Recently I had an opportunity to get a free mobile broadband dongle from Orange as part of their so called Premier Service.  Eagerly I phoned them and ordered the dongle, which arrived on my doorstep a few days ago.  Immediately I opened the box and stuck the dongle into one of my MacBook Pro free USB port.  The dongle evidently had already contained the Orange Connection Software, because it showed me the installation package called Internet Everywhere.  I then installed the package and run it, I waited and waited and waited …. nothing happened, the light on the dongles was blinking but the app looked like it’s not connecting ‘Anywhere‘.  No Joy for me.

So I plugged, reluctantly, the dongle into my Desktop PC (yes I also have a PC).  After a couple of minutes of installing the software and a reboot, needless to say, I was ‘sailing‘. But, this was not what I wanted to do with the dongle.  The idea of a ‘mobile‘ broadband is that is, well, mobile!  What’s the point to have it on my desktop?!

Time to call the cavalry, AKA the support guys.  Though I was a bit skeptical, knowing how support people is like, especially with Mac, but I was willing the gave them a chance.

Guess what? After 20 minutes with one of support guys, it was evident that he didn’t have a frekin clue how to resolve this problem.  It’s good that it was a free support number, otherwise I would had not only wasted my time but also my money.  You hear that Orange!

So, finally I did what I should had done on the first place, I Googled it!

And rightly so, Google didn’t disappoint me.  A few clicks later, I found exactly what I was looking for … a link to the correct place to download an updated version of that Internet Everywhere application that ‘works‘! Result!  I’m happy again.  Maybe I should call back to the Orange Support and tell them how to do it.

So here is the link to the latest Orange Mobile Broadband Connection Manager Software.

It looks like this:

Just get the appropriate version suitable for your OS.

Bytheway, if you are interested on how fast this dongle is, I did a speedtest and here was the result:

I’m not sure about the Download but I was quite surprise with the Upload.  But there you go.

If you are, like me, leaving the Windows world and just starting to learn how to use Mac using the MacBook (Pro), you would quickly arrive to a realization that some of the keys on the keyboard are not where they used to be.

One of these keys is, as a matter of fact, missing from the main configuration.  This key is the Hash Symbol (#) or the Pound Sign (for some of our American friends).  As I am a Programmer who uses the Hash Symbol extensively, the thought of not having this key readily available was enough to send me into a panic attack (so to speak)!

After I calmed myself down, I was thinking that this symbol must be there somewhere, hidden beneath one of these keys, the only think I need to do is to find out which one :)  This thought led me to scour the net to find an equivalent of Windows’ Keymap in Mac, and I found it :)

It’s called the Keyboard Viewer, and you can access it from the drop-down menu off the Language Selector on the Mac Bar.

If you select the ‘Show Keyboard Viewer‘ menu item, it will open the Keyboard Viewer window.

On this Keyboard Viewer you can see the Mapping of the keys on the keyboard to the characters and symbols. Also if you hold one of the modifier keys, e.g. Command, Alt, Ctrl, Shift, etc, they Viewer will show alternate keys to which the keyboard maps to when the modifier key is use. After trying out the modifier key one by one, finally I found the Hash Symbol that I was looking for, which produced by holding the Alt (Option) Key and the Number 3 key :) It’s not perfect (normally it requires only one key), but at least it’s there. I’m back to normal :)

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Keyboard Shortcut to Take Screenshot in Mac

Keyboard Shortcut to Open Folders or Files and Run Programs in Mac

How to Show Folder Size in Finder

One thing I love about Mac OS X (compare to Windows) is the fact that it has a substantial built-in support for taking screenshot from the get go! Unlike Windows which has only two screenshot shortcuts, i.e. PrtScn (to take the whole screen) and Alt+PrtScn (to take the active window), Mac OS X has several ways of taking a screenshot:

To take a Screenshot of the whole screen:

Command+Shift+3 : Take a screenshot and save it to the Desktop

Command+Ctrl+Shift+3 : Take a screenshot and save it to the Clipboard

To take a Screenshot of a particular window:

Command+Shift+4, then Space :  You will see that the mouse pointer will change to a (rather old) camera icon, with which you can choose which window you want to take the screenshot of.  As you hover the pointer on a window, the window color will change to indicate that it has been selected.  To actually take a screenshot of the selected window, just click on it.  This shorrtcut, like the one above, will also save the resulting screenshot on the Desktop.

Command+Ctrl+Shift+4 : The same as its sibling above, but again instead of saving the screenshot to the Desktop, it’s saving it to the Clipboard.

To take a Screenshot of an area of the screen:

Command+Shift+4 : The mouse pointer will change to a target cross-hair with two numbers next to it indicating the x and y coordinates.  As you move the pointer the two coordinates will change according to where the cross-hair is positioned.  To select an area,  just click – hold – and drag the pointer to make a rectangle to mark the area that you want to grab.  As soon as you release the mouse/touchpad button, a screenshot of the selected area will be saved to the Desktop.  Remember, this happens immediate, so if you make a mistake you just have to redo it again.

Command+Ctrl+Shift+4 : Same as above but saving to the Clipboard.

In Leopard you will have another modifier key to help you on your selection:

Space:  If you hold the Space key while you are making a selection, the area of the selection (the resulted rectangle) will be locked.  And when you move your pointer, the whole selection will move (normally it would resize the selection).

Shift: If you hold the Shift key while you are making a selection, it will resize only one side of the rectangle (which side depends on which way you move your pointer next, up-down-left-right).

Option (that’s Alt for Windows user): If you hold the Option key while you are making a selection, the area will resize with its centre as the anchor point.

The resulted screenshot image will be in a PNG format by default.  If you want to change this format, you can do so by opening Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities folder) and type in the following command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format
killall SystemUIServer

Where image_format can be one of jpg, tiff, pdf, png, bmp or pict (and many others).

Not content with providing us with this Awesome Keyboard Shortcut, Apple has also given us a screen grabber application (also by default), which is called, wait for it, Grab :)  You can find Grab at /Applications/Utilities folder.

If you want to read more info on this (also other alternative screenshot apps), you can go the this Macrumors wiki page, from which I based this post.

Do you have any tips and tricks in doing screenshot in a Mac? or maybe you have your own favourite screen grabber app?  Please share with us in the comment.

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Keyboard Shortcut to Open Folders or Files and Run Programs in Mac

How to Show Folder Size in Finder

As a Windows User whom recently ‘converted’ to Mac, I am used to do a certain things the Windows way.  One thing that is for me a very fundamental functionality in Windows is if you press the Enter key in Windows Explorer, it will either open a highlighted folder/file, or run a highlighted program.

But, of course, as you’ve probably known, in a Mac if you try to do the same as the above and expect the same result, then you would be ‘very disappointed.  Because if you press the enter key on a folder or a file, instead of opening it, or running it, it will enter the ‘rename’ mode.  It’s the same as the F2 key in Windows.

This was very annoying for me for a couple months, as everytime I wanted to open a folder I ended up renaming the folder name!

After a while I got used to not to use the enter key and use the mouse instead.  But recently my curiosity got to me and I missed the speed of the keyboard shortcut.  So, a few questions/answers later, I found out the equivalent of the Enter key in a Mac,

It’s the Command + o (that’s the letter o).  I have to admit, it’s not as elegant as the Enter key, but it works find.

Enjoy!

Normally if you look at your Finder, the column ‘size’ for folders will show ‘-’. Occasionally, for example when you want to see which folders take up the most space so you can free them up, you would want to see the size of those folders.
So, here is how to do that:

1. On the Finder menu, click on View -> Show View Options (or Command-J).
2. The ‘View Options‘ will be shown as below.

3. Now the only thing you need to do is tick the checkbox next to ‘Calculate all sizes’, and your Mac will start calculating and showing folders sizes.

Enjoy!

If you’ve just started using Mac, you would be mad if you don’t use Quicksilver, especially if you are a keyboard geek and if you think using a mouse is only for whimps!

Quicksilver, first and foremost, is a ‘keystroke app launcher‘.  Here is a basic explanation of what it does (from the documentation):

When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly. The search is adaptive, so Quicksilver will recognize which items you are searching for based on previous experience. It also supports abbreviations, so you can type entire words, or just fragments of each. When not in use, Quicksilver vanishes, waiting for the next time you summon it.

Typically you would bind the Mac+Space keystroke to open QS small interface. When it opens, you can start typing the first few alphabets from the name of the application that you want to launch. QS will try to ‘guess’ the right application, based upon past experience.  It will also give you a list of all possible applications in a drop-down list, which you could then choose.

Everything is wonderful.  Using QS, I hardly use the Dock, which I set to hidden.

Now, if you are, like me, coming from Windows platform, and still using it for one of other reason (your day job for example), I bet you miss QS functionality so much (I did).

Come Lauchy to the rescue !

Lauchy is an open source application that runs on window and linux.  It works much the same way as QS, and surprisingly (for Windows app) works very well.
It is now one of the Windows Utilities in my permanent list of must-have Windows apps.