Scheduled powered events

If you want to find out when your mac is scheduled to wake up or power on because it's missing important events, such as recording television shows, launch Terminal.  Verify using this utility that these Events are getting set properly. There is a command-line tool that can be used to view the existing Events within your Mac's Power manager. To use this tool, launch the "Terminal" utility, located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, then enter the following command (you can copy/paste the line below) and press return:

pmset -g sched

The resulting output should look something like this:

Scheduled power events:
[0] wakeorpoweron at 08/05/09 19:56:00 by com.elgato.eyetv

If there are no Events listed here, then there may be a problem with the "Wakein" component, a small script that EyeTV uses to create Events. If there are other Events listed here, these can conflict with some older versions of EyeTV, which cause EyeTV not to place its own Events.

Note: Before you check out this component, you may want to restart your computer and retype pmset -g sched into Terminal. The output may now be there.

You can view the full help page here.

If you're like me, some of your information is in the cloud and some is on your machine, and you don't always remember what is where. That can make it frustrating when you try to use your favorite local search tool to find something. Isn't the whole point of search that you don't have to remember where you put things?

That's where Precipitate comes in. After you install Precipitate, you can use Spotlight to find files online (such as those in your Google Docs list) just as you would find files stored on your Mac. Then, you can open them in your browser with a single click. Once Precipitate is set up, it stays out of your way, regularly getting the latest contents of your documents automatically, so you'll never need to think about it — and if you have Lion or Mountain Lion with iCloud enabled, then you are truly on your your way to being fully organized!

Turn off startup programs to speed things up

If you have too many programs configured to startup at boot, this may slow down your computer.  This is especially true if you keep installing programs over the years.  Disabling startup programs can also help you isolate software conflicts you may be having.  I show you in this post how to disable these.

First, I'll show you how to do this on a Mac:

1. Go to the Apple Menu and choose System Preferences... (you can also click on System Preferences in the Dock, if it's there)

     2. In the System section, Click on Users and Groups

     3. Click on the Login Items tab and highlight the unwanted programs and click the minus button.

In Windows, follow the following instructions:

     1. Click on Start
     2. From the Start Menu Options choose Run
     3. Type “msconfig” without quotes and click okay. This will bring up System Configuration Utility
     4. System Configuration Utility >> Click the tab called Startup
     6. Now you can uncheck any programs that you do not want running upon startup
     7. Once you are done unchecking Click Okay and you will be prompted to restart your computer

Click this link to access a page to help you figure out what startup programs are necessary and not necessary.

Force key repeat

Staring with Lion Apple added a new "feature" to give you alternative characters when you hold down certain keys (this is equivalent to holding down the option key in previous versions of the OS).  To force key repeat, type in the following command in Terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

You can also achieve this behavior via the Secrets Preference Pane, as illustrated below.

Constant Google popups

If you constantly get a popup that says, "To view this page, you must log in to this area on mail.google.com:443:" when logging into your Google account, follow the instructions below the illustration

open Keychain Access (Applications => Utilities => Keychain Access) Select Passwords on the left.
Delete your Gmail keychain.  Also, if you have any Google related extensions (Google Toolbar, Google Notifier, etc) and your password gets deleted, you may get this popup.

If you not want this behavior, delete your Google add-on.  If you have the Google toolbar installed, open your preferences in Safari and click on Extensions.  Click on Apps on the left and uncheck Gmail

Completely reset Safari to fix problems

If you are constantly having problems with Safari hanging or it just refuses to quit, as was in my case, you'll want to do a FULL reset.  You will be deleting a bunch of preference files, but don't worry, Safari will recreate all these files.  Just follow the instructions below:

Open Terminal - follow this path: Applications => Utilities => Terminal  and paste the commands following the screen shot then hit return.  These commands will save your Safari folder with a date stamp on your Desktop and delete several files.

mv ~/Library/Safari ~/Desktop/Safari-`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/Apple\ -\ Safari\ -\ Safari\ Extensions\ Gallery; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.WebKit.PluginProcess; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/Apple\ -\ Safari\ -\ Safari\ Extensions\ Gallery; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.LSSharedFileList.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.RSS.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.WebFoundation.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.WebKit.PluginHost.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.WebKit.PluginProcess.plist; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/PubSub/Database; \
rm -Rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.apple.Safari.savedState

Change the default save location in Mountain Lion

The default save location for TextEdit (and other apps that can store documents on iCloud) is iCloud. It takes a few clicks if you want to expand the save dialog and save a file locally. There is no way to change this in the GUI, but if you run the following command in Terminal, this will set the default save location to On My Mac for all iCloud-compatible apps:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

To change this back to the default, run this command: 

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool true

Update: you can also accomplish this through the Secrets preference pane

Click here to download the preference pane

Icons galore!

If you are looking for the perfect icon for your Mac then look no further than your CoreServices folder.  This folder holds every imaginable icon your Mac has to offer, and depending on which version Max OS X you're using, you will be able find 2000+!  My folder, for example, has 2,370 icons!  To get to all these icons all you have to do is:

• launch Preview
• Go to your MacintoshHD folder (this is your startup drive and you may have renamed it).
• Double-click the System folder
• Double-click the LIbrary folder
• Now look for the CoreServices folder

• Now drag that folder on top of the Preview icon that's on the Dock

As you can see, you may get presented with 2,300+ icons, which is great for getting the perfect icon.  Now you'll want to select the icon by enabling the Edit Toolbar, if it's not already.

• click on your View menu
• Now click on Show Edit Toolbar

Now select any selection tool you wish, Lasso Selection, for example on the left side of the Edit toolbar.

• Now drag your selection tool around the icon.  

Mac compatibility

I recently came across a great site for checking for compatibility of applications for new releases of the Mac operating system (Lion, Mountain Lion to even future versions).  The site in question is RoaringApps and recently added Devices section, in which you can check which of your (many) Apple computers will run the latest versions of OS X and iOS.

You can also update your Mac's firmware to make it more compatible and functional by clicking here.  My laptop's firmware, for instance, would be here.  Another example would be an an iMac I recently upgraded.

Microsoft Windows has an equivalent in a software download and you can download it here

Easily find your Mac's model number

Last week I was asked if there was an easier way to find your Mac's model.  There is, in fact, a very easy way.  Just follow these simple instructions:

• Locate the Apple Menu and option click About This Mac so it reads System Information...
• In the Hardware section, look for Model Identifier.

• Head on over to everymac.com and scroll down and make sure the By Identifier tab is open and click on Model Identifier.
• Now look for your Identifier in the list.  My iMac, for example, would be iMac12,1.  A friend I know has a laptop with an identifier of MacBookPro2,2

Note: you may have a version of MacOS X that has System Profiler instead of System Information.

You can also download an application equivalent of EveryMac.com called MacTracker. 

If you are on a Windows system, the utility you want is msinfo32.  Just click the Start menu and immediately type msinfo32.  After you press return, the utility will show up

Profile Watcher relentlessness

Scammers are all over the place and often relentless, as is the scammer who posted the following:

"WOW I cant believe that you can see who is viewing your Profile!
I just saw My Top 10 Profile and Photo Peekers and I am SHOCKED!!
You can also see WHO VIEWED YOUR PROFILE here -->"

This message has been seen on Facebook and as soon as the scammers see that they block the URL, they change it.  I just recently posted a different scam below.

Marketing Scams

Just got a SMS from (312) 508-3521 which reads BestBuy Cust #72568 You have won the $1000 Best Buy Card! Claim your prize Today www.tinyurl.com/9xrpjts. This is a scam! NEVER go to a site with a top level domain (after the www.) that doesn't specify the company name

more on this:

http://forums.bestbuy.com/t5/BestBuy-Com/Free-1-000-Best-Buy-GiftCard/td-p/273442/page/4

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-1-000-Best-Buy-Giftcard-Scams-Served-Via-SMS-275817.shtml

You can even search the internet on this topic

Repair manuals galore!

Ifixit.com is a the wikipedia.com equivalent of repair manuals.  This website has thousands of manuals and it's one of this site's purposes is to empower you to fix just about anything yourself.  The step-by-step illustrations are very crisp and clear.  To help you get the job done, the even sell tools and parts!

I recently had to blow out my MacBook Pro's left fan because it was making grinding noises and was dusty.  This website walked me all the the way through.  It even told me what size tools I needed!

Every Mac spec

There is a website called everymac.com that lists all the specifications of every mac ever made. It also has specs to every iPod, iPhone, iPad and Mac clone in the world, with technical, configuration, and pricing info. Get specs on every Mac, answer your Mac questions, compare Macs side-by-side, lookup Macs, and more!

Lion doesn't come on any physical media.  Instead, you have download it from Apple's servers from the Apple store.  What if you bought a Mac with Lion already installed and you desperately need the install DVD because your hard drive got hosed.  The following will give you instructions on how to burn your own install DVD.

1. Download Lion from the Mac App Store. The installer should show up in your Applications folder.
2. Right-click on the installer and hit "Show Package Contents". Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport and look for a file called "InstallESD.dmg".
3. Open up Disk Utility and drag the DMG file into the left-hand sidebar. If you're burning it to a DVD, insert your DVD, select the disk image in the sidebar, and hit the "Burn" button. Skip down to the last step to use it.
4. If you want to burn Lion to a USB flash drive, plug it in and click on it in the left-hand sidebar in Disk Utility. Go to the Partition tab and select "1 Partition" from the dropdown menu. Choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on the left.
5. Hit the Options button under the partition table and choose "GUID Partition Table". You'll need this to make the drive bootable on a Mac. Hit the Apply button when you're done to format your drive (note: it will erase everything on the drive).
6. Click on the "Restore" tab, choose the InstallESD.dmg file as the source and your flash drive as the destination. Hit the Apply button and it will create your bootable USB drive.
7. Reboot into OS X and hold the option key when you hear the startup chime. You can boot into your DVD or flash drive from there.

Exclude files and folders from Time Machine

I was asked if there were any default exclusions from Time Machine a while back.  While searching the internet, I came up with the following document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<!-- paths we do not want to include in a system backup -->

<key>PathsExcluded</key>

<array>

/.Spotlight-V100 

/.Trashes 

/.fseventsd 

/.hotfiles.btree 

/Backups.backupdb 

/Desktop DB 

/Desktop DF 

/Network/Servers 

/Previous Systems 

/Users/Shared/SC Info 

/Users/Guest 

/dev 

/home 

/net 

/private/var/db/efw_cache 

/private/var/db/Spotlight <!-- old tiger location of the Spotlight db -->

/private/var/db/Spotlight-V100 <!-- old tiger location of the Spotlight db -->

</array>

<!-- paths where we need to capture top level folder to restore disk structure, but don't want to backup any contents -->

<key>ContentsExcluded</key>

<array>

/Volumes 

/Network 

/automount 

/.vol 

/tmp 

/cores 

/private/tmp 

/private/Network 

/private/tftpboot 

/private/var/automount 

/private/var/folders 

/private/var/run 

/private/var/tmp 

/private/var/vm 

/private/var/db/dhcpclient 

/private/var/db/fseventsd 

/Library/Caches 

/Library/Logs 

/System/Library/Caches 

/System/Library/Extensions/Caches 

</array>

<!-- paths where we need to capture entire subtree folder layout to restore disk structure, but don't want to backup contained files -->

<key>FileContentsExcluded</key>

<array>

/private/var/log 

/private/var/spool/cups 

         /private/var/spool/fax 

         /private/var/spool/uucp 

</array>

<!-- standard user paths we want to skip for each user (subpath relative to root of home directory) -->

<key>UserPathsExcluded</key>

<array>

Library/Application Support/SyncServices/data.version 

Library/Caches 

Library/Logs 

Library/Mail/Envelope Index 

Library/Mail/AvailableFeeds 

Library/Mirrors 

Library/PubSub/Database 

Library/PubSub/Downloads 

Library/PubSub/Feeds 

Library/Safari/Icons.db 

         Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db 

Library/Safari/HistoryIndex.sk 

</array>

</dict>

</plist>

You can click here to view a page with similar content, or use can go to the Finder and pull down the Go menu then Go to Folder... and copy and paste this path:

System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

The following paths are my own exclusions.  To define your own set of exclusions, simply go into System Preferences, click on Time Machine and click on Options.

User Defined (my) Exclusions

~/Desktop/Facebook

~/Frostwire

/Users/Shared/Parallels
/Users/seanski/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-seanski35@imap.gmail.com/

User Library in Lion and Mountain Lion

After upgrading to Lion you will notice that your user's Library's folder is missing.  Don't worry, It's still there.  Apple decided to hide it so users don't mess around with this very important folder.  To unhide it, simply open Terminal (Applications ==> Utilities ==> Terminal) and input the following command:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/   #to show the Library folder

To change the setting back, input into the Terminal:

chflags hidden ~/Library/ #to hide the Library folder

You can also click this link to access this secret on Blacktree's Secret's page.  Secrets is a preference pane that gives you a graphical interface to access all of your Mac's hidden treasures.  You can download the software here

Setting up Outlook for use with AT&T

Someone just asked me to help them to reset their sbcglobal.net email password.  It's as easy as going to their 'Password Reset' page.

If you're still having trouble sending and receiving mail, just follow steps steps for setting up Outlook:

To set up your AT&T Mail account in Outlook(R) 2010, simply add a new email account to your existing Outlook profile. 

• Click Start >All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Outlook 2010.
• Select File > Info > Add Account. 

Note: If you are using Outlook 2010 for the first time, the Outlook 2010 Startup Wizard may automatically open. If the Wizard opens, click Next. On the following screen, select Yes when you are asked, Would you like to configure an E-mail Account?, and then click Next..

• Select the radio button beside Internet E-mail.
• Click Next.
• in the User Information section:
• In the Your Name field, enter your name the way that you want it to appear to other people when you send a message.
• In the E-mail Address field, enter your full AT&T email address including domain (e.g., YourName@att.net). 
    
  Note: If you are setting up this account for an AT&T Email Alias, input the alias email address in this field. 
   
• In the Server Information section:
  • From the Account Type drop-down, select POP3.
  • In the Incoming Mail Server field, enter inbound.att.net
  • In the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server field, enter outbound.att.net
• In the Logon Information section:
• In the User Name field, enter your full email address including domain (e.g., YourName@att.net).
• In the Password field, enter your password.
  
  Note: If you are setting up this account for an AT&T Email Alias, input the full email address of the ID (Primary or Sub Account) associated with the email alias in this field. Do not input the email alias address in this field.
• Select the check box beside Remember password.
• Select More Settings.
• Select the Outgoing Server tab.
• Verify these settings: The check box beside My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication is selected AND The radio button beside Use same settings as my incoming mail server is selected.
• Select the Advanced tab.
• Verify these settings:
  • The Incoming server (POP3) displays 995
  • The check box beside This server requires a secure connection (SSL) is selected.
  • The Outgoing server (SMTP) displays 465
  • The drop-down beside Use the following type of encrypted connection displays SSL.
• Click OK.
• Click Next.
• Click Finish.