New Mac User

You may have noticed that there’s no intuitive way to add your own text placeholder to a master slide in Keynote ‘08. In other words, if you want to make a set of slides that has more than just a title and body you can either (1) add a text box on every page or (2) try to add a text placeholder to Keynote. The second option isn’t so intuitive, but here’s how to do it:

1. Select View » Show Master Slides.
2. Select the master slide you want to edit. Make a text box in a master slide and keep it selected.
3. In the Inspector, go to the Slide Inspector (second from left), and select the Appearance tab.
4. Check the checkbox next to Define as Text Placeholder, and create a tag.

The nice folks over at Apple.com have put their photo printing services on sale for the books and calendars. It is a very simple process per the page that they have devoted to the sale. The sale runs now through the end of February 2008. I must say they did a good job with the books. I have 2 of them and my wife is working on one now with our Christmas Pictures from just a few days ago.

The codes are:

For calendars, use code: NAWinterCal08

For photo books, use code: NAWinterBook08

From Mactips.org

1. Open Automator.app (/Applications/Automator.app)
2. Choose File –> New
3. In the Starting Points menu, click Music and Audio. Choose “my iTunes Library” in the “Get content from” pop-up menu. Then in 2nd pop-up menu, choose “Ask for songs and playlists when my workflow runs”.
4. In Library list, click Mail.
5. In Actions list, drag the action called New Mail Mail Message into the Workflow pane. Click on the Options button and turn on “Show this action when the workflow runs.”
6. Choose File –> Save

Give it a try and let us know if it works for you

In Firefox & Safari if you hold down the Option Key and click a link it will automatically be dumped into the Downloads Folder.

Do you like how you can get an e-mail from someone about an appointment and Mail.app will allow you to just enter it in iCal? I really do like it and it has made my life just a step or two easier. Well over the holiday my family bought my Grandfather a Mac and we have since really gotten to love the iChat application. Over at Mac User.com they tell us that if you will type in a one line command that you can enable the Data Detectors in iChat. According to Mac User.com just enter

defaults write com.apple.iChat EnableDataDetectors 1

into terminal and iChat will have the same ability to have to enter the details into iCal just like in Mail.app.

iChat

Merry Christmas to all. I hope that everyone has a blessed day today and are with the ones who truly matter to them.

I have to agree with the folks over at Mactips.org about how annoying it is to see the crash report right after you have some unknown force close the application you have been working on. In their article they tell us how to use the terminal to turn off this very annoying problem.
From Mactips.org

I hate it when an application crashes, it is far and beyond annoying; the only thing that pisses me off more is the popup that shows up after it crashes asking if I want to send all of my personal information to Apple… Of course I do NOT! So why bother with these pesky solicitations of privacy when you can easily get rid of them? Simply open up Terminal and enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none

If for any reason you lose your mind and decide to reactivate these popups, retype the code replacing “none” with “prompt”

Are you an iMovie ‘08 user, adapting from iMovie HD? Do you think you’re missing those crucial transitions for your project — Fade In and Fade Out? I know I was when I first migrated to iMovie ‘08. Want them back? Since iMovie ‘08 does not require transitions to be tied to one or two clips, you can use transitions in pretty creative ways. This is one way I figured out how to do this creatively. If you want your “Fade In” transition back, on your very first clip, drag the new “Fade Through Black” transition. If you want your “Fade Out” transition back, you can drag the “Fade Through Black” transition after the last clip in your movie viewer.

Rob G. adds: For those who edit video a lot, this tip will seem quite basic. But if you’re an iMovie HD user making the move to iMovie ‘08, it may not be obvious that you can get the fade behavior back with a “fade through” transition.

Via Mac OSX Hints

Do you want to have your Mail.app to organize your conversations like gmail? If so its a very easy thing to toggle on and off. All you have to do is:

1. Right-click in the toolbar.
2. Choose “Customize Toolbar…”.
3. Add the “Threads” button.When you click on it, you inbox will automatically adjust, sorting everything by conversation.
4. Clicking on the blue arrow at the left of a message (a message that contains many more) will let you see every email in the thread.

What makes this even better than Gmail is that it is really easy to activate or deactivate it.