Welcome to the Tuesday TipFest. In an attempt to create some consistency for our articles, we’ll be publishing Tips on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Today we’ll be discussing Microsoft Entourage, which is part of Microsoft’s Office fleet. Entourage aims to be the ‘end all-be all’ solution for email, tasks, contacts, calendaring and project management, and overall it does a pretty good job.

Where it fails, however, is in being intuitive, easy to use, responsive or task-centrically oriented. Other than those tiny little shortcomings, it is aces.

That being said, what follows are some tips and tricks for making your Entourage easier to use. Join us now as we delve into the inner workings of Microsoft Entourage.

Dear Apple,
We’ve owned iPods since the first version. In fact, we’ve had one of each generation/iteration to date. We’ve been fairly happy overall with your wonderful little music machine.
However, today we come to you, hat in hand, asking for a feature to be added to the next firmware revision (in particular to the 5th gen video, thanks).
As you know, when a track is playing, you can hit the ‘(c)enter’ button and toggle from song position to ratings to the artwork display screen.
We respectfully request that you add the following set of toggles.

Perils in Parallels? - Security Fix

A technology blogger for the Washington Post has posted an article about the extreme danger that Mac users are in by running Windows inside a Parallels VM.

Aside from a few ’slippery slope’ allegations, the underlying implication is that it is Parallels, not Windows, that provides the security issue.

Granted, Parallels could make things clearer …

Welcome to the Weekend Quickie!

Since there’s nothing happening in the world (wait, did Anna Nicole use a Mac? No? She couldn’t even spell ‘Mac’? Oh, ok…), we will toss out a few useful tidbits that will make using your system as effortless as not knowing who the father of your child is!

Did you know:

You can add aliases to *anything* to your Finder toolbar?
You can create ’smart folders’ to show you all of your documents at one time?
You can lock your screen without clicking anything?

Here’s how to do it!

Obviously a misprint by CompUSA, but funny nonetheless. Everyone knows what sells digital music these days, and free iTunes will get anyones attention!

Thanks to the guys over on the MacRumors forums for the laugh!

Just a quick note to let you know that the mobile version of BabyGotMac is now live and active! Powered by a great script by Alex King, the mobile edition works with nearly all mobile devices including Palm, Smartphones, Symbian and Blackberry devices, as well as rudimentary support for Etch-A-Sketch. As soon as someone sends me an iPhone …

We all like to whine and moan about poor customer service; in fact, it’s our duty as members of the human race to complain. But how often do we stand up and say, proudly and with an emphatic ‘harrumph’, that someone has done a great job? Let me tell you: hardly ever, that’s how often.

That being said, I’d like to offer the folks over at Kensington a hearty handshake and a manly pat on the back (and maybe a quick little peck on the cheek).

I have numerous Kensington products, and while most have been trouble-free and well-behaved, I recently had two instances where my products became less than, well, usable…