Tag Archives: free

Tip for Writers on Mac OS: A Stickies Style Guide

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Maintain consistency in your writing with an easy-access style guide.

As I continue work on my 81st book (!), I thought I’d share a tip with other writers working on Macs. This one has to do with creating and maintaining a style guide for your work in progress.

Stickies IconToday, on my blog, An Eclectic Mind, I wrote quite a bit about what a style guide is and why it’s important. I also revealed my personal technique for maintaining a style guide for work in progress — I use Stickies — and explain why it’s a good solution for me.

In this piece I want to briefly discuss how to set up and use Stickies as a style guide. Keep in mind throughout this piece, however, that you can use Stickies to give you easy access to just about any information you might need to be reminded about as you work.

  1. In the Applications folder in in Launchpad (Mac OS X Lion and later only), open the Stickies icon.
  2. StickiesIf you’ve never opened stickies before, you’ll see some default notes with information on using Stickies. You can read these for more information. Then close them and do not save changes. You want to minimize the number of open windows on your Desktop, don’t you?
  3. Choose File > New Note to create a new sticky note window.
  4. My Style GuideResize it so it’s long and narrow, just wide enough to fit the words you’ll add to it.
  5. Reposition it so it’s on the far right (or left, if you prefer) side of your screen.
  6. As you work on your project, add difficult-to-remember words and phrases to it. Be sure to spell/capitalize the words/phrases exactly as you should be writing them. It’s also a good idea to list them in alphabetical order.
  7. If there’s a word or phrase you should never use, add it to the list but use the Fonts panel to format it with strikethrough formatting.
  8. When you are done writing for the day, quit Stickies. Do not close the note before quitting.
  9. When you start work the next day, open Stickies again. The note should reappear just as you left it, all ready to be consulted and updated as needed.

If you’re using Mac OS X Lion and you don’t quit Stickies, it’ll automatically reopen when you restart your computer. If you’re using an earlier version of Mac OS, you can set up Stickies as a Login item so it automatically opens when you start or log into your computer.

Again, you can use this tip for any kind of information you need to consult as you work at your computer. The one thing I wouldn’t put in Stickies is any kind of information that needs to be kept private. I recommend an application such as 1Password for that kind of data so it can be secured.

How do you use Stickies? Share your tips in the comments for this post.

Learn More!

Lion Book CoverWant to know more about Mac OS X Lion and Stickies? Check out my Mac OS X Lion: Visual QuickStart Guide. This 648-page, fully illustrated guide to Lion is available for a great price in print and Kindle versions from Amazon.com.

Broken Link Contest

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Help me clean up this mess — and maybe win a prize.

I’ve been building content on this site since 2003. In eight years, I’ve collected a lot of junk.

Broken Link ImageAs I revise this site, I’m going through every single post, deleting the ones I don’t think are relevant anymore, and fixing up the ones that remain. Along the way, I hope to hunt down and destroy all broken links.

But I’m only one person and can only check so many links in a day. So I’m asking for your help. And I’m willing to reward the folks who help me most with a free copy of any one of my books still in print.

Here’s how you can enter to win:

  1. Browse the site as you normally would.
  2. When you find a broken link*, open the comment for this post. (I put a link to it in the sidebar so it’s easy to find.)

    3. Check all the preceding comments to make sure your broken link isn’t already listed. I can’t give points for duplicate entries!

  3. If the broken link isn’t already listed, use the Comments form at the bottom of the page to enter the following information:
    • Your name and email address. (This might not be necessary if you’ve already commented here.) Please use your real email address; I will use it to contact you if you’re a winner. I will not share your address with anyone else or spam you. I promise.
    • The URL of the page where you found the broken link. It must begin with http://www.mariaguides.com/ — I’m not interested in rewarding folks for finding broken links on other sites.
    • The URL of the broken link. The easiest way to get this information is to either Control-Click (Mac OS) or Right-Click (Mac OS or Windows) on the broken link and use the Copy Link Location command in the contextual menu that appears. You can then paste it into the comment form.
  4. Submit the comment.
  5. Repeat as necessary. The more broken links you report, the better your chances of winning.

When I approve the comments — all comments are moderated here — I’ll check your findings. If you’ve correctly identified a broken link, you’ll score a point and I’ll note that in a reply to your comment.

At November month-end, I’ll award prizes to the top broken link finders.

Does this sound like a plan? I hope so. l could really use the help.

—
* A “broken link” is a link on a Web page that, when clicked, displays a “Page Not Found” error or something similar. In other words, it doesn’t display what it should for whatever reason.

MagCloud Offers Free Magazines for iPad Users

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Print on demand goes digital for free.

MagCloud LogoI’ve been using MagCloud for some time now to create marketing material and, for a while, a monthly newsletter about flying around Arizona in a helicopter. It was suggested to me by a reader of my blog and once I saw what it was all about, I ran with it. I’m not the only one. Hundreds of people are releasing monthly or quarterly magazines using MagCloud’s print-on-demand features. Of those, a bunch are also taking advantage of a new feature that makes it possible to automatically publish magazines in an iPad-compatible digital format.

February 2010

Exploring Arizona by Helicopter: February 2010

In this month’s issue:
- The Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River resembles flowing chocolate during spring thaws and summer flash floods.
- Breathtaking views of water-filled canyons are among wonders visible from the air at the Colorado-San Juan Confluence.
- Agathla Peak — widely known as El Capitan — stands…

Find out more on MagCloud

This is a great thing for iPad owners looking for interesting new reading material. There are dozens of beautiful, full-color magazines that you can download for free onto your iPad. All you need is the MagCloud iPad app, which is also free from the iPad App Store.

MagCloud Magazine StoreHere’s how it works.

  1. Download the app and install it on your iPad.
  2. Open the app and use it to visit MacCloud’s Magazine Store.
  3. Browse by topic or search for a specific title.
  4. Tap a magazine you want. It’s downloaded to your iPad.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as desired to download multiple magazines. They’ll appear in the My Magazines screen.
  6. Downloaded MagazineTap a downloaded magazine to read it. In portrait mode, it appears as a single page. In landscape mode, it appears as a spread. You can pinch and drag to magnify and scroll.

MagCloud is an excellent print-on-demand publisher for magazine-style publications. I highly recommend it. And if you’re an iPad user, I hope you’ll check out MagCloud’s app and the free magazines you can download. Be sure to do a search for “helicopter” and take a look at some of mine.

Mac OS X Book Excerpt Online

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Book sample chapter now online.

imageInformit.com puts another chapter on its site.

I just stopped by the Informit.com Web site to check their listings for my work. (They list all of my in print books for Peachpit Press, as well as articles I’ve written for them and excerpts from my books.) I found that they’d put another excerpt from my Mac OS X 10.4 book on their site: “File Management in Mac OS X 1.4 Tiger.”

If you don’t have the book and want to check out this sample chapter, please do. Frankly, I think it’s easier to read in the book, without the links and tiny pictures. Maybe this excerpt will convince you to buy a copy; if so, you can get it at a discount by clicking a link on their site.

Adding a Free Counter to Your Site or Blog

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Keeping count of visitors.

Ever wonder how many visitors your site or blog attracts? While you may have access to site statistics software that tracks and reports site visitors and hits, you may not. Or you may prefer a simple, old-fashioned visitor counter that’ll make this information easily available to visitors.

I use the free visitor counter offered by SiteMeter on my wickenburg-az.com Web site. And, for illustrational purposes, I’ve just added the same kind of counter to the sidebar of the WordPress book support Web site site. (Let’s see if Miraz lets me keep it there.)

Here’s how you can add a counter like this to your site or blog.

  1. Sign up for a SiteMeter account. It’s pretty straightforward and easy to do, so I won’t provide step-by-step guidance. Go to www.sitemeter.com, click the appropriate link, and provide the required information. You’ll get an e-mail message from the SiteMeter webmaster with login information for future use. You’re already logged in.
  2. Click the Manager link near the top of the page on the SiteMeter site. Then click the HTML Link on the left side of the page. You’ll see a list of links for adding code to various sites and blogs.
  3. Click the link labeled “Adding Site Meter to a WordPress blog hosted on your server.” (If you have a WordPress.com blog, you can click the link for that. Then follow the instructions there. These instructions assume you’re setting this up on a sever-installed WordPress blog.)
  4. Scroll down in the page that appears and select the contents of the edit box that displays the code for the counter. Use your browser’s Copy command to copy the code to the clipboard.
  5. Now open the sidebar.php or footer.php file for your theme with your favorite text editor or WordPress’s built-in theme editor.
  6. Position the insertion point where you want the counter to appear.
  7. Use your text editor’s or browser’s Paste command to paste in the code you copied.
  8. Save the file.
  9. View any page of your blog that includes the sidebar or footer (whichever file you modified) to make sure the page isn’t messed up. You should see a counter similar to the one shown in the sidebar of this page.

A few things to keep in mind:

  • You can set options on the SiteMeter site for your account to modify the appearance of the counter. If you want more options, you can pay for a premium account that gives you more control over the appearance.
  • You can also set option on the SiteMeter site to prevent the counter from including your computer, based on its IP address, to restart the counter, or even to count by an increment other than 1 (which is cheating, of course).
  • You should always back up a theme file before editing it, just in case you mess up the editing and need to go back to the original.
  • You can put the code in any theme file for your site, but it’s best to use a file that is accessed by all pages. That’s why I suggest sidebar.php or footer.php.
  • Depending on the theme and the file you modify, you may have to add additional HTML formatting codes for the counter to appear correctly. For example, you may have to surround the counter code with <li> and </li> codes to display it in the sidebar properly. Experiment with coding until you get it just right.

Of course, you can learn more about editing theme files for your site in Chapter 6 of our book, WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide.

SiteMeter offers reports for activity on its site. Wait until you have some statistics and then use your login information to check it out. I think it’s cool — but then again, I love stats.

TextWrangler

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A great little free text editor.

I thought I’d take a moment to praise the folks at Bare Bones Software for their free text editor, TextWrangler.

TextWrangler is a kind of pared-down version of BBEdit, Bare Bones’s super powerful text editor for programming types. TextWrangler is perfect for editing text files created for Web publishing, including HTML, PHP, and JavaScript files. Unlike other programs capable of saving in “plain text” format (TextEdit and Word come to mind), TextWrangler saves in real plain text that doesn’t include any extraneous codes that a Web browser or other client software might choke on.

TextWrangler also has a number of features that make it excellent for editing text to be used on the Web. For example, TextWrangler has FTP built right in. That means I can open a file on my Web server with TextWrangler via FTP, modify it, and save it — all without launching a separate FTP client. (This has got to be my favorite feature.) TextWrangler has commands for turning smart or curly quotes into straight quotes (or vice versa) or stripping quotes out entirely. It has an extremely powerful Find and Replace feature that supports Grep and pattern matching. The feature list goes on and on.

TextWrangler also has an extensive onscreen support system with detailed Help information and a tutorial. So if you need help figuring out these features — I needed help with Grep — help is there.

Looking for a text editor that leaves TextEdit in the dust? Check out TextWrangler. And if you need even more power, be sure to take the next step and look at BBEdit. I don’t think either program will disappoint you.

Apple Product Manuals Online

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A good place to get documentation for free.

Did you know that Apple offers manuals for many of its hardware and software products online, on the Apple Web site?

Visit http://www.apple.com/support/manuals/ for the most recently released manuals. That page also includes a search box you can use to search for a specific manual.

Apple manuals are generally offered in PDF format, which can be opened using Preview or Adobe Reader.