All You Need is Command-L

According to the Beatles, All You Need is Love. If I had been a Beatle I would have suggested All You Need is Command-L because Command-L does so many things for a Mac user.

First, this Quiz:
Question: how can you tell when someone's used a Mac for a long time?
Answer: because he calls that crazy cloverleaf/open apple key on either side of the space bar "the Command Key." You can call it anything you want, but technically it's a Sevärdhet, an ancient Viking symbol used today by Scandinavian road-sign makers to signify "point of interest." Apparently, you can be driving in Scandinavia and all of a sudden there's a big Command key on a post on the side of the road. Sounds like fun to me. Read all about it.

So, what can Command-L do for you? Well let's see...

In the Apple Address Book, Command-L toggles between the Editing view and the non-Editing view. Faster and easier than reaching for the mouse and clicking "Edit."

In Preview, Command-L rotates the document to the left.

&In Safari, and in Firefox, Command-L sends focus to the address bar (the place where you normally click to type "ioperating.blogspot.com" or possibly some other site). It also highlights everything in the address, so all you have to do is start typing. This is going to save you a LOT of time. Next time you want to load up some new web page, do Command-L, type the address, and hit Return. Bingo.

(Note: you can save even more time by NOT typing "http:///www." You can save a bit more by not typing ".com" or dot-whatever. So, when you want to go to "http://www.apple.com" you can simply do Command-L, then type "apple" and then Return. If that DOESN'T work for you it's all because of your internet service. Send me an email and I will help you fix that problem, for free if you tell me you saw it on The Boyce Blog.)

Know any other Command-L tips? Add them here by clicking the "Comments" button.

Free Mac Software

The people at MacHeist put together bundles of software at a low price. This time it's VERY low: $0. All you have to do is visit their site and sign up. For FREE you get...

• ShoveBox (for storing information snippets, though I prefer Evernote)
• WriteRoom (a nice little writing program)
• Twitterific (very useful if you use Twitter at all)
• TinyGrab (for sharing screenshots over the internet)
• Hordes of Orcs (game)
• Mariner Write (a very nice word processor)

For free, why not give these things a try? That's what I'm going to do. The offer expires on Wednesday the 11th, so get going and click this link.

Get at least $200 for any working iPad at Target

Target is offering at least a $200 gift card for ANY working iPad (newer iPads get more). The iPad can't have any scratches on the screen, and it has to turn on. Do what you want with the gift card (though I recommend spending it on either the iPad Air or the iPad mini, or possibly on Christmas gifts for your favorite blogger).

You'd better move on this quickly. The offer is good through November 9th, 2013. Target's regular trade-in offer for the original iPad is $65 so if you have one of those this $200 deal is really something. Plus, as of this writing, Target is offering gift cards when you buy an iPad from them. Wow.

Here is the link to Target's web page describing the program.

And here is the link to Target's gift-card-with-iPad-purchase program.

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