If for some reason you’ve been working with files that you want to get remove from your computer for good you’ll need to do a little bit more than just move the files to the Trash Can and ‘empty the trash’.

It is true that doing this will make it difficult for people to find those deleted items, but with special recovery software it is possible to restore files that have been removed from you Mac.

To permanently remove these files you need to just select a different item from the Finder menu:

1. In Finder, Select Finder from the menu
2. Select Secure Empty Trash
3. Click Ok when asked if you would like to permanently remove the files from your Mac

Depending on how many files you have waiting to be permanently deleted, the permanent removal of files may take some time. Doing this will overwrite the previous used disk space with pointless information that will then itself be removed.

A couple of weeks ago I was testing out some software updates on my shiny new Mac Pro. After I was finished testing things out I noticed that the Mac was slow, very slow. I fired up the Activity Monitor to see what was going on. Turns out a background process called syslogd was running up the CPUs. Syslogd is the Apple System Log Server. It gathers logging statements from all the various running applications and saves them in case you need to look at them later. If you open the Console Applications from the /Applications/Utilities folder, you can read the logs created by syslogd.

What I couldn’t figure out was why syslogd was using an enormous amount of the Mac Pro’s resources. A little Googling revealed that syslogd stores the most recent log statements in a database file so they can be searched quickly. This database file has the property of fast access for reading, but it is slow to update with new entries. In fact, if an application logs too much information in a certain amount of time syslogd can no longer update the database file in a reasonable amount of time and it begins taking up more and more resources. Most people noticed this problem when using time machine as time machine does log changes to your file system (which can add up). The software I was testing was sending more log statements than syslogd could handle.

Now that I’ve found what was going on, I still had to do something about it. Syslogd can accept additional start up information that controls what kind of log messages it will accept, how often the database file will be purged of old log messages, and other options. These settings are located in a file in the System Folder of your Mac. If you’re feeling lucky (or geeky), you can edit this file directly. However, I recommend Lingon, a free app that does all the heavy lifting for you.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Lingon, you can start it up and it looks something like this:

On the left hand nav menu, there is an item that says System Daemons, go ahead and expand that item and then scroll down the listings until you find com.apple.syslogd. Once you click on the com.apple.syslogd item you will be presented with a warning that looks like this:

Go ahead and click OK. You are then presented with the syslogd startup information, such as it’s name, the path to the application (i.e. /usr/sbin/syslogd) and other startup information. You can add startup parameters to the application as command line arguments. I changed /usr/sbin/syslogd to /usr/sbin/syslogd -c 3 -a and then saved the file. You will need administrator rights in order to save the changes. Once you are done, it should look something like this in the “What” field:

The -c 3 tells syslog to ignore less important messages. There are 8 log levels with 0 being the highest (or most important) and 8 being the lowest. With -c 3, syslogd will only log messages with a log level of 3 or less. The -a parameter tells syslog to archive the database, clearing out entries over 24 hours old.

I haven’t had any syslogd problems since I’ve added these new options. However, with Lingon I can go back and adjust if I need to. So if your Mac slows down, it’s probably not spyware or anything like that, just a little logging application with a hungry appetite for CPU cycles. Lingon lets you tell syslog, “you on a diet.”

Microsoft made available today their most recent update to their MSN Messenger service for Apple Computers. You can find the free download at the Mactopia site, Microsoft’s Mac software website.

So, if you’ve decided that Adium and iChat aren’t the Mac messaging clients for you, MSN Messenger for Macs might just fill your Instant messaging need.

After some initial experience with the new Microsoft software I was impressed that they left out the advertisements and countless pop up windows that appear in their Window’s version of MSN live messenger.

But, the MSN Messenger 7 for Mac is not without flaws. I was unable to edit my profile picture as the application rejected the countless number of .jpg, .gif, .png images I tried to select. It even failed to let me select one of it’s default pictures as clicking the ‘OK’ button did absolutely nothing…

Microsoft does test their software before release… don’t they?

This weeks Automator tip of the week focuses on quickly and easily converting the format of your Word documents to PDF by creating a workflow and saving it as a Finder Plugin.

To create an Automator workflow that will take your selected Word documents in a Finder window and convert them to PDF add the following actions:

1. Get Selected Finder Items - This will tell the automator task to grab all the items you’ve selected in Finder
2. Copy Finder Items - This will allow you to backup the items before you perform any action on them.
3. Convert Format of Word Document - Select Portable Document Format (PDF)

Save The Workflow as a Plugin

With these three action items you have everything you need to quickly convert word documents. To make it even easier lets save Automator workflow as a Finder plugin.

1. Select File
2. Select Save as Plugin
3. Name the plugin and Select Plugin for: Finder.

Test Out The New Finder Plugin

I named the plugin Word2PDF and I’m now ready to test our new Finder plugin:

1. Open a Finder Window and navigate to a folder that contains word documents
2. Select the word documents and right click (command + click)
3. Select More, then Automator, and then Word2PDF (Or whatever you named your Finder plugin

Your computer will then automatically convert the Word files to PDF.

Over the past few years iTunes has emerged as the leading point of sales for music both on and off the internet. The media selection in iTunes is always growing and including more and more ‘new’ types of media like podcasts.

There may be times where you’d like to point visitors to your website to some interesting content included in iTunes but you haven’t been sure exactly how to point to the specific location in the iTunes store.

Thankfully, Apple has provided a tool to help us add links to the content in the iTunes store we’re interested in sharing.

If you navigate to the iTunes Music Store Link Maker you can search the iTunes store for the exact content you’d like to link to on your site. Take the search results and click on the arrow next to the content you’d like to link to. Get the link code and add it to your site to point your site visitors to the media you’d like to them to check out.

For example, I love listening to podcasts! A podcast that is new to me is MacCast. If you like keeping up with news related to Apple products then check out this podcast. To help you find the podcastI’ve gone to the iTunes Music Store Link Maker, searched for MacCast, grabbed the code, and included it here: