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 The following questions and answers were excerpted from the book Your Brain, The Missing Manual
Also, be sure to check out Basic Tips for Mental Fitness from Your Brain: The Missing Manual
Q: Turkey is one of the best things to eat if you want to promote sleepiness.
A: False: Turkey may be loaded with tryptophan, the amino acid that can cause drowsiness, but it has no more of it than many other high protein food items like chicken, beef, and soybeans. Plus, eating high protein meals without a corresponding truckload of carbohydrates ensures that tryptophan will never enter the blood-brain barrier.
Q: The REM (for "Rapid Eye Movement") stage of sleep, when the most vivid dreaming usually happens, occurs during the deepest stages of the dream cycle.
A: False: REM sleep actually occurs at the very end of the sleep cycle, when the brain returns to a much lighter stage of sleep.
Q: Contrary to conventional wisdom, memories are not "stored" in the brain as recordings or as discrete "data", but are instead the result of the brain's constant rewiring of neuronal connections.
A: True: There's no static "memory storage" in the brain, but instead a fluid, constantly readapting process of establishing, reinforcing, and fading links between neurons.
Q: Despite huge life changes that temporarily create radical shifts in personal fortune (either good or bad), the brain will always drift back to an inborn "happiness" set point.
A: True: Regardless of whether you win the lotto or suffer catastrophic tragedy, you'll always return to the same chipper or grumpy temperament that sustains throughout your life.
Q: With most traits, heritability (the influence of genetics) decreases through childhood and adolescence, reaching its lowest point in adulthood.
A: False: The reverse is true--genetic links actually get stronger with age (meaning you're more similar to your parents as an adult than as a child), though there is no scientific consensus as to why this is so.
Q: T/F: IQ scores are highly heritable
A: True, page 242
Q: Your brain's energy use is roughly:
a.) 20 watts
b.) 40 watts
c.) 75 watts
A: 20 watts--enough to power a dim light bulb, page 29
Q: Microsleep is a phenomenon that occurs when the brain?
A: Shuts off for a second or two usually due to lack of sleep, page 52
Q: The art of improving memory is called?
A: Mnemonics, page 107
Q: T/F: Chronically sleep-deprived individuals have a greater incidence of obesity?
A: True, page 40
These days, aspiring Web site creators like you pick up a lot of Web-design theory before you start working on your pages. But as deadlines loom and the value of "do it right" falls victim to the imperative to "do it right now," even the best of us sometimes toss good practice out the window.
That's perfectly understandable and no cause for panic--after all, if Web weavers waited until their pages were perfect before uploading them, the Internet would be a very lonely place indeed. However, sometimes innocent-seeming shortcuts can cause triple-Tylenol headaches later on. Here are a few pieces of Web advice that site creators ignore at their own risk:
1. Always include a doctype.
Even if you develop your site pages with classic HTML (with its less rigorous standards) rather than up-to-date XHTML, you can use the same structuring and formatting features in your pages, and browsers will process them effortlessly.
But if you forget to include the doctype--the short instruction at the beginning of a page that tells a browser what type of markup (HTML code) you're using (see the figure)--your pages will appear annoyingly inconsistent. That's because some browsers, including Internet Explorer, switch into a backward-compatibility state known as quirks mode when they encounter unidentified markup; in essence, they attempt to act like an outdated browser from the 1990s. Common problems that result include text that appears at different sizes in different browsers and layouts that wind up in different configurations depending on your browser. To read up on doctypes and make sure you're using the right one, check out Fix Your Site With the Right Doctype!
2. Keep formatting instructions out of your markup.
In a rush, it's easy to get lazy and apply inline styles (or even worse, formatting tags like ) to a page's XHTML or HTML. But it's a rare Web site that uses a particular format just once. Most often, you'll use a design--say for a column, heading, or note box--elsewhere on the same page or on another of your site pages.
To ensure consistency across your site and to make it easier to fine-tune the look and feel of your pages, move all your formatting instructions to a central location: an external style sheet. That way, when a browser processes a page, it grabs this central set of instructions and applies them to the page (see the illustration for the sequence of events).
At their best, style sheets let you create a site you can effortlessly restyle in a thousand ways, as you can see in the super-flexible pages impressively demonstrated at CSS Zen Garden.
3. Be under renovation, not under construction.
Think of your favorite store. Now imagine shopping there if you had to wander around half-lit floors, dodging ladders, pylons, and heavy-duty construction equipment to find the aisles that still have products on the shelf.
It's a similar story on the Web, where a site with empty pages, "under construction" messages, and vague promises of upcoming content will send visitors away in droves. Yes, it's true that your Web site won't be complete when you first upload it. But make sure that what's there is genuinely useful on its own, and don't draw attention to gaps and shortcomings. Instead, keep improving what you've got.
4. Think twice before you adopt copy-and-paste design.
Typically, Web sites use the same page design across all their pages. For example, noodle around Amazon.com and you'll always see a menu header at the top of the page and a sidebar on the left.
There's a very special circle in Dante's Inferno reserved for Web developers who try to achieve consistent design by copying and pasting their XHTML (say, a set of <div> elements or a <table> element) from one page to another. It's almost impossible to manage or modify this mess across all your pages without making a mistake, even if you have a small Web site.
If you need a repeating page design, pick a suitable solution from the available options, each of which comes with its own caveat. Your can use server-side includes (which require Web host support), page templates (provided you have a Web design tool like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web), frames (which can exhibit quirks), or a Web development platform (if you're willing to take a crash course in programming).
5. Keep an eye on your visitors.
Is anyone here? There's no point in having a Web site if you're not willing to pay attention to what content draws and keeps visitors and what falls flat on its face. Remarkably, the best way to do that is with a free yet industrial-strength service called Google Analytics (see the screen shot). You simply copy a small bit of tracking code to each of your pages and within hours you'll be able to answer questions like "Where do my visitors live?", "How long is a typical visit?", and "What pages are their favorites?"
Whether you want to keep a simple online diary or sell products e-commerce-style, Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual takes you from writing your first Web page to building a complete, cross-linked, professional-looking site using nothing more than an ordinary PC and raw ambition. Expert Web developer Matthew MacDonald provides all the hands-on, take-it-to-the-keyboard guidance, advice, and techniques you need.
Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual is full of valuable tips and guidance like that above. In it, you'll learn how to:
- Build a site from start to finish with hands-on, guided instructions
- Create dazzling pages using the formatting and layout capabilities of style sheets
- Bring in some cash with Google ads, affiliate programs, and a PayPal shopping cart.
- Get your site noticed by Web search engines like Google and Yahoo!
- Track site visitors and identify the pages they're checking out most often
- Host videos and music right within your pages
- Foster a sense of community by adding online discussions and forums
- Create your own blog using a free blog-hosting service
- Find the right Web host for your needs and get a personalized Web site address
 The following tips are from the book Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual, by Lesa Snider King
1. Quick black-and-white with color tint. Photoshop lets you easily convert a color image to black-and-white without harming the original image. First, create a Black & White Adjustment layer by clicking the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel, and then choose Black & White. Tweak the various sliders in the resulting Adjustments panel for maximum contrast, and then add a color overlay by clicking the Tint checkbox at the top of the panel. Photoshop assumes you want to give your image a brown (sepia) tint. To use another color, click the little brown color swatch to the right of the Tint checkbox and pick a new color from the resulting Color Picker.
2. Partial color effect. To really draw viewer's eyes to the focal point of your image, make the focal point colored and the rest of the image black-and-white. By using the layer mask that tags along with each Adjustment layer, you can hide the effect of a Black & White Adjustment layer and bring back the original color. (Think of a layer mask as digital masking tape.) To create this effect, add an Adjustment layer by clicking the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the Layers palette, and then choose Black & White. Tweak the sliders for maximum contrast, and then, on the Layers panel, click once to select the Adjustment layer's mask (the white thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail). Press B to grab the Brush tool and, at the bottom of Tools panel, set the foreground color chip to black. (In the realm of the layer mask, painting with black conceals and painting with white reveals.) Next, mouse over to your document and use the Brush tool to paint over any area you want to bring back its original color. If you bring back too much color, press X to flip-flop your color chips so you're painting with white, and then paint that area to make it black and white again.
3. Portrait popper. You can make Photoshop add a soft, darkened edge around any photo in seconds...if you know which filter to reach for. Choose Filter > Distort > Lens Correction, then grab the Vignette slider and drag it all the way to the left. To darken the edge color even more, grab the Midpoint slider and drag it slightly to the left. Click OK and you're finished!
4. Background swap. If you want to add a colorful background to a photo that has a white background, don't waste time creating a selection to delete the background or hide it with a layer mask. Instead, swap backgrounds with the flick of a layer blend mode (blend modes change the way color on one layer interacts with the color on other layers). Simply place the colorful background at the top of your layers stack and use the pop-up menu at the top of the Layers panel to change that layer's blend mode to Darken. Like magic, wherever the two layers intersect, only the darkest colors will remain. If necessary, you can use a layer mask to hide parts of the new background, as shown here.
5. Quick color boost. Photoshop CS4 gives you a quick new way to make the colors in your image pop without harming the original image. It's called the Vibrance Adjustment layer, and you can find it on the right side of your screen in the new Adjustments panel (or by clicking the half black/half white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel). Once you've created the Vibrance Adjustment layer, drag the Vibrance slider all the way to the right, and it intensifies the colors in your image. Happily, it has less of an effect on bright colors (because they're already highly saturated) than on lighter tones, yet it leaves skin tones relatively unchanged.
Click here to download an audio version (.m4a 5.3MB) of these tips
Now Hear This
The iPod's volume-limit controls let you lower the player's maximum loudness level to help protect your (or your child's) ears. On the Nano, set your sonic limits by choosing to Settings→Playback→Volume Limit. On the Classic, choose Settings→Volume Limit. On the Touch, choose Settings→Music→Volume Limit.
Art Collecting By Hand
To make the Cover Flow feature in iTunes look great, use the Advanced→Get Album Artwork command to have the program round up missing album covers for songs in your music library. If you get an alert box with the number of things iTunes couldn't find, click the triangle or plus icon in the box to see what's missing. Click the Save button to dump the notes into a text file that you can use as a shopping list. Now you know what art you need to snag off of the Web from Amazon.com or other cover-rich sites.
The iPod as Pocket Watch
Have your iPod Classic or Nano tell you the time on the main screen--without having to fumble down to the built-in clock. Just choose Settings→Date & Time and select the Time in Title option to always have a clock displayed in the top bar on the iPod screen.
Return to the Beginning
The iPod Shuffle has no screen to tell you what song you're on, but you can get back to the first track in the playlist by quickly pressing the Play/Pause button three times.
Playlist Shortcuts
Right-click (or control-click) any track in the iTunes library and choose Add to Playlist to instantly place that song on an existing playlist. And if you want to see just how many playlists include a particular song already, right-click (or control-click) the track and choose Show in Playlist.
A Touching Story
Turn your iPod Touch into a pocket ebook reader with Lexcycle's free Stanza program, available in the iTunes App Store. Once the app is on your Touch, you can download all kinds of free books and classic works from Stanza's online catalog. The program also lets you adjust the font size and spacing of the onscreen text to make it all easy on the eyes.
A Nano Battery Booster
Want to squeeze out all the music you can between battery charges on that new Nano? Choose Settings→Playback→Energy Saver→On. With Engery Saver on, the Nano's battery-hogging screen gets quickly turned off when you aren't actively clicking buttons or scrolling around menus.
Sort iTunes Music Your Way
Press Control-J (Command-J on a Mac) in iTunes to open up the View Options box--which gives you all sorts of useful columns you can add to iTunes. Some of these include Equalizer settings, Last Played, and Date Added. Click the top of any column in the iTunes window to sort your collection based on that factor. Sorting by Play Count, for example, lets you see which tunes are in heavy rotation and which songs you've been neglecting.
Clip and Save Time
Tired of having to go to Safari first to get to your bookmarked Web faves? The iPod Touch lets you add one-tap shortcut icons called Web Clips right to the Home screen. When you have a site you want to add, tap the + button and then on the "Add to Home Screen" button. When you tap that new icon on the Home screen, Safari opens automatically and takes you right to the part of the page that was on display when you saved it.
My Main Menu
You're not stuck with Apple's default items out on your iPod's main menu screen. If you want a shortcut to your calendar, games, or other favorite destinations, add
1. It's still important to back up your photos. Elements 7 gives you a totally painless way with Photoshop.com. Sign up for a free account and you can set your albums to automatically back themselves up to your space at Photoshop.com. Once you set up album syncing, you don't have to think about it again. It happens automatically. If you have a computer disaster at home, just reinstall Elements on the new computer, turn on the backup/sync option, and sign in to photoshop.com, and your photos reappear on your new computer. This service has some limitations (all detailed in the book), but it's a terrific way to keep an extra copy of important photos. And you still have the regular Organizer options for backing up to CD, DVD, or a different hard drive.
2. Find a size that fits. If you've been using Elements for scrapbooking, take a look at the new file size presets available in Elements 7. There's a whole separate category for scrapbook sizes in the New File dialog box. Now you can create a 12"-, 8"-, or 6"-square sized file without having to set up a custom size.
3. On vacation? Take a private tour. If your "staycation" this year takes you to a nearby tourist spot along with everyone else in your state, you can get rid of those strangers crowding into your photos--as long as you plan ahead a little. Start by getting a series of pictures that give you enough clear spots, even if there are people you don't know meandering somewhere through every photo. Then you can combine the pictures with the Elements 7 Scene Cleaner to create an image of Aunt Esmeralda and Cousin Wilberforce standing in front of the falls all by themselves, with nobody else around.
4. Make slideshows like a pro. With Elements 7 you can share your albums with dynamite, professional-looking galleries. Create a gallery where your photos appear as a pile of old-fashioned slides. Your friends can then sort through, and click the ones they like, to see a larger view. Elements has other gallery options that let you create a virtual book where your visitors "turn" the page with the mouse. And you can host these at Photoshop.com (Photoshopshowcase.com outside the US), burn them to a CD or DVD, or even post them on your own Web site if you don't want to use Photoshop.com.
5. Create beautiful skin. If you like glamour-type photography, check out the new Surface blur filter to create dreamy looking skin quality. It blurs without losing edge detail: perfect for smoothing skin in portraits.
6. Make dramatic skies. If you're a beginner, try the new Quick Fix/Touch Up tool for making the sky bluer--maybe too blue (and kind of green) if truth be told. Fortunately, you can soften up the effect once you're done. Go back to Full Edit and find the Layers palette (you don't need to understand layers for this maneuver). Click once on the layer that Elements just added to your photo (it's called Blue Skies), and then go up to the top of the palette and move the opacity slider to the left. Watch your photo as you move the slider. When it looks real, you're done. (Click the bottom layer, the one called Background, before you leave the Layers palette. That way you can make more edits to your photos.) Another option: You may prefer the results you get using the Smart Brush in Full Edit, if your sky has any clouds in it. In the tool presets in the Options bar, go to Nature->Cloud Contrast and drag across the sky. Presto, your clouds really stand out!
7. Never, ever work on your original photo. If you use the Organizer, good news: Elements already has your back. It creates version sets, which save different states of your image as you edit. You can create as many different versions of a photo as you like and go back to any one of them at any time. And if you're working with Raw files, even better news: You can't alter your original (only the conversion settings). If you don't use the Organizer, make a copy of the picture (File- >Duplicate) and work on that. This way you can always start over again if you get a better idea later on.
8. Sharing photos with the Organizer. There are all kinds of fun, creative ways to share photos in Elements 7, and the Organizer makes it super easy to explore them all. Try a slideshow with music and commentary, or upload your photos to EasyShare or one of the other online services to create mugs, bags, and other cool gift items with your photos on them.
9. Don't scorn the auto buttons. If you've never tried these one-click fixes--Auto Levels or Auto Color, for example--give 'em a try. Each version of Elements gets a little smarter and you may find that you like the results you get from one of these easy-to-use fixes.
10. Panoramas for everyone. You don't need to feel wistful anymore about the fact that your point and shoot camera's lens doesn't have a true wide-angle setting. Take a series of photos with, ideally, about a 30 percent overlap and Elements' Photomerge will automatically stitch them together into a panorama wider than you could have captured with the widest lens. Photomerge is really amazing--it's totally automated and it does terrific blending to eliminate visible seams between images.
The beauty of the new iPhone 3G is that you don't need one. Almost all of the juicy stuff actually comes with the iPhone 2.0 software and the online App Store, both of which run perfectly well on the old iPhone as well.
That, incidentally, is also the beauty of "iPhone: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition." It covers both the old and the new iPhones, because it covers the 2.0 software, the iPhone App Store, and so on.
Here are a few of my favorite tips from the book.
- At the top of the screen, little icons indicate how you're connected to the Internet: an E for the vast but dog-slow AT&T Edge network, a 3G icon if you're on the faster but limited-area AT&T third-generation network, and radiating signal bars if you're on Wi-Fi.
The tip here: The two cellular icons (E and 3G) disappear whenever you're on Wi-Fi. That's not a mistake. The iPhone assumes that Wi-Fi is faster and better than any cellular network, and if you're on it, you don't care about E or 3G (and it's right).
- Unfortunately, 3G is a battery hog. If you don't see a 3G icon on your iPhone 3G's status bar, then you're not in a 3G hot spot, and you're not getting any benefit from the phone's 3G radio. By turning it off, you'll double the length of your iPhone 3G's battery power, from 5 hours of talk time to 10.
To do so, from the Home screen, tap Settings->General->Network-> Enable 3G Off. Yes, this is sort of a hassle, but if you're anticipating a long day and you can't risk the battery dying halfway through, it might be worth doing. After all, most 3G phones don't even let you turn off their 3G circuitry.
- More ways to save power: turn off more features. In Settings, you can turn off Bluetooth; Wi-Fi; GPS; "push" data; and the cellphone radio. Each saves you another bit of power.
- When typing on the on-screen keyboard, you can save time by deliberately leaving out the apostrophe in contractions like I'm, don't, can't, and so on. Type im, dont, cant, and so on. The iPhone proposes I'm, don't, or can't, so you can just tap the Space bar to fix the word and continue.
- To produce an accented character (like é, ë, è, ê, and so on), keep your finger pressed on that key for 1 second. A palette of accented alternatives appears; slide onto the one you want. (Keys that sprout these alternative versions: A, E, Y, U, I, O, S, L, Z, C, N, ?, ', ", $, and !.)
- Even if you've engaged the silencer switch on the side, the iPhone still sounds any alarm you've set. Good to know.
- You probably already know that you can rearrange your Home screen, and even set up multiple Home screens (up to 9). Just hold your finger down on any one icon until they all begin to wiggle. Now you can drag them to rearrange them (even onto the Dock of four special icons at the bottom), or drag off to the right to create a new Home screen.
And what if, in the process of downloading and then deleting new App store programs, you wind up with unsightly gaps on your Home screens? Here's a quick way to consolidate them onto a smaller number of full Home screens, without gaps: tap Settings->General-> Reset->Reset Home Screen Layout. If you'd put 10 programs on each of four Home screens, you wind up with only two screens, each packed with 20 icons. Any leftover blank pages are eliminated.
- If you come to the iPhone from another, lesser GSM phone, your phone book may be stored on its little SIM card instead of in the phone itself. In that case, you don't have to retype all of those names and numbers to bring them into your iPhone. In Settings->Contacts, the new Import SIM Contacts button can do the job for you. (The results may not be pretty. For example, some phones store all address-book data in CAPITAL LETTERS.)
- If you've indulged yourself by downloading some goodies from the App Store, then you may find yourself wondering where you're supposed to adjust their preferences. Turns out they often get stashed away in a completely different program--in Settings. That's where Apple encourages software authors to locate their own setting screens. For example, here's where you can edit your screen name and password for the AIM chat program, change how many days' worth of news you want the NY Times Reader to display, and so on.
- Don't type http://www or .com when entering Web addresses. Safari is smart enough to know that most Web addresses use that format--so you can leave all that stuff out, and it will supply them automatically. Instead of http://www.cnn.com, for example, just type cnn and hit Go.
- Don't type .net, .org, or .edu, either. Safari's secret pop-up menu of canned URL choices can save you four keyboard-taps apiece. To see it, hold your finger down on the .com button. Then tap the common suffix you want.
- The iPhone can now geotag the photos you take with it. Geotagging means, "embedding your latitude and longitude information into a photo when you take it." After all, every digital picture you've ever taken comes with its time and date invisibly embedded in its file; why not its location? So the good news is that the iPhone can geotag every photo you take. How you get to see this information, is a bit trickier.
Once the photos are synced to your computer, you can view the geotag information in iPhoto (the Get Info command reveals latitude and longitude), Preview (the Inspector window shows a map), Picasa (use the Tools->Geotag menu to see the photo's location in Google Earth). Unfortunately, the iPhone strips away the geotags whenever you send a photo by e-mail. That's a good argument for using the free downloadable program AirMe instead of the iPhone's built-in camera program. It avoids that geotag-stripping problem and many others.
So what can you do to keep your brain in its best working form? There may be no way to dodge bad genes, bad luck, injury, and disease, but studies of brain aging consistently identify a few characteristics in old-aged but nimble-brained people. Here are a few practical guidelines if you hope to become a quick-witted fast-talking 90-year-old cribbage shark:
• You are what you do. The brain is constantly rewiring the connections between your neurons, strengthening the ones you use and weakening the ones that you don't. In other words, when you spend a day munching Cheetos, watching American Idol reruns, and lamenting the tragedy of your life, you aren't just whiling away the time. You're also training your brain to be a better Cheetos-eater, TV watcher, and chronic worrier. Fall into this pattern for a few years, and your brain just won't look the same.
• Use it or lose it. The brain may not be a muscle, but there's good evidence that the human body doesn't waste effort maintaining mental hardware that you never use. Surprisingly, it seems that it's never too late to ramp up your thinking. Many studies suggest that suddenly giving your brain more to do, even late in life, can overcome recent brain decline and foster broad, long-term improvements. While there's no magic brain-honing activity, broad, integrative tasks like studying a new language, learning to play a musical instrument, changing jobs, writing a book, picking up a new hobby, and planning the perfect crime are all good prospects.
• Embrace something different. The brain craves novelty. The best way to keep your brain stimulated is to activate as much of it as often as you can. There's a fun side to this advice ("Indulge your curiosity!" "Engage strangers in long conversations!"), and a more challenging side ("Turn off the TV and learn differential calculus!"). The bottom line is that most of the time, the human body craves dull and easy stability. However, the brain thrives with constant challenges, tricky concepts, extreme concentration, and, well, work.
• Exercise the body to help the mind. Studies suggest the keenest old brains have owners who exercise regularly. The best bet seems to be modest aerobic exercise, such as a daily jog or brisk walk. It's unclear why this helps, although it could well be that exercise stimulates other body processes that benefit the brain.
• It wouldn't hurt to strum a tune. The popular media is filled with tantalizing studies suggesting that a bit of music listening or music making can boost test scores and cultivate a baby genius. The truth is that the human brain is unlikely to respond to a magic music pill. However, exposing your brain to as many different influences as possible is always a surefire way to promote its development. Learning music as a discipline--in other words, as something to read, play, or improvise--is likely to draw on regions of the brain that are left dormant through the rest of your day-to-day life. (That said, if you're already an accomplished musician, your brain has long-ago transformed the challenging problems of making music into deeply ingrained neural patterns that take little effort. As a result, you'll get more brain stimulation by taking up accounting.)
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TRANSCRIPT
So the first thing, I wanna go into the preference pane for a second. I want to show you a couple things. Again, we're in iPhoto '08. Now the number one thing you should do, how many of you work are in a network environment ever like at work or in a public network? Any network folks here? Not too many. What are the rest of you hanging out in the living room? Yeah, mostly? All right. All right, well that's okay. For, okay, so this tip is for three of you, so that's what I like to do. I like tips that apply to a lot of people.
The first thing you should do and the rest of you should do this anyway 'cause you may someday get out of the house and end up in public. Go to Sharing, right. It's okay to look for shared photos but don't have this box sometimes is checked by default. Don't share your photos with the world automatically. If this box is checked, and you're on a network, what'll happen is your photos will show up in other people's iPhoto pane right here. Now that may be okay. That may not be okay. Sometimes it's sort of shocking when you have people you know show up here, and you go, "Should I look at those photos?" They haven't asked me to look at 'em. So make sure that you turn that box off.
Okay, that's my num' - this is all part of one tip. We're still in one tip right now, so these tips have A, B, and C levels, okay, so that's one thing. Now there's some new things happening over in the general pane here, and one of 'em is double-click behavior. Double-click behavior in iPhoto '08 is very important and very fun. Right now what I recommend is that for double-click behavior you have magnifies photo, and I'll show you why. Most of the time when we're looking at photos, right, when we're in our thumbnails here, we wanna see them. We just wanna double-click and get a bigger picture. Now in previous versions of iPhoto, you would double-click and a lot o' times you end up in edit mode, all right. You don't really wanna edit most of the time. Hopefully, you don't even need to edit most of the time. You just want a bigger look at the shot, so in iPhoto '08, they gave you that option, so now when you double-click, right. When you double-click, you can just look at the photo, and you just have your regular rotate and email and all that kinda stuff, and you click again and it goes away. But you go what sometimes I do wanna edit, so do I have to like click on the photo and then go down here to the pencil in order to edit? You don't.
One of the most important keys in iPhoto - the key you should burn this into your memory - is the option key. The option key the engineers who made iPhoto love the option key, so now I'm just gonna hold down the option key. I'm gonna double-click. Now I'm in edit mode. That option key is very important. Now it comes to play in a lot of other areas too. Now what happens if you're in edit mode and then you don't wanna save your changes? Does anyone know what you do? Escape. You escape from edit mode. If you hit the escape key, and that's whether you're in full screen or any other edit mode, hit escape; you can get out of there and none of your changes are saved which is pretty important. It's pretty important stuff.
Now rotating photos is another place when you're in preferences, you get to choose which way you're gonna rotate your photos. When you hit the rotate key, right? And of course, you always know you think about we all know which way we're gonna hold the camera all the time, right? Do you always hold it the same way? Sometimes? No. You know what's really fun? You know a lot of things break up marriages, right, money and differences in religion and stuff like that. One thing that'll break up a marriage very quickly is if you're sharing one camera on a vacation because invariably, right, she holds it this way which she does rather close, and then hands it to him and then he holds it this way, right. And then you get your photos back and they're all catty-wampus, right, or sometimes he might hold it this way sometimes and then he changes his mind and is gonna hold it that way just to keep it fun. All right, that's not good, but iPhoto can help preserve your relationships and I'll show you how.
You do make, you have to make some sort of decision here but it really doesn't make any difference which way photos initially rotate. Like right now here we have a photo right here and we have the rotate button. Now it's set to rotate the wrong way. If I click on it and hit rotate, it's gonna put her on her head. I don't necessarily wanna do that, but we'll do it anyway. Okay, now do I need to go back to preferences in order to get her going the right way? What key would I probably use to go the other direction? Option key, absolutely! Hold down the option key and we can straighten things out, so this is how it saves your marriage. You don't care which way the photos are because you just go through with the rotate key and then if it's turned the wrong way, you hold down the option key and it goes the other way. You don't have to keep going back to preferences to change your preference there.
So this is two instances where the option key is really helpful. One is to go from double-click just to view, and then the other is, of course, to go double-click to edit, so the option key toggles that and then rotating in different directions.
To the planning-adverse and even some project managers, project-managing a vacation is over the top. I'm a die-hard organizer so project management creeps into even what I do for fun. This approach isn't as sick as it might sound. Really. I just got back from a ski vacation in Steamboat, so I had a chance to examine this peccadillo of mine.
1. Edit one section at a time whenever possible - that's what the "edit" link to the right of section headings is for. It makes it much less likely that what you're doing will conflict with an edit being done by someone else, and it makes it easier for other editors looking at an edit if it's only to one section.
2. Get a user account. It gives you a lot of benefits, including more privacy than if you edit without logging in. It's free, and Wikipedia requires you to provide absolutely no personal information. (In fact,the next three tips don't apply unless you're a registered editor.)
3. You can even edit just the top ("lead") section of the article - if you're a registered user, go to "my preferences", then the "Gadgets" tab, and select "Add an [edit] link for the introduction section of a page".
4. When you're editing only one section, you normally can't see the footnotes from that section when you preview your edit. If you add "<preferences/> at the bottom of the section, temporarily, you can see the footnotes in that section; you just need to remember to delete this temporary tag before you save your edit.
5. Sign up to get the weekly Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia's internal weekly newsletter. For inexperienced editors, a lot of the information will be irrelevant or difficult to understand, but you're not going to get quizzed about its contents, so it's not a problem to just skip over anything that isn't interesting.
1. Never check the "Remember me" box when logging onto the site. (Doing so puts your account at unnecessary risk and saves you very little time or effort.)
2. When you register for the site, use your actual birthday so that your friends will get an automatic heads-up a few days before the Big Day (all the better to fete you with).
3. Never add compromising photos or info to your Facebook profile; bosses, teachers, hiring managers, and others can use legitimate means to see your profile *even if* you think you've adjusted your privacy settings to prevent them.
4. If you're on Facebook to find a gig (or a date), be sure to sprinkle keywords liberally in your profile descriptions. Doing so ups the odds of your appearing in other members' searches.
5. Before you fill out your profile, first head to the main menu and click the "privacy" link (little-p) and follow the steps in Chapter 12 of the book to customize who gets to see how much of your personal information.
From Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual
In Mac OS X 10.5, Apple did something secret and artistic: It quadrupled the potential size of its icons. Instead of the measly 128 pixels square (which is all that most people ever see, maximum), you can blow them up to a colossal 512 pixels square. They're less like icons than art you can hang on your wall. To see the effect, you have to use Terminal.
Type this command, exactly as you see it here, but all on one line:
defaults write com.apple.finder DesktopViewOptions -dict IconSize -integer 256; killall Finder
It's quite a shocking sight--and, in fact, rather too big to be useful. It also works only on desktop icons--not icons in folders.
To turn the effect off, press c-J to open the View Options dialog box. Adjust the icon-size slider; the least touch of that slider turns the giganto-icon effect off again.
From Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual
Doesn't running Windows on my Mac mean that I'll be exposed to the nightmare world of viruses and spyware, just like the rest of the Windows world?
As a matter of fact, yes.
If you install Windows on your Mac, you should also install Windows antivirus and antispyware software to protect that half of the computer. The world is crawling with commercial programs that do the job; ironically, one of the easiest and least expensive is Microsoft's OneCare Live ($50 a year for up to three computers). There are also lots of free programs, like Microsoft Defender for spyware, and either AVG Antivirus (www.free.grisoft.com) or Avast Antivirus (www.avast.com) for viruses.
The good news is even if your Windows installation gets infected, the Mac side of your computer is unaffected. Just as Mac OS X can't run Windows-only software like, say, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, so it can't run Windows virus software.
Some people, therefore, run Windows naked--without virus protection (especially when using Windows-in-a-window programs like Parallels and VMWare Fusion). If a virus does strike, no big deal; they drag the infected copy of Windows to the Trash and just install a fresh one!
With this new Missing Manual, you can count on learning how to use all of Leopard's new features including the Time Machine, Boot Camp, and File Stacks. And here, as a bonus, David gives you six of his favorite Leopard tips:
1. Spotlight has been given two quiet enhancements that turn it into a different beast altogether. First, it's a tiny pocket calculator, always at the ready. Click in the Search box, type or paste 38*48.2-7+55, and marvel at the first result in the Spotlight menu: 1879.6. There's your answer--and you didn't even have to fire up the Calculator.
And it's not just a four-function calculator, either. It works with square roots: type sqrt(25), and you'll get the answer 5. It also works with powers; type pow(6,6)--that is, 6 to the power of 6--and you'll get 46656. You can even type pi to represent--you know, pi.
2. Spotlight is also now a full-blown English dictionary. Or, more specifically, it's wired directly into Mac OS X's own dictionary, which sits in your Applications folder. So if you type, for example, "schadenfreude" into the Spotlight box, you'll see, to your amazement, the beginning of the actual definition right there in the menu. Click it to open Dictionary and read the full-blown entry. (In this example, that would be: "noun: pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.")
3. The Mosaic screensaver is a real stunner, and Apple doesn't even talk about it. It starts with one photo from your collection; your "camera" pulls back farther and farther, revealing that that photo is just one in a grid--a huge grid--that's composed of all your photos. As you pull even farther back, each photo becomes so small that it becomes only one dot of another photo--from the same collection! And then that one starts shrinking, and the cycle repeats, on and on into infinity. How could Apple not have mentioned Mosaic in its Leopard advertising?
4. You're floundering in some program. You're SURE there's a Page Numbering command in those menus somewhere. But there are 11 menus and 143 submenus hiding in those menus, and you haven't got time for the pain. That's when you should think of using the Help menu. When you type "page number" (or whatever) into its Search box, the results menu lists, at the top, the names of any menu commands in that program that contain the words you typed. Better still, it actually opens that menu for you, and displays a big, blue, animated, floating arrow pointing to the command you wanted. You'd have to have your eyes closed to miss it. Slide your cursor over, click the menu command, and get on with your life.
5. That menu-search feature is especially helpful in Web browsers like Safari and Firefox, because it even finds entries in your Bookmarks and History menus! In Safari, for example, you can pluck a recently visited site out of the hundreds in the daily History submenus, like the "Wednesday, January 9" submenu. You've just saved yourself a lot of poking around menus, trying to find the name of a site you know you've seen recently.)
Ultratip: If you think about it, this feature also means that you have complete keyboard power over every menu in every program in the world. Hit Command-Shift-? to open the Help search box, type a bit of the command's name, and then use the arrow keys to walk down the results. Hit Enter to trigger the command you want.
1. Always back up your photos as soon as you get them out of your camera. You can burn a CD or DVD right in the OS X finder (just drag your photos to the disc icon in a Finder window sidebar, then go to File>Burn Disc), or copy to an external hard drive, before you do any editing. Elements 6 also lets you burn discs from Bridge (File>Burn CD/DVD) . For really important photos (wedding and baby pix, for example), it's not a bad idea to burn a disc and keep that someplace else, like your safe deposit box or with a friend or relative. Then, no matter what happens, you won't have to worry about losing your photos.
2. Never, ever work on your original photo. Always make a copy (File>Duplicate) and work on that. If you use a program like iPhoto, Lightroom, or Aperture to organize your photos, those will save your original separately from your edited version for you.
3. Sharing photos. There are all kinds of fun, creative ways to share your photos in Elements 6, and Create Mode makes it super easy to explore them all. Try making a photobook or a fancy collage, or upload your photos to EasyShare or one of the other online services to create mugs, bags, and other cool gift items with your photos on them.
4. Don't scorn the auto buttons. If you've never tried these one-click fixes -- Auto Levels or Auto Color, for example -- give 'em a try. Each version of Elements gets a little smarter and you may find that you like the results you get from one of these easy-to-use fixes.
5. Panoramas for everyone. You don't need to feel wistful anymore about the fact that your point and shoot camera's lens doesn't have a true wide-angle setting. Take a series of photos with, ideally, about a 30% overlap and Elements' Photomerge will automatically stitch them together into a panorama wider than you could have captured with the widest lens. (If you've tried Photomerge in previous editions of Elements, the Photomerge in Elements 6 is a whole new thing -- totally automated and it does terrific blending to eliminate visible seams between images.)
6. Batch processing with RAW. If you shoot RAW format photos, now you can apply the same settings to multiple pictures at once. Just open all the RAW files you want to work on, and then click to select each of their thumbnail-sized photos. Elements will then apply any edits you've made to the current photo to all the pictures you've just selected.
7. Crop creatively. Unless you plan to print on standard photo paper, don't feel compelled to crop your photos to standard photo paper sizes and shapes. Use cropping to emphasize the best parts of your photo if you plan to use the image for the Web or to print at home.
8. Take credit, quickly. You can put copyright info on your photos by using the Watermark feature in the Process Multiple Files dialog box (File->Process Multiple Files), or you can create a custom brush: just type what you want (the copyright symbol is Alt+0169 in Windows, Option+G on a Mac), then select your type and go to Edit-Define Brush. Save your brush and from now on you've got a one- click copyright notice.
9. Black and white are beautiful. The Convert to Black and White feature in Elements does a great job, especially if you use the sliders to tweak your adjustments, but you can create even more dramatic black and white photos by using the Dodge and Burn tools to selectively enhance contrast after converting.
10. The very best way to learn Elements is to dive right in. Open a photo and try all sorts of different things. Nobody, even great Photoshop gurus, knows exactly what will happen to any given photo when you combine different filters and effects. Experiment, and you'll quickly see why Elements is so addicting. You can do all sorts of amazing things you never knew you could!
1. Always back up your photos as soon as you get them out of your camera. You can use the Organizer's backup or disc-burning feature (File->Backup Catalog to CD, DVD or Hard Drive) for this, or you can use your computer's built-in disc-burning utility. For really important photos (wedding and baby pix, for example), it's not a bad idea to burn a disc and keep that someplace else, like your safe deposit box or with a friend or relative. Then, no matter what happens, you won't have to worry about losing your photos.
2. Never, ever work on your original photo. If you use the Organizer, good news: Elements already has your back. It creates version sets, which allow you to save different states of your image as you edit. You can create as many different versions of a photo as you like and go back to any one of them at any time. And if you're working with RAW files you can't alter your original (only the conversion settings). If you don't use the Organizer, make a copy of the picture (File->Duplicate) and work on that. This way you can always start over again if you get a better idea later on.
3. Sharing photos with the Organizer. There are all kinds of fun, creative ways to share your photos in Elements 6, and the Organizer makes it super easy to explore them all. Try a slideshow with music and commentary, or upload your photos to EasyShare or one of the other online services to create mugs, bags, and other cool gift items with your photos on them.
4. Don't scorn the auto buttons. If you've never tried these one-click fixes--Auto Levels or Auto Color, for example--give 'em a try. Each version of Elements gets a little smarter and you may find that you like the results you get from one of these easy-to-use fixes.
5. Panoramas for everyone. You don't need to feel wistful anymore about the fact that your point and shoot camera's lens doesn't have a true wide-angle setting. Take a series of photos with, ideally, about a 30% overlap and Elements' Photomerge will automatically stitch them together into a panorama wider than you could have captured with the widest lens. (If you've tried Photomerge in previous editions of Elements, the Photomerge in Elements 6 is a whole new thing--totally automated and it does terrific blending to eliminate visible seams between images.)
6. Batch processing with RAW. If you shoot RAW format photos, now you can apply the same settings to multiple pictures at once. Just open all the RAW files you want to work on, and then click to select each of their thumbnail-sized photos. Elements will then apply any edits you've made to the current photo to all the pictures you've just selected.
7. Crop creatively. Unless you plan to print on standard photo paper, don't feel compelled to crop your photos to standard photo paper sizes and shapes. Use cropping to emphasize the best parts of your photo if you plan to use the image for the Web or to print at home.
8. Take credit, quickly. You can put copyright info on your photos by using the Watermark feature in the Process Multiple Files dialog box (File->Process Multiple Files), or you can create a custom brush: just type what you want (the copyright symbol is Alt+0169 in Windows, Option+G on a Mac), then select your type and go to Edit->Define Brush. Save your brush and from now on you've got a one-click copyright notice.
9. Black and white are beautiful. The Convert to Black and White feature in Elements does a great job, especially if you use the sliders to tweak your adjustments, but you can create even more dramatic black and white photos by using the Dodge and Burn tools to selectively enhance contrast after converting.
10. The very best way to learn Elements is to dive right in. Open a photo and try all sorts of different things. Nobody, even great Photoshop gurus, knows exactly what will happen to any given photo when you combine different filters and effects. Experiment, and you'll quickly see why Elements is so addicting. You can do all sorts of amazing things you never knew you could!
I have in my possession a nugget, a secret bit of iPhone information that's so valuable, such a headache- and time-saver, that I don't know what to do with it.
One voice in my head says, "Hoard it! Keep it a secret until your book is published! If you reveal it, it'll be all over the Net in hours, and all your competitors' books will have it, too."
But another voice says, "But this information is too good to keep quiet. Plus, you didn't discover it yourself. And besides, you're not gonna starve, either way."
Eventually, the second little voice prevailed. I'm going to share with you the solution to one of the most annoying things, if not THE most annoying thing, about typing on the iPhone:
The punctuation keys and alphabet keys appear in two different keyboard layouts.
So every time you want to type a period or a comma, it's a three-step, awkward dance: (1) Tap the ".?123" key in the lower left to summon the punctuation layout. (2) Type the period. (3) Tap the ABC key in the lower left to return to the alphabet layout.
Imagine how excruciating it is to type, for example, "a P.O. Box in the U.S.A."! That's 34 finger taps and 10 mode changes!
And therefore imagine how thrilled I was to receive an email from reader Andrew McCallum, containing a method of typing a period or a comma with only a SINGLE finger gesture.
The iPhone doesn't register most key presses until you *release* your finger. But Andrew discovered that the Shift and Punctuation keys register their taps on the *press-down* instead.
So here's what you can do, all in one motion:
1. Touch the ".?123" key, but don't lift your finger as the punctuation layout appears.
2. Slide your finger a half inch onto the period or comma key, and release.
Incredibly, the ABC layout returns automatically. You've typed a period or a comma with one finger touch instead of three. In fact, you can type ANY of the punctuation symbols the same way.
This makes a HUGE difference in the usability of the keyboard.
I'm sending Andrew an autographed copy of iPhone: The Missing Manual.
Come to think of it, I'll send you one, too, for any tip you discover that I wind up using (and didn't know already)! Let me know: david@pogueman.com.
Type on, bro.
Be sure to also check out David Pogue's Favorite iPhone Tricks
The iPhone's finger-driven interface seems natural and obvious. But when you really think about it, making it seem that way was no easy task. There are no menus in the iPhone software, for example, and no checkboxes or radio buttons. Everything on the screen has to be big enough for a fleshy fingertip.
On the other hand, the finger makes an outstanding pointing device; heck, you've been pointing with it all your life. It's much faster to scroll diagonally with a fingertip, for example, than with fussy adjustments on two different scroll bars.
Here, then, are some of the iPhone's unadvertised taps, double-taps, and other shortcuts, all culled from iPhone: The Missing Manual.
Double-Tapping
Double-tapping is actually pretty rare on the iPhone. It's not like the Mac or Windows, where double-clicking the mouse means "open." On the iPhone, you open something with one tap.
A double tap, therefore, is reserved for three functions:
- In Photos, Google Maps, and Safari (the Web browser), double-tapping zooms in on whatever you tap, magnifying it by a factor of two.
- In the same programs, as well as Mail, double-tapping means, "restore to original size" after you've zoomed in. (Weirdly, in Google Maps, you use a different gesture to zoom out: tap once with two fingers. That gesture appears nowhere else on the iPhone.)
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When you're watching a video, double-tapping eliminates or restores letterbox bars.
See, the iPhone's screen is bright, vibrant, and stunningly sharp. It's not, however, the right shape for videos.
Standard TV shows are squarish, not rectangular. So when you watch TV shows, you get black letterbox columns on either side of the picture.
Movies have the opposite problem. They're too wide for the iPhone screen. So when you watch movies, you wind up with letterbox bars above and below the picture.
Some people are fine with that. At least when letterbox bars are onscreen, you know you're seeing the complete composition of the scene the director intended.
Other people can't stand letterbox bars. You're already watching on a pretty small screen; why sacrifice some of that precious area to black bars?
That's why the iPhone gives you a choice. If you double-tap the video as it plays, you zoom in, magnifying the image so that it fills the entire screen.
Part of the image is now off the screen; now you're not seeing the entire composition originally broadcast. You lose the top and bottom of TV scenes, or the left and right edges of movie scenes.
If this effect winds up chopping off something important--some text on the screen, for example--restoring the original letterbox view is just another double-tap away.
Secrets of the Sensors
The iPhone has three cool sensors. First, it has an accelerometer that detects when you've rotated the iPhone into landscape orientation. In programs like Photos, Safari, and iPod, it triggers the screen image to rotate as well.
Camouflaged behind the black glass where you can't see them except with a bright flashlight are two more sensors: a proximity sensor that shuts off the screen illumination and touch sensitivity when the phone is against your head (it works only in the Phone application), and an ambient-light sensor that brightens the display when you're in sunlight and dims it in darker places.
Apple says that it experimented with having the light sensor active all the time, but it was weird to have the screen get brighter and darker all the time. So the sensor now samples the ambient light, and adjusts the brightness; it does this only once--each time you unlock the phone after waking it.
You can use that tip to your advantage. By covering up the sensor (just above the earpiece) as you unlock the phone, you force it to a low-power, dim screen-brightness setting (because the phone believes that it's in a dark room). Or by holding it up to a light as you wake it, you get full brightness. In both cases, you've saved all the taps and navigation it would have taken you to find the manual brightness slider in Settings.
Earbud Cord Switch
Without close inspection, you'd have a hard time telling the iPhone's white stereo earbuds apart from a regular iPod's--but don't get them mixed up. The iPhone's earbuds have a tiny, embedded clicker/microphone partway down the right earbud cord.
That's right, "clicker/microphone." The tiny bulge is the microphone for phone calls. But if you pinch the bulge, you'll find that it clicks.
- Pinch once to answer an incoming phone call. Pinch for a couple seconds to dump the call to voicemail. (You can also double-tap the Sleep/Wake switch on top of the iPhone to send the call to voicemail.)
- During music or video playback, pinch once to pause the music; pinch again to resume playback.
- During music playback, double-pinch to skip to the next song.
Customizing the iPod Buttons
The iPod module on the iPhone starts out with buttons along the bottom for summoning four lists: Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos.
But what about Albums? Genres? Composers?
They're there, all right, but hidden; you have to tap More to see them.
But what if you use those lists more often than Artists or Songs? No problem: you can replace one of those starter buttons with a list of your own.
Tap More, and then tap the Edit button (upper-left corner). You arrive at the Configure screen. Here's the complete list of music-and-video sorting lists: Albums, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Genres, Composers, Compilations, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos.
To replace one of the four starter icons, use a finger to drag an icon from the top half of the screen downward, directly onto the existing icon you want to replace. It lights up to show the success of your drag.
When you release your finger, you'll see that the new icon has replaced the old one. Tap Done in the upper-right corner.
Keyboard Speedups
Don't bother using the Shift key to capitalize a new sentence. The iPhone does that capitalizing automatically.
Don't put apostrophes in contractions, either; the iPhone will put those in for you, too.
Force Quit, Reset
The iPhone is pretty darned simple and stable, but it's still a computer. In times of troubleshooting, these tips may come in handy:
- Force quit a program. Press and hold the Home button for six seconds to force-quit a program that seems to be stuck.
- Reset. If the entire iPhone locks up--it can happen--press and hold both the Home button and the Sleep/Wake switch for eight seconds. You'll see the screen go black, and then the Apple logo appears as the iPhone reboots.
More iPhone timesavers from David: a punctuation-typing shortcut. Perfect for heavy keyboard users.
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