Mac|Life - November 2011

4Access Your iSight Camera Depending on where your Mac is located in your home or office, you can tap into the iSight camera to check in on your employees, ensure the cat isn’t on the kitchen counter again, or just make sure everything is safe and sound. After logging in, click the Camera icon in the top menu bar; the iSight camera will snap a photo and send it right to you. Refresh the image with another click. This trick even works from the iOS app.

5Wi-Fi Sync Perhaps you’re visiting a friend or colleague who wants to send you a document or other file via email. Why bother with this old-fashioned scenario when you can simply log in to Presence from their computer and upload the file right to your Mac, where it will be ready and waiting for you upon your return? It’s as simple as clicking the Upload button, selecting the file, and waiting for the file to transfer.

6Preview Files with Quick Look Perfect for those times when you need to make sure you’ve selected the right file before you download it, Presence features its own Quick Look mode. Simply select a file and click on the Quick Look icon (the one that looks like an eye) and your image or document will be previewed right in your web browser. You can even select multiple files at once and skip through them the same way.

Say goodbye to cumbersome file emailing.

7Email Large Files Gone are the days when email attachments fail because they’re too big—with Presence, you select remote files and email a link so your recipient can download the files directly from your Mac (smaller files are sent as attachments). Select files, click the email icon, add your recipient, subject, and body (if necessary), and click Send. If the file is larger, you’ll be given the option to share it, and multiple files will be compressed in a ZIP archive for transfer.

Send links instead of huge ZIP files.

8Set Up Multiple Email Addresses In order to email files from Presence, you’ll need to set up outgoing SMTP email accounts within the Photos & Email pane of the Mac app. Click Add Email Address to get started, and many accounts are added quickly with just your email address and password, but you can manually configure your SMTP server and port for more complicated setups.

9Share Files with No Upload One of the most awesome uses for Presence is sharing files with others. Rather than having to upload large files to an FTP server or a cloud-based storage solution, you simply share them from your Mac using a simple URL link—and you can do it from anywhere! On your Mac, simply select a file and Control-click to select “Share in Presence” under Services.

Presence is omnipresent on your Mac, even available with a simple Control-click.

10Using the Shares Tab Users can control their shared files by opening the Presence window from the Finder menu bar and selecting Shares. Here you can add new shared files or folders, select passwords for your shares, or choose how to handle folders, which can be shared as a ZIP file or a browsable folder. It’s also easy to delete shares when you’re finished with them.