These two tips which came from friends, have helped me and you might find them useful as well.
This first one has to do with adding pictures to our email messages.
We tend to open iPhoto and drag photos to Mail when we want to email a picture to someone because that is the way we had to do it when we first got iPhoto and Mail. But there is a faster way to do it now.
With a new Mail message open, click on Window > Photo Browser. That will bring up a floating window that shows all your pictures stored in iPhoto. Find the one(s) you want and drag them into your message. To size them appropriately for mailing (small, medium, large, actual size) click on the “image size” button in the bottom right corner of the message window and select the size. The “image size” button will only appear when you are utilizing this option. Remember that if images attached to email messages are too large, some email hosting sites will reject them, so it is often prudent to select small.
This second one has to do with sending a message to someone you forgot to include the first time. In the past you would have to go into the "Sent Messages", open the message, copy the content, paste it into a new message, enter the email of the person or persons you forgot and send the new message.
Now you can go into the "Sent Messages" file, select and open the message, and then choose Message > Send Again and replace the existing list of recipients with the new one(s). Then hit send. I really like this one!
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( 2.9 / 45 )If there is a specific web site that you want tied to an Address Book card (such as the individual's personal web site, or the company web site where someone works), it is really easy to do.
Open Address Book and click on that person's card. Open Safari. This only works in Safari. Find the page you want added. Choose Card > Add URL from Safari. The URL will be added to the card. You don't even have to click the Edit button on the card.
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( 2.5 / 130 )iChat, like most of the Apple applications, has multiple uses. You just have to know what they are, and how to use them.
My daughters and I like to use it a lot to send photos back and forth. The really cool thing is that you can send a high resolution image through iChat and it arrives instantly. You don’t have to worry about making it fit someone’s email restrictions, or lower the resolution.
For those who are “digitally challenged” as I was when I first started dealing with computers and images and digital cameras, here is a brief definition. The higher the DPI (dots per inch) of your digital photo the better quality the photo will be, especially when you print it out.
But the higher the DPI, the longer it takes it to download and the more bandwidth it takes to send it. Therefore, if you attach pictures to your emails with high DPI resolution, they may never reach their destination because the email program your recipient uses may reject them. At the very least you should send them one picture per email.
The easiest, fastest way to determine the DPI (and the size) of an image is to open it in another wonderful Apple app called Preview. I keep Preview in my dock because I use it daily, so when I want to open an image in it, I just drag the image over the Preview icon in the dock and the image opens in Preview. Then click on Tools > Show Inspector and you get this window that shows you both the DPI and the size of the image. (If you want to adjust either the size or the DPI just go back to that Tools menu and choose “Adjust Size”).
So now we have to take a few moments for the precious part. I have a great grandson who turned 3 last week. He loves guitars and got one for his birthday. The only real person he has ever seen play is his own great, great, grandfather who still plays sometimes at age 91. So when he sat down, on his on and starting imitating my father playing the guitar, the cameras starting clicking. I wasn’t there so the computer came out, iChat came on and the picture came flying to me instantly.
All my daughter had to do was download the picture to her laptop, start an iChat, and drag the picture into the field where she would automatically enter text, and hit return. It didn’t matter what size the picture was or the fact that it was 300 DPI.
About iPhoto. As far as I have been able to determine, iPhoto doesn’t give you DPI information. It’s not an important function of iPhoto. If I’m wrong I’m sure someone will let me know. But my point is that if you have a photo stored in iPhoto and you need to know the DPI just hold your mouse button over it and drag it to the desktop, release it so it stays on the desktop and then drag it to Preview as noted above. You are not harming your iPhoto image in any way, nor are your removing it from iPhoto.
So, try this easy way to send picture, scanned articles, URL’s, scanned cartoons, or whatever else is of interest or important. Remember iChat is not necessarily secure so don’t be sending your credit card numbers.
Have fun with it.
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( 2.7 / 83 )I received a lovely email a few days ago from a very nice reader of this blog who wanted to know if it would be OK if she put the hard drive icon on her desk top in the trash. She had a really cool picture that she was using as a screen saver and the hard drive icon spoiled the effect.
This reader is a new Mac user who lives in an isolated location and she doesn't have many resources for questions. I'm so glad she asked this question because she is not the first, nor will she be the last to wonder about this.
The answer is that trashing the hard drive icon will trash her operating system. Something that none of us want to do. However, she can remove the icon image from her desktop, which is her real goal. Should you want to do the same, here is all you have to do.
Click in a blank space on your desktop so that you are in Finder. Choose Finder > Preferences > General. Remove the check mark next to Hard Disks under the heading "Show These Items On The Desktop".
Your hard drive icon will no longer be visible but it is perfectly safe. If you need to get into it for some reason, reverse the process.
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( 3 / 42 )OK, so I got up at 6:00 AM (basically against my moral code) and was at my local Apple store by 7:00 AM on Friday the 28th. The store opened at 10:00, but I wanted to be first in line to buy Snow Leopard. I figured as president as our local Mac users group CapMac it was my duty.
I didn't have time to install it until late Friday night so you can see it was the principal of the matter.
Installing it was like putting butter on a hot, home made biscuit. Couldn't have been easier. (I emphasize home made biscuit because as a true Southern woman, no canned biscuit will ever cross my threshold).
So I really have not had much time to play with it, but I will you it is easy to install because Apple has made it easy. [A smart user will still have a backup of their system just in case, but a smart user will already be backing their system up routinely.] And I will tell you my favorite little tiny change is the fact that I can now display both the day of the week and the date next to the time on the tool bar.
Choose the Apple Menu > System Preferences > Date & Time. Find "Date Options" and click the buttons next to "show the day of the week" and "show date".
Much more later.
Nancy
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