Mac Daniel's Advice

Addressing Three Tiny Annoyances

Dealing with Instakisses, USB Power, and Hidden Files

Evan Kleiman - 2002.08.07

Every day when you use your computer, there are tiny annoyances that spark up. While they don't really inhibit the functionality of the computer, they can harshly affect everyday ease of use.

I got an instakiss

This next problem really isn't one that only plagues AOL users, but it is a large enough "small annoyance" that it should be on this list.

Many people get so-called "instakisses" via IM or email on AOL. They are usually bad attempts to get the unsuspecting user to view a pornographic site or something similar.

How can you rid yourself of these little plagues? Well, there's really no way to remove all of them. It's just like spam, so it can be a difficult problem to tackle.

One of the main ways a potential instakiss recipient is located is through AOL's profile feature. To stop this from happening, it's a good idea to not make an AOL profile. For many people, this can be a bit of an inconvenience, so another way is to block out (through privacy preferences) or just "decline" all AIM screen names that you don't know, since most instakisses are done through the free AIM service.

My USB-powered peripheral doesn't work right when plugged into my keyboard or other non-powered hub.

This is another common problem, one that I've had for a long time, in fact, especially with my Limewire and the like tend to conveniently hide files for no good reason. So how can we unhide these files?

Back in the days of OS 9, unhiding a file was as simple as going into ResEdit and editing the file. However, now it can become a much harder task, and you have several options to do it. While you can do things such as going into the terminal and editing the attributes of a file, much as you would do it in DOS, I feel it is easiest to just do it the same exact way you did it in OS 9: use ResEdit!

Since it is a classic app, you'll need to either boot into OS 9 or use classic. Then all you need to do is go to the "file" menu and select the "Get File/Folder" option, uncheck "hidden," and you're all good!

However, you can also use some of the new breed of resource-editing apps for OS X, such as MacResourceDog. These programs aren't as reliable as good old ResEdit, but they can prove to be very handy.

Every day more of these minor annoyances pop up. In fact, it's just a natural part of being a computer user. So, thankfully, today three of them have been solved (well partly, at least).

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