Quicksilver: Universal Access and Action

A1c0r demos and discusses Quicksilver at the Google, including a good overview of why he chose to build the app in the way he did.

Alas, the jig is up for poor Nicholas. Now you all know that he does not, in fact, have flippers, and that he is actually astonishingly good-looking.

Leo Interviews Merlin Mann of 43 Folders

The beginning of a blood-curdling recession hardly seems like the time to ruminate about fantasy resources, I'll grant you that. But, I want you to think about something. Really think about it.

If, tomorrow morning, you had 60% of the time and resources you needed to start making anything you wanted, what would it be? And, what would you do first?

I’d like to start collecting links to tools, applications, scripts, and templates that people have created for implementing Getting Things Done, and that they would like to share with folks on the web. If there’s something you’d like to see added here, leave a comment with a link and some background information (status, license, platform, etc.), and I’ll check it out. As with our OS X inventory collection, I’ll add the most useful-, novel-, and promising-looking submissions.

Active Voice Writing & Editorial Services in Baltimore -- Downloads

Cool-looking collection of CC-licensed Hipster PDA templates include iconic "capture notes," research notes, and (here's a new one for me) a "yarn sorting card." Neat stuff.

Simply drag and drop them to your desktop, or right-click and "save as." Templates are formatted as .png graphics and can be printed as-is or inserted into a formatted document. They can be resized to fit everything from a 3x5 card to a daily organizer to an 8.5x11 sheet.

Kvet.ch features an excellent article on how to print D*I*Y Planner HPDA cards (see the end of this page) directly to 3x5 cards for Mac users. The technique should also work nicely with the templates offered here.

The best Mac ever | Editors’ Notes | Macworld

I knew what the near-consensus would be before the page opened. Everybody knows.

Now that I’ve primed your pump for an outsourcing extravaganza, it’s time to turn our eyes towards the quotidian.  Once you’re ready to hire help, there are two main challenges to face.  Firstly, you have to identify portions of your daily work that can be outsourced, and then you have to find the right person to do that work for you.

I love hearing how other people have set up their OSX Macs and learning about which programs they like to use for various tasks. I’m putting together a (very long and growing) profile of my own, but until that’s finished, I wanted to point to a few folks I’ve bookmarked who have posted great software and setup inventories as well as smart tips for workflow and productivity hacks. Here’s a few I like.

• Brad Choate: OS X software inventory [Brad Choate]
• Ted’s Macintosh Tips and Tricks [Ted Leung]
• BeatnikPad Journal: Mac OS X Software Inventory [Neil Lee]
• Marc Liyanage - Software - Mac OS X Packages - Tips and Documents - Mac OS X Customization [Marc Liyanage]
• Essentials [dive into mark] [Mark Pilgrim]
• Software Essentials [Bryan Strawser]
• Indispensable Mac OS X products | jluster.org - [Jonas Luster]
• James Tauber : My New PowerBook - [James Tauber]
• Justin Blanton | Required OS X Programs - [Justin Blanton]
• The Tao of Mac - HOWTO/Switch To The Mac and The Tao of Mac - Applications [Rui Carmo]
• a million monkeys typing » Essential Applications - [Douglas Johnston]
• Lathi.net . Main . MacOSXSoftware - [Doug Alcorn]
• JustinFrench.com: Software Inventory - [Justin French]
• Joi Ito's Socialtext Workspace - Joi's Favorite Applications - [Joi Ito]
• Crooked Timber: Indispensible Applications - [Kieran Healy]
• "Best software for my new Macintosh?" from the Ask Dave Taylor! Help Desk [Dave Taylor]

An Interface of One’s Own

I was delighted to see my favorite OS X writing app, Scrivener, turn up in today's "The Medium" column of the New York Times Magazine. I reviewed Scrivener about a year ago, and still use it whenever I have to research, plan, and draft anything more complicated than a blog post. In fact, as luck would have it, I was actually working on my upcoming Macworld talk in Scrivener when I took a break to read the paper and saw this article. Kismet or something.

Columnist, Virginia Heffernan, notes the app's beloved full-screen capability:

To create art, you need peace and quiet. Not only does Scrivener save like a maniac so you needn’t bother, you also get to drop the curtain on life’s prosaic demands with a feature that makes its users swoon: full screen. When you’re working on a Scrivener opus, you’re not surrounded by teetering stacks of Firefox windows showing old Google searches or Citibank reports of suspicious activity. Life’s daily cares slip into the shadows. What emerges instead is one pristine and welcoming scroll: Your clean and focused mind.

High fives to other great apps mentioned in the article, including Ulysses, WriteRoom, and Nisus Writer. Slightly lower fives go to Microsoft Word, which, once again, takes its usual drubbing as The Application Everyone Wants To Get Away From™. Poor Microsoft Word, the mascara-smeared Gloria Swanson of word processors.

macosxhints - 10.4: OS X 10.4.3 update released

MacOSXHints covers a few of the 500+ 10.4.3 updates that are worth not missing. Two that popped out for me:

• If you use Mail, you can now set your own font family and size for the mailbox list. My message list and mailbox list are finally in the same font!
• Also in Mail, when you forward or reply to a message, they got rid of some of the extra blank lines (though they left the one at the top, above the quoted text)

I'll take all the Mail.app updates I can get. Now will someone please make MailEnhancer work again!

Paranoia, Part I

I have, I must admit, become one of those people who waits a week before running OS X updates. I used to be "that excited guy" until I learned a) new cuts of Safari almost always break one or more of my (and Pimp My Safari's) must-have plugins (Saft, SafariStand, PithHelmet); b) there's nearly always at least one deal-killer booger that sends me into two days of hair-pulling kernel panics, restarts, font removals, DiskWarrior runs etc. (Yes, thanks, I actually have modded almost every aspect of my setup in incredibly haphazard ways.)

As ever, kids: do yourself a favor and run a Safety Backup using SuperDuper. If anything goes kerflooey, you can do a perfect rollback to the snapshot of your disk before updating, then you're back to work with almost zero downtime. Seriously, just get in the SuperDuper habit just in general.

Paranoia, Part II

A propos of nothing, here's my current backup and SuperDuper schedule: