b(eing) todd

Firefox: If you use Ctrl F like a fiend, this simple extension will add a drop-down history list so you can access your most recent search terms on a given page.

If you're looking for something specific and using Firefox's "Find on this Page" feature repeatedly, it can get annoying to retype your search terms every time. After installing FindList (and checking the "Keep Entries" box in its settings), the Find box will contain a drop-down that shows you all your recent terms. It's pretty handy to have around if you use Ctrl F a lot. Note that you need to hit enter after typing in your search terms to save them in the dropdown, though that's a pretty easy habit to get into.

FindList is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. We couldn't find a Chrome equivalent, but if you know of one, please let us know in the comments below.

FindList | Mozilla Add-Ons via AddictiveTips

When you boot up a Mac and use Mac OS X for the first time, the best you can do with the keyboard is type using the standard characters that form the English language and use a few keyboard shortcuts that you are familiar with. But your keyboarding abilities on Mac OS X can be taken quite a bit beyond that, in ways not obvious to many, and in this article we take a look at the various ways you can do that.

Keyboard Preference Pane

The Keyboard preference pane in System Preferences is the most obvious place to start and probably the one that most readers already know about, but here’s a recap. The most obvious thing expert typists would want to do is increase the key repeat rate and decrease the delay until repeat to make your typing faster. We’ve found that typing becomes much more efficient at the maximum settings for each, but you may feel comfortable at lower speeds.

The other thing you want to do is enable the “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar” option; it’s a neat feature that we will get back to later in this article. If you hit the Modifier Keys button here, it’ll bring up a sheet that will allow you to change the function of your modifier keys like Caps Lock, Control, Option and Command. Two good uses are to (a) disable the Caps Lock key if you find it of little use; and (b) interchange the positions of the Command and Option keys if you are using a keyboard not optimised for Macs.

Finally, if you are using an Apple keyboard, the “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” setting lets you toggle their functionality between controlling system features and being normal function keys. By default, they control hardware features like the screen’s brightness and volume levels and other system features like music playback, Mission Control and the Dashboard. Depending on the choice you make, the alternative function can be accessed by pressing them in combination with the Function (Fn) key.

Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

The first thing you want to do in the Keyboard Shortcuts tab is switch the “Full Keyboard Access” setting to “All controls” (which can also be done using the Ctrl+F7 shortcut). The next time you are staring at a sheet with the options Cancel and Discard, the Cancel button will be surrounded with a light blue glow, indicating that the button can be pressed by hitting the spacebar. Pressing the Tab key passes the control to other buttons and interactive elements of the UI.

In this tab, you can see a bunch of apps and features of the system listed on the left side and their keyboard shortcuts on the right. This is a great way to familiarise yourself with the keyboard shortcuts available to you in various parts of Mac OS X. You can also go in and change any of them to something you’re more comfortable with. Apple furnishes you with a list of common keyboard shortcuts for Mac OS X, while graphics instructor and designer Dan Rodney has a much more comprehensive and well-organised list available on his website.

The real fun, however, is in adding keyboard shortcuts of your own. If you frequently use the Merge All Windows command in Safari, for instance, or the Export option in many apps, you may find yourself frustrated by having to reach for the menu bar over and over again to access them. Custom keyboard shortcuts let you solve that problem.

Go to the Application Shortcuts option and then hit the Add (+) button to start adding a new keyboard shortcut. Choose any app from the ones listed in the Application menu, or by going through your Applications folder using the Other option at the end of the menu. Once you’ve selected an app—say, Safari—you have to enter the menu title of the command you want to create a shortcut for. Be sure to enter it exactly as you see it in the app’s menus and then enter a keyboard shortcut in the next box.

If you select “All Applications” in the Applications menu instead of a specific app, the shortcut you create will be applicable to all apps on the system that have that option in their menus. The “Export…” command is a good one to start with—used in conjunction with the Cmd+Shift+S shortcut, it can bring back the Save As option to many of the apps that lost it in the transition from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 Lion.

Changing the System Language

If you use British English outside of the UK and want your computer not to spell “humour” as “humor” and “organise” as “organize”, launch the Language & Text preference pane and hit the Edit List button under the Language tab. Scroll down to find British English among the list of languages, enable it and hit OK. Back in the languages list, you’ll find that it has replaced English at the top spot. Next, switch to the Text tab and select British English from the Spelling drop down menu. You may also want to enable “Correct spelling automatically” if it isn’t already.

Text Substitution

A handy feature of Mac OS X is its ability to speed up your typing by allowing you to set up text substitution. To get started, enable “Use symbol and text substitution” under the Text tab in Language & Text and then scroll down the table below to take a look at some of the presets.

To add your own, hit the Add (+) button and enter both the trigger text on the left side and the replacement on the right. If you want “tnw” to be replaced by “The Next Web”, for instance, enter the former on the left and the latter on the right. Good candidates for this list are names, usernames, email addresses, addresses, salutations and other things that you end up typing repeatedly throughout the day.

But you aren’t done yet! For some strange reason, Mac OS X does not actually enable the feature systemwide when you do so in System Preferences. You now have to right-click (or Ctrl+click) inside a text box in every app where you want to use the feature (Mail, Safari, TextEdit and Twitter, for example) and enable Text Replacement under the Substitutions menu. You can also enable the other options there based on your preference.

Thankfully, this is a one-time deal and, henceforth, text replacement will always be enabled within that app until you choose to disable it. You can now type “tnw” and hit the spacebar or return key to see it magically turn into “The Next Web”. The feature works in almost exactly the same manner on an iOS device running iOS 5 as well, so you may want to set up some text substitutions on your iPad or iPhone too.

Entering Special Characters

Mac OS X has robust support for entering special characters and symbols while typing and there are several ways to do it. For entering accented versions of characters in the English alphabet, you can hold down the keys on the keyboard to bring up relevant options. If you hold down ‘E’, for instance, you’ll see a menu come up with options to type seven accented versions of the letter. You can use the arrow keys to navigate to one of those choices or hit the number associated with it to jump straight to it.

For entering other special characters, you need to pull up the Keyboard Viewer. If you enabled the “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar” option in the Keyboard preference pane as described above, you will now see a new icon in your menu bar that looks like the one in the screenshot on the right. Click on it and select Show Keyboard Viewer.

With the virtual keyboard displayed, you can press and hold the Option key to see the characters on it change to a different set. Press the Shift key in addition to it and you’ll see more characters still. This is a map of all the special characters you can enter using standard keyboard keys. For example, to enter the Euro currency symbol (€), you need to hit Option+Shift+2, while just entering Option+2 will get you the trademark sign (™).

With the Option key pressed, you’ll also see five keys on the keyboard coloured orange. You can use these to enter accented characters if, for some reason, you dislike the method described above. Hit Option+E to type the accent (´) and then follow it up with a letter that supports it (like ‘a’ or ‘e’). So Option+E, followed by an ‘e’ gives you ‘é’, and Option+N, followed by an ‘a’ gives you ‘ã’.

Entering Symbols

Now that you know how to type “exposé”, how about entering a fancy forward-facing arrow (➟) or a degree celsius (℃) symbol? For those you need the Mac OS X Character Viewer. It can be brought up using the same menu that you used to access the Keyboard Viewer and this is what it looks like:

Select any of the categories on the left and then drag in a symbol from the options in the middle section into your document. You can see the list of related characters and variations of the one you have currently selected. If you plan to use a character often, you can add it to your favourites to make it easier to access. The Recently Used menu is self-explanatory and the search field lets you type in the name of a character to find it (for example, searching for “franc” will bring up the symbol for the French Franc).

If you want even more symbols, click on the gear icon on the top-left of the window and select Customize List. From the sheet that comes up, you can select more categories of symbols and various scripts from all around the world. Whether you want characters from the phonetic alphabet or technical symbols or Greek or Tibetan scripts, it’s all there. Once you’ve enabled the categories you want, hit Done and they will appear in the Character Viewer.

Typing in a Different Language

If you want to type in a different language on Mac OS X, go into the Input Sources tab of the Language & Text preference pane and select the language/script that you would like to use. You can select as many as you want and then use the Keyboard Shortcuts button to assign them a shortcut that will easily let you switch between them. The other option is to press the menu bar button that you used for bringing up the character and keyboard viewers above and it will now have your newly enabled languages.

If you select ‘Bangla – QWERTY’, you will now be able to type in Bengali. To make it easier, bring up the Keyboard Viewer after you have selected the language (the icon in the menu bar will change to reflect your new selection) and you’ll see which keyboard key corresponds to which Bengali letter. It requires some practice, but you’ll soon be typing in বাংলা (Bengali), Ελληνικά (Greek), 한국어/조선말 (Korean) or русский язык (Russian) on your Mac.

Typing Shortcuts

None of the keyboards Apple ships with its computers by default today include the number pad and various other keys like Home, End, Forward Delete, Page Up, Page Down, etc., and new Mac users are often frustrated by the seeming lack of these options. You probably already know that Cmd+C copies text, Cmd+V pastes it and Cmd+A selects it all, but did you know that Cmd+Del erases a full sentence?

Here are some of the most commonly used Mac OS X typing shortcuts while doing text entry:

• Option+Delete: Deletes a whole word.
• Option+Left/Right Arrow: Moves the cursor by one word in either direction.
• Option+Up/Down Arrow: Moves the cursor to the beginning or end of the paragraph respectively.
• Cmd+Delete: Deletes a whole sentence.
• Cmd+Left/Right Arrow: Moves the cursor to the beginning or end of the sentence respectively.
• Cmd+Up/Down Arrow: Moves the cursor to the beginning or end of the document respectively.
• Fn+Del: Forward delete.

As a bonus, you can combine the cursor movement shortcuts mentioned above with the Shift key to select text as the cursor is moved. Once you get used to these keyboard shortcuts, you’ll find yourself navigating through lengthy documents much more efficiently.

Miscellaneous Tips

To conclude this article, we’d like to share with you a couple of tips that will make typing a little less frustrating with some of the features we have described above. If you have automatic spelling correction enabled, you’ll sometimes run into the system trying to correct a spelling that you have purposely misspelt. To ignore its suggested correction, hit the Escape key before you hit the Spacebar to continue. If you find yourself typing that word often, it’s a good idea to right-click (or Ctrl+click) on it and select Learn Spelling, so that the system never tries to automatically correct it for you again.

Another neat trick is to use text substitution in combination with the special characters supported by Mac OS X. When you have to open the Character Viewer repeatedly to get to a special character that you type often, it becomes tedious, even if you have it saved as a favourite. In such a situation, it may be a good idea to set up a text substitution for it as described above. I, for instance, often find myself typing the Indian Rupee symbol and have my Mac set up so that typing “rs” replaces it with the currency symbol (₹). It makes life a little bit easier.

We hope that we were able to teach you a neat new trick or two about your Mac today, but there’s no doubt other useful text entry and keyboard-based features on Mac OS X. We keep learning new stuff all the time, and will be sure to let you know if we run into more Mac OS X features that you should know about.

Computerworld - Sometimes it seems as though technology is making our lives more complicated, not less. There's a vast amount of information out there, much of which we seem determined to save. We collect it from the Web, from our scanners and via our smartphone cameras, and it can range from important data such as tax returns, family pictures and contracts to the photo you took of the wine that your friend served you last Thursday. Where do you put it all, and how do you find it again?

A number of applications promise to help you track that cacophony of information. Currently, the two kings of this particular castle are Evernote and Springpad. They are both Web-based tools designed to serve as bottomless storage repositories; they're built to enable people to deposit almost any type of digital information and then organize it, categorize it and/or retrieve it when needed.

Alternative Applications

There are, of course, a number of other applications designed to help users collect and organize digital information, but most of them are more focused (and, as a result, more limited) than Evernote or Springpad.

Three popular programs are OS-dependent: Windows users can turn to Microsoft Office OneNote 2010 to collect text, photos, videos and clippings from Web sites, and Mac enthusiasts can do similar things with Yojimbo or Soho Notes.

There are also a number of cloud-based applications that are either limited to specific types of data (for example, Simplenote is a text app that works on the Web or with iOS devices) or more suited to people who use specific apps or software suites (Zoho Notebook, for example, is a OneNote-like Web app that works best with other Zoho applications). And a new application called Memonic lets you save Web content; it's available in a Windows client version or as an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch app.

It's a tall order. The idea that you can save almost all digital information and then retrieve it at a moment's notice is a great one -- especially to information magpies who want to hold onto a huge amount of data but don't have the time or the inclination to organize it. But how well do these two programs fulfill that promise?

I worked with Evernote and Springpad for several weeks, using them both as professional tools and for personal information storage. I compared the two based on a variety of factors, from the features of their interfaces to their support for social networking. Interestingly, while both applications handle a wide variety of data and are designed for the same purpose -- to help users track everything -- each has a very different approach. Your choice will probably depend on what type of interface you're comfortable with and the type of data you tend to work with.

Note: Most of my observations are based on experiences working on Windows-based laptops and an Android-based Droid smartphone. You might encounter some differences if you use Evernote or Springpad on OS X- and iOS-based devices, but the main functionality is the same.

How they work

The first major difference between Evernote and Springpad is in the access they provide to your stored data: a hybrid local/cloud approach versus an all-cloud service.

Evernote

Although Evernote syncs everything through the cloud and offers a fairly sophisticated Web-based platform, the application is actually centered on its local clients for Windows and OS X. It also is available in apps for several mobile platforms, including iPhones, iPads, Android devices, BlackBerry phones and the Palm Pre. Your information is synced across these platforms.

These local clients ensure that users have access to their data whether or not they're online -- something that is useful for those who depend on Wi-Fi for an Internet connection away from home or the office. For example, if I want to take notes at a meeting where I'm not sure I can get online, I bring up Evernote on my netbook (I haven't joined the tablet forces yet) and type away, secure in the knowledge that as soon as I'm able to connect to the Internet again, Evernote will automatically sync the new note with the rest of the database.

Evernote is available in a free ads-included version that allows users to add up to 60MB of additional data per month. (There's no cap on how much aggregate data you can store over time, just a limit on how much new information you can add each month.) A premium ad-free version ($5/month or $45/year) lets you add up to 1GB of new data per month; it also synchronizes any files you attach to your notes, while the free version syncs only images, audio and PDF files in addition to your notes. Premium users enjoy a variety of other advantages as well, such as improved support and access to note history.

Springpad

Unlike Evernote, Springpad is a completely cloud-based service, and it went through a nasty few days during the recent Amazon EC2 cloud service outage. Like other Web services that depended on Amazon's servers (such as Quora and Reddit), Springpad was completely down for about two days -- and its users didn't have local use of their data. Disconcerting, to say the least.

To its credit, the company was very careful to keep in touch with its users during the downtime, telling them exactly what happened, explaining how to back up their data and describing what it will do to prevent a similar incident in the future.

Springpad is completely free; it currently doesn't offer a premium service.

Addendum

As of May 10, 2011, Springpad added offline support to users of the Chrome browser. A new Springpad Chrome Web app will automatically save your data locally and allow you to access it offline with some limitations.

1

2

3

4

5

Next page

Sometimes, less really is a lot more.

Google has cleaned up the interface of Gmail, its Web-based e-mail, removing clutter and redesigning the layout of messages to make everything easier to read. If you’re a Gmail user, you’ll be automatically switched to the new design soon, but it’s big enough of an improvement that, unlike most Web site redesigns, I encourage you to take a deep breath and make the switch now.

Gmail’s new, more spartan layout.

The biggest improvement in Gmail is readability. The new look is more spartan, less cluttered, with more white space and fewer lines and colors to distract from the text onscreen. It also places Facebook-style user profile images next to each message, so you can see who sent them without reading through lists of names. And if you read through a message thread with multiple senders, there’s less interface clutter around the messages themselves to distract your eyes. It’s — well, Facebooky, but in a good way.

A blog post by Google details other improvements. You can adjust the spacing between lines of text to be more or less than the default. If you’re using a mobile phone or other small screen, Gmail will automatically use a more dense layout that you can adjust. On a big computer display, it will stretch out for readability. You can also move around the left-hand navigation items, for example to create more room for the chat section. The optional skins for the layout (Google calls them Themes) use high-resolution background images, but why bother? The plain white default is much easier to read. There’s also a new advanced search tool.

One big difference from Facebook: Gmail’s new look, which is gradually being rolled out, won’t drive you crazy with big changes in the placement and behavior of controls. The differences are technically subtle, but visually effective. To get the new interface, scroll to the bottom of Gmail’s homepage and click “Switch to the new look” in the lower right corner. If you hate it or aren’t ready to figure out the changes, click the big gear icon just above your list of messages and choose the option “Revert to the old interface temporarily.” Eventually, though, Google will force everyone to upgrade.

Food truck fanatics can satisfy their craving to eat from the back of a truck at the Suffolk Downs Food Truck Festival this Saturday, which is expected to feature over a dozen food trucks serving up everything from meatballs to fried dough.

The event will take place at Suffolk Downs on Saturday Oct. 22 from noon to 5 p.m.

There will be a variety of food trucks there including The FroYo Truck; Go Fish!; Grilled Cheese Nation, Lobsta Love, Sweet Truck and Redbones barbecue.

Food truck gourmets were disappointed last weekend when Occupy Boston protesters were the cause of the cancelation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway’s Mobile Food Fest.

The popularity of food trucks in Boston seems to be showing no signs of slowing down.

Indeed, the Aigner/Prensky Marketing Group, the Boston-based marketing firm that will produce the Suffolk Downs event, is planning “many more” food truck events for 2012.

The Suffolk Downs event will also include living racing.

Schools in some of the state’s wealthiest communities, including Wellesley, Lexington, and Dover, would get millions of dollars in casino money while some of the poorest districts, including Boston, Brockton, and Holyoke, would get nothing under a measure that passed the state Senate last week.

Increased school funding is one of several promises lawmakers have made in selling the casino bill to the public as an opportunity to improve quality of life in Massachusetts with a new source of money.

Both the House and Senate versions of the casino legislation would devote 14 percent of all casino taxes to schools. The House bill would distribute that money statewide, based on a formula Massachusetts uses in doling out money to cities and towns.