UsingMac has a nifty tutorial on how to change the little “Flag” icon used in OSX’s Mail application. 
Using the built-in flag feature (Command + Shift + L) is a great way to bookmark/highlight an email, but for me the flag icon that ships with Mail doesn’t stand out enough. This simple tutorial not only shows you how to customize the icon, but makes the star icons you see in the image above available for download.
Tagged: OS X
How to easily remove an OS X system preference pane
TUAW reports on an easy way to remove system preference panes. Simply right-clicking on a system preference pane in the Others section (which are the custom preferences installed by user applications) will present you with the option of removing them, which moves them to the OSX trash. While this is a simple OSX tip, it’s great for those who don’t want to go digging through their various Library folders looking for the actual preference pane manually.
OSX system sound song – watch, listen & download!
This little gem is made up entirely of OSX system sounds — a creative project by a designer living in New York City. You can download the GarageBand file used to create this tune from here.
Fine-tune your volume adjustments in OS X
If you own a laptop, you probably use the Volume key shortcuts (F4 and F5) to adjust your volume, rather than visiting the System Preferences or Volume menu item. Every time you press the Volume key, a full block of volume is raised or lowered in the Volume bezel on your screen. If the amount it is raised or lowered is too much or not enough, you can adjust the amount by a quarter of a block at a time. 
To fine-tune the Volume adjustment, hold the Shift and Option keys while hitting F4 or F5. This fine-tuning can be done with the Volume menu item as well, but it’s just easier to use the keyboard shortcuts. Update: This trick, as stated in the first sentence, is for Apple Laptops. While it may work with Apple desktop keyboards (I don’t have one hooked up right now, so I can’t check), it also may not work with any other branded keyboard. It’s also a Leopard-only trick.
Save time with OSX Finder shortcuts
As with any program, the speed with which you use OSX’s Finder can increase your productivity quite a bit, and we can all use a few extra minutes a day can’t we? With that in mind, here’s a few helpful Finder keyboard shortcuts to help you save the extra few minutes. Finder Views:
- Command 1 = Switch window to icon view
- Command 2 = Switch window to list view
- Command 3 = Switch window to column view
- Command 4 = Switch window to coverflow view
- Command Y = Toggle Quick Look on and off
- Command Option Y = Toggle Slideshow mode
Open Items
- Command Shift i = Open iDisk
- Comand Shift k = Open Network
- Command Shift a = Open Application folder
- Command Shift d = Open Desktop folder
How to get custom CSS signatures in OSX Mail
If you like having a signature sent with all your emails and you use OSX’s Mail application, this tutorial is for you. AllForces has put together a great tutorial on how to create and use CSS in your Mail signatures. All that is required is an image you wish to use, Safari and Mail.
Change Time Machine’s backup interval
If you’re running Leopard and you’re using Time Machine to backup your Mac to an external hard drive, you may become frustrated with how often Time Machine backs up your drive. This is especially true if you save or create a lot of files. When Time Machine is doing it’s work, your drive may become unresponsive, and at the very least, your backup drive can fill up quick. 
You could hack the .plist file to alter the intervals of Time Machine, but an easier way is to use TimeMachineEditor. TME provides a simple way for you to set the time(s) at which Time Machine does it’s thing.
Add Adobe Kuler feature to OSX Leopard applications
Lithoglyph’s Mondrianum is a powerful plug-in for OSX Leopard that enables Mac applications to leverage the resources of Adobe Kuler. Adobe kuler is an online community where you can explore, create, and share color themes. Once installed, Mondrianum acts like a built-in, system-wide color picker, available in any Mac application that supports this feature of Mac OS X. Apple’s own iWork and iLife suites, Adobe Photoshop, and other applications like Coda, CSSEdit, and many more, all work well with Mondrianum. Mondrianum combines the best of the community content on Kuler and the nativeness of Mac applications. If you work with colors on a Mac, be sure to check it out!< Thanks to Ivan at CreativeBits for pointing out this great tool for OSX.
13 cool OSX Leopard tweeks via Terminal
There are already many applications available which allow you to tweek the settings in OSX Leopard to adjust the dock, the menu bar, and other areas you wish to alter. But one thing that bothers me is having all those little apps hanging around my hard drive, or worse yet, running at all times. UsingMac has listed 13 very handy Terminal commands that do the same thing as many of these apps, without the space and memory overhead. It’s as simple as copy & paste. Check them out.
How to create customized OSX Mail stationery in Leopard
This tutorial has been updated for Snow Leopard users! Please visit the updated article here. While not much has changed, I’ve edited it for a bit more clarity.
If you enjoy Leopard’s new Mail Stationery for sending beautiful HTML email, but wished you could personalize it more, read on for some very good news!Apple has made Mail’s new Stationery feature quite easy to edit to your heart’s content, as long as you have an image editor that can save .jpg and .png files, and an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver (or just text edit if you’re a die-hard HTML coder). Just follow these simple steps: (more…)