Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • MAC TREAT #132: Tabbing Your Finder

    On any given day, I have about five windows open in Safari, each with about seven or eight tabs. My brain seems to respond well to this setup–each window has a different “theme” and the tabs within are all closely related. So efficient! And space-saving! (By the way, whenever I restart my computer, I can’t extoll the value of the “Reopen All Windows from Last Session” feature enough!)

    But this tip is not about Safari. If you appreciate “the fewer windows the better” philosophy overall, add the power of tabs to your Finder! Truth be told, I was searching for more ways to get the most out of my tabs a couple of days ago, and I came across an article about this on “mac360.com,”:http://mac360.com so big ups to them for the info!

    “TotalFinder,”:http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ with the motto, “Make Finder totally rock!”, is an app (currently free until v.1.0 comes out, at which time, it will be $15) that adds tabbed browsing to your Finder. Some features include Google Chrome-like tabs, and folders that always appear on top.

    I know it’s a bit of a cheat to feature a Mac Treat that would require an added application, but I’ve found it to be an extremely useful tool so far, and one that I wish Finder had natively. Get it while it’s still free!

    “Download TotalFinder 0.9.6”:http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/

  • _Dear Friends,_

    I got caught in some rain riding home from Burlington last night, but with the warm temperatures it was not too bad. I was at the S. Burlington store which was jumping all day. I was very proud of our team as they handled the big volume of customers despite the glitches we had that day with our database.

    It has been a great season for blueberries and my breakfast these days has been a bowl of berries, which is a great start for the day!

    I went down to the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor Vermont on Saturday to check out the New England BBQ championships and to watch Hapy compete in the Strongman competition. It was a beautiful ride and the place was jammed with 50 or more BBQ vendors, a huge Harpoon beer tent, some live music and big guys that made Hapy look small doing fetes of strength. I was amazed at how much Hapy could dead lift, but the larger guys were lifting over 700 pounds.

    There were some great new products coming out of Cupertino this week that are covered here in Kibbles & Bytes. I am very excited about the new offerings and will be moving to try out the Magic Trackpad as soon as we get one in. With less fanfare, Apple upgraded Safari this week and implemented the extensions gallery that will allow you to install and uninstall extensions easily to the browser. I have started playing with various extensions on the gallery and have found some that improve my surfing right away. Hapy is debating whether he will move to the new 27-inch iMac with a second 27-inch LED Cinema display or the ridiculously awesome 12-core Mac Pro.

    I am leaving on Wednesday to head to South Dakota for the Sturgis rally. Grace, Tony and I have decided that we will take up to a 100 mile detour to see oddball roadside attractions. I downloaded a couple of apps for my iPhone and iPad to find these for us. Our route is going through Canada to Michigan UP, through Wisconsin and Minnesota and then to SD. Tony will ride with us on the way out but Grace and I will stop in Chicago on the way back for our annual Cubs pilgrimage to Wrigley Field.

    I’ll be staying in touch with my iPhone 4 and my iPad and I’ll carry a Bluetooth keyboard for late-night writing. I found that I can type faster and more accurately with the BT keyboard and that makes the iPad the perfect compact platform for me–that and the eight pages of apps I have now!

    Things are really picking up on the construction of the Manchester, NH store. I’m heading over on Tuesday to do some final interviews for new members of our Small Dog team. We have a lot of steps to complete, but it is an exciting and heady time as we create a new store.

  • Tips to Speed Up Your iPhone 3G

    With all of the fuss surrounding the elegant and speedy iPhone 4, it is easy to forget about its curved backed forebear: the…

  • Get in Touch with Your Trackpad

    Apple’s Magic Trackpad is a revolutionary new product for Mac desktop users which features both familiar and new multi-touch gestures. Though Mac notebook…

  • Safari 5.0.1: Extensions for Everyone!

    Apple has released an update to its popular Safari browser. This update, which puts the browser at version 5.0.1, enables Safari Extensions for…

  • New Apple Battery Charger!

    Along with all the other major product updates on Tuesday morning, Apple also introduced a new (very cool looking) AA battery charger that…

  • Apple Updates iMacs

    Earlier this morning, Apple released significant updates to the iMac line. Largely performance oriented, the update introduced Intel Core i3, Core i5, and…

  • Tech Tails TV: Take 2.0!

    Here’s some entertainment news you won’t read in “Variety Magazine.”:http://www.variety.com A few months ago we experimented with hosting our bi-weekly Tech Tails TV web show on Ustream.com. Tech Tails TV is our live web show where we repair and troubleshoot Macs, gossip about industry news, and answer all of your Apple-related questions. While this was a fairly successful endeavor, we struggled a little with broadcast quality (particularly audio) as well as timing issues. Because of that, Tech Tails TV is moving to a different network and a different broadcast time.

    Forget “same bat-time, same bat-location”: Tech Tails TV will now broadcast every other Monday at 2:00 PM EST, starting *Monday August 2.*

    The brilliant and captivating Apple technician “Rebecca Kraemer.”:http://www.smalldog.com/rebecca will be hosting most episodes of Tech Tails TV. She’ll be joined by other techs from Small Dog Electronics, as well as a rotating roster of special guests.

    To watch the all-new version of Tech Tails TV, visit our channel at “http://www.justin.tv/hellosmalldog.”:http://www.justin.tv/hellosmalldog at Monday, August 2 at 2:00 PM EST. “Click here to subscribe to the Tech Tails TV broadcast calendar in your iCal calendar.”:webcal://ical.me.com/edwardshepard/Tech%20Tails%20TV.ics