Technologgie

Backup your OS X Lion Download on DVD or External Drive

You already learned how you can pause and resume your OS X Lion download from the Mac App Store. But as soon as your download is over, you will see the OS X Lion install screen that you see in Figure 1, below. Resist installing this upgrade for now, and choose the Install Mac OS X Lion | Quit Install Mac OS X Lion menu option for now.

Figure 1: Install screen for Mac OS X Lion

Why did I ask you to quit the install? That is because it is best that you first create a backup of the 3.74 GB download! Yes, it is true. As soon as you finish installing OS X Lion, the downloaded install file will be cleaned up! You might want to install OS X Lion on other computers, or just retain a backup of the install file; after all, 3.74 GB is not a minuscule size, even by today’s standards.

So head to launch Finder, and go to your Applications folder; it is here that you will find the Install Mac OS X Lion app, as you can see in Figure 2. Note that all applications in this folder, as shown in Figure 2 have the app file extension. This is because I have globally enabled file extensions on my Mac.

Figure 2: Install Mac OS X Lion app

Right-click or Ctrl-click this app, and choose the Show Package Contents option in the resultant context menu. Within the Contents | Shared Support folder, you will find the InstallESD.dmg file, as shown in Figure 3).

Figure 3:InstallESD.dmg file

Select and Alt-drag this file to any location on your computer. Remember Alt-drag will make a copy, just dragging will remove the DMG from the package; you don’t want to do that! Once extracted, you can burn this image to a DVD. You can also make a backup of this image on an external hard disk.

Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Backup, Mac OS X, OS X Lion

Burn Image to CD or DVD with Disk Utility

You really don’t need a separate CD or DVD burning application on your Mac OS X, especially if you want to do something as simple as burning an image to a CD or DVD. Mac OS X’s Disk Utility is all you need:

1. Minimize all your application windows and click an empty area of your desktop. Click the Go | Utilities menu option. In the resultant Finder window, click the Disk Utility icon to launch the program. You will see the interface shown in Figure 1.

   
   Figure 1: Disk Utility

2. Click the Burn button on the toolbar. This will bring up the Select Image to Burn dialog. Navigate and select a DMG or other image format that Disk Utility can work with. Select the Burn button.
3. Disk Utility will ask you to insert a blank disc, as shown in Figure 2. Insert a disc, and in a while, your image will be burnt to a disc.
   
   Figure 2: Insert a disc

Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Burn Image to CD, Burn Image to DVD, Mac OS X

Show or Hide File Extensions on the Mac for one file

You already learned how you can show or hide file extensions for all files on Mac OS X. Now let me show you how you can enable the visibility of the file extension for just one file:

1. Select the file within Finder or your Mac OS X desktop for which you want the file extension to be visible (or not visible).
2. Now right-click (or Ctrl-click) the file, and choose the Get Info option from the resultant menu.
3. This opens the Get Info dialog for that file, as shown in Figure 1, below.
   
   Figure 1: Get Info
4. You’ll see the Name and Extension pane within the Get Info dialog. Here, there is an option to check: it’s called Hide extension. If you want to show the file extension, you will uncheck this option, and then keep it checked, if you want to hide the file extension. Checking or unchecking this option overrides the global settings to hide or show file extensions in Mac OS X.

Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: File Extensions, Mac, Mac OS X, Show File Extensions, Show or Hide

Show File Extensions on the Mac for All Files

One of the biggest pain points for those who get started using Mac OS X after coming from an older Windows world is that you cannot really see file extensions in OS X’s Finder. Many of these Mac newbies believe that there are no file extensions at all on OS X, but that is simply not true.

You can enable file extensions to show on Mac OS X on a global scale for all files, or for just a particular file. In this post, you will learn how to enable the visibility of file extensions globally on OS X. I am using OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) but this process works similarly on other iterations of OS X:

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: File Extensions, Finder, Mac, Mac OS X, Show File Extensions

Mac OS X Lion: Pausing and Resuming the 3.74 GB Download

Is it just me, or did you all find that it was not very intuitive how you could pause the Lion OS download from the App Store, and then resume it again? Even in today’s always-connected-with-a-fat-data-pipe days, 3.74 GB is not a very tiny download size!

I found a quick way and wanted to share it with everyone else. So this is what you need to do; I am assuming that you have already purchased Lion on the App Store, and your download is proceeding, as can be seen within the visual indicator you see below the Lion icon on the Dock, as shown in Figure 1 below.

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: App Store, Download, Mac OS X Lion, Pausing and Resuming

Windows Phone 7 Series

Microsoft announced and showed the new Windows Phone 7 series at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Tons of new features and a whole new approach make this a very awaited product to watch out for — there’s a little of Zune, so much of Facebook, and Twitter — and of course even the Xbox. It looks like Microsoft is pulling no stops this time around to make sure that this product has the aesthetics and the functions that users want. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on Apple’s future plans. Meanwhile, this cool video has a lot going for it.

Filed Under: Phones
Tagged as: Facebook, Twitter, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Xbox, Zune

PicturePaste: Paste Pictures into Gmail, Hotmail, etc.

One of the frustrations of working with web-based programs including email apps like Gmail, Hotmail, etc. stems from the fact that you cannot paste pictures from say your Word document or PowerPoint presentation into an email message that you are composing.

With web based applications becoming more commonplace, this sort of clipboard access option becomes more of a necessity. That’s why I was glad to see this new company called PicturePaste that has developed a product of the same name.

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Filed Under: Internet
Tagged as: Email, Gmail, Hotmail, Paste Pictures

Small Simple Windows 7 Stuff 01: QuickTime Playback

In the past few weeks that I have been playing with Windows 7, I have found many small and simple improvements that no one talks about! I’m guessing they are all talking about the big improvements.

The first of these small things is that Windows Media Player now plays QuickTime MOV files, even if you have no QuickTime Player installed! Wow, who saw that coming?

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Filed Under: Microsoft Windows
Tagged as: QuickTime Playback, Windows 7, Windows Media Player

Animoto Holiday Cards

Animoto, an online video editor that I have mentioned in an earlier blog post is coming up with holiday cards that are actually video clips you customize within the Animoto interface.

The folks at Animoto do say that the personalized holiday cards won’t be ready until December 1st–but they wanted to provide a sneak preview of the holiday greeting cards that they will make available later next month.

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Filed Under: Video
Tagged as: Animoto, Fun, Holiday Cards, Movies

Apple’s New Nano Adds Video Recording and FM Radio!

Apple has done the impossible again! If you thought that the Apple iPod Nano music player was incredibly small, then think again because Apple has now managed to fit in video recording and an FM radio tuner within the new generation of the product without increasing its dimensions.

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Filed Under: Apple
Tagged as: Apple, Nano