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…

Best anti-Mac troll ever!

Does it get any better than this? Wow.

I’ve never understood the whole PC vs. Mac thing. I use both daily. Yes, I obviously prefer the Mac, but the PC has it’s place also. Hell, I develop software for the PC (admittedly, these days I do it on XP using Parallels)!

But anyway, after reading this over on Digg, I couldn’t help but share it with the world.
Enjoy, and feel free to post your own favorite troll links in the comments.

The comment linked is saved below for posterity’s sake, as posted:

John Gruber, over on Daring Fireball has a fascinating take on the Bill Gates quote in Newsweek:
Gates:I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn’t have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise.

He discusses both the implication that OS X is insecure, and also addresses the theory that Gates expounds regarding Microsoft having features that Apple copied, but implemented first because Microsoft was focusing on security.

Daring Fireball: Lies, Damned Lies, and Bill Gates

There’s another quote that isn’t addressed though, and it is this:

It’s time for the BGM logo contest to begin! Below you will see the entries that we received for the contest. Some of them are pretty clever…you choose the winner though.

Whichever logo has the highest vote count at 12noon, EST on February 17th wins an iMac!

Note: Excuse the formatting…unfortunately the differing sizes caused the votes to be kind of misaligned. Make sure when voting that you are clicking the proper button beside your preferred logo.

1) You can only vote once…votes are logged by cookie and IP. Don’t try to cheat!
2) Feel free to comment on the entries…be cool, though, ok?

So pull out your Paula Abdul mask, dawg. It’s time to vote!