• Director – Kathryn Bigelow
• Best Supporting Actress – Mo’Nique in “Precious”
• Best Actress – Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side” – not my choice, but I think she will win
• Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”
• Best Actor – Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”
• Best Movie – Hurt Locker

Avatar will get a few awards for special effects

Fantastic Mr. Fox best Animated

1. Right-click the cell which contains the comment.
2. Choose Show/Hide Comments, and clear any text from the comment.
3. Click on the border of the comment, to select it.
4. Choose Format|Comment
5. On the Colors and Lines tab, click the drop-down arrow for Color.
6. Click Fill Effects
7. On the picture tab, click Select Picture
8. Locate and select the picture
9. To keep the picture in proportion, add a check mark to Lock Picture Aspect Ratio
10. Click Insert, click OK, click OK

So I was at Barnes and Noble getting a few books for Rory to read and I walked past the Black History month section and something caught my Eye.

Black History Month

Now look a little closer at the book that maybe should not be there.

Sneaky Crackers

Black History Month #FAIL!

Startup can be more fun if you know this:

Press X during startup Force Mac OS X startup

Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete during startup Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)

Press C during startup Start up from a CD that has a system folder

Press N during startup Attempt to start up from a compatible network server (NetBoot)

Press R during startup Force PowerBook screen reset

Press T during startup Start up in FireWire Target Disk mode

Press Shift during startup start up in Safe Boot mode and temporarily disable login items and non-essential kernel extension files (Mac OS X 10.2 and later)

Press Command-V during startup Start up in Verbose mode.

Press Command-S during startup Start up in Single-User mode (command line)

youtube

First off, try to use your company name as your username on YouTube. If you discover someone is already using that name check around the office to see if anyone set that account up, if no one comes clean you can actually request the account from YouTube. Check how long it has been since they have logged on. If it is over six months, you have a good case, considering that is your domain name. Same goes for Twitter.

Even if you can’t get your company name on YouTube as it is taken by another legit account, you have to consider settling for a word or phrase that describes your products. For example the company http://www.elekta.com is using this channel very successfully – www.youtube.com/wearefightingcancer – it fits their model and actually it works for them.

Tip -

- Tag your videos the same way you would use keywords in a web page.  Choose some targetted words e.g. if you are in the Digital Arts fields – “3D animation” and other less heavily searched words, “educational training videos”

- DO NOT REPEAT keywords. YouTube will take the commas away from keywords and make it into a sentence almost. So don’t say “3D Animation, Cool Animation, Awesome Animation” as it will default to “3D Animation Cool Awesome” – You will end up tagging the video with “Cool”, “Awesome” – not so bad, but you are a business, not a 14 year old surfing dude.

- Should I include client names when displaying the work we have competed? – your decision, may be nice to ask them first to make sure it doesn’t steal their thunder or release company secrets.

Other tips.

- Make your channel looks like your website, you are allowed to upload a background, change colors, fonts, links, etc.

- Always provide a link to your website in every video, fill in all the Additional information on your video (this Neuroscience Axesse Video has tons of info and a link to the product on their website – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhFQey6Asyw&feature=related)

- Try using different categories if you can, gives you a little more scope.

- Use the metrics inside YouTube to see who is visiting you, who is embedding your video. Contact them, could be a sales lead there…. Become friends with a lot of people, try first with similar companies – not competitors, add your friends, look at other videos and ‘Favorite’ them, build a community, comment on videos.

- When creating a video watermark it or start and end the video with your logo or website link. If someone embeds the video on their site or blog you will have a free ad.

- Offer a link to your website to view the video in HD if you have a streaming server or users can download the file.

Hope that helps.

Yes, Windows has it by default, why not Mac? Well you can always push F11 to view the desktop, but what if you want a dock icon to do this? easy..

Open Apple Script Editor (Machintosh HD > Applications > System Utilities > Apple Script Editor)

Choose File > New

in the code window type

(* AppleScript Show Desktop *)

activate application “Finder”

do shell script “/Applications/Utilities/Expose.app/Contents/MacOS/Expose 1″

so you now have something like this:

Save this. File > Save As – “Show_My_Desktop”, change File Format to Application, check the Options box “Run Only”

Save

If that works you will not have an icon on your desktop like this:

Drag this into the dock, then click it. All done.

If you want it to look a little better, then change the icon. To do this read my previous post Change An Icon in Mac OSx

Change an Icon in Mac OSx – easy one. First you may want to surf the web for a few free icons. e.g.

http://interfacelift.com/icons-mac/

http://www.pixelgirlpresents.com/icons

http://www.iconarchive.com/

and there are millions more out there.

When you have the icon you need, In the Finder click on it and choose “Apple+I” or from the finder menu choose File > Get Info

e.g.

Sample Icon

ok, now select the icon by clicking on it, that is this one:

Copy this icon, Edit > Copy or Apple +  C

Now, find the icon you which to change, view it in Finder, choose Get Info, select the icon, then choose Edit > Paste or Apple + V

Close the finder window and the old icon is replaced with your new icon.

iTunes iPhoto slow to start? Time to stop sharing.

iTunes

In iTunes menu, choose Preferences, then click the sharing tab. Uncheck sharing, restart iTunes

iTunes Sharing

iPhoto

In iPhoto menu, choose Preferences, then click the sharing tab. Uncheck share my photos, restart iPhoto

iPhoto Sharing

usb memory key

I have an 8GB memory card that I keep on my keyring. If I ever lost it I don’t have to worry, why not?

1. I have the files backed up

2. The files on the memory card are encrypted.

how is this done?

Create a folder on your desktop, add the files you which to store on the USB card. Open ‘Disk Utility’ (Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility)

From the Menu, choose: FILE > New > Disk Image from Folder

Navigate to the folder you created earlier, you will notice that .dmg is appended to the filename automatically.

For image format, you can keep the default ‘compressed’

Finally, the password portion. Under Encryption you can choose None, 128 or 256 Bit. Your choice.

Hit SAVE and you will now be prompted to choose a password. Choose combinations of Letters, Numbers, Symbols.

Click OK and wait. The x.dmg file will appear in the same folder as your original file. Copy this to your USB stick and you are totally secure.

When you want to open the file, just double click to open the DMG, you will be prompted for your password (unless you open on the same computer you created the file, in which case the password may have been stored in your Keychain)