iCal

Recreate Everpix’s Flashback With Automator, Dropbox and iCal

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flashback

It seems like people really miss Everpix’s great Flashback feature. I have spent far too many hours over the past few days trying to find a way to replace it, but Thomas Verschoren went one better, and rolled his own Flashback. It relies on your photos being stored in Dropbox, and requires you to set an Automator action to run automatically every day using iCal, but it’s pretty simple as Thomas provides all the pieces for you.

Mastering Mac OS X Calendar: Create A Quick Event Using Natural Language [OS X Tips]

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Calendar QuickAdd

As a user of Google calendar, I’ve often ignored Mac OS X’s Calendar app, formerly iCal, for the bright internet lights of the easy to use, sharable online calendar from the folks in Mountain View, California.

I forget, though, that Calendar has a ton of great features for folks who really don’t need or want to use Google’s option, or who just want to stick with Apple products. One of the cool features that I didn’t realize Calendar had until researching this week’s tips is natural language event creation in Calendar itself.

Check it out.

Show As Many Or As Few Days As You Like In Mountain Lion Calendar [OS X Tips]

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The Beatles got nothing on us - FIFTY days a week.
The Beatles got nothing on us - FIFTY days a week.

Remember that tip we gave you about showing more than seven days in a week in iCal? It’s been a while, but there used to be a way to enable a Debug menu in iCal to allow you to open multiple iCal windows, change the number of weeks that appear before and after the start date in Day View, and even show more than just seven days in a week.

Well, that debug menu has gone away in Mountain Lion, but we found a cool Terminal command that does something similar.

Things You May Not Already Know About The New MacBook Pro’s Retina Display

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If your Retina MacBook Pro isn't delivering the battery life you expected, try this simple fix.
If you're the lucky owner of a new MacBook Pro, here are some things you should know.

We’ve been drooling over the next-generation MacBook Pro since Apple unveiled it at WWDC earlier this month, and we thought we knew all there was to know about its gorgeous high-resolution Retina display. However, Apple surprised us with a new FAQ page on its website this morning, which reveals a number of things about the notebooks new screen that we hadn’t heard before, which will help you make the most of your new display.

Here are a few of the things that you may be interested in.

Sync Reminders To Your Mac And Other Devices [iOS Tips]

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iCal Reminders Sync

Making a list of tasks is a great way to be sure you’re getting things done, right? Without being able to see those reminders across all the devices and computers you may use in a given week, though, that list is going to be fairly useless. That’s the reason services and apps like Evernote have become so ubiquitous: instant access to your notes across all the digital environments you frequent.

Apple’s Reminders system is the company’s foray into a task list, but figuring out how to sync the lists across devices is somewhat non-intuitive. Here’s how to do just that.

Shut Off iCal Alert Reminders For Increased Sanity [OS X Tips]

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iCalAlertsOff

Now here’s a tip that should save me a bit of sanity. I hope it does for you, too. I use Google calendar for much of my scheduling needs, but nothing beats iCal for a quick, offline calendar that runs on my computer. With the calendar info coming in from Google, though, I get reminders on my iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac via iCal. I really don’t need iCal to remind me about things, since I mainly use it as a quick calendar I can launch on my Mac and be done with it. Sometimes, I’ll open my Mac at home only to find a bunch of old reminders on it from iCal. I wish I’d known today’s tip sooner.

ownCloud Brings Flexible Open Source Cloud Sync To Business

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Open source ownCloud offers private business clouds
Open source ownCloud offers private business and personal clouds

One of the consumerization of IT trends is the use of cloud storage. Most of us already have experience with iCloud and other personal cloud services like Dropbox, Google Docs, and SugarSync. The big advantage to all these solutions is their ubiquity – you can access documents and files in the office, at home, on the road using your iPhone or iPad, and pretty much anyplace else. Though they may raise data security and privacy concerns, personal or public clouds are extremely easy to use and always available.

The popularity of major cloud providers is causing a number of companies to offer easy to configure private cloud options that businesses can physically deploy on their own network or that can be hosted by the developer or a cloud service provider.

This week, ownCloud, which already offers an open source cloud storage and sync, announced new business and enterprise options that offer a great deal of flexibility.

Show More Than 7 Days In A Week In iCal [OS X Tips]

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iCal Debug Menu

iCal brings out the love/hate side of the Mac fan base, with folks either praising the built-in Mac calendaring app or spreading vitriol thickly all over it. Regardless of your own specific opinion, however, todays tip will allow users to have just a bit more control over their iCal app.

Apple Seeds Yet Another OS X Lion 10.7.3 Build To Developers

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screen-shot-2012-01-24-at-7-32-53-pm

Developers have already received several pre-release builds of Apple’s OS X Lion 10.7.3 software, and we had expected last week’s release to be the last one before the update goes public. But it seems there’s still some testing to be done. Apple has seeded yet another build to developers through the Mac Dec Center, this time with the build number 11D50.

How an iPad Helps Run a Therapist’s Office [Interview]

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Psychotherapist Marcos Quinones.
Psychotherapist Marcos Quinones.

Psychotherapist Marcos Quinones has got streamlining a one-man office down to a science.

Quinones, a former software developer, is a New York City-based cognitive behavioral therapist and licensed clinical social worker who runs his entire office on Apple gear.

He credits the iPad with making a big impact in the smooth running of his sole practice.

As part of our continuing series about businesses using the iPad, he shares a few key apps that help him process payments and help with patient records, saving time and money.

How Do I Disable iCal Reminder Alerts On My Mac? [Ask MacRx]

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Lion-iOS5-Reminders.jpg

iCal’s Reminders feature is a handy way to keep track of our To Do lists, but sometimes you get pestered more than desired. Here’s one way to quiet things down when your iDevices have nagged you sufficiently:

I love the new Reminders app for iOS, and it ties in beautifully with my use on my iPad and iPhone. However, I hate sitting down at the end of the day and having to click through all my day’s reminders on my computer through iCal. In the iCloud settings, I can only disable iCal, but I don’t want to disable my calendars, just the reminders part of it. Is there a way I can disable iCal reminder notifications on my Mac without disabling the calendar syncing? – Benjamen

How to Make iCal Look the Way it Did Before Lion

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iCal in Lion leather

In OS X Lion, Apple redesigned iCal with a new faux leather look that resembles a physical calendar binding. This type of design choice is called “skeuomorphic,” because it was, “deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar.” Lion’s version of iCal takes the old look and feel of a physical calendar and ports that to a virtual application.

While some may like the new look of iCal in Lion, many have raised complaints. If you’d like to make iCal look like it did in Snow Leopard, we’ve got just the trick to return iCal back to its monochromatic glory.

Unreliable MobileMe Remains a “Hobby” for Apple [Opinion]

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MobileMe-Errors

I want to like MobileMe.  It’s the Apple-sanctioned slice of cloud computing, integrated with the Mac and iOS operating systems.  The setup is simple, the price is reasonable, and despite the unprofessional name and lack of phone support, when all is humming along things just work.

Except MobileMe doesn’t keep working.  It stops syncing.  It loses data.  And Apple provides little or no advance warning of potential problems, nor easy ways to fix issues that occur.  Apple TV may have moved on to a professional product stage with the latest iteration, but from a business perspective MobileMe is still a “hobby” for Apple.

How To Get MobileMe For Free Using Google and Dropbox [How To]

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MobileMe for Free.

A couple of weeks ago I canceled my MobileMe account. Why? Because it didn’t do the one thing I wanted it to do: share my calendar with my wife so we could coordinate our busy lives. That’s all.

I love MobileMe’s email, calendar, contact syncing (especially on the iPhone) and even iDisk. I gave Apple a year to improve it, but nothing happpened, so I switched.

Here’s how to recreate all of MobileMe’s features for FREE (except one) and how I use it to sync my iMac, MacBook and two iPhones.