Setting up remote Desktop access is usually something you wish you’d done just after you realise you need to take control of a remote computer – like when you’re called upon to fix a distant friend or family member’s PC, for example. Taking control of a remote computer is straightforward if you can get physical [...]
Posts under ‘How to’
How to enable hibernate mode on a Mac
Unlike Windows, Mac OS doesn’t offer a hibernate or deep sleep mode – selecting Sleep from the Apple menu just puts a Mac into a low-power state (suspend to RAM) that, while quick to resume, still keeps the contents of memory in memory. This isn’t much of a problem on a desktop Mac that’s plugged [...]
How to make the Home & End keys on a Mac keyboard work like Home & End keys
When you press the cursor keys, modified cursor keys (with [Shift], [Ctrl], and so on) or [Home] and [End] keys on a Windows PC, the on-screen cursor reacts in a consistent way when it’s in a block of text, no matter what application you’re using. Its behaviour is controlled at operating system level rather than [...]
How to sync Google Contacts and Calendar with the iPhone using Google Mobile Sync
Google now offers its own ExchangeSync service for smartphones called Google Sync for Mobile, which means you now now automatically synchronise your Google Account data with your handheld over Wi-Fi or a mobile data connection. If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch owner, this means you can now synchronise your Google Calendar and Contacts data [...]
How to sync multiple iPhone calendars with Google
If you’ve recently set-up Google Mobile Sync to synchronise your Calendar and Contacts with your iPhone over-the-air, you may have noticed that only one Google Calendar is being synced. It is possible to set-up Google Mobile Sync to sync up to five calendars, though (the maximum the iPhone supports) – you just need to make [...]
Backup your iPhone contacts to Google with iTunes
If you want to use Google Mobile Sync to keep your iPhone synchronised with your Google Calendar and Contacts, you’ll have to backup any existing contacts on your iPhone first, otherwise Google Sync will delete them. Fortunately, there is an easy way to do this and you can use iTunes to upload your contacts to [...]
How to display a Mac OS character map
Typing a character that doesn’t have its own key on the keyboard is easy in Windows – you can just use the Windows Character Map tool. Mac OS doesn’t have a similar tool – or rather, it doesn’t have one that’s so easily accessible. There are a few options for quickly inserting symbols like ®, [...]
How to hide the Genre column in iTunes 8 for Windows and Mac OS
iTunes 7 has a Preferences option to turn of the Genre column in the main window, iTunes 8 does not. This is very frustrating. I’m not in the least bit interested in seeing what genres are in my music library, and the Genre pane takes space away from the far more useful Artists and Albums [...]
How to type a hash (#) on a Mac UK keyboard
Mac keyboards don’t have a # (‘hash’ for the UK, or ‘pound’ if you’re American) key, which is a bit of a problem when you want to type a # symbol. The lack of a dedicated key doesn’t mean you can’t type the symbol, though – just type [Alt] + [3] or [⌥] + [3] [...]