So now that the boxed versions of MobileMe are available from Apple, and from other resellers like Amazon, I figured I’d better see what that actually means for .Mac users like myself that haven’t really been paying too much attention.

Fortunately, if you haven’t been following along, you can get up to speed fairly quickly with the Apple .Mac To MobileMe Transition FAQ on Apple’s website. This document should answer most of your upgrade questions if you’re a current user.

Bottom line — if you’re currently a .Mac user, you get the service upgrade without having to do anything. A couple of other decent items to note:

• Your .Mac subscription will be automatically upgraded to MobileMe at no additional cost.
• Individual subscription storage doubles from 10GB to 20GB.
• You may continue to use your current mac.com email address to send and receive email just as you do today. If you have any email aliases at mac.com, they will also continue to work.
• All of your existing iDisk files will be available on MobileMe iDisk.

And a couple of things you should be aware of

• As part of this transition to MobileMe, some features are being discontinued: Web access to bookmarks (bookmark sync between your Macs and/or PCs is still supported), iCards, .Mac slides, and support for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther sync.
• iPhone users: You will need to update to software version 2.0 or later to enable push mail, push contacts, push calendar, and push bookmarks. This software update will be available when MobileMe launches.

All this and much more at the Apple .Mac To MobileMe Transition FAQ on Apple’s website.

I turned on my system a couple of days ago, launched Adium and noticed that my ICQ account wouldn’t connect. ICQ has periodic problems, so I thought the service was just down. Turns out a new version of Adium was required to get ICQ working properly. The strange thing was in Adium, when I clicked Check for Updates, Adium reported back that I was already using the latest version. A manual update to version 1.2.6 was required.

Tip: Don’t trust the automatic program updates. Sometimes there’s no substitute for a manual update.

Did you know you can easily add applications and files to the finder toolbar for quick easy access?  This functionality basically adds a new dock to any finder window you may have open on you desktop. How can you accomplish this?  It’s quite simple actually, simply drag an application and hover over the finder toolbar for a second or two until the plus icon appears.  Choose your position, and drop.  Very useful! 

Thanks to reader macluvr for the tip!

Leopard,Finder

Having no easy way to quickly sleep my displays, I have in the past resorted to setting up a hot corner in the Expose/Spaces preference tab to turn off my displays. This is a good solution, however as a person who chooses to use the keyboard and lives off of shortcuts in all of my favorite programs, this mouse gesture is just not the solution which fits my habits well. Read the rest of this entry »

Safari

If remembering to command click to open a link in a new tab in Safari gets you like it gets me, a browsing session in Safari can quickly end up with many open windows. The latest Safari update exposes a hidden preference which can be modified using a Terminal command to force Safari to open links with a target of “_blank” in a new window.  Simply open terminal and type in the following command.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Enjoy!

Along with Quick Look, the new Leopard feature I use most is the built in Screen Sharing. Screen Sharing is accessible in Leopard through several different paths including iChat and Finder. My favorite way, however, is to access the System/Library/Core Services folder, and drag a shortcut to Screen Sharing down to my Dock.

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Quick Look has quickly become one of my favorite additions to OS X in Leopard. If you are like me, you find yourself scrolling through directories and using the space bar quite often. I even find myself watching movies and listening to songs using Quick Look. One of the best things Apple did in designing Quick Look, was to make it easily expandable through extensions. Read the rest of this entry »

After using Leopard for the past week and resisting the urge to “play”, I finally gave in and began messing with some of my Dock settings. These leopard tweaks and hints have appeared several places and this is our experience with them.

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Jackilyn.com: Get Rid of the Glass Dock in Leopard: If you don’t like the glass dock in Leopard you can change it with a few simple lines in Terminal. Check out this tip to learn how!

(Via Jackilyn.com.)

If there is any media which is generally a pain to deal with, video has to be it. With formats and codecs too innumerable to count, obtaining video from sources and converting it for use with other software or devices is potentially one of the more frustrating tasks a user may experience. Let us introduce you to a program which can significantly reduce these frustrations, HandBrake.

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