View the Calendar

        Click and hold down with your cursor on the Calendar in your Dock. You get 3 choices: Quit, Hide, Options. Options gives you the choice to Open at Login. This is a handy way to quickly view the month each morning when you turn the computer on.  It’s a reminder about all those family birthdays you’ve entered, along with SIGs upcoming from Bobbie Pastor and John Carter.  (You did update the Calendar, didn't you?)

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Reader Ad-blocker

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        Thanks to Sandra Garramone for this next reminder. You've probably noticed the word READER in the address field of a Safari page. This came as Safari 5's ad-blocking feature.  (Does it also come up in FireFox and other browsers?) Here's an article about it.
        Sandra says, ". . . I have found reading some web pages easier when I pressed the 'Reader' button where the 'RSS' button is. The page that opens has no advertisements and the print is aligned across the page."
        This is also handy if you're printing off an article, but note that the URL isn't automatically printed on those pages.

Keyboard Shortcut

        Here's a keyboard shortcut from Allen Laudenslager who writes, "After reading Art Gorski's post about boot commands, I thought some members might not be familiar with the most useful keyboard shortcut.
        "Press the command key (the one with a little apple on it) and hold while you press the space key. This will open Spotlight in the top right corner of your screen. What good is Spotlight? You don't have to search for the application or file you want to open. For example to open mail, you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard and use the mouse to select mail from your tool bar, just open Spotlight, then type the word 'mail.'
         "For your word processor, open Spotlight and type in the name of the file (for a new document type in the name of your word processor - Pages or Word). If you click on the name of the document, the word processor will automatically open for you.
        "What is really neat is that as you type, Spotlight will create a list of files and apps that match what you have typed so far, including web pages from your browser history. Just use the arrow keys in the bottom right corner of your keyboard and arrow down to highlight the file, app, or webpage you want to open and then just press the enter key - you will open whatever you were looking for."
        Allen closes with, "Once you get used to it, you'll never search through finder looking for a file again. Unless, of course like me, you forget what you called the file last month and have to look for dates to jog your memory."
        And this just in from John Carter: "The tip that Allen gave about Command-Space to open Spotlight does not work on applications that have been newly installed or never opened since being installed. For all new or never-before opened applications, you have to launch the application from the Applications folder. I have been stunned by this short-coming more than once."

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They Know Where You Are

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     Here's info on a serious privacy issue.  Jim Hamm sends this link to an investigative news video that demonstrates how your camera and your smartphone can show everyone where the picture was taken.  Jim comments, "What's the problem with this, you ask? Well, say you've taken a picture of an expensive diamond ring to sell on eBay and you post it to the site and await the bidding. In the meantime, Joe the crook, gets the location of your house from the picture and steals the ring. Ouch!"  The GPS location on the photos you post can show everyone where you've been.  Watch the video, then share the info with your kids, too.

Sending iCal Reminders to Your Smart Phone

        Both Jim Hamm and John Carter have some useful info.  Jim starts with, "If you've already subscribed to text messaging from AT&T (or Verizon) and use iCal as a day timer for appointments, etc., you might take a read on this article. You can set iCal to send a text message to your phone to alert you for an appointment. A pretty slick idea if I don't say so."
        Jim continues, "I ran into a slight problem in going through the instructions: I couldn't identify what an 'ME' card is in my Address Book as the article describes. When I clicked 'Card' in the menu bar the dialog box showed 'Go to my Card' as grayed out and not clickable. Apparently I don't have an 'ME' card. Any suggestions here appreciated."
        John jumps in here, "A 'ME' card is your personal vcard in the address book (as in 'this is ME'). If you don’t have one, create one. Follow the instructions from this website to find out all about a ME card and how to create one."

Partitioning Hard Drives for Mac

"If you bought an external hard drive to use with your Mac, do you just plug it in the way it came, or should you reformat it to work with the Mac?"  John Carter gets our attention. " If you bought the drive to use with Time Machine, then Time Machine will by default reformat the drive. But, does it need to be reformatted if you’re not going to use it with Time Machine? And what about that really big 2TB hard drive? Should you leave it as one big partition (the default), or should you repartition (and reformat) the drive into smaller pieces?"It would be an injustice to restate what Ken Stone says about partitioning hard drives for a Mac, so I’ll just include this quote from his website to entice you to read the rest of the story in his website: '...whether you intend to partition your hard drive or not, you really should reformat your new hard drive for the Mac. If your new hard drive is FireWire and you intend to use it with both Macs and PCs, then leave it as is and do not reformat.' John continues, "Apple walks you through the process of how you would go about repartitioning, and why you would want to, in this fascinating article."   Looking it over I sent a few questions to John and he further reports, "The article discusses Leopard, but not Snow Leopard. I’m sure it will serve for Snow Leopard. As to more recent external drives, if the interface is Firewire 800 or 400 or USB 2.0, it will work. If the interface is USB 3.0, the Mac isn’t compatible with that format. Some USB 3.0 drives claim to be backward compatible with USB 2.0 and work on a Mac. I have to see it to believe it."

Bank Trojan Described

"Now here is a scary scenario on how internet thieves can get into your bank account, " writes Jim Hamm. "I'd not heard of 'ID tokens' previously, but apparently the thieves break into the bank's computer system and 'steal' or access these tokens. Take a read on the rest of the article on what happens next. Perhaps I'll send this article to Chase, our bank.  These internet/computer thieves are really getting sophisticated."  Jim concludes, "Makes one want to stop doing any banking online."