Apple Krazy

The next version of Apple’s iPhone software will not only introduce Street Views to the handset’s Maps application, but also provide bus, train and walking directions, a series of new photos reveal.

Public Transit Directions

iPhoneYap has posted an extensive screenshot gallery from iPhone Software 2.2 beta 2, released Friday, which offers a walkthrough and detailed descriptions of the new features.

When set in Directions mode, Maps now offers three icons — car, public transit, and walking — centered at the top of screen, in between the “Edit” and “Start” buttons. Selecting the transit icon provides a list of transit choices that can include subways, buses, or a combination of the two.

A list of departure times and estimated commute times accompany each transit option. Once you select a particular method of transit, the Maps application will serve up step-by-step directions from your current location, usually directing you to your chosen departure subway or bus stop on foot. During commutes, Maps will specify when you should board or disembark from a bus or train.

Brasso, a house-hold product, has been proven to work on plastic and metal surfaces, such as iPods, tvs, monitors, and the MacBook. After reading about the guy who removed nano scratches with Brasso (a mild abrasive), I was intrigued and knew that I had to try it out. As per Todd’s example, I used a micro-fiber cloth and concentrated mostly on my Macbook outside cover, which I rubbed for ~15 minutes. Surprisingly, all of the scratches that were there had disappeared — I was amazed. After applying the Brasso it genuinely looked new. Some say that even applying it on the LCD screen is safe (I wouldn’t personally - just does not make logical sense to me!). If you are hesitant here are other sources that report its safety: 

http://todd.dailey.info/archives/200…can-of-brasso/

http://craggyair.blogspot.com/2006/0…nd-brasso.html

http://playlistmag.com/forums/ubbthr…view=collapsed

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/brasso.htm

http://justinblanton.com/2005/10/ipo…nvisibleshield

http://www.ehmac.ca/ipod-itunes-ipho…your-ipod.html

http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/2…scratched.htm

Because the iPhone is such a unique device, and its screen is so sensitive to touch, many people don’t know the best way to clean iPhone without damaging it. The microfiber cloth included when I purchased my phone is great, but there are other tips to keep my iPhone clean.

Of course, when you are cleaning your iPhone, you don’t want to simply wash it with any type of cleaners, because these cleaners could actually cause the iPhone to malfunction, thus giving you a defective product. When you are cleaning your iPhone, you must ensure that you take extra care, and don’t do it if you are in a rush. When you are cleaning your iPhone, there are several items that you must have. These items will allow you to effectively clean your phone without damaging the sensitive touch screen or the inner workings of your fantastic cell phone.

Tips: Best Way to Clean iPhone

Before you clean your iPhone, you need to make sure that you have the following items: water, microfiber cloth and your favorite CD to relax you and make the process enjoyable. Make sure that you NEVER use any type of chemical agents to clean your iPhone, because these can actually hinder the way the screen interacts with you. With the microfiber cloth, which is available through the many various iPhone retailers, dip the corner of the cloth into the water, allowing it to become saturated with the water.

If there are streaming water drops coming from where you wiped the mirror, than you have too much water on the cloth and you need to dry it out some.

You want to be able to wipe your iPhone screen without having drops of water left behind. Next, take the slightly wetted cloth and begin to wipe the screen of your iPhone in a up-and-down motion. It will usually take one or two wipes to clean the entire surface of your iPhone. How often you clean your iPhone depends on how much you use it. Average users clean their iPhone once a week, maybe once every two weeks.

by Adam Pash

If Amazon’s hot holiday seller list is any indication, a lot of you got new Macs this holiday season. If you switched to a Mac from a PC, you’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of differences between the two.

When I bought my first Mac a few short months ago, it took a while to figure out how to do all the stuff I already knew how to do on my PC. While it’s my job to spend time figuring that sort of thing out, there’s no need for you to waste your precious time figuring out the minutia of a new operating system. To ease this transition for all of the new Mac owners out there, I’ve put together a quick guide for Mac newbies making the big switch.

What follows is a round-up of everything that stuck out to me when I made the move to my first Mac. I’m still a dual-OS fellow, but after I figured out the ins and outs of my Mac, it’s by far the place I find easiest to get things done. If you’re delving into Macs for the first time, the following should come in handy.

Mac OS X Keyboard symbols

You’re a lifehacker and you know all the good keyboard shortcuts on your Windows PC. So the first thing you’ll want to do is get familiar with keyboard shortcuts on your Mac. This seems easy enough - except for the fact that Macs use a strange and foreign set of hieroglyphics for their shortcut keys. Some of the most familiar shortcuts are:

The Apple/Command key is the main modifier on your Mac. Contrary to its Windows counterpart, the Windows key, the Command key does much of the work that the Control key does on a Windows PC. So don’t go hitting the Apple key expecting a system menu to pop up out of nowhere, because it ain’t gonna happen. Instead, plan on using this for your most common keyboard shortcuts.

Like I said above, the Control key on the Mac isn’t used in the same way as the Control key on a Windows PC. I use it most often when I’m “right-clicking” on my Mac - often referred to as Ctrl-Click. The Ctrl key also comes in handy in a lot of other ways, like the Ctrl-Tab tab switching in Firefox.

I use the Alt/Option key most often to skip words in a document (and highlight words when used in conjunction with the Shift key) - much like the Ctrl-Arrow functions work on a PC. Like the Mac Control Shortcut, the Option key finds its way into your shortcut workflow here and there (for example, it’s also very handy for accenting letters), but not as often as the Command key.

Though Command, Control, and Option are the three main modifiers/symbols you’ll see on your Mac, you’ll certainly stumble onto several other cryptic communiqués when you’re trying to figure out a new shortcut, like the wacky Escape symbol and the big upcase Shift arrow. For a more comprehensive list of the Mac’s keyboard symbols, check out this handy reference table.

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Order Now! 

If you like magazines, the internet, and your iPhone you need to check out Zinio. They have combined three of my most favorite things into the perfect trifecta of technology and information. I love magazines and I get a lot of them every month but I can’t take them with me everywhere I go. Zinio for the iPhone or iPod Touch lets you view entire issues of some really great magazines on your iPhone. The service utilizes the landscape display functionality of the iPhone to show entire spreads complete with photos, advertisements, and everything else you see in the paper version of the magazine. Navigate to the iPhone trial version on your iPhone using Safari - http://img.zinio.com/iphone. You can create an account and view entire magazine subscriptions online both on your iPhone or your computer.

Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, introduces a new feature to the Mac Operating System: more space to work and play. It’s been available before now by installing separate software, but the Spaces feature, as it is called, is built in to Leopard.

This Tip is the first of several about Spaces.

Activate Spaces

To activate Spaces go to the Exposé & Spaces System Preference, then click on the Spaces tab, and check the Enable Spaces box. I also suggest you ensure Show Spaces in menu bar is checked. By default the Mac gives you 4 Spaces, but you can use more or fewer if you prefer.

Having explained how to activate Spaces, I want to explain what they are, and how to use them.

What Spaces is

Imagine you’re at home, sitting a the kitchen table, sorting through old boxes of photos (the kind that are on paper). The table is covered in photos.

After a while you decide to take a coffee break and read the paper. Instead of balancing coffee, biscuits and newspaper on top of the photos, you set yourself up at a different table.

The courier arrives with a parcel, so you take it to yet another table for unpacking.

That’s Spaces.

On your computer it would look like this: you’re working with your iPhoto albums (in Space 1) when you decide to take a break and surf some news websites. You leave iPhoto running and flip over to Space 2 where you open some web pages, and check your email.

You’ve received some emailed attachments, so you download them, and flip over to Space 3 to open the MS Word file into Pages.app and the Excel file into Numbers.app.

For each activity you have a clean, fresh, uncluttered work space where you can spread out and focus on what you’re doing.

How to use Spaces

There are no rules about how to use Spaces. No-one says you have to use a particular application in Space 1 or Space 2, so it’s up to you to explore.

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Whether you’re an iPhone rookie or a weathered pro, take a look at these quick-and-easy iPhone tips and tricks which not only save you time, but ease your overall iPhone experience.

(These items are listed in no particular order.)

1. Scroll to Top of Page  -

In any application, Safari included, you can automatically scroll to the top of the page by tapping on the “top bar”, which has the time, service bars, and battery. In Safari, this not only brings you to the top of the page, but also brings up the URL bar.

     2.  Domain Resolution -

When typing a URL in Safari, you don’t have to type the “www” or the “.com”.For instance, for www.cnn.com just type “cnn” in the URL box. Note: Your search engine must be set to Google, not Yahoo.

      3.   Domain Suffix - [On firmware 2.0 only]

Hold down the “.com” key for “.net, .edu, .org” keys. Note: Slide your finger from .com to .net/.edu/.org, rather than lifting and pressing.

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