Paul Vaughn: The Mac Guy

Hey Mac Guy: Apart from iSight, what would you suggest for cleaning my iMac screen?

— wondergrrrl

Hey wondergrrl: Apple includes a cleaning cloth with new iMacs, if you still have it you can use that to wipe down the iMac’s display. You want to avoid any cleaners that contain alcohol or acetone. iKlear or iClean are good, you can pick ‘em up at the Apple Store. You can also use a soft, lint-free cloth lightly dampened with water. Whatever you use, do not spray screen directly, spray the cloth. You want to avoid getting moisture into the iMac itself. You can check Apple’s site for their official cleaning tips.

Font Fight

Hey Mac Guy: How in the world do you do the high two symbol?? I “Alt”ed all the letters and all I got was ¡ ™ £ ¢ ? … but I can’t find the stupid high 2 to show “squared”. My friend and I just opened a new studio and it’s called C Squared, but we keep having to spell out “squared”. I know. We’re dorks.

— Dorks

Hey Dorks: That elevated numeral is not a special character, it’s more like a different case of the font and it’s called a superscript. If you are setting the text in Adobe InDesign, type the number 2, open the Character panel and select Superscript from the fly-out menu (or simply hit command-shift-= on your Mac). It’s basically the same in Illustrator or Photoshop. Other programs, like Microsoft Word, have similar methods for achieving this effect. Read the rest

Thanks SciFi:

Sometimes it’s those little conveniences that mean a lot. If your Mac tanks and you lose your entire iTunes library because you were too lazy to even set up a backup with Time Machine then a little app like iPodRip can help you recover your digital stuff.

The program is more than just a recover tool however. You can use it to transfer your music to a new Mac or grab music and playlists from a friend’s iPod. You can download iPodRip for free and try it out for a limited amount of time. If you like it (and why wouldn’t you?) the app cost a very reasonable $19.95. iPodRip works with Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 along with Windows XP and Vista. 

The Little App Factory, makers of iPodRip are giving away $1,000 in iPods and iTunes Gift Cards to celebrate their billionth song recovered. That’s a lot of tunes now in libraries that might not have been there without a lot of work. Surf over to iPodRip.com, check out the software and register for your chance to win!

The iTunes Store offers a couple of free tracks every week, and I love to check them out and see what’s hip. Usually it is some sort of modern pop music that I’m not all that into along with a weekly dose of some fine Reggaeton tunes, but typically there is never anything this cool.

This week you can download John Cage’s 4′33″ absolutely free! This is a masterwork of avant garde sonic art. Composed in 1952, this is Cage’s most controversial piece.

Don’t pass up this opportunity to get a real classic for nothing!