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Did You Know Archive 3
Did You Know?
- Finder sidebar lost its links when upgrading to Lion - here is how to fix it!
- Forgot to deauthorize your old computer in iTunes and have now used all 5 authorizations - What do you do?.
- Want to back up using Time Machine but not sure how? Click here to find out.
- Safari shortcuts and helpful tips.
- Documents in the Cloud.
- Running out of space on your hard drive?.
- 4J Desktop Support.
- iOS Basics and Apps We Like:
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Finder sidebar glitch in Lion:
There have been several stange glitches with Lion. One of them is with the Finder, specificallywhen trying to click on aliases in the sidebar. If, when you click on the sidebar, nothing is selected, go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and check and uncheck a box. For some reason this will restore sidebar links. While you are in there, don't forget to uncheck any boxes you might not want littering your Finder sidebar!
Removing old Macs from iTunes:
On your new computer you can't play some of your content because iTunes tells you that you have used up all five of your authorizations. What do you do? This inconvenient situation is casued by the digital rights management (DRM) software embedded in videos and other content sold in the iTunes Store. Apple only allows you to "authorize" five machines at a time to play your content. So if you have hit your limit, iTunes won't let you play music or video content with DRM. You can reset your iTunes account, removing all the previously authorized devices and starting again from scratch. From the iTunes Store, click on your email address in the upper-right corner. Enter your iTunes password, and you will be taken to your account page. Under Computer Authorizations, you will see the number of machines tied to your account. Click the Deauthorize All button, and it will remove all the registered machines from your account. The only drawback is that you will be prompted to enter your iTunes account credentials again on each machine the first time you attempt to play content with DRM built into it. Apple only lets you use the Deauthorize All button once a year, but it you are really in a jam, Apple tech support will usually clear your account for you. To be safe, remember to deauthorize old machines before you lose acess to them by going to Store > Deauthorize this computer....in iTunes.
Time Machine is Apple's easy-to-use backup solution that has been included with all Macs since Leopard (OS 10.5). Time Machine backs up to an external hard drive connected to your Mac. In the unfortunate event that you lose something important, you can activate Time Machine and easily go back to an earlier version of a file. To begin backing up, plug in the external drive, and navigate to System Preferences > Time Machine. Once there, flip the switch to On. Select a backup drive, then Time Machine will begin backing up your Mac in the background whenever the external drive is mounted on your computer. In the same preference pane, you can also set Time Machine to exclude backing up certain folders in order to save space on your backup drive. To do this, click on the Options button, and then click on the + button under "Exclude these items from backups." Excluding Applications and other system-level folders will give you more room to store more important stuff like your Documents, Photos, and Music folders.
Safari 5 - Things you should know!:
Make browsing easier and better with these time-savers.
- To type a URL, you can press Command-L and all the text in the address field is selected, so whatever you type replaced it immediately. Start typing a URL for a favorite site, and Safari autocompletes it by looking at your history or bookmarks. If Safari displays a list of sites, you can use the up and down arrow keys to choose the right one, and then press Return to go there.
- Scroll with the Spacebar: Press the spacebar, and Safari scrolls down one screen. If you need to go back up a screen press Shift-Spacebar. It's fast and efficient.
- Save Pages for later: New in Safari 5 is the Reading List, a sort of temporary bookmark list that you can use for pages you want to come back to and read later. If you press Command-Shift-D, you can add the current page to the Reading List. You will see an animation of an icon flying from the page to the little eyeglasses icon on the left side of the Bookmarks toolbar.
- Save Links for later: The previous shortcut works with pages you have open in the browser. You can also add links - from search results or other webpages - that you haven't even opened. To add a linked page to the Reading List, hold down the Shift key and click on the link.
- View the Reading List: To view the Reading List, you can click on the eyeglasses icon in the Bookmarks toolbar. There is also a keyboard shortcut to view - Command-Shift-L. The Reading List feature is also available in the mobile device Safari app in iOS 5.
You can create amazing documents and presentations on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. And now with iCloud, you can keep your work up to date across all your iOS devices. You don't have to save your work or transfer any files. Just sign in to icloud.com/iwork in any web browser, and all your iWork for iOS documents will be there - with all your latest edits. iCloud is already built into Apple iOS apps like Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. It can also work with other iCloud-enabled apps. So you can do things like create a spreadsheet on your iPad and make edits to it on your iPhone. Or start sketching on your iPod touch and add the finishing touches on your iPad at home. To learn more about iCloud visit Apple iCloud. To set up iCloud visit Apple iCloud Set Up.
To find out just how much space you have left on your computer, click once on your computer hard drive icon (found on the desktop). Click Command-I to bring up the Info window. In this window you can see what the Capacity of the hard drive is, how much space is Available and how much space you have Used. Here are a few tips to clean up the hard drive and free up space.
- Aside from music and movies, iTunes also keeps any podcasts you may have downloaded. Each epidose, especially video podcasts, can take up a huge amount of space, so it is worth deleting those you have listened to. Alternatively, just set iTunes to only retain a handful of episodes by clicking Settings within the Pocast screen in iTunes.
- iPhoto Trash - You may think you have trashed all of those blurry, duplicate, oops I cut off their head photos, but if you don't empty the Trash within iPhoto those pictures are still sitting in there taking up space. From within the program, click on iPhoto in the upper left corner and select Empty iPhoto Trash.
- Downloads Folder: The Downloads Folder is often the final destination for files, documents, etc. Browsers send files to the Downloads folder where they are easily forgotten. Check regularly and weed out anything you don't need. To find your download folder, open a Finder window, click on the icon of your house and select the Downloads Folder.
- If you are an avid iLife user, you probably have a bunch of iMovie, GarageBand, and even iDVD project that you have either published or shared already. They are not doing any good sitting on your hard drive. You can gather them all together, label them in to a folder, and then compress them by right-clicking on them and selecting Compress from the menu. That reduces the file size a bit, but for even more space reduction, consider shifting these compressed folders to an external drive or burn them to a DVD, then delete the originals.
The Desktop Support section of the 4J Website will assist the district’s Technical Support Staff, as well as other users, with hardware and software issues. The information posted here is the combined work of many talented people and range from simple “How-to’s” to more detailed troubleshooting suggestions. We have created this site with the intention of “spreading” the knowledge and empowering others to perform simple tasks for themselves.
If you have a technical problem you are unable to solve, please send an e-mail to 4jdesktop@4j.lane.edu with a description of your request and\or issue.
Managing your iBooks Library with Collections:
If you have a mix of books and/or PDFs on your iBooks bookshelf, creating Collections is a great way to get organized.
- Open iBooks on your iPad or iPod touch.
- Tap the Collections button on the top left. You will see the default Collections: Books and PDFs.
- Tap "New". You are not creating a new file type. You are actually creating a Collection name, like SciFi or Site Council PDFs. Touch "Done" after you have entered the new Collection name.
- Now to move books and/or PDFs in to your new Collection.
- Tap Edit.
- Tap on the book or PDF you would like to move.
- Tap on Move.
- Tap the Collection name that you would like to move the item in to. You will see the book icon fly into the new Collection.
- You can swipe right or left to see a new bookshelf with the new Collection and your selected book or PDF moved there. Note the Collection name is at the top of the bookshelf.
You have probably discovered how annoying notifications can be. You can control these. Go to Settings, Notifications, and configure which alerts (and accompanying sounds) will appear.
Once you buy an app, you can always re-install it (for free) if you have deleted it from your device. Go to the App Store, sign in (at the bottom of the screen) using the Apple ID and password that you used to originally purchase the app. In the App Store, find the app your want to re-install and tap on the Install button. The app should start to download.
Instead of wading hopelessly through your music library looking for that one song you want, or endlessly scanning through your Contacts, it is much quicker to make use of the Spotlight search. Flick to the right on the first Home screen to access Spotlight search. It can search almost everything on your iPad, including your apps, iPod and Contacts. It is a great way of finding and launching apps.