Cool ways to be productive on a Mac

Spotlight everywhere

Tired of playing the name game when it comes to your work? With Spotlight, Apple’s amazing search technology, you will no longer have to struggle to find a document or waste time trying to think up the “perfect” name for a project. Look up in the top right corner of your screen. See that little blue circle with the magnifying glass in it? That's Spotlight. Now, press command-spacebar. The Spotlight icon lights up, and a search field shows up. Type in your name. Every single place that your name occurs on your entire computer will begin to show up. Documents, mail messages, PDFs, folders, contacts, calendar events, bookmarks, and even music.

Why is spotlight so cool in your life as a student? Well, we know you are busy. You write a lot of assignments, pull a lot of all-nighters, and take tons of pictures. With Spotlight, you can instantly search for anything on your computer. This means you don't have to worry where you left something last night when you fell asleep writing that essay.

Right-click goodness

News Flash: Not only can you “right-click” on a Mac, when you do, you get some pretty great things. If you haven’t already, you may need to enable “right click,” also known as secondary click.

If you are on a notebook computer you have a couple different ways you can right-click. Go to the Apple icon in the top left hand corner of your screen and go to “system preferences.” Under system preferences, go to the “keyboard and mouse” section. Then go to the Trackpad tab. Depending on whether you have clicking enabled will determine if you “tap trackpad with two fingers for secondary click” or “place two fingers on the trackpad and click the button.”

If you are on a desktop computer, you will click on the mouse tab under the system preferences and change one of your mouse's buttons to secondary click.

On a Mac, secondary clicking opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Simply highlight any word and right click. Notice that you can “Search in Spotlight,” “Search in Google,” “Look up in Dictionary,” and, oh yeah, “copy” as well. This works in Pages as well as In Safari, Apple’s web browser. Remember that the next time you do research.

Screenshot anything

In Mac OS X, there are all kinds of tricks that can help you be more productive. Remember that time you were working on a project, shooting IM's back and forth with one of your friends, when you needed to show them something on your screen? Mac OS X actually makes it incredibly easy to do this on the fly.

Simply press “command/shift/4”. Your cursor will turn into a little crosshair. You can then drag a box around whatever you need a picture of. A file will then show up on your desktop in industry-standard PNG graphics format. Take that file, and drop it into your IM, press send. Discuss.

iWeb* your campus web space

With iWeb, you can express yourself in the digital world by creating websites and blogs - complete with podcasts, photos, and movies. And, you can easily get them all online to the web space your university has provided to you in just a few steps.

First, find the information your university has given you about how to connect to your personal web space on your uni’s servers. Once you have the information in hand, find the part that talks about FTP. Usually, it’ll look like a web address: ftp.youruni.edu.au

Now, make sure you are in the Finder and click the “Go” menu, then head to the “Connect to server...” option. Enter your FTP address as: ftp://ftp.youruni.edu.au (be sure to include the ftp://). It’ll ask you for your username and password. Enter it in, and like magic, a disk folder will mount on your desktop.

Use iWeb to turn your digital idea of yourself into a reality in ways you never thought possible. Add video, podcasts, images — all drag and drop.

Once you’re done, click the “File” menu and choose “Publish to folder...” A dialogue box will open up asking you which folder to publish to. Choose the one that we mounted in step one with your university web space information.

Learn more about iWeb.

Go postal

There are a lot of great things about Mail: fast searching, smart folders, spam filters. But students need to search and filter across multiple mail accounts. Mail makes it incredibly easy to keep your .edu, .Mac, and mail.whatever.com emails all in one place.

It’s super easy. To add an account, open Preferences in Mail. Select Accounts and press the little “+” in the lower left. You’ll be walked through a few steps to add the account. Since you’ll be prompted for incoming and outgoing servers, it’s probably a good idea to jot down that info ahead of time. You should also know your account name and password. Duh.

Once the account is added, you will notice a new mailbox on the left side. So now you can either view one box at a time, or click on Inbox to see all of them at once. A word of caution: When you compose a message, quickly double-check where it’s coming from. You wouldn’t want to send Grandma an email from “hottstuph45,” right?

Learn more about Mail and Mac OS X.