Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
MacsTextExpander: Essential Mac shortcut utilityMerlin Mann | Sep 5 2006TextExpander just got an update that adds a few features and fixes to this already essential OS X PreferencePane. Via email:
I have to say, I just love TextExpander (formerly “Texpander”). Its functionality is not unique — users of, say, TextMate, TypeIt4Me, or Windows’ popular ActiveWords (Hi, Buzz), or for that matter, Vim, will recognize the similarities. But, brother, is it ever easy to setup, modify, and use. At the heart of it, TE gives you system-wide text shortcuts that, when typed, explode into much longer bits of text or can even, say, paste in an image, like your scanned signature. So, for example, if you’re sick of retyping a new email sig, you can store it in TE and assign “ A screenshot of the control panel, courtesy of the Smile on My Mac site: There’s just too many uses for TextExpander to try and catalog here, but I'll share a few that I particularly like... read more »3 Comments
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GTD with a Mac label maker?Merlin Mann | Sep 4 2006multipart/mixed: Turbo-Charging the Dymo LabelWriter I love my Brother PT-65, which is regarded by many as the unofficial official label maker of GTD nerds (and which, quizzically, appears to have been discontinued :-(). The PT-65 has easily paid back its modest sticker price with three years of faithful service. Trouble is, I like using it so much that it's gotten to be kind of a pain to pull it out and Blackberry-thumb-type my bajillion labels via its teeny keys. Now, I want something that hooks up to my Mac. Josh Carter's gotten me interested in the Dymo LabelWriter 330 Turbo via this handy tutorial from late last year, which covers basic setup info, plus a tip on speeding up the creation of a new label with Quicksilver. Josh has good stuff to say about the 330:
Anybody using one of these units or similar? Care to recommend a label maker of any brand that hooks up via USB and works well with Tiger/OS X? I ♥ my little Brother, but I'm ready for Label Maker 2.0! POSTED IN:
Bokardo: Apple moving deeper into social software?Merlin Mann | Aug 15 2006Bokardo » Apple Making Huge Social Software Push? Via Andy, here's a thought-provoking post that draws from a mosaic of current and forthcoming features (including Wiki Server, iCal Calendar Sharing and the nifty-sounding Teams) to suggest that Apple's moving toward some interesting directions in social software and enhanced functionality for teams. Joshua writes:
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Open Thread: Leopard PreviewMerlin Mann | Aug 7 2006Apple - Apple - Mac OS X - Leopard Sneak Peek Like most of you, I'm keeping an eye on today's previewed features of the upcoming "Leopard" (OS X 10.5) release. Looks like some interesting ideas -- many of which, as usual, seem inspired by existing third-party products. I think I'm most intrigued so far by the idea of "to-do" functionality from within Mail.app (thanks for the tip, Matt); let's hope that also means I can deep link to a given email from my iCal task list. I also welcome the concept of built-in email templates -- although I'm kind of bummed that they seem more focused on execrable 1999-style HTML emails than on the kind of functional time-savers found in the peerless MailTemplate. To be honest, on first blush -- and I'm sure there's much more to come by the time of release -- this feels a bit cute and a little light on really revolutionary stuff (the long overdue promise of something like Time Machine notwithstanding). Stuff like (yet. more.) iLife integration is handy enough for the notional Swithcher and Grandpa Joe, but in general I guess I'm hoping for some serious power-user improvements to the core functionality. Maybe that's just me. What do you think? What's "Yeah!" and what's "Meh?" Anybody else holding out hope for some really deep Finder rewriting and more functional iCal updates? read more »POSTED IN:
HOWTO: Flag "penciled-in" events in iCalMerlin Mann | Jul 6 2006As I've mentioned before I like using iCal's invitations to share appointments with people -- especially since this lets them easily respond to let me know whether they 1) will attend, 2) won't attend, or 3) are just "tentative." Unfortunately, there's no analogous tentative flag for the (seemingly endless) number of appointments and event I want to just pencil-in -- you know, those times when you want to make sure to block out time for a call or lunch, but are waiting on confirmation from folks who don't use iCal (or for whom it makes no sense to pester with an invitation). My workaround -- yes, like many of these things -- is really simple. read more »POSTED IN:
Megazoomer: Full-screen mode for Cocoa appsMerlin Mann | Jul 5 2006Speaking of full-screen functionality, lots of people have been writing to mention Megazoomer, a free, SIMBL-based bundle that fakes full-screen mode within any Cocoa app, including Safari and Textmate. read more »POSTED IN:
Getting more out of iCalMerlin Mann | Jun 29 2006Okay, I admit it. I've grumbled about iCal on and off since it came out. It's one of those things in life that makes you nuts with how it almost works. The alarm choices are amazing but there's no way to have them added automatically. The shared calendars are great, but only one person can make changes. The snoozing sucks, notifications magically disappear, and some days, the "moist Jolly Rancher" design motif makes me want to barf pink. Hrmph. But (and it's a big but)... The truth is, iCal works great with kGTD (mostly of course), and once you make your peace with the perplexing stasis of its feature set, there are some not-bad hooks and affordances hiding in its pastel, roundy corners. Here's a few I like. read more »POSTED IN:
25% off OmniOutliner for 43F readersMerlin Mann | Jun 21 2006The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Professional It's nice to know my crush on OmniGroup is reciprocated -- and extended to the lovely Mac users who read 43 Folders. From now through June 30th, when you buy OmniOutliner from the OmniGroup site, use the checkout code " Thanks to Ken, Linda, and everyone at OmniGroup for sharing the love. POSTED IN:
OmniOutliner in law school, and an appreciation of OmniGroupMerlin Mann | Jun 20 2006Using OmniOutliner Pro and Kinkless GTD in Law School Erik Schmidt has a useful post on how he's using OmniOutliner Pro and Kinkless GTD in law school. His explanation of kGTD is succinct and nicely captures the economy of using a simple system to track projects and tasks. But, I think his section on law school note-taking and planning is a particularly good read for anyone who could use OO for similar purposes -- he highlights how you can adapt a basic structure (in his case, reading arranged by time/syllabus order, and notes arranged by class), but then have lots of flexibility via things like drag and drop: read more »POSTED IN:
Ejector: One-click ejects all mounted mediaMerlin Mann | Jun 19 2006freshmeat.net: Project details for Ejector I love little Mac apps that just do one thing and do it well, and I'd definitely put Ejector in that camp. read more »POSTED IN:
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