“2.1” means that this system includes left and right speakers plus a subwoofer. In the ProMedia system, the subwoofer contains the power supply for the other two speakers. The simple installation begins with setting up the left and right speakers wherever you want within the 30-foot range of where you’ll use your laptop or desktop computer. Connect them to the subwoofer, and plug it into a power outlet. Then plug the transmitter—a tiny device that looks like a thumb drive—into one of the USB ports on your computer.

Once you’re all hooked up, launch iTunes—or Pandora, or another source of your choosing—and play some music. If you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you can also install Apple’s Remote app to turn your handheld device into a remote control for iTunes.

Wireless, really?

For those of you who can’t forget the disastrous early attempts at wireless sound, keep in mind that Apple has been doing it well for years now through the audio‑out port on the Airport Express. Wireless sound has come a long way; it’s done digitally now, like good 2.4-GHz cordless phones, so it works well and sounds terrific.

Go give these a listen, and tell me what you think. (My bet: you’ll want to leave the store with a set of them.) And for those of you on a tight budget, I’ve found the non-wifi version of the same system for under $115.

Enjoy!

Sync your Mac Address Book with your Google or Yahoo! e‑mail account to make it available to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social‑media sites.

Many Mac users already make their contacts available everywhere by synchronizing between laptops, desktops, and smart phones, either using MobileMe or third-party utilities. But in Leopard and Snow Leopard (Mac OS X versions 10.5 and 10.6), there’s another very powerful option—synchronize your Mac Address Book with Google (Gmail) and Yahoo! e‑mail accounts. The advantage: these two services have become nearly universal resources for sharing your contact list with social‑media sites.

Here’s how it works:

1. If you don’t already have a Google or Yahoo! account, sign up for one. It’s free, and it gives you access to other members-only features of those sites, such as Google Analytics, local search, and lots more.
2. Open Address Book and choose Preferences from the Address Book menu. In Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), choose the General tab. In Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), choose the Accounts tab.
3. Click the appropriate checkbox for the service to which you want to sync. You’ll be prompted to enter your @gmail.com or @yahoo.com e‑mail address and password. You might also be asked to accept terms of a user agreement.
4. Click okay, and Address Book will communicate with Google or Yahoo to link the account. (If you encounter error messages, try signing out of you Google or Yahoo! account. Then attempt the link again from Address Book.)
5. Once the accounts are linked, they’ll be synced automatically within a few minutes. You can also manually synchronize immediately using Apple’s iSync application, or by clicking the iSync icon  in the menu bar and choosing Sync Now. (Turn the icon on or off using iSync’s Preferences menu option.)
6. Once your contacts appear in Google or Yahoo!, you can log in to your social‑media accounts to make use of them. For instance, in Facebook, click on the Friends tab, and in the “Find People You Email” section, log in using your Google or Yahoo! account information. Facebook will import your contacts and find all the people you know who are already on Facebook. Select the ones to whom you’d like to send friend requests. In a later step, you’ll also be offered the option to send invitations to join Facebook to selected contacts who aren’t already members.

There are a lot of software products available to help you organize information, but Circus Ponies™ Software’s NoteBook is one of the most powerful tools we’ve encountered. It uses the visual metaphor of a notebook, complete with ruled pages, tabbed dividers, and a wire spiral, among many other options, to collect and manage notes and materials for a task, a class, a trip, or any other kind of project you need to organize. Its feature-rich interface can be customized with outlines, drawings, sticky notes, flags, to-do lists, and custom toolbars. Note pages can include text, photos, audio and video clips, URLs, or just about any other kind of content you’re likely to run into.

But the real power of NoteBook is in the way it makes use of the Mac OS’s indexing and Services features. Every NoteBook file contains a Multidex™, an interactive index of all the text, links, keywords, highlighted words, capitalized words, numbers, etc., in the file. The Multidex is created automatically, updated on the fly whenever you add content to the file, and is Spotlight-searchable.

Another powerful feature is NoteBook’s use of Mac Services: set up a clipping service inside your NoteBook file, and then you can “clip” data from any other Services-aware application on your Mac directly into the NoteBook file with one menu click, even when the NoteBook app isn’t open. With this feature, you can set up a NoteBook file for each of your ongoing projects, then collect relevant e-mails, web pages, text, graphics, or other information whenever and wherever you find it.

NoteBook has too many cool features to cover in a brief review, but Circus Ponies’ web site has a terrific set of short video overviews to introduce you to the product. NoteBook sells for $49.95 and is also available in a discounted family pack and an academic license.

Customers can pre-order now for delivery on Friday, or visit an Apple retail store or Apple Authorized Reseller on Friday. As soon as we get a chance to test-drive Snow Leopard, we’ll post a review here.

Read the full story at Ars Technica.

Check out posts in the Mac 101 category, which are especially geared toward “new and novice” Mac users.

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