Leopard Tricks Tips and Tools

I know its probably not a big trick but it’s quite sensational. If you connect two computers in both ways with Leopard’s Screen Sharing, you’ll get a video feedback interactive by both users. To get out of this loop, you can close one of the Screen Sharing’s window or if refresh is not quite fast, one of the user can just force quit Screen Sharing. Since this is a major time waister and have no utility at all, the experience is still quite fun. It also reminds me the Time Machine”s layout. You can see an example on this webpage.

written by niclet \\ tags: screen sharing

Having fun taking pictures with the new leopard ichat/photobooth effects? Want more?

Well the company that brought you more ichat smileys, also just made More iChat (also works with photobooth) Effects. I recently downloaded these effects and are very happy with them. I have been waiting for extra iChat effect downloads. I hope developers start to produce more ichat and photobooth effects. This new application allows you to install 24 new ichat and photobooth effects. Right now it is on the apple.com as one of the top downloads.

Here are the links to download the extra ichat/photobooth effects:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/email_chat/moreichateffects.html

These are great new effects and I hope you like them.

written by Cj3693 \\ tags: ichat 4.0, new effects, photobooth

I have the Dock magnification turned off mostly, unless I am trying to impress (!)

But you can have it on to order. Just hold down control-shift and drag the mouse over the dock to see it now magnified. And if magnification was on, it is now off. It toggles the behaviour. Cool.

written by WhizzKid

Then here’s a fix that will take you to Tiger days of yore.

Type the following line in to Terminal (all together on one line- perhaps copy into Textedit to ensure it is before you paste) and press return:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer
‘EnvironmentVariables’ -dict ‘CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE’ 0.63

You’ll nee to restart to see the effect.
And to get rid of it once you realise that new is nice (!)  do the same, but type this line in Terminal instead, again all on one line:

sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer
‘EnvironmentVariables’

Be careful though, this is powerful stuff!

written by WhizzKid

Leopard includes a new “voice” in the “speech” section of Leopard (system prefs). This voice was designed to sound more human with fine tuning of speed, pauses, breathing, etc.

“Alex” can be used for a wide variety of neat things, like reading text files, or converting text or text files to audio files for later listening. There’s a lot of neat tricks you can do with speech and Automator too.

Try some of these commands in Terminal (if your brave):

say -v Alex -f ~/Documents/yourtextfile.txt
(this will read the file “yourtextfile.txt” to you with the Alex voice from the Documents folder)

say -v Alex -f ~/Documents/yourtextfile.txt -o ~/Desktop/yourtextfile.aiff
(this will create an audio file on the desktop with a recorded reading of the text file by Alex)

say -v Alex -o ~/Desktop/youraudiofile.aiff Hello, my name is Alex
(this will create an audio file on the desktop with a recording of “Hello, my name is Alex”)

Have a play, see what you can come up with! I like to have Alex read my email to me, sometimes!

written by James \\ tags: alex, Leopard, speech

This isn’t really a “tip” or “trick,” but it’s worth noting that Apple has released OS X Leopard 10.5.1 (as well as OS X Server 10.5.1), and it addresses many fixes, etc to the operating system.

You can get the update via “Mac OS X Software Update” in your Apple menu, or by going to Apple.com.

For details on the update, you can visit here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306907

For those keeping score, the first update for Tiger was released 17 days after it’s launch–10.5.1 is being released 20 days after Leopard’s launch.

written by rockmsockm

Did you know the new Leopard Dictionary supports even more ways to get you the information your chasing?

For example, the wikipedia is now built right in, and can search and display content right from wikipedia if your connected to the internet. Try it out!

written by James \\ tags: dictionary, Leopard, wikipedia

I wrote about Stationary in Mail here which discusses the new stationary feature in mail, and today ran into something interesting by mistake. If you click on the stationary template icon, the template in the compose window will change background colour. I don’t think it works for all stationary/themes however.

written by James \\ tags: Leopard, mail, stationary