Nothing against Evernote, but it’s just not on a trajectory I like anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve used it on a daily basis so I decided it was probably time to finish my transition off of the platform.
For 90% of my stuff I have either plain text files or Pinboard bookmarks. But there’s still images, PDFs and even the occasional generic file. The hardest thing to replace was the Evernote rich text combination of images and text.
FoldingText is currently on sale for $15 through the Mac AppStore. That’s half off if you don’t already have.
By way of @pslobo
Pretty good deal on Taskpaper for Mac. $2 is cheap and Taskpaper is very good.
By way of @ttscoff
It feels like I’ve tried almost every photo storage, sharing and syncing service on the planet. I’ve learned exactly one lesson from all of this effort and expense: Being organized is the only way to stay neutral and sane.
I’ve settled on a solution that may not be right for everyone. I run my own photo service on my NAS using a Synology. It works great but I have a well resourced system and a fast Internet connection.
A very nice upgrade to HoudahSpot is out now. Version 4 adds a significant visual improvement and a few nice functional tweaks. The upgrade was only $17 and I think it’s worth it for such a powerful searching tool. It’s certainly easier to use than previous versions. If you are happy with the features of the built-in Spotlight search, then have fun. I think HoudahSpot makes Spotlight much more useful.
Clark Goble has a nice reminder up about remapping the Caps Lock key on the Mac. You should read it if that’s your cup of tea.
I don’t jump through so many hoops, but I do remap my Caps Lock key to be a right mouse click. Sure, my track pad is right there, but I feel like I use the mouse right click enough that I wanted an easier way to do it.
I’ve only used the iOS app Authy for a few months. If you are unfamiliar, it is a very nice application for managing different two factor authentication secrets and generating tokens. It creates a single place to look for all 2FA tokens.1 There’s also a companion Authy Mac app that can receive the token over Bluetooth and set the clipboard with the token. That’s mildly more convenient than typing. Both require your phone to be next to you.
Thanks to a Twitter follower, I got to thinking about this TUAW article highlighting Choosy for Mac.
This doesn’t directly solve my issues with sites like Macworld that play audio and video when they open. What I really want is a Markdown browser.
So, here’s a Markdown browser that uses the Mac app Fluid.
Create a new Fluid app. I’d suggest using the HeckYesMarkdown.com URL for the browser so you get a cool icon.
I’m feeling pretty good about folding and unfolding blocks in Sublime Text. This week I think I’ll get a little better at using Slack. These are probably the most critical shortcuts to quickly moving around the Mac app.
First up is the mother of all shortcuts, the shortcut shortcut.
⌘+? opens the help window for the keyboard shortcuts. Hit ESC to close it.
I could be cheeky and say that’s the only shortcut you need, but that’s dumb.
If you use Alfred for the Mac, then the $5 companion app might be worth the money. The iOS app is a remote trigger for Alfred workflows and actions.
As a new app there’s not much I can say about it. It is very similar to the Keyboard Maestro app for iOS but the Alfred Remote works on the local WiFi network only and is far more attractive.
Setup is easy and there are a number of interesting options.
