UPDATED: I went back and added the drop shadow and also lightened up the Vortex image to make it stand out a little better. I got a little icon happy today and decided to merge the outer space image you see in Time Machine (called Vortex) with it’s default disk icon, to create the Time […]
Another Way to Kill Dashboard at Login for Managed Users
I love Dashboard, I have several widgets I can’t live without. Most of my users however, don’t even know what it is. I also love the Mighty Mouse but again, most of my users don’t understand how it works.
I’ve tried managing the mouse preferences to prevent Dashboard from opening when users click the scroll ball, but I can’t seem to get it to work for the life of me. The same applies to disabling the Dashboard application and all accompanying applications through Workgroup Manager.
I came across DashOff, an application for enabling and disabling Dashboard, but it requires user interaction and I want this to be automated. I finally gave up and decided to create an Applescript application called KillDash to run at login, to issue a “defaults write” command to disable dashboard.
Add a Little Retro to Your Google Notifier
I use the Google Notifier for Mac to alert me when my gmail account has new messages and lately, I’ve grown tired of the standard OS X notification sounds that it lets you use. I wanted to use my own sounds so that I can more easily distinguish this aural alert from other notifications.
Google Notifier lets you choose from the Mac’s standard notification sounds, or two custom tones that Google supplies. We’re simply going to replace one of these tones with our own. (more…)
Apple Remote Desktop Icon for OS X Leopard
For a few months now, I’ve been wondering when Cupertino is going to put out a new version of Apple Remote Dekstop (ARD). Partly because I want new features, mostly because I’m tired of looking at the Aqua Blue desktop background on the application’s icon. I was bored tonight and decided to take care of […]
Use Image Capture to Share iPhone Pictures Through Web Browser
While digging around for a native solution to easily drag and drop pictures from my Mac directly to my iPhone, I stumbled upon the fact that Image Capture has the ability to share imaging devices connected to your Mac. This would be useful for something like a small office setting with one scanner, which all […]
How To: Manage a Shared USB Printer in Workgroup Manager
UPDATED: To the best of my knowledge, this method does not work on OS X 10.5 Leopard, or OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due to changes in the way the printing system works in those versions of the Operating System.
While configuring our Middle and Upper School art rooms at work, I ran into an issue that was potentially going to cause a massive headache. How to use Workgroup Manager (WGM) to manage a local, shared USB printer?
Managing networked printers is easy with WGM, it even lets you decide if users have the ability to connect their own local USB printer. It does not, however, allow you to share this local printer and manage it.
What’s an admin to do? The first thing I did was start digging around for property list files, and that’s exactly where I found my answer.