I sure do like Slack. It’s a hugely convenient service that I actually pay for.1 Many of my best friends are on Slack and it’s a continuous source of enjoyment and intelligent discussions for me. But I use it less now because I can’t trust its security.
From Techcrunch:
Slack has a lot of functions, but end-to-end encryption isn’t one of them, which makes the platform a no-go for some users.
I’ve long used nvALT and Dropbox to maintain my collection of notes on my Mac. The benefit of this system is that so many iOS applications sync with Dropbox. I can search and edit my large collection of notes almost anywhere that I’m sitting. But 2016 brought some new innovations and concerns. The tremendous improvements with DEVONthink on iOS and the secure end to end encryption with their Mac application have made it a compelling capture and reference manager.
Email is more than just a communication tool for me. With unbelievably inexpensive storage options and incredible search and filtering my email is now a filing cabinet. I make the extra effort to organize my email archive because it improves my search experience, but even if I just moved everything to an archive folder my email is a data collection I count on.
But what if my email host went away.
Some activities just work best with multiple windows. Tabs are helpful but nothing beats dragging and dropping between folders. But it can be tedious to arrange windows every time I want to organize data. Luckily my constant companion on my Mac these days is DEVONthink Pro Office. Workspaces in DEVONthink are like Perspectives in OmniFocus. You arrange the windows and selections on the screen just how you like them. Take a quick trip to the “Go” menu and save a new Workspace.
The clipboard manager has been available in Alfred for long enough that I regularly forget to use it. A recent project had me working in a large TaskPaper document. I wanted to collect several lines into one block and then move them to the end. There are several ways to do this, but of course I had to go down a rabbit hole on Alfred to solve it.
Make sure the Alfred clipboard manager is enabled:
Dr. Drang moved back to Apple Mail (for now). While I still use MailMate everyday, I pretty much agree with all of his comments. MailHub could feel like magic and I still miss its intelligence. I wrote about my affection back in 2013. I’m sticking with MailMate because my muscle memory wins over the convenience functions of Apple Mail plugins (for now).
I’ve rewatched David’s entire series on Vimeo and it’s great. It works everywhere Vimeo works plus you can still download the videos if you want. As with GTD itself, I find that an annual OmniFocus refresher is time well spent.
This is a long and tedious post. It’s not really about beer, rather it’s about:
Text files Note taking Python scripting DEVONthink Keyboard Maestro Beer Ok. It’s a little bit about beer. Let’s start this story already…
I miss TapCellar, the iOS beer tracking app I helped make. It was my favorite app. But, we killed it because we are not idiots with bottomless bank accounts and free time.
I was honored (and a bit surprised) to be invited as a participant in the Six Colors 2016 Apple report card. If it’s not obvious, I think Apple is killing it with the iPhone. In other areas, well, you should read the report card. What I love about the Six Colors summary is that the responses are so diverse in what they care about. It also shows that you can be a fan without being mindless.
Katie and David were kind enough to invite me on the Mac Power Users podcast. We only talked briefly about DEVONthink. It’s always so much fun talking to the hosts of a show I listen to every week.
