Relevant to: Freelancers, Entrepreneurs, Productivity Freaks, One Man Businesses.

Read Time: 9 minutes.

Recent reader Zachary came to me looking for help and advice on how he could better adapt Google Voice for his business. Let’s look over how to use Google Voice, the pro’s and con’s for business and how to assess if it will work for you.

Google Voice (which is free, US only) attempts to make voicemail and your phone a Google like experience, meaning as integrated with your online experience and as feature rich as possible. The benefits are numerous but beware, if your looking to integrate with a current phone number, there are a few things you’ll have to work around.

LYNCHPIN (CON 1): The most prominent issue to tackle is the “one number for everything” question. Although you can have the Google number (and only the Google number) ring several phones, Google Voice will not quench the thirst for a one number for multiple businesses and your personal life UNLESS you can deal with a general “Hi this is Rob, leave a message” type voicemail for first time callers. Why? In order to use all of Google Voice’s features, callers MUST call your Google number and if the caller is a new caller WILL be sent to a general voicemail (without any type of extension or press this button type options).

The above specific point gets glossed over in the myriad of cool features. If you require people to hit a “branded” voicemail message where you mention your company name to some extent, this service will most likely not serve you for a one phone to rule them all solution (but it might for just business). If you think you can live with a general voicemail greeting (or are willing to set up another service, like Grasshopper, or Ring Central, that customers or whoever can call first and then by choice be routed to your Google number) look below for the numerous benefits you’ll gain and how to use them. Benefits which save me time in my day and make life much easier.

If you want more advice on how to know if you’re right for this service, check out this Lifehacker post.

Okay now that we’re through that.

Google allows you a layered approach to the GVoice service. You can integrate your existing phone number, or use the Google number exclusively online.

In this post we’ll assume you’ll want to blend your current cell number and a Google number. Your callers (clients, mom, or best friend) can all hear a general voicemail if they are a first time caller.

INTEGRATION ALERT (CON 2): If you want to take the biggest advantage of Google Voice, you need to use it for all correspondence. It has to be the number people are calling you on if you want to do anything special with the call. Let’s be clear, unless they are calling your Google number, the Google Voice service can only route voicemails (that come to your existing number) to an online interface and transcribe it or route pre-determined-in-your-address-book callers to a customized voicemail greeting and transcribe it. Requiring a number switch is a big caveat with the service, but in order to gain all the perks, you need to use the free number that you can choose from Google.

Transition Tip: I’ve had the service for over a year, but choose to gradually introduce it to existing contacts (mostly through text messages) while using it as my only number for new contacts.

Basics

Google gives you a number for free.

You can send txts from the online service and receive them back to an online interface for free. In addition, you can choose to forward them to a cell phone with the ability to respond from the cell phone (showing the Google Voice number in the text response).

Cheap outbound calls which work by calling you first, then connecting the call, like you had an automatic operator OR direct-using-the-computer calling from within Google Mail. If you choose to have Google connect the call to your cell phone, you have the choice for the number to appear like your own number or your Google number.

Integrates with Google Mail, multiple widgets for the computer and smart phone apps.

When a caller calls your Google number, what you can do with the number is astounding. Listen in on a voicemail, route the call to any number, play specialized voicemail greetings for specific callers, record the call, etc.

Click Here to See Googles Feature List With Short Applicable Videos

Productivity for Business

Central Data Location

I love having my voicemails and txts in the same place. Like Google’s Gmail, you can search, save, make calls, and send txts to anyone in your Google address book from the Google Voice website and now from within Google Mail. If you’re doing business online, you most likely coordinate a lot of action from your Google Account, and if you’re not, you should be and these added features are gold.

You can have both voicemails and txts forward to Gmail, which if your handy with the filters in Gmail means you can manage e-mail, voicemail, and txts from one website. Worried about duplicate data all over the place? Make the the Google Mail integration more passive by marking all new voicemail “e-mails” and txt message “e-mails” as read and archiving them to a specific label/folder automatically with a filter. Then everything is accessible and archived, but not yelling at you to manage. You’ll still receive txts on your mobile, and you can receive a txt when someone leaves a voicemail on your Google number and then call in to retrieve it. (Note: this is a downgrade compared to the increasingly common visual voicemail that smartphones now offer) Again, if your doing business online you’re most likely going to be able to check the voicemail on your smartphone, or will already be sitting at a computer.

Online Calling

Clicking a number to dial it is brilliant. The restaurant menu’s, e-mails, and online websites that contain numbers you need to dial are all too numerous. An easy cut and paste, or web browser add-on (Firefox Addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11167/) will allow you to click on a number to have it dial you and connect you with the number without cost (except your normal cell minutes if calling from your cell) in the US and Canada.

NEW! Google just added integration with Google Mail on an entirely new level. You can now dial numbers in your contact list and route the call THROUGH the online Google Mail interface, meaning no phone involved. If you’re comfortable with the headset, this is really convenient.

Cheap International Rates

Calls will only cost you cell phone minutes (or landline minutes if you still use that thing) plus whatever the cost listed at Google is. In general, very cheap. Rates listed here https://www.google.com/voice/rates.

Group Filtered Voicemail (requires caller to call Google number or have your current voicemail “activated” or switched to Google Voice) ((Settings > Phones > Show advanced settings))

If the caller is in your Google address book, you can create a group specifically for that person and do whatever you like with the call: Block it, send it right to voicemail, send it to a customized voicemail, etc. It’s not convenient to filter one specific caller, but several in a group you already have organized such as “college buds” or “tenants” could be very helpful.

Voicemail Transcription

Turn this on in the Google Voice settings and it’s attached to every voicemail you get in the online interface. Works fairly well and saves a lot of time.

Caller/Voicemail Screening (requires caller to call Google number)

Remember how you could listen to people leaving a message on the old answering machines? This is the same thing except you need to press buttons on your phone to pick up the call. Click here to see a demonstration.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF-7UTvwAXs

Call Recording (requires caller to call Google number)

(Note: at this time you can only record calls you receive on your Google Voice number. You can’t record calls you initiate.)

Press 4 during the call, and it’s recorded and added to the Google Voice website.

Benefits I’ve Used the Most

• Online Dialing -- The quick lunch menu call or check in is really convenient.
• Call Recording -- Consulting calls and interview calls.
• Text Messages -- Clients, friends, and my Mom even txt, it’s great to manage them all from one screen.

Reader Questions

1) How do I listen to an incoming voicemail and decide whether or not to take it?

If they’ve called your Google Voice number, you need to turn on screening (Settings > Calls), you’ll receive the call like normal, at which a google voice will tell you who is calling, at which you can send to voicemail and then listen to it. You can press * to “pick up” or join the call. Click here to see a demonstration.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF-7UTvwAXs

2) What is the best way to “jump all in” with out bothering people with a new phone number?

There’s not really a way to “jump all in” without giving out the new number, the best you can do is have people who are calling your old number sent to voicemail and check that online.

3) I am in property management. My number is on For Lease signs, business cards etc as well as for personal use. How do I make my life more comfortable juggling all the different uses I use my number for?

Here’s the lynchpin rearing it’s ugly head. If you already have your non-Google Voice number up, you can’t gain all the features of Google Voice, only voicemail “juggling” which is still a benefit if you’re a heavy e-mail user.

4) How can I check my messages without having to play them through my iPhones speaker, what if I’m in a public place?

I’m guessing your checking your voicemail through the online interface on a smartphone. It makes sense to do that because you’re used to visual voicemail, unfortunately you have to go backwards to check your voicemail on Google’s platform with a phone and not a computer. Once you change the settings on the Google Voice website (Settings > Phones > Show advanced settings), you can call your Google Voice number FROM your phone and be sent straight to your voicemail inbox.

Notes: to CON 1 and CON2

One number to rule them all: Set up a pre-Google Voice service (maybe a secondary Google Voice number?) or service that users call to get that specific service, and get forwarded if they press an extension. See Grasshopper for a great service that handles many “branches” or extensions for calls.

New Number: Nothing right now, but Google still claims they will offer a “port” of some sort in the future.

Conclusion

If you’re a one man show, such as a personal fitness coach, freelancer, web designer, etc, you can adapt Google Voice to really benefit you, but if you want to appear larger than you are and brand your voicemail experience, Google Voice will only tease you.

Some of Google Voice’s “features” are annoying and untraditional such as requiring users to say their name when they call you and requiring you to press a button to connect an incoming call, but the core features, such as txt messaging and voicemails online or integrated into your e-mail are enough to merit a trial in your life. I inform my most common “txt” contacts of the number so they aren’t thrown off when it shows up, and route all my voicemails to e-mail. Hope you find your perfect service Zachary.

Do you want a blog breakdown on a topic you’ve been struggling with or wondering about? Drop me a line!

Entrepreneurs are often associated with a certain type of spirit. A persevering opportunistic DO EVERYTHING because that’s what we’ll have to do, go getter attitude. One key characteristic an entrepreneur must have, (as written by Jun Loayza) is the ability to execute, and I agree. The ability to take an idea and build it to the point of sale is powerful. Entrepreneurs often have several different streams of income as they are constantly looking for business opportunities. It’s because of this every business minded person needs to have Square (PS. it’s FREE).

Square (not the old SNES company) gives the opportunistic entrepreneur, whether you own a hot dog stand, a small physical business, couch or offer physical services, like a athletic trainer, masseuse, musician etc, the ability to accept credit cards on the spot, without a merchant account (or much technical setup) with an array smart phones and devices.

The idea is brilliant, the company (and website) is top notch, the applications for the service are versatile. Signing up is free, (the card reader is also free!), and you pay less per transaction than typical merchant accounts. (merchant accounts are the most widely used way to accept a credit card) You are only charged if you make money.

I like these types of business model, don’t you?

Watch the YouTube below to instantly “get it” and get started here, why wouldn’t you? It costs nothing unless you are making money, and with your business ideas flowing, it’s finally time to execute…or “borrow” your friends credit card and force him to finally pay you the $5 he owes you, but that’s up to you.

Square is a valuable tool to have in your pocket (literally) providing an extra layer of value for potential customers.

What applications could use Square for?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBieYjxUj5Q

More Information about Square that people usually have to track down.

• You sign up through your mobile application, not the website which could confuse the first time user. See here (https://squareup.com/get-started) to get started, not the main homepage. The signup process is incredibly easy and well designed, as is the website backend once you’ve created an account.
• Square is available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Nexus One, Motorola Droid, Motorola Droid X, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC Evo, HTC Hero, and the Samsung Vibrant.
• Square’s card processing fees are:
  • 2.75% + 15¢ for swiped transactions
  • 3.5% + 15¢ for keyed-in transactions
• There are no activation, gateway, monthly, early termination, or hidden fees.
• Square works with any US-issued credit, debit, pre-paid, or gift card from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
• In order to get paid, you need to link a bank account to your Square account.
• Square is near the final round of their “under writing” a fancy term for figuring out how to handle so many credit card transactions. They are about to start shipping the free readers, now’s the time to jump in and sign up. I guarentee this service is going to blow up.

Relevant to: Bloggers, Content Providers, Mastermind Groups and Digital Product Creators

Read Time: 4 minutes.

As an online seller, there’s a chance you’ve launched a resource or created content that you only want certain eye balls seeing. You can usually do this by simply sending only those people an e-mail or putting content on a protected website, but what do you do when it comes to video?

Video is hard to manage because it’s big in size, so it’s expensive to host and cumbersome to pass around. There are tools to password protect specific files, but then you need to know how to host them, send them to people, upload and download, encode and re-code. You need a tech guy on call. I often get asked, can’t I just use YouTube somehow?

Cath Duncan of the amazing website Mine Your Resources recently asked me this and the answer is, yes, but with caveats. YouTube allows you to upload videos to your account as “unlisted” which keeps the URLs private. What does that mean though?

When you upload any video to YouTube, it automatically lists your video in search engines, in YouTube’s video directory, and in your account video listings. It’s most certainly not private, and anyone checking out your content is going to see it.

YouTube does have a private setting for videos, but this setting is limited by specific access controls that require you to enter the e-mail address of the person you’d like to see it, this doesn’t work if you want to share it with a private community that could number in the hundreds or thousands.
The “unlisted” feature acts exactly like a normal video, but YouTube does not list the “link” to see the video anywhere on the web. You are then left with the link to keep private on your own terms.

Benefits

• Easy to do
• Easy to share
• Creates “exclusive” feel

Drawbacks

• Not truly private
• Holds you and your audience to keep private

How To

The process is built into the normal upload steps but lets review it here.

Once you’ve finished editing your video, make sure it’s less than 10 minutes, smaller than 2GB in size, and in an acceptable format, you’re ready to upload it.

• Click the Upload link at the top of any YouTube page.
• Click the “Browse” button to browse for the video file you’d like to upload to our site. Select the file you want to upload.
• Click the ‘Upload Video’ button to start the uploading process.
• As the video file is uploading, enter as much information about your video as possible in the relevant fields (including Title, Description, Tags, and Category). You’re not required to provide specific information, but the more information you include, the easier it is for users to find your video!
• Select “Unlisted” under Privacy
• Click the ‘Save changes’ button to save the updates you’ve made to the video file.

Here’s the process in picture format.

Happy YouTubing! Use these tips to offer “your eyes only” video’s for your audience.

If you’re one of the 50% of people NOT backing up their computer, the time is now. I’ve been working the last 4 months specifically for you.

Today I’m introducing The Backup Informer so you don’t have to worry about losing pictures, songs, movies, business or anything else on your computer. Someday isn’t on the calendar, it won’t hurt, and you can do it, set up a backup plan today.

The Backup Informer is a guide built to catalyze action and have you backing up in under an hour. It includes how to make the right decision, what solutions are out there and how to set it up for a complete automatic secure backup. It’s written in plain english with big pictures, video and support!

Find Out More & Get The Backup Informer Now

See What Others are Saying

“This is stuff that I know only a little about and am even less interested in finding out about… but it’s so crucial! I have a bunch of creative projects on the go all the time and I’d be devastated if I lost my data, so really, I can’t afford to have my head in the sand. Rob, thanks for laying it out clear and simple and making it easy for me to just paint in the numbers to set up a good back-up system quick-quick, so that I can get back to doing what I really love doing -- and rest assured that my creations henceforth will be safe.”

Cath Duncan, Mine Your Resources

“Are there free guides out there? Yes. Do they suck? mostly. Is it fun clicking on 10 links off google only to find a question in a forum with no answer? No. Do most quickly blog posts on back-up strategy leave out half the story? Yes. Would someone truly concerned about their data integrity really trust what they read on forum from 10 months ago from some nameless punk? No. Would that someone feel better purchasing info from someone who a) has true expertise b) has a solid track record participating in a community c) is actively involved in helping people for free d) has been recommended by someone they trust? YES!”

Carl Schoof

P.S. (1 Minute)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ryH6gW_y94

Find Out More & Get The Backup Informer Now

There’s one question I get more than any other question working with people and computers. How do I backup?

About 5 months ago I decided to do some research on backing up and how I could really answer this question for the friends, family and users who come to me daily.

Recently popular author and ground breaker Gary Vaynerchuk even brought attention to backing up with a to-the-point post asking, “who backs up out there, be honest YES/NO?”

It’s not that there aren’t enough options out there, or that people can’t do it, but more so that they don’t know what decisions to make, where to begin or how to get the process done right.

I’m happy to say I now have an answer to those questions and I want to give you a sneak peak today.

The Backup Informer

According to a national survey 44% of people cite a lack of technical knowledge stops them from backing up. Not any more…

The Backup Informer is the title I gave to the result of months of work on how I could educate and catalyze action for those who aren’t backing up their computers.

The culmination of my efforts is a 3 part guide with accompanying videos on how to find the best backup solution for your situation, what that solution does and exactly how to set it up for reliable automatic backups in under an hour. It also includes advanced tips, tricks and bonus support.

It’s easy enough to follow that you’d share it with your Mom but powerful enough to backup everything on your computer.

Sneak Peak

The Obvious and Already Known Scary Truths

I didn’t write this article to scare you but backup is a big deal. You already know that a computer crash or some sort of data loss is debilitating in our digital world. It’s obvious and you’re smart enough to realize that. We’re increasingly pouring our lives into our computers, literally. Our bank accounts, companies, school work, media, pictures! etc. all live on our computers. They represent years of ours lives and cost thousands of our dollars in money and time.

According to Symantec, only %34 of people backup their computers regularly. You are more likely to check the oil and water in your car regularly than back up the valuable data on your computer.

There are a lot of people that need to backup.

Do You?

If you’re part of the nearly %70 of people who don’t have a backup plan, or don’t have a great backup plan, I invite you come back next Tuesday, July 20th for more information and the release of The Backup Informer. If you’d like to be alerted by e-mail, sign up for our updates in the form on the right. I never spam.

Thank You!

Relevant to: Bloggers, RSS Readers, Socialites, Time Savers, Internet Marketers

Read Time: 4 minutes.

Application Time: 15 minutes.

Have you ever seen something like “Reading: “Title of post” LINK” in your social media streams and posts? It looks something like the image below.

These posts, tweets, or status updates are automatically generated when someone marks an article in some form or fashion. It’s an easy way to share relevant information to readers, increase your following and interact with fans. It’s vital for exposure, but takes a lot of steps if you’re doing it by hand. In this post we’ll uncover an easy way to automate this, enhance it to include click tracking and include a personal comment, all without increasing the effort made to post.

A blogging friend and all around life living extraordinaire, Colin Wright of ExileLifestyle has been automating this network building tactic for a while. It’s a great time saving trick, but it can be enhanced so the generic looking “Reading:” is replaced with relevant comments, and the link clicks are tracked, all without leaving Google Reader!

WARNING: The process is complicated to understand, easy to set up, and thoughtless once it’s done.

Today I’m going to show you not only how to set up automatic sharing, but allow you to share a comment instead of the generic looking “Reading:” to various social media sites with bit.ly tracking when marking an article shared from inside Google Reader.

Background:

When you want to get some serious web reading done, the typical solution is to use an RSS reader. RSS readers collect all the articles and posts from various websites and allow you to scan through them and interact with them all in one place, and usually without clunky ads or having to go to the actual website.

There’s nothing wrong with reading articles at the sources website, and I happen to be a fan of Apple’s new Safari “Reader” feature, but RSS is the way to go when you want to get through a lot of content quickly, the only problem is that it’s not always easy to share those articles.

Amongst all the RSS readers out there, Google Reader is the most popular, and for good reason. Its ability to organize, share, and find similar content is amazingly powerful. It goes way beyond just reading information. So what does this have to do with the above “Reading:” type posts? These posts are automatically generated from Google Reader in conjunction with a few other services. Here are some typical set-ups.

Now here’s the specific one we’ll set up in this post.

How To Steps:

1. Google Reader. Finding your Atom RSS Feed. This step finds the feed of all the things you “share” on Google Reader. If you haven’t noticed at the bottom of articles you read in Google Reader, there’s a “Share with Note” button.
   1. Login to Google Reader, click on ‘Your stuff’, then ‘sharing settings’ on the right.
   2. On the page that opens there should be a link to ‘Preview your shared items page in a new window’, on this page you need to copy your ‘Atom feed’ link.
2. Yahoo Pipe Magic. This step will use Yahoo Pipes to take any notes you’ve added to the shared article and use them instead of the article title in a new RSS feed.
   1. Open this ‘Tweet Google Reader Shared’ yahoo pipe
   2. Paste your ‘Atom feed’ link from Google Reader and click ‘Run Pipe’.
   3. Copy the new feed link from Yahoo Pipes.
3. Twitterfeed. Now use the Yahoo Pipe Feed with the free service Twitterfeed to blast out your post with note, to Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm and a few others automatically with bit.ly links that you can add tracking to. All Twitterfeed is really doing is taking the RSS feed from Yahoo Pipes and sending it out to social media sites on a specified interval with tracking to any included links.
   1. Sign up for TwitterFeed.
   2. Click create new feed and paste in the feed that the Yahoo Pipe gave you.
   3. Configure your new Twitterfeed with a posting interval and the link shortener of your choice. (this is where you can use bit.ly and add tracking if you’re interested in those who click your link, the results will show up in Twitterfeed)
      • 
4. Finito! Done! Complete! Try it. Click the “Share with Note” button , add a note, click post, and watch your services update.

NOTE: Keep your Google Reader note under 115 characters so the link displays properly, otherwise you’ll have busted links.

It’s okay if you didn’t understand all that, it’s not really important to make it work.

Why should I do this again?

• More efficient and productive than manually sharing links or promoted articles.
• Increases follower and fan interaction.
• Stimulates conversation and exposure.

Why do all this? Why not just use Googles “Share to” button?

• Share to opens up a new window, which wastes time with logins and more post buttons.
• Share to can’t share to multiple services at once.
• Share to doesn’t keep an easily accessible record of what you’ve shared.

Special Thanks to This Guy

Martin Hawksey put together the rather complex Yahoo Pipe to which I stumbled on, tested and put together the above how to for.

If you found this article useful, why don’t you try asking your own question now for FREE. Ask now.

Relevant to: Bloggers!

Read Time: 4 minutes.

There are a few companies that come immediately to mind when you think of certain aspects or topics in life. For example: Internet, Google. Computer, Apple (or Micro$oft). Athletic Gear, Nike. Car, BMW, Toyota, Ford, etc. When it comes to blogging, I think of WordPress. When it comes to blogging plugins, I think of Apture.

In the standing effort to help freelancers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and other business people with technology here at IT Arsenal, I’d like to introduce Apture. Apture is a free plugin for blogs, but it’s much more. It does what great products do, it becomes more than just it’s description, it becomes a must have tool. Here’s why.

Apture is all around, you may not notice it, or know what it is, or in fact know that it’s available to you for free, and easily installed. Time, Newsweek, and Reuters are just a few companies who use Apture regularly.

Apture is what you see when you highlight a word on this blog, Apture is the bar you see when you scroll a bit down, Apture is what you see when you click on a link with a small icon next to it,  Like this. At it’s very basic, Apture is an immersive tool for engaging your readers. On the content creation level, the one you don’t get to see unless you’ve actually installed it, is where Apture becomes an invaluable tool.

How many times have you wanted to reference someone elses webpage quickly (www.cnn.com), or provide a quick reference for that fancy place (Galapagos) you just learned about? In the “New Post” window of WordPress (or the various blog platforms supported), Apture seamlessly integrates as a editing button. When you click it, you’re presented with a window to enter pretty much anything you want to search for, categorized into various types (audio, video, wikipedia, etc). Search for your word, person, blog, etc, and then find various ways to insert that content into your website. It might be easier to just show you. See the video below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=09R5vf8Cujc

Apture integrates with countless other services like Drupal, Blogger, TypePad and more.

Impressive, But…

It’s impressive, but the tricks and real world use I’ve found have been the staying factors. I constantly want to reference something when I’m writing but forget where I heard about a particular concept, or who wrote it. Pop open Apture, do a quick search and you’ll have enough content to reference the exact thought you had clearly. Another added bonus of Apture is how it self educates. I can honestly say as my writing has progressed, Apture has often taught me more about specific content I chose to research than I knew before starting an article. Apture makes writing easier, and the end result more informed, and more engaging.

Some of the Features Include:

1. Instant and hand picked information pop-ups that retain users.
2. Tracking on usage.
3. Site Bar with easy to see sharing features to Facebook and Twitter.

Favorite Uses:

• Don’t guess at names, reference them and include their latest social media content. Like this, Jonathan Mead.
• Embed content into your page using Apture’s built in hosting features. Upload a PDF, image or text document and offload the bandwidth usage on your own site.
• Embed a YouTube video, but go a step further using Apture’s trim features to start and end the video exactly where you want to.

I’m using Apture on a few websites now and I can easily say it’s the first thing I grab when setting up a blog. An invaluable tool for displaying content, writing content, and entertaining your readers that much more.

Check out www.apture.com for the full breakdown on how to implement Apture into your website, or of course, just drop us a line and we’ll create you a custom workflow!

Relevant to: Mac Using Beginners

Read Time: 2 minutes

The “bottom toolbar”, the “icon thing”, the “start bar”, the “application launcher”. The Dock has been called a lot of things by those new to the Mac. It’s understandably confusing if you’re coming from Windows, so this quick read is meant to inform those new or switching to the Mac (like my friend Pam) on exactly what this bar is, and how to quickly understand it’s use.

The Gist: It’s a customizable bar for applications and folders you can quickly access. If an icon has a blue ball underneath it, it means that the application is open and using your computers memory.

Favorite Trick: Click on an icon and hold down the mouse for a list of options, including to quit it.

The How: (borrowed from apple.com)

Adding and Removing Docked Items

If you want to add an application, file, or folder to the Dock, just drag its icon from any Finder window (or the desktop) and drop it on the Dock; the icons in the Dock will move aside to make room for their new neighbor. The resulting icon that appears in the Dock is actually an alias of the original item (it’s kind of a bridge to your original item). If you drag an application or file onto the Dock, you’ll be able to open it anytime by simply clicking its docked icon. If you drag a folder onto the Dock, a Finder window of the folder’s contents will display when you click the folder icon in the Dock.

Of course, you can also remove stuff from the Dock. To remove an item from the Dock, just drag its icon off the Dock onto the desktop; the icon will disappear in a poof of smoke.

Don’t worry, you didn’t permanently remove the item from your computer; you simply got rid of its alias. If you want that item back, you can easily locate the application, file, or folder in the Finder, and drag its icon back into the Dock. Keep in mind that there are a couple things that you won’t be able to remove; namely, the Trash and the Finder.

Tip: You can change where the Dock displays and customize its animated behavior in Dock Preferences. You can learn how to do both in “Customize the Dock.”

Emptying Trash

Sure, your Mac has a big enough hard drive to keep just about any pack rat happy, but you shouldn’t get into the mindset of not throwing anything away. When you need to delete unwanted files, folders, or applications, move them to the Trash.

Here’s what the Trash looks like when it’s empty (left) and when it’s got something in it (right).

The Trash functions somewhat like a folder in that you can drag things to it and then open it to see what’s inside. However, when you command the Trash to empty itself, you can kiss its contents goodbye. To get rid of unwanted items, simply drag the item from the Finder and drop it onto the Trash icon in the Dock. The item will remain in the Trash folder (click the Trash icon to view its contents) until you either move it out of the Trash (if you decide to keep it) or empty it. From the Finder menu, choose Empty Trash.

If you’re dumping sensitive files, such as electronic banking statements, documents that contain social security numbers or private passwords, or drunken photos of yourself at the company party, you can choose to have your Mac securely dump the Trash: From the Finder menu, choose Secure Empty Trash. This makes your Mac write over your deleted files with meaningless data, greatly reducing the chances it could ever be recovered. Keep in mind that this process can take some time, depending on what you’re deleting. If you’ve got a lot of files to “shred,” put it in motion and then go grab a snack, take a nap, or get some exercise and come back to it later.

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Relevant to: E-mail Users, Mac Users

Read Time: 4 minutes.

My brother Dave recently came to me fired up about two “simple questions” that had been driving him mad about his new Macbook Pro and how to get the Mail software that came with it for e-mailing clients, etc to just work.. The “simple questions” were how do I get spell check to work and how do I stop spam?

Although these questions are pretty simple, there are a few things to understand and set up before they “just work” like you want them to. Here’s the need to know, a workflow on setting up spell check to act like YOU want it in Apple Mail, and some tips on cutting down what seems like ever increasing spam.

Spellcheck

The Gist:

There’s no auto-correct in Apple Mail, set it up to prompt you when you hit send.

The Information:

The Macintosh or Apple operating system has spell check built into several of it’s core applications, like Mail, iChat, Safari and so on. You may have noticed this when a dotted red line appears underneath a word you are typing. I’ve found most people realize the red dotted line is telling them the word is spelled wrong, but don’t know what to do about it. The action is to use your mouse’s right button (or if you are using a laptop, hold down control) and click on the word. A list of options will appear for you to correct the spelling. See below.

You can use this feature to correct spelling wherever you see a word underlined. Apple Mail works like this, and also includes an option to prompt you when you hit send on an e-mail message if a word is misspelled.

The How:

While in Apple Mail, Select “Preferences” from the menu bar. Then click the composing tab and locate “Check Spelling”. See below.

Spam

The Gist:

Spam prevention starts at your host server, meaning, Yahoo, or your company, or Gmail. It then filters to your computer, and the applications you use to check your e-mail to further prevent Spam. In order to stop more junk mail, you need to train the program (Apple Mail in this example) to identify certain messages as junk and then auto trash them, this takes setup and is not automatically configured.

The Information:

Over %90 of the mail sent out on the web is junk mail. There are thousands of junk messages you aren’t getting for every one you do get. You don’t care about that though, you just want it to stop.

Your solutions vary. You can complain to your host to tighten security, you can purchase extra spam software and learn how to configure it (who is going to do that though?), or you can set Apple Mail to automatically identify junk and trash it. Below we’ll explore how to set up Mail to junk messages properly.

The How:

1. Tell Mail What to Junk

While in Apple Mail, select “Preferences” from the menu bar, and then click the “Junk” tab. See below. Read through these settings. Set Apple Mail to automatically move messages to the junk folder (as that’s the common preference), but remember to continue marking messages as junk to train it.

If a particular messages continues to get through, select “Perform Custom Actions” and then click advanced. You’ll be able to specify to junk certain messages with a specific subject, sender, etc. here.

2. Use the Junk Button

• To identify one or more highlighted messages in your Inbox as junk mail, select the messages and then click Junk in the toolbar, or choose Message > Mark > As Junk Mail.
• To correct a message that has been wrongly classified as junk, select the message and click Not Junk in the toolbar, or choose Message > Mark > As Not Junk Mail.

Mail maintains an internal database of information that helps it detect junk mail. When you mark messages as junk or not junk, Mail updates the junk mail database accordingly and your junk mail filter continually improves over time. If you change your mind about what is junk mail (for example, you want to receive someone’s messages that you previously specified were junk messages), you need to mark them as not junk.

3. Trick: Bounce!

This trick will  help with stubborn junk messages you continue to get. Select the message, click the “Message” drop down in the menu bar (see below) and choose “Bounce” this will reject the e-mail and disguise the rejection notice as if your e-mail address doesn’t exist.

Two simple questions that will save you time and frustration if you take a couple minutes to address them. They seem so trivial, but when we’re constantly dealing with e-mails between clients and important contacts, these things need to just work.

Note: If you aren’t constrained to use your work or schools e-mail servers, Google Mail or Gmail offers some of the best spam protection I’ve come across and can be used both in a web browser and through Apple Mail.

If you found this article useful, why don’t you try asking your own question now for FREE. Ask now.

The Question:

Hey, is Parallels (an application for running Windows and more on a Mac) worth getting? Does it mess up the pristine functioning of the Mac OS, and turn it into PCesque problems? Also, does it take up a ton of space?

Thanks, Bobby