How To Post To Facebook & Twitter From The Notification Center In Mountain Lion

If you’re a bit of a social enthusiast, simply posting regular status updates to social networks like Facebook and Twitter can turn out to be a bigger chore than you’d expect. Firing up a web browser and waiting for the website to load, only to post a quick status update is hardly an efficient way of doing things.

Normally, we’d solve this by employing a standalone application. A number of applications are up to the task. However, with Twitter making it ever harder for developers to develop a decent dedicated client, that can be difficult as well. Instead, we could opt to use a feature that’s already available on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Notification Center.

Similar to its iOS counterpart, the Notification Center (which can be accessed using the right-most icon in your menu bar, or by using a hotkey) is designed to keep track of the multitude of information broadcasted by the assorted applications installed on your computer. Apart from the expected—news about incoming emails, calendar events, and the like—you can also use the Notification Center to interact with Facebook and Twitter. Not only to view status updates from your connections, but to interact with it as well.

Connecting to your Facebook Account

Fire up System Preferences, and head to the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane. Here, you can integrate Mac OS X with a variety of different services. At the right side of the preferences pane, click the Facebook logo and fill in your account credentials.

You’ll be required to approve a miniature terms of service before proceeding, acknowledging you recognise what connecting with Facebook exactly entails. Among other things, Facebook will integrate with your Mac OS X Contacts and Calendar, updating contact pictures and adding friends’ birthdays to your calendar, and let’s other applications ask for your permission to interact with your Facebook account.

After adding your Facebook account to Mac OS X, you’ll notice that a small, unobtrusive button has appeared at the top of the Notification Center. Click it, and it will unfold to a recognisable Facebook widget that allows you to post simple status updates from the comfort of your desktop.

Connecting to your Twitter Account

There are two simple ways to connect your Twitter account to your Mac. One is to use Safari to log in to Twitter. Mac OS X will then ask you if you’ll allow other applications to request access to your Twitter account. This will add Twitter to the Notification Center as well.

The other way is very similar to how we connect with other accounts. Head to the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane in the System Preferences application. At the right hand side of the screen, find the Twitter icon and click it.

Enter your Twitter account credentials (including the @-icon prefixing your user name) when prompted and press the sign in button to connect Mac OS X with your Twitter account. Optionally, you can use Twitter to update your Mac OS X contacts as well by pressing the adequately named “Update Contacts…” button in the next screen, but no further action is needed to add Twitter to the notification center.

As with the Facebook integration, the Notification Center now shows a small, unobtrusive button at its head. If you connect with Facebook as well, these two buttons will appear side to side. Clicking it gives you a text-field (with character count, of course) that allows you to post directly to Twitter.

How do you use the Notification Center in Mountain Lion? Let us know in the comments section below the article!

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How To Setup Messages + Facebook Chat In OS X Lion [Quicktip]

Messages is one of the features is offered in the recently announced OS X Mountain Lion, it allows you to integrate Facebook Chat so you can chat with your Facebook friends without using web browsers. But you might need to wait a while for Mountain Lion. Still, there is no reason why you cannot enjoy the fun Messages has to offer before the release.

You may wonder how to set up Facebook Chat on your Mac, which is quite a good idea so you don’t have to always log in to Facebook every time you want to chat with your friends. There is no installer available or provided by Facebook that will allow you to install only its chat on your computer.

That’s where Messages come into play. Messages Beta is a cool messaging client made for Mountain Lion, which will allow you to send messages accross many Apple products, for free. It also allows you to add Facebook Chat so you can directly chat with your Facebook friends. Messages Beta is now available for download, so why wait?

Install Messages Beta

Before you can set up Facebook Chat on your Mac, head over to Messages Beta page to download and then install. When installation is done, you will see the Messages icon on your Mac’s Dock.

Set Up Messages Beta

Now you already have Messages Beta installed on your Computer. Since this is your first time installing, you will be prompted to register with Messages Beta. Click ‘Continue’.

Now to complete the setup process, fill up your Apple ID and password, then click on the ‘Sign In’ button.

That’s it, click ‘Done’ and your Messages Beta is now ready for use.

Set Up Facebook Chat On Messages Beta

While Messages is still open, go to the main menu then ‘Preferences’.

The Preferences window will appear; click on ‘Account’ and then the plus (+) button to add new chat account.

Now there will be a form for you to fill up, use the following information;

1. Account Type: Select ‘Jabber‘
2. Account Name: Fill with username@chat.facebook.com (don’t forget to replace ‘username’ with your own Facebook username)
3. Password: Enter your Facebook password
4. Server: Use chat.facebook.com
5. Port: 5222
6. You can leave both ‘Use SSL’ and ‘Use Kerberos v5…’ unchecked.

Once completed, click ‘Done’ and you are now ready to chat with your Facebook friends. Open your Messanger Beta chat window and you will see your online friends on the list, and ready to chat with you.

Conclusion

With Messages Beta and Facebook Chat integration, you can now chat with your Facebook friends without even logging in to your Facebook account. You can also add Google Talk, Yahoo! and AIM chat, and handle everything using one simple messaging client from your Mac.

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Why Your MacBook Air Has No Optical Drive & 4 Reasons Why This Isn’t a Problem

 

The MacBook Air is one of the thinnest and lightest computers available today; thin as your finger, and so light every computer after will feel like you’re hauling a sack of potatoes. In fact, ever since Apple set the trend with its MacBook Air, the ultrabook genre has been gaining ground in the Windows scene.

But you don’t get a laptop as thin and light as the MacBook Air without making compromises. Instead of a regular hard drive disk, the MacBook Air has a (moderately more expensive) SSD drive, and the optical CD/DVD drive has been removed entirely.

Labeling the optical drive as redundant might be seen as a bold move from Apple. After all, CD’s and DVD’s has become the de-facto standard for software distribution, and although its importance is waning by the day, it’s still heavily used. Luckily, with Internet speeds and bandwidth ever increasing, and other portable media becoming more economical, it’s perfectly possible to live without a built-in optical drive these days.

1. Use An External Disc Drive

Perhaps the easiest solution would be to get an external optical drive, which you can plug into your computer’s USB port whenever you’re handed one of those archaic silver discs.



The Apple Store provides you with a shiny contraption that looks like it belongs next to your MacBook Air, but you can find much cheaper models on eBay, Amazon, or even your local hardware store that provide exactly the same functionality. Just search for ‘external DVD drive‘ or ‘USB DVD drive‘ to see your options.

2. Use a Virtual DVD Drive

If you only use optical media once in a blue moon, buying an external DVD drive might be overdoing it a bit. If you have more than one Mac lying around, and one of them still has an optical drive, you can use Apple’s very own DVD or CD sharing functionality, which lets you use another Mac’s optical drive over a local network.



To enable DVD or CD sharing, open the Sharing preferences pane in System Preferencesusing the optical drive-equipped Mac computer and tick off the checkbox next to ‘DVD or CD Sharing‘.

Making sure your two computers reside on the same local network, open the Finder application on your MacBook Air. In the left sidebar, under Devices, you’ll see an entry calledRemote Disc which you can use to access the CD or DVD that’s inserted into the other computer’s drive.

Mind you, not all media will work this way. You won’t be able to play media or copy-protected discs, but you can use this option to copy (part of) a disc’s contents to a folder on your computer.

3. Download Media From The Internet

While this option doesn’t ensure compatiblity with older media, content producers are ever more using the Internet to distribute their content. You can download videos and music from Netflix or iTunes instead of buying that same content in a store. Likewise, you can use Steam, or the producer’s own services to download games to your computer.



Even if you’ve already bought software or games on physical media, the chances are you’ll be able to use the accompanying serial code to activate the products online, and download an installation file. In fact, a software trial downloaded from the website can often be registered and activated using your physically purchased serial code.

4. Make a Virtual Copy Of The Disc

If you often have the need for a certain CD or DVD, and you’re reluctant to make any financial promises, you can always make a virtual copy of the disc using a computer that’s equipped with an optical drive.



To do this on another Mac OS X computer, insert the CD or DVD and open the Disk Utilityapplication from Applications -> Utilities. Select the optical media in the left hand sidebar and choose File -> New -> Disk Image From discname. From the Image Format dropdown menu select DVD/CD Master, select a location and press Save. Finally, copy the image file to your MacBook Air over the local network or using a portable drive, and double-click it to mount it on your computer.

Do you have a MacBook Air? What do you do to circumvent the need for an optical drive? Let us know in the comments section below the article!

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How To Set Up A Live Skype Audio Broadcast With A Chatroom [Mac]

Now that our little Technophilia Podcast has amassed over 500 weekly listeners (guys, we love you), we’ve been looking for ways to interacts with listeners in real-time while we record live. That’s no easy task. We’ve been experimenting with just a chatroom, but without a live audio broadcast too it’s not very compelling for people to participate.

So today, I’m going to share an easy way to produce a Skype audio broadcast (both yours and your co-hosts) to a Mixlr stage.

Windows users – I’ll be addressing Mac only, however a similar application for Windows is available called Jack. Use this in place of Soundflower and the process should be identical. 

Mixlr

Mixlr is an audio broadcasting service with built-in chatrooms. There’s about a 10 second lag time I noticed, but otherwise the quality is fantasic. Before moving on, head on over and create a free account, and download the free Mixlr desktop broadcasting app.

SoundFlower

Now, broadcasting alone is not a particular difficult setup; you simply hook into the sound output of your iTunes. However, the problem with doing this is that your own voice won’t be included – you can either record your voice, or system sounds, but not both. The key to this process therefore is a fantastic (and free) utility called SoundFlower, which creates a virtual audio device and performs digital magic on it.

To get started, SoundFlower is a free installation, hosted on Google Code Project. Download the latest DMG installer - you’ll need admin privileges to install, as it’s a low level sound driver. Included with your download is an application called SoundFlowerBed – this is a handy GUI for managing your interfaces. The first time you run it, you may need to right-click and select Open depending on your security settings.

LineIn

The other crucial part to this equation is another free application called LineIn. It allows you to run a pass-through mixer, sending any audio input to any output. Once you’ve download it, create a duplicate of the file called it LineInB – we’ll be using two instance of the application later on.

Audio Routing Setup

This is the most difficult part of the process, but follow the setup closely and it should work fine.

• Click the SoundFlowerBed icon in the taskbar and set SoundFlower (64ch) toBuilt-in Output. This will route system audio to SoundFlower.

• In System Preferences, set the sound output to SoundFlower (2ch). Leave your audio input to what it normally is (a USB mic, in my case).

• Launch LineIn; set the input to your normal USB or system Mic, and set the output as Soundflower (2ch). Click PassThrough to activate this.

• Launch LineInB; set the input as Soundflower (64ch) and the output asSoundflower (2ch). Again, hit PassThrough.

• Set Skype output to Soundflower (2ch) and check the input is your microphone.

That’s all set up; now your Soundflower (2ch) device is an aggregate of your microphone, and your system audio and Skype. An unfortunate side effect is that you’ll also be hearing yourself as you record; I’m afraid I can’t figure out how to kill that, so if you can tweak this process then do please post in the comments how you managed it.

Recording

Last time I showed you how to record a Skype conversation, we used a small application called Skype Call Recorder. This may still work for you, but I had issues getting it to record from SoundFlower, so instead I’ll just be routing the SoundFlower as the input in Audacity (another great free audio app), and recording that.

Alternatively, if your guests are running Skype Call Recorder (as they should be anyway, for a backup), then use their audio.

Broadcast!

Launch Mixlr, and after logging in, select Setup Broadcast.

In the drop down to select audio source, you should see a Soundflower (2ch) device listed  - select that and check out the levels. Talk, and you should see the levels move. Play music through iTunes, and you should also see them move. If so, everything is working nicely. Don’t worry about audio monitoring, we’ve got that sorted with SoundFlower already.

You’ll then be able to enter your broadcast title and category; be sure to say it’s a test if it is. Then you can hit broadcast now, and wait for your attentive and loyal fans to come join you.

Testing

If everything is working right, you should be able to hear your broadcast at mixlr.com/your-username/stage (here’s mine). It’s an incredible simple interface, so use the buttons on the left to navigate between listeners, chat, equalizer visualization, and information.

That’s it! Now, the hardest part is actually finding some fans who will join you. I can’t really help with that I’m afraid.

Do you have another service you prefer to use for live broadcasting and a chatroom? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to try it out.

 

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How To Post To Facebook & Twitter From The Notification Center In Mountain Lion

If you’re a bit of a social enthusiast, simply posting regular status updates to social networks like Facebook and Twitter can turn out to be a bigger chore than you’d expect. Firing up a web browser and waiting for the website to load, only to post a quick status update is hardly an efficient way of doing things.

Normally, we’d solve this by employing a standalone application. A number of applications are up to the task. However, with Twitter making it ever harder for developers to develop a decent dedicated client, that can be difficult as well. Instead, we could opt to use a feature that’s already available on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Notification Center.

Similar to its iOS counterpart, the Notification Center (which can be accessed using the right-most icon in your menu bar, or by using a hotkey) is designed to keep track of the multitude of information broadcasted by the assorted applications installed on your computer. Apart from the expected—news about incoming emails, calendar events, and the like—you can also use the Notification Center to interact with Facebook and Twitter. Not only to view status updates from your connections, but to interact with it as well.

Connecting to your Facebook Account

Fire up System Preferences, and head to the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane. Here, you can integrate Mac OS X with a variety of different services. At the right side of the preferences pane, click the Facebook logo and fill in your account credentials.

You’ll be required to approve a miniature terms of service before proceeding, acknowledging you recognise what connecting with Facebook exactly entails. Among other things, Facebook will integrate with your Mac OS X Contacts and Calendar, updating contact pictures and adding friends’ birthdays to your calendar, and let’s other applications ask for your permission to interact with your Facebook account.

After adding your Facebook account to Mac OS X, you’ll notice that a small, unobtrusive button has appeared at the top of the Notification Center. Click it, and it will unfold to a recognisable Facebook widget that allows you to post simple status updates from the comfort of your desktop.

Connecting to your Twitter Account

There are two simple ways to connect your Twitter account to your Mac. One is to use Safari to log in to Twitter. Mac OS X will then ask you if you’ll allow other applications to request access to your Twitter account. This will add Twitter to the Notification Center as well.

The other way is very similar to how we connect with other accounts. Head to the Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane in the System Preferences application. At the right hand side of the screen, find the Twitter icon and click it.

Enter your Twitter account credentials (including the @-icon prefixing your user name) when prompted and press the sign in button to connect Mac OS X with your Twitter account. Optionally, you can use Twitter to update your Mac OS X contacts as well by pressing the adequately named “Update Contacts…” button in the next screen, but no further action is needed to add Twitter to the notification center.

As with the Facebook integration, the Notification Center now shows a small, unobtrusive button at its head. If you connect with Facebook as well, these two buttons will appear side to side. Clicking it gives you a text-field (with character count, of course) that allows you to post directly to Twitter.

How do you use the Notification Center in Mountain Lion? Let us know in the comments section below the article!

 

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How To Setup Messages + Facebook Chat In OS X Lion [Quicktip]

Messages is one of the features is offered in the recently announced OS X Mountain Lion, it allows you to integrate Facebook Chat so you can chat with your Facebook friends without using web browsers. But you might need to wait a while for Mountain Lion. Still, there is no reason why you cannot enjoy the fun Messages has to offer before the release.

You may wonder how to set up Facebook Chat on your Mac, which is quite a good idea so you don’t have to always log in to Facebook every time you want to chat with your friends. There is no installer available or provided by Facebook that will allow you to install only its chat on your computer.

That’s where Messages come into play. Messages Beta is a cool messaging client made for Mountain Lion, which will allow you to send messages accross many Apple products, for free. It also allows you to add Facebook Chat so you can directly chat with your Facebook friends. Messages Beta is now available for download, so why wait?

Install Messages Beta

Before you can set up Facebook Chat on your Mac, head over to Messages Beta page to download and then install. When installation is done, you will see the Messages icon on your Mac’s Dock.

Set Up Messages Beta

Now you already have Messages Beta installed on your Computer. Since this is your first time installing, you will be prompted to register with Messages Beta. Click ‘Continue’.

Now to complete the setup process, fill up your Apple ID and password, then click on the ‘Sign In’ button.

That’s it, click ‘Done’ and your Messages Beta is now ready for use.

Set Up Facebook Chat On Messages Beta

While Messages is still open, go to the main menu then ‘Preferences’.

The Preferences window will appear; click on ‘Account’ and then the plus (+) button to add new chat account.

Now there will be a form for you to fill up, use the following information;

1. 
   
   Account Type: Select ‘Jabber‘


2. 
   
   Account Name: Fill with username@chat.facebook.com (don’t forget to replace ‘username’ with your own Facebook username)


3. 
   
   Password: Enter your Facebook password


4. 
   
   Server: Use chat.facebook.com


5. 
   
   Port: 5222


6. 
   
   You can leave both ‘Use SSL’ and ‘Use Kerberos v5…’ unchecked.

Once completed, click ‘Done’ and you are now ready to chat with your Facebook friends. Open your Messanger Beta chat window and you will see your online friends on the list, and ready to chat with you.

Conclusion

With Messages Beta and Facebook Chat integration, you can now chat with your Facebook friends without even logging in to your Facebook account. You can also add Google Talk, Yahoo! and AIM chat, and handle everything using one simple messaging client from your Mac.

Continue Reading »

6 Simple & Effective Ways To Speed Up Your Mac

We are all impressed with the smooth running of the Apple Mac OS X as we compare with the contemporary Windows OS like Vista or Windows 7. However, there are times when your Mac might be slowing down as you put in more stuffs in your hard drive and work the system hard. That is perhaps a good time to evaluate where the bottleneck could be and clear it.

In this post I’ll be sharing tips I found useful in speeding up the Mac. While most of the tips do not cost you extra bucks, they also help you to clean up your Mac to not only make it run fast like cheetah, but also keep it as powerful as lion. So spend some time to get really well with these tips, then you’ll be smiling happily as you run your Mac smoothly!

If you are not only looking to optimize your Mac but also seeking to optimize your workflow in Mac, below we’ve got posts with 200 useful applications introduced to you

1. Clearing Your Desktop

Your desktop plays a part in how long it takes for you to boot the system because it’s the first screen that it has to load up. As much as possible, try to keep it simple by minimizing the number of icons from the dock and clearing up the amount of files you can see. You can eitherdelete them or put them into folders so that the operating system doesn’t have to waste additional resources to load them upon starting your computer.

Doing this will take the toil away from your memory, especially if you’re using an older Mac system. This will not only ensure that your boot time will be shortened, but also improve the performance of your Mac in general.

2. Managing Startup Items

When you install some applications, they automatically configured your startup setting such that these applications would be loaded up when you boot up your Mac. Depending on your usage, such a setting can either make it convenient for you (if the first thing you want to do when you boot up is to use that application), or slow down the booting time with no additional convenience for yourself.

Leaving such applications can also draw some valuable resources away from your Mac such that it slows down the system. As much as possible, try to remove those which you rarely use. For Mac OS X Lion’s user, all you need to do is go to System Preferences > System > Users & Groups > Login Items, and uncheck the application(s) you want off from the startup.

3. Cleaning Up The Hard Drive

Mac operating system actually utilizes whatever free space you have on your hard drive as ‘virtual memory’, which plays a significant role in the performance. In other words, the more data you have in your hard drive, the lesser the amount of memory you would have for the smooth running of your applications. The obvious solution to a slow-running Mac operating system is to free up hard drive space to make room for the ‘virtual memory’.

I’m sure you know where to begin when you’re cleaning up your hard drive, such as emptying your Trash, removing rarely used applications, etc. Alternatively, you can also remove languages that you don’t use through programs like Monolingual. This would save at least several hundred megabytes of disk space. It may not be much, but why waste resources?

4. Monitor Your Activity Monitor

Sometimes you wouldn’t know what’s taxing your memory and slowing down the system in the process. This is where the Apple’s Activity Monitor comes in handy. You get to see the CPU usage, Random Access Memory (RAM) and virtual memory usage from the monitor, which the info will help greatly in optimizing your Mac!

When you notice that there’s a spike when you use certain applications, you can infer that these are the ones which are draining away your memory and making your system sluggish. That way, you can either choose to minimize your usage on these applications or make room in your memory like closing down other applications when you’re going to use them.

On top of that, the monitor lists down in details all the applications which are currently in use. You can see how much each application is eating up your CPU, real & virtual memory. You may choose to quit those that are consuming an awful lot of your system’s resources to speed things up.

If you need more explanations on the Activity Monitor, do check out this comprehensive guide.

5. Embrace Cleaning Utility Tools

Perhaps the most straightforward way to optimize your system’s performance is to runmultifunction utility tool like OnyX. What it basically does is that it conducts system maintenance and cleaning functions to smoothen the running of your system. Temporary files stored as caches are cleared so that they don’t ‘jam’ up the performance of your system.

If your goal is to sustain a top-notch performing Mac, then such utility tools can be programmed torun as scheduled routines. This way, unnecessary files and browser history or any other cache files are regularly removed from your system so that it will run at its best most of the time. In fact, it is highly recommended that all Mac users do such consistent maintenance.

If OnyX doesn’t seem to cater to your maintenance needs, you can also try out others likeCleanMyMac and MacKeeper.

6. Getting Hardware Upgrade

Worse comes to worse, if the above tips didn’t significantly improve your Mac’s performance to your liking, you can always consider purchasing hardware that would more or less guarantee a speed boost. This would, however, require you to throw money to resolve the issue, as compared to the previous tips which are all free.

Upgrading your RAM is probably the simplest way to ensure a faster computer. As compared toupgrading your processor, it is also much cheaper. If you only have one piece of RAM attached in your Mac, consider getting another one.

At the very least, your Mac should have a 2 GB RAM minimum, and 4 GB RAM is recommended for web designer who run premium graphic editor like Adobe Photoshop which eats up a lot of memory and hard drive space. If you are using 2GB/4GB ram and still finds it running slow,consider getting an additional 2 GB RAM that would logically speed up the performance by 50%. Of course, this depends on how much memory your Mac can support, so ask the professionals before you proceed.

Another alternative is to get a faster hard drive or use a Solid State Drive (SSD), but they don’t come cheap. One way is to get the SSD to run only your operating system and other applications, while leaving the other data on your old hard disk. Here is a good site on how to set up a SSD drive.

That’s all from us! What’s your personal secret to speeding up your Mac?

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