TextExpander + OmniFocus

April 29, 2012 09:33 PM | Productivity, Tips, Software, Mac OS X

Two of my most used and favorite Mac Apps are TextExander and OmniFocus. TextExpander saves me time by typing out repetitive text for me with custom keyboard shortcuts, and OmniFocus is my task manager. This weekend I learned about a way to integrate these two tools. I have created a folder of TextExpander snippets for entering OmniFocus tasks in the quick entry window. I have several types of tasks

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Sparrow: My New Email Client for Mac and iPhone

April 21, 2012 11:15 PM | Productivity, iPhone, Software, Mac OS X

I am not one to stray away from the built-in Apple apps. I use iCal, Address Book, the iWork and iLife suites, and have always used Apple Mail for email. However, there is a new app in town for email and it has been getting a lot of press, so I took the plunge and have transitioned over to Sparrow. Sparrow has been around for awhile on the Mac but it is new for the iPhone. At this point, the iPhone

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AppZapper

April 16, 2012 09:14 PM | Software, Mac OS X

Springtime is a great time to clean house. This also applies to computers. I recently went through my applications folder and deleted apps that I haven’t used.1 Apple users have long bragged that it is easy to uninstall apps on the Mac; all you have to do is to drag an application to the trash. This is true, but not the whole story. There are thousands of preference files and caches that build

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iTunes Match Playlist Tip

April 11, 2012 10:06 PM | Music, Mac OS X

iTunes Match is a feature of iCloud that allows you to upload all of your iTunes music to the “cloud” for backup and for streaming/download access to all of your devices. It costs $25 dollars per year for the service, and is well worth it from my perspective. I love having all 13,415 tracks available to me wherever I am. However, there are some quirks with managing your iTunes Match tracks

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OmniFocus Tip

April 10, 2012 08:29 PM | Productivity, Tips, Mac OS X

I have several projects in OmniFocus that are constant projects that will essentially never be completed. These include: teaching, music department, guest artist series, etc… As long as I have my current job, there will always be tasks assigned to these projects. In OmniFocus, the default setting marks projects complete when the last task is marked complete. This can be kind of annoying to

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Awesome Note

April 8, 2012 08:52 PM | Productivity, iPhone

Awesome Note has been around for several years as a note taking, to do list, journaling, sticky note, all around organization app for iPhone. Its design aesthetic is a bit heavy handed, but all in all a beautiful app for keeping notes and organizing them into graphical folders. It is highly customizable and includes many options for changing backgrounds, adding custom folders, fonts, and adding pictures

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UPDATED: Competition Is Good

April 2, 2012 09:02 PM | iPhone, iPad, Software

UPDATE: OK, I am back using Instapaper. I was lured away by Readability's attractive UI, but Instapaper's features are superior. The last straw with Readability was that I was having syncing issues. I would keep seeing old articles that I had already deleted. A logout and re-download would fix it, but only for a few days. I still like Readability's looks, but I do love the following Instapaper-only

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Back To Work

March 31, 2012 09:43 PM | Productivity

I am a big podcast fan. If you are interested in productivity, starting your own business, or just getting better at managing your time and attention, you need to check out Back To Work hosted by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin. Merlin is a productivity expert and is known for his theory on managing email: Inbox Zero. Dan runs his own podcast network, 5by5, which has many fantastic shows each week centered

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Scanning Music With iPhone

March 23, 2012 09:26 PM | Music, iPhone, iPad, Education

Scanning musical examples for Keynote presentations or handouts is a regular task for music teachers. It can be a convoluted process with dealing with scanning software, finding the perfect resolution, getting the settings right for black and white versus grayscale, and then cropping and importing the scans into the document. A few weeks ago I presented a new session about clarinet fingerings, so I

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Mac Software Bundles

March 21, 2012 08:07 PM | Software, Mac OS X

It is no secret that I love Mac software. My Applications folder is overflowing and I really should go through and thin some of the Apps out that I don’t use. One way that I have accumulated so many applications is through buying bundles. It seems that about every six months a company comes forward with a bundle of Apps for sale at an outrageous discount. MacHeist is a popular service that I

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