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Happy Thanksgiving to all; no hints today. Enjoy your day of family, turkey and football, and be thankful for all you have.
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[3,352 views]
 
Have you ever been reading a web page and find you have to leave, but would like to continue reading on your phone? Here's a handy bookmarklet you can use to transfer the URL to your phone:
javascript:var%20qr=window.open('',%20'Scan%20Me',%20'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=0,width=110,height=130');qr.document.write('%3Cimg%20src=\'http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=100x100&cht=qr&chld=M|0&chl='+document.location+%20'\'%20/%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Ca%20href=\'javascript:self.close();\'%3EClose%20Me%3C/a%3E');
Copy this to a new bookmark. I named mine "Send to Phone." It pops up a little window with the URL of your current web page encoded as a QR code. Simply scan it directly off your computer screen with your phone's QR code reader and off you go! (I don't claim credit for this bookmarklet; I found it at http://www.masukomi.org/projects/qr_bookmarklet/.) [kirkmc adds: Submitted by robleach; one of three hints submitted together. The others will follow.]
[3,931 views]
Sometimes, such as early this week, Apple's iMessages servers go down. If so, and you try to send iMessages, you may want to resend those messages as standard text messages or SMSs. OS X Daily had a nice hint about how to do so easily. After you've sent the iMessage, if you see that it's not delivered, or if you simply want to use a belt-and-suspenders approach to make sure your recipient gets your message, just tap and hold on the blue bubble containing the message text, then choose Send as Text Message. It will get sent as a text message, and you can tell this by the green text bubble.
For this to work, you have to have your contact's phone number in their card. However, if you only have an email address for that contact, tapping and holding the text bubble shows Send to Email Address. In my tests, this failed every time, so I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work. (I assume that it would try and send the message as an email…) If anyone can get this to work, please post in the comments.
[6,190 views]
If you ever want to create a reminder with an alert time, it's easy to do, and it's similar to Calendar's Quick Entry feature.
Just type something like "Dinner with grandpa at 6pm", and you will get a reminder with an alert at 6pm today. You can even specify a date, or use relative dates like today, tomorrow, etc. [kirkmc adds: This makes sense, and it's good to remind people of it.]
[5,526 views]
When managing a server at work, I noticed my home server was showing up in the list of managed servers. Trying to see if I could connect by supplying my credentials was unsuccessful. I figured it must be showing up because I had signed into the same iCloud account on both machines. I then wondered if using the Back to My Mac URL for iCloud would allow me to connect.
To test, in Server.app I selected Manage > Connect to Server... From there chose "Other Mac." For the Hostname I inserted the Back to My Mac URL in the form server.XXXXXXXX.members.btmm.icloud.com. (see this hint to find how to construct the correct URL for your Mac), supplied my credentials and clicked Connect. The remote server came right up and I was able to manage my home server with no issues.
[5,947 views]
I have a 27" Thunderbolt Cinema Display, and I use its built-in speakers for the output of alert sounds. (In System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects, you can choose this.) But the volume wasn't very loud, even though I had set the Alert volume slider to its maximum setting. I'd been trying to figure out why, because when I listen to music, the alert volume - and a sound I use to alert me when VIP e-mails arrive - isn't loud enough to be heard.
So I remembered that Audio-MIDI Setup has a number of tweaks for system sound settings. This app is found in /Applications/Utilities. When I opened it, and clicked on Display Audio, the two volume sliders (right and left channels) were nowhere near the maximum volume, so I raised them, and now I can hear my system beeps and other sounds. So if you have problems with the volume of any audio outputs, you might want to check Audio-MIDI Setup and see if it can fix the issue.
[3,809 views]
Have you ever had trouble finding an application's preference file? It isn't always easy, as the name of the .plist file sometimes isn't even close to the app's name. Here's an easy way to make it show itself.
Open the /Library/Preferences folder in your user account. (In Lion or later, from the Desktop, hold down the Option key and select Go > Library to access your user account.) Set the window to list view, then click the Date Modified tab at the top so they are listed by the newest files first. Some apps will update their .plist file every time you use the program. Otherwise, open the app and make any type of change in its preferences and save. Go back to the Preferences window and see which .plist file jumps to the top of the list. [kirkmc adds: Good common sense. I've used this many times over the years, and I couldn't find it in past hints.]
[6,947 views]
Up until iOS 6, there was no way to remove e-mails from the "recently contacted" list when you start typing new e-mails, even if that person wasn't in your Contacts. Now, you can remove them one at a time, provided they are not in your Contacts.
All you do is start typing the e-mail address, and then when the list of addresses starts to populate the screen, scroll down to the address you wish to delete. It will have a blue arrow pointing to the right. When you tap on that arrow, you'll see a Remove From Recents button; tap that to remove that e-mail address from the recent e-mail list. [kirkmc adds: I don't know if this is new in iOS 6, because I never really paid attention to it. What I notice is most of the addresses I see are addresses I've used on my Mac, not on my iOS devices. So, I went into Mail > Window > Previous Recipients, and deleted all those who weren't in my Contacts, and the next time I synced my iPhone, those extra addresses were gone. Note that I sync e-mail accounts via iTunes (Info tab > Sync Mail Accounts); if you have only set up your accounts on an iOS device, and don't sync, then this my work differently. Can anyone post in the comments if they do it differently, and if e-mail addresses get deleted after removing them in Mail?]
[4,750 views]
Use text substitutions to correct common typing errors
Nov 09, '12 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: spinkb
Mail and spell checking in general will fix a lot of typos and spelling errors automatically as you type, but it fails to correct common key sequence issues. Sometimes words are an actual word, but not something 99% of people would write. It also sometimes doesn't fix short spelling errors. Fixing things like "i," "suer", "tis," "fi," "eb," "si," "ti," and "int eh." Symbol and text substitution is your friend and picks up when spell checking doesn't.
I write a lot of e-mails; often hundreds a day providing support to customers. Not form e-mails, but actual human e-mails. Mail has pretty good auto-correction for spelling errors, but it doesn't handle key sequencing errors where the space key gets hit just before the ending letter of a word, or when letters come out just slightly out of sequence form typing fast. I constantly found myself proofreading for weird auto-corrected words, fixing the red underlined unknown things Mail didn't fix, and fixing missed capitalization mistakes such as "i" and "THanks." I searched and searched, trying to figure out how to remove words from dictionary, when I suddenly realized I could override the dictionary. Until now, I just see people telling you how to make shortcuts to type longer texts and such, but it's more useful to me to have it fix my typos so I can write my text faster. Open System Preferences, click on Language & Text, then on the Text tab to see the Symbol and text substitution list. Using this, I can fix common spelling sequence typos automatically, and have made my typo error rate almost 0%. Here are some examples that Mail didn't auto-correct:
[4,279 views]
This Service adds any unique words you look up in the OS X Dictionary app to a TextEdit document that is- saved on your desktop, so that you can review, or repeat them later. Then you can use the same service to look up those words that you have logged already; they won't be added to your log file.
The service is seamlessly integrated with the Dictionary service on your Mac. It is even installed on the same keyboard shortcut: Command-Control-D. The only limitation is that it only works with selected text, so if you are looking up a word by hovering the cursor over it, in, say, Preview or Safari, then you'll have to choose More in the lower right corner of the Dictionary sheet that pops up to view the full Dictionary window. Then you'll have to press Command-Control-D once more, to "log" the word into the text file (the search word turns up selected in the Dictionary window.) Avoid the above limitation by selecting the word before Command-Control-D. If you select the word before pressing Command-Control-D, then everything is handled automatically. Since English is not my native language, this is something I have been wanting for years. So it is mostly made for non-native English speaker, but may also be useful for native anglophones. How to install:
# © McUsr/MacUser06 2012
on run {input, parameters}
set glossaryName to "DictLogger.txt"
set AutomatorIcon to (a reference to file ((path to applications folder as text) & "Automator.app:Contents:Resources:Automator.icns"))
# checks to see if the current selection contains anything valid
considering diacriticals
if first character of (input as text) is not in "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" then
tell application "System Events" to set appname to name of first process whose frontmost is true
using terms from application "Finder"
tell application appname
display dialog "The selection you tried to look up a dictionary definiton for contains non-valid characters.
Please copy the selection you used into an empty text document to figure out what is wrong.
Quitting for now…" with title "Dictionary Logging Service" buttons {"Ok"} default button 1 with icon AutomatorIcon
end tell
end using terms from
return input
end if
end considering
try
open location "dict://" & input
end try
tell application "TextEdit"
try
set glossaryDoc to its document glossaryName
on error
set glossaryDoc to null
end try
end tell
try
set theF to quoted form of (POSIX path of (path to desktop folder as text) & glossaryName)
end try
set foundword to true
try
do shell script "test -f " & theF & " || touch " & theF
set foundword to (do shell script "grep '^" & input & "$' " & theF & ">/dev/null && echo \"true\" || echo \"false\"") as boolean
end try
if not foundword then
if glossaryDoc is not null then
tell application "TextEdit"
tell its document glossaryName
make new paragraph at beginning of its text with data ((input as text) & linefeed)
end tell
save glossaryDoc
end tell
else
try
do shell script "export TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/${tempfoo}.XXXXXX` && cat " & theF & " >$TMPFILE ; echo " & input & ">|" & theF & " ; cat $TMPFILE >>" & theF
end try
end if
end if
do shell script "open -b \"com.apple.Dictionary\""
return input
end run
[4,459 views]
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