Are you a small business owner with a website? Does your website link to other websites? If so, you might want to use a link checker to make sure all the links to other sites are working.
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Do you frequently run out of USB ports on your Mac? If so, then you might want to consider purchasing a USB hub. A USB hub is a splitter. The hub plugs into 1 of the USB ports on your Mac and then gives you a handful of additional USB ports. Hubs typically come with 4, 7 or sometimes 10 USB ports. Read More from “USB Hub Considerations and Recommendations”
Do you need an affordable, professional photo of yourself for your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook profile or your own web site? Do you hate having your picture taken? If so, you should consider working with Tara Gimmer. Tara recently created an updated headshot for me and I’m pleased with the results, but judge for yourself. Read More from “Tara Gimmer Offers Professional Affordable Headshots”
Do you know that your Mac automatically builds a list of every wireless network to which it has been connected? When your Mac wakes up, it scans the airwaves to see which networks are available and then runs through this list of known networks trying to find a match. For this reason, you should make sure that networks that you frequently use, such as your home and work networks are at the top of this list. By putting frequently used networks at the top, your Mac will find them and connect to them a bit more quickly. Read More from “Put Your Commonly Used Wireless Networks At The Top Of The List”
If you’re going to be buying a Mac soon, please make sure you equip it with enough memory (RAM) when you buy it. Increasingly, Apple is soldering memory into the computer. The advantage of doing this is that computer cases can be thinner and one can get a bit better performance. The disadvantage is that it will no longer be possible to add more memory at a later date, which used to be a very common upgrade. Consequently, I increasingly recommend buying a custom-configured Mac that has enough storage space and memory instead of a pre-configured, off-the-shelf Mac. Read More from “Equip Your Next Mac With Enough Memory”
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”
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”
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”
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 (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”
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.
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”
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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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.
Read More from “What Is Stored In The “Other” Category On My iPhone And How Can I Get Rid Of It?”
Read More from “Remove Virus-Infected File Using Sophos Quarantine Manager”
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.
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”
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.
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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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”