Choose Between Delete and Archive

If you are more in favor of deleting emails that you have read and not archiving them, you can change the default setting of the Mail app such that it gives you the Delete option on swipe and not Archive.

How? On your iOS device, open Settings, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then tap the email account that you wish to change. There you’ll see an option that says Archive Messages. Turn it off and now you can send your messages from the Inbox straight to the Trash folder. ☺

Protect your Apple ID

A new app in the Google Play Store claims to bring Apple's iMessage service to Android devices, but users should keep their distance from this dubious software.

The app, simply dubbed iMessage Chat, is free to download and claims to have “no hidden costs” and no advertisements. It's supposed to allow Android users to communicate with iOS and Mac devices using Apple's free iMessage service, but it is operating without Apple's permission.

According to Adam Bell, the app does seem to work, though The Verge reportsthat Android-to-Apple communication isn't functioning properly.

Still, there are a few good reasons to stay away from this iMessage imitator. First, it asks for your Apple ID, which is attached to your personal and payment information. And as Jay Freeman (a.k.a. 'saurik' of Cydia fame) notes, all of the app data gets processed through the developer's server in China before connecting to Apple. This apparently prevents Apple from blocking the app, but it also raises security concerns about what happens to your data and login details.

Steve Troughton-Smith also points out that the app has the ability to download and install additional software in the background. Add the fact that the developerhasn't created any other apps, and you have every reason to be suspicious of this Android version of iMessage.

Besides, you can always rely on alternative apps to replicate iMessage's features without the security risks. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Viber, andFacebook Messenger let you communicate across many types of devices without counting against your SMS limit. And if you're looking to read and send regular text messages from another computer or tablet, you can use an app like MightyText. Unless the developer can somehow eliminate the security issues and earn users' trust, iMessage for Android isn't worth trying.

TOP 10 MALICIOUS EMAIL ATTACHMENTS

for August included four "ransomware" programs, which aim to extract money by locking victims' files or falsely warning they've been viewing illegal material.

The ransomware programs block "the work of the operating system and display a banner that gives instructions on how to unblock the computer. For example, the user is told to send a text message with a specific text to a premium-rate number," the analysts wrote.

Two other very old email worms, Bagle and Mydoom, also made the top 10. After infecting a computer, Bagle infiltrates a person's email contact list and sends itself out repeatedly. It was the third-most-common malware in August even though it was also discovered in 2004.

Two variations of Mydoom took the eighth and tenth places. Like Bagle, Mydoom also collects email addresses from infected computers and emails itself.

Phishing attacks rose tenfold, Kaspersky said, but still only amounted to a tiny fraction of overall spam, at .013 percent. Apple was one of the main phishing targets.

"We frequently came across emails that supposedly came from the official address of the company, but which in fact were phishing messages designed to deceive users and steal their logins and passwords," Kaspersky wrote.

[Now read: How to protect your PC against devious security traps]

Some of the phishing emails, which purported to come from the "Apple Security Center," warned users that their accounts had been frozen and that they have 48 hours to confirm their details.

Users are instructed to click on a link in the fraudulent email. "However, both the request to confirm the account information on third-party sites and the absence of a personal address should alert users to the risk of fraud," according to the post.

iPhone Power Adapters

Following recent reports of third-party iPhone power-adapters that were malfunctioning—”malfunctioning” in this case meaning “electrocuting their users”—Apple has introduced a take-back program for the things.

As reported on 9to5Mac, starting August 16, you’ll be able to bring any USB power adapter to an Apple Retail Store or authorized service provider, and the company will take that adapter and make sure it’s disposed of in an environmentally responsible fashion. If you want a new adapter, the company will—for a limited time—sell you a new, official Apple one for just $10. (They regularly cost $19.)

The offer is good through October 18, 2013, and is limited to one adapter per iPhone, iPad, or iPod you own. (You must bring the device with you for serial-number validation.)

This isn’t just altruism on Apple’s part. Headlines linking ‘iPhone’ and ‘electrocution’ are generally bad for business. More importantly, the program provides some justification for the company’s strict—and some would say draconian—hardware-certification programs.

GREEN DOT IN EMAIL

I received an email from a friend and there was a green dot to the left of their name in the email. Curious, I contacted Apple and found out that it means that person is available for Messages. That was included in the last Mt. Lion update. 

It would be nice if Apple would tell you what the latest updates include. 

BTW, as soon as my friend closed his computer the green dot in my email went off.

MacBook Air graphics

The New MacBook Air’s Graphics Will Be Powerful Enough To Drive A Retina Display

http://www.cultofmac.com/225960/the-new-macbook-airs-graphics-will-be-powerful-enough-to-drive-a-retina-display/

Posted with Blogsy by L. McNeil

Best iPad word processor

Textilus: The iPad’s best word processor | Slanted Viewpoint
http://www.tedlandau.com/slantedviewpoint/index.php/archives/2013/1146

Posted with Blogsy by L. McNeil

Information on 19.9 coming

Apple to release OS X 10.9 with new power-user features, more from iOS later this year

http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/29/apple-to-update-os-x-with-new-power-user-features-more-from-ios-later-this-year/

Posted with Blogsy by L. McNeil

How To Customize The Default Avatar Of WordPress

How To Customize The Default Avatar Of WordPress
http://onenaijablog.com/2013/04/how-to-customize-the-default-avatar-of-wordpress/

How to Protect Your WordPress From Attack

How to Protect Your WordPress From Attack
http://mashable.com/2013/04/18/protect-wordpress-from-attack/
An ongoing brute-force attack on WordPress-based websites has compromised more than 90,000 blogs, but there are simple ways to make sure your blog won't be next to fall.

14 WordPress Security Plugins for a Clean Installation

14 WordPress Security Plugins for a Clean Installation
http://colorburned.com/14-wordpress-plugins-brand-new-install/
by Jake Rocheleau
on April 18, 2013
"
After first installing a new website running WordPress there will be a number of tasks you want to handle. Securing the new installation is definitely a top priority. And thankfully there are tons of free plugins you can download right from the plugins administration page.
In this article I want to present 14 specific WordPress plugins which are helpful when doing a clean install. Any new WordPress-based website can benefit from a majority of these plugins. Additionally they are all free to download and the developers often update with version enhancements. You may not need every plugin but this is certainly an exhaustive list worth a quick peek."

How to Keep Your WordPress Site Secure From Hackers

How to Keep Your WordPress Site Secure From Hackers
http://www.authormedia.com/how-to-keep-your-wordpress-site-secure-from-hackers/

Genesis Theme Framework – The Best Wordpress SEO Theme

Genesis Theme Framework – The Best Wordpress SEO Theme
http://designyoutrust.com/2013/04/genesis-theme-framework-the-best-wordpress-seo-theme/
Genesis theme framework is regarded as one of the most popular and SEO friendly theme. It comes with dozens of SEO settings which let you create a perfect search engine optimized websites considering the onpage factors.

How to Find Royalty Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts

How to Find Royalty Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-find-royalty-free-images-for-your-wordpress-blog-posts/

WordPress Security

WordPress Security
http://www.sitepoint.com/wordpress-security/

Keep Up to Date

The first and the most basic measure to secure your WordPress installation is to keep it updated to the latest release. This helps patch security vulnerabilities. The process of updating WordPress is easy and fast.

A Look at WordPress 3.6 - New Features & New Default Theme

A Look at WordPress 3.6 - New Features & New Default Theme
http://wplift.com/wordpress-3-6

Mobile Plugins For Your WordPress Site

Mobile Plugins For Your WordPress Site
http://webtrainingwheels.com/mobile-plugins-for-your-wordpress-site/

5 Best and Creatively Designed WordPress Powered Websites for Inspiration

5 Best and Creatively Designed WordPress Powered Websites for Inspiration
http://www.bestdesigntuts.com/5-best-and-creatively-designed-wordpress-powered-websites-for-inspiration
"

The first and foremost thing that comes into mind, when we talk about WordPress is the BLOG, as it is one of the most popular blogging platform these days. The time when WordPress was strictly treated as a blogging platform has gone. Almost every website we come across on the web is hosted on WordPress, due to its features and user-friendliness. One need not to have technical knowledge of coding to start-up with his/her own blog/website.

WordPress has grown up as a capable Content Management System and this has given a great opportunity for designers and developers to create such amazingly designed websites that it becomes difficult to distinguish them with other HTML designed websites. This is all made possible with the heavy feature list, themes, widgets and plugins available on the web. Today, we like to showcase a few creatively designed websites powered by WordPress to inspire you switch your blog/website to this amazing platform for easy functioning." posted by administrator.

10 Time Saving WordPress Plugins

10 Time Saving WordPress Plugins
http://bradsknutson.com/blog/10-time-saving-wordpress-plugins/
Published April 16, 2013 by Brad Knutson
"

"Business owners, developers and bloggers alike all have the same problem. Time is money, and there aren’t enough hours in the day. We’re constantly up against the wall with deadlines, meetings, duties around the house and office, and unforeseen problems. Often times, the thing that we need most is just more time.
Since our time is so valuable, I wanted to highlight some WordPress plugins that webmasters, developers and bloggers use to save time every day."

20+ WordPress Advertising Management Plugins

20+ WordPress Advertising Management Plugins
http://wpbriefly.com/2013/04/wordpress-advertising-management-plugins/
by Lars Vraa on April 17, 2013

"
With WordPress advertising management plugins, it is possible to get more flexibility and control of what ads you are accepting and what you charge for the service. WordPress has become more and more popular due to its flexibility and user-friendly interface and the number of websites and blogs using WordPress themes grows day-by-day. Many bloggers use advertising to get a bit in return for their writing efforts. Typically it requires massive traffic to earn a living from the popular ad networks and selling your own ad spots as well may help raising the income to an acceptable level.
One of the upsides of using WordPress platforms is the many extensions that add functionality you need. It is possible to find various types WordPress ad management plugins you can use to take full control of how ads are sold and placed. Ad plugins for WordPress are typically easy to install and help you maintain your website advertising campaigns. In addition, some WordPress advertising plugins even lets you sell your ad spot online. This is a huge advantage compared to WordPress ad plugins where you have to handle the sales process manually. The plugins will work with most WordPress blog themes, but in some cases, you may need to do some coding to integrate the ad presentation into the layouts. If you are also looking for some blog themes I recommend you check out this article at Creativecan.com."

Premium Wordpress eCommerce Theme

Premium Wordpress eCommerce Theme
http://themeforest.net/item/serenity-premium-wordpress-ecommerce-theme/4542410

Special Features

• Minimalist, and clean design concept
• Responsive design, built based on mobile-first theory.
• Unlimited Slider
• Easy Demo Data Install
• Unlimited Google Fonts
• Unlimited Color
• Automated meta open graph tag and SEO ready
• Customized share buttons
• Widget Ready : Left sidebar, right sidebar and footer
• 8 footer widgets area
• Post Formats Support

A Set Of Free WordPress Themes That Actually Look Good

A Set Of Free WordPress Themes That Actually Look Good
http://www.designyourway.net/blog/resources/a-set-of-free-wordpress-themes-that-actually-look-good/

The new $100 bill....

How The New $100 Bill Will Foil Counterfeiters

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-04/how-new-100-bill-will-foil-counterfeiters?dom=fb&src=SOC

Safety on the web

Protect Yourself On Public Wi-Fi With Cloak [Deals]

http://www.cultofmac.com/224969/protect-yourself-on-public-wi-fi-with-cloak-deals/

How to move Time Machine Backup

How to Transfer Your Time Machine Backup To a New Hard Drive

http://www.mactrast.com/2013/04/how-to-transfer-a-time-machine-backup-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Open Office files on Chrome

Google adds ability to open Microsoft Office files directly in Chrome on Mac

http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/25/google-adds-ability-to-open-microsoft-office-files-directly-in-chrome-on-mac/

Words from the past

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/We-Had-No-Idea-What-Alexander-Graham-Bell-Sounded-Like-Until-Now-204137471.html#.UXoTr0hPG4A.twitter

Helpful must have apps

10 Apps That Made My Life Better

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-apps-that-have-made-my-life-better-2013-4

Evernote benefits

How and Why I’m Using Evernote

http://collindonnell.com/2013/04/20/how-and-why-im-using-evernote/

Cool idea

iPhone Stamp for UI Sketching

http://www.cultofmac.com/224355/iphone-stamp-for-ui-sketching/

Digitizing your vinyl library

How to digitise your vinyl

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/desktops/how-to-digitise-your-vinyl-50009225/

Can't live without

29 Web Apps We Can't Live Without

http://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/29_web_apps_we_cant_live_without

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Apple expands

Apple expands Mac accessory line to over 4,700 US Radio Shacks

http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/20/apple-expands-mac-accessory-line-to-over-4700-us-radio-shacks/

Posted with Blogsy

Are subscriptions going to be the new service plan?

Something to think about....

Evernote for Mac Updated with “Quick Note”

http://www.macstories.net/news/evernote-for-mac-updated-with-quick-note/

Posted with Blogsy

Google Glass

Hey, check out this pin on Pinterest: Google Glass Infographic dissects the technology

http://pinterest.com/pin/119556565080546847/

Posted with Blogsy

Flipboard's new tools

 

Welcome to the Next Generation of Flipboard

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Inside Flipboard

What’s the only thing better than Flipboard? Flipboard 2.0! It’s a major new edition, with treats for everyone from the casual reader to the power user. There’s more content than ever to enjoy, including a new partnership with Etsy. When you search, we instantly create a magazine out of your results. It’s faster, more visual, and easier to navigate.

And, for the first time, you can collect and save articles, photos, audio and video by organizing them into beautiful magazines. These can be private, or if you want to connect with like-minded enthusiasts, you can make them public and share them on Flipboard and beyond. Now everyone can be a reader and an editor.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Subject: "Take Control of iCloud" ebook updated to cover Apple's many changes

Time for a pop quiz! 

Is iCloud (a) packed with useful features, (b) more complex than Apple lets on, (c) almost essential for Mac and iOS use, (d) thoroughly documented by Joe Kissell in "Take Control of iCloud," or (e) all of the above? 

The answer, as you veteran quiz takers know when faced with an "all of the above" option, is (e). iCloud really is helpful, deceptively complicated, integrated deeply into the Mac and iOS experience, and, frankly, sometimes a royal pain in the posterior. But no one does a better job of explaining iCloud's features and quirks than Joe Kissell, and you can come up to speed with everything iCloud can do for only $10.50 with the 30% MUG discount:

http://tid.bl.it/icloud-mug-discount  

If you're pulling out your hair in frustration as you try to connect your Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Windows PC to the many digital pipes that iCloud offers, Joe's 155-page "Take Control of iCloud" will answer your questions and preserve your hairstyle. And, if you're trying to help your mother, sister, uncle, co-worker, fellow Rotarian, or Game Center buddy sync contacts between devices, create a shared calendar, filter email before it hits the iPhone, and so forth, Joe has ferreted out the details you need to solve their problems.

iCloud is no longer new, and the dreaded transition from MobileMe is long past, but updates and ongoing issues have made "Take Control of iCloud" our top-selling book of the past few years. Keeping it fresh and accurate - this is our fourth free update! - is like playing Whack-a-Mole. Sometimes it seemed that nearly every page had some detail that needed checking and tweaking. Even though Apple doesn't share inside information with us about what's happening in iCloud's troposphere, things Joe has had to track down and explain since just the last version of this book include iOS 6, iTunes 11, the Notes and Reminders Web apps, Shared Photo Streams, numerous tiny changes to iCloud's Web interface, and more. 

As always, thank you for supporting the Take Control series!

cheers... -Adam & Tonya Engst, Take Control publishers

Cut through your bookmarks clutter

How often do you use your Web browser? If the answer is constantly, then a few choice tips could save you loads of time and trouble. Here are some for Apple’s Safari 6.

Overwhelmed by bookmarks? The first step is to organize them into folders (Bookmarks > Add Bookmark Folder). The next step is to organize the bookmarks within the folders. It's not hard if you use the Finder to alphabetize them.

Go to your bookmarks window (Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks or Command-Option-B), and drag a folder from the Bookmarks sidebar to the Desktop. This action copies the folder to the Desktop, and the contents automatically sort by name.

You can’t drag a folder directly into the Safari sidebar; so, instead, drop your sorted folder into the list area of the Bookmarks window, and then drag it from there to the sidebar. Unlike in the Finder, folders with the same name can exist in the same location in Safari, which means now you’ll have two. After you place the organized folder, delete the original.

PRIVACY

You don’t necessarily want your personal data accessible to every app that asks, and iOS is here to give you the kind of fine-grained control that you crave. Under the Privacy section of Settings you can not only adjust which apps have access to your location, but also prevent them from accessing your contacts, calendars, reminders, photos, and Bluetooth sharing. Plus, if you use Twitter or Facebook, you can decide which of your apps can log in with your credentials. Just tap the appropriate section for any of these and slide the switch for the selected app to Off.

Restrictions. Go to General and then to Restrictions. You’ll be prompted to enter a passcode. You can then select which features you would like to lock down on your iOS device. If you’re planning to hand the iPhone off to Junior, and Junior has a habit of unintentionally deleting your apps, you can specifically disable that capability from the Restrictions screen. You can also prevent access to the iTunes Store, the iBookstore, Safari, Camera, FaceTime, and more.

Siri can help you post to your favorite social network.

 If you use Facebook and/or Twitter, Siri offers a bunch of helpful options. You can say “Post to Facebook I love reading Lex and Dan’s stuff at Macworld.com,” or “Write on my Wall I love Siri,” or even, “Post I’m an over-sharer to Facebook.” With Twitter, you can say “Tweet I’m eating breakfast” or “Post I’m still eating breakfast to Twitter,” along with other, similar variations.

Digital newsletter

Macwidgets Digital Newsletter can now be found in our sidebar.
Check it regularly for current articles about technology and the mac or idevices.

It is curated on the Scoop.it! platform.
It works on both the computer, iPhone, and iPad.
Check it out. It is a great way to do a newsletter.

YOUR OWN PRIVATE IMDb

You probably already know that you can use Siri to get information about what’s playing at movie theaters near you. But Siri’s also in expert in pretty much every motion picture ever made. That means you can ask questions about your favorite films, but you can also make Siri do more of the legwork for you when, say, you’re curious about which films specific actors have appeared in together. You might ask, “What movies star both Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry?” And Siri will, in turn, reply with both The Rocky Horror Picture Showand Rugrats In Paris.

SIRI AUTO OUTPUT

 If your car has a built-in speakerphone, or if you have a Bluetooth accessory that has a microphone and speakers, you can choose which one Siri listens to for commands. When you click and hold the iPhone’s Home button, you’ll see a speaker icon to the right of the main Siri button. Tap it, and you’ll get a menu of all the various sound inputs your iPhone can use; select the one you want, and Siri will listen using that microphone and, if possible, give its feedback via those speakers.

Documents App for iPad by Readdle -- A Swiss Army Knife of DocumentReaders

Documents is a powerful document and image reading and annotation app for the ipad developed by Readdle the authors of Good Reader. In fact Documents, which is currently free on the Apple App Store, will be replacing Good Reader (currently a Pay app).

Documents can open and display text, PDFs, convert Word and Pages documents to a readable form, open slides from Keynote and PowerPoint, graphics, video and music files can be opened and played within the app as well.

You can create a text file, markup (in multiple colors) documents as highlight, underline, strike through and more. The only action it doesn't appear to be able to do, which Good Reader and some other apps can do, is write comments in a PDF document.

Documents supports a large list of Cloud Services such as DropBox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Box Net, SugarSync, and more. You can also allow you to email, upload your documents to other applications such as notebook apps, utilities such as Zip+ and cloud services. With Documents you can create folders using Its internal file system. View in list or icon formats.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FeWhyGNgUGI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Take a look at this short video to see what Documents can do.

Mac troubleshooting: How to handle freezes and crashes

Joe Kissell@joekissell

• Feb 13, 2013 3:30 AM
• print

Crashes and freezes in OS X are mercifully rare, but they do occur. Fortunately, most of them can be resolved readily; and even though a crash or freeze may have any of numerous causes or symptoms, the same procedure works for troubleshooting most of them.

Crashing apps

Your first step should be to determine the scope of a problem. Is just one application having difficulties, or is the whole system affected?

Send a report, or not: If an app quits unexpectedly, you know that it's at least part of the problem. App crashes are usually accompanied by an error message. If you see one of these, click Reopen to send Apple a report with details about your system configuration and what went wrong, and then relaunch the app. Or clickOK to send the report without relaunching the app.

With OS X's default settings, a dialog box like this appears after most app crashes. Click Reopen to send a report to Apple and relaunch the app.

If you don’t want to send Apple information about crashes automatically, go to theSecurity & Privacy pane of System Preferences, click the lock icon, and enter your username and password to unlock it. Then click Privacy, select Diagnostics & Usage, and uncheck Send diagnostic & usage data to Apple. After you do that, the options in the crash dialog box change to Ignore, Report, and Reopen; only if you click Report is information sent to Apple.

If you change your preferences to prevent crash reports being sent to Apple automatically, a dialog box like this appears when an app crashes.

Skip reopening windows: If the app crashes again after you relaunch it, you’ll see a message asking whether you want to reopen the windows that were open the last time. I suggest clicking Don’t Reopen, on the theory that something in one of the open windows may have caused the crash. Either way, as long as the app functions correctly from then on, you can go about your business. (If it continues to crash, follow the steps below, beginning with “Restart.”)

When an application crashes a second time after you relaunch it, OS X asks if you want to reopen its windows. Most likely you don't.

Spinning beach balls and other bad signs

Sometimes, however, an app freezes but doesn’t quit. If your symptom is an unresponsive Mac—perhaps featuring the dreaded spinning wait cursor, sometimes refered to as the "spinning beach ball" or as I like to call it, the “spinning pizza of death” (SPOD)—you’ll need to narrow down the cause.

Switch to another app: Try switching to another app—for example, by clicking its Dock icon or pressing Command-Tab. If other apps respond, and especially if the SPOD appears only when you hover the pointer over a window or menu belonging to the app that was in the foreground when your Mac stopped responding, try force-quitting that app. One way to do this is to press Command-Option-Esc, select the app in the list that appears, and then click Force Quit. (Sometimes you may need to repeat this once or twice to get the app to quit.) If this force-quitting succeeds, try relaunching the app. More often than not, that will be enough to bring the app back to life.

If relaunching (or force-quitting and then relaunching) an app doesn’t do the trick, if none of your apps respond, or if your mouse pointer is frozen, move on to the following steps—try each one, in order, until the problem goes away.

Restart: If you can choose Restart from the Apple menu, do so. If not, press Command-Control-Eject (the Eject key looks like an upwards-pointing arrow with a line underneath it) to force an immediate restart. If even that doesn’t work, press and hold the Power button until your Mac shuts down, then press the Power button again to turn your Mac back on.

Check disk space: A startup disk that’s extremely low on disk space (10GB or less) can lead to slowdowns and worse. Delete some files (or move them to another disk) to make more space. For help, see “Seven ways to free up drive space.”

Try another document: If an app always misbehaves when a particular document is open, try closing it and opening a different document. A damaged or corrupted file could be the source of the problem.

Update your software: Make sure OS X itself, and any apps you use regularly, are up to date, because a software update may have fixed a crash-producing bug. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to update Apple software and anything downloaded from the Mac App Store; for anything else, use the app’s built-in software update feature or download the latest version.

Disconnect peripherals: If you attached any new devices recently—especially USB devices—try disconnecting them. Restart and see if the problem recurs. If not, the device may be faulty or, more likely, it may require updated software or firmware. Contact the device’s manufacturer for assistance.

Disable plug-ins: If the app that’s crashing includes any extensions, plug-ins, or other extras, try disabling or removing them to rule out the possibility that the add-on software is the culprit.

Try a safe boot: To disable certain software that loads at startup and to run cleanup processes that may resolve random gremlins in your system, try a safe boot: Restart your Mac, and, immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key until the gray Apple logo appears on the screen. If the problem goes away, restart again normally and try again.

Repair your disk: Disk errors can lead to all sorts of problems, crashes included. Try using OS X Recovery and using Disk Utility’s Repair Disk feature to look for and fix common disk errors.

Run Apple Hardware Test: Apple Hardware Test is a special utility you can run to test your Mac’s logic board, RAM, graphics board, and other components for errors that could lead to crashes and worse. Apple’s support site has complete instructions for using this tool.

Add RAM: If your Mac has a small amount of RAM (say, 4GB or less) and has available slots to add more, try increasing your RAM. Extra RAM can speed up many operations on your Mac and can reduce the likelihood of crashes and hangs related to running out of memory.

If you try all those things and continue to have crashes or freezes, contact the app’s developer (if it’s a single app) or Apple (if the problem is system-wide) for further advice and assistance.

USE "IN TRANSIT" CUE

Use the “in transit” cue. Ask Siri to help you find an address with a couple extra words at the end, as in: “give me directions to San Francisco International Airport via transit.” iOS will open up the Maps app and display the routing pane, which lets you choose which third-party app you’d like to supply your directions.

Attentive readers will know that Google Maps is included among these routing apps, which means that you can actually use this trick to get directions via Google Maps using Siri.

Bugs & Fixes: PDF's fail to open by Ted Landau

Recently, I tried something that had always worked before. This time, it didn’t.

Using Safari, I clicked a link to a PDF file. After the PDF opened in a browser window, I selected the Save As... command from Safari’s File menu. So far, so good. Next, I double-clicked the saved file sitting on my Mac’s desktop. Normally, this opens the file in Preview. This time, however, I was greeted with

the following error:

A similar message appeared if I tried to open the file in Adobe Reader, rather than in Preview. I next tried saving the file from Firefox

instead of Safari. It made no difference.

Returning to Safari, I selected the Print command. From the Print dialog, I selected to save the file as a PDF. This too failed to save a viable copy.

I finally discovered a route to success. If I clicked my trackpad when the pointer was over a PDF page in Safari, a toolbar overlay appeared. One icon in the toolbar was a floppy disk (really!). Clicking this icon saved a copy of the file that (at last!) opened in Preview with no errors.

The problem was not restricted to a particular PDF file saved from the web. It happened with any one I now attempted to save. PDFs that did not originate from a web page continued to open just fine.

I wasn’t certain why the problem had first popped up when it did, nor why one particular method of saving worked while other similar ones did not. However, I was fairly certain as to the culprit: I suspected the Adobe .plugin files used for PDF viewing. Two such files resided in my /Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder: AdobePDFViewer.plugin and AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin. If I removed this pair from the this folder, Safari reverted to its built-in (not Adobe-based) method of viewing PDF files. After I did this, problems with saving PDFs from Safari vanished.

To be clear, removing these plug-ins did not eradicate problems with previously saved files. It just prevented symptoms going forward.

My next step was to check if there was a more recent version of these plug-in files that fixed this problem. At first, the answer appeared to be no. As I knew these files get installed as part of Adobe Reader, I launched the app and selected Check for Updates. It said I was already using the latest version (10.1.5).

Not ready to give up, I also checked Adobe’s website. Contradicting the Reader app, the site listed a newer (11.0.01) version as available. After I updated to this newer version, the PDF saving bug was gone!

Unfortunately, the update introduced a new bug. Now, when I select to save a PDF file from Safari, I have to save twice. At the second instance, I am asked if I want to replace the file I just created a moment before. While a minor irritation, it’s been enough to get me thinking that I would be better off giving up on Adobe’s plug-ins altogether.

Normally, I wouldn’t devote a column to a bug that is resolved merely by updating software. However, I suspected that many users would not realize that the Adobe plug-ins were the culprit. Even if they did, they might not realize that these files originate with Adobe Reader. Even then, they would likely be stopped by Reader’s erroneous update message. Not to worry. If you have this bug, you now know what to do.

ENABLE EMOJI KEYBOARD

Perhaps you’ve seen these iconographic symbols in emails, iMessages, and tweets, and wondered how the heck people managed to type them. Maybe you’ve mistakenly assumed that you need to purchase a third-party app to gain access to those special symbols.

You don't: Apple treats those symbols, called Emoji, as an international keyboard. Launch Settings, and tapGeneral, International, Keyboards. Then tap Add New Keyboard and find Emoji. Now open an app where you can type some text.

Next to the spacebar, you’ll see a little globe icon. Tap it to switch between your regular keyboard and the Emoji one, which contains many tabs full of different characters. Tap on those characters to insert them wherever you’d like. (If you have many international keyboards, tap and hold the globe to bring up a menu of all your options.)

Spoken Emoji. For real fun, type in a bunch of Emoji symbols, select them all, and then tap the Speak button. You’ll hear the often-entertaining names of each symbol read in sequence.

SPEAK TEXT

Your iPhone or iPad can read to you. Enabling the Speak option makes it possible for your iOS device to read aloud any selectable text. Launch the Settings app, tap on General, and then choose Accessibility. Scroll down to Speak Selection, and tap to turn it on.

Now, go into any app where you can highlight text. Your options include Mail, Safari, Notes, and many others. Select some text, and you’ll see a new option appear in the contextual menu (you may have to tap the right arrow to view more options). Tap the Speak command, and your iOS device will start reading the text aloud.

Quick Correct

When typing you may find that you enter a word incorrectly or that auto-correct changes it when you tap the space bar. Instead of deleting the whole word just tap the backspace key once to see the replacement options, then select the word you want to change it to.

Where's Hold?

If you're using an iPhone 4 or 4S, you’ve probably noticed that when making a call, the hold button has been replaced by the FaceTime button. You can still place a call on hold though.

To do so, tap and hold the mute button until it turns into hold. To resume the call, tap the hold button again.

Stream video to Apple TV

Beamer’ Can Stream Video In Any Format To Your Apple TV
http://www.razorianfly.com/2013/01/15/beamer-can-stream-video-in-any-format-to-your-apple-tv/

IPHONE TIP

Good Video on iPad/iPhone Accessories for Road Warriors

Must--Have iPad Accessories for the Road 

(Productive! Magazine Show #47)

Apple, Business, Travel, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Accessories, Gadget, Technology

A good overview from Michael Silwinski on what accessories he takes for his iPad when traveling and a good method for packing them up.

You might find duplicating or utilizing many of his tips will make traveling with your iDevice more productive and encounter less hassles. 
[Click on the title above to see the video on what he takes with him on the road and how he organizes his accessories] 

Virtualization Software for Intel Macs -- Parallels Desktop 8 vs. VMware Fusion 5

From MacObserver

 Pitting Parallels Desktop 8 Against VMware Fusion 5

1:45 PM EST, Jan. 31st, 2013 · John Martellaro · John Martellaro's Blog

For many users, virtualization is an important capability on their Macs that allows them to run other OSes, for example, Windows or Linux, right along side OS X. The two leaders are Parallels Desktop and VMware's Fusion. MacTech Magazine has extensively benchmarked the two over the years and has consistently found a winner. Here some details on their latest report.

_____________________

MacTech Magazine has just released an extensive report, a continuation of a series launched several years ago, to pit these two major virtualization products against each other in a variety of tests that include:

• Top level results
• Launch and CPU tests
• Footprint and battery tests
• File and Network I/O
• Games
• Retina Support

The most recent report, for January 2013, has just been published, and it's a tour de force analysis. The scale of the project is described in the section that explains why some other virtualization products were not included.

This benchmark project is already huge with thousands of collected data points crossing four guest OSes (Windows 7, Windows 8, OS X Lion, and OS X Mountain Lion), five models of computers with mechanical hard drives and SSDs, and over 60 tests each run 3-5 times for most of the environments. There were several thousand tests to be completed, many with a stopwatch."

Top Level Results
Those users who have specific needs will want to look through report to see which product is best for them, but the 30,000 ft view from MacTech is that, once again, Parallels Desktop was the clear winner, especially in 3D graphics. The report states: "If you look at all the tests, including the 3DMark06 detailed tests, Parallels won over 68% by 5% or more, 56.9% of the tests by 10% or more, and 31.7% by 25% or more.
VMware Fusion won 7% of these tests by 5% or more, 3.7% by 10% or more, and 0.2% by 25% or more. In 24% of the tests, the two products were within 5% of each other (i.e., they tied)."
Here it is in a pie chart format.

Source: MacTech Magazine (with permission)

There is much more in the report, so I will just quote from the conclusion.

In the vast majority of our overall tests, Parallels Desktop 8 won. Again, if you count up the general tests (including the top 3D graphics scores), Parallels won 56% of the tests by 10% or more. If you include all the tests where Parallels was at least 5% faster, as well as the balance of the 3DMark06 graphics tests, Parallels increased the lead further."
If you are a traveler, Parallels Desktop has power management features that stretch your battery life. On the MacBook Pro, we saw about 40% more battery time on an idling virtual machine (a couple of hours of additional use in Windows 7) than we did on VMware Fusion in the same test."

TMO's Own Tests
In September of 2012, TMO's Jim Tanous conducted his own extensive benchmark analysis of these two products. Shown there were extensive comparison charts of performance in various tests, and Parallels Desktop 8 consistently outperformed VMware Fusion 5.
Mr. Tanous wrote: "From a purely performance-based perspective, Parallels has won this year’s competition of virtualization software on OS X. The good news for consumers, however, is that Fusion is not far behind in most categories and, while Parallels is indeed faster, Fusion is often fast enough for common tasks."

 

                                                               From TMO, September 4, 2012.

From my experience, virtualization is a very important technology for many Mac users, whether for personal or business use. If Apple were to contemplate, at some point, switching to the ARM architecture for Macs to take advantage of ARM's low-power capabilities, that will likely mean a modification of the ARM hardware architecture to support virtualization and a major rewrite in store for these two front runners. Time will tell.

John Martellaro

John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer and has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include skiing, chess, science fiction and astronomy. You can follow John on Twitter at twitter.com/jmartellaro.