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Tonya Engst

Tonya Engst

Tonya Engst co-founded TidBITS with Adam Engst back in 1990 when publishing on the Internet was either strange or revolutionary, depending on your viewpoint. Since then, along with performing nearly every imaginable role involved in running TidBITS, she has worked at Cornell University's academic computer store (selling Macs, PCs, and NeXTs), worked at Microsoft as a technical support person, written and co-written several books, written oodles of articles for the likes of MacWEEK and Macworld, become a parent, edited various books, and worked as editor-in-chief for the Take Control series of electronic books through 2017.

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Reluctantly Switching from Eudora to Apple Mail

How Tonya upgraded over 10 years of email from Eudora to Apple Mail, but not without mistakes and troubles, and what she learned along the way.

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MacVoices Podcast Covers Time Capsule Ins and Outs

Listen in as Glenn and Joe chat about Time Capsule: how it works, what's going on behind the scenes, what type of user it's meant for, and more.

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First Kindly Impressions about My Kindle

Tonya's new Kindle arrives and makes a charming, but quirky, first impression.

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More Women at Macworld Expo?

TidBITS Senior Editor Tonya Engst is shocked to have to wait in line for the bathroom at Macworld Expo. Seemingly many more women made the trek to the show this year.

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Quick Fix for a Mac Typing in the Wrong Language

If you find that your Mac unexpectedly starts typing in a different character set, such as Greek or Arabic, the explanation may be simple.

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Three Handy Tips for iPhoto Organization

This assortment of handy iPhoto tips will help you organize photos quickly and easily, while learning old and new features. I can't promise that these tips will help you whip out your holiday cards from iPhoto while you bake cookies and realize that Chanukah is way before Christmas this year, but they certainly won't hurt.

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Slipping Into Something More Comfortable

When Leopard arrived, I couldn't resist slipping into something more comfortable... picture included!

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Solve Link-Clicking Problems When Reading PDFs

Few people have trouble viewing a PDF, but clicking links in PDFs is another story. If you've ever had trouble clicking a link in a PDF to go to a Web site, or have been nagged incessantly by Adobe Reader about visiting Web sites, read on for how to take control of your PDF-reading software.

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Why I Might Not Buy the New iPod touch

When it comes to buying bleeding-edge tech gadgets, it's best to do your research before pulling out your charge card and the iPod touch is a case in point

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Why I’m Buying an iPod touch

Does a lack of mobility in lifestyle lead to a lack of mobility in trying new technologies, such as the iPod touch? I posed that question to myself over the past weekend, reflecting on how my lifestyle choice to work at home has caused a lack of mobility in more ways than eliminating commuting

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Twitter Turns Out to be Fun and Useful

Who knew that Twitter turns out to be both fun and useful - I'd been curmudgeonly about it for months. But with some judicious setup, I've become a Twitter convert.

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Take Your Child to Work Day, Macworld Expo Style

Like so many people these days, I work at home, so for me, nearly every day is "take your child to work day." As often as not, after school my eight-year-old son Tristan helps me balance bank statements or put stamps on envelopes, or "helps" by staying out of the way while I wrap up editing a manuscript or making one last phone call. But, there's much more to my job than what Tristan normally sees, and some of that "much more" happens at Macworld Expo, an event that is oft-discussed around my dinner table, but that Tristan had never seen

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“Dispatches from Blogistan” Puts Blogs in Context

Out of the many linear feet of books that crossed my doorstep for possible review recently, one stands out: Suzanne Stefanac's "Dispatches from Blogistan: A travel guide for the modern blogger." The book is a great read for anyone wanting to keep up with Internet trends, read and use blogs more adeptly, start a blog, or run a blog more professionally. In today's world of profit-pumping book publishing, a blog-related title is easy - the technology is simple enough to explain without much research or tech-writing talent and the buzz factor should make the book easy to market

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Pandora Beats iTunes for Holiday Music

The holiday season is upon us, and if you are the resident geek in your home, that probably means messing around with smart playlists in iTunes to wrangle your holiday music into likely compilations - quiet music, lively music, silly music, and so on

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Take Control News/17-Oct-05

"Take Control of Permissions in Mac OS X" Released -- When Adam and I conceived of the Take Control series back in 2003, we imagined multiple ebooks, each functioning like a chapter in a huge volume about the Mac - readers could buy only those chapters that were of interest, and we could provide deeper and more current coverage than a print book could offer. In our initial brainstorming sessions with authors, a number of people suggested writing about permissions, those sometimes-pesky settings that control who can do what to which files, folders, and disks on a Mac