How to Disable Auto-Play Videos in Facebook

Recently Facebook decided that we wanted our feeds littered with auto-playing videos.  The only saving grace is that the audio doesn’t also play but it’s still distracting and annoying to many of us. Luckily, there’s a switch to turn it off from the web-version of Facebook, and in a completely different place to turn it […]

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Use Custom Fields to Tell Your Contacts Apart

The Apple Contacts application isn’t really designed to handle how many different ways we have of contacting people these days. In particular it’s awful at handling couples in a single card entry.  Let’s say you’re friends with Bob and Sally Schwinkendorf.  You send them a holiday card every year so you want both of their […]

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Activity Monitor for iOS Using Instruments in Xcode

Activity Monitor is a great utility on the Mac to monitor what applications and services are chewing up CPU cycles, energy hogs, and other things that might slow your Mac down. in this tutorial, I’ll show you how to engage a version of Activity Monitor to track your iOS device. My particular interest in using […]

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How to Show User Library on Remote OSX Volumes

Problem to be Solved You’ve got a great backup of your OSX computer, and you need to get something back from the Library folder, say something in the Application Support subfolder. These instructions will show you how to do unhide the User Library folder on the external drive or even on a second Mac. Credit […]

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How to Remove Noise With Audacity

Download Audacity You’ve got your recording finished and realized there’s a hum or hiss on one half of the recording. This quick tutorial will walk you how to import your audio into Audacity, split the stereo track and remove the noise. Start by downloading Audacity from audacityteam.org/download for your operating system (Mac, Linux or Windows). […]

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How to Make iTunes Refresh Podcasts on a Schedule

The problem to be solved here is that it’s a hassle to remember to tell iTunes to update your podcasts before you sync your iPod or iPhone to get the latest shows. The easiest thing to do on iOS is to use a podcatching client like Downcast, which lets you skip iTunes altogether but if […]

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How to Encrypt a File or Folder in OSX

You need to email a file or folder of files to someone, but the information is sensitive. These slightly geeky but easy to follow instructions will show you how to do it. We’re going to compress the file(s) into a single zip file that’s encrypted by issuing one single command into the Terminal. When you […]

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How to Make Mailing Labels Using Word 2011

  These quick instructions will show you how to use a Word file containing addresses to make mailing labels Assumptions: You’re running Office 2011 for Mac You have a comma delimited file with the same number of fields in each address You have already purchased, or plan to purchase labels that match one of the […]

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Keynote Theme Advice if You’re Blind

In order to narrow this down, I took a look at Apple’s best practices for creating a presentation on a Mac for use on an iPad. They suggest only 10 of the possible 44 options in Keynote for the Mac. In describing these themes, I chose to explain the colors, the contrast, and the overall […]

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