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			and finally...

			Big thankyou to everyone who has signed the petition...

			Dropping Text on the Dock for Fast Results Let’s say you’re reading an article online, and you read a sentence that you want to email to a friend. Don’t do the copy-and-paste thing. Instead, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it right on the Mail icon in the Dock. It will open Mail and put that sentence into a new mail message. This tip also works in other Cocoa applications like TextEdit, Stickies and Safari. For example, if you’re reading a story and want to do a Google search on something you’ve read, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it on the Safari icon in the Dock. It will launch Safari and display the Google Search Results.

			Create super shortcuts! Drag a Application that you use all the time when working with finder, such as calculator, to the menu bar of the finder window. Also if you control click and choose 'customise menu bar' there's some useful extras you may not be aware of. Try using the Path tool - it's really useful.

			Hi will, Just a tip, If you don't have the Apple Remote with you and want to access FrontRow, just click the escape button (esc) and the Apple button at the same time. Navigate with the arrows and return with the Escape button. To exit, press escape. Adam

			I am a preacher and teacher and I spend a good proportion of my time writing for my own and others’ websites.  So my choice of Desert Island Apps are tools which help me to do the mechanical part of the job. 1. Scrivener: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html Scrivener is a creative writer’s tool which gives an uncluttered interface for the writing but has available a wealth of useful organising tools.  It will be updated in a day or two when Spotlight functionality will be restored.  This means that Scrivener can serve as a great document based database which can be used for all those jottings relating to programme oddities you have made over the years. Scrivener enables you to plan your novel chapter by chapter and then work your plan with first drafts, second drafts etc.  It supports outline, edit, storyboard and writing functions and has been called “the biggest software advance since the word-processor”.  Quite simply it has changed my whole pattern of creative writing.  You can try it free for 30 days and then it will cost you $34!!  less than £20! 2. Books: http://books.aetherial.net/ Books is a free, simple and highly versatile database for keeping a track of all those books that I have borrowed and all those that others have borrowed from me.  It seriously threatens to get my fairly extensive library into shape for the first time in over 50 years and it is absolutely FREE. It supports multiple categories and keywords. 3. Omnioutliner Pro: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/ Omniliner is a powerful Outliner tool from the omnigroup people.  For folks who like to plan their thinking and to create notes for students Omnioutliner is  a great tool.  It does everything that outliner in Microsoft Word is supposed to do but properly AND a whole host of things Word has never thought about.  $40 for the standard and $70 for the Pro version. 4. Ghost Action: http://ghostparksoftware.com/ Still on the quest for the Holy Grail, otherwise known as ‘Getting Organised’ I have tried lots of different management tools on several different platforms.  One  of the latest schemes for getting things organised and completed is called ‘GTD’ (Getting Things Done)  This is a simple tool to facilitate the operation of David Allen’s methodology.   There are more sophisticated tools but they don’t work.  This one syncs faultlessly with my various iCal calendars and from there to my Palm PDA.  You need to be fairly familiar with David Allen’s methodology but from then on this app seems rock solid. Ghost Action will cost you $20! 5. MailTags: http://www.indev.ca/MailTags.html MailTags adds categories to your emails and thus enables you to create smart folders.  I use it in conjunction with Ghost Action and it is a very helpful way of getting some order into those bulging email sacks.  It supports both keywords and project categories and can then be ‘spotted’ by Spotlight so it is easy to have everything to hand as you need it. It also syncs with your iCal making it possible to create a to-do list straight from the emails as they come in.  It costs approx $25 Yours Ron Bailey www.biblebase.com

			Joseph Thomson

			Brilliant little widget here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/fans.html One of those widgets which although completely pointless is still very nice! Joseph

			Fans About Fans Fans shows the speed of the Fans in your Mac in real-time. It shows, for every fan in your Mac, a fan in Dasboard which rotates as fast as the one in your Mac. Currently only Intel Macs are supported.

			Hi Will Glad to have British Mac and the Sunday Papers back on a regular basis! I wondered if you might mention the petition below on the British Mac website/podcast? It's something that I, and am sure many British Mac listeners will feel strongly about - I can't believe I've totally missed this issue until now! I was browsing around yesterday evening and came across the article 'DRM and the British Broadcasting Corporation' found here: http://www.advogato.org/article/918.html Having read the BBC's proposals for implementing DRM to protect its on demand content, I was obviously concerned that BBC feels it appropriate to lock down its content to Windows users only. As Mac users, we pay the same licence fee as Windows users. Surely we should have access to the same service? Though the BBC Trust's review of this proposal (published on the public consultation web page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/consult/open_consultations/ondemand_services.html) stipulated that the BBC should be platform agnostic, the timeframe for this was suggested at 24 months. This obviously means that users of Mac/Linux etc would have to wait up to two years to receive the same service! Clearly the BBC should have the right to protect their property but there must alternatives to this. US channels show their programmes via their websites and manage to restrict the viewers to the US only. Unfortunately the public consultation ended just a few hours before I found the link or I would have submitted my views directly to the BBC, however residents of the British Isles (or ex-pats and those in the armed forces) can still make their views known via the 10 Downing Street website: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/iplayer/ The deadline for signing  this is the 20th August. On another note, if our major channels are already tied up with Microsoft DRM this doesn't exactly sound promising for TV content on the UK iTunes music store does it? Cheers Lisa

			Jeeves & Wooster