Do you have styrofoam peanuts or large blocks of styrofoam that you’d like to recycle? I order a lot of computer products online and unbox a lot of new computers that clients have bought. For many years, I’ve dropped off styrofoam peanuts at my neighborhood shipping company, Sip and Ship in Ballard. Many neighborhoods have private shipping stores or a FedexOffice store that I would assume would be happy to receive this material. It’s been tough to find options for recycling large blocks of styrofoam, but I’ve found some. Read More from “How To Recycle Styrofoam In Seattle”
Apple Starts MacBook Pro Video Repair Program
Do you own a 15″ or 17″ MacBook Pro? Does it suffer from distorted video, no video or random reboots? If so, the cause might be a defective video card. If this is the cause, Apple may repair it for free. Read More from “Apple Starts MacBook Pro Video Repair Program”
Use Malwarebytes To Remove Genieo and Other Malware
Is your web browser acting oddly all of the sudden? Do funny windows pop-up showing you ads? Do your Google searches look weird? If so, you might have inadvertently installed some adware on your Mac. Starting in late 2014 I noticed a rash of Macs infected with adware. Adware is software that makes ads pop-up in your web browser. The good news is Malwarebytes for Mac, can be used to remove most adware as well as other types of malware from your Mac. Use these instructions to download a copy of Malwarebytes and scan your Mac. Read More from “Use Malwarebytes To Remove Genieo and Other Malware”
5 Tips To Avoid Common DNS Problems
Last week’s Tech Tip explained how the DNS system works and introduced you to the most common DNS records: NS, MX and A records. This week’s Tech Tip lists 5 DNS management tips for small business owners to avoid common problems. If you follow these tips you’ll reduce the chances that your company’s web site or email will ever stop working. Read More from “5 Tips To Avoid Common DNS Problems”
Understanding DNS Basics
Understanding DNS (Domain Name System) is important because it determines if your business can send and receive emails and if your business’ website is visible to the world. This Tech Tip explains basic DNS terminology like domain names, name servers, DNS lookup and common DNS records like NS, A and MX. I believe that most small business owners should understand the basics of how DNS works. Any time you ask an employee or contractor to make changes that will affect your DNS records, you should be sure that this person knows what they are doing. Even if you aren’t a small business owner, I think you’ll find this overview of the DNS system useful. Read More from “Understanding DNS Basics”
Comcast Now Offers IMAP Email Accounts
Do you use a Comcast email account? If so, you might be interested to know that Comcast email accounts are now IMAP-enabled. IMAP refers to the way your email application, such as Apple Mail, interacts with the mail server. IMAP offers more sophisticated email management if you access your email account using multiple computers, tablets or smartphones. (Read this previous Tech Tip about IMAP if you’d like to learn a bit more.) Comcast started to support IMAP around the end of 2013.
Tips For Taming Your Email Inbox
Do you struggle to stay on top of the high volume of email messages that arrive in your Inbox every day? Many people struggle with this, including me. Here are some suggestions on how you can start to tame your Inbox. You don’t need to implement all of these suggestions. Instead, just pick a few that sound like they would be effective for you and use them. If you have your own suggestions, please send them to me and I’ll update this list. Read More from “Tips For Taming Your Email Inbox”
Options For Archiving Email From Entourage Or Outlook
Do you use either Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Entourage as your email application? Do you store thousands and thousands of email messages? Do you infrequently access many of these messages? If so, you could consider archiving these messages. Once the message has been archived then you can delete them from Outlook which will remove them from Outlook’s or Entourage’s mail database. This makes the database smaller, faster and less prone to having problems. The messages can still be accessed, typically from within the archiving application.
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What Is Stored In The “Other” Category On My iPhone And How Can I Get Rid Of It?
Have you ever noticed that the “Other” storage section on your iPhone or iPad is quite large? Have you ever wondered what comprises this “Other” category? When you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac, you’ll see a bar like the one pictured. This bar depicts the primary storage categories and shows their relative size.
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Remove Virus-Infected File Using Sophos Quarantine Manager
If Sophos detects that your Mac has a virus-infected file on it, here are instructions on how to use the Quarantine Manager to get rid of the infection. Previously, I’ve endorsed the use of an anti-virus application and specifically recommend Sophos or ClamXav.
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Scan Your Mac For Viruses Using Sophos
Sophos is a great anti-virus application for Mac users. Sophos is free for home users and quite affordable for business users. Sophos updates itself daily and scans every file that you download or open.
How To Set Up An Auto-Reply If You Use Rackspace Email
When you’re on vacation or out of the office for a day-long meeting would you like to send an auto-reply to email messages that you receive? If your email provider is Rackspace then follow these instructions. Rackspace is a premiere email provider and I regularly recommend Rackspace to my clients. Read More from “How To Set Up An Auto-Reply If You Use Rackspace Email”
How To Search Your Entire Mac’s Hard Drive
Did you know that Apple’s built-in search tool called Spotlight doesn’t search the entire hard drive? There are good reasons why Apple does this (which I won’t go into now), but there are also times when you want to be able to search the entire hard drive. When I’m troubleshooting a problem on a client’s Mac, I often need to search through various folders that Spotlight doesn’t search. I use Devon Technologies’ EasyFind or Thomas Tempelmann’s Find Any File.
Use The Recovery Partition to Securely Erase Your Mac’s Mechanical Hard Drive
Are you retiring an older Mac that has a mechanical, spinning hard drive and its running macOS version 10.7 or higher? If so, here are instructions on how you can securely erase the Mac’s hard drive before you donate your Mac or sell it.
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How To Rename Your iPhone or iPad
Here are instructions on how to rename your iPhone or iPad. The names of these devices are often copied from one device to the next so it’s possible that your new iPhone 6 might still be named Tim’s iPhone 4, for example. You don’t want that! Read More from “How To Rename Your iPhone or iPad”
How To Set Gmail As Your Mac’s Default Email Client
Do you use Gmail? When you click an email link on a web site does Apple Mail or some other email client open? If so, you should follow these instructions to make Gmail your default email client. I’ve provided instructions for the 3 most widely used web browsers: Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Follow the instructions listed for the browser you use.
[Update February 2019 – If you’ve updated to macOS Mojave then you have Safari 12. The solution I outline below, the mailto extension, does not work with Safari 12. Fred Potter, the developer of a new solution, pointed this out to me. While I haven’t tested his solution, Fred created a Mac application named Open in Webmail. Get Open in Webmail from the Mac App Store where it currently costs 99 cents. This app currently has 8 reviews and an overall rating of 4.9 stars out of 5.]
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A Cautionary Tale About Why You Shouldn’t Use Dropbox For Backup
This week’s Tech Tip is a cautionary tale. Using Dropbox as your sole backup can be dangerous. I recently became aware of an incident that occurred in the summer of 2014. A user of the free version of Dropbox lost about 8000 files related to his PhD dissertation due to a bug in Dropbox’ Selective Sync feature. This web page provides the full story if you’d like to know the details. Read More from “A Cautionary Tale About Why You Shouldn’t Use Dropbox For Backup”
How To Change Your OS X User Account Picture
Below are instructions on how to change your OS X user account picture. When you took your new Mac out of the box and turned it on initially, you were lead through creating a user account and either had one of the built-in photos randomly assigned to your User Account or you were offered the choice of using the Mac’s built-in camera to take a photo of yourself. Not surprisingly, clients are often not happy with the photo linked to their account. Here are instructions on how to change the photo: Read More from “How To Change Your OS X User Account Picture”
OS X Bash Update Available
A few weeks ago Apple released an update which addresses the bash security vulnerability found in OS X during the last week of September 2014. The security vulnerability was nicknamed shellshock or the bash bug and reportedly affects all versions of OS X as well as many versions of Linux and Unix released over the past 25 years. Read More from “OS X Bash Update Available”
Entering your SMTP Password in Apple Mail
When you reset or change your email account password, you have to enter the new password in two places in your email account configurations in Mail. The first place is in the incoming mail settings. The second place is in the outgoing (SMTP) mail settings. Locating these outgoing settings is not obvious, so I’m frequently asked how to change SMTP settings. Here are instructions for changing your password in the outgoing settings if you use Apple’s Mail application on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. Read More from “Entering your SMTP Password in Apple Mail”