You no longer need to go get a free Thawte certificate or go anyplace else to get one -- Keychain Access now has a Certificate Assistant that will generate a self signed certificate for you!
Open Keychain Access (in /Applications -> Utilities), and in the Keychain Access menu, select Certificate Assistant (it's the fourth choice). Click it, follow the on screen directions. You can now encrypt and sign your email -- encryption requires your email recipient's public key.
[robg adds: This hint was also submitted at nearly the same time by boredzo, who pointed out the assisant's capabilities:
Create a certificate for yourself
Create a Certificate Authority (CA)
Use your CA to create a certificate for someone else
Request a certificate from an existing CA
View and evaluate certificates
We don't usually run menu-item hints, but since this one's hiding in the app's menu, and many people seem interested in encryption, etc., I thought it worth sharing.]
The updated Preview.app that comes with Tiger now offers a few extra features when used with PDF files. Besides the ability to do simple image editing and annotations, you are now able to add your own keywords to the internal properties header of a PDF file. Why is this useful?
Because not all scanners or scanning solutions do OCR. In my case, I have an extremely fast page scanner that will take a dozen or so pages and spit out a PDF in about a minute. However, the scans only contain a graphic image of the pages, not the actual text content of the file (and therefore invisible to Spotlight). This isn't as bad as it sounds, particularly if you're scanning your documents primarily for archival reasons (i.e. getting rid of mountains of paper clutter) .... or at least that's what I told myself until Spotlight was released. Now that Tiger has the ability to search for material based on content, I've begun looking for third party apps to take my previously scanned PDFs and add text content by OCR.
While I haven't decided upon a final solution yet, there is another option I'm considering that others may find useful: Instead of using OCR, manually add your own keywords to the internal properties stored along with every PDF file.
Prior to Tiger, one of the easier ways to do this was the shareware app PDFPen, which allows you to fill in the author, subject, and keyword fields in a PDF document. PDFPen is a great app that I continue to use, particularly for its ability to rearrange, insert, and delete individual pages in a single PDF file. But as it turns out, one of the stated improvements in Tiger's Preview.app is this same capability. Tools -> Get Info : Keywords tab. Whatever keywords are added to a PDF will then be visible from Spotlight.
Granted it's not as easy nor as automatic as a full OCR of a document, but at least it does allow you to specify and target your PDFs internal metadata a bit more accurately than just relying on the filename, etc.
I had been using an automator script to install my downloaded widgets, but wanted to delete the zip file which the widget came in at the same time.
So I created this short AppleScript to do the job. It probably could be improved (it only deletes the zip file if it has the same file name as the widget, but with .zip on the end), but I'm pretty new to AppleScript):
tell application "Finder"
set selectedFile to (get selection)
set filePath to (item 1 of selectedFile as text)
set zipFileName to filePath & ".zip"
if zipFileName exists then
move zipFileName to trash
end if
move selectedFile to folder "Widgets" of folder "Library" of startup disk
end tell
[robg adds: If you use Safari, these steps are usually automated. But this script could save some time if you use a third-party browser that doesn't install widgets automatically (or if you've disabled the feature in Safari).]
This may be a fairly obvious hint, but you can consolidate every Smart Search on your computer using a single Smart Search folder (this beats putting every Smart Search folder in your side bar, if you ask me). When you make your new consolidating Smart Search, use the Filename field from "Other," set it to Contains, and then type .savedSearch in the field. This will put all Saved Searches under that one single Search.
As seen in this screenshot, you can add a Raw Query so that this new all Saved Searches folder doesn't show up -- just include its name in the Raw Query, as shown.
I guess you could also just put an alias to the ~/User/Library/Saved Searches folder in your Sidebar, but that's less geeky.
Normally when you perform a Finder search for files that have Spotlight comments, you're limited to searching for a single phrase or word or comment. You can't search for multiple comments from within the same search field, nor can you add additional search fields, because then Finder thinks you're seeking all of the variables at once. However, with the Raw Query, you can easily search for multiple Spotlight comments with the following string:
(kMDItemFinderComment = "*text*")
The * characters placed before and after the word force the search to look for that word, but not limit itself by any other text around it (without the asterisks, the query becomes absolute for just that text and nothing else). For example, if you have one type of Spotlight comment that is Mac OS X Hints and another that is Unix Hints, then you can use the following string to find files possessing both types:
(kMDItemFinderComment = "*Hints*")
If you want to find all files with Hints comments, but also limit to them comments offset by the word Rob (i.e. Mac OS X Hints by Rob as opposed to Mac OS X Hints by Wolverine), then you can write it as follows in the same search field:
That search will find all comments that contain either the words "Hints" or "hints". This picture shows a sample smart search using these constructs.
Finally, you don't need to limit yourself to the Raw Query strings that you know -- you can easily find out what strings are available on a given file by going into the Terminal, finding the file, then typing mdls filename.ext or mdls "File Name.ext". Here's an example.
T-Mobile just started selling the Motorola V330, and I decided to change out my 3650 for it. It turns out the V330 is a V551 in disguise, so a little copying and pasting got iSync to see it just fine. This is on Mac OS X 10.4, so your mileage may vary.
Once in the file, add this text, preferably below the V300 section. After editing, iSynch synced up my Address Book and iCal just fine! I was impressed.
A lot of people, myself included, have been asking around message boards with the following problem: After upgrading to Tiger, their Bluetooth headset would still pair correctly, but it wouldn't show up as an input/output device. Removing and re-pairing the headset doesn't work. I resolved the issue as follows:
Delete the pairing with your headset in Bluetooth preferences.
Become root via sudo sh.
Make a backup copy of /var/root/Library/Preferences/blued.plist
Convert blued.plist to xml format by typing (assuming you're in the directory) plutil -convert xml1 blued.plist
Change owner to yourself in order to edit the file (replace username with your actual OS X user name) by typing chown username blued.plist
Now open blued.plist in Property List Editor, and hunt for the entry containing your headset. It will still be there, even after you deleted your pairing!
Delete the whole entry regarding your headset, and save blued.plist
Convert back to binary format by typing plutil -convert binary1 blued.plist
Reboot
Now try to re-pair your headset. It showed up as an input/output device in my case. Obviously this story changes some OS X system files, and should not be performed if you're not fluent in terminal work. But I do wish to share it, it brought me success ... Skype works once again!
[robg adds: The hint doesn't include instructions to change the owner back to root, but I think that would be a required step -- just type chown root blued.plist while still in the root shell. I can't test this, though, as I don't have a Bluetooth headset.]
I opened Help from the Addess Book. When the Help Viewer opened, I searched for "directories." It returned "6 help topics, 6 support articles." I double-clicked on one of the support articles, and it opened one of the Knowledge Base articles in the Help Viewer window.
I think it's great that they're integrating the Knowledge Base and local Help!
Tiger is pretty great. And this is really picking nits, but it was really bugging me, and it wasn't fixed in 10.4.1 ... so I fixed it myself.
In Tiger, the analog menu bar clock for some reason places the "hands" one pixel too far too the right, or if you like, places the clock face background one pixel to far to the left [leftmost of the two images at right]. Fortunately, this fix is easy. The clock background is drawn using two TIFF files located within the bundle of the Clock.menu package deep inside the System folder. So here's the fix:
The Clock.menu package is at /System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Menu Extras -> Clock.menu. Control-click on Clock.menu and choose Show Package Contents, then open the folder named Contents and the one named Resources within that. You can also open this folder more easily by pasting this URL into a new Safari window.
Copy Clock_Base.tif and Clock_BaseWhite.tif to your Desktop or some other location.
Open them both in Photoshop or some other graphics program that can edit TIFFs, and shift the contents of both 1 pixel to the left, then save both files.
Copy them both back to Resources folder you opened earlier, replacing the ones that are already there (you'll need an admin password for this).
You'll need to restart the menubar clock by turning it of and back on again in the "Date & Time" pane of System preferences before you see the fix [fixed clock is on the right side of the above screenshot].
[robg adds: The screenshot is from my machine, and the problem is clearly noticeable as you can see in the screenshot (and yea, you can see exactly how long it took me to do the modification!). But as I never use the analog clock, I hadn't seen it. If you do this, as with any system modification, I recommend renaming the existing files, not overwriting them. Sure, in this case, the modification isn't likely to cause any issues, but it's a good habit to get into.]
I don't know if anyone's pointed this out (a search didn't find it), but if you launch the Printer Setup Utility and click on its application menu, there's a "Reset Printing System..." menu item. Choosing it requires you to enter an administrator password, and it then kills the existing cupsd daemon and launches a new instance. This may help clear up printing problems without a reboot.
[robg adds: Generally, menu items aren't published here as hints. However, given that this one is hiding in the application's menu itself, and the number of times that printing problems seem to crop up, I thought it worth the mention.]