Kibbles & Bytes Blog

The days are definitely getting longer, and my thoughts seem to wander to motorcycles even though that is a few months off.

We are getting excited about our new store under construction in Rutland, Vermont. There’s work being done now on walls, floors, signs, point of sale counters, etc. We’ll be posting some photos of the construction on our blog as the work progresses.

Thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes team,
_Don, Kali, Stephanie and Mike_

Apple Refurbished is definitely the way to buy Apple computers.

Not only to you get an amazing product with an Apple guarantee to be just like new but you can purchase AppleCare for the computer as well!

Of course the cherry on top would be the monumental savings you get when compared to purchasing a brand new machine with AppleCare.

Purchase this Apple Refurbished 15-in MacBook Pro with an extended 3-year AppleCare warranty and save over $600!

Sleek, stylish and grippy! What more could you ask for in a case for your new iPod nano?

We have a variety of colors to match whichever iPod nano color you choose.

Right now, we are offering HUGE savings of 50% off plus FREE shipping on all Simplism Silicone for iPod nano (7G). Get ’em now before they’re gone!

Have you ever used your computer in the hot heat of summer when you could give anything for a breeze? Well, this cute little accessory does just that.

Plug it into an available USB port on your Mac and feel the breeze of air blow by you.

For a limited time we are offering FREE shipping on this product. Get yours now and be prepared for when the hot weather rolls around.

iCloud seems to be all the rage these days for Apple users, and deservingly so. iCloud will store your content as well as let you access your music, photos calendars, contacts, documents and more from any of your iOS and Mac devices.

I remember the good ol’ days back in college when I would write papers the night before, but forget to save it to my flash drive or email it to myself so I could either work on it more or print it at school. If Apple had come out with iCloud back then, I wouldn’t have had that problem!

When storing documents on the Cloud you are able to then access these files from another one of your iOS or Mac devices. Here’s how:

First, you’ll need to make sure you have the Documents & Data option enabled in your iCloud preferences. From your iOS device: *Settings > iCloud > Documents & Data > On.* From your Mac: *System Preferences > Internet & Wireless > iCloud > check Documents & Data.*

There are a few ways to save a document to the Cloud. If you are in an iCloud-compatible app (like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc.) on your Mac, you’ll want to go to *File > Save (or Command-S)* and choose iCloud from the menu. Name it and hit “Save”. This file will automatically be pushed to iCloud.

The second way to save to iCloud is if you have a file you’ve already created and it’s saved on your machine, you can easily drag and drop the file onto the iCloud document pane. To do this, open the application that the file was created in. For instance, if you have a Numbers document you’d like to push to iCloud, open Numbers. If Numbers wasn’t already open, you should get the iCloud document pane. Open a Finder window and locate the Numbers document you’d like to add. Then, you can simply drag that file from Finder to the iCloud window pane and boom, it’s there!

The third way to save to iCloud is to open the file that is locally saved to your computer. At the top of the document window is the file name, click on the name and choose “Move to iCloud” (not you must save the file first, if your document is Untitled the “Move to iCloud” option will not be available).

To access the document from a different device than the one you just saved from is super simple. Let’s say you now want to open your Numbers document on your iPad, open the Numbers app on your iPad and choose the file you had previously created. There it is! You can now work on it from your iPad, save it again, and then continue working on it again later on your Mac. It’s really pretty cool.

Note that you need to be running Mountain Lion on your Mac for all of these cool iCloud features and have at least iOS 4.3.3 or later on your iPhone (3GS or newer). Enjoy!

Congratulations are in order for *Sharon L.* for winning an iPod nano. Her story about receiving spoiled chocolate covered strawberries one Valentine’s Day got the most votes for our Worst Valentine’s Day Gift contest.

Honorable mentions go out to Stacy T. and Dennis R. for receiving the next most votes for their 1930’s themed lingerie and virus riddled PC stories respectively.

For anyone who missed it, you can check out all of these stories and more on our blog here: “*http://blog.smalldog.com/article/14-worst-valentine-s-day-gifts/*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/14-worst-valentine-s-day-gifts/

As promised, we randomly picked one of our voters to receive an iPod shuffle. Congratulations to *Toni D.* — you’re our lucky winner.

A very big thank you to everyone who submitted a story about their worst Valentine’s Day gift and to everyone who voted. Hope yesterday treated you much better!

The other day, my boss said to me, “You know what a great article topic would be? Automator, because it seems like powerful tool that everyone forgets about.” The thing is, I completely agree with her. Automator is a useful tool that was a complete mystery to me until I was tasked with this topic. The geek inside me told me to fire up the program and start playing — which I did.

The funny thing is, I didn’t get past the landing page. I was confronted with choice of a type for my document, and I had no idea which to choose, so I turned to Google for my answer. I searched for tutorials about the app, and found one that might actually be useful for me.

It would be rather silly to just regurgitate that article in its entirety so here is a link to the tutorial incase you are interested as well. “*Batch Resize Pictures In OS X Using Automator.*”:http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/20/batch-resize-pictures-in-mac-os-x-using-automator/

What I found was a tutorial allowing me to create a application that would automatically resize, convert to a png and rename an image file all at once. You might think that these are simple operations and wonder why anyone would bother. However, I often have to resize images to make them web-ready and I prefer to save them as a png file. So what this app (that I created) allows me to do is simply drag an image file on top of the app icon and each action is completed in succession pretty much instantly. Now I have a file on my desktop saved in the appropriate file type with the name I chose…and an extra 5 minutes of my day to work on something else.

Now from my brief use of Automator, I can see where there might be some limitations. I’m sure it isn’t as powerful as writing your own applescript plugin, but it certainly has the ease-of-use that Apple is known for. After completing one tutorial, I felt like I had a solid enough understanding of how Automator worked to start creating my own apps. At the very least, I felt like I wasn’t going to damage my computer horribly by writing some monstrous automated function that would erase my hard drive.

I highly recommend to anyone who does the same thing over and over again on a Mac to take a look at Automator to see if it could benefit your workflow. Worst case scenario is that it won’t, and you go back to your same old routine that you were dong before.

I would love to hear if any of our readers currently use Automator and what you use it for. “*Email me your thoughts!*”:mailto:michaelb@smalldog.com