If you really like to customize your entire computing experience then this tip is for you. Lifehacker.com recently posted an article that includes a number of ways to put a custom image behind the login screen.

Some of the instructions require a bit more experience with OSX and the command line, but one simple solution to matching your wallpaper to your login screen exists in a free download from Apple’s website. Check out Desktop to Login.

Personally, I prefer the easier method.

Many people purchase the iPod with the thought of how wonderful it will be to have literally thousands of songs in their pocket. What they often over look is all of the other features that are available to them with their iPod. Podcasts are a great source of entertaining and educational media that can help you keep up on news, your hobbies, and even complete your goals… like Learning a New Language.

To start learning a new language for free on your iPod follow these steps:

1. Open iTunes
2. Select the iTunes Store
3. Select Podcasts
4. Select Education under Categories
5. And then select the podcast that is teaching the language you’re interested in

Subscribe to the first lesson, sync them up with your iPod and then go through each and every one as you work your way to being a fluent speaker in your new language.

Podcasts on iTunes include lessons on how to speak Spanish, Japanese, French, English, Italian, and more. And remember most if not all these podcasts are FREE.

Most all browsers today have build in search capabilities and Safari is no different. No need to browse to Google or Yahoo’s home page to start your search as you can quickly enter your search phrase into the browser and hit search, propelling you closer to item your looking for. Unfortunately, Safari web search doesn’t include some of the great spotlight search functions like auto-suggest or previews of some of the information you’re looking for. But to our great luck there is a Safari plug-in that makes such capabilities available.

ENHANCE YOUR SEARCH: INQUISITOR

Inquisitor is a Safari plug-in that will provide you with Spotlight like search functionality for your web searches. One of the great things about Inquisitor is how fast it is. Start typing anything into the search field and auto-suggest items with details about the pages it is suggesting start popping up below the search field. Inquisitors suggestions are also great examples of how to setup your search phrases to get optimal web search results.

SETUP

After you’ve downloaded and installed Inquisitor you can fire up Safari, start a new search in the browser search field, and see how Inquisitor works. If you’d like to change some of the settings for Inquisitor select Preferences from the Safari menu and then click the Search tab. Here you can add the amount of suggestions displayed, what search engine to use, or other search related features.

Be sure to check out the other Safari Hints and Tips articles to take full advantage of Keyboard Shortcuts and learn how to let Safari read the web for you.

Over the past few weeks we’ve posted a number of tips, reviews, and tutorials on how to help you take full advantage of your Apple products. If you didn’t happen to read all of these, now is your chance to catch up on what you’ve missed. Some of the most popular articles have been:

1. Our conversation with J.D. from getrichslowly.org on how Macs impact his blogging efforts.
2. Instructions on how to import gmail contacts to your Address book and thus your iPhone/iPod Touch.
3. The first two articles on how to take full advantage of Safari: Keyboard shortcuts and Safari Reads Out Loud.
4. We even compared Time Capsule to Airport extreme.

We’ve got a number of additional tutorials, reviews, and secrets on how to unlock the complete power of your mac. Subscribe to our RSS feed to keep yourself posted on these ideas.

You may have noticed a menu item in many of your applications called Services. This is OSX’s way of letting you know how you can make applications interact with each other. One feature of Services that I find both interesting and useful in Safari is the Speech option.

START READING

I often find myself reading news articles from multiple news sources online that are covering the same article. I like to see how they’re different and see if one media source is applying any additional information that another may be missing. Safari and Mac OSX Speech option is perfect to allow me to essentially read two articles at once. Safari reads out loud the first article while I continue on to the next one.To get Safari to start reading for you:

1. Find a website you’d like Safari to read back to you
2. Select the text you’d like to read
3. Click Safari on the menu bar
4. Highlight Services, Speech, and then click “Start Speaking Text”

Thats all it takes and your mac will quickly start reading back to you the contents of the website. This is a great way to get multiple things done at once. I personally enjoy having Safari read back recipes to me while I’m cooking, or reading back blog articles on my google reader page. How would you use this feature? Don’t forget, you can create a keyboard shortcut to Start Speaking Text with just a few clicks on the keyboard.