Category: I-phone

Dear Aunt TUAW,

There are works [sic] that are highlighted and linked to pop-ups when I go to webpages and pass my mouse pointer over them and I would like that to stop.

Your loving nephew,

Sabon

Dear Sabon,

Auntie isn’t entirely sure whether you’re talking about tool tips or in-line advertising. So she’s going to answer both of these possible questions.

Tool tips are those yellow pop-ups that appear when you hover your mouse on top of URL. They look something like this.

It’s a feature that helps expose the link you’re looking at. It gives you more information about where you’ll go if you click that URL. To get rid of these pop-ups open a Terminal window and type in the following. (If you don’t know what Terminal is, or how to use the command line, this write-up probably isn’t for you.)

defaults remove com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips

Quit and restart Safari and your tool tips will be disabled. To restore the feature, use this command, entering it into a Terminal window.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 1

And, again, quit and restart Safari for your changes to take effect.

Here’s the other question Auntie thought you might be asking. If you’ve ever seen those underlined (typically green) links, you know how utterly annoying they can be. Here’s what happens when your mouse goes near that link.

Irritating, isn’t it? So what can you do? Auntie turned to Uncle TJ for the answer. And she warns you that it too involves a bit of command-line ability — in fact slightly more than “a bit”. You will need your administrator credentials here.

Head on over to someonewhocares.org and copy their hosts file to your Mac as hosts.withlove. This file contains a gadzillion host rules that block out a lot of really irritating Internet hosts, protecting you from some (but not all) spyware, pop-ups, and so forth. Or, as they put it “Using a Hosts File to make the Internet not suck (as much)”.

In Terminal, make sure the saved file is created without an txt extension, i.e. hosts.withlove, not hosts.withlove.txt. Move the file into the /etc folder, e.g.

sudo mv ~/Desktop/hosts.withlove /etc/hosts.withlove

In /etc, copy hosts to hosts.original. This creates a backup of your original hosts file that you can revert to if needed.

sudo cp hosts hosts.original

Use your favorite text editor to match up the start of the withlove version to match the original version, just so you’re working more or less from the same starting point. Then move it into place.

sudo cp hosts.withlove hosts

To test this, you don’t have to restart Safari but you should re-load whatever page you had seen the in-line advertising. For example, the Business Insider page that Auntie captured above now looks like this after enabling the withlove version of the hosts file.

Yay!

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me disable in-line tool tips and advertising originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the “day at a glance” type, but many of my fellow wage slaves liked these large desk blotter calendars that displayed a full month. Now there’s a Mac app from WireLoad, Blotter (US$9.99) that turns your iCal events and tasks into the electronic equivalent of the desk blotter calendar.

Blotter

After you purchase Blotter from the Mac App Store, an app icon appears in your Dock. I have enough icons in my Dock, so I usually drag ’em off, and that was the case with Blotter. Not to worry, though — once you’ve launched Blotter, a tiny menu bar icon appears for setting preferences and creating new events and tasks. Blotter can be set to auto-launch at login, and that’s the way it should be.

The main feature of Blotter is the beautiful translucent calendar that appears on your Mac desktop. By default, it shows the current week, but can be set in preferences to show the seven days or only weekday dates. The current date is listed as a large number, with the month, year, and day of the week listed below. There’s also a list of To Do items, as well as a “Right Now” mini-view showing the next four or five hours at a glance. I have my Blotter calendar set to fade out after 60 seconds — a quick click on the menu bar icon brings it back to full intensity.

Blotter isn’t meant to replace iCal. Instead, it is meant to work with iCal so that you don’t need to actually open your calendar to look at it. It’s always there on the desktop for you to see if you need it, much in the manner those desk blotter calendars were on our real desktops in the past, soaking up coffee spills and giving us a look at what was coming up in the next few days or weeks. If you use Google calendars, no problem — as long as you’re subscribing to those calendars in iCal, they’ll show up on Blotter.

The calendar can be set to take up a lot of screen real estate or a smaller area, and in the smaller views it is movable to various locations on your desktop. There’s a “narrow” mode that displays just the date, To Do list, and the Right Now mini-view, but it seems to defeat the purpose of Blotter for me.

On my 27″ iMac I tend to always have a lot of windows open, so they obscure the view of Blotter and also defeat the purpose of the app a bit. However, it’s possible to hide windows temporarily by pressing Command-H repeatedly while in the Finder, and that makes it very easy to hide windows very quickly, glance at the Blotter calendar, and then return to work without taking my hands off of the keyboard.

Within the Blotter preferences, there is a setting for displaying all iCal calendars or just a selected few. One of the few negatives I see with this app is that for some reason, the color of one of my calendars — which is orange in iCal — came over as a sickly olive color in Blotter. The two main calendars (home and work) showed up in their proper colors.

What about adding new events and tasks to the calendar with Blotter? The app would be worthless without this capability, and Blotter makes it as easy as either clicking on the menu bar icon and selecting New Event or New Task, or by setting up a keyboard shortcut. In either case, a small dialog appears for entering in the scheduling information on the fly.

Conclusion

Blotter is a very attractive Mac utility for displaying iCal events and tasks on otherwise unused space on your Mac desktop. I fear, though, that Blotter might be made obsolete by Lion. While testing the next version of Mac OS X, I’ve found it useful to place iCal in full-screen mode. From any screen, it’s available with a gesture and a click; much faster and easier than clicking on my desktop and hitting Command-H until I can see Blotter. Still, the translucent Blotter calendar is much sexier than even the Lion calendar in full-screen. Apple should take some design cues from the Blotter developers for the future.

Don’t just take my opinion about Blotter. I’ve included a video review of the app by friend and frequent TUAW TV Live guest Doc Rock, who was the person who turned me onto this amazing utility.

Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to Digitimes, Amazon is shopping around for manufacturers to supply touchscreen panels for its rumored upcoming tablet. The retail giant has supposedly approached TPK Holdings, Wintek, HannStarr Display and J Touch. Two of the four manufacturers, TPK Holdings and Wintek, currently supply touchscreens for Apple and are hesitant to make a commitment to Amazon.

Amazon is looking to ship 4 million tablet units by the end of the year and neither manufacturer has the resources to supply Apple and Amazon at the same time. The online retailer may be forced to turn to smaller manufacturers for its touchscreen panel supply. This move could limit the supply of tablets Amazon has on hand for its launch, which is not a good starting position for a new entrant in the highly competitive tablet market.

[Via BGR]

Apple’s supply demands could affect Amazon tablet production originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

There are works [sic] that are highlighted and linked to pop-ups when I go to webpages and pass my mouse pointer over them and I would like that to stop.

Your loving nephew,

Sabon

Dear Sabon,

Auntie isn’t entirely sure whether you’re talking about tool tips or in-line advertising. So she’s going to answer both of these possible questions.

Tool tips are those yellow pop-ups that appear when you hover your mouse on top of URL. They look something like this.

It’s a feature that helps expose the link you’re looking at. It gives you more information about where you’ll go if you click that URL. To get rid of these pop-ups open a Terminal window and type in the following. (If you don’t know what Terminal is, or how to use the command line, this write-up probably isn’t for you.)

defaults remove com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips

Quit and restart Safari and your tool tips will be disabled. To restore the feature, use this command, entering it into a Terminal window.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 1

And, again, quit and restart Safari for your changes to take effect.

Here’s the other question Auntie thought you might be asking. If you’ve ever seen those underlined (typically green) links, you know how utterly annoying they can be. Here’s what happens when your mouse goes near that link.

Irritating, isn’t it? So what can you do? Auntie turned to Uncle TJ for the answer. And she warns you that it too involves a bit of command-line ability — in fact slightly more than “a bit”. You will need your administrator credentials here.

Head on over to someonewhocares.org and copy their hosts file to your Mac as hosts.withlove. This file contains a gadzillion host rules that block out a lot of really irritating Internet hosts, protecting you from some (but not all) spyware, pop-ups, and so forth. Or, as they put it “Using a Hosts File to make the Internet not suck (as much)”.

In Terminal, make sure the saved file is created without an txt extension, i.e. hosts.withlove, not hosts.withlove.txt. Move the file into the /etc folder, e.g.

sudo mv ~/Desktop/hosts.withlove /etc/hosts.withlove

In /etc, copy hosts to hosts.original. This creates a backup of your original hosts file that you can revert to if needed.

sudo cp hosts hosts.original

Use your favorite text editor to match up the start of the withlove version to match the original version, just so you’re working more or less from the same starting point. Then move it into place.

sudo cp hosts.withlove hosts

To test this, you don’t have to restart Safari but you should re-load whatever page you had seen the in-line advertising. For example, the Business Insider page that Auntie captured above now looks like this after enabling the withlove version of the hosts file.

Yay!

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me disable in-line tool tips and advertising originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

There are works [sic] that are highlighted and linked to pop-ups when I go to webpages and pass my mouse pointer over them and I would like that to stop.

Your loving nephew,

Sabon

Dear Sabon,

Auntie isn’t entirely sure whether you’re talking about tool tips or in-line advertising. So she’s going to answer both of these possible questions.

Tool tips are those yellow pop-ups that appear when you hover your mouse on top of URL. They look something like this.

It’s a feature that helps expose the link you’re looking at. It gives you more information about where you’ll go if you click that URL. To get rid of these pop-ups open a Terminal window and type in the following. (If you don’t know what Terminal is, or how to use the command line, this write-up probably isn’t for you.)

defaults remove com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips

Quit and restart Safari and your tool tips will be disabled. To restore the feature, use this command, entering it into a Terminal window.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 1

And, again, quit and restart Safari for your changes to take effect.

Here’s the other question Auntie thought you might be asking. If you’ve ever seen those underlined (typically green) links, you know how utterly annoying they can be. Here’s what happens when your mouse goes near that link.

Irritating, isn’t it? So what can you do? Auntie turned to Uncle TJ for the answer. And she warns you that it too involves a bit of command-line ability — in fact slightly more than “a bit”. You will need your administrator credentials here.

Head on over to someonewhocares.org and copy their hosts file to your Mac as hosts.withlove. This file contains a gadzillion host rules that block out a lot of really irritating Internet hosts, protecting you from some (but not all) spyware, pop-ups, and so forth. Or, as they put it “Using a Hosts File to make the Internet not suck (as much)”.

In Terminal, make sure the saved file is created without an txt extension, i.e. hosts.withlove, not hosts.withlove.txt. Move the file into the /etc folder, e.g.

sudo mv ~/Desktop/hosts.withlove /etc/hosts.withlove

In /etc, copy hosts to hosts.original. This creates a backup of your original hosts file that you can revert to if needed.

sudo cp hosts hosts.original

Use your favorite text editor to match up the start of the withlove version to match the original version, just so you’re working more or less from the same starting point. Then move it into place.

sudo cp hosts.withlove hosts

To test this, you don’t have to restart Safari but you should re-load whatever page you had seen the in-line advertising. For example, the Business Insider page that Auntie captured above now looks like this after enabling the withlove version of the hosts file.

Yay!

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me disable in-line tool tips and advertising originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dear Aunt TUAW,

There are works [sic] that are highlighted and linked to pop-ups when I go to webpages and pass my mouse pointer over them and I would like that to stop.

Your loving nephew,

Sabon

Dear Sabon,

Auntie isn’t entirely sure whether you’re talking about tool tips or in-line advertising. So she’s going to answer both of these possible questions.

Tool tips are those yellow pop-ups that appear when you hover your mouse on top of URL. They look something like this.

It’s a feature that helps expose the link you’re looking at. It gives you more information about where you’ll go if you click that URL. To get rid of these pop-ups open a Terminal window and type in the following. (If you don’t know what Terminal is, or how to use the command line, this write-up probably isn’t for you.)

defaults remove com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips

Quit and restart Safari and your tool tips will be disabled. To restore the feature, use this command, entering it into a Terminal window.

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitShowsURLsInToolTips 1

And, again, quit and restart Safari for your changes to take effect.

Here’s the other question Auntie thought you might be asking. If you’ve ever seen those underlined (typically green) links, you know how utterly annoying they can be. Here’s what happens when your mouse goes near that link.

Irritating, isn’t it? So what can you do? Auntie turned to Uncle TJ for the answer. And she warns you that it too involves a bit of command-line ability — in fact slightly more than “a bit”. You will need your administrator credentials here.

Head on over to someonewhocares.org and copy their hosts file to your Mac as hosts.withlove. This file contains a gadzillion host rules that block out a lot of really irritating Internet hosts, protecting you from some (but not all) spyware, pop-ups, and so forth. Or, as they put it “Using a Hosts File to make the Internet not suck (as much)”.

In Terminal, make sure the saved file is created without an txt extension, i.e. hosts.withlove, not hosts.withlove.txt. Move the file into the /etc folder, e.g.

sudo mv ~/Desktop/hosts.withlove /etc/hosts.withlove

In /etc, copy hosts to hosts.original. This creates a backup of your original hosts file that you can revert to if needed.

sudo cp hosts hosts.original

Use your favorite text editor to match up the start of the withlove version to match the original version, just so you’re working more or less from the same starting point. Then move it into place.

sudo cp hosts.withlove hosts

To test this, you don’t have to restart Safari but you should re-load whatever page you had seen the in-line advertising. For example, the Business Insider page that Auntie captured above now looks like this after enabling the withlove version of the hosts file.

Yay!

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me disable in-line tool tips and advertising originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

According to Digitimes, Amazon is shopping around for manufacturers to supply touchscreen panels for its rumored upcoming tablet. The retail giant has supposedly approached TPK Holdings, Wintek, HannStarr Display and J Touch. Two of the four manufacturers, TPK Holdings and Wintek, currently supply touchscreens for Apple and are hesitant to make a commitment to Amazon.

Amazon is looking to ship 4 million tablet units by the end of the year and neither manufacturer has the resources to supply Apple and Amazon at the same time. The online retailer may be forced to turn to smaller manufacturers for its touchscreen panel supply. This move could limit the supply of tablets Amazon has on hand for its launch, which is not a good starting position for a new entrant in the highly competitive tablet market.

[Via BGR]

Apple’s supply demands could affect Amazon tablet production originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google enabled invitations and opened the floodgates to its new Google+ service last night before shutting it down due to “insane demand”. Many iOS users were included in this new group of invitees and they may be wondering how to get Google+ on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Unfortunately, a native app for Google+ is not yet available. It’s tied up in the App Store approval process with no discernible ETA. The next best alternative is Safari and the mobile web app version of the social network. Before you cringe, the experience is not that bad. You have access to your circle of friends, stream, notifications, photos and profile.

What are you missing by using a web app? The two biggest items I noticed are push notifications and native camera support. Hopefully, the Google+ app will hit the App Store soon. We’ll be watching and will let you know when it officially arrives.

Connecting to Google+ on your iOS device originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to Digitimes, Amazon is shopping around for manufacturers to supply touchscreen panels for its rumored upcoming tablet. The retail giant has supposedly approached TPK Holdings, Wintek, HannStarr Display and J Touch. Two of the four manufacturers, TPK Holdings and Wintek, currently supply touchscreens for Apple and are hesitant to make a commitment to Amazon.

Amazon is looking to ship 4 million tablet units by the end of the year and neither manufacturer has the resources to supply Apple and Amazon at the same time. The online retailer may be forced to turn to smaller manufacturers for its touchscreen panel supply. This move could limit the supply of tablets Amazon has on hand for its launch, which is not a good starting position for a new entrant in the highly competitive tablet market.

[Via BGR]

Apple’s supply demands could affect Amazon tablet production originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

According to Digitimes, Amazon is shopping around for manufacturers to supply touchscreen panels for its rumored upcoming tablet. The retail giant has supposedly approached TPK Holdings, Wintek, HannStarr Display and J Touch. Two of the four manufacturers, TPK Holdings and Wintek, currently supply touchscreens for Apple and are hesitant to make a commitment to Amazon.

Amazon is looking to ship 4 million tablet units by the end of the year and neither manufacturer has the resources to supply Apple and Amazon at the same time. The online retailer may be forced to turn to smaller manufacturers for its touchscreen panel supply. This move could limit the supply of tablets Amazon has on hand for its launch, which is not a good starting position for a new entrant in the highly competitive tablet market.

[Via BGR]

Apple’s supply demands could affect Amazon tablet production originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Google enabled invitations and opened the floodgates to its new Google+ service last night before shutting it down due to “insane demand”. Many iOS users were included in this new group of invitees and they may be wondering how to get Google+ on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Unfortunately, a native app for Google+ is not yet available. It’s tied up in the App Store approval process with no discernible ETA. The next best alternative is Safari and the mobile web app version of the social network. Before you cringe, the experience is not that bad. You have access to your circle of friends, stream, notifications, photos and profile.

What are you missing by using a web app? The two biggest items I noticed are push notifications and native camera support. Hopefully, the Google+ app will hit the App Store soon. We’ll be watching and will let you know when it officially arrives.

Connecting to Google+ on your iOS device originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Google enabled invitations and opened the floodgates to its new Google+ service last night before shutting it down due to “insane demand”. Many iOS users were included in this new group of invitees and they may be wondering how to get Google+ on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Unfortunately, a native app for Google+ is not yet available. It’s tied up in the App Store approval process with no discernible ETA. The next best alternative is Safari and the mobile web app version of the social network. Before you cringe, the experience is not that bad. You have access to your circle of friends, stream, notifications, photos and profile.

What are you missing by using a web app? The two biggest items I noticed are push notifications and native camera support. Hopefully, the Google+ app will hit the App Store soon. We’ll be watching and will let you know when it officially arrives.

Connecting to Google+ on your iOS device originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple is the leader of the tablet market for many reasons. The hardware is stellar, the OS is smooth and the App Store is packed full of apps. So full, in fact, that the overall count of apps for the iPad has unofficially crossed the 100,000 app milestone. As Macstories points out, a quick look at the App Store on an iPad lists over 100,161 apps — and that number is climbing.

This number dwarfs the offerings found on other tablets like the BlackBerry PlayBook and Android tablets like the Xoom. For many customers, the presence of a robust App Store influences their purchasing decision. I’ve experienced it myself when I cracked open a shiny new Xoom tablet earlier this year. It’s pleasing when you get a new device and can spend an hour trying out new apps, but disappointing when you browse an app store and only find several hundred apps (most of which are junk).

Apple has a definitive advantage in this area thanks to a legion of hard-working developers who continue to push out quality apps. Keep up the good work!

App Store unofficially hits 100,000 iPad apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Google enabled invitations and opened the floodgates to its new Google+ service last night before shutting it down due to “insane demand”. Many iOS users were included in this new group of invitees and they may be wondering how to get Google+ on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Unfortunately, a native app for Google+ is not yet available. It’s tied up in the App Store approval process with no discernible ETA. The next best alternative is Safari and the mobile web app version of the social network. Before you cringe, the experience is not that bad. You have access to your circle of friends, stream, notifications, photos and profile.

What are you missing by using a web app? The two biggest items I noticed are push notifications and native camera support. Hopefully, the Google+ app will hit the App Store soon. We’ll be watching and will let you know when it officially arrives.

Connecting to Google+ on your iOS device originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple is the leader of the tablet market for many reasons. The hardware is stellar, the OS is smooth and the App Store is packed full of apps. So full, in fact, that the overall count of apps for the iPad has unofficially crossed the 100,000 app milestone. As Macstories points out, a quick look at the App Store on an iPad lists over 100,161 apps — and that number is climbing.

This number dwarfs the offerings found on other tablets like the BlackBerry PlayBook and Android tablets like the Xoom. For many customers, the presence of a robust App Store influences their purchasing decision. I’ve experienced it myself when I cracked open a shiny new Xoom tablet earlier this year. It’s pleasing when you get a new device and can spend an hour trying out new apps, but disappointing when you browse an app store and only find several hundred apps (most of which are junk).

Apple has a definitive advantage in this area thanks to a legion of hard-working developers who continue to push out quality apps. Keep up the good work!

App Store unofficially hits 100,000 iPad apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments