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9 Jun 2007

Getting Things... Remembered

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For those that spurn the written word, there is also a screencast at the end of this article.

We spend all this time and effort figuring out ways to get things out of our heads and into our trusted systems. We’ve offloaded the memorization of telephone numbers to our mobile phones, driving routes to GPS units and friends’ birthdays to our calendar applications.

But some things belong inside our heads.

With all this focus on getting things off our minds, what do we do about getting things back in? Where’s Getting Things Memorized?

Am I the only one that feels like, despite freeing up all this mental processing power with all these clever applications, my memory is still getting worse?

In this post, I’ll talk about a new application that tackles this head-on.


21 May 2007

Five Steps to a Kinkless Desktop

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This is the introduction to a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop.

How did it come to this?


26 Jul 2007

Target: 8760

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This is why Omni Group rocks the house. Current average time to crash on OmniFocus is 8000 hours.

This is kind of stability they are working on in the beta alpha.

And the best part? Tim’s goal is even higher. Love these guys/gals.

Read more about their crash reporting stats.


25 May 2007

Hazel Rules Updated

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UPDATE for the Kinkless Desktop Part 5 article: Amber V. and some other readers spotted an error in the ruleset for applying green labels. I’ve corrected that rule now and re-uploaded the zip file. Please continue to post improvements and ideas in the comments on that article as I’ll be collecting them for a later update article to this methodology. The power of the hive mind in action :) -e


24 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 5: Cruelty can be kind

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This is the final part of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

UPDATE: Amber V. and some other readers spotted an error in the ruleset for applying green labels. I’ve corrected that rule now and re-uploaded the zip file. Please continue to post improvements and ideas in the comments as I’ll be collecting them for a later update article to this methodology.

This screencast demonstrates the use of Hazel to keep my Inbox, Outbox and Pending folders tidy, including labeling the files in them based on age and whether I’ve accessed them.

Links in the sidebar aren’t working, it would seem, so here’s a link to download the rules for the time being.

Before starting, however, please note that there are some links and downloads to the right. You can jump over to Noodlesoft to grab a beta of the 2.0 version of Hazel and I’ve also provided download links for the Hazel rules that I’m using in this screencast. Download them, try them (cautiously when it comes to deleting stuff) and let me know how they are working for you!

Keep in mind that this the current Hazel 2.0 is beta software. Do yourself a *huge* favor right now and go to this Noodlesoft forum thread for the most recent beta update information. You will need to make a user account, but it’s quick and painless and will keep you abreast of the updated releases. Lovely.


24 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 4: Capture and access easily

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This is part four of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

In this screencast, I briefly demonstrate using the sidebar favorites in Finder to ensure that your new folders are easily accessible from any application and how I’m using smart folders so that I can keep my capture-databases filed away but still have them easily accessible on the desktop, along with recently opened files.


22 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 3. Aesthetic Computing and Usability

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This is part three of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

You can start with the article below or jump to the video:

Computing should be an aesthetic experience. Our environment impacts our mood and creativity. For this reason, and to provide us with distinct visual cues as to the function of each of our new folders, we’ll assign custom icons to them.

I’m using a couple tools to style my system wide folders.


22 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 2: Fight Desktop Entropy

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This is part two of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

You can start with the article below or jump to the video:

Now that your desktop is in its most natural denuded state, it’s time to try and stop the seemingly inevitable build up of new stuff. Our trick is going to be applying good real-world habits to your computer’s desktop.


21 May 2007

Kinkless Desktop 1: The "No Mercy" Cleanup

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This is part one of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

We’ll assume you’re starting out with a messy desktop. If this is not the case, congratulations and you can skip this step after doing a little dance of exultation. Extra credit if you film and submit the dance with a shot of your desktop.

I’ve mentioned that there are two basic reasons that your desktop becomes cluttered:


7 May 2007

kgtd

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WARNING

Sorry to say that it's been a while since I've had a chance to work on kGTD... so long that it's not Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) compatible.

But wait! There's hope!