I have been using a PC for so many years that I sometimes forget the command keys to use to take a screenshot when I use my Mac. Since I need to remind myself, I thought it might be a better idea to blog a quick guide so that my readers can refer to it when needed.

The main keys to use on your Mac keyboard is the Command & Shift key. There are three keys to remember when taking a screenshot. The Command, Shift & 3,4 (numeric keys).

Shortcuts:

Command-Shift-3:
Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop

Command-Shift-4,
then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop

Command-Shift-4,
then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop

Command-Control-Shift-3:
Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard

Command-Control-Shift-4,
then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard

Command-Control-Shift-4,
then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

In Leopard, the following keys can be held down while selecting an area (via Command-Shift-4 or Command-Control-Shift-4)

Thank you to macrumors.com for the tip.

I’ve been able to save hours of reading time by listening to audio books while I drive to work. This is made possible by hooking up my iPod Touch to a FM Transmitter and when tuned to an unused FM frequency, you can listen to your music or audio books through your car stereo system. This is not new technology but it was previously illegal in the United Kingdom to use a FM Transmitter in your car. Since the law changed, I finally got around to buying a FM Transmitter to use in my car.

There are many brands of FM Transmitter you can buy from high street shops or even online and the prices range from cheap to expensive. I bought mine from Amazon.co.uk and I decided on the Belkin iPod TuneBase FM Transmitter with ClearScan. I decided on Belkin with ClearScan because it allowed me to charge my iPod Touch while I listened to my audio books and ClearScan made it easy to tune the gadget.

What is ClearScan?

The ClearScan technology will automatically scan to find the best FM frequency and it eliminates the static. With ClearScan you can enjoy listening to music and audio books on your iPod static-free in your car. I know how annoying it can be to listen to your favourite music while you endure all the hissing static. ClearScan technology claimed to be best at auto scanning and deliver static-free music. I tried it and I agree with Belkin’s claim.

TuneBase presets.
Once you find a clear station, you can set it to one of two presets on the TuneBase. This is especially useful around your local area and areas that you frequent, because you can quickly return to these stations at the touch of a button.

Other plus points I like
1. The Belkin comes with a flexible steel-neck mount and a swivel cradle which allows you to position the iPod for optimal viewing and accessibility.
2. Supports various generations and types of iPod.
3. The TuneBase built-in PRO setting optimizes the audio and provides a volume boost for the best sound possible.
4. Large display on the from to tell you exactly what frequency the music is being broadcast.
5. Works a treat as an iPod charger which you can easily plug into your car cigarette lighter.
6. The TuneBase also has a line-out feature that lets you use it with car-stereo inputs or cassette adapters.

Any minus points?
Yes, only one…the price. It costs £40 from Amazon.co.uk but if you buy it from an Apple Store or any High Street shops, you could be forking out between £60 – £70.

Would I still recommend Belkin iPod TuneBase FM Transmitter with ClearScan to the readers?
It’s a definite Yes. If you look beyond the price, you will appreciate the technology. You get what you pay for and in the case of this gadget, you will not be disappointed.

So much has been said about Skype for iPhone. Everyone were anticipating the release and finally I read on BBC that it will be available for download from iTunes App Store today. Yes, today. I downloaded and installed it on my iPod Touch this morning. Later this evening after I got home from work, I installed Skype on my friend’s iPod Touch and noticed that there are already over 300 reviews on the application. When I downloaded Skype this morning, no one had left a review but this evening there’s over 300 reviews. It would be interesting to see the stats, if it is available to find out how many people have downloaded Skype since its release.

The next thing to do now that I have installed Skype is to find a microphone for my iPod Touch. Unlike iPhone, iPod Touch does not have a built-in microphone. The microphone that I would like to get is called TouchMic Handsfree Lapel Microphone & Adapter. The microphone is compatible with iPod Touch 2nd Gen and works with Skype application. It is small and neat and has a lapel which you can clip to your t-shirt or shirt.

What is even more awesome is you can use the TouchMic Handsfree Lapel Microphone with Voxie Recorder to record audio messages. Voxie Pro Recorder is available for download from the iTunes App Store for £1.19

My latest past time is playing online chess on my iPod Touch. Chess with Friends is a free game created for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The way chess is played at Chess with Friends is not the traditional method where you finish the game over a few hours if not less.

Chess with Friends is a type of correspondence chess where the game is played with friends online or random opponents with an iPhone or iPod Touch and wifi connection. A game can last from a few hours to a few days or even weeks.

Here is how Chess with Friends work. First I download and install Chess with Friends on my iPod Touch or iPhone. Then I create a standard account but Chess with Friends will ask you for your mobile no. You can decline giving out your mobile no. if you do not wish to. It is optional. If you decide otherwise, Chess with Friends will allow opponents to contact you on your mobile. In a way, Chess with Friends is sort of a social network for chess enthusiasts.

After you have created an account, you login and you can start playing chess. You can choose a friend from your contact list, search for a friend using their username, let the computer select a random opponent for you or stick to a local game with “Pass and Play”. I tried Pass and Play the first time and the problem with Pass and Play is you need a friend in the same location to play chess with. You make one move, pass the iPhone/iPod Touch to your friend to make the next move, then you repeat the sequence.

Since I didn’t know anyone in my contact list who are interested in Chess with Friends and couldn’t think of any username to search for, I tried the Random opponent. With random opponent, you wait for the computer to find you a random player who is also waiting to play chess. This can some times take more than a few minutes. Once a random opponent is found, you get on with the game. With this mode of play, you or your opponent can make a move then get on with whatever you want to do and then go back and make another move a few minutes later, a day later, a week later or longer. So this means you will could be playing the game for as long as it takes.

I started a game last evening and played less than 5 moves then went on to watch American Idol then played another couple of moves and went to bed. I resumed playing chess with my random opponent an hour ago. While I was out this morning, I started another game with another random opponent and we are still playing the game. Chess with Friends allow you to create multiple games and you can play more than one game with different opponents. As you are playing the game, you can also chat (type-chat) with your random opponent.

I think Chess with Friends can be very addictive. Imagine waiting for time to pass in the airport and you are thinking what you should do. You can play Chess with Friends or have a chat with your random opponent about anything while making a few chess moves. If you lose your wifi connection, you can pick up the game when you arrive at your destination. At the same time you are exercising your brain since generally we only use around 10% of our brain at most times.

So anyone of you out there who are looking for a chess opponent, search for ashchuan and let’s see how long it will take to finish a game of chess.

There are times when I act in haste in a situation and then regret my action hours or days later. Upgrading my iPod Touch firmware 2.2.1 was one of those moments. In great enthusiasm, I trusted my instinct to upgrade to 2.2.1 without first checking online to find any reports of problem with 2.2.1 upgrade. I clicked Upgrade in iTunes as it started to sync my files with my iPod Touch. Now I wish I know how to roll back.

After the upgrade everything was fine for a while. Then my iPod Touch started to crash. Once it crashed I couldn’t restart the gadget. The Apple logo would appear then the screen would just go blank. Once after several attempts to revive my iPod Touch, it gave up and I had to restore my iPod Touch from a backup. After the restoration my iPod Touch was still crashing.

After some investigation I discovered the problem is caused by the wifi. If I have it on by default, it would consume the battery within minutes if I go online. I didn’t have that problem before the upgrade to 2.2.1. Since the upgrade my battery would drain in a few minutes if I go online using my iPod Touch.

I checked on Apple’s website and they denied that 2.2.1 had anything to do with wifi. Seriously what else could it be. I Googled, found a few others with wifi problem after 2.2.1 upgrade but no clear solution or fix is available.

I also discovered another problem with the 2.2.1 upgrade. It didn’t happen to my iPod Touch, thank God! but others would have their iTunes crash on them and they couldn’t sync their iPod Touch/iPhone after the upgrade to 2.2.1. For this problem, Apple provided a resolution. You are suppose to De-authorize and then Authorize again in iTunes before you connect your iPod Touch/iPhone to your computer.

Reason for de-authorizing and authorizing

Deauthorizing a computer allows you to manage which computers can play music, videos, audiobooks, or other content purchased from the iTunes Store.

Authorization helps protect the copyrights on the content you buy. You can use your digital rights management (DRM)-protected music purchases1 from the iTunes Store on up to five different computers (these can be any mix of Macintosh or Windows-compatible computers). When you play an item you’ve purchased, your computer is “authorized” to play content purchased using your Apple Account.

Learn how to Deauthorize and authorize iTunes here.

As for my wifi problem, it is not resolved. I’ve decided to book an appointment at the Genius Bar. If those guys can resolve my problem I will update the solution here. Till then, wish me luck.

Google included an Easter Egg in its Google Mobile Application. I discovered it yesterday after receiving a tweet from a friend. The Easter Egg is found in the Settings page and it is called Bells and Whistles. The Easter Egg does exactly that. It allows you to change the Theme Color, Sound and other settings in your Google Mobile App.

How to uncover the Easter Egg?
On your iPhone or iPod Touch, go to Google Mobile App and click/touch on Settings which is at the bottom right of your iPhone/iPod Touch screen.

Then scroll to the bottom of the page. The last menu displayed is the About menu. Continue to move your finger upwards rapidly as though you are scrolling to the bottom of the page even though it is already the bottom of the page. After a few seconds, the Easter Egg is uncovered and you will see a Bells and Whistles menu.

Click on Bells and Whistles. This will uncover the Bells and Whistles settings. You can change the Theme Color, Sounds, Live Waveform and Open Links in App.

Enjoy uncovering the Easter Egg!

I came back from a long walk around Kingston-upon-Thames earlier and thought about the performance of my Mac and said to myself I have never defragged the hard drive since I bought the machine a few years back. I thought should I attempt to do a defrag on a Saturday afternoon.

If I want to defrag then which reliable utility should I use. As usual when in doubt, the best thing to do is to Google and guess what. Defragging your Mac hard drive is a thing of the past, like shoulder pads and hair mousse! That is because of the way the OS X operating system manages files.

The system optimizes itself after a system update of installation of a new application but you can still run a defrag utility to defrag your Mac’s hard drive if you wish to. It could take up to several hours and you may not see any significant performance improvements.

Here are some useful tips I learnt about OS X.

1) OS X automatically defrags files that are less than 20 megabytes.
2) If you make it a habit to periodically clear your Mac’s various caches, including those associated with your Internet browser, it can also help speed up your machine.

Are there other option besides defragging?

Yes, you can reformat our hard drive. That’s a crude method but remember to backup all your documents and files before you attempt anything that involves the word format!

If you think that using Safari browser is safer than Internet Explorer, you should think twice. Apple has just release a fix for Safari to fix a dozen security flaws. The flaws opens up your PC/Mac to vulnerabilities that could have you machine taken full control by malicious programs.

The serious flaws reported by zdnet website are:

1. A heap buffer overflow issue exists in the libxslt library. Viewing a maliciously crafted HTML page may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

2. A heap buffer overflow exists in CoreGraphics’ handling of color spaces. Viewing a maliciously crafted image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

3. Multiple uninitialized memory access issues exist in libTIFF’s handling of LZW-encoded TIFF images. Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

4. A memory corruption issue exits in ImageIO’s handling of TIFF images. Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

5. A buffer overflow exists in the handling of images with an embedded ICC profile. Opening a maliciously crafted image with an embedded ICC profile may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

The fix should be treated as highly critical update and you should apply the patch immediately if you are using Safari.

I have been using a Mac for awhile but it is not until recently that I discovered how to change the Print Screen shortcut on my Mac. I had to change the shortcut because I am not using a Mac keyboard. Instead I am using a Windows keyboard from my older PC whose motherboard fried when the power supply went faulty…but that is another story.

To setup or change keyboard shortcut on a Mac, go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse

Then double-click on the shortcut you would like to change and press the key you would like to change to. In the example below, I have changed “Save picture of screen as a file” from the default Mac shortcut key to F13 which is the Print Screen key on my PC keyboard. So everytime I hit F13, it will capture the screenshot and save it as a png file on my Mac desktop.

Streaming on-line multi-media content is a hot topic of discussion this week. Just a few days ago I read that IMDB is allowing their readers to watch full length movies on-line. Today MySpace Music made an official announcement that it will allow the entire back catalogue of artists to be streamed online through their website.

Until now, an artist is only limited to stream four songs on their MySpace page. With MySpace Music you can listen to all the music you want when you are logged on to the site but if you wish to download the songs, you’ll have to pay 79p per song. Although there is no mention of song quality.

The service is set to be available in the UK before Christmas. The rivalry is heating up for Apple iTunes. I’ve been buying all my songs from iTunes in the last couple of years, I think this Christmas I will download the No. 1 hit from MySpace Music for a change.