This has turned out to be a help post as well as a help me post. I’ll deal with the help part first since it’s the easiest.

Have you tried to update your OS X to the latest version (10.5.6) through system update and found yourself staring at a non-moving progress bar forever? Many have had the same issue, me being one of them. There’s an easy fix (for most). Just download the Combo Pack and run it locally. Works like a charm (again, like I said… for most).

This brings me to the second part of this post…

After performing the previously mentioned task (twice, in one attempt to fix the issue below), I find myself with a fully updated MBP that has convinced itself that I have seven (7) displays attached. Now, not only do I not have any connected nor did I have any at the time of upgrade, but I can’t even think of how I would attach 7 displays to this thing. As cool as this looks, it’s not the case and I want it to go away. My system is creepy slow now. There’s gotta be something I can do. Any help? Everyone I have connected with tonight says a resounding “wow, I’ve never even heard of that before” … Well, now you have. What do I do?

Thanks in advance,

Brent

Welcome back to Exploring Quicksilver! In this segment, we look at creating a simple solution for managing a to-do list, as well as an easy iTunes trigger. If you haven’t already, please be sure to watch Part 1, where I go over the basic setup and overview of quicksilver.

Special thanks to Merlin Mann for the idea related to the To-Do List. You can find Merlin at 43 Folders.

I caught the end of a Twitter conversation today between new Mac owner Clintus McGintus and long time Mac owner Cheryl Colan . Clintus had just finished thanking Cheryl for her help in syncing his Google Calendar with his iPhone. This jogged my brain a bit and made me realize that I hadn’t posted about it yet here on iBAM so that’s what this is. A quick tutorial on how to sync your gCal with iPhone via iCal. (At least until Apple or someone else creates a direct sync method).

I’ll try to keep this visual and simple as there are several steps in the process. Here’s the skinny:

So here’s my Google calendar:

If you go to the upper right of your gCalendar screen, you’ll see some links. One of them says “Settings”, click that!

This will take you to your Calendar Settings page.

Click the “Calendars” link and you will see something like this:

Click on the title of the calendar you want to sync with your iPhone and you will be presented with the settings for that calendar. At the bottom of that window you’ll see this:

If you click the ICAL button you’ll get a window like this:

Copy that but URL and launch iCAL. Inside iCAL, click on the menu command Calendar > Subscribe (or Option+CMD+S) and you’ll get a subscribe box.

Paste the URL in there and click the “Subscribe” button. You’ll then see a new calendar appear in your left pane.

Now, launch iTunes, connect your iPhone and navigate to the “Info” tab by clicking on the iPhone in the left info pane and using the tabs that come up in the main window.

Inside that tab, there’s a few sections, but one that is titled “Calendars” and looks like the example below. Make sure you have selected “Sync iCal calendars” and then choose the calendar you want to sync with your iPhone. You see here that I have chosen my iCal calendar as well as my Google calendar that I subscribed to earlier.

That’s it! Click save and re-sync, your calendars will be forever connected. There’s is one small hiccup though. If you haven’t ran iCal recently and it hasn’t had a chance to sync itself with your Google Calendar, it’s not going to update your phone with the most current data. I just make sure I have opened iCal for a few minutes (if it’s not already open) before I sync my iPhone in iTunes. That makes sure everything is all up to date.

Hope this helps you out as together we wait for an easier method to keep these tools connected. If you know of a better technique or tool, just share it via the comments. We would all love to hear.

Have you ever wanted to use an Mac Application Icon in a presentation or a design (as long as it’s not conflicting with some crazy copyright law)? We’ve all done the screen snaps and hack jobs. Some have even been able to navigate through the huge App package file folder and find the icon files. Others hack away at the icon in some image editor and get stuck settling for a near-close representation. I was fortunate enough today to stumble upon a nifty trick that saves me quite a bit of time and effort so I thought I’d share my new found wisdom with the rest of the planet. Here’s a quick and easy way to get those icons in whatever size there is available.

Small Disclaimer: This appears to only work on OS X 10.4 and above

Quick Glossary: CMD = The Apple Key

You may use Preview for a quick view of something you downloaded off the internet but it does have more uses than just “previewing”. This little trick is quite possibly one of the most useful tips I have here on iBAM. I just wish I would have discovered it a long time ago. Would have saved me a lot of effort!

1. Find the Application/Copy it’s icon. Right Click (or Control+Click) on the app icon and choose “Get Info”. A window will come up with the Application information. At the top you will see the application name and icon. Click it, it will highlight. Copy (CMD+C) the icon to the clipboard. (This update provided by: Austin Baker – Thanks Austin!)

2. Open Preview I do this with spotlight (CMD+Spacebar and then typing “pre” usually will find it for me). You can open it up from your Applications folder though (since you’re already in there).

3. New From Clipboard Once Preview is loaded, create a new document from what you have on the clipboard. (File > New From Clipboard or CMD+N). This will then load in all of the sizes of that program’s icon into the preview window. If the program has multiple sizes of icons, they will be presented on the right in a sidebar. You can choose whatever size you need for your usage.

4. Save As… From the File menu, select “Save As…” (or CMD+Shift+S) and you can then choose the format and location of where you want to save the image file.

I personally like a PNG file with Alpha so I can then use the icon seamlessly in an image I am preparing using Photoshop (my program of choice, but you can use whatever program you choose of image editing)

In minutes flat, I am designing away with a nice clean image file for whatever use I can think of. Of course, if you’re not interested in using the icon for something, it’s still a great way to get a closer look at those 512×512 versions of some of your favorite OS X icons.

Here’s the final image I whipped out for demo purposes. I can’t wait to use this technique again. Good times!

Here’s a pretty easy one. The newest release of the iPhone firmware brings us all sorts of fun and necessary updates. We can now create webclip icons on our home page from inside Safari. If you’re a design geek like me, a crappy snapshot of a website screen isn’t on my list of things I want to see as icons on my home screen. So Apple has given us a workaround.

Just like with browsers and favicons, your iPhone looks for a special image in the root of the site to use as a webclip icon. If it can’t find anything, you get a screenshot. Making the icon is a snap. All you need to do is create a PNG image that is 57×57 pixels in size and save it as “apple-touch-icon.png” in the root of your website. Here’s what mine looks like:

Additionally you can specify any image as your icon in your CSS (like you do with the favicon). Here’s the syntax:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/whatever.jpg"/>

Place that in your website code between your <head> tags and you’re golden. That’s it!

Now… I really want to see your icons, so if you don’t mind, post a link in the comments to your webclip icon so we can all see.

Disclaimer: There may be a better way to do this, but this is how I worked it out.

One of my recent frustrations with my MacBook is that I either have to leave my Wireless Mighty Mouse on all the time and just keep pumping batteries in there all the time or save my batteries and go through the Bluetooth connect process every time I open up the cover. Both are a bit of a hassle and somewhat annoying so I began hunting to figure out a reasonable alternate solution. From what I gather, there’s no real simple way to do it. But there’s a semi easy fix that has made my life easier.

For some reason in the Bluetooth Preferences pane, I can mark my mouse as a “favorite” but have yet to understand what that really means. That wasn’t the solution, as logical as it sounded to me. So I manhandled it my way. To do this on your Mac, you will need Quicksilver (a free application and one of my personal faves). Quicksilver sits right near the top of my “Essential Apps” list for sure.

What I did was take a little piece of AppleScript I found online and save it as an app out of Automator. Then I placed the app in my Applications folder and I can now kick it off through Quicksilver. In a couple keystrokes, I am connected to my mouse (or other device) and all is well with the world. If you would like to use the app for yourself, you can download it by clicking on the icon to the right. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Post pictures were lost in a crash, but the large flickr pics are still available. Just click on the broken pic link to see the large version. Sorry for the inconvenience. – Brent

I don’t know about you, but I have had my Airport Extreme and Express for a while now and never really took the time to get both of them working correctly. They worked for what I needed them to do, but it was never 100% successful. With my crazy schedule, I had just let myself be okay with the flashing yellow lights on the front of both units. Well, last night I decided to “conquer the beasts” and get all set up as well as I could. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be. What I found out was that I couldn’t just let it set things up automatically. Here’s what I ended up doing. Hopefully this will help those of you out there that were in my same boat.

FYI: This is a 3 page article (to keep the scrolling to a minimum).

Let’s start by opening up the Airport Utility. As you can see by this screenshot, I have an Extreme in my home office (Hooked to a Dell 1600n Laser Printer) and an Express in the living room (hooked up to my stereo for AirTunes).

Let’s start with the Extreme since it’s the one that creates the network. To set it up completely, you will need to do a “Manual Setup”. Click the button and let’s get configuring.

Here’s my AirPort configuration pages. I have named my network “SPORE”, my base station “Office” and selected my time zone accordingly. You can set these things to whatever you choose. If you have an AirPort Express, the most important screen to pay attention to in this menu is the next screen.

The AirPort/Wireless Screen: At the top of this screen, it is important that you set the wireless mode to “Create a wireless network”. This will allow for your Extreme Base Station to be the parent of a WDS network which is what the Express needs to connect to and for you to use all of it’s features correctly. The second item to set on this screen is the security settings. Most likely, if you have not set this, your base station will be flashing a yellow light warning you that your network isn’t encrypted. You can tell your base station to ignore this and it will give you a green light, but we’ll set it just because it’s a good idea to have a secure wireless network to protect your privacy (and your bandwidth).

Note that we have selected a “WPA/WPA2 Personal” security protocol and I have put in a connection password. Be sure you remember this information for when you want to connect anything else to the network (i.e. laptop, AirPort Express, etc.).

At the bottom of this screen there’s a button that says “Wireless Options”. I have set mine like this:

Multicast Rate: This is the minimum speed in Mbits/s that the base station will allow for connections. By default, it is set at 2Mbit/s, but can be lowered to 1Mbit/s for longer range connections. If you have a lot of base stations in close proximity (like in my small neighborhood – I can see 9 networks from my living room) the density setting should be adjusted upward. Setting high multicast rate can also be a quasi-security measure.