You can use Finder, Disk Utility, iTunes, iPhoto, or iDVD to burn files into writable CD or DVD. Apple Support has a summary guide on how to go about burning a CD or DVD. If you want to burn a disc image file (commonly in ISO disc format and with an ISO extension), a separate Apple Support article describes how you can burn a disk image file on a CD or DVD in Mac OS X.

However, if you have DVD Video files in VIDEO_TS folder, there is no quick method using the bundled apps in Mac OS X to burn a DVD-Video disc to be playable in regular DVD players.

Burn is an open source and free app that can help you burn the disc to the correct DVD Video format.

Or if you prefer the command line using Terminal, the steps are:

• Create a new folder to house your VIDEO_TS folder, for example ~/Downloads/XMas2008/VIDEO_TS.

• On a Terminal session, enter the following command:

  hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name MY_DVD_NAME -o MY_DVD.iso /path/to/folder/containing/VIDEO_TS

  Using the above example:

  hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name XMas2008 -o XMas2008.iso ~/Downloads/Xmas2008/

• Make sure that /path/to/folder/containing/VIDEO_TS is the path to the folder containing the VIDEO_TS folder, not the VIDEO_TS folder itself.

• The command will create an ISO disk image file XMas2008.iso.

• Start Disk Utility, drag the newly created XMas2008.iso into Disk Utility and click the Burn button to create the DVD-Video disc.

Snow Leopard comes with subtle changes that refine the Mac OS X experience, minimize application windows to application icon is one of them.

When you minimize a window under Mac OS X, the default behavior is to shrink the window into the thumbnails of the dock, one icon per window. This leads to irritating Doc clutter if you have a number of minimized windows.

Snow Leopard has an additional entry “Minimize windows into application icon” in its System Preferences > Dock settings where you can select to hide minimize windows into application icon instead of thumbnails of the dock.

You can accessed minimized windows as usual from the application’s Window menu or from the icon menu by Control-Click on the app icon on the Dock. Minimized windows also appear below at the bottom in Dock Expose when you click and hold the app icon on the Dock. Similarly minimized windows appear at the bottom when you activate Expose.

Once in a while you might come across CD images in the format of a .bin file and .cue file. These are format popularized by CDRWin which is a Windows program. In order to use the CD image in Mac, you have to convert the bin/cue format into the disk format supported by Mac OS X using third party application.

Roxio Toast CD burning software is able to convert bin/cue format into Mac OS X disk format. But this will set you back at least $80. Or you can use the free and open source command line tool bchunk to convert the bin/cue files into iso image that can be mounted on Mac OX X.

It is recommended to obtain bchunk from MacPorts:

• Download and install MacPort if you have not done so. MacPorts is a community driven effort to make it easy to obtain and update open source software on the Mac OS X.

• Open the Terminal app and install bchunk port using the following command line:

sudo port install bchunk

• Let say your bin/cue files are image.bin and image.cue, you can now convert the bin/cue file to iso using the following command:

bchunk image.bin image.cue outputimage

bchunk will create the disk image outputimage.iso which you can open for it to be mounted on your Mac.

Canon comes with great software for their EOS Digital SLR camera. ImageBrowser (ZoomBrowser on Windows), Digital Photo Professional (for RAW file processing) and other utilities software are indispensable if you own a Canon EOS DSLR. The problem is Canon’s distribution policy for their camera software, you need the original CDs that comes with the camera in order to be able to install them on your Mac. The updates available from Canon’s download site are just updates that expect you already have the software installed.

This create problem if you have lost your EOS software CD, or you purchase the camera from another user who has lost the EOS software CD. Turns out that there is an easy way to work around this ‘problem’:

• Download as per normal the latest EOS camera software from Canon’s download site.
• The download is dmg file which will be mounted as volume
• Copy the updater software to your desktop
• Control-click on the updater software and select “Show Package Contents”
• Navigate to the folder Contents > Resources and delete the file “update.plist”

Now you can double click the updater software file and it should install without any issues.

When you are writing for the web, such as blog posts or comments on forum, it is a good idea to learn the basic of HTML. HTML is the markup language for web pages, it is the formatting language understood by web browsers. Writing using HTML is not as easy as using a word processor such as Pages or MS Word for text formatting but it is simple enough for most computer users. Nonetheless there are alternative markup languages other than HTML that aims to make writing for the web even easier.

HTML basics

• To denote a paragraph, you enclose the text with the open tag <p> and closing tag </p>, for example

  <p>The PlayStation 3 Slim gaming console from Sony Computer Entertainment is not only smaller and cheaper, but adds hardware enhancements that make it speedier, including a new Cell microprocessor.</p>

• For headers, you use the tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>..etc and end the heading text with respective closing tags </h1>,</h2>,</h3>…etc.

  <h2>Third episode of new season’s Mad Men leaks out</h2> <p>The third episode of the Emmy-winning drama’s new season was briefly made available by mistake to holders of an iTunes Season Pass on Tuesday evening.</p>

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Digital SLR (DSLR) camera is now at a price point that is attractive to people looking for an upgrade from point and shoot (P&S) camera. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax all have quality entry level DSLRs that promised great pictures. But high quality image does not come automatically with a higher-end gear. The following are 8 pointers for P&S owners looking to pick up their first DSLR.

1. DSLR advantages

The promise of high quality photos and the ability for creative images are the main advantage of DSLR. This is possible due to:

• DSLR allows manual control to override the automatic mode of the camera. You will have full control of how you want the exposure of your pictures, giving you creative options. Granted, a few high-end P&S compacts such as Panasonic Lumix LX3 or Canon G10 also provide such features.

• DSLR has more advanced electronics, making it easier or possible to capture fast motion pictures such as sports or birds-in-flight.

• DSLR has better high ISO performance due to its sensor. You can have acceptable images even for ISO as high as 1600. This allows for low light shooting or where exposure requires high shutter speed. Newer advanced compact such as Sony WX1 is trying to catch up by employing newer CMOS sensor design.

• DSLR provides easier control for depth-of-field (DOP) due to its larger sensor. Shallow DOP allows you to have the subject in sharp focus with a blurry background, giving highlight and contrast to subject matter.

• DSLR provides optional RAW image file meant for post processing. Post processing is akin to the darkroom in film photography, allowing you to correct, adjust or applying effect to your images. A number of advanced P&S models allow for RAW images as well.

• Lens in DSLR is interchangeable, and you have the options for high quality pro level lens which will improve the image quality of your photos.

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If you are new Mac users coming from years with MS Windows, some minor adjustment is necessary due to the differences in respective operating system, but none is too intimidating. The following 14 differences highlights the essential ones to get you up to speed with Mac OS X.

1. [Command ⌘] Key

There is no [Windows] key in Mac off course. Instead you have the [Command ⌘] key. Usage however is entirely different.

In Windows, the Ctrl key is used for keyboard shortcuts for the graphical user interface elements. For example [Ctrl-c] to copy, [Ctrl-x] to cut and [Ctrl-v] to paste. But Mac has kept the Ctrl key to its default usage as per its Unix heritage, and use the Command ⌘ key instead for graphical user interface. Thus you use [⌘-c] to copy, [⌘-x] to cut and [⌘-v] to paste.

If you’re coming from Unix background, it is more logical and less confusing by not mixing Ctrl key for graphical usage. This is especially true for those who are used to using Ctrl keys, for example [Ctrl-c] to end a process, [Ctrl-a] to move to beginning of line, [Ctrl-e] to go to end of line, [Ctrl-k] to erase line etc.

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Photo JPG files from modern digital camera has a high resolution that is often not necessary if you are posting the photos on the web for viewing. For example a 10M pixel camera typically produces photos in 2816×2112 resolution. For web viewing purpose, you might want to scale down to 1024 or 800 pixel for faster uploading and viewing.

You can use iPhoto or Preview to scale JPG file, but Automator can help you automate the process if you have large number of JPGs.

For this tutorial, we are getting Automator to automate the following:

• Prompt to ask us to choose the photos
• Copy the photos to Pictures>output folder so that original photos are not changed
• Apply resize action to the photos in the Pictures>output folder.

We are going to create an Automator workflow for this task, and will drag the necessary actions from the library to the workflow to achieve the above tasks.

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There are more than 50,000 apps in Apple’s App Store, many doubt if it is still possible to make money developing apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. If you are exploring programming for the iPhone as an option, the following frequently asked questions by beginners might be useful to you.

1. What kind of app can be run on iPhone?

You can develop native app to run on iPhone, or you can develop web app that runs on mobile Safari browser on the iPhone. In general, iPhone app refer to the native app. iPhone native app is the only app you can sell on iTunes App Store.

Native iPhone apps are by far the dominant apps on the iPhone with native iPhone touch interface and experience. Many vendor develops native iPhone app for their website, such as Facebook, MySpace and NY Times. On the other hand, popular web apps customize for iPhone include GMail and Flickr.

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iPhone keyboard’s Auto-Correction feature is time-saver and great help for people who are not used to touch typing. iPhone suggests word as you type when the word is not in the keyboard dictionary. You tap the “X” next to a suggested word to reject the correction, and iPhone will add your word into the keyboard dictionary. Your word will then not show up for correction again.

In due course, you have high probability of messing up the keyboard dictionary. For example if you spell “dont” without an apostrophe and reject the suggested correction for a few times, iPhone keyboard will add “dont” into the keyboard dictionary and will not suggest correction for you subsequently.

To erase all the words you added to the keyboard dictionary:

Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary

Select “Reset Dictionary” to clear your words and reset the keyboard dictionary to factory default.