Have your Mac start a program when you start the c...

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 ...

Customizing your iPhone home screen – Video ...

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...

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...

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...

Backup your digital photos with iPhoto – Vid...

Macintosh users take digital photos too. And they also need to make sure their photos are backed up safely. Thankfully, the bright men and women at Apple computers have built in a great picture management software called iPhoto. Within iPhoto, you will find a straight forward method of backing up your photos. Here’s how: 1. Start iPhoto 2. Hold down the Command key on your keyboard and select which folders,...

Mozy Online Backup – Now for Mac too

A couple of months ago I reviewed a couple of the online backup services and really liked (and continue to use) the Mozy Backup service. Today, Mozy announced the release of their online backup system for Macintosh users. You can read more about it and try it out by clicking this link.

How to get music off of your iPod

The iPod has set the standard for media players. It’s ease of use and intuitive interface make it a device that media lovers of all ages and expertise can easily pickup and use. However, the iPod has one disadvantage when compared with almost every other media player on the market. Once your music is stored on the system, there is no simple way of getting it back off again. If you switch computers or simply want to...

Use Alt+Tab or Command(Apple)+Tab to quickly chang...

Thanks to long time listener and web visitor, Daniel, for suggesting this week’s tip. I have been using this technique for more than ten years, but in order to learn it, you really must see it in action. Thus, it was a natural for our Video Tips, which are now almost 18 months old! For Ubuntu and Windows users, you can quickly switch between open programs by pushing Alt+Tab on your keyboard. Macintosh users have a key...

Microsoft Office function without the MS price ...

This is the first of what we hope to be many Macintosh video tips here at HelpMeRick.com. We posted a similar tip to this one a few months back for Windows and Ubuntu users, but this one applies to Mac users only. In this tip, I describe to you how you can use the free NeoOffice product from neooffice.org to seamlessly create Microsoft Office compatible documents. Of course, the software also allows Mac users to open any...