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Take your iTunes know-how to 11!Updated May 17, 2014Let iTunes expert Kirk McElhearn help you become an iTunes power user and get the most out of iTunes 11 whether you want to enjoy your own media or try cloud-based options like podcasts and iTunes Radio. With a question-and-answer approach, Kirk shares his love of music and helps you understand the process of bringing media into iTunes, tagging it, adding album artwork, and organizing it into playlists. You'll also learn the best ways to transfer media to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod.Find answers to questions about how to:Play: This chapter covers how to play audio and video, and how to make quick playlists with Genius and Up Next. It also describes how to bring back the left-hand sidebar. Or, you can learn to love the new Source pop-up menu. Rip: Add content to iTunes with detailed steps for'ripping'music CDs and audiobooks. (If you want to rip--or tag--audiobooks so they play nicely from iTunes, don't miss this chapter!) Also, find general advice for ripping video DVDs and learn which file formats work in iTunes. Buy: Become expert at managing and sharing iTunes Store media (including free podcasts and iTunes U courses), and understand what the iTunes Store does well--and not so well. Plus, discover other online music vendors, whether you want to download or stream content. Tag: Kirk describes himself as'tag obsessed.'If that description fits you, or if you just want to take control of your tags, this chapter is for you. Tags are descriptive bits of information--known to geeks as'metadata'-- that describe your media. You can sort and filter based on tags, giving you myriad ways to manipulate your iTunes library. Learn which tags to bother changing, how to tag a file to put it in a particular library, how to add lyrics and album art, and more.View: iTunes has more views than flavors of ice cream at the corner grocery. Get the scoop on how to switch between views, where your album art is (or is not), and so forth. This chapter also discusses plain-as-vanilla contextual menus and Apple's new menu flavor -- the popover.Organize: Make a simple playlist of romantic songs, workout songs, or whatever theme you like. Also, create smart playlists that, for example, comprise only your 5-star faves or tunes you haven't heard recently. You'll also find answers to questions about operational issues like dealing with a huge library, multiple libraries, and where iTunes puts your media files... including ebooks in 10.9 Mavericks.Search: Find media in iTunes, plus learn tricks such as searching based on star rating or locating duplicates.Sync: You've put all your media in iTunes... now, how do you transfer it to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? This chapter answers questions about manually managing the transfer and has help for people who have too much music. It also notes options for playing media through a second- or third-generation Apple TV.Cloud: Access content you bought from Apple even if you never actively downloaded it, from your computer or an iOS device. Plus, try iTunes Match, a subscription service that uploads your music to the cloud even if you didn't buy it from Apple. Share: Find answers to questions about sharing iTunes library media with others, primarily through Home Sharing on a local network.Burn and Print: Learn how to copy music from iTunes to a CD. Also, get directions for printing a song list, for example, to include in the jewel case of said CD.Back Up: This short chapter has tips and inspiration for backing up your (potentially irreplaceable) iTunes media.Extend with AppleScript: Mac users can make iTunes do more with AppleScript. Learn about key AppleScripts that you can download to make iTunes jump through even more hoops.

Let LaunchBar's superpowers save you from Mac drudgery!Updated October 6, 2014Learn how to use LaunchBar, from Objective Development, to carry out nearly any Mac task more efficiently. To help you develop a mental map of all that LaunchBar can do, author Kirk McElhearn explains LaunchBar in the context of its six superpowers -- key LaunchBar techniques that no Mac user should be without. Abbreviation search. The primary way you select things in LaunchBar is by typing a few letters associated with the item you want to find. LaunchBar is smart (so the abbreviation doesn't have to be obvious) and learns from what you type (in case it guessed wrong the first time).Browsing. Sometimes you don't know what you want until you see it. You can browse folders, recent documents for an app, clipboard history, snippets, tags, and more.Sub-search. Too many results in a list to browse? Try a sub-search, which is an abbreviation search limited to a list of search results.Send To. Want to open a PDF in PDFpen rather than Preview? Attach a document to a new email message? Tag a file? Skype a contact? You can send anything on LaunchBar's bar to another app, folder, action, or service.Instant Send. Instant Send is the fastest way to put a selected file or bit of text on the bar, ready to open in another app, move to a folder, send to a Google search, calculate a result, look up in Dictionary, and more.Staging. New in LaunchBar 6.1, staging lets you select and work on multiple items at once in LaunchBar, even if they are not located in the same LaunchBar results list. Once selected, you could select a group of files and then move them all to a different folder, tag each one, or send them as email attachments. Don't worry about remembering all this -- a will jog your memory until LaunchBar has worked its way into your fingertips.Consider two examples:Example 1: The most beloved LaunchBar function is to access apps quickly -- especially apps that you don't keep in the Dock. Just invoke LaunchBar (with a keyboard shortcut of your choosing), type a quick abbreviation -- whatever seems natural to you -- and press Return (or, take the express route with LaunchBar's handy Instant Open.) LaunchBar doesn't require predefined abbreviations; instead, it adapts to you! This method of accessing an app uses the Abbreviation Search, superpower #1.Example 2: Once you've become accustomed to the ease of accessing any app, you can apply abbreviation search to other tasks and begin to unleash more superpowers. One example is to employ superpower #5, Instant Send, to add a book to iBooks: select an EPUB file (like Take Control of LaunchBar!) in the Finder, hold down the key you use to invoke LaunchBar for an extra second to select the file on the bar, type IB to select iBooks, and press Return to send the EPUB file to iBooks.We could go on forever with our favorite examples: pasting the third item back from the clipboard history, moving a file into a deeply nested folder, creating calendar events and reminders, skipping to the next track in iTunes, running Terminal commands, looking up terms in Wikipedia, counting the characters in selected text, typing emoji, tweeting a quote from an article, finding your uncle's phone number, and so on. To learn how do all this, and more, read the ebook!

Join iTunes expert Kirk McElhearn as he helps you think like an iTunes power user so you can get the most out of your audio, video, and ebook collections in iTunes 10. You'll also learn the best ways to transfer media to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod.In this question-and-answer format title, Kirk helps you appreciate and understand the process of bringing media into iTunes, tagging it, adding album artwork, and organizing it into playlists. Once you've become an import specialist and tagging genius, you can enjoy your music, movies, audiobooks, and ebooks, and more without hassles when it's time to find a particular item or when you want to do something special like sync a select subset of music to your iPod, create a party playlist, identify music you haven't heard in a while, listen to the chapters in an audiobook in the proper order, or get the most out of iTunes in the Cloud features, including iTunes Match.Coupons in the back of the book help you save $5 off Equinux's SongGenie tool for adding missing metadata and $3 off Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil wireless audio streaming software.Questions answered include:How can I use iTunes Match to share music with my family?How can I create a separate, smaller iTunes library for use with iTunes Match?How can I put an audiobook into my iTunes Match setup?How do I control sound quality when I import (rip) a music CD?What should I consider before I rip an audiobook CD?How do I turn on Genius?Where are good places to shop for digital music besides the iTunes Store?Which tags should I consider adding?How do I add lyrics to my tracks?How can I locate music that I haven't listened to in a while?What special things can I do with smart playlists?What AppleScripts can I use to extend iTunes?How do I share my iTunes library over a network?What can I print with iTunes?What's the best way to deal with my huge music library?

In this ebook, you'll take a creative voyage with Scrivener, a unique and popular content-generation tool. Scrivener supports wordsmiths of all types, and it's designed especially for long-form writing projects - scripts, novels, academic works, and more. Author Kirk McElhearn walks you through using Scrivener to create and manage a writing project on your Mac. You'll learn how to use Scrivener's Binder, Outliner, and Corkboard to develop characters and settings, collect and organize research materials, and arrange your scenes. Kirk even explains how to keep yourself on track by switching to Full Screen (Compose) mode and by setting daily progress targets, all on the way to helping you produce a polished, submission-ready manuscript.Which Scrivener versions? This ebook was last updated when Scrivener for the Mac was at version 2.4. The developers of Scrivener are putting a lot of effort into bringing the Windows version into feature parity with the Mac version. This ebook has info for Windows users so they can tell which features will work for them, with the ebook last updated for version 1.2.5.You'll learn how to handle each aspect of the flexible Scrivener manuscript-generation process:Set up: Add reference materials to your project for easy access -- videos, audio files, PDFs, Web resources, and more. And, if you've already written bits of text, you can import those items too, including OPML outline files (such as from OmniOutliner Pro). Beyond importing from the Finder, you can use Mac OS X Services or Scrivener's handy Scratch Pad panel. Or, you can use the Import and Split feature to import a long document into multiple chapters or segments in Scrivener.BONUS! The ebook has inspirational testimonials about Scrivener from published authors who have embraced Scrivener, including James Fallows, Jason Snell, Jeff Abbott, and Michael Marshall Smith. Who knows, maybe you'll be next!Organize: Use the Outliner, Corkboard, Collections, and Binder to mix and match your content into the perfect final arrangement. For example, you can:Ignore the concept of a traditional file and break your manuscript into sections based on character, theme, topic, scene, or whatever you like.Organize your manuscript linearly in the Outliner.Use search Collections to search for a character, location, or phrase and see just those texts.Organize ideas by dragging and pinning index cards on the Corkboard.Write: Learn how to hide distractions so you can wordsmith in peace, whether in Full Screen mode in Windows or the Mac, or Compose mode on the Mac; set up Typewriter Scrolling to keep your writing focus at the center of the screen, not the bottom; and view more than one part of your project at once, so you can write in one section while referring to another. Also, use Scrivenings view to write one thread of a story all at once in a single view, even if it is broken up in multiple scenes or chapters in the final manuscript.Format: Optimize the formatting you see when you work in Scrivener for your eyes and your screen, and understand how this can differ from the formatting in a'compiled'version of your manuscript.Revise: Use revision marking and the useful Snapshot capability to experiment with and compare the effect of different revision strategies, while still being able to roll back to a previous version.Be Mobile: Work on your project using more than one computer, or on an iPad.Compile: Don't worry if the term'compile'is unfamiliar; it enables you to assemble your manuscript into linear order, in a form that can be printed or converted to common file formats. Scrivener supports RTF, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Final Draft, PDF, MOBI, and EPUB.