There’s no easy way to get a DVD onto your iPad or into a Keynote presentation. You need to convert the movie from DVD format into a movie format that the iPad will play. Here’s how to copy a DVD to your hard drive and then convert it to a movie that will play on your iPhone, iPad or in Quicktime on your computer. 

STEP 1. Copy the DVD to your computer using Mac The Ripper.

 Firstly you’ll need to copy (rip) the DVD to your computer using Mac the Ripper.

1. Download Mac The Ripper.

(Click here to go to the mactheripper page to download it. Otherwise click  here to download an old free version. It used to be free but the newer (and better) version you need to buy.)

2. Mac the Ripper will copy a DVD from your DVD player to your computer, removing any copy protection, and save it on your desktop as a ‘VIDEO_TS’ folder.  You can watch this ‘VIDEO_TS’ folder using Apple’s DVD Player App.

Is this legal? It depends on which country you live in. For example here’s the relevant  Australian rules. Before you rip a DVD to your computer I suggest you ring the person who made it and ask if it’s OK.

STEP 2. Convert the DVD to a Quicktime (mp4) movie.

Secondly, you most probably want to convert this VIDEO_TS folder to a different format to make it more useful.  For example so you can watch it watch on your iPad. A good app for this is handbrake.

1. Go to http://handbrake.fr/ and click on ‘download it now’ to download the latest version of handbrake.

2. Instal and run Handbrake.

3.  In Handbrake select the ‘source’ in the top left of the toolbar – select the VIDEO_TS folder  you have just ripped.

4. Under ‘Source’ select the title and chapters that you want. (Or select the whole movie) You can work out the chapters by opening DVD player and looking in the information window. To verify them you can check the duration.

5. Click ‘toggle presets’ in the toolbar and this will give you a pull out window where you can select the output quality that you want. AppleTV is better quality, iPod is lower quality and a smaller file.

6. Select a destination directory (eg desktop) and press the start button.

It can take quite a while, allow a few hours!

That’s it – you can now copy this new movie file to your iPad, or iPhone (via iTunes) or even put it into a Keynote presentation.

Web pages generally  do not automatically appear on search engine results pages. To make your site appear in google and other search engines you need to manually add your site to their index. This is called submitting your site to a search engine. You don’t have to pay to do this – it’s free. Read on to find out how to submit your site to Google.

To submit your site to google go to:

http://www.google.com/addurl/

Add your web address, then wait a couple of days.

do the same for yahoo, msn etc

To see if google already knows about your site type site:http://www.yoursitename in google search

If you want your page to go up in the search results, you need to have other people link to your site from their site.

To see how many sites link to your site type link:http://www.yoursitename in google search.

Basically, more entries here, the higher you will be in the search result. (That’s a simplified version of how Google works, it also depends on how good the sites that link to you are and some other things.)

A lot of people are reporting problems with their iPhone battery life, especially with the iPhone 5 and iOS 6.

Here are some tips to get longer battery life on any iPhone simply by disabling some of the features of the iPhone.

You might think ‘but I don’t want to turn off any of the features on my iPhone’. Well, do you have every light and appliance in your house turned on all the time? It’s not the best use of energy to do so. Likewise it’s not necessary to have everything running on your iPhone at once either!

It’s a matter of compromising between convenience and battery life. My rule of thumb is that if I use something less than once a week, then I’m happy to turn it on manually, but for things I’m using every day, I generally leave them on.

This article is dedicated to Felicity.

Here is a list of things you can turn off. Work your way down, turning things off.  These are all found in the ‘Settings’ app.

1. Turn off LTE

WHERE: General – Cellular – Enable LTE

Turn off LTE unless you need the very fast speeds of the 4G network. This is especially true if you are NOT in an LTE area. Some people say this is because the phone is scanning looking for an LTE network even if it can’t find one. 

2. Turn off most (but not all) location  services

WHERE: Privacy – Location Services

Turn off every app that doesn’t need to know where you are. You probably want to leave “Find My iPhone” and “Maps” on as they really do need to know where you are to work. I leave on Camera as well –  so it can tag a location for my photos – but I turn everything else off.  

3. Turn of Automatic Mail Checking

WHERE: Mail, Contacts, Calendar – Fetch New Data
Turn ‘Push’ Off. Otherwise every single email comes to your phone individually and uses up power doing do.

Set Fetch to ‘Manually.’ This will then fetch all your mail at once when you open mail app. Or set it to the time interval that you want it to check if you’d prefer it to check automatically.

4. Turn Down Brightness

WHERE: Brightness and Wallpaper

Trun brightness down to half or a quarter – you’ll get used to it! And it still goes a bit brighter in the sun if you have ‘Auto brightness’ on.

5. Turn off auto-update of iCloud and Safari Bookmarks

WHERE: General – Cellular
Scroll down and under “Use Cellular Data for:” turn off iCloud Documents, Passbook Updates and Reading List.
This stops your iPhone updating all those things while you are out and about.
You can also turn off iTunes and FaceTime if you want.

6. Turn off Bluetooth (if you don’t use it)

WHERE: Bluetooth
Turn off Bluetooth unless you have a wireless headset or bluetooth device you use.

7. Turn off WiFi (if you don’t use it)

WHERE: Wi-Fi
Turn off wi-fi if you don’t need it.(eg If you are travelling in the car and are just using your iPhone on the phone network, then you don’t need wi-fi, or if you are wandering round and just want to use your phone as a phone and conserve battery life.)

8. Siri Raise to speak.

WHERE: General: Siri

Turn off Raise to speak – some people report this improves battery life. (Leave it on if you like this feature.)

9. Shut down unused apps.

WHERE: Double Press the main iPhone ‘home’ button – 4 apps will appear.

Press and hold one of these apps till you get the wobbles and then click the red buttons to quit the apps.

When you are finished press the ‘home’ button again, twice.

This is debated but some apps seem to still use battery life when they are in the background. 

10. Turn off more location Services

WHERE: Settings: Privacy: Location Services: System Services

Disable some of these as I have done above. 

As well as all this, the following might fix some bugs that could make your battery life worse:

1. Settings: Carrier: Automatic

Set to Off and select your carrier manually (Eg Telstra)

2. Settings: General: Reset: Network Settings

Reset Network Settings. Then flatten your battery totally and recharge. This one helped my iPhone battery life a lot for some reason – I don’t know why.

3. Restore your phone (last resort)

If Battery life is still bad, try this as a last resort:

Open iTunes, backup the phone, then restore the software.

If it’s still bad take your iPhone to a genius bar!

Other notes on battery life:

It doesn’t hurt to turn your phone off every couple of weeks  just to reset it. Hold down the top ‘power’ button till it turns off. Then turn it on again.

For best battery life keep your phone as fully charged up as you can. Pop it on the charger at Morning Tea and Lunch etc. It doensn’t hurt to keep it on the charger all day even if it’s charged. It’s not good to let it get too flat – each full discharge does some damage to a Lithium Ion Battery. So keep it as full as you can.

 This article at wired.com has some great information on battery life too.

Despite their differences, Apple and Google do work well together when it comes to email.  Gmail is free and it has great spam protection. But the Gmail web interface is a bit clunky. Apple mail is very nice to use and you can set it to use a Gmail account. Here’s how to use Gmail from Apple’s mail app and also how to set up Gmail on your iPhone or iPad.

1. Sign up for Gmail.

- Go to gmail.com and click on “Sign Up”

- Fill in the details – you’ll need to pick a gmail email address (somethingunique@gmail.com) and a password. (Write them down!)

- When you have finished you should get a verification page that says this at the bottom:

Now it’s time to set up the Apple mail application on your computer.

2. Enter your Gmail details into Apple mail on your iMac, Mac Mini or Macbook.

- Open Apple mail, and go to the “Mail’ menubar at the top of the screen and  then select  ’Preferences’  from the menu.

- Select the ‘Accounts’ tab. From here  you can manage your mail accounts.

- Press the ‘+’ button – this means add a new account.

-  You will be prompted for some details:

• Where it says ‘full name’  enter your name,  this is not important but it will appear in the ‘ from’  field and can be anything.
• Where it says ‘email address’   put in your Gmail email address from step 1 above including the @gmail.com at the end.
• Where it says ‘password’ enter your Gmail password from step 1 above.

It will then verify that the email address and password are correct and then display a confirmation screen. It should say that the Account type is “Gmail IMAP” as follows:

- Press ‘Create’

- You will be taken back to the Apple Mail preferences screen. There are some settings you should change here.

1. Click on the mailbox behaviours tab

You pretty much need to set them to the opposite of the Apple default. Tick the ‘Junk’ and un-tick everything else like this:

EXPLANATION OF ADVANCED SETTINGS

You don’t want to tick “Drafts.”  Every few minutes Apple mail makes a backup copy of your email as you are typing it. If  you select this option all these draft emails get stored in your gmail Drafts folder and you end up with lots of clutter!

You don’t want to tick “Sent”  because Gmail automatically keeps a copy of your sent messages and puts them in its ‘send mail folder’ so Apple mail does not need to.  You only need this option checked if your email provider doesn’t keep a copy of your sent emails automatically.

The “Trash” option is  for email providers who don’t keep a copy of all your deleted emails. If checked it will save all your deleted items to a trash folder incase you want to undo the delete. Gmail automatically keeps a copy of every email that you delete so you don’t need to do this.

You  want the “junk”  option ticked  because Gmail automatically takes care of junk mail –  you don’t want the Apple mail program deleting it.

- That’s it.

- You can close the preferences window. (Click save if it prompts you to save the new settings).

- There should be some welcome messages from Gmail waiting for you in your Apple mail.

EXPLANATION OF GMAIL FOLDERS

On the left-hand side of your mail app there should be a little folder called [Gmail]  that looks like this:

The All Mail  folder contains every mail you have sent or received and even the emails you have deleted.  This is where you go if you want to find an old email that you have deleted.

The drafts folder will be empty all the time because you are not storing your draft emails on the gmail server.

Sent mail will contain all the emails you have sent.

Trash will be empty. All your deleted emails are kept in the All Mail folder –  you don’t need another copy in the trash.

- You can repeat all these instructions  to add more accounts to your Apple mail.

- If you want to set up your Gmail account on an iPhone or iPad read on.

3. Enter your Gmail details into your iPhone or iPad.

- Go to Settings, then “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”

- Select the ‘Add Account’ option.

- Select ‘Gmail’

- Enter your Gmail settings from Step 1 above. The ‘description’ can be any description to help you remember what the account is,  eg ‘My personal gmail account’

That’s it!

You can now access and edit your emails from your Computer and your iOS device.

The iPad can to do most things a laptop can do, and the retina display on the latest iPad is better than the display most laptops! So is there any reason to still buy a laptop?  The simple answer is yes. iPads are a great complement to your desktop mac or laptop but probably not a replacement. Here’s why.

iPads are great. Watching my kids use them for school has made me realise they can do lots of things that in the past only a laptop or desktop computer could do.  They can edit movies. They can compose and record songs. You can hook the iPad up via MIDI to a keyboard and use it as an external sampler and synthesizer. You can do word processing in Pages and make Keynote presentations. You can watch movies. The question is, is there any reason to get a laptop?

Well, yes…

Dexterity and age. I’ve watched older people (over 50) try to use an iPad and perhaps because there fingers are dry or perhaps because their fingers are more stubby, it seems harder to press in the right place. So for some people it’s a lot easier to use a mouse on a laptop  than use the touch interface on an iPad.

Learning curve.  Pretty much all the apps need to be re-learned on the iPad. Menu’s are different. Ways of doing things are different. I’d encourage people to have a go, get an iPad, and learn how to use it. But if you need to use it right away  (for example replacing a laptop with an iPad) it may be significantly slower the first few times you use it. So plan to have a few months to learn to use it before you need to rely on it.

Different apps. If you use apps like Excel, Filemaker Pro, Photoshop or Illustrator then there may be iPad apps that do a similar thing, but they will not do the same thing. They may do what your old apps did, but they may not read the files from your old apps. So you probably won’t be able to load and edit those old files on the iPad.

No USB Thumbdrive access. You can’t plug a USB thumbdrive into an iPad.

No DVD Drive. We rely less on DVD and CD’s now days but there are still manny things you can only get on DVD. For example if you are n holidays you can’t go to a DVD store, hire a DVD and watch it on your iPad. You can’t borrow a DVD from the local library to watch. You can of course hire a movie from Apple and download it to your iPad, but you may be in a place with no wifi or phone range.

No CD Drive. You can’t even load Audio books from a CD unless you also have a desktop mac or a Laptop to first load it onto then copy it across. This may be a problem as many titles are not available in the iTunes store but are available on CD. If you plug an Apple USB DVD player into your ipad with a lightning to USB adapter you just get an error saying ‘This accessory used too much power”.

No Power Supply with accessories. When you are using the iPad with an external add on such as the USB port there is no way to keep it charged.

No remote clicker. If you are using your iPad to display a keynote presentation, there is no way to hook up a bluetooth or USB clicker to it to control the slides.

CONCLUSION

iPads are great,  but if you’re thinking of REPLACING your laptop with an iPad, that will probably only work if:

(1) you still keep a desktop mac and just use your iPad for what it’s good at

or

(2) you really only want to check email, browse the web, play with photos and do other iPad type tasks.

iPads are great for: checking email, facebook, reading ebooks, surfing the web, FaceTime, watching movies at the gym, playing round with music apps, games and more.

They have lots of uses. But they don’t do everything a desktop or laptop could do so generally are not a replacement for one. iPads are a great complement to your desktop mac or laptop but probably not a replacement. An iPad is a great upgrade from an iPhone but probably a significant downgrade from a laptop.

I noticed when watching movies on my 27 inch iMac that they are too dark. There are a lot of details in the blacks missing compared to watching on a DVD player. Then at church for some reason our macbook air that’s hooked up to a projector plays movies that are very dark too. Turning the contrast or brightness up doesn’t work as it just washes out the black. But you can change the color profile in the preferences control panel to fix this up.

What to do:

1. Open System Preferences Menu and go to ‘Displays’

2. In the Displays Panel for your Projector select the ‘Color’ tab.

3. Unselect the ‘Show profiles for this display on this display only’ then select one of the new profiles that appear. Try sRGB IEC1966-2.1 or  Adobe RGB(1996). See if that brightens up the movie on the projector.

4. If that doesn’t work or if you want more improvement, press the ‘Calibrate’ Button.

5. Now check the box that says ‘Expert Mode’

6. Now press ‘Continue’ 6 times till you get to this screen that adjusts the Gamma setting:

Move the Gamma setting to the left. Go towards 1 to get your video lighter.

I’m not completely sure how Gamma works, it’s related to the way we perceive light levels and the way that increments in light intensity are is spread out at different light levels. You can read about it here on wikipedia and Apple have an article here.

The short story is that changing the Gamma setting to the left seems to help with brightening up a movie on a projector. But it looks very washed out to use this Gamma setting for everything.

So I’d suggest saving two settings, then switching the display when you want to watch a movie or use a projector.

I’ve just found a new wireless remote to use with presentations in Keynote or Powerpoint. Recently I have purchased a Kensington wireless remote and I’m very happy with it. It appeared in our local Office works store recently for just $29, and it’s on par with the old Logitec remote. 

The Kensington Remote comes in two shapes.  The first is this shape:

Even though this one is the lowest price of the two shapes, to me it feels like it’s a better build.  It has a red pointer and comes in two models, one with 1G RAM built into the receiver.

The second shape is this one:

This is the more expensive model that comes with a green pointer, a classy zip up  protective bag, and the shape is nicer to hold than the model above.  But the buttons with their fake plastic chrome feel flimsy, especially the on/off button which is so small you can hardly find it. It also  comes in two models, one with 2G RAM built into the receiver.

Here are some various options:

Model 1: $35 presenter from Amazon or $49 from the Apple store or $29 from Officeworks (Australia)

Model 2: $59 with 2G RAM from Amazon(USA) or  Officeworks (Australia)

Kensington vs Logitec remote.

What I like about the Kensington Remote:

• It doesn’t have a button that quits out of your Keynote or Powerpoint presentation with no way of getting back into it. (This was one of the worst ‘features’ of the Logitec!).
• It has a button to ‘blank’ and ‘unblank’ the screen.
• It has a good range.
• It works with Powerpoint and Keynote.
• The USB receiver stows away in the transmitter.
• It’s only $29 for the cheaper model.
• Both shapes have an option to purchase with a flash drive built in to the receiver.

What’s just OK about it:

• On the first model the forward and back buttons don’t have as firm a ‘click’ as the old Logitec, but there is enough of bump when you press it that it feels and sounds like it’s been pressed. The second more ergonomic version does have a good click in the buttons.
• The first model feels good quality but it’s not as comfortable to hold as the old Logitec. The second model is a nice shape but feels cheaper.

What features are missing compared with the first version Logitec:

• No volume up and down control.
• No battery life  indicator.

For $29 though, it’s hard to beat!

About the Logitec remote.

My previous favourite was the Logitec wireless remote you can read this article for why I liked it.

Unfortunately Logitec discontinued this model and replaced it with the Logitec 400R which was a dud (you cead my negative review here).

The original Logitec remotes are still round but there price has gone up because they are hard to find and in limited supply, here’s one at Amazon.com for $250!!!

There have been various copies of the original Logitec remote that have appeared since (eg the August presenter for sale here on Amazon) but they are a cheap copies – mine broke quickly.

Today I had a list of full names (eg “Ed Smith”) in a Numbers spreadsheet. I wanted to separate  it into first and last name to be able to sort if alphabetically. It was harder than it should be – in my opinion Apple should have a firstname and lastname function!  But they don’t. So here’s how to get first name and last name.

After you’ve done this if you want to delete the original full names you’ll need to ‘copy’ then ‘paste values’ over the formula.

The Original full name is in the cell ‘B2′

Firstname:

=LEFT(B2,(SEARCH(" ",B2)-1))

Lastname:

=MID(B2,(SEARCH(" ",B2)+1),20)

Some of the newer macbooks and macbook airs do not have an ethernet port or firewire port, so you can’t connect them to an older macbook to copy your old files and settings accross. What do you do?

You buy a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter!

Read on for more info!

Apple has a great piece of software called ‘Setup Assistant’  that automatically transfers all your settings and programs from your old Apple computer to your new one. You connect the two computers with an Ethernet (or firewire) cable, run ‘Migration Assistant’ on your old computer, and then ‘Setup Assistant’ on the new computer does the rest.

Here’s the hitch, Apple have removed both the ethernet and firewire connectors from the newer Macbooks. This limits the options you can use for ‘Setup Assistant’ to connect the two computers together…

1. Firewire is no good as the newer MacBooks do not have firewire. :-(

2. Ethernet is no good as the newer Macbooks do not have ethernet.  :-(

3. Thunderbolt is no good as the older Macbooks don’t have thunderbolt.  :-(

So what do you do?

Here are 5 options listed from fastest and simplest to slowest or most complicated….

1. THUNDERBOLT TO ETHERNET ADAPTER

Buy an Apple Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter (they are approx $30). This gives your new macbook an Ethernet port and then you can plug in an ethernet cable from your old Mac directly to to your new Macbook.

Personally I think it’s poor form on Apple’s part that they don’t include one of these adapters with every Macbook or Macbook Air, at least while we transition from Ethernet.  The ‘Setup Assistant’ on the new Macbook Pro actually tells you to connect to an Ethernet network, but there is no Ethernet port on the Macbook Pro!!!

If it’s boxing day, and you have your little Macbook Pro ready to go, but the Apple store is closed, then you can’t get a firewire to Ethernet adapter. Very sad. You’ll have to try one of the next options!

2. TIME MACHINE 

If you have a time-machine backup you can simply connect the time-machine backup (USB or wi-fi) to the new macboook and ‘Setup Assistant’ can import from there.

3. USB DRIVE

The next quickest way if you don’t have a Time Machine backup of your old computer would be to make one. Grab a USB drive and make a Time Machine backup, it might take 5-10 hours or so, but then you can use  ’Setup Assistant’ to import from the time-machine backup.

4. WIRELESS NETWORK

If worst comes to worst, you can use an existing wireless network (eg a wireless router) and if you have no ethernet connection this is what ‘Setup-Assistant’ will try to use, but this may be very slow. For example I had a friend and it said it would take over 100 hours to do the Migration!

If you do use a wireless network it will be best if it’s an Apple Extreme network or other very fast 802.11n network. Also if you have any other computers being used on the network (which you probably do) then it will slow everything down. So only do this as a last resort. And turning off all the other wireless computers, ipads etc in the house will make it faster.

5. COMPUTER-TO-COMPUTER NETWORK

If you don’t have access to a fast wireless network, then you can use  a ‘computer-to-computer’ network with ‘Migration Assistant’ (but not with ‘Setup-Assistant’).  ’Migration Assistant’ is in Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant.  ie if you skip through all the ‘Setup-assistant’ steps without importing your settings, then you can manually use ‘Migration Assistant’ on the new mac. You need to ‘Create Network’ on your old mac, then tuen on ‘Internet Sharing’ in the control panle of your old mac, then use Migration Assistant on both macs.  See this good article for more info on this!

More information:

If you are unsure about what Migration Assistant is, Apple have an article here.

If you’d like some more detailed info on Migration Assistant check out podini.org.

1.You can’t copy files to a USB drive from your iPad.

With the Apple Camera adapter kit you can plug a USB thumbdrive into your iPad. If you create a folder called ‘DCIM’ you can even trick your ipad into thinking the thumbdrive is a camera and so read photo’s or movies off it. But you cannot save files onto the thumbdrive or load other files from the thumbdrive. If you Jailbreak your iPad you can, so it is possible, it’s just that Apple have disabled the ability to do it. There doesn’t seem to be a way round it. I’ve spent lots of time looking.

2. You can’t use a wireless clicker with Keynote on your iPad.

You can plug a USB remote clicker into your  iPad Apple Camera adapter kit USB port, but it doesn’t work to control Keynote. Plugging in a keyboard into the USB will control keynote, but a remote doesn’t. So again this seems to be a feature Apple have disabled. I cant’ find a way round it.

3. You can’t log out of the Apple Store.

After you log in to the Apple Store there is no way to log out. You can shut the safari window but when you open it you can still access your purchase history etc. You can quit Safari, but when you re-launch some items such as your shopping cart are still accessible from the history. Lot’s of forums, no answers. So the best I can come up with is don’t use the Apple Store from a public computer!!!