Macs are awesome machines, and they come with tons of great software, already included. But that’s not all you need to maximize your Mac. Here are some of our favorite must-have accessories for our machines. Whether you’re a recent switcher or a long-time Mac head, you can use each of these crucial goodies.
Extra iPod Cable
It doesn’t matter that every iPod you’ve ever bought comes with its own cable for syncing and charging. Despite your best efforts to keep track of those suckers, they will all eventually disappear. Even at Mac|Life HQ, which is home to approximately a billion iPods between the ones we buy for reviews and personal models owned by our coworkers, not a day goes by without someone poking around, saying “Hey, do you guys have any spare iPod cables?” The answer is always the same. “We did, but a bunch of people asked to borrow them and never brought them back, and now we have none. Sorry!”
Save yourself (or your giftee) hours of heartbreak and frustration. Next time you’re at the Apple store, pick up a few extra iPod cables. You’ll be glad you did. And while Apple charges a Jackson for them, there are plenty of cheaper third-party options.
Snow Leopard Upgrade
Upgrading to Snow Leopard is probably the best $29 bucks you can spend on a Mac. Sure, it might be a bit short on whiz-bang new features, but the behind-the-scenes performance improvements are worth it. Plus, a Snow Leopard install will slim down OS X by several gigabytes, offering those with stuffed Mac hard drives a bit more breathing room. And we really dig the new Dock Expose functionality, which lets you click and hold on an application icon in the Dock, and Expose will show you all that application’s windows in a handy grid, complete with labels to tell you what each window is. There's also the new, less-annoying Stacks; you can scroll through all of a Stack’s content, without having to click anything. They’re small tweaks, for sure, but they’ll delight any Mac power user.
High-Capacity SD Card & USB Reader
The latest MacBooks and iMacs are all rocking SD card readers. While the death of the ExpressCard slot on MacBook Pros may have angered, well, the pros, the reality is that for a great many users, a built-in SD card reader is quite a bit more useful. Heck, you can even build a Snow Leopard rescue disk on an appropriately-sized SD card, giving you the ultimate in portable disaster recovery. But even if disaster never strikes, SD cards are a quick way to move files about, whether it’s pictures from your camera, or MP3s of the DJ mix you threw down last Saturday. And just in case, pick up a USB card reader as well. They often come bundled with the cards, and you never know when you’ll run into someone with an older Mac that doesn’t have the built-in reader.
BBEdit
Your Mac ships with its own text editor, in the form of Text Edit. It’s fine for quick stuff: dashing off a shopping list, or using cut and paste to eliminate all that weird extra hidden gunk Microsoft Word likes to bake into all of it’s documents. But for a serious, heavy-duty, level 10 Mac geek, Text Edit can’t hold a candle to serious dedicated text editors.
For big time coding projects, be they HTML or CSS files for your website, or AppleScripts, Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit is the way to go. And trust us, it’s anything but bare-bones. It can handle any text you can throw at it, and with a bazillion custom settings, you can set up different environments to suit different text-based needs.
PowerSquid
If you’ve ever been to the Macworld Expo, or pretty much any café with tables, you’ve seen the problem before: 18 people with laptops in need of a charge, and only 4 outlets. It doesn’t matter how long you hover around the table, giving her the evil eye, that girl working on her blog isn’t going to give up her coveted AC supply anytime soon. And that guy editing his band’s new single in GarageBand isn’t budging either. But here’s the move. If you’ve got a powerstrip in your bag, you can easily bypass the rest of the powerless geeks around you, and say “Hey, do you mind if I share your outlet?” It works like a charm. You’ll get the needed power, and you come off looking like a smarty who’s prepared for anything. Bringing your own powerstrip isn’t just a necessary urban survival skill, it’ll also make you look smart to that cute nerd at the next table. 
Targus Bluetooth Comfort Laser Mouse
MacBook trackpads are nice. Multitouch gestures are great, but for getting serious computing done, nothing beats a decent portable mouse. Targus’s Bluetooth Laser Comfort mouse works flawlessly with a Mac straight from the box, and has a 6 month battery life on 2 AA batteries. There’s even an LED power gauge on the bottom to keep you apprised of the power situation. It’s perfectly sized to offer the best of both worlds—big enough to be comfortable for full-time use, and small enough that it’s easy to just toss it in your go bag. And if battery life is an issue—either on your mouse or on your MacBook—Targus offers an RF version with a USB transmitter for better power performance.
Western Digital MyBook World Edition
For anyone with an existing home network (which is pretty much everybody) a Network Attached Storage drive is a convenient way to share files with any computer on your network. Or use an always-on NAS to make backups effortless and always available. And if you store media on a NAS drive that supports streaming protocols, you can use a NAS drive to play back media on other devices throughout your home. Luckily, all these capabilities are easy to set up and manage with a user-friendly NAS drive like the Western Digital MyBook World Edition. MyBook is Time Machine compliant, and it also offers remote access, so that you can easily grab files from your home NAS from any computer over the internet.
Subscription to Carbonite online backup
Backups to a Time Capsule or an external drive are a must-have. When it comes to hard drive failure, the question isn’t if your drive will fail, but when it’s going to fail. But what happens when a bigger catastrophe strikes? External backups can be stolen, destroyed by fires or other natural disasters, or they can fail themselves. So for irreplaceable photos, documents and other important files, an off-site backup stored at another physical location can provide another layer of protection. For a small annual fee, Mac users can backup an unlimited amount of data to Carbonite’s servers. And since the backups are automatic, users can set it and forget it. 
USB 2.0 Plus Hub
It doesn’t matter if you have a Mac Pro or a MacBook Air. There are never enough USB ports. Between flash drives, external disks, printers, iPods, speakers and other accessories, there are always more devices to plug into your Mac than there are ports to handle them all. For maxumum flexibility, we like powered models that can disks and other devices that need high powered USB ports to function correctly. Belkin’s USB 2.0 Plus hub also features top-mounted USB ports, which come in handy for flash drives and other devices that are connected temporarily. 
A Bottle of Rubbing Alcohol
That new 27-inch iMac sure has a pretty screen. Only problem is all the people who think they need to actually touch your super-shiny screen to point out that no, it’s not the first two “Cat Rides Roomba” videos that you want to watch, but the third one down. Pretty soon, your gorgeous Mac is reduced to a blurry, smeary mess. And next time you see someone working on a MacBook, take a close look at their screen. Everytime they close it up, all the dust and oil from their keyboard gets transferred to the screen.
You could buy a specialized cleaner for several dollars per ounce, or save your money for something good and roll your own screen-cleaning solution. A soft lint-free cloth and a 50/50 mix of rubbing alcohol and water does the trick just fine.
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FLV MP4 変換
FLV 3GP 変換
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Microsoft Windows Vista ™
Note: The games branded "Games for Windows" are the most profit taken out of the familiar controls of Vista.
1. • To open the start menu, use your mouse and click the button "Start" Windows Vista in the bottom left corner of the "desktop".
2. • Click on "Instant Search" and type "par" to search control mechanisms.
3. Click on "Parental Controls".
4. • In the menu "Settings", click "Create a new user account, click the text box and between a user name.
5. Click "Create Account" and you will be given various options to set controls:. Web content - blocking access to the Internet
. Computer games - restricted by the ESRB rating
. Time limits - select when and for how long the computer can be used
Other suggestions:. Create a source of different logins for each child in the family
. • Use the "Activity Viewer" to monitor computer usage and to adjust the control mechanisms. It's under "User Controls" in the "Parental Controls"
For more information on controls on Microsoft Vista, please visit: www.gamesforwindows.com / isyourfamilysetPC Game Reviews | PC Games 2010 | PC Games News Reviews 2010 | 2010 PC Games | 2010 University Gaming Blog | EDU PC Games Blog
Incorporation of Control Mechanisms
Tips "GamerDad" On the Use of PC Games Online
By Andrew S. Bub
The ESRB system is very effective in classifying the content of PC Games for parents to make wise decisions about who adopted their children. But you can also access most of the
platforms and games themselves when connecting to the Internet, and what participants say or do online can not be classified or predicted. That's why online games have the warning: "Interactions not rated by the ESRB"
which invites parents to pay more attention, and this is the reason.
Compare a game online with a playground. When your child plays online, it often does with strangers. Some of them are also children, other adults and enthusiastic as any group of people, it may also have some undesirable characters. Most platforms
Games offer an online connection or WiFi and many games allow communication, and others offer up visual and verbal interaction with other participants. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the participants seems to inspire some of them to use obscenities and immoral and discriminatory. It is also possible (though in rare cases) to find a sexual predator online. Certainly a child can find all these things in a playground or walk down the street, but on the Internet occurs in a virtual world where it became more difficult to discover the identity of individuals.
Online games are fun and the kids are interested because they can play with friends, which is much more attractive and challenging than playing alone. Although the most effective way to protect your children is not allowing them access to online games, the good thing is that there is no need to go to that extreme. There are many elements that parents can use to make the experience safer and more rewarding.
PC Game Reviews | PC Games 2010 | PC Games News Reviews 2010 | 2010 PC Games | 2010 University Gaming Blog | EDU PC Games Blog
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