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Burning CDs in iTunes

Wednesday, January 04 2012 by chrisb iTunes

Taking your music with you

iTunes Burn Settings<br>Click to see a larger image

iTunes Burn Settings
Click to see a larger image

Most people keep their music in iTunes and listen to it on an iPod. Most cars these days have either an AUX input or a direct iPod port so you can listen to your music in the car. If you don't have a connection to your car stereo, you can make CDs from iTunes and play them in your car.

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Is your Mac backed up?

See a Preview of the book

The Backup Plan is available exclusively on Amazon in Kindle format. A Kindle device is not required to read the ebook. Kindle apps are available for Macs, PCs and mobile devices. Members of Amazon Prime with a Kindle device can borrow this ebook for free.

Printing Directly to a PDF file

Tuesday, January 03 2012 by chrisb OS X

Streamline the PDF process

CUPS-PDF Virtual Printer <br>Click to see a larger image

CUPS-PDF Virtual Printer
Click to see a larger image

Like many people, I did much of my Christmas shopping online.

At the end of an online transaction, you normally get a confirmation page that has your order information on it. I want to keep that info, but I don't want to print the page, so I normally print the page as a PDF.

I know that the process to print to a PDF is clunky, but while I was doing it over and over one day when I was shopping online, I decided that there had to be a better way.

I did a bit of digging around and found a way to greatly simplify the print to PDF process.

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Happy Holidays from Basics4Mac

Sunday, December 11 2011 by chrisb OS X

Indianapolis Monument Circle

2011 is coming to an end and the season is getting very busy, so I'm going to take a break for the rest of the year.

I would like to thank you all for your readership and support over the past year. It means a lot to me to see all the red dots on the map that represent readers from all over the world.

I wish you all a Happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, New Year, and anything else you celebrate in your neck of the woods.

New tips will be back January 3, 2012.

--chris

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Cool Tools: I Love Stars

Friday, December 09 2011 by chrisb iTunes

Giving star ratings to your iTunes Music

I Love Stars in the Menu Bar <br>Click to see a larger image

I Love Stars in the Menu Bar
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Giving star ratings to music tracks in iTunes is one of the best ways mark your music. You can create Smart Albums that, say, only play tracks with a 4 or 5 star rating for times when you only want to hear your favorite music. On the other hand, you can create a Smart Playlist that contains only 1 star songs to indicate that you might want to prune them from your iTunes Library at a later time.

The problem is, it's hard find the time to sit down and give each track a star rating. A small app called I Love Stars helps make the process easier.

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Manually Adding Locations to Photos in iPhoto

Thursday, December 08 2011 by chrisb iPhoto

Show where your photos were taken

Adding a location <br>Click to see a larger image

Adding a location
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In iPhoto, Places shows a Google map with pins that represent where photos were taken. iPhoto gets this information from the photo itself if the camera supports geotagging.

If your camera doesn't support geotagging, you can add locations to photos after they have been imported into iPhoto.

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Basics4Mac EXTRAS

Articles at the intersection of computers and life

What's this?

As I comb through the Mac news of the day, I often come across articles that aren't tip material but that I think would be interesting to Basics4Mac readers. The links below go directly to the website that hosts the article.

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MACWORLD: Why the iTunes Store succeeded - 4/28/13

MACWORLD: Why the iTunes Store succeeded - 4/28/13
The history of music retailing goes something like this. Throughout the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s the LP (Long Play album) was the long-form audio format du jour. If you wanted to purchase just a single song, you bought a 45-rpm disc, a smaller record that featured a hit song on side A and a lesser-known song on the B side. As tape players began to show up in homes and cars, 8-track tapes and cassettes became popular. You could purchase cassette singles, though they weren’t terribly popular.

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ARS TECHNICA: Five ways Congress should improve the copyright system - 4/28/13

ARS TECHNICA: Five ways Congress should improve the copyright system - 4/28/13
In a Wednesday speech, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) announced plans for a "comprehensive review" of copyright law. The announcement is significant because Goodlatte chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over copyright issues. "I am announcing today that the House Judiciary Committee will hold a comprehensive series of hearings on US copyright law in the months ahead," Goodlatte said. "The goal of these hearings will be to determine whether the laws are still working in the digital age. I welcome all interested parties to submit their views and concerns to the Committee."

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ARS TECHNICA: 78-minute Steve Jobs comedy film iSteve now online - 4/28/13

ARS TECHNICA: 78-minute Steve Jobs comedy film iSteve now online - 4/28/13
Comedy site FunnyorDie has released its comedic Steve Jobs film, iSteve, on its website, the first of a handful of Jobs films planned for release this year. The 78-minute film was slated for release on April 15, but FunnyorDie delayed it for two days following the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday. It's now available in its full glory on FunnyorDie's website, starring "Get a Mac" actor Justin Long as Steve Jobs.

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ARS TECHNICA: Where’s my Knight Rider 2000? A MyFord Touch owner’s lament - 3/18/13

ARS TECHNICA: Where’s my Knight Rider 2000? A MyFord Touch owner’s lament - 3/18/13
In early February, I bought a 2013 Ford Escape equipped with MyFord Touch. In many ways, the system, which was developed jointly by Ford and Microsoft, is a driver's best friend. But best friends can be idiosyncratic sometimes, and they occasionally drive you nuts—especially when they argue with your other best friends (like your smart phone). These friends occasionally stop talking to each other, and one might even interrupt calls to your mom because they've decided it's time to perform "routine maintenance."

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TidBITS: Thoughts on — and of — a Computer Science Major - 3/6/13

TidBITS: Thoughts on — and of — a Computer Science Major - 3/6/13
Like many others, I entered college from a high school where students were rewarded with good grades for memorizing and regurgitating the correct answers. I was great at that and always received above-average grades. I learned what was required from textbooks and was tested on it. There was no guessing as to what resources or subject matter to study. Alas, while my grades may have helped me get into college, high school otherwise didn’t do much to prepare me for the University of Virginia.

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