Productivity Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Macworld 2010: Chatting with Phil Libin of Evernote

by Mike Schramm (Feb 12th, 2010)

There are some big fans of Evernote on the TUAW staff -- we've talked quite a bit about the app that promises to store important clips and notes from anywhere, and make them accessible at any time. But even if you haven't heard of the app before, ...

Five customized Automator services to help save you time

by Sang Tang (Feb 2nd, 2010)

One gem in Mac OS X that sometimes gets glanced over is the Services menu. Lots of readers may not know yet that Snow Leopard brought with it the ability to create your own customized service in Automator -- in other words, you can get additional ...

Five widgets for Friday

by Sang Tang (Jan 22nd, 2010)

As we've previously pointed out, in many ways, Dashboard Widgets are the precursor to iPhone apps. Need to know when your latest packages will arrive? Yes, there's an app for that. But there's a widget too. Need to figure out how many pesos are in a ...

TUAW Tip: Character building with Mac OS X

by Sang Tang (Jan 21st, 2010)

I've previously demonstrated how to use LaTeXiT to create and display complex math formulas and other symbols, and thank you readers for the additional recommendations! While providing a means to display almost every imaginable existing symbol or ...

Send tweets automatically during a Keynote presentation with Keynote Tweet

by Sang Tang (Jan 21st, 2010)

Imagine if, as Steve Jobs moves through each slide of his Keynote presentation, he also has the telepathic powers to automatically tweet information related to the slide. But even the almighty Steve Jobs can't do that. Fortunately for him, there's ...

TotalFinder beefs up Finder

by Brett Terpstra (Jan 14th, 2010)

A new "hack" for Finder is in the works, and it's pretty darn cool. TotalFinder adds tabs, Visor-like functionality and a few other goodies (with more on the way) to your plain, vanilla Finder setup. If you're skittish, though, don't jump just ...

What to do when your Numbers' charts don't paste correctly

by Sang Tang (Jan 11th, 2010)

The iWork suite of apps (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) play nice with each other -- for the most part. Objects such as shapes, text boxes and tables created in one app can easily be copied and pasted onto another and retain their styles. Even an image ...

Billings 3.5 paves the way for Billings Touch

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 30th, 2009)

Billings, my personal favorite time-tracking, estimating and invoicing application has just updated to version 3.5. The developers, Marketcircle, are labeling it the "Trojan" release due to its mostly-under-the-hood improvements. Under the hood, but ...

Mac 101: Getting your RSS feeds in your inbox in Mail.app

by Sang Tang (Dec 29th, 2009)

RSS reader support has been a built-in feature of Mail.app since version 3.0 (when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was released). Although I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds, I've yet to find the need for a dedicated RSS reader app -- such as Newsgator's ...

Making Microsoft Office on the Mac look more PC-like

by Sang Tang (Dec 28th, 2009)

Previously, I've mentioned that, despite their similar DNA and file interoperability, Microsoft Office for the PC and Mac are different in their own little subtle ways. This is part function: for example, Microsoft Excel on the Mac uses the 1904 ...

Mail.app plugin WideMail makes a comeback in Snow Leopard

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 28th, 2009)

Since upgrading, Snow Leopard users with widescreen displays may have been missing WideMail, the plugin for Mail.app that gives you a 3-column display of your messages. We mentioned it some time ago, and you may recall it being one of the casualties ...

Drag and drop your windows into tidiness with Cinch

by Mike Schramm (Dec 23rd, 2009)

I'd never heard of Cinch, just mentioned over at Cult of Mac, but it's such a great idea I thought I'd check into it. Basically, Cinch does what all great Mac software does: it works in the background and lets you do what you want to do, skipping ...

"Cinch" your desktop windows into place

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 18th, 2009)

Cinch is a new Mac utility from Irradiated Software. It helps keep your desktop windows organized by snapping them into predefined sizes and locations when you hold them near an edge of your screen. While its toolset is limited in comparison to its ...