Mac Must Knows

Games are a great for when you get bored. I like to have a few on my computer for whenever I need to kill some time. Here are my 5 favorites that are fun...and free!

1. Sauerbraten:
   Proof that not all free games are simple and boring. Sauerbraten is a great 1st Person shooter game. Your can play it by yourself but when you get bored of that you can also play online. With tons of different levels and the ability to make your own, Sauerbraten is definitely one of my most favorite free games.
   Click Here for more information.
   
   
2. Quinn:
   Want something more classic and simple? Try Quinn!
   I would have to say it's the nicest free Tetris I've ever played. You can play on the same computer with your friend, or over the internet as well. The entire game graphics are customizable so you can even make it look just how you like. Fans of Tetris definitely need to check this game out.
   Click Here for more information.
   
   
3. Stepmania:
   Dance Dance Revolution is definitely one of the coolest games I know. It's not as good on a computer, but it's still a party to play. Stepmania is a free DDR type game for mac. Great fun!
   Click Here for more information.
   
   
4. Pac The Man X:
   Once again another classic game for the mac. Pac Man. Pac the Man X has the classic feel and at the same time a newer sort of look. You can play with 1 or 2 players at a time, on over 130 levels. Not enough? You can even make your own. Another really nice classic game.
   Click Here for more information.
   
   
5. SuperTuxKart:
   I think I've covered everything except one other type of game. Racing!
   This game reminds me a lot of mario kart. You can play as a wide range of characters in different game modes. Your friends can also join in because it allows you to play against up to 4 people.
   Click Here for more information.
   

Who ever said you need money to have fun? Try these games, I'm sure you'll be impressed at the quality.

Happy Gaming!

Hotmail is one of the most popular email services out there. Millions of people use it (including me) and its great. But that said I do have one big problem with it...

Hotmail doesn't work with any mail client unless you buy a premium membership!

This means it doesn't work with Mac Mail or any other email applications for mac. But, luckily there's ways to work around this. If you've ever wanted to use your Hotmail, Windows Live or MSN email with Mac Mail this is how to do it.

Solution #1 - Switch Your Email

The best solution is to switch to a service that does work with Mac Mail (I'd suggest Gmail).

You may not want to do this but it's the best in the long run. I'm sure many people won't want to do this if everyone they know sends them info through their Hotmail address. I too didn't feel like telling everyone to switch.

So if that's the case then here it is.

Solution #2 - Download "MacFreePops"

This is best way I know for getting your mail out of hotmail. You may have heard of "httpmail". I've tried it and it failed, so I'll show you how I got it to work with MacFreePops.

1. Download and Install MacFreePops
   Click here to get MacFreePops. Once it's downloaded move it to your application folder.
   
   
2. Open Mac Free Pops
   When you first open it up the window will look something like this.
   
   Before you start, make sure Mac Free Pops is updated. Click where it says "Updates Available" to download all the updates. Do this twice to get everything, after the second time don't worry if it says there are updates.
   Next check all the options you want. I've circled all the ones I have but you can do whatever you like.
   
   
3. Check You Have The Right Settings and Start MacFreePops
   Click "freepopsd service". Make sure that window looks like this. Check that the circled things are set right too. When your all done click "Start freepopsd service".
   
4. Make a New Mail Account
   Open up Mail. Click "File > Add Account...".
   
   Start setting up your new account by entering your Name, Complete email and Email password. Click "Continue" when your done.
   
   Next you're asked to setup your Incoming Mail Server. To do this:
   
   1. Set the account type to POP.
   2. Enter any description you like.
   3. Set "127.0.0.1" as your Incoming Mail Server.
   4. Make sure the user name is your FULL email (includes the @hotmail.com, @live.com, @msn.com, etc.).
   5. Click Continue.

   If you get an error message ignore it and keep going.

   
   
   Ignore "Incoming Mail Security" and keep going to "Outgoing Mail Server". For this:
   

   1. Put in any description you like.
   2. For my outgoing mail server I use "smtp.gmail.com".
      I believe it works without authentication. If not you can set up a gmail account for free and use put in your user name and password for authentication. Try without authentication first and see how it goes. You can keep "Use only this server" checked.
   3. Click Continue.

   
   Mail will then take you to a summary of all your settings. Make sure everything looks right and click "Create".

   

5. Modify Your New Account's Settings

   The last thing you need to do is change a few account settings. Open Mail again and click "Mail > Preferences".

   

   To finish setting up your account:
   

   1. Go to the "Accounts" section.
   2. Choose the account you just created from the left-hand menu.
   3. Go to the "Advanced" section.
   4. Make sure "Enable this account" is checked.
   5. Make sure "Include when automatically checking for new mail" is checked.
   6. I would suggest unchecking "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message:". If you ever need to switch back to using Hotmail the old way, all your e-mails will be gone. Better to just leave them.
   7. Change the port to "2000".

   

   Congratulations, your done!

Now whenever you click "Get Mail", Mac Mail will check your hotmail account for e-mails.
If it doesn't work, you probably have quit MacFreePops. Make sure it is open and that the service is running.
Now checking your email can be a lot quicker. Good Luck!

Have you ever notice how bright your Macs screen is?

Pretty bright. It's set like this mainly because a bright screen is a beautiful screen.

Sure, you want it to have a certain level of brightness, too dark and you can't see what your doing. But do you realize how bright your screen really is? Turn off the lights and i'd not be surprised if the screen lit up the whole room.

If your on a Macbook or Macbook Pro, the screen is a big battery drainer. You can make your computer stay alive longer by dimming the screen to a different level.

Bright screens are also not good for your eyes. Sitting all day, looking at a screen is bad enough, let alone having the screen be as bright as a lightbulb.

Solution?

1. Go to System Preferences > Displays and check "Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes".
This will make the screen automatically adjust to the correct brightness level.

2. Download ScreenShade. It's a free application that let's you further adjust your screen brightness. Even the lowest brightness level is too bright in some places, screen shade let's you go even lower to get the perfect setting.

Your eyes will thank you and your computer will run longer.

If you like browsing the web for cool stuff, this thing is for you.

StumbleUpon is an add-on that works with Firefox and (just recently) Safari. It allows you to find webpages that might interest you based on what you like. People who use StumbleUpon can also submit sites they find so that they are shared with other users.

I've played around with lots of add-ons. Most of them are cool for a bit but are then soon forgotten and left alone. StumbleUpon is the one add-on I actually like to use.

To get started, download StumbleUpon:

Safari Version: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/stumbi.html (Shareware)

Firefox Version: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138 (Freeware)

Once you have the plugin you need to register an account with http://www.stumbleupon.com/. On the site you are asked to enter all your interests. You can also edit your profile along with other things.

Once your accounts the way you like it, login into it using the toolbar (Tools > Sign In). Now your all set.

Now whenever you want to find a new cool site click "Stumble" and you'll get sent to something related to your interests. Also, if you are ever browsing and find something cool, click "I Like". If it has never been found before you get to submit it to StumbleUpon.

Enjoy, it's a fun way to kill time!

Ever since Apple started building in the iSight camera into all the Macs, they also added an application called Photo Booth.

For those that don't know, Photo Booth let's you take pictures with the iSight camera and add tons of cool effects while your at it.

Photo Booth now comes with 24 different photo and video effects. There fun, but why not add more?! Here are a couple Photo Booth add-ons that let you do just that.

1. CatEye : 8 Cool Retro Effects For Photo Booth.
2. iGlasses : iGlasses lets you change the video settings. Change the brightness, contrast, rotate the image and more!
3. More iChat Effects : A free pack of 48 effects that work in both iChat and Photo Booth.

These should keep you entertained for a few months.

Have fun!

Ever tried to run a game or application only to have the computer tell you "Please insert CD".

Well what if you lost it, can't find it or lent it to a friend. Well I have a solution.

As long as you have a Disk Image file (.dmg) you can mount it so the computer thinks there's a CD. Click here to see how to make a .dmg file for your CD.

What you use is something called "Toast Titanium".

You may have heard of it before, it's fairly popular. I thought it was stupid till I tried it. Toast Titanium can do tons of cool stuff but that's a different topic.

Right-Click the .Dmg > Open With > Toast Titanium.

This opens toast. In the window that this opens, somewhere it says "Mount". Click it.

This mounts the .DMG file so that the computer actually thinks you've inserted a CD.

I find this really helpful for games because it says me having to look for the disk.

Enjoy!

Having a stack of CDs for different programs and games is fine, but what if you could put them all on your computer...

Wouldn't you rather just double-click a file instead of looking for a CD then putting it in?

It's actually quite easy to put all your CDs onto your computer. The information is saved in a .DMG (Disk Image) file which is like a virtual CD.

To do this all you have to do is:

1. Put the CD into the disk drive.
2. Open up Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility).
3. Select the CD you inserted in the right-hand menu.
4. Click New Image.

And your done. The CD is converted to a .DMG file and saved on your computer.

Now whenever you want to run that CD you just click on the file.

Easy!

There are many tools out there for optimizing your Mac.

If you look you'll find ones like Cocktail, Mac Janitor and TinkerTools. They are all very popular and great but my favorite is Onyx.

Onyx lets you do a variety of "Cleaning" and "Repair" tasks that will clear your Mac of all it's crap. It has been debated how effective this is, but I find it does the trick.

In Onyx there is a long list of things you can clean. You get to choose what options to run. When choosing make sure you know what your doing so you don't have any problems.

Something about Mac OSX is that, the more free space you have on your hard drive, the faster your computer runs.

Cleaning out your hard drive is a great way to speed things up.

Go through your folders and look for things to delete. Stuff like...

• Movies you don't watch.
• Music you don't listen to.
• Files you no longer need.
• Pictures you don't really need (Things off the internet).
• Applications you no longer use.
• Duplicate Files.

And so on...

There are a few programs that can help you do this. They can tell you where the most space is being taken, what duplicate files you have and other things to help you clean things up.

I'll go over them in a different post.

The more free space you have the better.

Programs can also be guilty of sucking up the power.

How can you find out which ones?

With Activity Monitor. It comes with Mac and can tell you everything you need to know about the applications running.

Activity Monitor says how much CPU, RAM and Virtual Memory your applications are using and more. You can use it to see which programs are slowing things down.

Checking activity monitor every once and a while can give you insight into which applications are holding back your computer.