Macintosh

How to print labels the EASY way! – Video Tip

I know I’m late for this year’s Christmas season, but you can learn and start using this tip TODAY to make next year’s Christmas card mailings a breeze.

Too many computer users have no idea what a database is, how to use it, and how to merge it with another program to create labels. Since printing mailing labels is only a once per year activity for many of you, learning how to do it again every single year requires too much time and frustration.

In this week’s tip, I take all of the mystery and hysteria out of creating and printing mailing labels. You will thank me every November when you need to print out your mailing labels. The tip centers around creating a word processing document where you can store, edit and print your labels quickly and easily. Watch the video as many times as you need to and you will NEVER be frustrated with printing labels again!!

If you can’t understand and utilize this tip to print your labels, get out your best pen and write them out instead.

Email Tips / Macintosh / Ubuntu Tips — No Comments
21
Sep 09

Set Firefox to recognize web mail for mailto links – Video Tip

If you use a web based email system like Gmail, HotMail, or Yahoo email or any derivative of these, you more than likely run into occasions where you want to email someone from a web site. However, when you click the link (known as a mailto link), you get presented with an email system you never heard of or used asking you to enter your email particulars to send the email. Most folks usually just snarl and forget about it.

You could copy and paste the email address into your web mail. OR, if you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser, you can set it to Continue reading →

Macintosh — No Comments
2
Aug 09

Apple Macintosh Expose Shortcuts – Video Tip

Windows users making the switch to an Apple might miss the Show Desktop icon from Windows that minimizes all Windows and displays the desktop. By default, Mac systems have a function enabled called Expose corners that lets users quickly display the desktop by just moving the mouse to the lower right corner. In today’s short video tip, I explain how to enable the other corners of your Mac screen to perform a function that makes sense to you.

Take a look at this easy to implement and useful tool for Macintosh. Continue reading →

Digital Photography / Email Tips / Macintosh — 5 Comments
13
Jun 09

How to attach iPhoto images to Gmail & Yahoo Mail – Video Tip

Currently, iPhoto only lets you send photos via email from within iPhoto if you use the Apple Mail program. For web based email users like Gmail, HotMail or Yahoo email, follow the easy steps in this tip.

Start a new email as normal in your Gmail, HotMail, Yahoo mail, etc.
Complete the address, subject, and body of the message as normal as well.
Look for and click the Attach Files option
The Select Files screen will appear
In the lower left hand corner of this screen, click Photos
Now at the top of the screen, you will see iPhoto where you can click your Events or Photos folder
Now all your photos appear at the bottom of the screen where you can select the ones you want to send. (Hold down the Command key as you click to select more than one photo)
When finished selecting your photos, click the Select button
Once they upload to the email, click Send on your email.

All these steps are illustrated and narrated for you in Continue reading →

Macintosh / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 2 Comments
7
May 09

Easy Envelopes for Mac users

If you own an Apple computer running the Macintosh operating system, you will love this free application. You can’t print envelopes any easier with any computer or program.

EasyEnvelopes | Ambrosia Software, Inc..

Internet Tips / Macintosh / Riding Shotgun with Rick / Ubuntu Tips / Windows Tips — 5 Comments
28
Apr 09

Make reading the web easier than ever – Video Tip

photo credit: dsevilla

Although we now have 19″ and larger monitors on most new desktop computers, the text seems to shrink. Why is that? It has to do with screen resolution (how much information can be displayed). Screen resolutions on today’s monitors are up to 3X that of monitors we used just 6-8 years ago. We can see a lot more information, but often the text is too small to view for some computer users.

Never fear. Using this week’s tip, you can easily and quickly enlarge the text of any web page using only your keyboard and mouse. This tip will work with any web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc) and any operating system (Windows, Ubuntu, Mac OS X).

All you need is a mouse with a scroll wheel and your keyboard. This tip can be performed without the mouse as well, but I’ll touch on that later.

First, when you are reading a web site, particularly news web sites and blog type sites like mine, look for an indication of a printer friendly page. Often designated as Printer Friendly, Print this article, or simply Print, clicking this link brings Continue reading →

Macintosh / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 2 Comments
6
Feb 09

Have your Mac start a program when you start the computer

If you are a Mac user and want a program to start automatically, follow these steps:

Click the Apple from the upper left hand corner
Click System Preferences
Click Accounts in the System section
Click your user name
Click the Login Items button.
Click the “Add (+)” button underneath the listed items
Find the program you want to automatically start at bootup, and double-click it
Close all your open windows

Macintosh — 5 Comments
30
Dec 08

Customizing your iPhone home screen – Video Tip

This is a pretty specific tip for a relatively new device, but with WalMart now carrying iPhones more and more people will want and need to learn how to take advantage of their investment. The iPhone is a wonderful little tool…IF you learn how to use it and make it work for you.

One of the first things you can do with any piece of technology is customize it to fit your needs. With the iPhone, learning to customize the interface makes the unit more usable for you. This week, I show iPhone users how to customize the location of their icons on the iPhone launch screen or home screen.

Touch and hold your finger on any icon
When the icons start to jiggle, take your finger off the icon.
Now you can drag any icon to any position by touching and dragging it to a new location or even a new screen by dragging it to the left or right edge of the screen.
You can also drag the default icons off the toolbar at the bottom and drag the ones you use most often to the toolbar
When you are finished moving your icons to positions that work best for you, push the button at the bottom of your iPhone.

As always, these tips make more sense by watching the video! And even if you aren’t an iPhone user, I think you will find it interesting to see the kind of tech that can be found in a phone today.

Macintosh — No Comments
16
Dec 08

Using the Macintosh Dashboard – Video Tip

This week’s tip is for those of you who have taken my advice and moved over to the Macintosh world. The Mac has a nice feature that remains unused for many new Mac users. It’s called the Dashboard. The Mac Dashboard consists of literally hundreds of helpful or just plain fun, customizable widgets that can be instantly viewed or instantly pushed out of view. Mac computers ship with a couple of dozen widgets ranging from calculators, conversion programs, translation programs, weather gadgets, post-it type notes, and much more.

If you don’t find any Dashboard widgets that work for you, I explain how you can search Apple’s vast library of downloadable widgets…most of which are free.

Watch my how-to video below to learn how to make the most of your Mac Dashboard!

Internet Tips / Macintosh / Ubuntu Tips — 1 Comment
9
Dec 08

Pandora Internet Radio – Video Tip

Pandora.com qualifies for yet another Web 2.0 application. Pandora started as a project to find the similarities in music and why we like certain music and why we don’t. The Pandora folks eventually made all their study of music into an amazingly customizable and accurate music service. To sign up is free although I recommend paying for the service if you use it a lot. Once you sign up, you start by building your own radio stations based on your favorite songs or artists. After you build your first station, Pandora starts to play songs related to the song or artist you started with when you built the radio station (which entails that you simply type the name of a musical artist or a song name and click Create).

As the songs play, if you tell Pandora whether you like the selection or not (via a click on a thumbs up or thumbs down icon), it will continue to more accurately pick music for you. You must see the short video below to see how it works, and better yet, give it a try to see why it is such an exciting and useful Web 2.0 application!