iPhone advice: 2 best things to take with you on your Italian Holiday.

1. Navmii Italy

I can't speak highly enough about this app, not just the price, it is also a great app. Lets talk about the price first, as I investigated tom tom and other alternatives and found them to be 10 or 20 times as expensive and forcing me to buy maps for all of europe in some cases.

We weent to southern Tuscany, a bit out in the wilds but wanted to visit a few of the sights whilst we were there. So flew in to pisa and it got me out of Pisa and on the Autopstrada in no time, but what was good about it was it found the place we were staying that was in the middle of nowhere. Then we used it on all our excursions from Saturnia to Siena and some wild and wonderful places in between. It didn't flalter or fail, although sometimes the signal to the iphone was not that great.

The thing with these kind of apps is you try them and then build a trust in them, in our case this trust was built quickly and I would be happy to recommend it to anyone

2. If you are going to buy the above app for your iphone and use it as a sat nav system then you need a holder, to fit on the windscreen or dashboard. we bought the one below because it was low cost and good quality, easy to fit and it came with its own charger. We only have the Iphone 3GS, but a friend recommended the second one for the iPhone 4.

"Car Charger Windscreen Holder Mount For Apple iPhone 3G 3Gs" (greymobiles)

This is the one for the iPhone 4

"Mobilizers: 2 in 1 Dedicated In Car Windscreen Suction Mount Holder Cradle + Car Charger Kit For Apple iPhone 4 4G HD" (Mobilizers)

The navmii system combined with an iphone was an absolute must for getting around southern tuscany and with our limited Italian, we valued this and really something you should pack along with your tooth brush.

Addressbook duplicates in Mac OSX

We have always had problems with addressbook duplicates, but as we do not use Snow leopard server addressbook server,  and we tried iHub but couldn't get it to work across our VPN. So we use other means to sync a number of our macs and their addressbooks.  WE have tried everything but still get a vast array of addressbook duplicates and spend ages trying to work out where they come from and who created them.

 

 

SCRIPTS
"Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server Unlimited Client (PC DVD)" (Apple)

 

 

Yes we use the find duplicates in the addressbook menu bar, but it was not always working

The we  then found a couple of apple scripts and have attached them here for you to use at you own risk, both script put duplicates into a seprate folder in your addressbook and let you do the deleting, one puts pairs of records in  in and the other just the duplicate record for you to trash.

If you have an answer to this problem please tell us.

Cudos for the writing and design of the scripts goes to others, so if they are yours we are happy to credit you further or give links to further work you may have produced

Please download the scripts from the forum here: SCRIPTS

Technorati Tags: addressbook, duplicates, applescript, mac sync, mobileme, icloud, dropbox

Get mac support and help in our forums

If you need more than an interesting read and have an issue or problem with your mac and need mac help, mac support or just to troubleshoot your mac or ask questions of the mac community why not take a trip over to our forums.

"Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.6: A Guide to Supporting and Troubleshooting Mac OS X V10.6 Snow Leopard" (Kevin M. White)

There you will find a range of discussion areas and an opportunity to influence the community and direction of macmend.com

Why not head over to the macmend forums now take a look around, you can do so via the link in this article or by clicking on mac help in the menu bar above.

The New Lion Desktop pictures

The new OSX Lion desktop pictures are amazing

As usual apple have managed some beautiful works of art...and you can have them now

If you want these for your desktop before OSX Lion comes out you can down load them here on Mediafire



"Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)" (David Pogue)

5 useful utilities for your mac

5 best utilities for your mac

Everyone has their favourite utilities, ones they can't do without or that considerably enhance their computer experience, here's macmends, we use them, so we want to recommend them, 5 simple utilties that will support and extend your your mac use.

Quicksilver: although we mostly use this as a simple app launcher it really does so much more. There are competitors like finder pop, launchbar, alaunch and others this is the granddaddy

Glims (safari add-on) its what makes the super fast safari into a useable browser. Its really all the best firefox plugins rolled into one and made just for safari...try it it will change your browsing experience for ever.

"Apple Macbook White 13" 2.4GHz (Intel Core 2 Duo, 2Gb, 250Gb, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, up to 10 hour battery life)" (Apple Computer)

DropBox. is an application that creates a special Finder folder that automatically and securely syncs online and between your computers. It allows you to both backup files and keep them up-to-date between systems. You have to register at the site before you use it. These days we can't do without it

OnyX, is still free and one of the best mac maintenance and repair tools around, when we get requests on our boards for help we often point people toward this utility.

clipmenu, we use to use another multi pasteboard, but now use this andjumpcut. Its simple really, it remembers all the things you copy to the pastebaord, instead of just the last one and allows them to be the item you paste next. This really is an incredibly useful tool that should be built into every OS.

Well hope these are useful

Alternatives to the Finder

Recently we have been getting a little fed up with the Mac Finder, yes it has been improved and tweaked to make it run smoother and faster but it still lacks some basics that many people would expect or perhaps used to be in OS 9 (tabbed windows is an example). So we decided to take a look at a few alternatives.

"Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Mac)" (Apple)

The best known is probably

Pathfinder really has it all, it has been called what the Finder ought to be, and we use it here at macmend, altough this writer finds it a little techie and not as graphic and intuitive as he would like. So what does it include, well the developers site lists these, actually it list some of them and really promotes the first few:

• 
  



• Command Line Tools and stuff



• Dual Pane File Browser



• Drop Stack



• Tabs & Bookmarks



• “QuickLook” support



• Use Path Finder as your “Default File viewer”



• Subversion plugin



• Application Launcher



• Size browser



• Selection tools



• File list filters



• Integrated Stuffit Engine



• Create and Convert Disk Images



• Customize menu keyboard shortcuts



• Smart Sorting

well as informationI am not sure how many of these we use but there are times when it is an easier file browser to use than finder, has an easier interface and is easy on the eye.

Among the others worth looking at are:

MuCommander Disk Order Forklift and other similar ones that borrow a lot from FTP browsers like Transmit,

The there are the quirky alternatives like:

FileBrowse

For a quick addon of chrome like tabs and some other usefultools you might want to try Total Finder, we like it

I know I am not saying much about these and thats because whilst interesting you need a more complex and fuller finder alternative and thee really is only one of the those. But test them we would like to hear which you think makes the grade.

The best accounting software for mac

For years we searched for decent accounting software on mac that lived up to its name, we tried them all Quick this and that, MYOB, Accountz and some in between, some shareware and some competely out there.

Then we found kashflow. Its easy to use, has a great GUI, and is cost effective. Even better it is all online secure and accessible anywhere you have an internet connection.

Initially we read a write up from someone that said they started to like doing the accounts once they used Kashflow, we laughed at the good advertising, but its true. Its the best accounts program I have ever used, and whilst its online it has a good mac feel, give it a try. We recommend it and you can get 60 days free trial just click on the link in this article.

We rarely recommend things this wholeheartedly or run specific ads, but with this we just had to tell you that our search was over