here’s Hapy carrying two rocks with a combined total of more than 650lbs! He got about 43 feet with those beasts… nice work!

He says, “Hey all – here is a good pic of me carrying over 650lb of stones at the Maine Games. The one on my right weighed 345 and the one on the left weighed 315. I think I got 43ft with them when I stepped in a divot and lost my grip.”

Mollie got a mention in today’s Burlington Free Press regarding their iTunes story. Yay Mollie!

To read the article, click here.

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Freeware Voice-over-IP (VoIP) application Gizmo Project makes phone calls from your PC similar to the popular Skype. Like when we first mentioned Gizmo Project, it still boasts several excellent features like voice integration with other Gizmo Project users as well as Google Talk, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger users, support for AIM and MSN chat, and a free call-in number—making it sort of a kitchen sink version of Skype.

The latest version of Gizmo Project supports video chat (though it's not as high quality as Skype), an improved interface, and several worthwhile fixes. If you've tried Skype but you're looking for more functionality and integration with other communication standards, Gizmo Project is worth a go. If you've been using Gizmo Project since we first mentioned it, let us know how it's working for you in the comments. The current beta is Windows only, but will presumably support Mac and Linux soon.
Gizmo Project 4 Beta [Gizmo Project Forums]

Mac users, that file you're trying to copy might actually be a bundle of multiple files—which is why your copying isn't working. The Pain in the Tech weblog schools us on Mac OS X bundles, how to browse inside them and manipulate them, using GarageBand and Pages files as examples, but remember: applications like Firefox.app and Mail.app are bundles as well.
Mac OS X Bundles [Pain in the Tech]

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): There are tons of great instant messaging applications available, but one nagging problem in the IM world is that there's no great, fully cross-platform chat app (unless you count Meebo). Free, open source application Instantbird aims to do for chat what Firefox does for the browser. Based on the same tools used to create Firefox and Thunderbird, Instantbird should ultimately be just as extensible as the former—which means IM customization will be as simple as installing a Firefox extension. Right now Instantbird connects to virtually any IM network and supports a tabbed chat interface. Beyond that, the application is still very barebones, but its upcoming features are very exciting.

Aside from the basics you'd expect from any chat app (like status notifications, contact management, and IM notifications), the ultimate roadmap for Instantbird includes video and voice support. What's most exciting, though, is the possibility that the chat application will be subject to the same community of creative extension developers that make Firefox such a killer browser—so that Instantbird can easily be customized to deliver exactly what you want from it. Instantbird is free, works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's still a very young app, so this one's for the early adopters.
Instantbird [via CyberNet]

Windows/Mac/Linux: Add clip art, advanced PDF functions, and in-editor Wikipedia searching to open source office suite OpenOffice.org with OxygenOffice Professional, a modified installation package and extension. Along with adding roughly 3,400 clip art files and templates, OxygenOffice's extensions also add support for Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications in the Calc spreadsheet program and conversion tools for the Office Open XML format used in Office 2007. Combined with the Writer's Tools package, this gives OO.org a number of exclusive features.

To install, download the extension, open OO.org, go to Tools -> Extension Manager and click the "Add" button in the My Extensions section, or download a binary to make a fresh OO.org install. OxygenOffice is a free download that runs wherever OpenOffice.org does.OxygenOffice Professional [via Download Squad]

Mac OS X Only: Freeware Mail.app add-on Mail.appetizer lets you read and delete email on the fly without having to open Mail's main window every time a message arrives. What makes Mail.appetizer stand out from other notifiers is the customization—you tell it whether to show headers, icons, quoted reply text and determine its size. Mail.appetizer is freeware, available in a seemingly bug-free beta for OS X 10.4 Tiger and a stable version for 10.3 Panther. Thanks, dcharti!
Mail.appetizer [Bronson Beta]

Windows/Mac: Freeware application Yuuguu provides instant remote screen sharing through a simple IM-like application. Just install Yuuguu on the computers you'd like to share screens, and then register and login to the Yuuguu chat application. If you decide you want to do a little screen sharing—perfect for friends and family tech support or a little project collaboration—just click "Show" and let the screen sharing begin. The user you're chatting with can either observe your screen or take control of the keyboard and mouse. Of course, there's no shortage of screen sharing apps like Yuuguu out there (like CrossLoop, ShowMyPC, LogMeIn, and of course VNC), Yuuguu's simple cross platform support is a bit of a gem.
Yuuguu [via Web Worker Daily]

Apple has just released a video walk-through of OS X 10.5 Leopard. The video doesn't cover anything we haven't mentioned before, but seeing Time Machine, Stacks and other features in action is something else altogether. The video requires QuickTime to view.
Mac OS X Leopard - Guided Tour [via Macworld]

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Free, cross platform application SvnTimeLapseView downloads every revision of a file from your Subversion repository and scrolls through revisions with a simple slider, highlighting differences in blue. If you're not familiar with the benefits of version control (especially for people who live in text), check out our guide to setting up a home subversion server for a better idea of what it does and whether Subversion might be useful for you. If you decide Subversion is up your alley, Windows users should also check out how to use TortoiseSVN with Subversion. SvnTimeLapseView is free, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux (or any platform that runs Java).
SvnTimeLapseView [Google Code]

You've got a household full of PC's and you've stopped yourself from getting a Mac because you don't want to deal with incompatibility headaches. Eight years ago that would've been understandable, but today Mac OS and Windows can work together in harmony on the same home network, sharing files and printers, mounting one another's drives and using the same equipment, like wireless routers and USB drives. If you're considering a mixed Mac/PC home or office, here's a primer on how the two systems inter-operate (and the few instances when they don't.)

Both OS X and Windows can see each other's shared drives over the local network. To mount a Mac's shared drive on a PC, it's a simple matter of enabling Windows Sharing in System Preferences and browsing to the shared folder the way you would on any other PC. Here's a step by step rundown for accessing a Mac's files on your PC. Update: Reader Jeremy writes in with more information on how to get Windows Vista to see Mac-shared folders. Thanks, Jeremy!

By default, OS X shares only your home folder. To share out another location on your Mac—like, say, an external drive that houses all your media files—use the free SharePoints System Preferences pane to configure advanced sharing.

To go the other way around and see your PC's files on the Mac, use Finder's built-in support for Samba, a network file-sharing protocol. Here are the details on mounting a shared Windows folder on your Mac.

File and Application CompatibilityOnce you're whizzing files back and forth between your Mac and PC, you'll see that practically all the filetypes you need work on both systems. A Photoshop .PSD file created on a Mac will open in Photoshop for Windows without any kind of import or formatting. Word documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF's, images, zip files, text, rich text, MP3's, AVI's—you can even play Windows Media Files on your Mac.

But while you're unlikely to run into filetype compatibility issues, Mac newbs should know that applications are not compatible across operating systems. That is, if you buy Microsoft Office for Windows, you've got to buy a whole new package/license for Office for Mac. Same goes for Photoshop and other utilities like text editors or FTP clients. Some Mac-only apps can export files that work on PC, but won't run on PC's—like iPhoto, for instance.

File Sync and System Files: Thumbs.db and .DS_Store You can even easily sync files between Mac and PC using a variety of methods, like FTP, rsync or any file copying utility that recognizes the networked drives you set up above. Once you do start copying whole folders, though, you'll start to reveal some of the inner workings of both Windows and OS X in the form of folder view system files. Mac OS X by default creates a file called .DS_store in each of its folders, and in turn Windows has Thumbs.db. On their native OS, these system files are hidden: you won't see them in the Finder or Explorer, unless you have "Show hidden files" enabled. But once you start moving them over to a foreign OS, you will see them. Here's more on how to turn off .DS_Store and Thumbs.db. Alternately, you can exclude them from your file sync job, or scrub them from your system manually after the fact.

Printer and Fax Sharing A printer hooked up to one Mac or one PC on your home network can be printed to from any other system as well. Using Bonjour for Windows (free), your PC can print to your Mac's printer. Here are the details on sharing your Mac's printer with Windows using Bonjour.

To go in the other direction, simply share your Windows printer as usual and use the Mac's printer browser to find it.

Running Windows on your Mactel If you want to use both Windows and Mac OS X but you don't want to have all that extra hardware lying around, you can have your cake and eat it too on a single, Intel-based Mac. Here are your options:

• Dual boot Windows on your Mac using Boot Camp—forces you to partition your hard drive into two sections and choose which OS to start when you turn on your computer, but runs Windows natively (read:fast)
  
• Run Windows inside OS X with not-free virtualization software like Parallels or VMware—lets you move files back and forth between each OS's drives and open any file on either system using a Mac or Windows app. (You can even set a Mac or Windows app to open for a filetype by default from either system.)
  
• Virtualize your Boot Camp partition to get the best of both worlds—make your choice every time whether you want to start Windows natively or within OS X, based on the task at hand

A few things to keep in mind when you set up Windows on your Mac: If you choose Boot Camp, you'll have a choice to format your Windows partition as FAT (which has a 32GB size limit for Boot Camp) or NTFS. NTFS is more secure and has no size limit, but OS X cannot write to NTFS drives, only read them. That means that you cannot save files to your Windows partition while you're booted up into OS X, just like you can't write to your Mac drive in Windows. (If you do opt for FAT, you can write to your Boot Camp Windows partition in OS X.)

If you go the virtualization route, when Windows is running inside OS X, you can easily copy files between your Mac and Windows drives. In fact, Parallels mounts your Windows hard drive and displays it in Finder like any writable external drive (pictured.)

Remote Server Access Both Macs and PCs can act as an FTP or SSH server, which gives you the option to use a huge range of cross-platform FTP and SSH clients like WinSCP, FireFTP or FileZilla to transfer data between them over the internet or on your local network. Here's how to set up a Windows FTP server and a Windows SSH server. On the Mac, it's literally as simple as checking off either "FTP access" or "Remote login" in the System Preferences Sharing panel.

Most commercial remote login services like LogMeIn are Windows-only, but the cross-platform VNC lets you remote control your Mac or PC from either OS. Likewise, the free VPN software and network which lets you stream your iTunes library over the internet and access shared drives, Hamachi, is also available for Mac with HamachiX.

There's no Microsoft Outlook for Mac, but Entourage (included in Office for Mac) can talk to your Microsoft Exchange server. Mac's Mail.app is also not available for PC but supports your standard email fetching and sending protocols, like POP/IMAP and SMTP, so it can download and send mail from Gmail or your ISP just the way Outlook Express can on your PC. Update: Mail.app can also work with Exchange server. Thanks, Byslexic!

iTunes, your iPod, and Other Incompatibilities The one major area of Mac/PC incompatibility is the iPod and iTunes. While iTunes comes in both Windows and Mac flavors, iTunes' internal library files themselves are different for Mac and Windows, so you can't copy your entire library between operating systems and preserve play counts and ratings. Update: this is due to the differences in how Mac OS and Windows address file paths. If you must move your library from Mac to PC, here's how you can massage iTunes' internal XML file to do just that.

You can, of course, share a library on a Mac or PC and listen to it in iTunes on any other machine regardless of OS.

Likewise, you've got to choose between formatting your iPod for Mac or Windows. An iPod formatted for one will not work with the other. Update: Two readers report that a Windows-formatted iPod WILL work on a Mac, but not the other way around.

Along those same lines, an external hard drive formatted "Mac OS Extended" can't be plugged into Windows and just work. However, USB drives formatted "MS-DOS" (for Windows, that is) can be recognized, read and written to by both Windows and Mac OS. So a thumb drive sneaker net will work between Mac and PC.

Making the Switch If you're a new Mac user or you're considering becoming one now that you know Mac OS and Windows can live together in harmony, be sure to check out Adam's comprehensive guide to switching to a Mac.

How do you negotiate Windows and Mac OS in your computing life? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, has one foot in each OS on a daily basis. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

AbiWord 2.4.6 is a multi-platform Open Source word processor. I recall using it for a few months on a notebook running Microsoft Windows several years ago. I tried out an early version (1.0 beta release I believe) of OpenOffice.org and have not revisited AbiWord since then.

It’s interesting that AbiWord is available for Windows and Mac OS X (as well as Linux) while the OpenOffice.org project still can’t figure out how to build a native Mac OS X version yet (even though the NeoOffice Project has a solution for them ready-to-go).

Windows Live SkyDrive (Microsoft really needs to come up with shorter product names) bumped up its online storage capacity from 512MB to 1GB. Um, ok, this is better. 5GB would be nicer though :-). According to the SkyDrive Team Blog, three other features were also just added. (1) RSS Feeds are now available for public folders. (2) You can share a file with someone by just typing in an email address (vs. selecting from a Hotmail address book).

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Google acquired the Twitter super-clone Jaiku. Jaiku is the twitter-like social network micro-blog presence (enough buzzwords yet???) web service. Like other sites before it acquired by Google, it will remain available to existing users but is essentially closed to new members. Google has developed a habit of buying great web services and then closing its doors for a long time. Remember the JotSpot wiki service?

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Findbyclick.com advertises itself as The easiest way to find interesting places, add new ones and share maps with your friends. But, most of the so-called interesting places seem to be Starbucks and Kinkos locations. Still, its an interesting idea. And, I suppose as more people contribute, we’ll see other, umm, interesting things located on its maps.

I mentioned recently that my Mac mini bit the dust. Although everything should be backed up to an external Firewire drive, I decided to get a second option for my iPod data just-in-case.

Senuti 0.50 Beta 2

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Macworld says there are a few things you can do to clean up and prepare your Mac before you take the leap to OS X 10.5 Leopard. Install the latest versions of your current applications (many are rolling out Leopard updates), clean up your hard drive, uninstall unneeded software, run the Apple hardware test and repair your hard drive using Disk Utility. The list of file and folder deletion candidates is especially impressive. First there are the usual culprits like Documents and Applications, but to dig deeper and rid yourself of cruft, look in:

• In /Library, /Library/Application Support, ~/Library, and ~/Library/Application Support, look for folder names matching applications you no longer use, and delete them.
• Your /Library and ~/Library folders may contain other folders that store components of third-party utilities. Look in Application Enhancers, Bundles, Contextual Menu Items, InputManagers, and PreferencePanes for any system enhancements you no longer use, and drag them to the Trash.
• Third-party Dashboard widgets live in ~/Library/Widgets. Any widgets you don't use can go.
• Applications use cache files to increase their speed and efficiency, and rebuild them automatically if necessary, so you can delete them safely:
  • The contents of /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches, can sometimes occupy hundreds of megabytes of valuable disk space. Drag these files to the Trash.
  • You can empty Safari's cache by choosing Safari -> Empty Cache (Command-Option-E).
  • Safari stores favicons (those tiny icons that appear next to a site's URL in the address bar) separately from its main cache. To remove them, quit Safari and drag the folder ~/Library/Safari/Icons to the Trash.
• Software that requires some component to be running in the background all the time may install folders in /Library/StartupItems. In most cases, you should leave this folder alone, but if you see anything there from software you're sure you don't use, delete it.

Mac users have been waiting since 2004 for an update to Microsoft's ubiquitous office suite, and especially eagerly since Apple switched to Intel processors. Now that the 2008 release is quickly approaching, it's time to take a look at what Office 2008 for Mac has in store. The new Office is chock full of interface enhancements following in the footsteps of Office 2007 for Windows, including a new ribbon-like toolbar, lots of snazzy animations, and a much snappier performance. Hit the jump for a look at the visual refresh of the Office for Mac suite.

galleryPost('Office 2008 for Mac', 6, '','list');

As you can see in the screenshots, the Office 2008 for Mac ribbon (I'm not entirely sure if they're calling it a ribbon or not, but it's strikingly similar looking, so I'm making the leap) is very different from the Office 2007 for Windows ribbon. That's because with the Mac's menu bar, you still have access to all of the traditional menus. The new ribbon provides quick access to templates, graphics, and other similar tools. Click the ribbon title once to expand it, click it again to hide it.

Most importantly, Intel Mac users should notice a significant jump in performance from the new universal binary. I haven't been using it long enough to give a good measure, but so far I'm very happy with the results I've seen.

Let's hear what you think of the new look of Office 2008 for Mac in the comments.