Mac OS X

If you enjoy the sharing capabilities of Google Docs, but want to have a local copy of all the files try the newly released free service Insync.

Insync requires an application to be downloaded to your Mac just like in the case of Dropbox and once it's launched you will need to give it permission to access your Gmail account. After that it immediately downloads all your Google Documents to the ~/Insync folder. If you now edit, delete or add files on Google Docs or locally in this folder the changes will be reflected immediately in the other locations as well. But that's not all that this service does.

You can add more Google accounts, you can sync several computers at the same time and sync any files not just documents. Insync is very much like Dropbox. The only difference is that this service uses the Google disk space, which is significantly cheaper than Dropbox's current offering.

The setup and configuration is very simple. Once you launched the application it creates a menubar icon that provides all the options in a dropdown menu. Enjoy!

If you're like me and download files from the internet frequently from places that are positively safe you may want to disable the annoying "... is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?" warning message that appears when opening the files.

It's especially a hassle if you want to open multiple files because this warning message won't allow you to and you will have to open each file individually.

To disable the warning message in Mac OS X, open Terminal and enter this command:

xattr -d -r com.apple.quarantine ~/Desktop

Replace ~/Desktop with whichever folder you use to download your files. You don't have to restart, it takes effect immediately. Unfortunately you have to run it every time you download fresh files, so I created an Automator script that runs this Terminal command. It's attached. You can place it in your dock and click it to run.

In OS X Lion you can press and hold the Option key to resize the window from all sides at once. And use the Shift key to resize while preserving the aspect ratio of the window.

In OS X Lion Finder you can rename a file with just one click by holding down the Option (Alt) key.

This trick only works in List and Columns views.

In my book this method beats the carefully timed double click that is otherwise required to rename a file.

Data is becoming increasingly important in our highly digitised world. This is painfully apparent when you lose it. As the saying goes: You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

There are many strategies for backups and all of them have their positive and negative aspects.

In OS X 10.7 Lion by default the Library folder under your user is hidden in Finder to avoid new users accidentally deleting or modifying one of the files.

If you ever need to access the files you can do so by pressing and holding the Option (Alt) key and clicking the Go menu in Finder. You will find the Library folder there.

In Lion there are two options for scroll direction: Natural is where content tracks finger movement. Unnatural is where the direction is opposite to finger movement.

Traditionally most of us are used to the unnatural scrolling, but looking at the video the natural makes more sense.

What's your preference?

iPhone Tracker extracts the data gathered by your iPhone and maps the information about your movements. It doesn't record anything itself, it only displays files that are already hidden on your computer.

If you have several images that you need to combine into a multi-page document you can do it quickly in OSX with the Preview app.

1. First open all the images in Preview
2. Put them in the correct order by dragging them to their right place
3. Click Edit / Select All
4. Click File / Print Selected Images...
5. Finally click the PDF button in the bottom left corner of the window and select the Save as PDF...
6. Done

Apple posted a preview page about the upcoming OSX 10.7 features. Here is the list, which one excites you the most?

1. The Mac App Store built in
2. Launchpad (iPad like home for your apps)
3. Full-screen apps
4. Mission Control (Updated Exposé+Spaces)
5. Gestures and animations
6. Auto Save (Intelligently only changes are saved)
7. Versions (Time Machine for live documents)
8. Resume (Reopens everything after a restart)
9. Mail 5 with Conversations (Like Gmail)
10. AirDrop (Easier file sharing)
11. All-new FileVault (Supporting external disks)
12. Lion Server (Now included in all installations)

Mission Control in action