If you ever want to select all but one playlist (or movie, podcast, app, etc.) to sync in your iPod or iPhone's iTunes dashboard, it seems you have to select every single one manually.

It turns out there's an easier way: just Option-click on any entry in the list. This will toggle the state of all items in the list between 'selected' and 'not selected.' Then you can just change the few you don't want (or do want), and sync.

Flash wasn't working consistently for me in Firefox -- it would for some sites, but not for ComedyCentral.com or some others. Running through my standard troubleshooting list, I finally came up with a solution: I was using the Adblock add-on instead of Adblock Plus (I like it better because it's easier to pull up the blockable elements on a page).

Now that I've replaced Adblock with Adblock Plus, and changed the Options (visible when clicking the ABP icon in the tooblar) to uncheck 'Show Tabs on Flash and Java,' Flash now works consistently again.

An interesting change in Leopard was the addition of Data Detectors to Mail, which automatically detect info such as dates, times, names, and addresses, and let you use that data directly from the message in iCal. It can be a very convenient feature, but some users find it annoying. To disable it, quit Mail, and in Terminal, simply enter:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableDataDetectors YES

If you want to enable it again, quit Mail, and repeat the above command, but replace YES with NO (confounded double negatives!).

[robg adds: This previous hint explains how to enable Data Detectors in iChat, which are disabled by default in that program.]

While the nickname field of Address Book entries does sync to the iPhone, it's not searchable on the iPhone. Also, it's not used as the display name in call lists or SMS chats. I much prefer reading friend's short names or nicknames instead of their full name when they call.

The easy solution to achieve that is to turn your friends into companies. Use each person's nickname as the company name, and check the Company box in Address Book. The only downside to this solution is that now their full names are not searchable on the iPhone anymore.

Quite a simple and obvious hint, but maybe helpful for some nonetheless...

There are a couple of hints here on how to record FireWire video from cable boxes such as the Motorola DCT-6000 family (I've got a DCT-6200 myself). But they involve using AVCVideoCap.app from the FireWire SDK, or weird hacks based on it. I've stripped out the important stuff from AVCVideoCap.app, and written a CLI utility that can be run without the need for a UI. I call it clover, after our dog. (This source is distributed per the terms of the Apple license in the original SDK.)

It's currently beta but works for me; anyone who wishes to help me test it is encouraged to give it a shot. To use it, you simply hook up your Mac to your video tuner with a FireWire cable, then run clover with the following options:

• -c channel_number
• -d duration_in_minutes
• -o output_filename
• -v -- verbose mode, if you wish to see what it's doing

For example, clover -v -c 67 -d 30 -o my_recording.ts would change the tuner box to channel 67, and record for 30 minutes, dumping the transport stream to a file named my_recording.ts in the current directory. The resultant file can be played with VLC or Plex.app directly without the need for transcoding. My intent is to eventually build a very simple DVR that I can use on my Mac Mini without needing to buy a TiVo.

It should be noted that some channels, such as HBO or HD on Demand from your cable company, will be encrypted. While you will be able to dump these files to disk, you will not be able to view them. However, for broadcast channels that are unencrypted, this works great; it can even record HD content with AC3 audio without breaking a sweat.

[robg adds: I can't test this app, but it sounds pretty useful if you've got a FireWire cable box.]

If, like me, you like to make yourself feel all l33t by doing a lot of system and file management on the command line, you'll have been frustrated at least once by failing to be able to add freshly-downloaded MP3s to the iTunes library (once you've salted them away in your carefully-ordered music stash, naturally) via Terminal.

Well, be frustrated no more! Here is a handy-dandy AppleScript I wrote to do just that right in the shell. It takes the path to your newly-minted MP3 folder as an argument, and here's the code:

on run named_folder
  set folder_alias to POSIX file named_folder
  tell application "iTunes"
    add folder_alias to library playlist 1
  end tell
end run

On Leopard, save this to a text file with this as the first line:

#!/usr/bin/osascript

Then chmod a+x the script to make it executable, and you can invoke this as you would any shell script:

~/scripts/addToITunesLibrary ~/Music/mp3/_purchased/Malcolm Middleton/

On pre-Leopard systems, you'll need to save it out as a regular AppleScript via Script Editor, and invoke using osascript, thusly:

osascript ~/scripts/addToITunesLibrary.scpt ~/Music/mp3/_purchased/Malcolm Middleton/

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]

Recently, iCal started acting strangely with screen artifacts, non-responsive behavior, and unexpected quits (I would think that Leopard would start expecting them after a couple dozen times!). I could change views from the menu, but not from any of the buttons. Deleting the iCal preference files brought only temporary satisfaction. iCal would then open fine, but at some point, the calendars and to dos would suddenly disappear from sight. (I found this would happen when I would open the to do list.)

Hiding the to do list would make the calendars visible again, but I still could not work in them. After some testing (checking one calendar at a time and opening the to do list to see if it would freeze), I narrowed down the problem to a corrupted to do in one of the calendars. This is how I fixed it:

1. Quit iCal.
2. Delete the following preference file: ~/Library » Preferences » com.apple.iCal.plist
3. Open iCal.
4. With the to do list hidden, export the offending calendar and delete it from iCal (you have multiple back ups of your calendars, right?)
5. Open the exported calendar in TextEdit. Each to do entry will look something like this:

   BEGIN:VTODO
   PRIORITY:0
   SEQUENCE:8
   DTSTART;TZID=America/Denver:20040101T120000
   UID:AF68ADF6-C8EC-4543-B0AC-0CCED4CA8FD5
   STATUS:COMPLETED
   DTSTAMP:20080721T221616Z
   SUMMARY:New To Do
   CREATED:20080827T223955Z
   COMPLETED:20080812T060000Z
   X-APPLE-SORT-ORDER:2127475757
   DUE;VALUE=DATE:20080808
   END:VTODO

6. Delete the chunk of code for the last to do and save the file. Go ahead and overwrite the locked file when prompted.
7. Repeat steps one through three, and then import the edited calendar file into iCal.

I had to delete the last two to dos to fix my issue -- one was blank and the other was simply labeled New To Do. I hope this helps.

After I recently reinstalled my OS, Flip4Mac, and Perian, I noticed that my sound didn't work for movies from my digital camera in iPhoto. A bit of googling found that this appeared to be a more common issue starting with Quicktime 7.5. I likely had this same problem before my hard drive died, but I wasn't watching lots of old camera movies.

When playing the camera video and looking at the information window (Command-I), I noticed that my Sony CyberShot camera video was listed as "Motion JPEG OpenDML," but listed no audio track. Through trial and error, I started removing each QuickTime component file (one by one) in these directories:

• The top-level /Library/QuickTime folder
• My user's Library/QuickTime folder
• The system's own /System/Library/QuickTime folder

When I removed the QuickTimeImporter.component file found in the system's QuickTime folder, my sound returned! The date on this component is from May 2008, so I suspect this is a result of Apple protecting the OS during a recent security update. If I recall correctly, one of the security updates discussed protection from from malicious out-of-bound conditions that can exist in these sloppy implementations of so-called codecs used by many cameras. I'm thinking this component may only be a simple filter or such to shield the OS from the possibly horribly broken video files.

I hope this tip is helpful to many.

[robg adds: I always hesitate to remove key system components, as you really can't be certain what other functions those files may handle -- nor what security risks they may protect you from. If you're going to try this approach, I recommend keeping a backup copy of the file, just in case you need to put it back. I would also contact Sony about the problem, hoping for an official solution from the company.]

Recently my nearly one-year-old iPhone kept telling me that an accessory was not compatible with the iPhone, even though I had not plugged in an accessory. A few days later, I could not put my iPhone into silence mode.

After getting ready to send it in for repair, I discovered it was simply compacted debris, collected from being carried in my pocket, in the bottom port that was making the iPhone think it was plugged into something. A blast of canned air did the trick, and my iPhone is now as good as new again.

I noticed a new post on a very old thread on the Mac OS X Hints forums site, which was about being able to start a sync to .Mac (MobileMe) from the command line. The new post showed how to use an AppleScript to control the MobileMe preferences pane and then click the Sync Now button.

While this may work, I suspected that there must be a better way, and so I had a dig around. I found dotmacsyncclient, located in /System » Library » PrivateFrameworks » DotMacSyncManager.framework » Versions » A » Resources. Further investigation showed that, indeed, you can start a sync from the command line -- and much more.

Note that the following examples assume you have cd'ed into the above directory first... ...or have otherwise set things up such ($PATH) that you don't need to type the full path to the command every time. In Terminal.app, to start a sync now, use this command:

dotmacsyncclient sync

Read on for some other uses of this program, as well as a caution on its use.