SCO0113 - Housekeeping with Hazel

hazel2 copy
Time to take control of your messy folders and do a bit of Housekeeping! This weeks show features a great utility for managing your files, folders, trash and un-installs. All in one easy to use, yet exceptionally powerful package.

This week's show is sponsored by NoodleSoft and features their recently upgraded application - Hazel.

Hazel is a utility that resides in your preference pane (and optionally your Menu bar) and constantly monitors the folders that you instruct it to. By applying rules, you can make Hazel move, sort, colour, re-arrange, file... well pretty much anything with your files and folders. The really cool thing is it does it all automatically once you've created your rules.

For example, simply create a a rule for Hazel to monitor your desktop and automatically move completed downloads from your desktop to a sorted folder structure. Hazel does it for you automatically.

Add in some neat features to manage your Trash effectively and finish off with App Sweep to help you cleanly un-install applications.

App Sweep is built into Hazel and cleans your mac by sweeping up the miscellaneous files that a standard uninstall leaves behind, and you've got a pretty fully featured package that makes keeping your mac in tip top shape a pleasure.

Also this week, we have a special ScreenCastsOnline Discount code to get 10% off the usual price of Hazel. Just use the code:

SCO2007

when making a purchase from the online store.

Discussions: Forum

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SCO0109 - OS X Troubleshooting with Activity Monitor

Utilities
So Macs don't crash that often (but let's face it they do sometimes!) but more often we may get a rogue application that decides to go AWOL and take up all of your precious CPU cycles. And let's not mention the "spinning wheel of doom" that occasionally appears if an application decides not to play nicely.

The good thing is that these occurrences don't happen that often but when they do, we need to be able to track down the culprit and stop the app so we can carry on working.

Step up to the mark, Activity Monitor.

Activity Monitor is a free Mac OS X application installed on every Mac and is just the job for seeking out misbehaving applications and some other really useful information. It even allows you to selectively quit individual processes that may be causing problems on you Mac.

This week's show gives you a run down on the major features of Activity Monitor and describes how you might use it to find out more about your Mac and to help sort out any process issues you may come across. Activity monitor also has a number of features and displays that enable you to continuously monitor the health of various aspects of your Mac via separate windows or even via the dock application.

If you want an alternative to Activity Monitor, this weeks show also has a quick demo of a super donationware package that lets you monitor many aspects of your macs health direct from the menubar. That's iStat Menus

Discussions: Forum

Extra members get access to full versions of the show in AppleTV (HD), ED and iPod resolutions.
The free show (or trailer) is at a much lower resolution.
Click
here for more details on becoming a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member