Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Tip of the Week: Mail's Spam Filter

    Mac OS X includes Mail, a robust and highly customizable email program with support for POP, IMAP, and Exchange. It’s always had a very good junk mail filter that’s easy and intuitive to set up.

    When you fire up Mail and configure it for the first time, you’ll notice some of your messages appear in your inbox in an amber typeface. This color means Mail thinks the message is junk. If a message is wrongly tagged as junk, you can click once on it and then press the “not junk” button in the toolbar. Conversely, if something gets by the filter, you can click once on it and then press the junk button in the toolbar.

    When you feel that Mail is adequately filtering out the junk, you can take it out of this training mode by going to Preferences in the Mail menu on top of your screen. Click Junk Mail in the Preferences window toolbar and select the appropriate option in the “When junk mail arrives…” section.

    I receive several hundred emails every day, and send quite a few, too; I spent a fair amount of time training my junk filter when I started at Small Dog about four years ago, and continue to tweak the filter’s performance by marking messages that get past.

    I recently made the choice to wipe my computer clean and selectively rebuild my configuration from my backup. Like anyone else, my computer tends to accumulate crap, and it’s nice to have a fresh start now and again. One thing I did not want to do is re-train my junk mail filter. I didn’t mind re-doing my rules, but the meticulous marking of junk mail over the years is priceless.

    Turns out it is very simple to preserve your hard work. Simply copy com.apple.mail.plist from ~/Library/Preferences on your backup into the same spot on your restored or new computer. This has the delightful side effect of preserving all of your settings.

  • Follow-up: Safari Keyboard Shortcuts

    Thanks to the many readers who pointed out my failing to include a very important few keyboard shortcuts for Safari users who enjoy tabbed browsing.

    To switch between open tabs, press Option-right arrow; to move backwards between open tabs, press Shift-Option-right arrow.

    Apple has an “extensive compendium of shortcuts”:http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343?locale=en_US on its “support”:http://www.apple.com/support site. If ever there were a time to print something out and keep within reach, this is it!

  • Anchors in iWeb

    I am a huge fan of iWeb. Despite being versed in HTML, I find that iWeb is an easy, aesthetically pleasing way to create and maintain an active site without being a techno-whiz. However, despite improved features and functionality with each new release, iWeb still has its imperfections and I ran into one of them last week.

    I was creating a new page for my website–a FAQ on Pregnancy Massage–and I wanted to use anchors. Anchors allow links to be made from one area of a page to another. For example, with many online FAQs, the standard format is to have a list of questions at the top of the page and each question is a link to the full answer located further down the page. This is a relatively simple function that is built into most remedial website deign applications. I was sure iWeb must support it as well!

    After searching through the help menu and getting no results, I turned to the “Apple Discussions”:http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa board. It was there that I learned that not only does iWeb not support anchors, but people have been complaining about this lost feature since the first edition of iWeb.

    I ran across several workarounds but most seemed very cumbersome. Most suggestions involved exporting the site to a local folder and then editing the raw HTML or using a third party program that edited the HTML for the user. While that’s a valid workaround, it defeated my use of the program which is to make quick edits and be able to publish them directly from iWeb on the fly.

    I finally found a solution that was not only simple, but it could be done right from within iWeb. This is how I did it:
    # First write up your FAQ page so the layout is the way you want it. Then, publish it as-is (without links).
    # Go to your new page and record the URL. For this example let’s say your URL is ‘http://web.mac.com/smalldog/FAQ.html’
    # Go back into iWeb, select your first FAQ question, enable it as a hyperlink and use the URL ‘http://web.mac.com/smalldog/FAQ.html#widget1’.
    # Enable your next FAQ question as a hyperlink using the URL ‘http://web.mac.com/smalldog/FAQ.html#widget2’. Continue in this manner to create hyperlinks for each FAQ.
    # Now, create an HTML widget for each FAQ answer (Insert->Widget->HTML Snippet) and drag it so that it’s next to the answer. The trick here is that you need to be sure to create the widgets in order. For example, make sure the first widget you create on the page goes with your first FAQ question. iWeb is smart in the sense that it knows the order that the widgets were created, so if you start creating widgets and don’t keep track of which number the are you can end up with links that take you to the wrong answers. You need to put something benign in the HTML Widget, I used ‘‘. This will make the widget invisible on the page without making it clickable. Once your widgets are in place go ahead and publish!

    You should be left with a nice, neat page where each FAQ question links to the appropriate FAQ answer. We know that what is really going on is that each FAQ question links to a hidden corresponding widget, but the people surfing your site never need to know that! I really love this solution because it’s easy enough for any average user and the page can continue to be edited in the future without the need to use a messy third-party work around. I hope you find fun ways to use this on your website!

  • Happy Tuesday,

    It’s amazing how much greener it is around here after only a week away. Don, Ed, Kali, and I went down to the Washington, DC area for the annual meeting of the Apple Specialist Marketing Corporation (ASMC).

    With temperatures in the upper seventies and bright sunshine all week, it was a welcome departure from the inconsistent and muddy environs we call home; in fact, we were welcomed home with near-freezing temperatures and wet snow falling for much of the weekend.

    Owen, the dog pictured at left, always stays with my friend Jon over in the Champlain Valley when I travel. Each time I leave him he manages to sneak out–he can open doors!–and chase me down the long driveway. Each time I come to pick him up, though, he is hesitant to jump into the car.

    Jon’s two Labs and Owen grew up together in Moretown, where I live now; they remain best of friends. Jon’s pack grew before Owen’s arrival with an Australian Cattle Dog pup named Moxie. She’s about a third of Waylon’s size (Waylon is Tony’s heeler) and is just as crazy.

    As always, thanks for reading, and keep in touch.

    Matt
    “matt@smalldog.com”:mailto:matt@smalldog.com

  • It was warm and sunny in DC but pretty chilly by the time we landed in Burlington. Ed and I were at the final ASMC dinner drinking wine and chatting with our friends from New York, Austin, Oregon and Montreal and sorta lost track of the time.

    Ed suddenly says, “I think we need to get to the airport…” and sure enough, we were late. We had a car to return, but the timing turned out to be perfect as we made our way through security. We did the perfect walk-on to the plane without having to wait a minute.

    There is snow in the forecast for Mother’s Day, I sure hope that is the last time for this season!

    Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,
    _Don, Kali & Ed_

  • iPad Travel Experience

    This past week. I took a substantial leap of faith. That’s right, I left my MacBook Pro at home and traveled with my iPad and iPhone only. Overall iPad was able to keep up with my digital note taking, research and communication needs. There were just a couple of times when I was glad to borrow Matt or Kali’s notebook (literally just a couple of times).

    I used iPad to take copious notes. Since I was typing these notes in an auditorium during lectures, I was glad to have the silent keypad versus the louder, clickier keypad on my MacBook Pro. I found the keyboard was good enough to allow me to keep up with typing as the presenter spoke. What I really missed on the keyboard were arrow keys.

    I was able to send a few dozen emails, update the blog, send some Tweets, and IM from iPad as well.

    Moving from event to event, I loved how iPad is unobtrusive, simple, and lightweight. It was also incredibly handy for passing around and sharing a document (such as the conference agenda, which we all seemed to keep forgetting). As I’ve mentioned before, iPad is a fantastic ebook and document reader, and I was glad to use it for that on the plane, outside the hotel sitting in the sun, and in my room at night.

    One small problem with iPad on an airplane is the period during takeoff and landing when “all electronics must be turned off and stowed in the overhead compartment.” Maybe that’s the airlines way of forcing us ebook readers to study the Sky Mall catalog. Once the plane was underway, it was great to read on iPad.

    The only other notable issue with iPad was using it with Google Analytics. The charts drawn up in Analytics are currently rendered in Flash, which is annoying. I use a couple of apps to help me see Analytics stats, but so far none really provides the granular view as Google Analytics on a webpage. I bet this will change soon.

    One of the awesome things about iPad was its long battery life. I easily made through every day on a single charge. During the first day, it seemed my battery was draining faster than expected, but Kali noted that my screen was on max brightness. After dimming it about 25%, the battery use slowed way down. I never worried about running out of juice.

    Managing the screen brightness is the best way to extend iPad battery life. Apple notes:

    “By default, your iPad has Auto-Brightness turned On. Auto-Brightness adjusts iPad screen brightness based on ambient lighting conditions; lowering brightness in low light conditions helps to extend battery life. You can adjust brightness yourself; go to Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper and drag the slider to the left to lower the default screen brightness.” “See more iPad battery conservation tips on Apple.com by clicking here.”:http://www.apple.com/batteries/ipad.html

    Regarding multitasking (or the inability to multitask) on iPad, in most cases I appreciated having just one active application, as opposed to the my regular computer that typically also has iChat, Twitter, and email all open at the same time. It helped me focus, and it has made me more aware how distracting those applications can really be.

    In many cases, I’d probably only bring iPad on four day or shorter trips. On longer trips, I’d either bring iPad and MacBook Pro, or just MacBook Pro with iPhone as backup. I also might bring a bluetooth keyboard for longer writing tasks. Guess I need another trip to test that out!

  • App of the Week: iExit

    Lately, my husband and I have been taking a lot of road trips. Navigation has become a lot more interactive since we have gotten our iPhones, and we are constantly trying out new apps to use when we travel.

    AllStay’s “iExit”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fapp%252Fiexit%252Fid349052631%253Fmt%253D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30 (link opens iTunes) is one of those apps that renders others redundant. On my iPhone, I have a page reserved for apps that are helpful for when I travel–trip planner-slash-flight tracker, Metro line info (used this yesterday), restaurant finder, etc. While I do keep a couple of specialized apps on that page (such as the Starbucks finder), for the most part, I like for an app to be sophisticated enough to do several things.

    *iExit (a steal at $2.99)* does just that, by combining food finders with gas station info and so on, but I find that the organization by exit makes so much sense. It takes advantage of the GPS features of our phones, and it has proved to be an excellent tool when we’re on the road. We’re usually the kind of travelers who appreciate very short on/off pit stops, so a huge benefit for us is when an app quickly and accurately lets us know not only what’s available off that exit, but __how far it is.__ All locations off of an exit feature mile distance and directional data in a list or a map view. (We like to pick places under .5 miles!)

    The image icons are crisp and clear, and the layout makes the information very easy to manage. Perhaps more importantly, though, the main reason this app is so nice is that along with being extremely fast, it lays information out in such a way that you can view all upcoming exits and the businesses off of them in a list. When a highway splits, you will see the directional options listed inline as well. For example, I was traveling on I-89S in Vermont, and about 30 minutes prior to the White River Junction split of 89/91, I could continue viewing my trip with exits available on I-91S.

    However, there are some features that iExit is missing. Notably, there is no way to star or ‘favorite’ a particular exit. It’s great to be able to remember an exit for future use–you know, that the ramp was an easy on/off and that it had three of your favorite places in one location. Plus, a notes section would be nice to use for when you want to remember why it was so nice. Maybe the bathrooms were especially nice or that it’s the best way to take a scenic shortcut.

    I brought these suggestions to the attention of the developer in an email I sent, and to my surprise, he responded back to me within five minutes… not with a canned response, but with a thoughtful, comprehensive email thanking me for my input and adding some insight to the development he’s currently working on. (Yes, those features are already in progress!) I was very impressed that this was not a huge developer that may or may not ever ‘hear’ me or even update the app consistently.

    It’s a work in progress, and so far, even with about 85% rating of usefulness in my mind, it was worth ditching three separate apps in favor of iExit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some travel plans to get back to…

    “Read more, check out the screenshots or buy iExit here.”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fapp%252Fiexit%252Fid349052631%253Fmt%253D8%2526uo%253D6%2526partnerId%253D30

  • Mac Treat #124: Quickly Select Audio Inputs from Volume Menu

    If you use different audio input devices with your Mac, (such as the “Blue Microphones Snowball”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/42648/blue-microphones-snowball-bundle-with-usb-microphone-and-tripod) you’ve probably had to go to System Preferences to change your selected input device. If you’re using Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, however, all you have to do is hold down the Option key as you click on the volume control in the menu bar at the top of your Mac’s screen. If you have audio input devices such as microphones, USB input boxes, etc, these will show up in the drop-down list.

    Time to get a microphone and kick off your karaoke career!

  • Dear Friends,

    I have just returned from Washington, DC where the annual Apple Specialist Marketing Cooperative conference was being held. As with most events like this, while the presentations were great, it was the networking, private meetings and late night informal conversations that meant the most.

    The Apple Specialist community is very open and supportive of each other and we share ideas on operations, marketing and community. The ASMC had scheduled some social events and I was able to catch the performance of the Capitol Steps and laugh a lot.

    There is a vendor fair at the ASMC conference and unlike places like Macworld or CES, this is a small and very intimate gathering of decision makers from Apple Specialists and vendors where deals are made, products are introduced and relationships are built.

    Kali, Ed and Matt joined me at the event this year and I think all of us made new friends, gained valuable insight and reestablished old relationships. Personal relationships are so important in business–they are everything. We look at the relationships we build with our fellow Apple Specialists and the vendors as an integral part of our “people” commitment in the way we measure our success–people, planet and profit. How you treat others is always reflected in how you get treated yourself.

    An old friend of mine works for Apple, Ted Moorman. There is a funny story about Ted and I. About ten years ago there was a meeting where Steve Jobs came to speak to the Apple Specialists and other resellers. There was a long line for checking in to enter the room and as I was picking up my badge, this tall guy says “Don? Of Don and Pat?” I looked up in surprise because not many people know that my wife Grace changed her name from Patricia about 40 years ago.

    Now, I have to admit that I did not recognize Ted but he remembered me and reminded me that we went to the University of Illinois together and then the light went off and we began to talk about old times. He even updated me on mutual friends that I had not seen for 40 years. When I got home, Grace, who seems to have a much better memory of old times and friends than I, filled me in on even more details. It is very interesting that we both ended up in the Apple world. Ted’s a Kibbles & Bytes reader so here’s a shout out to you, Ted!

  • Permissions are Powerful

    I arrived in the office this morning around 8:30, and Rob must have seen me drive in. My phone was ringing as soon…