Several of our readers have written in and asked how to make their iPhone stop sending them copies of their outgoing Gmail. Here's how. Go to Settings -> Mail -> (Your Gmail account) -> Advanced. Switch "Use Recent Mode" from ON to OFF. Be aware that the first time you do this, you may end up sucking a bunch of old messages into your iPhone inbox. (I had about a dozen old emails which shows exactly how little I use my gmail account.) It's a one time thing, though. After you get rid of those old e-mails by disabling "recent mode", your iPhone will stop sending you those outgoing copies.

Update: This option keeps getting weirder. TUAW reader digitalintrigue discovered that copies of outgoing mail sent from gmail's website still get sent to the iPhone although copies of iPhone-originated mail do not. I tried this out and confirmed the behavior.

RogueAmoeba just linked to Mark Johns' easy little app called Cursorceror. He loves the Ctrl/scroll wheel trick, just as I do (holding Ctrl and using the scroll wheel allows you to zoom in on any part of your desktop-- especially useful for watching Flash movies fullscreen very quickly), and he wanted to get the cursor out of the way quickly, so he wrote Cursorceror to attach hiding the cursor to a hotkey-- make it appear and disappear at will.

The only problem is that he didn't have to do all of that. Turns out that when you're zoomed in (in most applications, including the major browsers), hitting any key at all will automatically hide the cursor for you. So if all you want to do is watch Flash videos fullscreen, just zoom in, tap a key, and watch your videos cursor-free.

Johns' wittily-named app didn't completely go to waste though-- while hiding the cursor is easy most of the time, the keystrokes you hit will still be received by whatever program has focus, and so handing off the task to Cursorceror will keep you from making any mistakes while keying. Also, not all programs will apparently let the keystrokes through (I couldn't get the cursor to hide in iTunes or GraphicConverter in my quick tests), so Cursorceror will come in handly if you want instant hiding no matter what app has focus. It will also hide the cursor after a set time limit, which, as far as I know, OS X won't normally do.

The iPhone offers some delightful navigation tricks in Safari. Here are a few of my favorites for you to enjoy and to use while scrolling though webpages:

Page down. When not using a zoomed-in display, double-tap towards the bottom of the screen. The page will re-center around your tap. Make sure not to tap a link!

Jump to the top. Double-tap the very top of the screen, just below the time display to pop back to the top of the page. (Thanks John C)

Zoom onto a single picture. Double-tapping images in Safari zooms them to fit your iPhone display. If the picture is linked to a URL, this can prove a little tricky but it works great for non-linked images. Double-tap again to return to the unzoomed display.

Zoom a column. You can zoom text columns as well as pictures. Double-tap on the column to fit it to the display. Double-tap again to return out of the zoom. Not only does Safari zoom block-quoted text independently of regular text but if you move your finger after the first double-tap-to-fit, it interprets the next double-tap as a re-center page command rather than a return-to-previous-zoom. Smart.

Stopping a scroll. After flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement. Don't forget, you can also manually drag the screen display to reset the part you're viewing.

Manual zoom. This is probably one of the most-advertised Safari features (along with the flip-the-phone-on-its-side-trick) but it's worth mentioning again. To zoom into a Safari page, put your thumb and forefinger on the screen and move them apart. To zoom out, pinch the fingers together after starting with them apart.

Examining the URL. To peek at a link's destination, touch and hold the link for a few seconds. You can also do this with images to see if they are linked. If a link appears and you don't want to activate it, just slide your finger away until the destination text disappears.

Got some more tricks to add? Let us know in the comments.

I kept running into this: I wanted to type contractions like "he'll" or "we'll," but they were a hassle: without the apostrophe, they're both words on their own, so the keyboard software wouldn't recommend the contraction. I'd have to click the punctuation button, then hit the apostrophe to form the right word.

But nope, there's a better way: simply add a third "l." Type "helll," and the keyboard software will recommend "he'll." Type "welll," and the keyboard software will recommend "we'll."

Sweet.

[Update:] This also works with "were" and "we're." Type an extra "e" ("weree") and the software recommends "we're."

I just read about an iPhone typing tip from David Pogue (via John Gruber) that involves one solution to the alphabet/period conundrum: the period isn't included with the rest of the alphabet, so entering a period and moving on with another sentence is an aggravating process. Pogue's solution involves tapping and holding on the ".123" key (I left out the question mark since it doesn't play well with our blogging system), sliding your finger over to the period and then releasing - the trick here is that, if you do it right, the keyboard will switch back to the alphabet due to the way the keyboard registers and handles taps and key releases.

Personally, I find this really clunky, and I think I have an easier solution: simply press that ".123" key normally, type your period and then hit the space bar - the iPhone realizes you've just ended a sentence and are beginning another, so it automatically switches back to the alphabetical layout. This seems far more natural to me and easier to pull off in any kind of mobile or awkward situations.

[Update: It appears my trick works with any character on the punctuation/number keyboard layout: press the .123 button, hit a number or punctuation character, then press the space bar to switch the layout back to alphabetical. For some characters that typically have a letter after them, such as an apostrophe, the keyboard seems to switch itself back automatically without any interaction on the user's part; not even a space bar.]

Many iTunes users are unaware that the capacity presentation for iPods and iPhones actually is interactive. Tap on the bar to switch from between views. These views include the default view (space occupied), an item-count view (number of items for each category) and a duration view (the length of playback for the items loaded onto the device). It's just one more sweet little Apple feature.

Click To Play

One of the things I mentioned in my Aperture podcast that I love so much about this app is its plethora of features designed especially to increase efficiency for power users and pro photographers. This tip centers around Aperture's keyboard shortcuts that allow for some very useful navigation and scrolling of the library browser, which is the pane that displays thumbnails of all the images in the currently selected album, project or folder. Instead of just explaining the shortcuts or giving you a screenshot, however, I thought I would go one step further and put together a short demo video of the shortcuts and the browser in action, additionally pointing out the small shuttle control on the right that helps detail just how quickly you're scrolling. It isn't anything fancy, but it should give you an idea of just how cool and actually useful this feature is.

For those who want the actual keyboard shortcuts, they are: J, K and L to scroll up, stop and scroll down, respectively.

A few weeks back, Dave Caolo wrote about double-clicking the pipes at the bottom of Finder's column view to automatically resize a column to accommodate long file names. This feature isn't just in Finder. You might be surprised to learn that the Open File dialog supports "right sizing" and it does so far better than Finder browser windows.

To switch to column view in the Open dialog, click the column icon, just to the left of the location pop-up.

As in Finder, you can double-click the double-pipe to right-size the selected column.

Alternatively, right-click (control-click) the double-pipe to open a contextual pop-up menu (shown above) that allows you to choose from several options. Select right-sizing the selected column (as if you'd double-clicked the double-pipe), right-sizing all columns individually (each column sizes to its longest element), and right-sizing all columns equally (each column sizes to match the right-sizing of the current column). I'm not sure why Apple built this behavior into the Open dialog and not into Finder windows. It's certainly useful. Perhaps it will make it into Leopard.

Update: A few more tips, courtesy of our fabulous readers:

* In Finder, Option-Drag the pipes to resize all columns at once. Option-Double-Click the pipes to "Right Size all Columns equally"

* Option+doubleclicking will 'right size' all the columns, not just the root one.

* This menu appears to be a Cocoa-only feature, which is why it doesn't work in iTunes, Finder, Office or Adobe apps.

Sometimes virtualization can be aggravating. If you've found yourself with a Parallels virtual disk that turned out to be uncomfortably small for all your stuff, there's a way to expand your horizons -- increase the virtual drive size with the included Image Tool, then boot the virtual machine from a free GParted LiveCD image to bump up the Windows partition to the full size of the virtual disk. Easy as pie, right?

Well, unfortunately not anymore: Parallels has (temporarily, we hope) removed Image Tool from the 3.0 distribution and the older version of the tool will not work with the current disk image format. The resizing procedure has been confusing for users (and possibly eaten the VHDs of a few unlucky souls), so until Parallels comes up with a more integrated resizing solution, it's off the table. You can get around the missing utility by making a new (larger) blank disk image, then using a tool like Acronis MigrateEasy within Parallels to move from old HD to new; still, it's a pain in the keister.

Meanwhile, as I discovered when preparing to move my Boot Camp XP setup into a virtual machine, the otherwise excellent Parallels Transporter P2V (physical to virtual) conversion tool has a serious functional gap. Transporter, which is designed to help you create Parallels virtual machines from physical PCs or other virtual disk formats, works on just about any source machine except... you guessed it: a Boot Camp installation of Windows. Argh! I could capture the Boot Camp install as a restorable disk image with NetRestore or WinClone, but I really wanted to go virtual, as I am in the process of moving over to a new MacBook Pro (yay!) with a smaller internal drive (boo!). What to do, what to do?

In this case, it was the competition that came to the rescue, in the form of VMware's free Converter tool. VMware Converter, which does the same basic P2V tricks as Parallels Transporter, works just fine with a Boot Camp setup, thank you very much, and neatly whisked my one-third-full 40 GB XP partition into a folderful of virtual disk chunks; with Converter you can also easily expand or contract your target disk size, which is another approach to the resizing problem above.

From there I had what we refer to in Brooklyn as "lotsa optsh" -- continue on using the new virtual machine in VMware Fusion, or run back to Parallels Transporter to continue converting into a Parallels VM. In fact, to avoid installing a full VMware setup (I did fire up the new v4.1, just to kick the tires a little), there's a conversion method in Transporter that goes directly from the VMware virtual disk to a Parallels .hdd file, don't pass Go or collect $200. Transporter will even make the needed config changes to the resulting disk, open it up in a fresh virtual machine, and load the Parallels support tools and drivers for you, hands-free.

Well, Parallels, I suppose I can forgive the Boot Camp transfer situation, but let's not go down this twisty disk-y road again, mmmkay?

This week, Apple posted a tip about using FTP directly from Finder. What Apple fails to mention in its tip is that whenever you connect via the Finder's Go -> Connect to Server option, make sure to include the user name in the ftp address. Don't connect to ftp://foo.org, instead, connect to ftp://erica.sadun@foo.org. Adding the user name fixes nearly all the connection problems that people write to me about. Instead of getting "The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in (address) could not be read or written. (Error code -36)." an authentication window appears.

Update: Apple appears to have removed the tip page. Interesting.

Thanks, Arlo.

Update 2: Apple's tip is still live here. (Thanks Francis.)

Well shiver-me-timbers: while Aperture doesn't catalog anything but images, it at least helps you download 'non-image files' off your camera so you can manage them some other way. When I performed the initial import from iPhoto (using Aperture's handy File > Import > iPhoto Library command), a notification appeared at the beginning of the import letting me know that Aperture found a few files it wouldn't import. I realized the files in question were probably a few movies I shot with my point 'n shoot camera, which led me to assume that Aperture simply doesn't handle or even touch those files to begin with. Apparently, my assumption was a bit off.

As it turns out, plugging a camera or card into Aperture that contains either audio or video files (and possibly other types) will generate the dialog you see in this post, allowing you to download the files Aperture isn't designed to handle to another location on your Mac. This is great because you can set up another location to, for example, store all the home movies you've been shooting and manage those files with the Finder or another app like yFlicks once you're done working in Aperture.

As for those home movies in iPhoto, I guess I'll still need to dig those out some other way. Fortunately, iPhoto automatically applies the keyword 'movie' to all movies it imports, which should make this task a bit easier for anyone else making the upgrade to Aperture like I did.

Since I committed to stepping up to Aperture from iPhoto, I've been slowly learning that Aperture really isn't left out in the cold in terms of integrating with other applications or syncing photos to devices like the iPod and Apple TV. If you don't have Aperture installed, you simply won't see it as an option in things like Apple's system-wide Media Browser or iTunes for photo synching; that's what caught me, since I've been running my entire iTunes library on an older iMac downstairs, and Aperture on my MacBook Pro. Today I decided to tinker with a few things by plugging an iPod into my MacBook Pro, and suddenly I caught this option in iTunes for Aperture. This setting also appears in the sync options for the Apple TV as well, and works just as you expect; you can chose to sync your entire photo library, or you can pick and chose albums (or Projects, as they're called in Aperture), complete with image counts for every album in the list.

This should be great news for anyone who, like me, previously thought Aperture couldn't play with all the system-wide integration that iPhoto enjoys.

Ron Popeil, the patron saint of gadget vendors, has a saying: "Set it and forget it." And, as with so many of Saint Ron's utterances, we sometimes miss how deep and meaningful these lessons are in our daily lives. Take Safari 3 for example. After switching to the new beta, I suddenly started seeing pop-up ads. Lots and lots of those annoying little windows. And this was, of course, because I had so long ago set my Safari pop-up blocker and then forgotten about it.

Now that I had upgraded, it was time for another "set it and forget it" moment. I opened my Safari menu and sure enough, "Block Pop-Up Windows" was unchecked. So I selected it and my pop-ups went away. Hopefully this post will help some of you to do the same.

TUAW reader Irice22 wrote "I accidentally switched over to iTunes Plus. How do I go back to the old format?" Here's how:

1. Sign into your iTunes account and select View My Account from the Store Menu.
   
2. Sign in once again (yes, I know! How annoying!) and click on Manage iTunes Plus.
   
3. Uncheck the box marked "Always show me iTunes Plus music and music videos when available" and click Save Changes.
   

You can always re-enable this option by following the same directions and checking the box rather than unchecking it.

This morning, I received a desperate letter from a person to remain nameless. "Quick!" it said, "Tell me a keyboard shortcut to mark IN on the timeline in QT Pro from where the playhead is parked. Having to twiddle those stupid triangles is frustrating beyond measure." Well, secret correspondent who shall be henceforth known as "V", here is a quick reference for you. I threw this together in short order, so if anyone has additional playback shortcuts they want to throw into the mix, please do so. If you've got a long commute, why not download Apple's QuickTime 7 Guide (pdf) and go straight to the source?

Space bar. Pause/play.

Right-Arrow. Move one frame forward in time.

Left-Arrow. Move one frame back in time.

Up-Arrow. Increase volume.

Down-Arrow. Decrease volume.

Command-A. Select the entire track.

Command-B. Select nothing. This has the very useful side effect of moving the selection triangles to the current location of the playhead.

Shift-Left Arrow. Move the left selection triangle to the playhead.

Shift-Right Arrow. Move the right selection triangle to the playhead.

Command-Left Arrow. Play in reverse.

Command-Right Arrow. Play.

Option-Left Arrow. Move left to the next selection triangle, or if there is none to the start of the movie.

Option-Right Arrow. Move right to the next selection triangle, or if there is none to the end of the movie.

Command-T. Play selection only.

Command-L. Loop playback.