Mac 10.6: Snow Leopard

Mac’s latest operating system, Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) is here. If you have received a brand new computer recently it probably came with Apple's latest operating system, 10.6: Snow Leopard.

Let’s take a look at some of the new features of OS 10.6.

1. QuickTime X movie, audio, and screen recording.
• You can record yourself directly from your built in camera into QuickTime X.
• Don’t have time to write out instructions to explain to your students or a colleague how to do something on the computer? Make a screen recording!
• Record an audio clip directly into Quicktime.

If you opt to share your videos from QuickTime X, you'll be presented with a progress window that uploads your video. Once the video is done, the progress window will display the URL for the video you've uploaded. This works with both MobileMe and YouTube.

2. Import from a scanner directly into Preview.
Just go to File > Import From Scanner.

3. Screenshot names are time stamped (in this example: 
“Screen shot 2009-10-26 at 11.41.50 AM" PM”

4. Sync Address Book with Google and Yahoo


5. Scrollable Stacks
Stacks in Snow Leopard are scrollable. The icons will stay a fixed, easy-to-read size, and if there are more items than fit on the screen, you can scroll up or down to see more.

The 100 top features of Snow Leopard are detailed at MacLife.com. This is the a very thorough listing of Snow Leopard features.Each feature is clearly described and includes easy-to-understand screen shots.

For more information on Snow Leopard, check out the Apple website.




Hash Tags

Have you noticed on Twitter that people sometimes use a # sign in front of words? That # sign is called a “hashtag”. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with the hash (#) symbol, for example, #balloonboy

So what does that hashtag actually do? Hashtags create real time track records of words, events, groups, etc on twitter. They make it easier to track all conversations in the twitter via search. You can find what other Twitterers who use that hashtag in their post are saying about a particular topic.

One of the most notable uses for hashtags was during the San Diego forest fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter used the hashtag "#sandiegofire" to identify his updates related to the disaster. See this post “How Geeks Can Help in Disasters”. People around the country followed what was happening on the ground.

A great educational use for hastags is to find out what other teachers have to say about #utahhistory, #civilwar, #mathtricks, etc.

Type in any hashtag. If somebody has used it in a post, you will see what they had to say. Have fun!