Pete & Jay's Tip O Da "Day"

With all the good and cheap streaming media players and streaming sticks out there it is hard to know which is the best for you. The App Faceoff's Streaming Media Player profiler asks 4 questions and then recommends which streaming media player is the best for you comparing Chromecast vs Apple TV vs Amazon Fire TV vs Roku.

Geeky Sunday tip: If you've ever needed to show your family or the world how to do something on the computer, try Jing , it is Free Screen Capture/Screencast software for Mac and PC.

I have a computer at work and one at home, but there is always something on one machine you need on the other. It will happen, and it will be involvement when it happens. Two handy free solutions have recently made themselves know to me. If you have a Mac, sync your addressbook with Yahoo! you don't even need a Yahoo! email account, Sync your address book with Yahoo!. They provide simple step by step instructions For Mac or PC users, or if you use both. Dropbox is the most elegant solution for keeping files in sync on all your machines at once. It even makes sharing files and photos incredibly easy. Everything synced in the background, super quick and responsive. All its nifty features are laid out in a video over at getdropbox.com . Dropbox is in private beta right now, but we have invites. Drop us a comment and we'll invite you to join (if we still have any invites left by the time you read this)

If you need to open a .wpd file, the best thing to do is to download AbiWord and it should bring it up. (Though not without the joys of cross file conversions; oddly shaped paragraphs and what-not.) Also, it won't print out properly. Or so it would appear. However, I cut and pasted everything into Word and it looked about 95%. If you need things to be 95%, you got your answer. I don't and so I am going to print out 20 pages and take it over to Kinkos and mail out the document. Fun, eh what? The problem is footnotes don't convert well. They always look odd and could be confused for actual numbers. I don't like this one bit, but there is really nothing that can be done. After working on this project for the better part of two hours I can safely say that Microsoft is evil. (The views of this poster do not necessarily reflect the views of the proprietor of this site.) Microsoft Word will not read .wpd files in Word and they bailed out Corel, who conspicuously r...

You should backup your computer files. "I know I know." It is very important that you back up for your files. "I'll get around to it." There are only two kind of computer users out there, those who have had a major hard drive failure and those who will. "Isn't there a third kind?" For a simple and free way to keep your files backed up try Mozy, they have a Mac and Windows version. The files get backed up to their server so you don't have to worry about buying an extra hard drive or anything. Plus you get up to 2GB free! Use this link to get another 12% on top of that! Now you don't have anymore excuses!

If your Mac is anywhere near mid-life, it probably has multiple copies of the same program under the "Open With…" menu that you get when you right-(or command)-click a file. Just download this AppleScript and run it! MacFixIt - Multiple, errant entries in the "Open With" contextual menu

You know those white Apple stickers that come with any new Mac or iPod. Well the iPod shuffle comes with cute little Apple stickers. Why? Because the big ones won't fit in the tiny package the iPod shuffle is sold in

Concerned about your Mac Laptop getting stolen. Even more concerned that you wanna see the guy fry who stole if from you? Check out Undercover , it will track the IP address and take pictures of the person who is using your computer. Hah hah aha! Found on TUAW

The type geeks out there, know there is a difference between different quote marks, such as ", “ and ”. The latter two are proper typographically, the first is just what they invented for the type writer. Word and other programs will automatically use their “smart quote” feature to convert a boring quote into open or closed quotes. But what if the program your using isn't smart enough. On a Mac just his Option-[ for open double quotes, and Option-Shift-[ for close double quotes. Use Option-] and Option-Sift-] for single quotes. To do it in HTML use ‘ ’ “ and ” for ‘ ’ “ ” respectfully. On Windows, it is Alt+0145, Alt+0146, Alt+0147 and Alt+0148. Thanks to P22's Tip of the Month , Mountain Dragon's HTML Entities Examples , Tip sheet on special characters Dave M. and Citizen Grim.

This one happened by accident! Have you ever been working in a program on your Mac that has multiple columns you can sort by (like Mail, iTunes, etc.?) Sometimes you'll encounter data in one of these columns that is WAY too long for the width you have set for that column. For example, someone sends you an email where the subject contains more data than most people put in the entire message. For example, check out this iTunes store list. Notice how the album column isn't wide enough for the content? I used to DRAG the column header over to resize, and then I discovered, accidentally, that double clicking on the column header (directly between the columns) will elongate (I hate that word) the column to fit the content! It's amazing--give it a try!

Here is a good little article explaining how hackers crack passwords and then offers tips to make a password that is easy to remember yet hard to crack. Read the article at Baekdal.com A couple of tips I will add to that as you create passwords. 1. Never type a password you mind loosing on an protected Wi-Fi network. It is amazingly easy to grab a password that is flying over the air unencrypted. 2. Don't use the same password for secure and unsecure sites. If it is a little, no name operation, who knows how secure his sever is. Or if the web address starts with "http://" who cares how secure their server is, cause the password could get nabbed along the way. Look for "https://" at the beginning of your web address to avoid this. 3. Beyond what they mention in the article, one of my favorite ways to create a memorable yet secure password is to use a phrase and use the first letters off of the words. Such as "I like working at Creative Group in Wilmore, Kent...

Even though it's not officially supported, Final Cut Pro will run on a MacBook (non-Pro). Color and Motion won't though, but who uses those anyway. Hello $1100 mobile edit bay!

Depending on what operating system you're using the maximum number of characters allowed on a file name is around 250. So when sending someone a zip you can send them an email message or a flirty correspondence in the file name. Be creative.

So yea have an iPod, and there is always the struggle on how to listen to it in your car. The iTrip and other FM transmitters are a popular "solution". As with many other in-quote solutions out there, it doesn't always work. The biggest trick is to find an empty station, that is surrounded by other empty stations. That gives you something to do on a boring Sunday, but its not exactly fun. Belkin has come to the rescue with their new web tool my best FM stations . Just punch in your zip and you've got a great starting point to finding a clear station!

The highly addictive game Wingnuts is now free for Mac users. They came out with a sequel, so they're giving away the old one now. Just go to Wingnuts 2 homepage and look in the right hand column for "Download WingNuts1 for FREE!"

If you've got a job making websites and have out grown the likes of Dreamweaver, and you've got a Mac. Give Coda a try. Its like the Web Development 2.0. That has what you need and not what you don't. Its a text editor, CSS editor, FTP app, Terminal and reference guide all in one window.

You may not know this, but on all of Apple's new Mac you can run not only Mac OS X, but also Windows. You can do this with the Apple solution, using free Boot Camp software, but you have to restart your computer every time you switch OSes. Or, even cooler, you can run Windows, where in belongs, in a separate window in the Mac OS using Parrallels . Note: both solutions require that you purchase Windows separately.

Google, the fun loving company they are. Always has a fun "new product" on April Fools Day. This year it's free commode based Wi-Fi . Update: Turns out Gmail had their own prank too.

We all love how standard-fare programs on your Mac organize your music, photos, videos, fonts, etc. But occasionally, you may need to locate an actual MP3 from your iTunes playlist to email to a friend (Note: Pete & Jay Enterprises does not condone illegal, illicit music piracy.) or locate a font and send it to a printer, etc. While Macs make it easy to store and organize such files, you don't want to have to go through countless subfolders to find that song or font. But, Mac makes it easy (if you know the shortcut) to easily locate these files in Finder. If you're in most programs, hitting "Command-R" (for REVEAL) will reveal the file in its Finder window.

New Mac OS X users may not have noticed that when you right click on almost any word that you are typing, in the menu that comes up there are 3 really handy dandy features. "Search in Spotlight", Spotlight is their fancy term for basically just search your computer. "Seach in Google" self explanatory and cool. And "Look Up In Dictionary". Mac OS X also has a Microsoft Word like spell checker that works in almost any program. Just right click for suggestions, they will appear above the three other commands I just mentioned.