The Grafx Blogs

Firstly, a huge thanks to everyone that attended the free training last Saturday. It was our first foray into this area and it seemed to go down well with all of you. We hope to cover different ground every week and will try and keep the whole thing relaxed and enjoyable.

This coming Saturday (Feb 13) we will be looking at iPhoto, iMovie and iWeb. If you haven’t already signed up then please let us know you are coming as we were at capacity last week!

A couple of notes from me from last week then:

To access your Macs serial number, simply go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of your screen and choose About this Mac. Then click here on the window that opens.

Time Machine is a great way to keep your data safely backed up, and anyone on Leopard or Snow Leopard should be using it. If you’d like us to optimise it for you, please email me directly or leave a comment below.

Anyone looking to upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard can contact me via email or the comments below and we’ll get that sorted out also. It’s a painless process, I promise.

If anyone has any questions, comments or just wants to join the discussion, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Finally, for those looking for a new Mac, we have made a couple of bundles that some of you may have missed at the end of last week. We have a MacBook Pro bundle, including the MacBook Pro, AppleCare, wireless keyboard and mouse, backpack, backup drive and 2 hours setup/tuition. We also have an iMac essentials bundle, including the iMac, AppleCare, UPS for power, backup drive and 2 hours setup/tuition. If you are interested in either of these, please contact myself or tony.

Finally, a reminder that any Mac purchased from Grafx comes with complimentary FastTrack service, worth £35. This gives you priority service any time you need that Mac repaired.

Many typists like to learn the many keyboard shortcuts OS X has to offer, as I do. There are hundreds of them, and they are generally pretty well publicised. There is one that isn’t however.

We all know how to copy and paste right? Command+C to copy to the clipboard, Command+V to paste from the clipboard. There is another way though; a secret clipboard in OS X. Using this secret clipboard will not effect your main clipboard, meaning you can copy two things at once.

There is a nuance to this however. This trick will cut everything from wherever you are in the document, to the end of that paragraph. Cutting is a method of copying and deleting what it is you copied.Remember, anything you cut will be removed, but copied to your clipboard.

So try copying some of this text and pasting it into Word or TextEdit. Select a place in the middle of a paragraph and use the keyboard shortcut Control+K. Go to another place in the document and use the shortcut Control+Y to paste the text you just cut.

It’s far more difficult to explain than it is to do, and it’s not something you would use all the time. That said, if you are a writer, or typing 2 or more paragraphs of text and occasionally think you should rearrange your argument then it’s well worth learning.

Grafx are proud to announce the continued status of Extensis Preferred Partner for 2010. This status recognises the skills found within Grafx to actively promote and support the full range of Extensis products, including Font Management Solutions such as UTS2 and Sutcase Fusion 2, and Digital Asset Management tools such as Portfolio, Portfolio Server, Net Publish and Net Media Max. We are sure this status will not only promote Grafx to a national level, but also allow us a greater means of supporting all our existing clients.

Kevin Lamb (Channel Sales Manager for Extensis Europe) said of our reappointment

‘Extensis is delighted to be able to renew the Extensis Preferred Partner status granted to Grafx during 2008. Over the last 12+ months, Grafx has continued to develop its sales performance and technical expertise to such a level as to make this authorisation an easy decision.’

This year Grafx will be putting on a series of seminars about Font and Digital Asset Management as well as tailored demonstrations relevant to your company. If you would like to discuss how Grafx can help your business in these areas please contact Jon on 01242 704364.

One of my most used applications, Dropbox is great for students, people with multiple computers and those wanting basic read-only access to documents on the go (on iPhone).

Dropbox is deceptively simple. Once installed you will have a Dropbox folder, just like any other in your Home folder. Drag any file or folder in there and it’s sync’d up instantly and invisibly to your online Dropbox account. You can then access that from any computer with an internet connection (just through a web browser), or on your iPhone (free app here).

Ninja move: install Dropbox on your iMac and your MacBook to get the contents sync’d across them automatically. You don’t even need both on at once as you can change something on the iMac, turn it off, go to work, open your MacBook and a few seconds later it will sync down and be ready for you.

If you want a simple way to get a few important files backed up off-site, to share files with friends online, or just to get your files/preferences sync’d across computers it’s a great way to go. Loads more info on uses and features can be found here, with a short demo video below.

Dropbox is free if you want up to 2GB storage (enough for most people). If you want to you can upgrade to 50GB for USD$9.99/month or 100GB for USD$19.99/month.

You can see a demo video here.

This is an app I couldn’t live without, so I thought I’d share it with you. We all know how useful Apple’s Keychain is in saving our passwords, but 1Password takes it a stage further.

One of my favourite features is the secure password generation. Many of my customers use very insecure passwords, and nearly all of you use the same password for everything. This isn’t very secure. 1Password can generate massively secure passwords for you, and store them for you so you never need to remember them.

1Password integrates with Safari, Firefox and other browsers so you can enter your usernames and secure passwords at the click of a button. 1Password can also store details about you, your credit cards, your software licences and much more. This means that the next time you sign up for a new service (like Amazon or something) you can click one button and have the form filled out with your name, address etc.

It’s all stored securely so you don’t need to worry about security. There is also an iPhone app, so if you want to log int to Twitter, Gmail or even your online banking on the go you now can, securely.

The free trial is highly recommended and will save you a ton of time and effort which is what computers are for right?

It’s a tough thing to admit as a Mac user, but when Windows 7 hit the streets there was one feature I really liked about it. If you drag a window to the edge of the screen then it will snap to that edge, and resize appropriately.

This is a great feature, useful for moving things from one window to another, cut and paste, layout, proofing and file transfer among many other uses.

Now you can do this in Mac OS X! It’s a USD$7 app called Cinch. It’s a tiny download and when you launch it a new menu bar icon will appear in the top right of your screen. Just start dragging windows to the edge of the screen for easy access. The videos are below, and I can say from experience how useful it is. Simple but effective.

A demo video is available here.

A free maintenance update of Suitcase Fusion^™ 2 (v13.2.2) is now available for Mac OS^® X. This is a recommended update for all Suitcase Fusion 2 Macintosh^® users that provides a series of performance and stability improvements to the product.

Download v13.2.2 Update

Please Note: You may have already been notified of this update via the auto-update feature within Suitcase Fusion 2.

With the recent release of NetMediaMax to complement the already fully featured Portfolio Server 9 solution from Extensis Grafx have decided to run some One on One demonstrations for our key clients as well as any other companies that would like to see how Portfolio 9 can enhance their workflow.

If you interested in signing up for one of these demonstrations please call 01242 704332 or email sales@grafx.co.uk

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the great deals Apple Finance have here in the UK on business deals. The offers continue and as you can see from the below there are some great reasons to look again at these deals and consider upgrading your current hardware.

If you would like to talk more about how Grafx can help you with your next hardware purchase please give us a call on 01242704330.

Here at Grafx we are growing and to help support that growth we are now on the hunt for someone to join our B2B Sales team.

We are looking for an enthusiastic sales support person to help develop a B2B division within the company. Administrative and customer service skills are essential, as well as the ability to work closely with Account Managers to ensure customers’ needs are met. Over and above the basic salary, a commissioned target ensures scope to increase earnings.

Full details of the job can be found here and we look forwards to hearing from you!