I switched to Calendar 366 Plus as my menu bar calendar on Mac and it’s perfect for my needs. The icon shows the date, it supports natural language event creation and understands slash notation to specify the calendar name. It even does a nice job highlighting events in the month calendar when they are selected in the list view.
For only $10 it was a small investment with a big payoff.
Most of my information is captured as plain text. I love text files. But, sometimes an image or a bit of formatting actually does help document things more precisely. Writing notes in Markdown with image links is possible but it’s not enjoyable. This is especially true when working on iOS.
In those situations I fall back to a DEVONthink formatted note. They share a lot of functionality with Evernote documents. DEVONthink formatted notes can contain images, links, and a variety of text formatting.
My history with OmniFocus goes back to OmniOutliner on the Mac and the miraculous Kinkless GTD (thanks Ethan!). Those early days with Kinkless and GTD felt a bit revolutionary. Then The Omni Group released OmniFocus and set a the gold standard in task management for both Mac and iOS. The power of the perspectives and the incredible quick capture on the Mac was groundbreaking.
The transition to OmniFocus 2 killed my interest in the system.
Polarr is a very powerful photo editing tool for iOS and Mac. I was turned on to it by a friend that is a much better photography than I am but I still use it occasionally. Polarr for Mac is on sale right now for $3.
Polarr for iOS | Free with IAP
Polarr for Mac | $3
One of my biggest concerns about Apple reducing their commitment to Mac automation is that we will no longer get these fabulous posts by Dr. Drang.
I recently enjoyed a new form of spam: iCloud calendar spam. No, it wasn’t a calendar invitation attached to an email. It appears to be from a source other than email.
Here’s the fact pattern:
A new event alarm was created in my primary iCloud calendar without my consent.
I did not accept the invitation.
There was no record of an email invitation in any of my mail folders, including spam.
This DEVONthink series by Stuart Ingram is a great introduction to DEVONthink and shows several different use cases and contexts. DEVONthink is one of those apps that is hard to explain precisely because its strengths change based on what you use it for.
Series intro
Setup and first use
Student academic use
Professional academic use
Personal use
These tutorials by Jesse are a great introduction to TaskPaper. If you haven’t used TaskPaper in a long while, it’s worth another look. The application was completely redesigned and has several cool new features. Even the TaskPaper date picker is one of the most functional I’ve seen. Plain text doesn’t mean featureless.
The big news is that Sal Saghoian is leaving Apple after many, many years as the heart of nerdy automation.1 That’s not the big story though. The big story is that Apple eliminated his position. Imagine a Mac without Hazel or Keyboard Maestro or FastScripts or Folder Rules or Automator. Now, imagine that it costs $4000. I’ve been a die hard Mac fanatic long after it went out of fashion. I don’t buy the talk that iOS is just as capable.
I read a lot. Until recently that included Twitter. To replace that source of information, I’ve shifted to other, more curated, sources like my RSS reader.
I’m a big fanatic for Pinboard. It’s almost completely plain, minimally styled, text on a blank page. I capture every web link that I find interesting right into Pinboard. I also use it as a reading list. It’s great.1
I was asked on Twitter about using DEVONthink (DT) as an RSS reader or Pinboard alternative.
