Lately, I’ve had quite a few discussions with clients about the shrinking empty space on their hard drive. Before they know it, they’re getting the “Your hard disk is full” message.

This isn’t too surprising because, if you are like me, you take bazillions of photos and rarely delete any. And as digital cameras are capable of higher and higher resolution, their file sizes are getting larger. (Let’s not even talk about all those songs in iTunes!) Your main hard drive contains the system files for Mac OS X and all the files for all the users. Eventually, even with the best of housekeeping, you will run out of space. At that point it makes sense to invest in an external hard drive, and do a little shuffling around of files to make room on the main drive.

Just about any external drive will work. The most common type has a USB 2.0 connection. Others have Firewire connections. For all around versatility, get one with dual connectivity — both USB 2 and Firewire. You’ll also find that they come in an ever increasing range of capacities — from small 160GB models to 1TB monsters. There are lots of choices. Get the biggest one you can find at the cheapest price! Personally, I have several of the MyBook series of drives by Western Digital.

Once you have your new external hard drive, you can make the move to transfer your entire iPhoto library to it. This will free up a sizeable amount of space on your main hard drive so you can, well… fill it back up again with something else.

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Do you dislike leaving your display(s) on when you leave your machine for an extended length of time? To turn them off, there are a number of options.

Utilizing the Energy Saver System Preferences panel, you can set a short sleep timeout; but, that gets annoying if you pause while working. You can also use Keychain Access (via its Preferences) to add a menu bar item that includes a Lock Screen function. Lastly, using the Exposé & Spaces System Preferences panel—in 10.4 and 10.5—you can set a corner of your screen to Sleep Display. Drag the mouse to that corner, wait a second, and your displays will sleep.

In 10.5, though, there’s a hidden method—one that’s easier than all the others, I think, and requires no use of the mouse or menus. Just press Shift-Control-Eject, and all attached displays will instantly go to sleep. Move your mouse or press a key on the keyboard, and the displays will awake. It doesn’t get much simpler than that!

Note that this is not a secure display sleep mode—if you’ve set your system to require a password on wake from sleep or screen saver, it will not be triggered if you’ve slept your displays in this manner. You can make it secure by first starting the screen saver (probably by using a hot corner defined in the Exposé & Spaces System Preferences panel), then pressing Shift-Control-Eject. The password dialog will appear when you press the hot key combo, but if you then click Cancel, the displays should then go to sleep (they did here in my testing, at any rate).

Again, this will only work in 10.5, and if you’re not using an Apple-provided keyboard, it may or may not work. Also (somewhat logically), if you’re using some type of program to prevent your Mac from sleeping, this trick won’t work—the screens will go black, but then instantly awaken.

Many computer users are concerned about the security (or lack therof) of personal data on their computer. Whether it be passwords, account numbers, bank records, personal correspondences, or any other number of private details, there needs to be a secure way to keep them from prying eyes.

Yea, this post is about making encrypted .dmg files; however, I feel I must first say a few things about security in general. For more detailed information about security, see HERE.

Minimally, if you’re the least bit concerned about protecting data on your computer, you should disable the Automatic Login feature in the Accounts System Preferences (Apple menu > System Preferences > Accounts). This way, when you turn on your computer, you’ll be required to enter your password at the login screen.

If you are ever away from your computer when others are around, you should also take a look at the Security settings in System Preferences, and set them accordingly.

Speaking of Security settings in System Prefs, there is a function in Mac OS called “FileVault”. This is a method of securing data by encrypting everything on your computer. When you access something, FileVault decrypts it on the fly, and encrypts it again when you’re finished. Although this method has been proven effective in thwarting prying eyes, it has its cons. Search Google for “FileVault pros and cons” for more information. Personally, I don’t use it.

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Since nearly the beginning of Mac-dom, when you wanted to find out which key combination produced a font’s special characters (stuff like ©, ™,£, ¢, %, ƒ, etc.), you used a utility called KeyCaps.

More than a decade later, KeyCaps is still a part of Mac OS, but a better way to access these special characters is through the Character Palette.

You can access it two ways: (1) from within Mac OS X business apps (like Mail, TextEdit, Stickies, etc.), just go under Edit and choose “Special Characters” or click on the “Actions” pop-up menu at the bottom of the Font Panel and choose “Characters;” (2) add Character Palette access to your menu bar so you can access it when you’re working in other applications (like Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign).

You do this by going to the System Preferences in the Apple menu, under International, and clicking on the Input Menu tab. Turn on the checkbox for Character Palette, and check “Show in menu…”, and it’s icon will appear in the menu bar.

Either way you open it, here’s how you use it: When you open the Character Palette, choose “All Characters” from the View menu, then click on the “By Category” tab. The left column shows a list of special character categories and the right column shows the individual characters in each category. To get one of these characters into your text document, just click on the character and click the “Insert” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the dialog.

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