Adding free text services

Reader Mark Meyer longs for some productivity of old. He writes:

Under Leopard I had a service that allowed me to change the formatting of selected text (Small Caps, Sentence Case, Title Case, No Caps, All Caps…) unfortunately it broke under Snow Leopard. I have a widget that does something similar but would love to go back to using a service. Are you aware of any services for Snow Leopard that would give me back this functionality?

I am. Devon Technologies continues to offer the free WordServices set of services. This provides 34 functions including, among other things, all caps, lowercase, straight and smarten quotes, insert date and time, and initial caps of words and sentences.

To make it work, you create a Services folder within the Library folder inside your user folder (so ~/Library/Services) and then copy the WordService.service file into this folder. Log out of your account and then back in and… no, the services won’t be in evidence.

To present that evidence, launch System Preferences, select the Keyboard system preference, click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, and select the Services entry in the left side of the window (or, to get there faster, select the Services command within any application and choose Services Preferences). In the right side of the window locate the Text heading. Below this heading you’ll find the newly added services. To activate them, simply tick the checkbox next to the services you’d like to use.

Emptying iPhoto’s stubborn trash

A reader who wishes to remain nameless seeks a little iPhoto spring cleaning. Nameless-to-you writes:

There are 474 items in iPhoto’s trash. I’ve been trying to empty that trash and it just won’t. Do you have any suggestions for me in completing this task?

By way of background for others, let me explain that iPhoto has a trash separate from the Finder’s trash. When you delete images in iPhoto, they go into this separate trash and they’re not deleted from your Mac until you expressly tell iPhoto to empty the trash. You do this by Control (right) clicking on iPhoto’s Trash icon and choosing Empty Trash from the contextual menu.

If you’ve tried that with no satisfactory results it’s possible that you’ve hit a fairly common snag where iPhoto has difficulties deleting a lot of images in one go. The solution is to select all the images in the trash, assign an identifying keyword to them (I’d suggest “trash”), and then choose Photos -> Restore to iPhoto Library. This, as you might imagine, places the trashed photos back in your iPhoto library.

Now choose File -> New Smart Album, create an album with a condition that reads: Keyword is Trash, and click the OK button that creates the smart album. Select a hundred-or-so images in that smart album and press Command-Option-Delete. This tosses those images in the trash. Now use the Control (right) click trick to empty the trash. If successful, do the same thing with another hundred images. Keep going until the images are really gone.

If none of this works, iPhoto may have a touch of the corruption. Quit it, hold down Command and Option, and launch it. A Rebuild Photo Library window will appear. In this window you’ll see a number of repair options. Start with the first one (Rebuild the Photos’ Small Thumbnails) and give it a try. Check iPhoto after you’ve done this to see how it behaves. If it’s still funky, give the next option in the Rebuild window a try. Rinse and repeat until iPhoto bends to your will.

Play 5.1 audio in iTunes

Reader Lyle Opseth feels he isn’t getting everything he should from his MacBook Pro and iTunes. He writes:

I have a 17″ MacBook Pro (2009 vintage), which has a digital optical output. I’m trying to play 5.1 audio through iTunes and I find my receiver plays only stereo audio. Is there a way to do this?

There is, but it’s hardly straightforward. The method, originally posted by Graham Booker in his Record and Reverie blog, describes the process. You should definitely read through it, but here’s the gist for movies that contain AC3 audio files:

Install a copy of the free Perian QuickTime plug-in on your Mac. String an optical cable between your Mac and a compatible receiver. Launch Audio Midi Setup (found in the Utilities folder) and in the audio output area select Digital Out from the Source pop-up menu and 48000.0Hz and 2ch-16-bit in the Format area.

Launch the Terminal app and enter

defaults write com.cod3r.a52codec attemptPassthrough 1

Press Return.

If iTunes is running, quit and relaunch it.

Locate the movie you want to view, and play it with iTunes’ Volume slider set to its highest level. Also be sure that the equalizer is off. Place your cursor over the movie so that the on-screen controls appear, click on the small bubble icon, and choose the surround sound track. With a little luck, iTunes should now play the movie with surround-sound audio.

Uninstalling Norton AntiVirus

by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com

Reader Randolph Walker provides me with the opportunity to address a question I get, like clockwork, every two years. He writes:

I was running Norton AntiVirus 10.0 on my iMac. I decided to uninstall it. Now when I restart, I get several small dialog boxes telling me auto protect cannot be activated. It is obvious I did not uninstall this properly. How do I get these little boxes to go away forever.

I’ve yet to encounter a product with the Norton name that can be uninstalled by simply dragging a file or folder to the Trash. These utilities work their magic deep down and scatter files hither as well as yon. If you don’t follow the correct procedure for removing them, you experience this kind of thing.

And the proper procedure is to locate the Symantec Solutions folder inside the Applications folder at the root level of your hard drive, launch the Symantec Uninstaller application, select the Symantec AntiVirus Corporate, Norton AntiVirus, and Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect entries, and click the Uninstall button. Confirm your decision when prompted and then enter your administrator password in the space provided. You’ll be asked to restart your Mac. Do so and Norton should be gone for good.

What, you say you tossed out the Symantec Solutions folder when you attempted to uninstall Norton AntiVirus by hand? You can download the uninstaller directly from Symantec’s site (direct download link: ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/norton_antivirus_mac/ver9.0/updates/symantec_uninstaller_102.sit).

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of “Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (6th edition),” and “The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)” both from Peachpit Press

and

“Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)” from lynda.com

Find Chris’ books at www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer

By Christopher Breen

Cures for a crusty keyboard

Reader Marcie Phipps seeks to clean up her act. She writes:

I have an old keyboard that I love, but its keys are sticking due to built up dust and gunk. Is there a way to clean it?

This is a common question and with it come solutions both tried-and-true and controversial. Starting with the tried-and-true:

The first step in cleaning a keyboard is to unplug it, grab a can of compressed air (found at any electronic supply store), and blast air around the base of the keys in the hope of dislodging whatever’s gumming up the works. Do this holding the can of compressed air upright. Flip the can upside down and there’s some danger that you’ll squirt propellant into the keyboard.

Turn the keyboard over and give it a good shake in the hope of removing the gunk you’ve loosened. While in this position, blast it a few more times with the compressed air. If a key remains unresponsive after this treatment, gently pry it up with a small flathead screwdriver and clean its post with a slightly damp cloth.

Now, the controversial:

If the keyboard is so filthy that it appears to be a lost cause–as it might after a major coffee, soda, or Mai Tai spill–put it in the dishwasher. Place it in the top rack, dial the dishwasher to a rinse only setting, don’t put soap in the thing, and run it through. Remove the keyboard and let it drain, with keys down, until it’s completely dry–this could take a couple of days.

This is controversial because some keyboard manufacturers suggest that you not do this as they won’t guarantee that the keyboard will survive the ordeal–particularly if you hit the keyboard with really hot water, detergent, and flying cutlery.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve done this with a beloved Matias TactilePro keyboard that I’d given up for dead (this is the perfect condition under which to conduct this experiment). I’m happy to report that not only did it survive, it works perfectly (and is a whole lot nicer to look at than it once was).

E-mail and the advantages of deception

Reader Gary Campbell expresses a concern about his privacy along these lines:

When I visit some Web sites I’m asked to provide an e-mail address. I’m concerned that this will lead to more spam. Any suggestions?

A couple, yes.

Despite what you learned in Sunday school, your first best option is to lie. When asked for an e-mail address for no apparent good reason, feel free to enter joeblow@example.net and smack the Return key. With luck, the Web site will take this as the goods and let you get on with your business.

Regrettably, this technique doesn’t work as well as it once did. Increasingly, you’re asked to submit an e-mail address and then the asking body sends you a link to whatever you’ve requested via e-mail. If the address you submit is no good, you don’t receive the message, and you can’t get the thing you were after.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you must offer your primary e-mail address. I’ve created a couple of free Google and Yahoo addresses for exactly this purpose. When asked for an e-mail address that I know will result in an activation message, I plunk in one of these addresses. I then check that account for the activation e-mail and then ignore the account until I next need it. (Meaning I don’t include it in a schedule that automatically checks my e-mail.)

If you want to get very fine with this, you can create a new account for each place you visit. For example, if you must submit your e-mail address to Company X, create a new Google account for joeblowcompanyx125@gmail.com. Should you receive spam at this address, you have a reasonable idea of who’s responsible. At that point you can complain or swear off that company in the future.

If you have a MobileMe account you can create up to five alias addresses. Messages sent to these aliases are forwarded to your primary MobileMe address. So, for example, when dealing with the famed Company X, create an alias for joeblowcompanyx125@me.com. After you’ve received Company X’s activation e-mail, delete the alias. Any future messages sent to this account won’t go through as it’s now a dead address.

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of “Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (6th edition),” and “The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)” both from  Peachpit Press

and

“Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)” from lynda.com

Find Chris’ books at  www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer

by Christopher Breen

Speed-up iMovie clips

Andy Milder (aka Dean Hodes on Showtime’s Weeds), sends this question:

While filming Weeds last year, I borrowed a Flip recorder to record my makeup transformation into a Black man (African-American doesn’t seem to fit…who knows what I was…). I wanted to edit it and then speed it up, so you could see me go from lily-white to much darker in mere seconds. One problem: I have no idea how to do it. Help?

iMovie ’09 can do the job. Like so:

Plug your Flip camcorder into your Mac. By default iPhoto will launch and the Flip camcorder will be selected. (The FlipShare software may also launch but choose iPhoto instead.) Select the clip you want to import and click the Import Selected button. The clip will import into iPhoto.

Now launch iMovie ’09. In the Event Library area select iPhoto Videos. Your Flip clip should appear in the iPhotos Videos section at the bottom of the window. Select the clip and drag it up into the Project pane.

Double-click the clip in the Project pane and in the Clip tab of the Inspector window that appears, click the Convert Entire Clip button. (You have to do this before you’re allowed to adjust the speed of a Flip camcorder’s clips.) When iMovie finishes converting your clip the Inspector will show a speed control slider in the Clip tab. You can drag this as high as 800-percent.

However, you can make the clip even faster than that simply by entering a higher value in the Speed field. Optionally, you can tell iMovie how long you’d like the clip to play by entering a value in the Duration field below the Speed field–2:00, for example, if you’d like the clip to last 2 minutes.

Now just export your project using a command in the Share menu and you’re good to go.

Loved the drawer bit with Kevin Nealon, btw.

Shifting large media libraries

Reader Remo seeks a way to store media files in a location other than a user’s Home folder. He writes:

My brother’s family 24-inch iMac has a hard drive of 500GB and it’s filling up pretty fast with pictures, movies, music, etc. Usually I would just replace the hard drive in a computer with a larger one, but we would be voiding the warranty on his computer, which isn’t something we want to do.

I want to have their home directory or certain folders on their iMac to serve as a representation to where these files are actually being saved to, which is an external hard drive. I have been a long time Mac user, but I don’t see an easy way of doing this. Is there a way within MacOS X (10.6) to accomplish this?

I see several ways to approach this one.

If all you’re after is a larger startup drive for storing files, just use an external hard drive as your boot drive. Find a fast FireWire drive, clone the contents of the internal drive to it using a tool such as Bombich Software’s donation-ware Carbon Copy Cloner (making the external drive bootable in the process), and designate that external drive as the startup drive. Done.

Or, if you simply want to store media files on the external drive, this can be easily done as well. For pictures, copy the iPhoto Library file from your brother’s Pictures folder (found inside his user folder) to the external hard drive. Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto. A dialog box will appear that asks “What Photo Library Do You Want iPhoto to Use?” Choose the copy of the iPhoto Library file you just copied and click the Choose button. iPhoto will now read and write to this iPhoto Library rather than the one on the internal drive.

For the music and movies that iTunes uses, dig down into your brother’s Music folder (also inside his user folder), open the iTunes folder, and copy the iTunes Music folder to the external drive. Launch iTunes, choose Preferences, click the Advanced tab, and click the Change button in the iTunes Media Folder Location area. Also enable the Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder When Adding to Library option. iTunes will now use this folder as well as add new media to it.

Or, you can place your brother’s user folder on the external drive. My colleague, Dan Frakes, explains how to do that in this tip from Mac OS X Hints. (Note that you no longer need to use -rsrc to do this.)

“Locking” an external hard drive

Reader Dustin Kuo is interested in locking down an external hard drive. He writes:

Is there a software that can lock the external hard drive so if someone got hold of it, they wouldn’t be able to view the data?

I wish that waving a magic wand over your drive and barking “Lock!” could work this minor miracle but, alas, even with such a wand and Christopher Plummer’s commanding voice you’re not going to realize the results you’re after.

What you need to do is create an encrypted space on all or a portion of that drive and then move the files you want to protect into it. You have a number of ways to do that.

One is built into Mac OS X. Open Disk Utility, choose File -> New -> Blank Disk Image and in the resulting window choose Sparse Disk Image from the Image Format pop-up menu and either 128-bit AES Encryption or 256-bit AES Encryption from the Encryption pop-up menu. Then choose a size from the Size pop-up menu (select Custom and then enter a size if the preconfigured sizes don’t suit you). Name the image, choose to save it on your external drive, and click the Create button. You’ll be prompted for a password. Enter and verify that password and click OK and you have a protected image that can be opened only with your password. Move your files into this image and you’re good to go.

Note that you should choose to not store this password in your keychain if you’re all that concerned about security. Also, this image will take up only as much space as the accumulated content inside it. So, even if you’ve asked for a 5GB image file, if you put 1GB worth of files in it, the image will be only 1GB. You can then add files until you reach that 5GB limit, at which point, the image is full.

Another free option is the open-source TrueCrypt. This is a cross- platform encryption tool that you can use to encrypt folders and volumes. Again, if you intend to encrypt an entire external hard drive you’ll first have to move the files off that drive, format it with TrueCrypt, create an encrypted volume, and then copy your files to that volume. TrueCrypt features more encryption schemes than does Disk Utility.

And then there’s the $35 Knox, which our resident Gemeister Dan Frakes tells me is the goods. Like Disk Utility, it creates images using either the 128- or 256-bit AES standard. Unlike with Disk Utility or TrueCrypt, you can use Spotlight to search the contents of a Knox image (termed a “vault”). (You can search the image only when it’s open.) And Knox includes a backup feature.

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of “Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (6th edition),” and “The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)” both from  Peachpit Press

and

“Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)” from lynda.com

Find Chris’ books at  www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer

By Christopher Breen

Dealing with a full hard drive

Reader Matthew Mitchell feels the walls closing in. He writes:

I have a 17-inch MacBook Pro with a 320GB hard drive. (Formatted it has 297GB, but who’s counting?) I’m down to 70GB and I heard that a full hard drive is a slow hard drive. I went looking for files to delete and found a fair few that were either hardly ever used or never used. Are there any secret locations on my hard drive that large and disposable files could be hidden?

There’s lots to talk about here.

Let’s start with the capacity of your hard drive. For just about ever, hard drive manufacturers have defined a megabyte as 1,000KB. The Mac OS defines a megabyte as 1,024KB. It’s for this reason that a 320GB drive (using the 1,000KB measurement convention) appears to have much less capacity, because it’s being measured by the OS using the 1,024KB definition. It’s been reported that this behavior will change in Snow Leopard so that OS X 10.6 will show a 320GB hard drive having exactly that capacity.

As for a full hard drive slowing down your Mac, it’s true. OS X uses your hard drive to swap files out of RAM and if there’s very little room to do that, your Mac needs to work harder at the job and therefore slows down. Note, however, that at 70GB your 320GB isn’t there yet. Continue to leave 10 to 15-percent of your hard drive free and you should be in fine shape.

Now, let’s turn to lurking files and folders. In this regard it’s worth your while to download a copy of The Omni Group’s free OmniDiskSweeper. This utility will tell you how much space is consumed by folders and files on your Mac. When you find something you believe you can do without, simply highlight it and click on the Delete button in the bottom-left corner of the window.

Good places to start looking are in the /Library and ~/Library folders. For example, look in the Audio folder within the /Library folder and you’ll find an Apple Loops folder that holds GarageBand’s audio files, which take up many gigabytes of storage. If you don’t use GarageBand, this folder can go. Similarly, iDVD’s themes (found in /Library/Application Support/iDVD) take up a couple of gigabytes of storage that you can free up if you never touch iDVD.

Because it doesn’t go without saying for everyone, allow me to offer a couple of safety tips. First, don’t throw out items in the System folder unless you really, really, really know what you’re doing. And, more generally, don’t toss out files and folders stored elsewhere on your Mac unless you know the purpose they serve. Doing so could land you knee-deep in the soup.

Streaming large movies

Reader Michael Quinn has a lot of questions regarding a single movie. He writes:

I have a 1.75GB MPEG-4 Quicktime Movie file. If I subscribe to MobileMe and upload it using iDisk, will friends and family be able to see it? If so, could they stream it, or would they have to download it? Or, is this file too large for them to access at all? If MobileMe can’t do this, is there any other movie/video hosting app that could?

If you dropped it in you iDisk’s Public folder your friends and family would be able to download it but not stream it. But let’s back up a second. That’s a honkin’ big movie and one that, in its current form, I wouldn’t advise streaming. First of all, it could take a long time to start streaming to your viewers. And, perhaps more importantly, if a lot of people access the thing, you could easily run over your MobileMe monthly data transfer limit (that limit is 200GB of data transfer for a standard MobileMe account).

If you want to go with MobileMe I’d severely slim down that movie. One good way to do that is to import it into iMovie ’09, pull it into a project, and then choose Share -> MobileMe Gallery. In the sheet that appears you can choose a size that will work better for streaming–Tiny (176 x 144), Mobile (480 x 272), Medium (640 x 360), or Large (960 x 540) for a 720p HD movie.

From the sound of your question, you don’t yet have a MobileMe account. If the MobileMe Gallery feature is the single thing that’s pushing you toward this $99-per-annum service, perhaps you could save some money by creating a YouTube account and posting your video to that fine free service using the Share -> YouTube command. As with MobileMe Gallery you have options for creating movies of different sizes and you needn’t grant the general public access to your movie. Just make it a personal movie and then grant access to your family and friends.

No, you’re not infected

A reader who wishes to remain anonymous is concerned about a very scary looking website. I attempt to calm the waters.

I used Yahoo to search for something and was sent immediately to the following [redacted] site. I believe my Mac was invaded and don’t know what to do!

First, relax. Your Mac wasn’t invaded, infected, compromised, co-opted, or conquered. If you’d clicked through a few of those dire pop-up warnings you might have been as amused as I was to see a phony Windows Security Alert appear on a Macintosh. What you’ve encountered is termed “scareware”–a scam that attempts to frighten those confronted with these pages into downloading a hunk of software that will allegedly deal with the problem.

The chain of events goes like this: A perfectly legitimate URL is hijacked by the scammers and you’re redirected to the scareware page. That page is designed in such a way that several dialog boxes pop-up, warning you that your computer is infected. Click Cancel and you’ll just get more warnings and an interface that makes it appear like your computer is being scanned. If you fall for the trick and click the buttons necessary to download the offered antivirus software, you’ll pay for a product that is likely a hunk of malware (and I hate to think what happens to your credit card information.) This malware is bad for Windows PCs but has no effect on Macs.

Regrettably, these pages are sometimes difficult to dismiss because the constant pop-up warnings prevent you from leaving. Clicking OK may get rid of the pop-ups so that you can close the window or tab (and no, doing so won’t automatically download the software to your Mac), but I faced a situation with my wife’s Mac (who was just concerned as you were) where I had to force-quit Safari to get away from the scareware page.

You can take some comfort in knowing that the search engine folks do their best to weed out this junk and that those who promote it have been–and will continue to be–prosecuted for engaging in such malicious and scammy activities.

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of “Secrets of the iPodand iTunes (6th edition),” and “The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)” both from  Peachpit Press

and

“Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)” from lynda.com
Find Chris’ books at  www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer

by Christopher Breen

Hiding the menu bar

Reader Desmond Biss would like an even cleaner Desktop. He writes:

I use our living room’s LCD TV as a monitor for our Mac mini. Within System Preferences one can set the Dock to automatically hide and show. Is there any way to set the menu bar on the Desktop to also automatically hide and show?

With some help, yes. That help takes the form of Chieh Cheng’s free MagicMenu 2, a collection of AppleScripts that work a little plist magic, likely along the lines described by our own Rob Griffiths in early 2007.

Just run the Finder MagicMenu On script, log out of your account, log back in, and the menu bar behaves much like the Dock when you have the Hiding feature turned on. The menu bar is absent until you place your cursor in the area once occupied by it. At this point it appears.

To undo this, simply run the Finder MagicMenu Off script, log out, log back in, and your menu bar remains omnipresent.

Put spare hard drives to work

Reader Bill Robertson, like a lot of us, has accumulated quite a collection of hard drives. He writes:

I have the original Mac Pro that I loaded with four 250GB SATA drives. That 1TB of storage filled up faster than I thought it would and so I replaced some of them with 500GB drives. Things are getting tight again and now that prices have come down, I’m thinking of 1TB drives. The problem is that I have a lot of old SATA drives that are sitting around. What should I do with them?

As we deal with larger files–pictures, audio, and video–we need places to put them. The CDs and DVDs that once seemed so expansive just don’t have the kind of capacity that many of us require. That leaves us with hard drives. And because hard drives fill up, we increasingly find ourselves in situations such as yours–swapping out lower-capacity hard drives for more capacious drives.

It’s silly to toss out these perfectly serviceable older drives. So allow me to suggest three ways to put them to use.

• Drobo.
• Voyager Q or Voyager S2.
• External enclosures.

Data Robotics’ Drobo is a RAID enclosure that supports up to four SATA drives of any capacity. Going for just over $350, the Drobo works over a USB 2 or FireWire 800 connection. The thing to note about the Drobo is that it doesn’t provide the accumulated capacity of each drive because it’s a redundant system–it stores two copies of your data. So, for example, if you were to shove four 1TB drives into it, you’d realize only about 2.7TB of storage. While it’s a shame to lose some of that storage, you’ll cry far fewer tears when one of those drives goes bad and it doesn’t take your data with it.

NewerTech’s Voyager Q.
If you don’t need that kind of storage and are seeking a way to simply jack in one spare SATA drive or another from time to time, take a look at NewerTech’s Voyager Q or Voyager S2. Priced at $95 and $50 respectively, these hard drive “enclosures” look and behave like toasters. Just connect it to your Mac (the Q supports FireWire 800/400, USB 2, and eSATA connections while the S supports USB 2 and eSATA), shove a 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA drive into the slot, and the drive mounts on your Mac. When you’re done with that drive, drag its icon to the Trash, and then push down the Voyager’s lever to pop out the drive, just as you’d pop out a slice of toast.

And if you desire a more permanent solution, purchase a drive enclosure from an outfit such as OWC or NewEgg. These come in a variety of flavors– USB 2, eSATA, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800 (and often a combination of them)–and can be had for as little as $40.

iCal and shifting time zones

Reader Eric Brown has unwillingly traveled in time and is displeased. He writes:

While traveling recently, I stumbled upon an iCal feature that took me by surprise, and not in a good way. Changing the computer’s time zone (in the Date & Time system preference) changes the time stamp of every item–past and future–in my iCal calendar. Since I use iCal for my time sheet, it’s pretty strange to look back and see that a 10 AM meeting in Vancouver is now logged as a 1 PM meeting, just because I’m now in New York. And when I log my 9 AM New York meeting, it’ll show up as a 6 AM meeting when I return home and reset the time zone. Is there a way to set iCal items so that the current time zone setting leaves past events unchanged?

You’re not the first to be perplexed by this issue. Fortunately, Apple’s got your back on this one.

Launch iCal, choose Preferences from the iCal menu, click the Advanced tab, and enable the Turn On Time Zone Support option. When you do this, a pop-up menu appears in the iCal window’s upper-right corner. This pop- up menu displays the time zone configured within the Date & Time system preference.

Editing the time zone in an iCal event.
When you change time zones within Date & Time, your events will shift, just as you’ve observed. To shift them to display in a different time zone, simply click on this pop-up menu and choose the time zone you’d like. If an appropriate one doesn’t appear, select Other and, in the sheet that appears, choose the time zone you want and click OK.

Ah, but what if you want to display Vancouver events in Vancouver time and New York events in NY time? Easy enough. Select the event, press Command-E to cause the event edit window to appear, and choose the time zone you desire from the Time Zone pop-up menu within the edit window (it appears just above the Repeat entry).

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of “Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (6th edition),” and “The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)” both from  Peachpit Press

and

“Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)” from lynda.com.

Find Chris’ books at  www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer

Auto-enabling Safari’s Private Browsing

Reader Leo Campo is interested in Safari’s Private Browsing feature, but finds with it a measure of frustration. He writes:

I’m using Safari 4 beta on an Intel iMac under Leopard 10.5.6. I use the private browsing feature most of the time. Is there a way to make this Safari feature the default action? It gets old very fast always having to turn this feature back on every time I launch Safari, which for me, is several time a day.

Regrettably Private Browsing isn’t a feature you can leave on. When you quit Safari and launch it again, you’ll find that Private Browsing is turned off. And no, editing the com.apple.safari.plist file does you no good either. Safari just resets the option within the preference file when you next launch Safari.

If you’re running Leopard you can, however, automate the process of enabling the Private Browsing option with AppleScript.

First, launch the Universal Access system preference and enable the Enable Access for Assistive Devices option.

Now, launch Script Editor (within the AppleScript folder inside the Applications folder) and enter the following script:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
    tell menu bar 1
    tell menu bar item "Safari"
    tell menu "Safari"
    click menu item "Private Browsing"
    end tell
    end tell
    end tell
    end tell
end tell

Save the script as an application and then use that application to launch Safari. When you do, Safari will launch and Private Browsing will be enabled.

Accessing a Mac when you don’t know the password

Reader Sabrina has a common, but potentially delicate, question. It goes a little like this:

I was given my mother’s iMac because she passed away but I don’t know the password. How can I gain access to this Mac?

I suggest this question is a little delicate because you could use the method I’m about to describe to access any Mac. And that may be a problem for parents who want to keep kids out of their stuff (and vice versa). On the other hand, situations such as yours (as well as problems that come up when you purchase a used Mac that hasn’t been properly cleared) invite a response.

That response is this in regard to OS X 10.5: Locate that Mac’s installer disc or a recent OS X installer disc (a Tiger or Leopard disc, for example). Insert that disc into the Mac’s media drive and hold down the keyboard’s C key to boot the Mac from that disc.

When the Mac boots you’ll be asked to choose a language. Do that and click the right-pointing arrow icon to continue. When the Welcome screen appears wait for the menubar to materialize and choose Reset Password from the Utilities menu. In the resulting window choose the user whose password you want to change from the Select a User pop-up menu. Enter and confirm a password in the appropriate fields and, if you like, enter a hint for the password. Click Save to make the change.

Note that when you’ve reset the Administrator’s password you haven’t reset the login keychain password–that password remains as it was when it was originally set. What this means is that you’ll be able to do all the things an Administrator can–install applications and muck with all the Mac’s system preferences, for example. You can’t, however, access keychain items (web site passwords, for example) saved in that login keychain without the password originally used.

Oh swell, I hear parents saying. You’ve just given my kid the key to taking over my Mac. Thanks so much!

Fortunately, there’s something you can do. Boot your Mac from that installer disc again, find your way to the Welcome screen, and from the Utilities menu choose Firmware Password Utility. In the window that appears click the Change button, then enable the Require Password to Change Firmware Settings option and enter and verify a password. Click OK and your Mac is now protected with a firmware password.

Which means what? It means that if your kid starts up your Mac with an installer disc in the media drive and presses the C key to boot from the disc, the Mac will ignore that key press and move to the login screen. If the kid’s really savvy and presses the Option key to move to the screen where you choose a device to boot from, a padlock icon appears with a text field below. If said kid doesn’t enter the correct firmware password in that text field, he or she won’t be able to boot from the disc.

However (and this is an important however), if you’ve logged into your Mac as an administrator and walked away from your Mac without logging out, any passer-by can then shove the installer disc into the Mac’s media drive, boot from that disc by choosing it in the Startup Disk system preference, and then muck with the administrator and firmware passwords. For this reason, be sure to log out of your account before leaving your Mac if you fear for your Mac’s safety. (The Log Out After X Minutes of Inactivity option in the General tab of the Security system preference can help with this.)

Making sense of OS X’s folder structure

Reader Mark Walerysiak is frustrated by what he views as redundancy in OS X. He writes:

I’m very happy with all things Apple but one thing I’ve never understood about OS X is the multiple Library folders. Today I was looking for the StartupItems folder because I had to delete something. I went to Hard Drive/System/Library/ StartupItems. And I found nothing in that StartupItems folder. I then went to my Home folder/Library, only to find no StartupItem folder. Finally, I found what I was looking for in Hard Drive/Library/StartupItems folder. What the heck is going on?

This question goes to the heart of the way OS X organizes users and directories. It breaks down this way:

Items in the System folder are for OS X’s use–items in its Library folder are, for the most part, placed there when OS X is installed or when the OS is updated. Unless you’re geeking out, there are few reasons to venture into this folder.

The Library folder at the root level of the hard drive is often populated with third-party items installed by an Administrator. In the case of startup items, they’re placed here because they may be needed by every user who has an account on that Mac. If a user doesn’t have access to a particular application that uses one of these startup items–because they have a controlled account, for example–no worries. It doesn’t hurt to have that item loaded. It would hurt, however, if a startup item was loaded for one account and not another.

This helps explain why there’s no StartupItems folder in the Library folder within your user account. (Underscoring this notion is the fact that startup items load before a user logs in.) Note that StartupItems are not the same thing as the applications you’ve designated as Login Items for your account. StartupItems work deeper-level background mojo than Login Items.

The Library folder within a user’s folder contains, as you might expect, items that apply to that specific user–preferences, audio files, plug-ins, mailboxes, log files for applications used by that user, and so on. This is the folder you want to dig around in when something in your account is acting up.

Spring into spring-loaded folders

Today’s easy-peasy fix comes courtesy of reader Paul Sarlis, who writes:

With older versions of OSX I could grab a file that I saved to my Desktop and hold it over my hard drive icon. When I did that the hard drive would open so that I could place the file where I needed it. Is this option still available or is there a new way to do this?

Yes the option–called spring-loaded folders–is still there. In your case, it appears that it’s been switched off. To switch it on, choose Finder -> Preferences, click the General tab if it’s not already selected, and enable the Spring-Loaded Folders and Windows option. With the Delay slider below you can determine how long the Finder delays springing open a folder or volume after you’ve dragged an item to it.

Easy and peasy though this question and answer are, it’s a nice reminder of a feature that far too many people fail to use. If this spring-loaded thing is new to you, it works this way: Drag an item to a volume or folder and continue holding down the mouse button. The volume or folder will blink a couple of times and then its root folder will open. You can let go of the mouse button and the item will drop into this folder. Or, you can hold the item over yet another folder and, sure-as-shootin’, that folder will also blink and then open. Continue this process until you dig down into the folder you want to access.

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of “Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (6th edition),” and “The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (4th edition)” both from Peachpit Press and “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Essential Training (video)” from lynda.com.

Find Chris’ books at  www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer

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Troubleshooting .Mac iCal syncing

Reader Turner Kellogg is unhappy with .Mac’s inability to sync his calendars. He writes:

For some reason I’m no longer able to sync iCal with .Mac on my home computer. When I try, I get a warning that tells me I have inconsistent data. I thought inconsistent data was the whole point of syncing! I’ve tried resetting the calendar in my .Mac preferences several times with no luck. I’ve also unregistered my Mac and then reregistered it to see if that would help. The next time I sync I get the same thing even though I have it set to replace the data on my computer with what’s on .Mac.

You’re on the right track, but you need to take it up a notch. By that I mean that you should try mucking with your .Mac settings on every computer configured to sync its data to .Mac.

That mucking takes this form:

Begin by making a backup of your iCal and Address Book data. I explain how to back up iCal toward the end of this entry. To back up Address Book, in Tiger choose File -> Back Up Address Book and in Leopard choose File -> Export -> Address Book Archive. Should you need this backup you can use Address Book’s Revert (Tiger) or Import (Leopard) commands to bring back your data. Now on to syncing.

On the Mac that holds your master calendar–the one where you most often enter events–pull up System Preferences and click the .Mac preference.

If you’re running Tiger, click the Advanced tab, select the name of your computer in the list of registered computers, and click the Reset Sync Data button. In the resulting sheet click the right arrow button so that you’ll replace any contact and calendar data on .Mac with the data on that Mac and then click the Replace button.

If you’re running Leopard, the process is similar. The difference is that you must choose the Sync tab in .Mac preferences, click the Advanced button, and then choose your computer and click the Reset Sync Data button. As promised, the data on your computer will replace the information on .Mac.

Repeat this process for other Macs you’ve synced with .Mac. However, this time be sure that when you ask your Mac to Reset Sync Data, you click the left arrow button, which tells the .Mac preference to sync the data on your computer with info from .Mac. With luck, you’ll no longer see the inconsistent data warning.

I mention “luck” because even though this technique should work, it doesn’t always. Some have found that they have better luck when they first hand-copy their iCal data from one Mac to the other. You can do this by choosing File -> Back Up Database (Tiger) or File -> Back up iCal (Leopard) to create an iCal Backup file. Make a copy of that file and take it to your other Mac. From within iCal on that other Mac choose File -> Revert to Database Backup (Tiger) or File -> Restore iCal (Leopard) and choose the backup file you created on the original Mac. This will cause iCal to replace all its calendars, events, and To Do items from the other Mac so be sure you don’t have any unique information in this copy of iCal. (And to be safe, you might want to create a backup file of this iCal’s data before replacing it.)

Moving Mail accounts offline

Reader and Weeds cast-member Andy Milder has recently made the transition from Entourage to Apple’s Mail. Following that transition he encountered this issue:

I’ve got a whole bunch of mail accounts that are halfway bogus and/or I don’t want checked. That is to say, accounts that on rare occasions I’ll check and download, but not always. Here’s the $64,000 question: Is there a way to customize the Get Mail button so that it only checks the accounts I want checked? I’ve set the automatic checking to not bother with them, but the Get Mail button seems to check ‘em all.

You can’t do anything with the button specifically, but you have a couple of options for barring particular accounts from retrieving mail. You’ve already mentioned that you can keep an account from being automatically checked by opening the Accounts preference, selecting an account, clicking the Advanced tab, and disabling the Include When Automatically Checking For New Mail option. As you rightly point out, this option has no effect on the Get Mail button.

However, the checkbox just above it does. Disable the Enable This Account option and the account disappears from Mail’s list of mailboxes. You can press Get Mail from now until doomsday, and the disabled account will be left unchecked.

If you want an account ignored only occasionally, this isn’t the best way to go as you have to dig down into Mail’s preferences to switch it on or off. A more expedient route is to Control-click the account’s Inbox in Mail’s list of mailboxes and choose Take “nameofaccount” Offline. (Alternatively, you can choose Mailbox -> Online Status and, from the submenu, choose Take “nameofaccount” Offline.) A tilde-like symbol appears next to the account to indicate it’s offline. Press the Get Mail button and the offline account will be ignored. To bring it back online, you can simply click the tilde-like symbol.

Fix Apple TV wireless syncing

We have a helpful crew here at Macworld. For example, not only did Chief Gemologist, Dan Frakes, propose a terrific Mac 911 question, but a couple of days later, answered it as well. We begin with the question:

My Apple TV is having loads of connection problems. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks I changed my network configuration in the house and applied the Apple TV [2.0.1] update, so it could be due to either. Essentially, the Apple TV appears to be connected to the wireless network, and shows up in iTunes; I try to sync, and it appears (in iTunes) to start syncing, but it eventually drops off the network and out of iTunes. When I go to the TV, nothing has been added to the Apple TV, and it claims it’s not connected to the network. So I connect it to the network again. Rinse, repeat.

After a “Huh, let me look into it” response from yours truly, he came back with this:

If your wireless network is set up as a 5GHz network using wide channels, the Apple TV can’t maintain a connection. I disabled wide channels (which, unfortunately, reduces performance) and the Apple TV was able to join the network and, more important, maintain the connection.

To earn my day’s pay, allow me to add some details. Specifically, to do as Dan suggests, launch AirPort Utility, select your base station, make sure the AirPort item is selected in the toolbar, and click the Wireless tab. With the Radio Mode pop-up menu set to 802.11n Only (5 GHz), click the Wireless Options button. In the sheet that appears, disable the Use Wide Channels option, click Done, and then click Update to do just that to your AirPort Base Station.

But hang on a sec, one tmartine in the Apple Discussion Forums contends that you can fix the problem without disabling wide channels. He suggests that while in the aforementioned Wireless tab, you hold down the Option key, click on the Channel pop-up menu, select 161, and click Update. Others have offered that any channel over 40 will work just as well.

If you’ve had this problem and discover that tmartine’s solution is the goods, please make your voice heard by putting the Comments link to good use.

Macworld Senior Editor Christopher Breen is the author of Secrets of the iPod and iTunes, fifth edition, and The iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide (both Peachpit Press, 2005).

Find Chris’ books at www.amazon.com and www.peachpit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld Magazine! Subscribe today at http://www.macworld.com/useroffer.