Resizing VirtualBox Guest OS screen on MAC

Before we start, here are some terminologies to understand.

• Host OS : Install VirtualBox on your MAC. For VirtualBox, MAC is now your host OS
• Guest OS : On this VirtualBox, lets say we want to install Ubuntu 14.04. For VirtualBox, Ubuntu is now the Guest OS

When I first installed Ubuntu 14.04 as a Guest OS using VirtualBox on MAC, I was stuck with a peculiar problem. I call it peculiar, since I did not face this problem when installing OpenSuSE or Elementary OS as a Guest OS on the same VirtualBox. The problem was that, the size of the Ubuntu screen was stuck. Even if I changed the View to full screen, the screen size did not change !! It was something like in this image below.

No matter how much I move the corners to reize the window it always remained the same. I was stuck since I could not move around the application windows in Ubuntu as well !!! There is a fair amount of free desktop space that is left after that window is displayed in the image above. But, I had no access to it. I felt handicapped to do anything with that screen.

After some "googling" I found that there is a GuestOSExtension package that comes with VirtualBox that is supposed to fix this issue. But, unfortunately, I could not find this extension package for MAC. 

With some luck, I found an option under Display Menu that solved my problem. You need to run your Guest OS for this menu option to appear as in the below image

Just keep following the instructions as they pop up after choosing this option. If you get some errors as to no permissions or no file found, then look into the errors to figure out which file it was not able to open.

I had to manually go to finder,

• Applications->VirtualBox, 
• Control + click and choose "Show Package contents"
• Double click Contents->MacOS->VBoxGuestAdditions.iso

You will see some more popups coming in your Ubuntu VirtualBox. Follow them. Restart your Ubuntu VirtualBox and your resizing problem should be solved.

It solved the problem for me and I downloaded variety Wallpaper just to see that small clock on the bottom of the wallpaper :)

MAC : Keyboard shortcut for Tags

If you love using keyboard shortcuts and want to use Tags for your MAC files, this simple tip comes as a life saver.

Steps :

1. Open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts
2. Select App Shortcuts on the left pane
3. Click on + to add a new shortcut
4. Select "Finder" as Application
5. For Menu Title, type in the following keys : Tags⌥;
1. Typing option + ; gives you the ellipsis.
6. Keyboard Shortcut : anything you wish to use to launch Tags [ ex : ⌘⌃ T ]
7. Open Finder and select the file or folder that you want to tag, and hit your keyboard shortcut

More details can be found in this article : http://www.macworld.com/article/2158081/use-the-finders-tags-feature-from-the-keyboard.html

Sign your documents in MAC

Wouldn't you love to sign each and every document of yours with a special personal signature ?

Doing this is a piece of cake on your Mac Book Pro with the powerful and helpful Preview Application.

Open your image of PDF document in Preview. Select Tools->Annotate->Signature->"Capture Signature ..."

Then, sign on an empty page and show it to your Mac Book Pro's FaceTime Camera. Align your signature to that Blue Line you see on the screen. Once you like the preview of the captured signature, click on Accept [ I had to use the help of my wife to hold the paper in position while I clicked on the Accept button :-) ]

Go back to your document that you have opened in Preview. Click on View->"Show Edit Toolbar". You will then see a small  "Sign" button. If you don't see it, then select Tools->Annotate->Signature, and you will see all your accepted signatures there. Chose the one you want and place it anywhere on the document. Adjust it and once you are happy, save the document. And you have your document signed with your own personal signature. Enjoy !!!

MAC : Keyboard viewer

For my earlier post on Switching between windows in MAC, I pasted an image to depict the key strokes to use for switching between windows of the same application on MAC. If you ever wish to publish something like this, I am sure you will have to hunt for some keyboard images. Well, that's not required. You can use the inbuilt keyboard viewed of MAC and create an image out of it using screen captures. More on screen captures later. For now, follow these simple steps to set up the keyboard viewer.

• Open System Preferences application and click on Language and Region

• Click on Keyboard Preferences button that you will find towards the bottom of this window

• Move to the Input Sources tab and select "Show input menu in menu bar"

• Once you do this, you will see a new item added to your menu bar. Select the option of "Show Keyboard Viewer" from its drop down menu

• And behold ! You get your keyboard displayed on your screen. You can also use it to type text in any application. And of course, it also highlights the keys that you press. 

Another advantage of this keyboard viewer, is that you get to learn the symbols for various keys on MAC, like :

•   ⌃   : Corresponds to "Control" key
•  ⌥   : Corresponds to "Option" key
•  ⌘   : Corresponds to "Command" key

MAC : Switching between windows

When it comes to using a computer, I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. To move the focus from one window to another on a MAC, I found that you could use :

⌘ + ⇥ [ Command + Tab ]

key combination to switch between different "application" windows. If your current focus is on Safari and you want to move to another application like, Numbers, you would use "Command + Tab" to switch between them. While it does that, you also get to see a nice list of applications that you can possibly switch between. Something like this image below.

Then, one day, I had opened 2 windows of Safari and when I wanted to switch between those 2 windows, I found that "Command + Tab" key combination does not help me for this. It only helps to switch between windows of different applications. To move between windows of the same application, you had to use another set of keys :

⌘ +  ` [ Command + Back-tick ]

The back-tick is on the key which has a ~ on it. Like the one on this image below :

Digital Marketing

Attended a free seminar on Digital Marketing for Startups at IIMB on May 03, 2014

There were quite a few learnings for me in this. Hopefully, you will also gain from this.

Creating awareness

1. Use blogs and newsletters to create awareness about your online existence
2. Use twitter and Facebook and other social media to propagate information about your articles
3. Make sure that the attractive words in your digital ads are emphasised and given more importance on your landing page.
4. The content of your webpage is the biggest driving factor for attracting visitors
5. It also boosts up the chances of your page being listed high up in the search list
6. Constantly updating content on your website is the only sure way of retaining visitors

Email Marketing

1. Never under-estimate the power of email marketing. This is the most personal form of communicating in the virtual world. 
2. Write personal emails, not generic emails
3. Write things that create a connection between you and the respondent. Don’t write one-liners

Adding Value to your websites

1. Visitors of your website, are more interested in getting what they want and not what you did
2. Visitors of your webpage look for things that add more value to themselves
3. You winning a football match is information to your visitor. It does not add any value to him
4. You writing about tricks to perform better as a footballer is more valuable to your visitor

Mobile Advertising

1. Mobile advertising is still [ as of early 2014 ] in its early infancy. Its failure is in trying to mimic the banner ads.
2. Mobile advertising needs to develop new ways of presentations to be more attractive.

Brand building

1. Make sure your online image and offline image match each other.
2. Use the same words in offline communication that have attracted visitors in your online communication
3. Its the things perceived by your client that you chose to do or chose not to do that builds your brand. [ Read this An Entrepreneur's Diary and not at this conference ]
4. Apple has such large brand following today not because of how it creates things, but because of the things it creates.

Syncing Notes with Google

MAC [ Maverick OS ] has this simple note taking app called “Notes”. I like the simplicity of it. Easy to launch and use. Infact, I wrote this article using MAC Notes in offline mode :-)

While exploring this simple application, I found that there was this feature of syncing notes with other online accounts, like iCloud, Google, Yahoo, etc.

So, I went ahead and associated this application with my Google account. This might sound too simple, but I was baffled on not finding which Google application Notes synced up with !!!

I tried Google Keep, the new note taking application of Google [ it replaced Google Notes, if I am right ]. MAC Notes was not synced with this. I tried Google Docs and there was no luck there as well.

After some googling, I figured out these notes were actually being synced with Gmail !!! Yes, Gmail. My MAC Notes were converted to self addressed messages. They were all labelled as “Notes”

So, when you sync up your MAC Notes with Google, remember that they are available online in your Gmail labelled as “Notes"