Tag: how to

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Average Joe's Tips

How To: Make Your Desktop Background Into a Screensaver

Do you want an awesome background on your computer? Well I will show you how to make your desktop background into a lively moving screensaver with a few easy steps. The first step to this process is to open up System Preferences, go into “Desktop and Screensaver,” and then into the “Screensaver” portion. From there select which screensaver you would like to have as your background. After that open up Terminal. Then copy and paste the following code in /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background and press “enter.” After that your background should come up as the screensaver you choose. If you want to have a different screensaver you need to open a new Terminal window select the new screensaver in System Prefrences and press “Enter” again in terminal. Note that the screensaver will only stay up as long as the Terminal app is open.

Let us know how this worked for you.

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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Record Your Screen with a Mac

Do you ever wonder how people on YouTube make videos of their screen with no camera? Well it is super easy and you will not have to buy any software. First, you have to open QuickTime Player and scroll up to “File.” Then select “New Screen Recording” and select the red button when you are ready to record. Also you can change settings like quality and where to save your video on the drop down menu located on the bottom left of the recording screen. When you are done recording on the top right of the Menu Bar is a button that says “Stop Recording.” After that your new video should be saved in your “Movies” folder. This is a great and easy solution for screen recording when you want to show people how to do something on your computer.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know.

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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Make an iTunes Account Without a Credit Card

Do you not have a credit card and all you want to do is buy a free app off of iTunes? Well I have a quick and easy solution for you.

The first step is to open iTunes and launch the “App Store” and remember that it has to be the “App Store” because it will not work anywhere else. Then click on a free app and a new screen should pop up that asks for your iTunes Account, all that you have to do is click on “Create New Account.”

After you make your way through all of the forms and information, you will see a page for a form of payment, select none, and proceed to finish filling out the other information needed. Then you will need to verify your email adress before you can use the account, by finding the email Apple has sent you. This is clearly a simple and easy solution if you have no credit card.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know.

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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Customize Icons in Mac OS X for Free

One thing that I always liked to do was customize my computer icons so that they would look cool and stands out from the crowd. For that same reason I want to show you two different ways to customize your icons. The first way that to customize your icons are by just going to the apple website and downloading icons or by downloading apps.

I would recommend this way of customizing your icons for people who have a lot of time or really want personalized apps. First access the Apple Download’s page and then look through the list of icons, screensavers, and ect but when you look through the list make sure what you select is an icon download and not a screensaver or something else. You can even do this with your own pictures by opening them in preview and cropping the part that you want and clicking “Command + C. After you download the file open it up and you will notice that they are just thumbnails. What you need to do is select one of the thumbnails and click “Command + C”. From that point go to the app(s) that you want to customize in finder, select it, and press “Command + I”. Then on the top left of the new screen that popped up should be the icon and select the icon and click “Command + V”. After that the thumbnail that you copied should have replaced the old icon.

For those of you people who don’t want to waste to much time replacing every app you can just download and app. Some of my favorite two of my favorite apps that I use for downloading is “Candy Bar” and for my dock “Dock Library”. For “Candy Bar” you can either put “Change all icons” or you can select certain icons that you want you customize. Now  “Dock Library” is a little more confusing because you have to go to different websites like Lepoard Docks and download the a few neat custom docks. What “Dock Library” is for is to actually convert your dock. The way to do that is after you download the custom dock that you want you go into “Dock Library” and import them by clicking the “Import” sign on the top. The Dock should appear below and from there you select the dock on the bottom that you want and click activate.

Overall, no matter what tool you use, make sure your dock bounces off the wall!

What do you think? Leave a comment with a link to a picture of your dock? Who’s is the coolest?

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Average Joe's Tips

How to: Sync iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod with Multiple Computers

A reader sent in a question today regarding how he could sync his iPhone with his Mac and PC. This will work for Mac to Mac or Windows PC to PC. Ron writes:

“I have an iPhone that is synced with my PC, but I also use a MacBook Pro.
How do I sync with both PC/Mac? When I tried to sync with my new Mac, it
warns me everything on iPhone will be replaced by Mac (which is
empty).

I would like to use both PC/Mac and use my iPhone as “master” to sync
back. Is this possible?

Thanks,
Ron”

Prerequisites:

– 10 Minutes of your time

– On iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod (Repeat for all devices you wish), select “Manually mange music and videos”

– Backup of iTunes Music

– iTunes closed

– Ability to find your iTunes folder: in Windows XP, its default location is in “My Music” and, for both Windows Vista and Mac OS, it is located in “Music”.

– Knowledge of how to open a file with a desired application on both Windows and Mac (however, you do not need to if using Mac to Mac).

– Download HexEdit for Mac or UltraEdit for Windows for the secondary machine with which you wish to sync

On the Primary Computer (with which the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPod was first synced):

– Make sure iTunes is CLOSED!

– Backup the iTunes Library on the machine with which you wish to sync. Backup “iTunes Music Library.xml” and “iTunes Music Library” (or iTunes Music Library.itl on Windows). It is important that you back these files up to a safe location because we will be modifying the files.

– Retrieve your iTunes Library ID. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” with a text editor (TextEdit on Macs, Notepad on Windows). Find the entry after <string></string> tags, after “Library Persistent ID”. In the screenshot 8B6C633F7DACB74B is my iTunes Library ID. Copy this entry exactly to a piece of paper or email this to yourself. After you have stored the iTunes Library ID you may close the file.

On the Secondary Computer:

– Make sure iTunes is CLOSED!

– Retrieve your iTunes Library ID. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” with a text editor (TextEdit on Macs, Notepad on Windows). Find the entry after <string></string> tags, after “Library Persistent ID”. In the screenshot 0E958526D15C67FAis my iTunes Library ID. Copy this entry exactly to a piece of paper or email this to yourself. Do NOT close the file yet!

– Replace the the iTunes Library ID, in my case 0E958526D15C67FA with the one from the computer (8B6C633F7DACB74B-iTunes Library ID from the Windows machine) the iPhone is already syncing with. Save the file, then close it.


– In Hex Editor open “iTunes Music Library” (iTunes Music Library.itl on PC)

– Choose “Find and Replace” from the Edit menu. Make sure the “Hex” matching is selected not ASCII. Find the iTunes Library IDs you found from both the primary and secondary computers.

– In the “Find” section, enter the iTunes Library ID of the secondary computer and, in the “Replace” section, enter the iTunes Library ID from the primary computer. There should be one match. Save the file and close.

Success!

You should now be able to sync your devices with two or more computers. Now, you will not be alerted by the annoying “Erase Your Data” prompt from iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them here. Tell us about your experience!