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Hidden Fractions & other Characters
I was asked the other day if there was anyway to add fraction sin to a Pages document. I was slightly stuck..... I knew it was possible, I had done it myself before but I couldn't remember how. It got my frustrated so I had to know.. Here's how to do it.
Fonts contain all sorts of characters — also called glyphs — that you may not actually be able to type on your keyboard, such as ornaments, fraction characters, and letters for foreign languages. Fortunately, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and QuarkXPress 7 all offer a glyph palette that lets you display every character in a font. But Photoshop users who want special characters shouldn’t feel left out in the cold! Mac OS X offers its own glyphs palette — called the Character Palette — which gives all users the same features and even some additional options that InDesign and QuarkXPress users will want to use.
Finding the Character Palette (OS X 10.6)
In order to use the Character Palette, you must first enable it.
Step 1: Open System Preferences and click on the International icon.
Step 2: Click on the Input Menu panel and turn on the Character Palette checkbox
Step 3: Now close System Preferences. You should now have a flag icon in your menu bar representing your current keyboard country.
Step 4: Choose Show Character Palette from this menu to display the palette. It will float on top of whatever application you currently have open.
Anyone Can fall foul to fraud - Even celebs & politicians
More than 420,000 scam emails are sent every hour in the UK
according to a report published today.
The study from life assistance company CPP http://www.cpp.co.uk estimates that Brits were targeted by 3.7 billion 'phishing' emails in the
last 12 months alone. And a quarter of us admit to falling victim to
e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over GBP285 each.
Fake banking emails are the most common method used by criminals, with 55
per cent of those targeted receiving seemingly legitimate e-correspondence
from high street banks. Over half received false lottery or competition prize
draws, while a further one in two was targeted by foreign cons such as the
renowned "Nigerian 419 advance fee fraud" scam.
And consumers must take caution, as latest industry figures show that
online banking fraud rose by 14 per cent in the last 12 months. In fact,
nearly half of Brits (46 per cent) worry their card details could be used to
make illegal online purchases.
Fraudsters are also exploiting the explosion of social networking sites
and current defaults in privacy settings to target victims. Nearly one fifth
of Brits have received phoney Facebook messages claiming to be from friends
or family. One in 10 fear that fraudsters are using Twitter to follow them
and a third are concerned their social networking account could be hacked.
It seems that anyone - no matter their level of expertise - can fall
prey. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web fell foul to fraud after
buying Christmas gifts online, which failed to show up. Movie-star Salma
Hayek had her Apple MobileMe account attacked, and not even politicians are
immune - Ed Milliband's Twitter account was infiltrated by hackers who
posted details of a fictitious sex life.
Robert Schifreen, reformed computer hacker advises: "Staying safe online
is easy if you follow some basic precautions. Never type your credit card
number, password, or any other confidential information into a web site
unless its address begins with https and your browser displays the 'closed
padlock' symbol. These indicate that the site is safe and that your data is
encrypted. Also, make sure your antivirus software subscription is up to date
and that your computer is configured to automatically download protective
software."
Tips to reduce the chances of falling
victim to online fraud:
- Install anti-virus protection which scans for viruses
- Install anti-phishing tools which identify phishing emails that trick
users into giving away personal information
- Install an active firewall, which updates and upgrades automatically,
preventing hackers from gaining access to your PC or laptop
- Keep your personal information safe. If someone asks for your personal
details online ask yourself why they would need them
- Be aware that banks will never ask for your personal information
online. If you are unsure whether an email is genuine, ring your bank
and ask them
- If you store personal information on your PC, install up-to-date
security software
- Remember the golden rule: identity thieves are experts at spotting an
opportunity to steal your identity and all they need are a few personal
details
- On social networking sites, keep your privacy settings set to friends
only and never display your address, phone number or date of birth
iPad sales top 2 million in 60 Days
Apple today announced that iPad sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3. Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year.
"Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone."
iPad allows users to connect with their apps, content and the Internet in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad's revolutionary Multi-Touch user interface.
Developers have created over 5,000 exciting new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. iPad will run almost all of the more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
OS X Parental Controls feature blocks access to HTTPS secure sites
Just thought some people may be interested to know this. As we spent a while scratching our heads...
If you use parental controls in 10.5 or 10.6 and have the website restrictions service activated to block adult in appropriate material it will also block secure HTTPS sites.
This isn't to helpful as a lot of sites use HTTPS to secure traffic between you and the website. Websites and services like Googles Gmail are blocked and most web stores will also be unusable. Basically if the site begins with https then it will be blocked.
Why does this happen?
When you visit a website Apple/OS X will check certain information that contained within the site code to determine if it's appropriate or not. Secure https sites secure this information so OS X is unable to determine if it's nasty or not. So to be safe it blocks it.
How to stop this
The only way to overcome this is to add the https site to the allow list in your parental controls.
Drobo FS now Time Machine compatible.
Data Robotics announced today that the Drobo FS now supports
network-based Time Machine backups. The company shipped a new version
of Drobo Dashboard for the FS allowing the creation of shares for Time
Machine use. In Dashboard v1.7.2, there's now a control to enable Time
Machine support on a Drobo array, then set a maximum size for the share
so that the backup files don't take over all of the space on the
device.
Very cool indeed.... More info can be found at the engadget website
The easy way to shorten URL's in OS X
Right, folks this is handy and I thought it should be shared amongst us.
As I'm sure you are all aware URL shortening is catching on a lot. Especially now as we all enter the world of Twitter and Facebook. If you're not aware of URL shortening then listen up. There are many services out there that allow you to shorten long clunky URL's of a website to a nice small URL. It's great but wouldn't it be better if you could incorporate this into OS X without the hassle of going to the service website pasting in the url then copying the shortened URL and then plonking it where you want it to go.
This method is much easier and it works a treat. Follow the instructions below :
First you need to download this service from Moebius Strip Software. Once downloaded you need to move the shortenurl.service file to you home folder. The file needs to go here home>library>services If the folder does not exist create it. The loaction should look like this
Once you have moved the services file to the above location you need to restart finder. To restart finder click the Apple logo (top left) then go to force quit. Find finder in the list and then select it. Then click the re-launch button. This activates the script.
You can now access this new service by clicking the services menu item in most applications.
Even though this is easier it's still a bit of a pain. So I thought it should be pretty easy to assign a keyboard shortcut to this service and it is. Follow the below to add a shortcut.
Go to the services menu again but this time click Services Preferences. This will load system preferences.
In the left column click Services the hunt down the right hand list until you find the Shorten URL service. It's listed under text.
Make sure the service is enabled by ticking the radio button then click to the right of the service and you can assign a shortcut to this service. Choose something that isn't used by another function. I used cmd ~ as it's easy to quickly hit and also nothing else use's this shortcut.
Now restart finder and that's it you're done. Now the next time you have a large URL that you want shortening simple hit cmd ~ to shorten.