Mac|Life Productivity Software RSS Feed

Red Sweater FlexTime

Susie Ochs — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:02:40 -0600

I once appeared in my high school’s production of The Pajama Game, a musical about labor strife at a pajama factory, of all things. One of the songs is called “Think of the Time I Save,” and I still get the chorus stuck in my head occasionally: “Tick-tock, tick-tock, tempus fugit. Tick-tock, tick-tock, time goes by.” It’s a super-cheesy musical, but a nice reminder to manage my time well.

So when I recently went looking for a versatile timer app, I was relieved to find FlexTime. This light utility lets you program timed routines, making it a great choice for repetitive tasks.

For example, my most frequently used FlexTime routine is Merlin Mann’s productivity hack: 10 minutes of solid work, followed by 2 minutes of strictly enforced goofing off. Repeat that five times and you’ve just worked 50 minutes out of an hour--not bad. I’ve also got FlexTime reminding me, via a Growl notification (which requires Growl, a free notification system for Mac OS X), to space out Mac|Life’s Twitter posts. I can prewrite a day’s tweets in Tweetie, and FlexTime just nudges me to push one out every 20 minutes.

Here are two FlexTime routines I use a lot, no scripting required.

FlexTime’s easily programmed routines can include multiple steps and run once or in a continuous loop. Each step can be marked by a sound, spoken text (using Mac OS X’s text-to-speech feature), a text or Growl pop-up, or even trigger a script.

Scripting is key to FlexTime’s versatility. A routine can run an AppleScript, a shell script, or an Automator workflow. Users who are familiar with these can script all kinds of events that aren’t included in FlexTime’s defaults. A script could launch your favorite backup utility, open your to-do list, save the current document, or empty your Trash. FlexTime’s Help includes some basic examples, and when you’re using Mac OS X’s built-in Script Editor (in Applications/AppleScript), you can choose File > Open Dictionary and pick the FlexTime dictionary to browse compatible commands.

But even if writing a script freaks you out, FlexTime’s built-in options can cover a lot of ground. I re-created the routines from my favorite workout DVD, and exported the audio to iTunes, so I can exercise anywhere without the DVD. (This would also work for tai chi or yoga.) You can even break up longer activities with affirmations at set intervals--your Mac nudging you along with the occasional “You’re doing great, keep going,” for example.

myPantone

Jon Phillips — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:18:56 -0500

We’ll get this right out of the way: Pantone’s foray into the App Store is a success -- myPantone is slick, clever and imminently useful. But we can’t describe the killer utility of the app without first getting into the whys and hows of Pantone itself. So, color experts, please excuse the preambling primer. We just want to get newbies up to speed so that they really understand what Pantone’s iPhone app does -- and does not -- have to offer.

The app includes nine virtual Pantone fan decks that allow you to search by name or Pantone number, or browse with finger-swipes.

There’s No “Sorta” In Perfect Color-Matching
Pantone makes color-matching systems that have become essential to the world of design -- from graphic design to clothing design to furniture design and more. Because accurate color reproduction on paper, fabrics, plastic and other surfaces can be so hit-and-miss, designers often need to work within reliable, never-changing “color spaces” to ensure that the color they want to see reproduced is actually the color that is reproduced. In practical terms, this means spec’ing the relevant elements in a computer design document with a specific Pantone color code.

Let’s say you’re designing the logo for a Fortune 500 company. Hell, let’s say the logo is for a local moving company, because companies of all ambition-levels want their logos to look consistent on letterhead, outdoor signage, T-shirts, everywhere.

When it comes time to decide on a specific logo color, you open up your Pantone swatch collection -- it may take the form of a splayed-out “fan deck” or a book of perforated paper chips -- and decide on the color you want. That color has a code. For example, 636 C for a particular variant of light blue. Now, when it comes time to have your logo printed in the real world, you define the blue in your document file as Pantone 636 C, and the reproduction service will use the precise mix of inks, pigments or whatever to achieve the exact color you specified as it appears on the medium they’re printing on. In short, the Pantone color-matching system ensures that 636 C looks the same wherever it appears, be it in your Pantone fan deck, or on a business card or billboard.

So that’s how Pantone color matching works. That’s why it’s so useful. That’s why Pantone has become the leader in color standards.

All of which leads us to a little irony intrinsic to the myPantone app: It shouldn’t be used for precise color matching. Color accuracy is not what it’s all about.

myPantone: The Color Fanatic’s New Inspirational Friend
Here’s the deal: The iPhone’s screen isn’t designed for color accuracy. It’s designed for the best possible display at a small size, low price, and modest power requirements. The upshot is that even though myPantone contains virtual fan decks of nine different Pantone color libraries, a designer could never depend on the iPhone to perfectly represent how a particular myPantone color swatch will print in a real-world situation.

In this screen you get to choose which color system you want to work in. Shoot, we get inspired just seeing the covers of the virtual fan decks! But we’re geeky that way.

Of course, this is also an issue when viewing Pantone colors on regular computer displays, because even the best displays have to be precisely calibrated for the best-possible color accuracy. But the iPhone’s innate screen color accuracy isn’t anywhere close to that of, say, a 30-inch Cinema Display, nor does the iPhone have any screen calibration control -- unless you count the Brightness slider.

But, hey -- whatever. The app is a virtual goldmine of incredibly useful tools and features, for professional designers and color-minded hobbyists alike.

For starters, the app includes nine complete virtual fan decks: Formula Guide/solid coated; Formula Guide/solid uncoated; Formula Guide/solid matte; GoeGuide/coated; GoeGuide/uncoated; Fashion+Home/cotton; Fashion+Home/paper; Pastel Formula Guide/coated; and Pastel Formula Guide/uncoated. Given that individual fan decks (the ones printed on paper) start at about $60, you can see how much value this app provides, even if you just use myPantone in a casual way, like surveying color options in a conference room with colleagues. Again, you shouldn’t use the app to make final decisions on one Pantone color versus another; it’s not a replacement for printed Pantone color guides. But myPantone can provide you with a huge head start in making color decisions, thanks to its wealth of helpful features oriented around color cataloging and inspiration.

Swatch Details Like You’ve Never Seen Before
Once you’ve chosen which virtual fan deck to use, you can opt to sort it in one of two ways: with either a Visual sort (with all colors arranged chromatically, like a rainbow, from red to violet) or a Classic sort (with colors arranged according to Pantone’s own rather scientific -- and obtuse -- numerical grouping system). This sorting feature is something that’s just plain impossible to do with a paper fan deck or chip book.

With your sort decision completed, you can finger-swipe your way through the fan deck to browse for a particular swatch. Once you find a swatch that suits your fancy, you can double-tap it for a larger-version swatch that consumes most of the screen. This larger view will also give you the color’s Pantone number code, along with the color values for RGB, L*a*b* and HTML conversion. Pro designers already know the convenience of having all this info by one’s side.

The largest swatch view possible provides a large virtual color chip – just don’t assume that what you see on the iPhone is what you’ll get on printed material.

If you want to save the particular swatch for future reference, or just want to explore more possibilities with that swatch, you can drag it into your palette collection at the bottom of the screen. The app provides slots for 10 different palettes, and each palette can contain five swatches. Even better, you can view and share your palettes in a bunch of cool ways: Email it yourself or a friend; upload it to your account on Pantone’s community website; beam it to another iPhone; or view it on an assortment of virtual wallboards. You can also tap into the iPhone’s GPS to define the location where the palette was created.

With your new favorite swatch snuggled firmly in a palette, you can tap it again to bring up its Color Details—another feature that just isn’t feasible with a real-world fan deck. Color Details shows you a medium-sized image of the swatch, along with a row of its closest color neighbors in the Pantone collection. This “color neighborhood view” is perfect for narrowing down the precise shade or hue that floating around in your mind’s eye. You also get notation on which page the swatch appears in the real-world paper fan deck, and a button that lets you record a voice memo about the color.

Hit another button under Color Details, and up pops a screen of more swatches that bear contextual relevance to the one you’ve been digging into. For example, the swatches under Cross-Reference show you analogue swatches in other Pantone color systems. Blue Coral 19-4526 TPX may not have a perfect (or even close) analogue match in every system, but this cross-referencing feature will be invaluable to pro designers nonetheless.

At the top of the screen, the Color Details feature give you the other colors that surround your swatch in the fan deck. Those swatches at the bottom of the screen are simply a collection of swatches we gathered by hand.

And then there are the Harmony groupings, which use Pantone’s own mathematical algorithms to reveal traditional color-wheel harmonies (complementary, analogous, triadic, etc) applicable to your swatch. This might be the single-best feature for folks intimidated by making color choices. Whether you want to explore “matchy-matchy” (analogous color combos, like Evergreen and True Navy) or “stark contrast” (split-complementary combos, like Evergreen and Pesto set against Oxblood Red), the Harmony choices will keep you moving around the fan deck like a free-associating fool.

The mathematically driven harmony suggestion under Color Details are great for color newbies. We just wish those crazy symbols were explained somehow.

Take a Picture, Extract a Color
So far, we’ve explained how myPantone works if you’ve already found a color you’re interested in exploring. But what if you want the app to tell you which colors to explore? Enter the color extraction tool, which is rather unceremoniously labeled Image on the app interface. Here you can either snap a photo with the iPhone’s camera, or grab a photo already in your phone, and then hit Auto-Extraction to set the magic in motion. The app will digitally dig into your image, identify its five most dominant colors, and then generate the five swatches that most closely map to those dominant colors.

Auto-extraction does a pretty fair job of identifying close Pantone matches for the colors in your photos. Just be aware that the lighting conditions in which you shoot will have a profound result on extraction accuracy (see the next set of screenshots for living proof!).

This little trick presents some interesting opportunities. For professional designers, myPantone color extraction can provide close (though not perfect) information for matching elements in a photo with colors in a Pantone library. This can come in handy when, say, you want your coverline type to be filled with whatever Pantone green most closely matches the grass in your cover photograph.

Color extraction also offers benefits to the aesthetically challenged color newbie. Let’s say you want ideas for colors that will be harmonious with your particular light-blue wall paint. You can take a close-up photo of the paint, hit auto-extract, and then receive not the single color that most closely matches the paint, but a group of colors that work with the paint in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. Did Pantone intend for a single color to generate four or five complementary swatches? We don’t know (more about that in a moment). But extracting multiple colors from what is ostensibly a single color is both a positive feature (because the harmonious color palette offers inspiration) and a negative feature (because these results remind us that the color extraction function is unreliable, and highly influenced by the light conditions in which photographs are shot).

The app doesn’t include any documentation on how color extraction works, and, in fact, one of myPantone’s very few faults is a lack of documentation and help screens. Pantone’s developers designed an interface that’s pretty darned intuitive, but we still encountered a number of features that deserved more explanation than, well, zero explanation.

The big field of green you see here is not a myPantone swatch. It’s a close-up photograph of the top of a Pantone Flight Stool spec’d in 15-0146 TPX. This photo was shot in poor lighting conditions. The app’s auto-extraction tool generated four color matches from an ostensibly single color, and none of the matches are 15-0146 TPX.

Here’s a wider-angle shot of the Flight Stool – we wanted to prove to you that it was indeed spec’d (and labeled!) as 15-0146 TPX. Again, Auto-Extraction couldn’t find this specific color in the photograph. But we blame hardware limitations, not Pantone.

While we really want to see documentation, help screens, and even color-theory reference materials in a version update, we really can’t fault Pantone for the app’s lack of color accuracy, either in the way it renders colors, or in its function for extracting colors (which, by the way, uses nearly the same algorithms that are employed in Pantone’s handheld Color Cue 2 extraction device, which currently sells for $249). The Pantone app developers did a stellar job in side-stepping the iPhone’s hardware limitations, and simultaneously making the best possible use of its unique hardware opportunities.

TextExpander touch

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:57:49 -0500

We imported these existing TextExpander snippets from our Mac to our iPhone using the Add via Local Network option under Groups (though some identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent).

SmileOnMyMac's TextExpander utility for Mac OS X is the ultimate in keystroke-saving goodness--automatically and instantly expanding short "snippets" you designate into longer chunks of text to eliminate the repetitive retyping of oft-reused text, like addresses, phone numbers, email signatures, signoffs, and much more.

Of course, as a Preference Pane extension, TextExpander for your Mac works much differently on your computer than it does on your iPhone or iPod touch because Apple doesn't allow iPhone apps to run in the background.

To use Text Expander touch, you launch it, then tap Compose. Up pops a blank composition area, into which you can type your desired snippet, such as aaddr for your mailing address, ttel for your phone number (which you will obviously have to edit after you've installed the app), or any other snippets you've added to your library by editing the default snippets that come preloaded or creating your own unique ones.

Once the snippet has expanded in the note screen, tap the Share icon at the bottom-left of the screen. This gives you the option to Send to Mail, Copy All Text, or, if you have a supported Twitter app installed, send to your Twitter app to add to a new tweet. (The Twitter apps currently supported are Echofon, aka Twitterfon, BirdFeed, Tweetie, Twitteriffic, and Twittelator Pro.) The reason TweetDeck isn't supported, according to SmileonMyMac, is that it "does do not support a URL schema such that it can be launched by TextExpander along with message content."

As far as we're concerned, that's not a deal-breaker, though, since there are plenty of excellent iPhone Twitter apps that TextExpander touch does support. And SmileonMyMac has made it easy-as-pie for other app developers to integrate TextExpander touch support by releasing an SDK.

While using the app on your iPhone or iPod touch takes a little getting used to--especially for TextExpander users whose fingers and brain are trained to type snippets on a Mac without even thinking--TextExpander touch does indeed save time and finger cramps when composing email and text messages, notes, Twitter posts, and the like. As such, it's more than worth its $4.99 price tag.

Consider this scenario: You're planning a big work event, wedding, family reunion, or other shindig that requires advance planning and communication with lots of people. People email you regularly asking for specifics. With TextExpander touch on your iPhone, you need not tap your fingers to the bone retyping the same basic date, time, location, or other details. The shortest way to get a long chunk of text into TextExpander touch is to email it to yourself to an account you already have set up on your handheld device. In the email, select the text, copy it. Launch TextExpander touch, tap Groups, select a group, then tap the + icon. Give your new snippet a name in the top field, then double-tap under Content and tap Paste. Voila! Now you have all that info at your fingertips for the next time you need it.

Step 1: Create a new snippet or edit an existing snippet by giving it a name in the Abbreviation field and typing or pasting the content into the Content field below it.

Step 2: Tap the icon in the lower-left of the screen and select the option you want. In this case, we selected Copy All Text.

Step 3: If you're using a function like SMS that's not directly integrated into TextExpander touch, launch the app and in the text field, double-tap and then tap Paste.

If you already use TextExpander on your Mac, you can even import existing snippets to your handheld device via your local Wi-Fi network. In the Groups view on your iPhone or iPod touch, tap the + icon, then Add Via Local Network. As long as your device and your Mac are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, your device will find the Mac. Tap the Mac from which you want to pull snippets and choose your snippet group. On that Mac, a dialog will pop up in the TextExpander System Preference pane asking if it's OK to share the data. Click OK to continue.

Tweetie 2

Zack Stern — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:49:07 -0500

Tap the remaining-characters countdown ticker to toggle between the keyboard and often-used tools.

Features spring out of Tweetie 2's diminutive, clean interface like items from Felix the Cat's bag of tricks. No matter how you use Twitter, Tweetie 2 lets you use it better.

Tweetie 2's basic features never feel bogged down by its deep extras. The tool quickly downloads and uploads messages over Wi-Fi or a phone network, and navigation within the app equally feels snappy. You'll begin composing messages with a tap or two, even bringing up a directory to add contact names and recent hash tags.

Pictures load previews within messages, but you can expand them with a tap.

More advanced tools embed pictures and videos through your choice of host services, shorten URLs, and add a Google geotag. However you use Tweetie 2, your favorite options will always be nearby.

And Tweetie 2 excels at reading messages. You can see previews or full versions of embedded photos within the app. Great search tools show trending topics, specific queries, or even a map of local messages. You can follow web links, including YouTube videos, and return to Tweetie 2 without going to the Home Screen. Or suppose you want to read a link or see a video later, Tweetie 2 interfaces with Instapaper and Read It Later. Just tap a button to keep a running list, and view it on your Mac or PC another time.

Get a new perspective on your neighbors or an out-of-town trip with a live map of nearby messages.

Tweetie 2 neatly interfaces with Apple's tools, too. Surf across a cool website in iPhone Safari? A slick system sends those URLs directly to a new Tweetie 2 message after you click a special bookmark. And you can save Twitter profiles into Address Book under a new or existing contact.

iPhone Helper Apps for Insanely Specific Scenarios

Leslie Ayers — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:06:00 -0500

Every day, life presents any number of problems that need solving—from settling bets to knowing which fish are OK to eat to remembering where the soupspoon goes in a formal table setting. Your iPhone or iPod touch can act as a digital Swiss Army knife, offering up the right tool to get you through almost any dilemma. We review and rate a collection of handy helper apps and ass-saving accessories that are sure to boost your rep as the consummate boy scout, always prepared for anything.

For Anyone Who's Ever Asked, "How?"

Howcast.com's free iPhone app puts the site's eclectic collection of how-to videos in your pocket

Think of all the things you’ve always wanted to know how to do: fold origami, set a formal dinner table, pick a lock…or maybe have sex in a car? Amazingly enough, you can learn how to do all of these things—and many more—with Howcast’s free iPhone app. This excellent freebie puts an iPhone “wrapper” on the mind-blowing array of how-to video content available on Howcast.com.

Click here to read a full review of this app

Search for topics in the search bar or tap on Most Recent or Featured to see a list of how-to videos on Howcast.

Howcast How-To Videos
Howcast Media
www.howcast.com
Free

Six More Ways to Skin a Cat (Not Literally, OK?)

These apps offer more practical solutions to real-life problems

Heads, You Win; Tails, You Win

Need to settle a bet but don’t have a coin to toss? If you spend a buck on My CoinFlip, you’ll never be without a way to force your friends to choose between two options. The app features 11 different types of coins, including a variety of euro coins.

The Vatican euro offers a nice option for your Catholic friends.

My CoinFlip 1.2.3
Sandro Stricker
www.software.sandrostricker.de
$0.99

Wait, How Many Spider Rolls Did We Order?

Ordering sushi for large parties can be an exercise in chaos—especially after a few sake rounds. Sushi Boat! presents a list of common sushi offerings—nigiri, sashimi, and maki—so you can you pass your phone around to capture a digital account of your order. When everyone’s weighed in, tap My Order to see the tally, which can then be read to the server by whoever’s most coherent.

Handy translations ensure you won't order hamachi (yellowtail) when you want maguro (tuna).

Sushi Boat! 1.0
Impresario Digital
www.impresariodigital.com
$0.99

Automatic Name That Tune

Can’t put a name to the tune that’s playing over a public speaker system or at a party? Shazam can ID the song, artist, and album—then let you buy it directly from the iTunes Store. Just tap Tag Now and hold up your iPhone so it can “hear” the music.

Shazam effortlessly recognized Len's "Steal My Sunshine," after only hearing the first couple seconds of the song, which is a bunch of talking.

Shazam 1.5
Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
www.shazam.com
Free

Wash and Wear

LaundryPal is exactly what college kids whose moms coddled them and newly divorced bachelors need: It deciphers the often mystifying care symbols found on clothes labels, ensuring that you don’t machine-wash a hand-wash or dry-clean-only item. Even better, it includes a laundry how-to, as well as tips in each symbol section (Wash, Tumble Dry, Iron, and Bleach, Dry Clean, and Dry). If only it could fold your laundry too!

The Do Not Dry symbol is presumably interchangeable with the symbol for Do Not Tumble Dry. Otherwise there will be a lot of laundry noobs walking around wearing wet—albeit clean—clothes!

LaundryPal 1.2
Hip Fire
www.hipfire.com
$0.99

You Go Green, Girl!

We debated including this, worried that the manly men out there would balk at the app’s title. This iPhone version of Sophie Uliano’s best-seller Gorgeously Green provides you with the core info from the eco-conscious lifestyle guide. What tipped the scale in the app’s favor was ultrahandy lists and tips, such as which types of fish are OK to eat, how to decode the numbers on plastic bottles, which produce you should always buy organic, and more.

Which produce should you always buy organic? The GG Survival Guide's got your back.

Gorgeously Green Survival Guide 1.2
Optima Drama
www.gorgeouslygreen.com
$0.99

Unlike Mace, It Doesn't Require a Permit

Panic Alarm is a personal alarm that can’t immobilize an attacker the way mace or pepper spray can, but could very well be all you need to scare off a would-be perp. The app consists of a large Alarm button that appears on launch, which, when tapped (or if you shake your device), sets off a very loud alarm. You can also set the app to call an emergency contact after the alarm sounds for a certain period before it’s turned off.

In the settings, designate a contact to call if the alarm goes off for a specified period without being turned off.

Panic Alarm 1.0
Adduce Studios
www.adduce.se
$0.99

Remember the Milk

Ray Aguilera — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:22:40 -0500

Judging by our desk, you’d never guess that we try to be highly organized. And we’ve tried everything, from David Allen’s nerd-famous Getting Things Done (GTD) dogma, to complex Mac apps, endless paper notebooks, and iCal’s built in to-do features. We have yet to find the perfect system for managing not only our work tasks, but also all the other stuff we have to do in the course of our daily life. But Remember The Milk, a Web service also accessible via iPhone, is helping us become more organized than ever.

Signing up for a Remember The Milk account is free. From there, you can use RTM’s Web interface to create multiple lists to organize all of your to-dos. RTM supports all sorts of metadata for individual to-do items, including due dates, repeat schedules, time estimates, text notes, and tags (a favorite among GTD-ers). RTM also offers complex searches that can be saved as Smart Lists, similar to iTunes’ Smart Playlist feature.

Don't forget the milk...or anything else that you need to do.

Advanced users will appreciate the various ways you can interact with Remember The Milk. You can submit tasks by email, share tasks with other RTM users, create SMS and email reminders, and display your RTM tasks in iCal or another calendar program. Paid Pro accounts also give you access to an RTM app for iPhones, as well as an optimized iPhone web interface. Robust APIs mean that you can access and manipulate your tasks with a variety of software and devices--the service even supports 3rd-party iPhone apps.

Remember The Milk is easy enough for newbies to pick up, but it supports a deep feature set that will satisfy ninja-level task managers as well. But nothing is ever perfect. RTM only offers a fairly flat structure of individual Tasks that belong to a List, so there’s no ability to nest tasks and create multistep projects. Complex tasks with due dates and tags, for example, require entering data into multiple fields. We’d vastly prefer a smart text-entry field that could parse data, so that we wouldn’t have to enter task names and due dates in different spots. And there’s no way to set email/text reminders for tasks individually.

Address Book Power Tips

Scott Rose — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:58:33 -0500

Squeeze more power out of Apple's quintessential contacts app.

Level: Easy

What You Need:

>Address Book (included in Mac OS X)
>About 20 minutes to tinker

Apple’s Address Book is a central part of the Mac experience. It’s integrated with Mail, iCal, iChat, Safari, Fax, Dashboard, and Spotlight. It synchronizes to MobileMe, iPhone, iPod, and a wide variety of third-party software and hardware.

Yet for such an essential tool, it’s curious that Apple has kept Address Book so bare-bones basic. At first glance, there’s not much power to eke out of Address Book, but we’ve collected a few handy tips to help you squeeze some extra functionality out of this vital application.

Note that many of these tips only work while viewing Address Book in “Card and Columns” view (View > Card And Columns).

Address Book can do more than you thought it could.

1. View Multiple Contacts

Instead of single-clicking a contact in Address Book, double-click on the contact to open up that card in its own window. You can do that for as many contacts as you’d like, for easy viewing and editing of multiple contacts.

Look at four contacts (or more) simultaneously with just a double-click.

2. Synchronize Birthdays

Address Book and iCal both contain hidden features that let you add a contact’s birthday to his or her Address Book record, and then that birthday will show up every year in iCal. In Address Book’s preferences, click the Template button in the toolbar, then select Birthday from the Add Field menu. That new Birthday field will now show up whenever you edit a contact’s record. In iCal’s preferences, click the General button in the toolbar and check the box for Show Birthdays Calendar. You’ve now created a special read-only Birthdays calendar in iCal that pulls all of the birthday data automatically from Address Book.

This hidden Birthday field will link your contacts' birthdays to iCal.

3. Create Custom Fields

If the default Address Book cards don’t have enough fields for all the info you want to collect for your contacts, head to the Template screen in Address Book’s preferences, and click Add Field to add additional fields onto all of your cards. You can also click the little green plus signs to add even more variations of the same type of fields.

Address Book also lets you create your own custom fields. On the same Preferences > Template screen, you can click on most of the field labels and select Custom, where you can name your very own custom fields that will appear on each card.

We've already added the custom fields Hours, Referred By, and Rates. You can add even more by choosing Custom from almost any field label.

4. See a Contact's Group

It’s easy enough to click on an Address Book group and see which contacts are part of that group. But what if you want to go the other way around and see which groups a particular contact belongs to? Simply hold down the Option key after you’ve selected the contact’s card, and Address Book will highlight all the groups that person is a part of.

Holding down Option shows us that this contact belongs to six groups.

5. Dial Your Phone

If you have a Bluetooth cell phone that supports this feature, first pair it with your Mac (go to System Preferences > Bluetooth, click the Plus sign for Set Up New Device, and follow the prompts). Then just click the label of a phone number on one of your address cards, choose Dial from the pop-up menu, and watch in amazement as your cell phone dials the phone number for you.

Our iPhone 3G doesn't support dialing over Bluetooth, but we could still dial this number in Skype.

6. Sort Your List with Smart Groups

Address Book doesn’t give you a way to see the creation date of your contacts. It also obscures the updated date if your notes extend beyond the window size. In either case, you can never sort your list by any other criteria except for First Name or Last Name. If you need a list of recently updated contacts, you can create a smart group (File > New Smart Group) where “Card has changed in (x number of days, weeks, months, etc).”

This Smart Group will contain any contacts that we have modified within the last three days.

7. Export to Sort

If the Smart Group’s idea in step 6 doesn’t meet all of your sorting needs, you’ll need to export your data out of Address Book using the shareware app Export Address Book (€12.50, software.dibomedia.de), which will let you export any fields that you specify—including the Creation Date and the Modification Date—as a CSV (comma-separated values) file. You can then open that file in a spreadsheet app, such as Numbers or Excel, and sort your data there.

Export Address Book gives you complete control over exporting your data from Address Book.

8. Claim Your Identity

Safari’s AutoFill feature (in Safari, choose Edit > AutoFill Form) makes it easy to fill out online forms with your personal information. But where does Safari pull this information from? From the Address Book card that you’ve designated as yourself. To do that, simply find yourself in Address Book and then choose Card > Make This My Card.

When you claim a card as your own, the little icon to the left of your name changes to a human silhouette.

9. Quickly Copy an Address

If you need to quickly copy someone’s entire address—for pasting into an email, for example—make sure that you’re not in Edit mode. Then click the label of the address field (e.g., “work”) and choose Copy Mailing Label.

Choose Copy Mailing Label to save this address to your Clipboard.

10. Google Maps

While you’re in the same contextual menu (from clicking the address-field label as described in step 9), you can choose Map Of to go to a Google Map of that location in your default browser. Or choose Copy URL Of Map if you want to paste that map’s URL into an email or chat.

Clicking our work address and selecting Map Of gave us this map to Mac|Life HQ.

11. Large Type

If you’re going blind (like we are) and can’t see those small phone numbers when you’re trying to call someone, first make sure that you’re not in Edit mode, and then click the label of the phone (e.g. “mobile”) and choose Large Type. This will fill your entire screen with the selected phone number—super useful when you’re walking to the fax machine all the way across the room.

Can you see me now?

Digitize Your Mental Notes with Evernote

Susie Ochs — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:29:40 -0500

Capture ideas and information instantly--and be able to find it all when you need it.

What You Need:

-- Free account at www.evernote.com
-- Evernote application for the Mac (free, www.evernote.com)
-- Optional: Evernote application for the iPhone or iPod touch
-- Optional: Twitter account (see Step 9)

What do you do when you come across some info you want to remember? If it’s a webpage maybe you bookmark it; if it’s an email or a file, you might stick it in a folder called “Important!” Evernote is a super-useful service that comprises a Web-based application, a free Mac desktop app, and even an iPhone app, all kept effortlessly synced. And it’s ready to store all your digital info--receipts, serial numbers, snippets of code, articles, photos, PDFs, audio files, recipes, you name it--with handy tagging, indexing, and searching features so you can actually find it all later. We’ll walk you through setting up Evernote, then encourage you to tinker around and discover how it fits into your personal workflow.

1. Sign Up and Download

Head to www.evernote.com and click the Register link at the top-right of the page. Then click the Downloads link at the very bottom of the page (or go to www.evernote.com/about/downloads) and grab the free Mac app, which requires Mac OS 10.5, aka Leopard. Install that puppy in the usual fashion

This is all the personal info they ask for. Refreshing.

2. Look to the Menubar

The app will put a little elephant-head icon in your menubar. Click it to check out your options: New Note launches a window where you can type a new text note or drag in an attachment from the Finder. If you have a free account, you’re limited to attaching JPG, PNG, or GIF images; MP3 or WAV audio files; or PDFs. But Premium account users ($5/month or $45/year) can attach any file type.

Those hotkey combos work globally, and you can change them in Evernote > Preferences > Shortcuts.

The menubar icon also lets you paste the clipboard contents into Evernote, send a screenshot to Evernote, and launch the main Evernote window with the cursor in the Search box. Better still, all these commands can be executed with global hotkeys.

3. Web Clips, Three Ways

Most of the info we want to save comes from that ever-gushing font of knowledge and nonsense known as the Internet. Evernote’s got that covered: Firefox has a dedicated Evernote extension, which adds a toolbar button with a contextual menu for clipping the whole webpage, or just a selection, to Evernote. The Evernote app can install a similar Safari plug-in (click it to send the current webpage to Evernote, or Shift-click it to save the page to Evernote as a PDF, which does a better job of preserving the formatting).

But if you want to avoid bloating your browser with extensions or plug-ins, there’s also a “bookmarklet” you can drag into your bookmarks toolbar for one-click clipping. Find it at www.evernote.com/about/downloads.

Mouse over the Evernote button in Safari for a reminder of what it does.

4. More Ways to Add Notes

If the Evernote app is running, you can also drag supported file types right onto its Dock icon. If you’re using someone else’s computer when inspiration strikes, just log in at www.evernote.com to view your notebooks and add new notes through the Web interface.

And the app also has a button labeled iSight Note that lets you snap a shot with your Mac’s iSight—and it even flips the image horizontally before saving it to a notebook, so any text that’s visible in the image doesn’t appear backward.

Normally when you hold something with writing up to your iSight, the text is backward.

5. Search for Text in Images

“Who cares if the text is forward or backward?” you may ask after reading step 4. Well, you do. The genius of Evernote is that it finds text in your notes—even text that shows up in a photo, scanned document, screenshot, or PDF, and even if the text is handwritten. When you click the Sync button in the Evernote app, the notes on your Mac are synced with Evernote’s servers, where the text recognition is performed. Once that info is synced back to your Mac (which happens automatically, or you can click Sync again after a couple of minutes), you’ll be able to search for words contained inside any of your notes.

Our search for "Mac" found the image we took in step 4. Smart!

6. Tag Notes

Evernote lets you create multiple notebooks, but we prefer to dump everything into one notebook and then use tags to keep it all organized. You can tag notes as you write them, and as you type a tag, the app will suggest tags you’re already using that contain those letters. For tagging after the fact, just select one or more notes from the list and drag them onto the desired tag, listed in the sidebar—it’s the quickest way to tag multiple notes at once. And of course, each note can have as many tags as you need.

Drop multiple notes onto one of your tages to apply that tage to all of them.

7. Add Notes from Your iPhone

...or iPod touch, naturally. The free Evernote app is a lifesaver for capturing inspiration on the go, letting you create new notes by typing, taking a snapshot with the camera (iPhone only, of course), using an image that’s already on your device, or even recording a quick voice note. You can read all your notes, mark some as favorites (which saves a copy to your device, so you can read them offline), and search your notes too.

Notes you make on the phone will sync back to Evernote on the Web and on your Mac.

Bonus: Tap the magnifying glass icon to the right of the Search box for the Advanced Search page, where you can search for notes based on where you made them (within 1, 5, or 25 miles of your current location)—great for finding the note you made about where you left your car, once you get back to the parking garage.

8. Export or Share

The Evernote app can export your notes as ENEX files, which lets you back them up locally, but only the Evernote app can read the ENEX files. The app can also print your notes (including the ol’ print-to-PDF trick) or email them via Apple Mail. Evernote’s Web application also lets you print and email, and even publish your notebook online—you’ll get a URL you can share with friends.

Share your notebooks to let anyone (who knows the URL) read them.

9. Add Notes via Twitter

If you have a Twitter client open all day anyway, it can double as a fast way to send short notes (140 characters or less, duh!) to Evernote. First, you have to follow myEN (twitter.com/myEN). You’ll get a direct message with a URL for linking your Twitter and Evernote accounts—make sure to sign in to Evernote before you click the link. Then just add @myEN anywhere in your tweet to have a copy sent to Evernote. You can also direct-message myEN (start the tweet with D myEN) if you want your note to stay private.

To get started, go to twitter.com/myEN and click Follow.

10. Go Premium?

Evernote’s Premium account ($5/month or $45/year) boosts your upload limit to 500MB/month (a free account is 40MB/month), syncs your files between multiple computers running Evernote--even across platforms--and supports more file types and SSL encryption. (The small ads in the bottom-left corner of the Evernote app and webpage disappear too.) We don’t want to discourage anyone from upgrading to the paid service (we’re sort of Evernote fanboys, OK?), but we have to admit that in our months of using the service, we’ve yet to have an “Oooh, I wish I was Premium!” moment. Your mileage may vary, of course.