Are you stuck?

Kendra asks,"How do I eject a CD or DVD on my Mac when pressing the eject button doesn't work?"

This is a great question that I myself had to search apple support for the answer when I first had this problem on my first mac. Especially when you think that a stuck disc is going to mean sending your machine in for repair. Firstly, remember old CD and DVD drives from those PC computers you used to use and how when I disc wouldn't eject you would grab a paper clip and bend it straight to press on that magic manual eject button? Don't try that on a mac, cause you will search forever and never find such a button. In fact you might damage something. The solution is easier than it might seem.

In general a CD or DVD can be ejected on a Mac (MacBook or MacBook Pro) using the physical eject button or from the finder without any problems, but occasionally this don’t work and the disc icon might disappear from your Desktop and you can’t get the disc out of your computer. However, there is a trick you can try to extract the stuck disc.

• Restart your Mac
• After you hear the startup chime, press and hold your trackpad button
• After a minute or so and you think nothing is gonna happen the disc ejects
• Release the button once the disc ejects

99% of the time this will work. The other 1% has a more advance solution that I won't publish. So if it doesn't work for you. Just contact us and we'll walk you through it.

Mac Tip of the Day: Expose and Aluminum Keyboard

If you have been a mac user for long enough time you will know all about the Expose feature. If not then here is a quick review....

Expose allows you to quickly do the following:
See All the windows you have open,
Push all windows to the side to quickly view just your desktop,
See just windows from the current application

These key commands are some of the most commonly used keys on my keyboard. By default,

F9- Shows All Windows
F10- Shows Application Windows
F11- Shows Desktop

While you can set hot corners or mouse shortcuts (a tip for another post) for these commands, most mac users quickly learnt these keys when they bought their first mac. However, if you have just bought yourself a brand spankin new mac, or got yourself a new Aluminum keyboard you will notice that F9, F10,F11 are now defaulted to "Next", "Mute", and "Volume Down" respectively. While this keyboard now included F3 as the new "Expose - Show All Windows" command it leaves the other two commands, most importantly, "Show Desktop" out to dry. Oh sure you can press "Function" and F11 to still get to the "Show Desktop" feature but on both the macbook, and the keyboards have the "FN" key in a very poor location which makes this key not very "short."

AH, there is a solution.
By default, ⌘ + F3 will "Show Desktop" and Control + F3 will "Show Application Windows"

This actually turns out to be quite ergonomical and sooner than later you will forget F11.

BONUS: Pressing ⌥ + F3 will bring up System Prefs for Expose and Spaces. As well you will find that ⌥ + F12 will bring up System Prefs for Sound

EVER MORE BONUS:

⌘ = Command
⌥ = Option
⌃ = Control

Mac Tip of the Day: Email attachments quickly

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to send email attachments there is no faster way than by using Mail.

We all know the standard way. Open Mail…Select New Message…click on
the Attachment Paper Clip icon…fill out your email…and Send.

There is actually a much quicker way to do this. Just take the
attachment you would like to send, and drag it to the Mail icon in the
Dock. Mail will launch, a new message will pop up, and your file will
already be attached.

Fill our your email, and click Send.

via Mactips.org

Why I quit using Windows

How to reset your iPod

Chris asks: my ipod has a strange error message on it and I can't play my music?

Solution:

Important: If your iPod is frozen or won't turn on,
it may be because iPod is paused or the Hold switch is in the locked
position. If so, a lock symbol appears on the screen. Slide the Hold
switch to the unlocked position and check the screen.

"If the iPod displays shows any of the following messages you should eject the iPod from within iTunes instead of resetting it:"

• Connected. Eject before disconnecting
• Sync in Progress. Please wait...
• Do not disconnect

If your iPod is frozen or won't turn on, the steps to reset it vary by model. You can easily tell which iPod model you have if you're not sure.

If you have an iPod with a click wheel. Which is probably 95% of people. Here is how to reset your ipod.

1. Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Slide it to Hold, then turn it off again.)

2. Press and hold the Menu and Center (select) buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo appears, about 6 to 8 seconds. You may need to repeat this step.

If this doesn't work, try connecting your iPod to a power adapter or to your computer as your iPod may have no battery life left to perform the reset.

Most of the time this solution will fix the problems you are having and in a few seconds you should be able to listen to all your music again. If it still isn't responding then you may have a bigger issue. If so you could contact us here or go directly to Apple support.

iChat Video

For those readers out there who are using a Mac, I hope you are using iChat. Long ago I got tired of all the junk MSN had to offer and since I started using iChat I won't ever go back. However, I recently had been having problems getting a video chat going on my Macbook while I was at work on my iMac and my wife was on the Macbook. After some search around on the internet I learned some very great tips.

First is how to test your video to see if the problem is on your end of the connection. You can then test your connection with one of three little-known Apple iChat test buddies.

These are added using the + icon on iChat’s buddy list, keeping the Account type as AIM, and creating 3 separate buddies by entering one name at a time into the Account name: field, hitting the Add button, and repeating that process until all 3 are added.

appleu3test01
appleu3test02
appleu3test03The next step is to click on the bright green camera icon next to one of these names, the first two of which run Apple commercials on non-stop loops (below), the third of which is supposed to mirror back your video to you. If one of the three names is grayed out, someone else is testing with it now, but if it’s bright green, you can connect and do a test right away. If it works and runs stable, your machine’s just fine and your connection is just fine. If it connects but runs sluggish, your Internet connection is probably to blame if you’re not running any other programs and using a recent (G5 or Intel) Mac.

What I discovered after this process was that my internet connection was fine and even my router settings were fine. (That's another whole topic) Then I discovered a simple setting that can cause iChat video to not work. You need to make sure that under the Sharing Preference Pane in System Preferences that the Internet Sharing box is unchecked. Once I unchecked the box iChat video was up and running as usual. I guess I must have turned it on for some reason.

Happy Chatting!
If you are on ichat.... look me up dgrunau AT mac DOT com

Download YouTube videos

Alexa writes:

I downloaded some videos from youtube and they are currently in flv format. I'd like to put them into a powerpoint, and I think I need to convert them to mpeg, or something. But I don't know how to do that or what program to use.
Thanks!

I get asked this question all the time. YouTube is an amazing resource until you need to use one if its videos offline or in a presentation.

And that's where vixy.net saves the day.

Vixy converts flash videos to a few different formats, including .avi and .mov. It's super straight forward to use:

1. Copy the URL (web address) of the page where the original video is
2. Paste the URL into the appropriate field, pick a format, then hit start.
When Vixy is finished converting the file, it will allow you to download the video!
A few quick tips:
-I recommend using .avi if you're a Windows user and .mov if you're a Mac user.
-Don't expect perfection; YouTube's videos aren't that high of quality to start with, and you will lose more quality when you convert the video to a downloadable form.
-This works with any flash site that uses streaming flash videos, like Daily Motion, MetaCafe, etc.
-Depending on the length of your video and how busy Vixy is, conversion and downloads may take a while.
-This won't work if you copy the address of a page where the video is embedded. You have to go straight from the source!
-Vixy can get a little glitchy; if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.