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Filed under: Macworld

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck to make a bunch of press kits?



In the press room at Macworld there was a little foyer with alphabetized buckets where you could pick up press kits from the various vendors. This is an exercise in wastefulness, as many of the press kits are glossy folders filled with photocopies and CD's.

Now, I realize the coordination required to put all this on a single DVD or USB drive would be immense, so I'm not blaming Macworld/IDG here, but surely there's got to be a better way. I've made a gallery of the leftover press releases, CD's and cases I was left with-- and I didn't even take everything! I also had to discard all the covering folders for what I did grab, because I didn't want to pay $60 extra for the additional weight in my luggage (no kidding, it was like an extra 10 lbs. of junk). Sadly, that stuff got trashed in my hotel room, and I'm sure it didn't get recycled. Maybe next year the dream of a "paperless" Macworld can be realized...

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools, .Mac

.Mac webmail now does server-side spam filtering



As with most big Apple announcements, at least a few features slip through the cracks. Thanks to TUAW reader Brandon Werner, we caught one that answers a long-time complaint of .Mac users and critics: server-side spam filtering. Until today (or at least recently; we've never noticed this before), checking your mail at the .Mac site would subject you to any and all spam you receive, since the webmail didn't filter anything out; Apple leaves that up to Mail (or your other client of choice). Now, finally, .Mac webmail offers this option to filter out junk mail right on the server, giving you at least some sort of a break from the stream of junk you might inevitably encounter. Be sure to check out the support document linked at this option, as it outlines a few steps to take to ensure that your email client and .Mac webmail keep in step regarding the messages that actually get filed into the junk mail folder. This will allow you to review those messages either from the webmail client or your desktop client, making it easy to pick out the few genuine messages that get swept away with the actual garbage.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Reviews

Get organized: a survey of digital junk drawer apps

A while ago I decided to bring some sanity to the way I do things and organize all my stuff. I'm working on a design thesis in my multimedia undergrad degree, I'm constantly doing research for my blogging work, and I have countless other projects and ideas that were growing in both size and disorganization in my Home folder. When I decided to finally start getting organized, I realized I might not be the only person in this position, and I figured I would turn my research and testing experiences into a post; a sort of survey of what some call 'digital junk drawer' applications.

What follows is a pro and con summary of four of the most popular junk drawer apps I looked at, but read this post with a few of my criteria in mind:
  • I like keyboard shortcuts. I like them a lot. Being able to highlight a chunk of text in a browser or a PDF I'm reading and hitting a couple of keys to send it to a junk drawer app is far more efficient and less workflow-intrusive than having to use a mouse to drag and drop it to some far corner of my display.
  • I decided not to touch apps that employ entirely different paradigms such as the wiki-like VoodooPad; I'm not denying the usefulness of these other ways of working, but adding that entirely new level to this survey would've meant putting this post on the back-burner for longer than I would like.
  • I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.0 Ghz with 1.5 GB RAM, and while I synced my notes library across these apps to gauge performance 'n all that jazz, my library is a mere 500 notes (URLs, PDFs, etc.) strong, so your mileage may vary.
With that said, check out my survey of some Mac OS X apps that could help you bring order to your digital chaos, and feel free to post your thoughts or mention apps that should've made this list, and why.

Continue readingGet organized: a survey of digital junk drawer apps

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

Chronos replaces StickyBrain with SOHO Notes 5.5


StickyBrain, one of the leading 'digital junk drawer' apps that recently entered a 4.1 beta testing phase, has been officially discontinued by Chronos in favor of SOHO Notes 5.5. Current registered users of StickyBrain 4.0 will receive an upgrade to SOHO Notes for free, while users who own licenses for any previous StickyBrain versions (1.x, 2.x and 3.x) can upgrade to SOHO Notes 5.5 for a mere $25, the price offered in the past for upgrading from StickyBrain 3.x to 4.x.

Why is StickyBrain being dissolved in favor of SOHO Notes, you ask? Chronos has published an announcement and FAQ explaining the decision, but here's the short version: SOHO Notes is basically the big brother of StickyBrain; they're almost the same app, derived from the same codebase, except SOHO Notes included three key features that Chronos used to charge extra for:
  • SOHO Notes can synchronize notes between multiple computers using a .Mac account (seamlessly, in the background).
  • SOHO Notes can access multiple note databases simultaneously.
  • SOHO Notes is multi-user capable which means users can share notes with others over a network using the product's client/server technology.
Now, with SOHO Notes taking the helm, its price has dropped to $39.99 to keep it more in-line with StickyBrain's previous price, as well as the competition like Yojimbo and DEVONthink.

Feature-wise, this new version of SOHO Notes 5.5 offers some powerful new goodies, such as the ability to import and catalog almost any kind of file, send notes to your blog, a DockNote that makes it easy to get info both in and out, audio recording notes, full-screen editing of notes, a Daily Journal/Diary category that can automatically date/time stamp notes and much more.

Whether you love your hate StickyBrain SOHO Notes, this should be good news for the 'digital junk drawer' market, as this price drop and the new features should help keep everyone's innovative juices flowing.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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