macosxhints.com Internet tips

10.7: Check web pages without using a browser

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 07:30:00 -0800

Using a saved Internet location on your desktop, you can quickly check a web page without opening a browser window.

This is a handy way to keep an eye on websites without having to manage browser windows or tabs. Simply drag the URL address from the the top of your browser window (I use Safari) onto your desktop. A 'web internet location' file is created. Now just use Quick Look (hit spacebar) to see a live view of the web page. You can even click a link, which then opens in your default browser.

Take it to the next level: Create a folder with all your favorite internet location files. Put the folder in your dock. Now when you hover over the file in grid or fan view, you can tap space bar to see the web page, and use the arrow keys to navigate around (list view doesn't Quick Look, for some reason, and only opens into a browser). I don't have Flash installed on my system, but I'm curious to know if YouTube and other Flash sites will run within Quick Look. Hope some ...

Share an Airport connection with iPad via Bluetooth

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 07:30:00 -0700

This is a useful hint if you have a Mac and an iPad (or iPod touch), and you want to share a hotel wireless Internet connection with both devices.

In the System Preferences Bluetooth pane, pair your Mac with your iPad (they don't need to be connected yet, just paired). Then, select the iPad in the list of Bluetooth devices, and click the Advanced button. Check the 'Share my Internet connection with other Bluetooth devices' option. This should switch you to the Network preferences pane and prompt you to create a new Bluetooth PAN device.

Now go to the Sharing preferences pane and select Internet Sharing from the services list. Under 'Share your connection from,' select Airport, and under 'to computers using,' select Bluetooth PAN. Then check the checkbox next to Internet Sharing in the services list to enable Internet sharing.

From the iPad's Settings app in the General pane, tap Bluetooth, and connect to your Mac. In the top left corner, in place of the W ...

A quick way to open a URL in QuickTime Player

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:30:00 -0700

I regularly listen to the Internet broadcast of a local radio station. To get it, I have to go their website, and then click on a button to open the online broadcast. It is in a Windows Media Player format. QuickTime Player opens and starts streaming.

Here is how I got to access it by just double-clicking an icon on the Desktop.

The 'obvious' way would be to drag the URL to the Desktop and create a .webloc file. But there were two problems with that.

The URL starts with mms:// and if one tries to open it directly from inside QuickTime Player, it does not recognize it. It does, however, open and play the stream if I use http:// instead.

However, the corresponding .webloc opens in Safari (or whatever other default browser is set), and doing Get Info and setting it to open with QuickTime Player has no effect.

Enter AppleScript. I created a very small script (you need to put in your correct URL): ...

Fix slow Internet video on iPad

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 07:30:00 -0800

If your iPad is slow or stutters when viewing video over the internet (e.g. from YouTube), and changing your network's DNS settings, or rebooting the iPad, or changes to the Airport Extreme (or other access point) frequency/band/channel/power/multicast etc. does not fix the issue, here is a possible fix.

Check to see if your Airport Extreme Base Station has DHCP/NAT turned on. If so, instead set your AEBS to Bridge Mode (this will probably work on Airport Express too). This assumes you have a cable modem or other router/switch that you can use instead for DHCP/NAT. No more slow/stuttering video.

[crarko adds: I restart my Airport Extreme every few weeks just to flush the memory and have not experienced any trouble paying video. I do use it for DHCP/NAT on my network.

What I have noticed is that after prolonged use, my Apple TV (2nd generation) does have stuttering and will sometimes just lose it's connection to, say, Netflix. I have to reboot the A ...

Quick Email Attachments

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 07:30:00 -0800

I use Yahoo mail and Firefox. I found that I was wasting lots of time navigating through my files to attached a document to an email, especially if I wanted to attach multiple documents that were stored in different folders. Normally, I send off a file after having just worked on it, so I decided to use Smart Folders and Saved Searches in the Select Files dialog box in Firefox.

Here are the steps:

In a New Mail message in Yahoo click the Attach button.
In the Select Files dialog, start typing a term in the search field and the Save button will appear in the dialog. For some reason, the Save button doesn�t appear when the dialog is opened.
Click the Plus button next to Save.
Select Last Modified in the first pop up and then Today in the second.
Click Save.
Name the Search. I call it 'Today.'
Now, the Today Smart Search will appear under Saved Searches in the Select Files dialog -- no need to type t ...

Force RSS feeds to refresh using pubsub

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 07:30:00 -0800

I've had problems with RSS feeds not updating correctly in Safari. So, I started looking for a way to manually refresh the feeds which, in turn, led to experimenting with the pubsub command (in the Terminal application). To use the pubsub command, first launch the Terminal application.

To list all RSS feed clients type:

pubsub list clients

You'll get results like this:

#Feeds	Signature
9	com.apple.Safari
0	com.apple.mail

To list all RSS feeds for all clients type:

pubsub list

To list RSS feeds for a particular client type:

pubsub --client com.apple.Safari list

Either way, the pubsub list command returns the following RSS feed information: ...

Use the new MobileMe calendar with older iOS devices

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:30:00 -0700

One of the requirements for upgrading to the new MobileMe Calendar is to have iOS 4.1 for your iPhone. If you have a first gen iPhone like I do, this is rather hard to do. If you would like to keep syncing your old iOS device and would like to use the new MobileMe Calendar you can without much trouble. First go ahead and upgrade your Me.com calendar. This will break syncing to your old iOS device.

Next on your iOS device go into the Settings app and select 'Mail, Contacts, and Calendars.' To my knowledge you can swap the order of the next two steps. When doing this for myself, I did it in the order I give here.

Select 'Add Account' and then pick 'Other.' Under the Calendars section, select 'Add CalDAV Account.' The Server you need to enter is cal.me.com. The username and password are your Me.com credentials. Then give the account whatever description you feel appropriate.

Once the account is verified by your device, you will now be syncing your ...

10.6: Whitelist websites for a Mac web kiosk

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:30:00 -0700

I needed to allow users of kiosk machine to only browse a list of permitted websites. This 'whitelist-only' functionality is available via OpenDNS, but it's expensive, with even the highest-end paid option allowing a miserly 50 domains. I have over 300. You can also use commercial software like wKiosk, but I found version 6's URL control to be unreliable.

Below is an alternative method. 1. Go to Parental Controls (System Prefs » Accounts » choose a non-admin user » Open Parental Controls�) and go to the Content tab: Allow Access to only these websites. This enables whitelisting, but you can only add sites one-by-one. What a pain!

2. Delete all but one of the whitelisted sites. Note which one you left, we'll need to find it later.

3. Go to Terminal, and run the following command, replacing userGoesHere wit ...

Automate an Internet content filter

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:30:00 -0700

As an adult with ADD, I'm a huge fan of Steve Lambert's SelfControl. This nifty app, for those who don't know, is a great boon to the Internet addict and to easily distractible folks such as myself. It is a timed Internet filter that can block sites based on a whitelist or blacklist. Once you turn it on, it's virtually impossible to deactivate until its timer runs out. So, if I wanted to work on a project for 3 hours without checking Twitter or Facebook, I would simply add facebook.com and twitter.com to SelfControl's list of blocked sites, set its timer for 3 hours, and get some real work done.

I find it helpful to be able to automate this app, so that I don't change my mind and decide to blow off work at the beginning of the day. To this end I have an AppleScript scheduled to activate SelfControl every weekday morning while I'm still sleeping, which lasts until mid-day, so I can get stuff done wh ...

Automate the download and installation of a hosts file

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:30:00 -0700

I've written an Automator workflow that will download the MVPS HOSTS file and place it in the /private/etc folder. The workflow can be saved as an iCal plugin to run automatically, and does most of its work in the background -- it does ask for a password when it replaces the old hosts file, though.

After downloading the Automator workflow (119KB: Original host • Hints mirror), open the desired workflow in Automator (one has Growl support, one doesn't) and go to File » Save as Plug-in. Select iCal Alarm, and now you can have it run once a week/month/year to help keep your Mac a little bit safer from unwanted internet intrusions. Please be aware that the workflow does not back up your old hosts file, so please be carfull when using it!

[robg adds: The workflow is ...

Enable IP forwarding using an AppleScript

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 07:30:00 -0700

If you use your Mac as an intermediate machine to provide Internet access or other network services, you could have the need to enable the IP forwarding. I looked through the web to check how could I enable or disable this ability, which is disabled by default.

I developed a small and smart AppleScript to allow the user to activate or deactivate this system option very quickly. I compiled the script, and now I offer it as an (open source) app to launch when needed; you can find it here.

[robg adds: Here's the source code, just in case the above site ever goes away.

(*
(c) Copyright 2010 Joris Berthelot <admin at eexit dot net> httpt://www.eexit.net
*)
display dialog "Current state of IP Forwarding:" & return & ret ...

Make WordPress' plug-in installation work on OS X hosts

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:30:00 -0700

Over the weekend, I installed a local copy of WordPress, as I was interested in testing out a number of plug-ins, and didn't want to do so on my actual blog. Install was done using the typical five-minute WordPress install, and it all seemed to work fine.

However, when I went to install a plug-in, WordPress displayed a Connection Information panel, instead of just automatically installing the plug-in, as happens on my online blogs. The Connection Information panel asks for ftp or sftp login information in order to proceed with the plug-in install.

After much searching, I found this page, which explains that the panel appears when WordPress doesn't have the rights to change the filesystem. (Experienced Unix users are now saying "well, yea, duh!")

So the fix wound up being quite simple. In Terminal, I cd'd to the WordPress folder, ...

Pay with an AmEx (Gift) Card in the iTunes Store

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:30:00 -0800

A few days ago, I wanted to get iTunes to accept my AmEx Gift Card, but somehow it always said the security code was invalid. Different from VISA and MasterCard, the security code from an AmEx Card is on the front and is four digits long. There was no doubt this code was in fact valid, and I was typing it correctly.

Obviously I wasn't the only one with this problem -- Apple's Support Discussion Board was filled with people complaining about that, and the "hints" there weren't working at all.

As for me, it worked after I put an empty space after the last number on the card. The reason: iTunes wanted to have 4 4-digit parts (16 digits) of the credit card number, but the AmEx had only had 15 digits. This was causing the invalid security code.

However, you couldn't tell that in the first place, because all iTunes showed after rejecting the code was **** **** **** 4123. In fact, 123 were at positions 13 to 15 in the real credit card. But iTun ...

10.6: Run Privoxy 3.0.16 on Snow Leopard

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:30:00 -0800

I really like browsing without all the flashy ads around, so I've been using the filtering-proxy Privoxy now for many years. But there is no longer support for Mac OS X, as there isn't a maintainer for the Mac OS X port any more. MacPorts still has 3.0.12, which has some major bugs (timeouts), so I decided to build from source. Here's how to get it run...

First, get the source for Privoxy 3.0.16 from SourceForge (1.7MB direct download). Unpack the download somewhere, and make sure you have Xcode installed somewhere.

Open Terminal and ...

Create RSS feeds for Google searches (with Google!)

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:30:01 -0800

This isn't really Mac-specific, but it's very useful. There are a lot of reasons people like/want to create RSS feeds for Google searches (e.g. for their name, so they see when something new comes up). However, most of the ways out there for making feeds are very unreliable, available for Windows only, quickly out-of-date, and/or cumbersome. So here's a foolproof way using Google's own services.

This is very simple -- in fact, it involves using Google Alerts. All you have to do is create a new alert for the search you wish to create a feed for, then edit it. Click the Deliver To pop-up and select Feed instead of Email. This gives you an RSS feed that can be either directly added to Google Reader, or viewed in any RSS reader you wish to use.

[robg adds: This works; just make sure you save and verify the alert first, then you can edit it to turn it into an RSS feed.]

Convert HTML documents to FictionBook format

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:30:01 -0800

If you'd like to create FictionBook format (.fb2) electronic books on a Mac, here's a simple way to create one -- at least for documents that are in HTML format. In my case, it was an RTF document which was exported as a web page from Microsoft Word 2008.

Upload the file to any available public resource such as the Public folder in your Dropbox, or any other service that provides a public URL for your uploaded file. Next, copy that public URL to the clipboard, and go to web2fb2.net. This site converts HTML to FB2. The result will be a reference to a downloadable zip file.

If you want the file o nyour iPhone, you'll have to get it there via SSH for jailbroken devices, or use DropBox or any other utility that supports file transfer.

Hope this help somebody else, too.

10.6: Easily manage the built-in web server with AppleScript

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:30:00 -0800

If you work with the built-in web server a lot, it's helpful to write some simple AppleScripts to open the files in your text editor, and to restart the server. Use AppleScript Editor to create the following scripts in your user's Library/Scripts folder.

A script to edit your httpd.conf file:

tell application "TextWrangler"
  open "/private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf"
  activate
end tell

A script to edit your user-specific httpd.conf file (if you use one):

tell application "TextWrangler"
  open "/private/etc/apache2/users/username.conf"
  activate
end tell

A script to edit your php.ini file (if you use PHP):

tell application "TextWrangler"
  open "/etc/php.ini"
  activate
end tell

A script to restart Apache: ...

Ban Pure-FTPd login attempts by IP after three failures

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

I run an FTP server on my machine, using Pure-FTPd. Lately, I was getting a lot of noise in my logs about unknown people trying to gain access on my FTP server. I wanted to automate the task of looking through the log and banning the bad IPs, so that my logs will be kept clean from all those try/fails attempts.

What I came up with is a bash script executed as a launchd user daemon whenever the file /var/log/ftp.log is being modified. Parts of the code come from , and irc2samus on the #bash channel (IRC on freenode.net) made the rest.

I thought this might help others, too, so here's the code. I put the following in /etc/autoban/ftp_ban.sh: ...

Sync to Dropbox from anywhere in your home folder

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:30:05 -0700

I use Dropbox to keep files in sync between my work computer (a PC), my MacBook Pro, and an iMac at home. Although Dropbox is great, it keeps the files that it syncs to the cloud in a Dropbox folder. I have my own folder/file organization for projects, which I would prefer to maintain.

I found that I could keep a copy in the place where I usually would and sync with the cloud by creating symbolic links to the folders that I want to sync inside the Dropbox folder. Using this method, the file would be available in both places, without taking up any extra disk space.

To do this, you need to use the Terminal. Since Dropbox allows you to choose where your Dropbox folder resides, there's no "one size fits all" solution, but here's the general syntax (replace username, foldername, and path/to/dropbox with your own values):

ln -s /Users/username/Documents/foldername /Users/path/t ...

10.6: Dial numbers in Google Voice using a Service

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:30:04 -0700

I created a Service to send a selected phone number to Google Voice to be dialed. To do this, I actually use two files: The service, which should be installed in your user's Library/Services folder, and the google-voice-dialer php script, which does most of the heavy lifting; install that wherever.

Download the zip file (78KB), expand it and open the resulting folder, move the Service to your user's Services folder and the php script to wherever you'd like it to reside. Before using this Service, you need to open it in Automator for some editing. Within the AppleScript code in the Run AppleScript Action on the right, scroll through the code and change the following properties: usrnm, psswrd, phnm, myFilePath, an ...