Goes to show we don’t know everything.

Dunno if you knew this already, but the Doodler didn’t until he stumbled on it on Mactips.org.

You can do basic arithmetic by just entering the equation into the little Spotlight window on the upper right corner of your screen, as in “1+1″, and it will promptly spit out the answer. No need to call up the dashboard widget or access the Calculator app that we all  keep handy on the dock.

It works for addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (*), division (/) and calculating exponents (^) and factorials (!).

A good friend and co-worker of mine, the extremely talented Hinge Inquirer Creative Director Chris Garperio, recently got himself a flat-screen HDTV, and is now obsessed with finding hi-res inputs to feed it. He eventually ended up connecting his MacBook to the Bravia, and was delighted with the visual results, but wryly told me that he wished the sound came with it. I told him it did! He rapped back that he didn’t mean the paltry mini-stereo analog output from the jack - he wanted the serious surround stuff.

I realized that it isn’t common knowledge, even among supposed die-hard Macheads, that the audio-out ports of recent Intel Macs like Macbooks, Macbook Pros (with the exception of the Air, I think; I can’t get it to work, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the things they took out) and others are actually also Digital Audio-out ports as well - all you need is to tweak a setting and use the proper digital audio cable known among audiophiles as the Toslink cable, which is used to connect AV receivers to digital media players and monitors. With it, connect your Mac via the jack to your system. (Yes, it’s that same little earphone port you use to connect your iPod buds to - all you need is a different cable.)

Get yourself a commonly available Toslink cable (pictured above) and get a mini-Toslink adapter (easily found; Belkin sells one, for example) so you can connect the Mac to the monitor or the AV receiver. Then dive into your player application (in this case, DVD Player) and enable the digital output:

Voila! Your Macbook now outputs full digital surround, including DTS signal passthrough - just like your settop DVD player! Then combine your Mac and Home Theater System with the Apple Remote and XMBC (which we’ll talk about in an upcoming post), and you got yourself an honest-to-goodness Mac Media Center.

(I’ve known this trick for some time and have actually been teaching it to friends ever since, but it never occurred to me to post the darn thing. Taught it to Game Magazine editor Howard Paw the other day and realized I haven’t even mentioned it here. Well, better late than never.)

Apple has left out cartloads of basic features, apps and utilities that should be no-brainers to add. Even worse, they even forget to mention things that are actually already there for you to use right out of the box.

One of the things they forgot is how to find out currency rates in real-time over the net, quickly and easily without going to websites when all you want to do find out what the rate today is. Don’t worry, there’s no specific icon for it; you didn’t miss anything. It’s built into the Stocks widget that comes with the iPhone.

Updating the rates of currency worldwide is done through Yahoo online. All you need do is run the widget and add the “stock” of your selected currency manually, and every time you update it’ll check the current conversation rate for your preferred coin. Finally, a use for Stocks that those of use who don’t dabble in the market will find way useful. (Remember, it’s not a currency conversion calculator, mind you - someone else can invent one; this just gives you the current conversion rate. You can use the built-in Calculator to find out how much you’ve made or lost, which is now a snap because you know the current rate.)

Run the widget, then tap on the “i” icon on the lower right corner.

Then tap on the “+” or add button on the upper left corner, which is supposed to let you add stocks you wish to monitor.

In the text window, type the currency equation in this format: yyyzzz=x, where yyy is currency you’re asking about and zzz is your home currency.

Thus, to use an example, to find out how many Philippine Pesos (PHP) one US dollar (USD) can buy, you type USDPHP=X.

The proper abbreviations for currencies that the widget understands can be found on the Yahoo!Finance Currency Converter page (where you can actually do this and calculate specific amounts - which is better, really - but that’s not the point of this tip.)

Once you type in the argument, the iPhone will locate the proper “stock” and show it in the window below. Tap on it and it will add the “stock” to your list of monitored stocks.

Tap on “Done” and you’re all set. Every time you run the widget, it’ll consult Yahoo!Finance and give you the real-time exchange rate of the currencies you’ve selected.

You can add as many as you want (and while you’re at it, you can remove the pre-installed stocks Apple put in to save on screen real estate - me, I left Apple on to see how Steve and the gang are doing, just out of curiosity.)

So there.

Long ago, to remove Digital Rights Management from my music tracks, I started with the rigamarole of burning them to a CD from iTunes then re-ripping them back to iTunes, fresh, sparkling clean and DRM-free.

After I had a accumulated a small stack of CDs I never used from this method, I thought of just reusing a CDRW, erasing and burning over and over, even if I just had one track to clean - I didn’t have to wait to fill up a CDR with DRMed songs just to save a little money.

5thirtyone.com shows us an even easier way that doesn’t involve burning digital media at all, and is so simple I smacked myself on the head and said, dang, why didn’t I think of that?

One caveat - you’d need to have iMovie HD on your system.

The basic idea, in a nutshell, is for your to import the DRMed track into iMovie as a soundtrack, export it to iTunes as AIFF, then convert it to AAC within iTunes then just manually adding back the meta data and artwork. A little tedious, but no more ripping and burning to CD. And easier, as 5thirtyone.com points out, to create an Automator sequence to do this by the numbers every time you need to strip DRM from a track.

More detailed instructions and explanations from 5thirtyone.

No, it isn’t really anything new. It’s the old Belkin Backup Battery Pack for iPod w/ Dock Connector. It has suction cups to attach to the back of the iPod, and the 4 AA penlights supply power to a weakened or battery-dead unit.

I have an old one lying around the house, and I’ve found it works for iPhones too.

I don’t know how long it’ll let the thing run without further testing, but I’ve determined that it does, apparently, work with iPhones as it does with iPods.

I let my iPhone run down, and then attached it. The usual warning appears that says the accessory isn’t meant to work with iPhones popped up, but I ignore it and tap no. Then the red battery indicator changes to plugged-in status (not necessarily charging) and pretty soon it’s fine again. (Like it does for iPods, it powers the iPhone but doesn’t charge it.)

There’s even a power level indicator so you know how the AAs are holding up. The thing attaches to the iPhone by two suction cups on the back, and it fits perfectly. The iPhone’s svelte no more, of course, and weighs three times as much, but it works. But all you’ll ever need are four AAs, and you’ll never be low batt ever again. Simple, easy to replace, relatively cheap and available everywhere. I will start bringing the device in my bag regularly, along with a coupla sets of penlights, and will be most excellent when I travel.

So you can provisionally add the Belkin Backup Battery Pack for iPod w/ Dock Connector to your short list of old iPod accessories compatible with the iPhone.

Will text it for longevity when I get a chance and report back to you. In the meantime if you see this in a sale bin somewhere, it’s going to be a good idea to pick it up.