I often end up using my Desktop as a parking lot for current files. Not exactly an inbox, but given how easy it is to hit CMD-D in a dialog box, it’s where a lot of tmp files, exported jpgs, and assorted stuff naturally ends up. Still, I find it distratcting when too much stuff accumulates there, so I also keep a “Junk” folder on the desktop.

My Analog GTD Whitepaper

OSXCon | Merlin Mann

Danny and I had a great time doing our talk yesterday at O’Reilly’s OSXCon. Met a bunch of great people and enjoyed the chance to hang with like-minded nerds. I love that people want to show me their squirrely productivity setups. Time management pr0n! Totally into it.

Our time for the session just flew by, so we didn’t have the time we would have liked to spend with all the apps. If you were there (or just like to play with OS X apps), here are links to all the things we talked about (or planned to talk about). If I left anything off or you have any questions, feel free to leave comments.

Thanks to Derrick and Vee for all their hard work, and thanks to everyone who showed up, asked questions, and just said hi. Stay in touch.

• TextMate: The Missing Editor for OS X - Text editor with interesting shell integration
• Daring Fireball: Markdown - Turn structured txt into valid XHTML
  • HumaneText.service - Txt to HTML and back again, as an OS X Service
• Quicksilver - Application launcher and much more
• nondeterministic . net : hack : fiwt - Incremental search for Safari pages
• michael-mccracken.net - [i-search] - Incremental search in many Cocoa text fields
• Notational Velocity - Sexy note-taking and incremental search in one nerd-friendly app
• Welcome to Flying Meat Software, home of VoodooPad - Wiki comes to your Mac’s desktop
• PithHelmet - Filter ads, apply styles, and protect your privacy, per-site
• Welcome to Growl! - Notification program lets you know what’s happening under the bonnet
• Tynsoe projects - [GeekTool] - Make your Desktop look like “The Matrix” with notifications, photos, and shell output
• Safari Enhancer - Flip on the debug menu and more
• Bonus - Here’s the modest “hamburger helper” html file I use as a snippet in TextMate

Also—since a bunch of folks had asked—the Finder replacement app you saw in the demos is Path Finder. It’s a terrific, super-functional app that adds tons of features to speed up your work flow.

Hello,

I am new to this forum, but have been listening to merlin and reading for a long time. I will get right to the problem.

My data is a mess. I have a 500gb external drive bulging at the seams with duplicate files and folders. The problem occurred because my wife and I both backup to this drive. We now have our own folders full of the same files(mostly music). Now bear with me. I hope this doesn't get too complicated.

At the moment I have a drive that looks similar to this

z:\my music\joe smith\track a, b, c, d etc.

z:\her music\joe smith\track a

Treat your email more like Photoshop

My pal, Colleen, has written up a short, designer's take on handling email. She suggests you treat messages the way you'd handle Photoshop PSDs; streamline, automate, and fear not the rule nor template:

Once you’ve done enough of the same kind of work in Photoshop or Illustrator—say, resizing photos or creating a certain size of flyer—you devise ways of creating your templates quickly...

Apply the same principles to processing your inbox and you will vastly reduce the time you spend horsing around in your email client. There are as many “best practices” with email as there are organizational gurus, but the same principles generally apply:

1. Handle things once
2. Process all at once, at scheduled times
3. Clear your inbox, don’t use it as a holding bin

Right on. And as good a point as ever to re-point-out my beloved MailTemplate, which is still the easiest way I know of to create customizable boilerplate templates for Mail.app and Entourage.

Random Bonus: Here's some video (direct MOV download) of me interviewing the MailTemplate/MailTank guys at Macworld back in January.

I want to put up a Web site that offers a portfolio of my writing samples, along with a blog, and probably other professional stuff that escapes me at the moment.

What do people recommend for setting up a site like this? Would you use a CMS? If so, which one?

If anyone can offer any examples of good writing portfolio Web sites, please let me know. Thanks!

Robyn

Access bookmarks in your Safari Bookmarks Bar with CMD-1 through CMD-9.

Prodnography: $10 Alternatives to Levenger Pocket Briefcase and/or Rope Case

Where can I buy pre-made 43 folder tickler system?