FEATURED SPECIAL | 05/22/09 – 05/29/09

On Monday, the “Boston Globe”:http://www.boston.com/business/globe/globe100/globe_100_2009/bright_id mentioned Small Dog in the bright ideas section of the “Globe 100” as a company that’s embracing a corporate “shabby chic” mentality in order to creatively save money. “Click here to read this.”:http://www.boston.com/business/globe/globe100/globe_100_2009/bright_ideas_shabbychic/

I am going to be naturally shabby chic in the woods this weekend, as I am camping at the Green River Reservoir in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Green River Reservoir provides camping and paddling experiences in a remote setting – campsites can only be reached by paddling a couple of miles to them. The only technology I’m bringing is a digital camera. The iPhone is (gulp) staying home.

I hope all of you enjoy this Memorial Day weekend!

Until next week,

_Don, Kali, Ed, Morgan & Sebastian _

As mentioned above, many Mac users don’t know that Macs are as right-click savvy as Windows computers. This misunderstanding is partly Apple’s fault. While Macs have been long able to right click, they shipped with a single-button mouse until 2005. Before that, it was necessary to purchase a third-party mouse with two buttons (or use the Control key, described below).

All desktop Macs now ship with Apple’s Mighty Mouse (which is multi-click capable), but by default the Mighty Mouse is configured for single-button clicking. Likewise, the trackpads on the past few generations of Apple notebooks have the ability to right-tap, emulating the right-click of a regular mouse. However, by default this is also not activated.

Here’s how to configure the Mighty Mouse for right-clicking (or Secondary Clicking, as Apple calls it):

*1.* Open System Preferences (by clicking on the the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen, then choosing System Preferences).
*2.* Click Keyboard & Mouse to open its preference pane.
*3* Click the Mouse tab.
*4* Choose which button you want to assign to use for right clicking (again, called Secondary Click here). I suggest using the, uh, right key to right click.

Now you can use your Mighty Mouse to access unique contextual menus for each application.

If you have a recent Apple notebook, you can configure the trackpad to recognize a right click:

*1.* Open System Preferences (by clicking on the the Apple icon in the upper left corner of the screen, then choosing System Preferences).
*2.* Click Keyboard & Mouse to open its preference pane.
*3* Click the Trackpad tab.
*4* Click the checkbox “For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button”.

Now you can use your MacBook, MacBook Pro, and late model PowerBook’s trackpad to access unique contextual menus for each application.

As mentioned above, you can also hold down your Mac’s *Control* key while clicking with your mouse or trackpad to access the right-click contextual menu. The *Control* key is labeled *ctrl* on most Apple notebooks.

To tell the truth, I’ve not bothered to set up a secondary click on my MacBook Pro’s trackpad; I simply hold down the *Control* key while clicking with the trackpad.

“Read more about multi-touch on your the most recent Apple notebooks by clicking here.”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1115

_Dear Friends,_

This week it’s Ed writing for Don, who was last seen in Kansas, retreating into a farmhouse to take cover from an ominous oncoming thunderstorm. Fortunately he had his little black dog and dear Uncle Henry and Aunt Em to keep him company. Funny, I haven’t heard from him recently…

This was an exciting week for us at Small Dog Electronics. For two days we hosted a large booth at the “Vermont Business and Industry Expo”:http://www.vtexpo.com/, which is the largest expo of its kind in Northern New England and upstate New York. We won the “Best Technology Booth” award – which was easy since our booth was basically a wall of shiny new Macs and Apple displays.

The Expo was a great opportunity for networking and idea swapping. It was also inspiring to see the large number of innovative Vermont businesses that are competitive and successful, even with the economic cluster – I mean, economic downturn.

You can see a video promoting the Expo “by clicking here:”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY2KJ0J_ifM The video has appearances from Small Dog employees Geoff Blank and yours truly.

We also had a smaller booth for two days at the “Alliance for Community Media Northeast Conference and Trade Show.”:http://acm-ne.org/ That was a nice opportunity to meet some of the creative people working in that important field.

Also this week, the “Vermont Association of Broadcasters”:http://vab.org announced the winners of the 2009 Commercial of the Year awards for Vermont. Small Dog’s television ads won three of the top awards, including First Place “Best in Show” for TV for our “Busy Dogs” commercial. You can see these ads on our YouTube channel “by clicking here.”:http://www.youtube.com/user/smalldogelectronics

At the various events this week, I talked to many people who recently switched from Windows to Mac. Every single person said they loved their new Macs and were very glad they switched. However, a surprising number mentioned they wished they could still “right click” on the Mac as they had on their PCs. A familiar refrain was “I guess it’s easier to use a single mouse button, but I really liked using the right-click”.

This was surprising to me – I assumed that more people knew Macs are as right-click capable as Windows machines. Which brings me to this week’s Mac Treat!

We are continuing our monthly tradition of randomly selecting two winners of a Mac / iPod gift pack from our “Facebook fans”:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Small-Dog-Electronics/18904017006 and “Twitter followers.”:http://twitter.com/hellosmalldog

If you’re not already in our Facebook group, you can join here:
“Small Dog Electronics on Facebook.”:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Small-Dog-Electronics/18904017006

Not on Facebook? “Sign up here.”:http://www.facebook.com

Do you use Twitter? We post Mac tips, tricks, news, contests and more on our Twitter feed. “Click here to follow us on Twitter.”:http://twitter.com/hellosmalldog

Word is spreading that there’s a critical security vulnerability in Java on Mac OS X. Actually, it’s a couple of vulnerabilities that can be taken advantage of to run commands outside of the browser as the user that launched the browser. The truth is that it’s been known about since at least August of last year and Sun, the makers of Java, fixed it long ago, but those fixes haven’t made it into Mac OS X yet, not even the “10.5.7 update”:http://support.apple.com/downloads/#10.5.7.

So, what’s a Mac User to do? There’s no known use of exploit beyond the “proof-of-concept examples”:http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/macosx/CVE-2008-5353.20090519.html, but the triage is pretty simple:

1. Turn off ‘Open “safe” files after downloading’ in Safari -> Preferences -> General
2. Turn off Java in Safari -> Preferences -> Security and any other browsers you use

This will prevent malicious Java code on a web page or downloaded from running automatically. There’s no reason to panic and JavaScript will still function normally, but it’s better to be on the safe side if you’re not regularly visiting web sites requiring Java.

If you’re technically inclined, you may be interested in “the detailed explanation”:http://blog.cr0.org/2009/05/write-once-own-everyone.html of the vulnerabilities.

[Via “Daring Fireball”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/05/20/fuller-java-mac-os-x]