Making iPhone ringtones

It’s easy to make a ringtone.

  1. Open iTunes. Add the sound file you want to use to your Library if you haven’t already done so. It should be 30 seconds or shorter.
  2. Open up iTunes Preferences, then click General, then click on “Import Settings…”.
  3. Select AAC encoder from the list. Click OK. Close Preferences window.
  4. Find your sound file in the iTunes browser. Right click on it and select “Create AAC version”.
  5. Go to the Finder and open up your iTunes folder, sort by date to find the directory and filename, and change the extension to .m4r instead of .m4a.
  6. Re-import the .m4r file to iTunes. It should show up in Tones.
  7. To ensure proper syncing with the iPhone, select the Tones tab in the Sync panel that shows up when you click on your device in the Devices section of the left part of the iTunes window, and click the box for syncing Tones.
  8. Sync.
  9. Presto!

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Making your Gmail hacker proof

Adapted from http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hacker-proof.html :-

Before you begin, you will need to be logged in to your Google account and have your cellphone ready.

Log in to Google, eg at the URL you usually use for your Gmail. Then go to your Account Settings, by expanding the little drop-down user info panel at the top right and clicking “Account” to view your account settings. On the account settings page, click “edit” next to 2-step verification and turn it on. (Note: if you don’t see this option, your Google Apps domain administrator needs to turn it on in the Advanced settings section of the control panel.)

GMail will walk you through the next few steps. You just need a telephone that can receive SMS text messages. Enter the numeric code sent through the text message to proceed. Now log in with your password and the PIN. Note that from this point forward your password alone is no longer enough to access your email.

With 2-step authentication, accessing your email always requires the password and a code delivered via your cell phone. (You can check the “remember me for 30 days on this device” checkbox so you don’t have to do this every time – but you should only do this for devices you know others can’t get access to!) With this scheme in place, even if would-be hackers discover your super-sekrit email password, they can’t do anything useful with it! To access your email, they’d need to somehow gain control of your cell phone, too. I can’t see that happening unless you’re in some sort of hostage situation, and at that point I think email security is the least of your problems.

What If I Lose My Cell Phone?
Your cell phone isn’t the only way to get the secondary PIN you need to access your email. On the account page there are multiple ways to generate verification codes, including adding a secondary backup phone number, and downloading mobile applications that can generate verification codes without a text message (but that requires a smart phone, naturally). This also includes the never-fails-always-works option: printing out the single-use backup verification codes on a piece of paper. Go do this now. Right now! And keep those backup codes with you at all times. Put them in your wallet, purse, man-purse, or whatever it is that travels with you most often when you get out of bed.

What About Apps That Access Email?
Applications or websites that access your email, and thus necessarily store your email address and password, are also affected. They have no idea that they now need to enter a PIN, too, so they’ll all be broken. You’ll need to generate app-specific passwords for your email. To do that, visit the accounts page. Click on authorizing applications & sites, then enter a name for the application and click the Generate Password button. (Let me be clear about this, because it can be confusing: enter that specially generated password in the application, not your master email password.) This effectively creates a list of passwords specific to each application. So you can see the date each one was last used, and revoke each app’s permission to touch your email individually as necessary without ever revealing your primary email password to any application, ever. See, I told you, there is a method to the apparent madness.

Posted by Jeff Atwood

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Get Dock out of the way on OS X Lion

Modified from http://techblog.willshouse.com/2012/03/26/remove-dock-on-mac-os-x-lion/ :-

I am very keyboard-centric, use Quicksilver all the time, and really hate that the OS X Dock just serves to get in my way. The following commands make the Dock TEENY WEENY and stick it bottom left on the screen where I am unlikely to accidentally click on it.

Open a Terminal and run the following commands.

(makes the dock icon size TEENY WEENY)
defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 1

(puts the dock on the bottom of the screen; can also pick left/right)
defaults write com.apple.dock orientation -string bottom

(puts the dock on the left side; can also pick center/end)
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start

(restarts the Dock so the changes take effect)
killall Dock

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Killing Mac startup sound in Lion

One of the most annoying commercial aspects of owning a Mac is how it announces itself to the entire world when you boot it.

There were solutions that worked in Snow Leopard which Apple broke deliberately for Lion.

Never fear! StartNinja is here. And it works in Lion. Free/donationware.

Screen Shot 2012-04-09 at 22.25.44.png

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Using GeekTool to put iCal events on the desktop

Do you like GeekTool? I do. It enables putting stuff like to-do lists and weather graphics on your desktop, behind all the app windows.

For instance: you can choose an Image geeklet and feed it the following URL: http://www.theweathernetwork.com/common/maps/satrad/gta/is_satrad_na_ca_gta_all_en.jpg to display Toronto’s current radar image.

GeekTool will also execute arbitrary shell tasks if you pick a Shell geeklet.

There’s a really useful command-line utility called icalBuddy which you can download here. Once you’ve done that, you can make a Shell geeklet in GeekTool with (for instance) the following command:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy -nc eventsToday+7

PS: note that for Lion you need the GeekTool version available only from the Mac App Store.

icalBuddy.png

PostScript: Setting GeekTool to refresh your iCalBuddy geeklet every N seconds is fruitless unless you have iCal open; otherwise it won’t update.

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Safai bookmark sync problem in Lion

Some time after I converted my machines to Lion, Safari bookmarks wouldn’t sync on most of the computers. Very odd. Messing with iCloud preferences did absolutely nothing.

According to this page, the root of the problem is probably a permissions problem. The following method outlined by dan8394 worked for me:-

Safari stores its bookmarks in ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist. If this file cannot be updated (i.e. if permissions are wrong), then the bookmarks won’t be saved. Check the datestamp on this file. It should be updated every time you add a bookmark. If it isn’t, then this is likely the cause of the problem. To fix it, you need to fix the permissions.

  1. Try Repair Permissions in Disk Utility. If that doesn’t work, try step 2.
  2. Delete the above .plist file while Safari is running – then go into Safari and add a new bookmark. This will create a new file with all your bookmarks. (If you delete the file while Safari is not running, you lose all your bookmarks – so make a back up of the file. The safest thing is to rename it.)
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How to turn off Dashboard permanently

How do you kill the annoying RAM-chugging Dashboard? There are two steps. The second one is necessary because Dashboard is actually owned by Dock. In Terminal.app, type the following:-

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

killall Dock

[This can be reversed by substituting NO in the first step, and then killing Dock again.]

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Where your iOS crash logs are

Via http://aplus.rs/apple/how-to-find-crash-logs-for-iphone-applications-on-mac-vista-and-xp/ :-

  1. Application crash logs are transfered to your computer each time you do a sync with the iOS device, in iTunes. So, do a sync.
  2. Logs are kept at ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/<DEVICE_NAME> .
  3. There are .crash and .plist files – archive them both and send to a developer. Actually, pick all the files you find there that have the name of the problematic application.

In my case, this search confirmed my suspicion that most of my iPad crashes seen while using twitter apps are caused by lack of memory.

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Turning off AppleSpell permanently

I’ve been having trouble with Apple re-installing the stupid f*&^#%@!ing spell checker whenever a major system update comes down the intertubes. So I’m trying again with a new strategy to see if it works in Lion. According to this, renaming the folder containing the AppleSpell.service doesn’t work because OS X will still throw error messages when it can’t find the directory. Also, renaming the language directory doesn’t work either as it then goes hunting for another language. So we try something more drastic.

  1. Go to Finder menu, pull down Go, Go To Folder. Enter /System/Library/Services/. You will see AppleSpell.service in there; right-click it to Show Package Contents.
  2. Type into Terminal.app the following:-
    sudo mv /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Resources /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Resources.disabled
  3. Quit AppleSpell.service process in Activity Monitor.

Fingers crossed!

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Lion and apps like Preview reopening files

Are you sick of Preview reopening previously-closed windows from the previous time you fired up the app?

You can turn this behaviour off – although only for all apps at once.

It’s in the System Preferences –> General pane, near the bottom, second-to-last checkbox. Uncheck.

restoringopenwindowsPreference.png

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