I have a had a busy week working away on a client site with no Internet access so I have been rather cut off, enough to miss this little gem from Evernote.
I love Evernote and Twitter so the ability to integrate these caught my attention.
So, in a nutshell you can add selective Twitter tweets to your Evernote account by including @myEN to your tweet.
I have just enabled this and I am going to think long and hard for some good usability reasons for doing so.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, good or bad.
I am sat writing this on the train from Leeds to London. Free Wifi on the train is powering my Internet so no need for the 3G card.
Here are my collection of links for this week.
My first link for this week is a link to an interview with David Allen from the Washington Post. The interview is about how to Get Things Done and Organize Your Life.
My second link is a link to the Shoeboxed Blog that announces integration with Evernote. Shoeboxed is a service that allows you to mail in your receipts as and when you need to and now with the Evernote integration they will scan them into your Evernote account. If only they had this in the UK I would be a customer for sure!
My third link is a link to a review of Making it All Work, the latest book from GTD creator David Allen. I am quite shocked to admit that I have not yet read this book, but it is the next on my reading list after I have finished with Twyla Tharp and the Creative Habit.
My fourth link is a link to a great article comparing Getting Things Done and Autofocus. Both are great productivity methodologies and it is good to see the writers viewpoint of the differences between these two systems.
My fifth and last link is a link to some information about the latest version of reQall. reQall is an iPhone application that I reviewed back in November 2008 when it first came to my attention. One of the main new features of reQall is the ability to do location based reminders. All in all reQall should be looked at if you have an iPhone and want to improve your productivity.
Well, the WiFi is still holding up so I will publish this whilst I still can. I am down in London for a couple of days on a training course, should be fun.
I am really busy at the minute and having to focus a lot on my daily work in order to get it all done. We are getting a lot of orders which is always good and we probably should employ staff more but the current economic climate is really preventing me from taking on additional headcount in case the work slows down.
I guess it is a nice problem to have but my productivity and organizational skills are being tested right to the limit at the moment as I juggle quite a few different roles.
Here are my collection of links for this week.
My first link for this week is a topical (as it is Mothers Days here in the UK) titled Time Saving Tips for Mothers. Just a collection of a few little tips that my wife pretty much already does in order to be more organized when it comes to children.
My second link is a link to a post about Getting Things Done with Gmail Tasks. I do not use Gmail myself apart from the odd time when I need web access to my mail (as I use Google Apps to host all my email) although I know a lot of people swear by Gmail. Just some handy hints on how to make Gmail work for you in a GTD style.
My third link is a link to Getting Things Done with Projects 2.0. This is a fresh look at Project Management and how Project Management 2.0 can help change the views of the people involved for the better.
My fourth link is a link to a nice little post about the Trick to Evernote. I love Evernote and I use it more and more every day. I love finding new ways out to use the app.
My fifth and last link is a link to the cool Cult of Done Manifesto. Read it and I would love to start a comment discussion with your thoughts!
Well, that is it for this week. going to have a well earned rest now and hopefully I will get some more time this week to do some more posts.
The fantastic note taking application Evernote has released a major update to the Mac client version.
Evernote is available as a Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac desktop application as well as having a Web Based Application and apps for various phones including the Apple iPhone.
One main improvement with version 1.3 is the new clipper for Safari 3 and 4. This button installs on the toolbar and allows you to clip the current page directly into Evernote. You can select text and click and this copies the text to evernote, just click and the whole page is copied to evernote or shift click and the page is sent to Evernote as a PDF with all the formatting preserved.
Here are the details about the version 1.3 release for the Mac.
Version 1.3.0 (03/09/2009) build 44809
Evernote for Mac can now install a native Safari plugin, which makes it easy to clip directly into Evernote while browsing the web using Safari. Includes:
Clipping a selected portion of a web page
Clipping the entire web page
Clipping a PDF snapshot of a full webpage, rendered exactly as it appears in the browser. Shortcut: Shift+click on the Safari Clipper
A ‘Merge Notes’ command is now availble in the edit menu and the note list context-menu. This command will merge the contents of selected notes into a new note.
Promotions display at the bottom of the left-hand nav.
Support for Growl notifications.
Fixed a bug where removing *all* tags from a note would not get synced up to the server.
Improved performance and stability when syncing several thousand tags from the server.
“Show/Hide Info” is now called “More/Less Info”, and new note editor windows are opened with the state set by the user.
Fixed an issue where file attachment information would not display correctly inside a note when running on a case-sensitive file system.
Fixed Safari 4 Beta compatibility issues. This includes the note search field sporadically selecting all of its text.
Fixed a bug in the Evernote AppleScript dictionary, which made scripts that accessed a note’s ‘source url’ property fail to compile.
Fixed a bug that caused some images to fail to make it into the note when clipping HTML from a file.
Fixed a bug that caused some hyperlinks to get stripped from the note when clipping HTML from a file.
Fixed a bug in the thumbnail viewer which would cause the app to crash or stop responding to mouse clicks.
These are all great new additions to what is already an awesome application! Below is a nice video showing the web clipper with Quicknote.
I have been quiet this week due to being very busy with work and also receiving my new 17″ MacBook Pro on Wednesday evening.
I am just about done with the migration and though I would share some of my findings for anybody wlse who is moving from an old Mac to a new one.
I could have used the Migration Assistant and sucked my old laptop to my new one. I used this when I rebuilt my old laptop and upgraded the hard drive and it worked amazingly. As my old laptop was three years old, and had been used to test a lot of software I decided to opt for the manual approach.
Being an organized person, my data was all organized under my Documents folder. This made it pretty easy to move my Documents to my NAS, and then to my new Mac preserving the same structure as I had before.
I did a bit of pruning before the copy and got rid of old information that I no longer needed. I also archived some of it off to DVDs to go into the Someday/Maybe drawer that I use to good effect.
The data was the easy part. I then had to migrate Mail and all my media such as my iPhoto Library, Aperture Library, and my iTunes Library.
Let’s start with the media. I did expect problems when moving my media due to the customizations that I have done to my media including tagging etc. Well, to my surpirse, I copied my Aperture and iPhoto libraries to my new machine and they all worked fine. I then deauthorized my old laptop from within iTunes, copied the iTunes folder to my new laptop and all went smooth.
I was using iLife ’09 on both my old and new Mac’s so everything was very easy to migrate. iPhoto and Aperture both use a Library. These are package files that contain all the other files and represent themselves as a single file within the Operating System. Sure does make copying easier!
Now onto Email migration. I have a few mailboxes that I use on the Mail.app client built into the Mac Operating System. My main mailboxes are IMAP through Google Apps so these were as easy as setting up the new mail accounts on the new laptop.
I have a few old POP accounts and for these I created the POP account on the new laptop and archived the old mail onto one of my USB disks for storage and the ability to search through this at a later date if needed.
All smooth so far. Now to re-install some of the applications I use. There are a few killer applications that I use and could not live without. These are my core apps that I installed and I decided that if I need any of ther other apps on my old laptop then I would install them as required.
I downloaded the latest version of each app and used my serial numbers where applicable that I always store in Evernote. This is a great use of Evernote and I have been storing my software licenses in it since I got it.
So, all migrated and working good. The new laptop is amazing. So much faster than the old one and I cannot wait for the dual link DVI connector to arrive so I can hook it up to my 30″ Display.
Had a real busy week this week and my head has been all over the place. I have been doing some testing for customers and my home office currently looks like a junkyard from PC World. I hate it when my office is cluttered and I am finishing this post to go and declutter!
I have had a really big report to finish this week for a client, probably the largest I have ever done so my head has been busy and I have not had much time for blogging.
I am happy to say that I finished the report but I do not like having a piece of work that totally consumes your time. I feel trapped with this type of work and try my best to avoid it at all costs.
I have a lot going on and when I have to focus on a sole project like this for a whole week it does upset my rhythm. Surely something I need to look at and blog about!
Here are my collection of links for this week.
My first link for this week is a link to a post from fellow productivity blogger Dragos over at eDragonU about using Travel as a Personal Development Tool. I love to travel and I have been fortunate enough to travel to travel to many countries and I agree that if used right, travel can really help with personal development.
My second link is a link to a four part series (and growing) on Evernote and GTD. I love Evernote and use it in my GTD setup along with OmniFocus. I picked up some good little tips from these posts so check them out.
My third link is a link to a post from TXFX about why Things is not a GTD App. I found this through a link to my blog in the post and the post certainly makes interesting reading.
My fourth link is a link to a post from the Daily Herald titled Its High Time To Get Organized. Being a GTD Advocate and Productivity Blogger I couldn’t agree more so what are you waiting for!
My fifth and last link for this week is a link to a nice little review of Tracks, the Ruby on Rails GTD App. I have done a review of Tracks which I aim to get posted this week.
Don’t forget that if you have a great post that you would like me to link to, the best way is to link to me in your post as I pick up all trackbacks and usually respond in kind.
Alternatively, leave me a comment on one of these posts or contact me via the contact form.
Hope you all have a very productive week ahead. I know I will!
I have got quite a few reviews stacked up for release on this blog and I cannot believe that I have never published a review of Evernote before.
I did review the Evernote iPhone application a few months ago. I love Evernote and it really is one of those applications that I use on a daily basis.
Evernote is one of the most well-known organizational programs on the internet and is a great choice for users looking for a GTD application or just a better, general tool to help sort out their daily lives.
Its “remember everything” slogan encapsulates the main goal of the app; to provide an easy and convenient method of taking digital notes from the user’s daily life.
Visually, Evernote is outstanding. The simple yet detailed aesthetic cultivated by the developers makes the program very welcoming and a joy to check into.
Evernote’s main features are all clearly laid out and easy to access for new users or those who only ever really use the program at a basic, surface level.
Each form of the system from the no-download web access to portable phone usage looks and navigates extremely well so users shouldn’t be worried about how their operating system or choice in medium will be able to handle it.
The developers of Evernote have obviously spent a lot of time packing the program with important features. Interface support is, frankly, quite astonishing.
As mentioned before, Evernote can be used on the web, on a Windows or Mac Client and also on mobile devices including the Apple iPhone. The option of signing in and using the whole array of tools without a download is also great for users who wish to access the program from various computers.
Some of the more innovative aspects of the application include incredibly simple copy and pasting from the web (both words and pictures) into Evernote and text searching within images.
The “Endless Tape” view through Evernote Windows is also interesting in that it allows users to scroll through all of the ‘memories’ they’ve pasted into the program — a great feature for those who want to make sure absolutely everything gets sorted from within their various files.
Once notes have been taken it’s also quite easy to organize, store and peruse your various work which makes it an excellent choice for those who want to incorporate the program into a GTD philosophy of work.
There aren’t too many faults worth mentioning with Evernote when considering the large amount of attention and continued work that has obviously gone into the program. While it may have a fairly overwhelming number of features this is ultimately a pretty difficult aspect of the program to consider negative.
The community attached to the program should help to make the learning curve relatively gradual and exciting. In future versions it would be good to see a greater emphasis on sorting information into more detailed categories, tasks and next actions although users are still able to make this happen on their own accord with a bit of effort.
The support is pretty remarkable and it’s obvious that the popularity of the program has lead to a great, helpful community. From Evernote’s homepage users can peruse press releases, news, updates, tours and manuals along with a quick video tour which highlights the main program features for the uninitiated.
RSS feeds, Facebook fan pages, FriendFeed and Twitter options all help to further increase the level of involvement with the Evernote world that dedicated fans can choose to get into as well.
Users will no doubt be impressed by Evernote and its wealth of features no matter what kind of organizational tool they’re interested in.
Whether accessed through the website, offline mode or via a mobile phone the program is a great bet for the busy user interested in introducing a little more order to their day to day lives.
Starting December 31st, 2008 we’ll take the 5 top nominations in each category and add 5 nominations from our list of iPhone bloggers, developers, and general web-celebrities for each category to come up with 10 nominated apps for each category. In addition, the 10 apps that get the most votes across all categories will compete for the title of Best App Ever. Please come back and vote for your favorite app in each category.
I have voted already, and those who read this blog will know the iPhone app that I chose, although there was a close second place as well.
Also, check out the category of Best Productivity Killer and see how many of these you have installed on your iPhone 🙂 I have one of these installed, the Facebook app.
What was your favorite iPhone productivity app of 2008?
