RileyTec Tips

Why would you want to? Well, one of the most useful facilities in the Debug menu is one that lets you change the User Agent. This enables you to tell the website you are using different browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Mobile Safari. This is useful for website development testing. In addition, as a result of lazy and inadequate development, some sites are blocking visitors who are not using Internet Explorer. By changing your User Agent you can bypass these stupid restrictions. Anyway, here’s what to do:

1. Quit Safari
2. Launch Terminal
3. Type defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
4. Re-start Safari and the debug menu will be enabled

To disable the debug menu, repeat the process but replace the 1 at the end of the terminal command with a zero.

If you are working with confidential files and you may want to make sure they are erased from your Time Machines backups when you delete them as well as your live file system. It is, fortunately, very easy to do so. Launch Time Machine, then navigate to and select the file you want to erase. Now select the Action menu and choose Delete All Backups of XYZ (where XYZ is the name of the file you are erasing).

One of the neatest new features in Apple OS 10.5 (aka Leopard), is Quick Look. The feature enables you to take a peek at most files from within the Finder window, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, email attachments, Microsoft Word and Excel documents. Just select the item and tap the space bar to see a file in Quick Look or press Command-Option-Y to launch Quick Look in full screen mode.

So you want to use your favourite MP3, or a part of it, as your ringtone? Why pay Vodafone, O2 or anyone else for a second-rate offering? All you need is an Apple computer, iLife (06 or 08) and a mobile phone that supports MP3 ringtones (that rules out the Reliant Robin disguised as a Ferrari, aka iPhone!) to which your computer can send files using bluetooth or USB.

1. Open iTunes and find the song you want to use, it can be any song and it does not matter if it is an MP3 or AAC file
2. Launch GarageBand
3. At the welcome screen select Create New Music Project
4. Give it a name (e.g. ringtone)
5. Click create, you will see the default virtual keyboard and a track that is called Grand Piano marked in green
6. Close the virtual keyboard by clicking on the red X in its top left corner
7. Select Track from the menu bar and Delete Track to delete the default track
8. Switch focus to iTunes and simply drag the track from the iTunes window to the GarageBand window
9. Your tune is shown in an orange bar in the track automatically named the same as the song
10. If the track is not placed at point zero on the GarageBand ruler, simply drag it to the left until it is
11. Double-check you have the right song by clicking GarageBand’s play button
12. Take this opportunity to decide where you want to “cut” the track for your ringtone remembering that most phones divert to voicemail after 10-20 seconds
13. Click on GarageBand’s ruler on the point at which you want to start your ringtone
14. Select Edit from the menu bar and Split
15. Click anywhere in the grey area underneath your track, then click on the orange track to the left of the vertical red line
16. Select Edit from the menu bar and Delete, this will delete the portion of the song to the left of where you have just split it
17. Click and drag the remainder of the track all the way back to point zero on the GarageBand ruler
18. Press the GarageBand play button to decide where you want your ringtone to end and make a note of where that point is on the ruler
19. Press the GarageBand play button again to stop playback and click in the ruler at the point you made note of above
20. Select Edit from the menu bar and Split
21. Click anywhere in the grey area underneath your track, then click on the orange track to the right of the vertical red line
22. Select Edit from the menu bar and Delete, this will delete the portion of the song to the right of where you have just split it
23. Select Share from the menu bar and Send Song to iTunes
24. In the resulting pop-up window ensure that Compress Using is set to MP3 Encoder and click Share

iTunes will automatically take focus and start playing your ringtone. All you need to do now is send or copy your newly made MP3 file to your mobile phone and set it as your ringtone. Please note, you are not legally entitled to distribute your new ringtone to anyone else.

Apple OS 10.5, aka Leopard, was released last Friday and is full of new features. The best review we have seen is from John Siracusa, it is very deep and covers pretty much everything there is to know. For a higher level quick and slick overview, check out Apple’s guided tour. As with any software, particularly operating systems, there are some bugs. One or two of them are significant including a Windows-esque blue screen of death in some upgrade circumstances. Unless you are in a position to do a clean erase and install, our advice is to wait until Apple has had time to offer patches or verified procedures to correct these problems. REMEMBER: When attempting any kind of upgrade or fresh installation, mirror your startup disk to an external drive before doing anything!

To capture a screen image in Apple OS X, you have two options. Firstly, to capture an image of your entire screen, select Command-Shift-3. You will hear a camera click sound and a PNG file will be created on your desktop containing the image. To capture a particular section of your screen, select Command-Shift-4. Your cursor turns in to a crosshair, now just click and drag your mouse to select the part of the screen you want to capture. When you let go of the mouse button, you will hear the same camera click sound and, as above, a PNG file will be created on your desktop containing the captured image.

When using groups in the Address Book, you may want to see which contacts are not assigned to any of your groups. This is a pretty convoluted method but until Apple provide a smart group option in Address Book to accommodate this requirement, you can do the following:

1. Backup your Address Book by selecting File then Backup Address Book
2. Create a new group and call it anything you like (I suggest “Z”)
3. Select all of your contacts and drag them in to this new group
4. Click on your first existing group (let’s pretend it is called Group1) and select all of its contacts (Command-a)
5. Click on the Z group and you will notice that only the contacts you have just selected are highlighted
6. Press Tab once to switch focus to the Name column
7. Hit the Delete key and then click the Remove From Group button

At this point, you have a group called Z which contains all your contacts except those listed in Group1. Repeat steps 4 thru 7 for all your remaining groups and you will end up with group Z containing only those contacts not assigned to any other groups.

To quickly cycle through open applications in MS Windows, hold down Alt and repeatedly press Tab. Just let go of all keys once the desired application is highlighted. Similarly, in Apple OS X, hold down Command and repeatedly press Tab. Another option in OS X is to use Expose. Press F9 to invoke it and then just select the desired window with your mouse. However, if you have Spaces enabled in OS 10.5 (aka Leopard), Expose will only show you open windows in your current Space whereas the Command-Tab method will cycle through all applications across all Spaces.

If you ever used a System 7 Mac, you will probably remember the character palette. Just like the character map in Windows, you can find all sorts of symbols that are not easily reproduced on a keyboard. Strangely, this feature seemed to have disappeared in OS X. However, it does still exist, it is just not a standalone application any more, now it is really a component of each application. You can find it in the Edit menu of nearly all applications and it is called Special Characters. You can also launch the character palette using Command-Option-T.

When a dialogue box appears, there is usually one choice highlighted and pressing Enter will just accept that default choice. You may like to be able to select different options in the dialogue box using Tab and Shift-Tab as you can in Windows. To enable this functionality open System Preferences, select Keyboard & Mouse and then the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Now select the All controls radio button and you will be able to Tab navigation in all dialogue boxes.

It is pretty straightforward to take a screenshot and bring it into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. But that is longer than necessary, you will end up with an additional file on the desktop and the website in your presentation will not update automatically. A more dynamic way of doing this involves loading the website into your presentation but unfortunately, this only works with Keynote and not PowerPoint. To accomplish this, you simply drag the small icon that is on the left side of the url in your web browser over to the Keynote presentation. You can then be sure that your Keynote presentation will stay current no matter when you show it. Even if you do not have internet access, it will simply show the latest downloaded version. One other small caveat to note is that this only works with Safari and Camino, so no Firefox.

What are known as shortcuts in Windows environments are called aliases in Apple OS but, frankly, the process of creating them can be a pain. When you use the Make Alias menu item or Command-L shortcut in Finder, it creates the alias in the same folder and adds alias to the name. You then have to move it around and rename it. However you can create an alias while dragging it to another folder. You simply have to hold down Command-Option while dragging it. An arrow will appear showing you that you are indeed creating an alias and not moving the original file. This is faster not only because you will not have to subsequently move the alias but also, Finder does not add alias to the title so you do not have to rename it.