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 the name of the file in the search field. Just click the saved search and all your recently modified files are together.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one.]

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).

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.

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.

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 when I wake up, rather than just roll out of bed onto Facebook.

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 relatively straightforward; it just curls the latest file from the site, renames it, and moves it into /etc/hosts. Be aware that the MVPS HOSTS file blocks a ton of sites, not all of which you may want blocked -- make sure you understand what you're getting if you use this hint.]

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. I have not tested this one.]

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, then ran sudo chown -R www * inside that folder. This changes the owner of the WordPress files to the user (www, which is actually _www, though I didn't specify it that way in the command) that runs the web server process.

After that, my plug-in installs went fine. This basic hint should apply to any other web application you install: if it's not behaving as expected, make sure its files are owned by the www user.

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 iTunes made them 14 to 16, and took one digit of the first three four-digit parts and made it position 13.

First I was concerned I might have done something I shouldn't have done (if it's even possible, which I doubt). Yesterday, though, I got my receipt from iTunes and checked AmEx -- it worked; iTunes was able to transfer from my credit card.

I don't know how many people actually have this problem, all I know is that the number isn't too small. And I hope that this will work for everybody with the same issue.

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 change to the directory where you expanded Privoxy: cd ~/Downloads/privoxy-3.0.16-stable (or wherever you put it). You can drag the folder to the Terminal to complete the path, if you wish.