Assigning Apps to Spaces in Lion

February 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

OSX Lion select space for app

I like to keep a separate desktop window (“space” in Apple parlance) for blogging (and the screenshot shot and editing apps I use). However, when I launch an app, it defaults to the main desktop. I remember that in OSX 10.6, you could set which space an application opening in System Preferences. However that has gone the way of the dodo in OSX 10.7 Lion.  So, how do you select where apps should open or even keep them visible on all desktops?

Easy enough:

  1. Right click (CMD-click) icon in the application dock.
  2. Go to Options.
  3. Select which desktop you want the app to launch in (or if you want it in all desktops).

Yay! Thanks to MacLife for providing a list of Mac Spaces tips. I would love to link directly to the article but the URL produces a 404 error each time. It looks like MacLife doesn’t like deep linking.

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Using Mac’s Text-to-Speech with Mac Kindle App

January 16, 2012 By 2 Comments

I like having Apple’s text-to-speech read websites to me while I scan other pages, or check email. I was wondering if I could do the same with my Kindle books.

I currently use the $79 Kindle, which doesn’t have a headphone jack (so no text-to-speech possible there). Also, a number of Kindle books do not have text to speech enabled, anyway.

So, I found myself wondering if there was any way to use Apple’s built-in text to speech to read Kindle books?

The answer was a surprisingly simple “Yes!” “Yes, but only for a while — see update below”

  1. Download the Kindle for Mac desktop app.
  2. Load up your favorite book (even if it has Kindle’s own text-to-speech disabled).
  3. Reduce the font to the smallest setting. This lets you select more text in the next step.
  4. Highlight all the text.
  5. Press the text-to-speech hotkey in you selected in System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech.

Enjoy your favorite Apple text-to-speech voice read your book to you!

UPDATE: This works until you reach the copy limit for the ebook. The process described above acts as “copying.” Then, you get a warning, and then you can’t use the process anymore. Have I mentioned how much DRM sucks?

 

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Adding different highlight colors for PDF in Adobe Acrobat

January 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

Adobe acrobat hightlight 1

One of my favorite tools in Adobe Acrobat is the highlighter. However, when I am commenting and marking up PDF documents , I was frustrated with not being able to select different highlighter colors other than YELLOW!

There’s got to be a way to highlight PDF documents in red, green, blue or any different color, doesn’t there?

There is a way!  With the Highlight tool selected, click CMD+E. A new tool bar pops up letting you select a different highlight color.

Adobe acrobat hightlight 2 small

Now, go have fun highlighting your PDFs in ANY color!

Adobe acrobat hightlight 3 final

And here’s how to add highlight colors in Adobe Acrobat on PC (Windows).

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Backup strategies for solo or small firm lawyers

January 2, 2012 By 2 Comments

It’s a new year and it is time to make good on that resolution to strengthen your law firm’s backup strategy (or to get one started)!

How to get your back-up plan in order, in case of a hard drive failure, theft or fire, is one of the most important things a solo attorney and small law firm can do — especially once you go paperless. Then it is all just bits. And you do not want them to go away. Fortunately, it is much easier to copy bits than it is paper documents, allowing you to have multiple up to date and versioned copies in multiple locations.

Goals of a successful backup strategy:

  • Automatic. You already know that if something is a hassle, it is not going to get done. You want something that works in the background whether you remember to use it or not.
  • Multiple locations. One of the worst backup strategies is to have your backup sitting next to your computer. You want to make sure you have offsite back-up. And having a backup in a completely different regions is even better.
  • Multiple copies. One backup is good, but several are better. You never know when a perfect storm will hit and take out your one backup.or
  • Multiple services. If something happens with your backup provider, even a temporary problem with connectivity, you could be left out in the cold. It is a good idea to put your eggs in several different baskets just in case.

Great, you say. You could read pabulum like this on any number of law blogs. So let me give you a quick and dirty guide to backing up. Some of this is Mac specific, but I am including PC alternatives for the Morlocks among you ;)

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Cloud, Mac Tips, Practice Tips Tagged With: , , , , , ,

iPhoto won’t play older iPhone movies

December 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

IPhoto videos wont play

I spent the better part of a Saturday trying to figure out why iPhoto 11 won’t play old videos. I know I recorded them on an iPhone. Yet, whenever I try to play a video, I get a the gray exclamation point triangle sign.

I pulled up the information inspector (Cmd-I), and I see that these older videos are in RAW format (compared to H.264 for more recent videos).

Installing Quicktime Player 7 — Strike 1!

After scrounging around on some forums, I see that the problem may be that Apple didn’t ship with the necessary codecs to play videos recorded, oh… IN THE LAST YEAR!

Apple: It Just Works — Until It Doesn’t… Because We Took a Part Out

Anyhow, download Quicktime Player 7 for the current version of OSX (currently Lion).

Quicktime player 7

Install it, and then relaunch iPhoto. I also hear using VLC also works for playing back these “old” videos.

Did that work for me? [Read more...]

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Gonzo iMovie editing tips

December 14, 2011 By 2 Comments

I was doing interviews at MILOfest (Macs in Law Offices) conference. I had FinalCut X installed on my late 2010 Macbook Air and, over the course of the afternoon sessions, I got to watch the progress meter slowly churn on an 8 minute clip and still not finish. Previewing and editing lower thirds was positively painful. Everything might have been ok if I had not tried to re-render the clip (even using the proxy media setting).

I know, I know, I’m trying to use a heavy-duty app on an underpowered machine. So, despite the much greater editing, titles, audio, controls, I found myself going back to my iPhone for some rapid-fire, gonzo, video editing.

Here are tips for splitting clips, tricks with titles, and making video editing on the iPhone with iMovie doable.

Pinch and Zoom the timeline

Touch interfaces have a lot of gee whizz! However, fine editing on a small screen isn’t ideal; especially when you are dealing with small clips. Well, don’t sweat it! If you need finer control, use the two finger expand gesture to expand the clip.

IMovie iOS p z 3

Now, it is easier to find the right spot for edits, sound cues, etc. [Read more...]

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MacTip: Built in Magnifying Loupe in OSX Lion

December 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Lion Loupe

Here’s a quick tip from Finis Price presented at MILOfest 2011:

In Preview, hit the tilde key (~) to open a magnification loupe and you can make the loupe larger or smaller by pinching and expanding on the trackpad OR using the plus and minus (+ and -) keys.

You may not be able to just tell your computer “ENHANCE!” However, you can quickly get a nice magnifier!

 

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Restoring sort-by-column in OS X Lion’s Finder list view

November 21, 2011 By 10 Comments

Apple’s OS X 10.7 Lion can be an amazingly annoying beast. Things that worked one way in prior versions suddenly stop working.

Recently, I had the darnedest time time trying to sort files in list view in the Finder. The descriptions above each column were grayed out, with no way to click on them to change the “sort by” category. I found I could no longer switch between sorting by name, date modified, size or kind.

So I pulled up the View options (Cmd-J or from the pull down menu “View – View Options”).

[Read more...]

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How to create links to Apple iTunes, App Store and Mac App Store

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Writing about various apps means I often have to create links to the product. However, finding links to Apple App Store or iTunes pages is difficult. I would think there would be a button right on the product page or an option to share the product on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or other social networks. But, no. It’s not there.

Fortunately, there is the iTunes Link Maker. While it is not the easiest solution, it provides a way of creating a link music, movies, books, and apps in iTunes, the iOS App Store (iPhone and iPad) and the Mac App Store (desktop).

 

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Fixing “Windows created a temporary paging file” error message

November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

my mind is blown

I am a Mac user primarily. However, I still need to use programs like Quickbooks to run my law office. This brings virtualization into the picture. Personally, I use VMWare Fusion. Note: I am not knocking Parallels; I simply moved to Fusion a few years ago to take advantage of the multi-core functionality in Fusion. Time has passed and both programs are quite good.

Since I virtualize, I want to run Windows in a lean environment. So, I set up a small 20 gb maximum for Windows to run in.

Recently, I started getting an error message every time I started Windows  7:

Windows created a temporary paging file…

Whenever I got this message, Quickbooks would have trouble running and particularly backing up to a shared drive on the Mac side of my computer. I did not find a solution despite reading various articles.

What was the problem? I simply ran out of room. Derr! Even though I save most everything on the Mac side, updates and other files had slowly eaten up the small virtual drive Windows was running on. So, wham-bam, no room to work and paging file errors.

Fortunately, this is easily remedied. Just run Disk Cleanup (click the Start menu and start typing “cleanup”). Check all the boxes for maximum cleanage. You will get some room back which should get you back up and running without the error message.
Creative Commons License photo credit: stallio

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