MacMost: Video Podcast

iCloud makes it easy to share calendars with others. You can create a public calendar that is read-only to others and anyone can subscribe to it. You can also create shared calendars that can be viewed and/or updated by a list of others you invite.

OS X 10.8 will arrive late this summer. Apple has given us a preview of new features and is providing an early release to developers. See what is in store for us with the next release of the Macintosh OS.

The Image Capture app that comes with every Mac is a good alternative to scanner manufacturers' custom software. You can use it to scan images from most scanners and it will adjust its features depending on the scanner's capabilities.

You can put solid colors, textures or animatics in your iMovie timeline for a variety of reasons. Use them to allow your audio to play when there is no video to show. Or, use them to plan your movie.

Your short user name is both your account name and the name of your home folder. You can't really change it. But you can create a new user account and move everything to that account if you are willing to put a lot of effort into it.

With the 10.0.3 update of Final Cut Pro X you can now use multiple camera angles of the same scene. Final Cut Pro will use timecodes or audio to sync two or more videos and then you can switch fluidly between these shots.

Learn how to take multiple RSS feeds and view them all on one page in Safari. You can create your own custom page of news from sources you like to read. You can also search this page to find articles to read.

You can use QuickTime Player in Lion to edit audio files as well as video. You can trim down the audio, getting rid of unwanted sections at the beginning and end. You can also use the same technique to divide an audio file into several parts.

Take a look at the different parts of the Finder window like the Toolbar, Status Bar, Sidebar, and Path Bar. You can show and hide these elements, as well as customize them and what appears in each one.

If you don't have Numbers, you can use Pages to create simple spreadsheets. Just use the tables inside Pages to create small spreadsheets that can use formulas to perform calculations. You can even sort and use basic and conditional formatting.

With iDVD no longer available for new Mac users, it is important to find an alternative if you still wish to make DVDs. Roxio Toast 11 is a program that has been around for a long time and used by many Mac users to create DVDs. It has a simple but powerful interface for burning video DVDs. You can customize it and add slideshows and data too. https://macmost.com/j-toast

The new iTunes U app for iPad lets you subscribe to entire college courses. The courses can include video, audio, reading materials, apps, web links and other items. You can follow along with the course and take notes.

The new version of iBooks for iPad allows you to read advanced textbooks. These can include interactive images, 3D objects and even review quizzes. You can add your own notes and then review them as Flash cards.

Take a quick look at iBooks Author, the new tool from Apple that lets you create textbooks for the iPad. You can design and layout pages like in iWork Pages. You can also add special elements like photo galleries, quizzes, 3D objects and interactive images.

Two transitions in Keynote allow you to animate between similar slides. The Magic Move transition will animate the positions between objects from one slide to the next. This give you infinite variation and also allows you to create simple motion graphics for use in videos. The Anagram transition allows you to create an interesting build between two pieces of text.

Sometimes you need to place a watermark, like the word DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL, behind text in a document. You can do this using text boxes that are made into background items and then set them to appear across all pages in the document.

You can use the COUNTIF function to count the number of times an item appears in a column. You can also use COUNTIFS to total the number of rows based on several conditions in several columns. The SUMIF and SUMIFS functions will give you the total of the rows in another column based on the same criteria.

Lion allows you to merge the contents of two folders as long as you choose to copy those files, and not move them. You can also place files of the same name in the same folder as long as you let the Finder automatically rename the new files.

Evernote is a third-party program that allows you to create notes on your Mac or iOS device. These notes will sync across your devices. You can create audio and photo notes as well. There are many ways to use Evernote and anyone with multiple computers or devices should check it out.

When you sign up with an ISP like a cable modem, DSL or mobile provider you are often given a free email address using the domain name of the ISP. Many people use these as their primary email address. Here are five reasons why that is a bad idea and you should instead use a portable free email service like iCloud or Gmail, or get your own domain name.