Typically within Finder, you are either locating documents, applications, or moving documents around. As you might be aware, you can always toggle between your productivity Finder views by:

• Command-1 (icon view)
• Command-2 (list view)
• Command-3 (column view)
• Command-4 (cover flow)

Each having their own purpose. I am typically working with Apple-3 (Column view) and using my arrow keys to cruise along, navigating to and from my documents. This is pretty basic stuff. However, there are a handful of really useful Finder tools that might assist in your day-to-day productivity.

1. Showing the Path bar. Enable this by clicking on View - Show Path Bar. Notice in the bottom area of the finder window you get the full path to where you are. This is really helpful if you are in a List or icon view, and need to move around. Double-clicking on any of the items in the bottom take you to that location.

2. Adding items your toolbar. Granted, the Mac has the dock, as well as the left-hand side of your Finder to add your favorite applications, or documents that you consistently need to go to, however did you also know that you can drap a folder, application, or document to the top of the toolbar, wait a second until the plus symbol shows up, and release. You can use the Command-drag to remove it from the toolbar.

3. Proxy Icons. See that tiny icon at the top of every Finder window?. Control-click on it to show a pop-up menu displaying its folder hierarchy. Select a folder to get there. If you hold down the command key while selecting a folder, it will open up in a new Finder window.

4. Dragging Files. Here is a nifty little way to move files around. If you drag a file over a folder, and pause a second, that folder will open p and show its contents. Drag the file over another folder in that window, and that folder will also open. Using this “spring-loaded” feature allows you to move files deep into your folder hierarchy without having to open new windows. Pressing the spacebar while holding a file over a folder will immediately open the window, and pressing the escape key will cancel the move.

For Mac users, the keycombination is Command/Apple + Tab. While this will switch between windows for you and is quite handy, so are the F9-F12 keys on your Mac. Hitting those will arrange the windows and give you a preview of what’s going on in each of them. Experiment to see which key does what.

Switching between windows this way can really increase your productivity. It’s also useful if a dialog box opened behind a window and you can’t find it because it has no spot on the taskbar.

If you don’t have the  old key or the clips are broken, you can get a baggie of laptop keys from eBay for less than $10 which will work on many laptops - perhaps even yours. If you don’t want to mess around with that, buy a complete replacement for about $20-30. It’s usually as simple as removing 3 screws and replacing the keyboard. Stop putting up with the hassle of reaching for the other shift key or hitting the little nub under your missing spacebar. Just replace it!

When you send a large attachment, you’re not only sending redundant data over the internet as described above, you’re unnecessarily clogging the recipients’ email boxes (and your own)! Not only that, can you imagine being forced to download the massive video over dial-up or some other slow internet uplink? The image on the right is a perfect example; while Dax will get the video in minutes or even seconds, mom and grandma might have to wait hours for the message to arrive in their inbox. Not only that, if they don’t have a webmail service to delete the message before their mail client starts downloading it, they’ll have to wait for your message to completely download before they can get ANY other email! Poor grandma - she’ll never use email again. And Dax probably doesn’t even like puppies.

Don’t put your grandmother through this - find the video online (e.g. YouTube, search on Google) and send her the link rather than the video itself. FYI, the same idea applies to audio files and large photos.

Email (message) (to contact) - Typing this allows you to fire off an email message to your recipient. Simply typing in ‘email’ brings up options that allow you to perform all sorts of tasks related to ‘email’.

Weather Zip code or Weather City brings up the current temperature for that city.

Wikipedia - Even typing in wi immediately brings up a suggestion list for Wikipedia (search), simply typing ‘w’ brings up all related commands for ‘w’ such as weather, Wikipedia, etc. Typing in a keyword, Wikipedia wireless brings up all related content with photos and text for wireless. Pretty powerful, and all within your current browsing window.

If you are researching material on a page, you can highlight any text, use the keyboard shortcut to open ubiquity, hit delete to remove previous commands, and ubiquity does the rest, suggesting items related to your highlighted text.

Simply tinkering with throwing commands in the Ubiquity window is pretty cool as well. Typing in ‘a’ brings up all of the commands under the ‘a’ listing such as Amazon search, Ask search, Add to calendar, Answers search, etc. Below is a full listing to help get you started. As you can see Ubiquity is a really powerful add-on and I look forward to its future development.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/

A
ask-search (search term)
amazon-search (search term)
answers-search (search term)
add-to-calendar (event)
tab (tab name)

B
back 1
bold
bookmark
bugzilla (search term)
tab (tab name)

C
convert (text) (to conversion-options)
close-tab (tab name)
calculate (expression)
count-tabs (filter)
close-window

D
digg this page
delete
define (word)
desaturate-image
detect-email-provider

E
email (message) (to contact)
edit-page
ebay-search (search term)
exit-firefox
edge-detect-image

F
flickr (search term)
forward 1
flip-page
fullscreen
define (word)

G
google (search term)
gcalculate (expression)
get-email-address (name)

H
home
help (command name)
highlight

I
imdb (search term)
italic
image-search (search term)
invert-image
Performs a imdb search

J
twitter (status) as j
translate (text to translate) to japanese (from language)
translate (text to translate) (to language) from japanese
wikipedia (search) in japanese
twitter j (as twitter username)

K
back 1
flickr (search term)
bookmark
sparkline (data)
wikipedia (search) (in language)

L
last-email-from gmail
link-to-wikipedia (text)
bold
yelp (restaurant) (near text)
help (command name)

M
map (address)
map-these (selection)
msn-search (search term)
home
zoom (percentage)

N
undo
print
define (word)
tinyurl (url to shorten)
convert (text) (to conversion-options)

O
home
zoom (percentage)
bold
undo
redo

P
print
map (address)
yelp (restaurant) (near text)
help (command name)
edit-page

R
redo
refresh
report-bug
rotate-image
restart-firefox
The redo command

S
save
search (query) (with search engine)
sparkline (data)
skin-list
syntax-highlight (code)

T
tab (tab name)
tag (text)
twitter (status) (as twitter username)
tinyurl (url to shorten)
translate (text to translate) (to language) (from language)

U
undo
undelete
underline
tinyurl (url to shorten)
youtube (search term)

V
view-source
save
convert (text) (to conversion-options)
invert-image
remove-annotations

W
weather Milwaukee, United States (in temperature units)
wikipedia (search) (in language)
word-count (text)
forward 1
twitter (status) (as twitter username)

X
exit-firefox
restart-firefox
syntax-highlight (code)

Y
yelp (restaurant) (near text)
youtube (search term)
yahoo-search (search term)
tinyurl (url to shorten)
ebay-search (search term)

Z
zoom (percentage)
bugzilla (search term)
amazon-search (search term)

Here’s what you should do instead and why:
Replace your screensaver with a power-saving feature available in ALL operating systems - turn off the display. This will save some hours on screen life, significantly reduces the wattage burned while you’re not using the computer, and will stretch your battery life even further. I set my screensaver to “none”, tell the computer to turn off the display after 3 minutes of activity, and to sleep after an hour of idle time. Three minutes is a good amount of time - if I haven’t touched the mouse or keyboard for 180 seconds, I’m probably not going to for another few minutes. All it takes to get the computer to come back alive is to touch a key or wiggle the mouse and it’s right there. While it might take a half second longer to bring the monitor back on in some cases, I’m willing to make the sacrifice. Many computers don’t have a function to lock the computer when the display goes off; rather, that happens when the screensaver comes on. Not to worry, most operating systems have a “blank” screensaver. So if you’re worried about security, set the blank screensaver to come on at the same time your display blanks or thereafter. Doing so allows you to require a password to wake it back up.

I can’t count how many times I’ve been in meetings and when the person’s display turns off they quickly turn it back on by moving the mouse - just to let it sit there and do the same thing again, again, and again. It’s no wonder they complain about short battery life. I say, let your computer snooze whenever you’re not using it. You won’t be upset.

Why is this important? When you shut down your computer normally your operating system (OS) has time to save those files it’s currently working with. For example, say you’re installing a vital Windows Update (or System Update for you fanboys). It goes through and updates a bunch of your files replacing them with newer ones. If you kill the power to the computer while that’s happening those files might become corrupt because they haven’t been properly written to your hard drive. Even if you’re not using files yourself, your computer might be scanning files for viruses, indexing them, or rearranging them to make your computer faster. At any given time, your computer is likely to be opening and closing dozens or more files per minute! While *nix-based operating systems like Mac OSX might handle incomplete file input/output better than Windows, problems will still occur. Many of the issues our office sees are likely caused by improper shutdown. Sometimes the repair is easy, often times not.

And all that is just the software side! What happens to hard drives when the power is suddenly removed from them? If shut down properly, the hard drives will park their “needles,” or “heads,” like your old turntable. And while they can do this pretty quickly, cutting the power might not give them enough time to park. Those “heads” are hovering over your data relying on the physics of moving air to ensure they don’t drag across the hard drive’s internals. Doing so could damage the disc and then you’d surely lose data!

So next time you flip the switch on your powerstrip, unplug your power cable, or turn off your circuit breaker, think twice and make sure you’ve shut down your computers.

Many many viruses spread themselves by infecting computers which haven’t been protected by a firewall. Windows users need to be sure to check their settings (Vista / XP) as do Mac users. In fact, Apple doesn’t enable the firewall on your Mac by default. Foolish if you ask me. Check out those links to learn where your firewall settings are. Keep in mind though, that enabling it might not be good enough. Look at the list of exceptions (applications allowed to bypass the firewall) and make sure you don’t see anything fishy there. If you don’t know what an application is, disable it and see if anything breaks.

Having a firewall active is very important for your computer’s security. And here’s a related tip: if you have broadband access at home, protect your entire network with a router. Though routers are designed to share your internet connection with more than one computer, nearly all broadband routers have firewalls built in. That’s a quick, easy, and cheap way to make sure your network is secure!

So if you’re tired of getting all kinds of malware just from cruising the web, tired of clicking “Yes, install this for me” dozens of times when viewing your favorite streaming video site, or tired of using a dozen tools to get your information online which a good browser could do for you, get Firefox.

Head over to www.crucial.com to see their Memory Advisor Tool. Put in your computer’s make and model, and click Find It. The tool will tell you what kind of RAM your computer uses, how many modules it can take, and the packages you can buy. In most cases I tell folks to max it out - buy the biggest and fastest package possible - you won’t be upset. Unless you’re doing a small upgrade, you’ll probably be taking out your  existing RAM, so don’t worry about what’s currently in your computer.

When the RAM arrives at your door, installation is relatively simple. There are all kinds of videos out there to help you do it yourself. Not convinced you want to? Bring it by Law Library 210 and we’ll install it in less than 5 minutes! If you have questions about what to order, we can help with that too.

P.S. Though Crucial will guarantee the RAM you purchase with the Advisor Tool will work in your computer, if you already know what kind of RAM you need you can probably save a couple bucks by heading over to newegg.com for get a better deal.