Google and Yahoo! both have built-in calculators in their search boxes … you just have to learn the symbols and know how how to organize your parentheses if it’s a complicated equation.

But, here is something quicker if you are using a Google toolbar or Safari: with the Google search box in the upper right of Safari’s window:

Just enter the equation right in the search box in the upper right corner and hit enter. The Google search results show the equation and the answer to the equation.

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There is a bug in some versions of iMovie that causes intermittent loss of audio in the exported .mov or .mp4 files of some videos.

Here is a fix that is known to work and hopefully will work for your situation. With your project open in iMovie, select one clip and choose ‘Extract Audio’ from the ‘Advanced’ menu.  Repeat for each clip. Save your project and try the export again. The new exported file should have all sound back intact.

The procedure works for projects that have transitions between clips as well. One report of loss of audio occurred after the trash was emptied within iMovie, so you might want to hold off on emptying the trash until you are done exporting.

You boot up your MacBook with an external monitor attached, but you forget to turn on the monitor. You turn on your external display, but your MacBook is already booting. When everything is all booted up, your external monitor is at the wrong resolution — 800 X 600. What do you do?

First of all … you don’t have to reboot your MacBook.

Just go to the Apple menu and select ‘System Preferences …’

Select ‘Displays’ from the ‘System Preferences’ window that pops up

Another window pops up that probably has the name of your external monitor in the title bar

Click on the ‘Detect Displays’ button from that last pop up.

Done. Your external display will get back to its optimum resolution.

Here is the simplest way to save a graphic to your computer from an email that arrives in Mac Mail with a picture in the message:

Hold Down the CONTROL key and click the mouse key or trackpad key.

A popup menu shows a list of possible commands … the best being SAVE TO DOWNLOADS FOLDER. If you select SAVE TO DOWNLOADS FOLDER, the graphic is saved to the hard drive in the Mail Downloads folder and that folder comes to the front of the display and you should see the graphic file icon in the folder.

The next step will make this graphic the one and only graphic in your LAST ROLL in iPhoto, so make sure you have organized your iPhoto LAST ROLL before you do the next step … Next, you can drag the recently downloaded file into the iPhoto icon in the Dock (the row of icons at the bottom of the Mac desktop) … this automatically opens the graphic after importing it into the iPhoto application. You can then organize this photo into a folder in iPhoto just like you would organize a photo or a group of photos from a camera import.