Your place for technology information…

Here is a great page from Apple on Tips and Tricks for you Mac:

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/

Google Chrome web browser is out for the Mac (in beta).  It’s a fast browser.
You can download it here: http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac&hl=en

I’ve had it for a couple weeks now and I like it.  It doesn’t work with 1Password,
so I haven’t made it my default….yet.

Want to know why I use a Mac? I have a MacBook Pro running 5 operating systems.

My MacBook Pro runs Apple OS X Snow Leopard (Operating System)  with iWork
and Mac Office 2008.

I have VMWare Fusion 3.0 (a virtual machine) running Windows Vista with Office 2007
and Linux Ubuntu running Sun Open Office

I have Parallels 5.0 (a virtual machine) running Windows XP with Office 2003 and
Windows 7 (64 bit) with Office 2007

Now THAT’S A COMPUTER!

Do you want a ringtone on your iPhone, but don’t want to pay iTunes for creating it?
If you have a Mac, and have Garage Band 09, you can do it for free!  Here’s how:

Open Garage Band

Choose “iPhone Ringtone”

You can select the “Example Ringtone”

Click “Choose”

Save this, ie, give it a name in “Save As” example: thenameofthesong.band

I like saving mine to my Desktop

Don’t change anything else.

Click on “Create”

Click on the blue “Pastel Slide Medium” and hit your “delete” button on the keyboard

In the bottom right corner of Garage Band, there are 3 little icons, an “eye”, a “i” and
a music note. Click on the music note

This should open the music in your iTunes library.

Choose the song you want to create a ringtone from and drag it to Garage Band and let go.

The orange bar is the song.  The yellow bar is the portion of the song the ringtone will be
created from.  You can click on the yellow bar and move it to any portion of the song you
want to create the ringtone.  You can grab the “end’ of the yellow bar and make the ringtone
longer or shorter.  (You can not create/save a ringtone longer than 40 seconds.)

Once you get the ringtone to the right size, click on “Share” at the top of Garage Band,
then “Send Ringtone to iTunes”

That’s it!  It should be in your iTunes under Ringtones.
Sync your iPhone and you have a new ringtone!

I got this directly off Apple’s website.

Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.

You can calibrate your iBook, PowerBook, MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro
computer’s lithium ion battery for best performance.

The battery calibration for the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) and any
model of MacBook or MacBook Pro has been updated because of a new battery
released with this computer. With these computers, follow these steps to calibrate your battery:

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the
   light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen
   meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours.
   You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the
   computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time.
   When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
4. At this point, save your work. Continue to use your computer; when the battery
   gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the
   battery is fully charged again.

Tip: When the battery reaches “empty”, the computer is forced into sleep mode.
The battery actually keeps back a reserve beyond “empty”, to maintain the
computer in sleep for a period of time. Once the battery is truly exhausted,
the computer is forced to shut down. At this point, with the safe sleep function
introduced in the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) computers,
the computer’s memory contents have been saved to the hard drive.
When power is restored, the computer returns itself to its pre-sleep state using
the safe sleep image on the hard drive.