Over the past few weeks a number of software bundles for the Mac have been announced that brings a significant number of Mac applications to users at incredible prices. Of course, the deals become much more incredible once a certain number of people have purchased the bundle and thus unlock the best apps included.

MacUpdate recently announced their “Parallels Promotion” which includes a number of applications that make creating word art, writing that book you’ve always dreamed of authoring, and keeping backup copies of your DVDs quick and easy.

A solid deal as once all applications are unlocked purchasers will receive $469 worth of software for just $69. If a large number of people purchase the bundle additional software including Parallels virtualization machines that allow you to run Windows on your Mac will be part of the bundle.

Additionally, after recent success on previous bundles, Macheist has announced a new bundle for $49. This includes some software from previous bundles as well as ways to make managing your clipboard easier and providing a solid writing environment for all the would be authors.

But, if you’re not sure you’d like to put down any money for some of these software options… There is plenty of powerful free software available.

Lifehacker.com recently described a number of free alternatives to the available software included in bundles. Check out some of their suggested apps and let us know how they work.

for additional help and discussion, please visit our Forums.

Like all web browsers, Safari keeps track of the websites you’ve visited and when you went to them. This can be very helpful if you’re trying to track down websites you’ve been to but can’t seem to find again.

Clearing Safari History

Although seeing where you’ve been and what sites you’ve looked at can be helpful, it also takes away from some of your privacy. To clear your history you can select History from your menu bar and then click Clear History. Additionally, you can clear your Safari browsing history by selecting Safari on the menu bar and then clicking Reset Safari (This method also allows you to clear all personal data Safari may have stored on your system).

Restoring Safari History

If for some reason after you’ve cleared your Safari history you discover you can’t find a website you know you visited 3 weeks ago, Time Machine is there to help.

To Restore your Safari Browsing History:

1. Close Safari and Open Finder
2. Select your user account under Places (There will be a Home icon next to it)
3. Open the Library folder, and then Safari folder
4. Open Time Machine - Time Machine will open displaying the Safari folder in Safari you’ve navigated to
5. Select the date you’d like to restore your browsing history from
6. Select the History.plist file and click restore - A dialog box will open asking you if you want to proceed - Click REPLACE
7. Open Safari and click History on the menu bar

If the restore was successful, you should see today’s history plus the date you restored from below it. Navigate down to the Date and the history of sites you visited on that date will be displayed.

Exclude Safari History From Time Machine Backups

Now that we’ve showed how easy it is to restore your browsing history… you may want to keep that information as private as possible.

To keep Time Machine from backing up Safari History:

1. Command Click (right click) on Time Machine in the Dock and select Time Machine Preferences…
2. Click Options
3. Click the + button
4. Navigate to your User folder, Library, and then Safari
5. Select History.plist and click the Exclude Button (To keep everything in Safari Private, select the Safari Folder and click exclude)

This should add history.plist or all your Browsing personal information out of Time Machine backups. This, combined with Safari’s Private Browsing feature will allow you to browse the web without anyone being able to trace your steps.

OS X Leopard includes a wonderful backup tool, Time Machine, that allows anyone to quickly backup their entire system on an external hard drive or Time Capsule.

In addition to allowing individuals to backup and restore from their own system, Time Machine also allows you to “Browse Other Time Machine Disks”. This built in feature allows you to connect to any available Time Machine drive on your network and pull off any version of the file you’re looking for.

To Browse Other Time Machine Disks:

1. Be sure that you are connected to the Other Time Machine disk. To do this you may need to connect to the computer the drive is connected to and login with user credentials or mount the drive by connecting to the computer (command+K in Finder) with its IP address and mounting the drive.
2. After your computer has connected to the Other Time Machine disk, right click (command+click) the Time Machine icon in the dock
3. Select the Other Time Machine disk from the selection window and click Use Selected Disk

After following the steps above, Time Machine should launch and display contents of the backed up data on the Other Time Machine disk.

Browse through the files to find what you’re looking for, select those files, and then click restore. Time Machine will ask you where you’d like to restore the files to on your current computer. Select the location and let the file restoration begin.

Now that we’ve explained how to setup Windows to run on OS X in its own Space by using Parallels its time we explain the quickest and easiest way to launch your Windows applications when you’re working in OS X.

Once you have Windows installed using a Parallels Virtual Machine and you’ve launched some of your Windows’ applications getting back to them from OS X is as easy as searching in Spotlight.

For example, say you’d like to open Microsoft Word 2003 to create a new document based on the news article you just read in Safari.

Instead of switching to your Windows Space and launching Word 2003 from the Start menu you can pull up Spotlight with its keyboard shortcut (command + spacebar), type in Word, select Word 2003 from the populated list and hit enter.

Your screen will automatically move to the correct Space and spotlight will open up your Windows application.

NOTE: You must have previously opened the Windows Application for Safari to have it indexed.

We’ve mentioned previously how wonderful the new Automator is and have decided that to feature a weekly workflow that may make some of your tasks easier.

The Automator Tip of the Week is Picture File Conversion.

It is amazing the number of different picture file formats for the modern computer. Many people use jpegs but at the same time tiffs are still common amongst Mac users.

Additionally, web picture formats include gif, png, and many others. But amongst all these different file formats you may find yourself in need of a way to quickly convert pictures from one format to another. Opening each picture and saving it as a different format can be very time consuming. Unless, of course, you setup an automator task to do the work for you.

Change Picture File Type With Automator

The following Automator steps will help you batch convert the file extension of your pictures. For a point of reference I’ll reference this as if you were changing png images to jpeg:

1. Find Finder Items - Do a search to select all the .png images you want to transfer to jpeg
2. Get Selected Finder Items
3. Copy Finder Items - This will make sure you keep an original copy of all your .png images should anything go wrong.
4. Change Type of Images - select the image type you’d like to change to.

Run this automator process and you’ll be set with a backup copy of your images and the new images in your desired file format. The process that use to take you forever was completed in seconds.

If you need any help with an Automator process please let us know by leaving a comment.