We are heading to PEI tomorrow and then to Nova Scotia where we will ride the Cabot Trail before starting back west towards Vermont. Special thanks to Jessica for watching the little dogs and to Matt and Tony for keeping Hammerhead company. We sure do like this motorcycle touring!

I will be back in the office next Thursday just in time for “*Small Dog Speaks*”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks on WDEV, so get your questions ready for me by filling out the form on the page. As always, we’ll answer them live on-air!

Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don, Kali & Stephanie_

Whenever I have something going on with my computer, I always think about how our computers are sooooo fancy that IT could just access it remotely, play around and fix whatever needs to be fixed. Sharing screens is a super cool tool that can come in handy in many situations, and one that turns out, isn’t just for IT experts.

If you are running Mountain Lion on your Mac and have Messages you can share screens with your other pals and play the tech expert to help troubleshoot issues or just to simply have some fun. Wanna learn how to use this nifty tool?

To get started with screen sharing, each person must be using the same type of account: AIM, Bonjour, Google Talk or Jabber. Unfortunately, screen sharing is unavailable through iMessages (two iCloud accounts). To start sharing the screen, simply click on the user’s name in your Buddies list and from the menu, choose Ask to Share [_____]’s screen.

Or, you can select your buddy’s name and click the screen sharing icon (it looks like two overlapping rectangles) on the bottom right of the Buddies window. Whoever you invited will then receive an invitation via a dialog box. When this happens, they can either accept or send you a text reply with something like, “I’m busy; can’t share screens right this second.” To end the screen share, simply look for the flashing orange screen-sharing icon and then choose End Screen Sharing.

However, the possibilities of Messages do not end here. You can also do things like share slideshows and presentations. This could be a huge tool for businesses. Read more about Slideshows and Presentations via Messages in Mike Burl’s, “*How To Give A Remote Presentation With Messages*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb823/ article.

If you’d like to keep a copy of your conversations in Messages, simply hop into the preferences and choose the Messages tab and enable “Save History When Conversations Are Closed.” If you’d like to locate the archived messages, open up Finder, hold down the Option key and select *Go > Library.* When that opens, click on the Messages folder and then the Archive folder. There should be a series of folders labeled with various dates. These are your chats!

Here at Small Dog, we use Messages all day, every day, to “chat” with one another. If you’ve never used Messages and have it on your computer, open ‘er up and play around. It could be a handy app for you. Cheers!

Apple has announced that, starting August 16th, they are going to be offering a USB Power Adapter swap program to replace customers’ third party (non-Apple) power adapters. They are now offering this at a special price for customers with third party power adapters because there have been several reports of these malfunctioning or causing safety issues. While not all are unsafe, Apple is offering this a solution to help.

Here’s how it works:
Bring in your adapter and associated iOS device. Apple offers one swap per device, at a special discounted price. We will need to verify that the iOS device (be it an iPad, iPhone, or iPod) has not already been used for this program via the serial number.

Pricing on the third party adapter replacements will be $10. While some third party adapters have had malfunctioning issues, not all do. We won’t be able to verify if your third party adapter is one of those — just that it is a non-Apple adapter. If you use a non-Apple branded USB power adapter for your iOS device, we recommend bringing it in for us to offer a swapped unit for you.

A timeline for this program has not been offered yet, but it was announced as a “limited time” program, so please, take advantage of it while you can.

In addition to the AirPort Express Base Stations, we also got a great deal on Apple refurbished AirPort Extremes. These are already $60 off of the current model, and for the next two weeks enjoy free shipping as well.

__This article originally appeared in Kibbles & Bytes issue__ “*#746*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb746/

This Mac Treat is similar to one of our “*previous treats,*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb584/ but with some added nuggets.

One of my favorite features in Spotlight is the ability to pose a calculation (e.g. 5,608 * 72) and it will retrieve the Calculator for you as a top hit. (Just enter the numbers you want to add, subtract, multiply or divide by using the standard mathematical symbols of +, -, * and / in the Spotlight window.)

Here’s an updated bonus for those of you with Lion: Now when you do a Spotlight search, it offers a ‘web searches’ option in the search results. If chosen, your default web browser will option with said search entered.

You can also now drag and drop files out of your search results. (Yippee!) In order to preview an item in your search results, select and hold the Command key. Additionally, hold down the Command key (with the preview window open) to display an info bar at the bottom of the window.

Hey, we got a special shipment of Apple refurbished AirPort Express Base Stations. They’re are $20 off the current model, and for the next two weeks get free shipping on these bad boys!