More Mac OS X Killer ‘Tips & Tricks’ For Tiger, Panther.

There are more tips and tricks in Tiger and Panther than you can count. Someone should write a book.

I found one that made me look like a hero to my mom. Now she loves me even more. If that’s possible. Tips & Tricks to make mom love you more.

With a little organization you can look like a hero to anyone and not do much clicking to get there. For example, iPhoto is a good way to store gazillions of digital photos.

Got keywords? Add a few. Got comments? Add a few of those to each photo when you import to iPhoto.

Then, your Mac comes to the rescue and lets you do cool things without having to do much more than lift a finger.

Case in point: I have some family photos I’ve scanned and saved and imported into iPhoto. I added a few keywords and a couple of comments to each one.

Then, the other day, I get a ‘reminder’ email from mom. Mom’s basically making me feel unworthy and inadequate (in ways only moms can truly understand) because I haven’t sent a note in awhile.

Sigh. Been there. Done that. Many times. Summer re-runs.

As usual, mom signs her email message with xoxo and, the word “mom.”

Hmmmmm. I wonder…

I highlight the word “mom” in the email message, then right click (gotta love the new two-button mouse from Apple). Bingo. A contextual menu.

In this case “mom” gets me a pop up menu that says ‘Search in Spotlight” and “Search in Google” (don’t do it with ‘mom’). And “Look up in dictionary.” Now, if your dictionary is like mine, there’s already a photo of “mom” next to the definition of “mom.”

So, I selected ‘Search in Spotlight’ instead.

In a second or so, there was a huge list of everything that contains “mom” from my Mac, including a bunch of thumbnail images from, where else? iPhoto. One click brought up iPhoto and a few other photos of mom.

Another click and I had an email message ready to go back to mom (along with some syrupy message about missing her, all the good things she’s done, etc; man is that worth a macro).

Click, click, click. Guilt removed.

The search with Spotlight didn’t require me to think, type, move, or even breathe (much). Because I had “mom” in the comments section of the photos imported into iPhoto, they pop up in Spotlight’s search results.

Cool or what?

Now, let your imagination run for a moment or two.

OK, that’s enough. Those same keywords could be for “dad” or for “brother” or “sister” or “Aunt Edna” or whomever. Then, when you want to respond to an email or just have something resembling a wild hair thought about a friend or relative, ‘click’ and you’ve got mail.

Here’s another tip for Spotlight. You want to search for a file, email, or photo on your Mac from/for your brother ‘Bob.’ If you type in ‘Bob’ in Spotlight you’ll get every freakin’ file in the world that has a ‘bob’ in it.

If the email message was from a ‘Bob Smith’ and you type in ‘Bob Smith’ (obviously your brother’s name in this example), you also get everything having to do with anything named ‘Smith.’

Whew. Waaaaay to much work, even if the results come back in a couple of seconds.

So, type ‘Bob’ then the pipe sign “|” and then Smith. No quotes. The whole Spotlight entry would look like this: Bob|Smith.

That gets everything that’s just ‘Bob Smith.’

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