iTunes notifications in the Mac's Dock

a secret preference setting built into OS X Lion that allows song notifications to pop up over the iTunes Dock icon. Here’s how to enable them:

First, quit iTunes if it’s already running. Fire up Terminal (from /Applications/Utilities/) and paste in the following command, then hit Return:

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE;killall Dock

The first part of that command turns on the Dock’s ability to display iTunes notifications; the second part restarts your Dock. (That restart may take a couple of seconds.)

Now, relaunch iTunes, select a track, and press play. Down in the Dock, you’ll see a brief notification with the song’s name and artist. The notification will appear whenever the track changes, regardless of the app you’re currently using; it will then fade away on its own.

If you decide you don't like the notifications, you can get rid of them by issuing the same command, but replacing TRUE with FALSE.

Update: if Hyperdock is installed then you don't need this command because this preference pane takes care of this for you,

Email your files to Google Docs

A lot of people have asked me if was passible to e-mail files your Google Doc's account and the answer was, "yes".  It was indeed possible to to do this but, unfortunately the feature was plagued with problems. So, Google has pulled this feature for the time being and is currently working on a fix.  You can access the FAQ here

Clean out your Windows PC computer

I was asked not too long ago to clean out an increasingly slow Windows computer.  CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner), developed by Piriform is a utility program used to clean potentially unwanted files and invalid Windows Registry entries from a computer.  A beta version for the Mac OS X has been released, but if you want a free, fully developed software package for the Mac, give Onyx a try

Macs can write to NTFS volumes now

I just recently bought a portable hard drive that was formatted with the NTFS filesystem and I was wondering if there was a way to write to the drive with my mac.  Well, not natively, Macs can only read such a filesystem, but fear not!  Go to MacGuy4.Us for the full solution.  Basically, you have to download two pieces of software (one if you already have Parallels Desktop installed).  For an added bonus, the new extension, NTFS 3G, you install will give the Disk Utility application the option to partition a drive with NTFS

Facebook Notifications

I was just asked if you could delete multiple Facebook notifications and this is not currently possible with the current development.  The official message reads, "James, the ability to clear multiple notifications is already a feature of the current 1.2.32 beta. Please see this thread for more info"


You can reach the discussion thread and official response from a developer here

Paused Printer

If you get an error saying the printer is paused you'll also get an exclamation point (!) next to the printer name, in this case it is Brother HL-5170DN series.  The next two screen shots will illustrate this.

Just click on continue as illustrated on the first screen shot.  If the printer can't resume, it'll tell you.  Just open the Print window and select Print & Fax Preferences and double-click Brother HL-5170DN series (the name may be shortened to fit inside the sidebar)

You may have to power off and power on the printer