Free Apple Mail Christmas Stationary

Every year I send out several holiday greeting electronically.
iPresentee, the developer of add-ons for Apple's iWork and iLife applications, just released some excellent free Christmas Mail Stationery templates to be used with Apple's Mail software. New Mail Stationery package includes ten templates: Santa Claus Letter, New Year's Day, Christmas Wreath, Merry Christmas, Gift, Snowman, Christmas Letter, Christmas Socks, Santa Claus and Christmas Tree. Check it out.

Happy Birthday to the Computer Mouse

Today is the 40th birthday of the computer mouse. There is an excellent story (and video) on the first mouse right here.

So Happy Birthday to my mouse. Over the years I must admit I've taken you for granted. I've let your batteries run dry, I've dropped you on the floor, and I've watched you get abused with remarkably poor design (exhibit A below). I've even tried to banish you into obsolescence with a continuous onslaught of trackballs, trackpads, tablets, and even lowly keyboard shortcuts yet you continue to faithfully serve me as a master with an endless supply of cheese. Happy Birthday Friend!

OmniFocus Tips - The Omniscient Start Date

I've been promising an OmniFocus screencast for some time but it seems the world is conspiring against me lately. Nevertheless, I thought I would share one of my most valuable tips, the effective use of start dates.

If you're like me, you have a lot of tasks in your database. One of the primary goals of task management is to actually get things done and not be paralyzed with fear when you see a list of 784 items. The trick is to make OmniFocus only give you the tasks you want to see at that moment. In addition to using contexts, another way to accomplish this is through the effective use of the "start date" field. For instance, if you have a particular project for work that you want to start on Wednesday, the start date for the related tasks should be Wednesday. You do not want those items appearing on your task list on Monday or Tuesday. I have some tasks that are not scheduled to begin for over a year. I was reminded of this yesterday when OmniFocus told me it was time to sort out the Christmas card list.

Every morning I do a sort of triage to my task list. Several items appear that weren't there yesterday. I look at them and realistically determine which of those will get accomplished today. Those that won't, get rescheduled to appropriate new start date. It's not that I'm deleting these tasks, I'm rescheduling them. They will appear again and will get done.

OmniFocus makes this very easy. You simply tab over to the start date field and type in a new date. You can also mouse over the calendar and enter the date that way. By far the most efficient and nerdy way to do this is through OmniFocus's intelligent date system. For instance, if the start date lists as December 8, 2008 and I type in the field "2d", OmniFocus will automate reschedule it for 2 days, December 10, 2008. If I type "Wed" in the field, it would do the same. You can even combine these. If you type"3w Sat", it will reschedule the event for three weeks from Saturday. I find it extremely useful and I am quickly able to parse through my task list to show only those events I need to work on today.

If you really want to go nuts, you can also use times in your start date field. If I've already blocked time out to do a specific project in the afternoon for instance, I will set the start time to coincide. That way my task list during the morning is not stuffed with items I do not currently need. I also do this for home related tasks. As an example, tomorrow someone's coming to work on my home and I need to prepare. When I made the appointment last week, I set a task for today. When that task appeared this morning, I promptly rescheduled it to 7 p.m. It will show up tonight but I don't have to look at it all day. If I were a bit smarter, I would have scheduled the task to "mon 7pm" and then I wouldn't have seen it this morning. Using this technique, I am able to keep my task list to a manageable and appropriate size. Once I finish the triage in the morning, I click over to context mode and then I'm off to the races for the rest of the day. By the end of the day I've either finished everything on the list or advanced it to a new appropriate start date.

I know GTD purists would argue that in doing this, I'm tying my hands behind my back. Specifically, GTD canon holds that if you have free time, you should be able to pull up all of your outstanding phone call tasks and work through them quickly. For me, this just doesn't happen very often. I think more in terms of specific projects I want to focus on and I'm such a terrible multitasker that jumping around quite often leads to misery. However, if I do find myself with free time, like I did a few weeks ago when the Internet went down to my office, it is a simple matter in OmniFocus to change your filter to show all tasks "remaining" instead of just those "available" and I can see all of my telephone calls.

So MacSparky Nation, are these productivity posts helpful? Every time I post one I get several complementary e-mails from readers and several not-so-complementary e-mails from people threatening to unsubscribe because I've gone off the Mac-centric focus of the site. Let me know.

Clips Review

This week I'm looking at a clipboard enhancement, Clips, from Conceited Software. Do you constantly find yourself moving bits of text and pictures between different applications? I do. Because I do so much writing it is often simple text and I've found the free utility Jumpcut completely adequate for this purpose. Clips, however, goes way beyond keeping a list of recently copied text snippets. So the question becomes whether additional functionality would be useful?

Once you install Clips, it will silently begin keeping track of everything you add to your clipboard. It then categorizes and tracks those clips for future reference. For instance, Clips remembers which application you were in when you cut or copied. So if I want to see all the clippings I made in Safari or my word processor, it is simply a matter of clicking the application in the Clips browser. If you use Leopard Spaces, it even tracks which space your clippings were made in.

You can then search through your collection of clips easily with the live search. You can also create your own custom clipboards. I have one for MacSparky that includes some frequently used graphic and text assets. It even has a feature called "smart clipboards" that works very similar to smart rules in the Finder or iTunes. For instance, I made a smart clipboard that collects all clippings I've taken out of Safari more than five times.

If you have clippings you use frequently, you can assign text snippets or key combinations. When you type in a certain text string, Clips will drop in the assigned link, picture, or text string. While TextExpander still reigns supreme for text snippets, this feature is useful for other assets.

Once you have found your clipboard Nirvana, you can share your clipboards between multiple Macs. This is nice if you have multiple users or Macs. While it doesn't support MobileMe Syncing, that would be nice.

For me, the most confusing part of Clips was the first time I loaded it. The application includes three separate interfaces. It has a Dashboardesque "Clips Board" which explodes onto your screen like the Dashboard. It also has a clips panel and clips organizer that works nearly identical to the Finder. There are also keyboard shortcuts and hot corners. My first reaction was, "Cheese and crackers! Clips just took over my Mac." It actually took me a little fiddling to realize that all of these interfaces give you similar information in different ways. In essence, the developer is giving the user the choice of figuring out what works best. Once I realized that, I tuned the interfaces to my liking and turned off several of the key combinations and hot corners and things have worked just swell since then.

I was skeptical when I first started kicking the tires on Clips. I have been very pleased with my free Jumpcut and wasn't sure that I had any use for these fancy bells and whistles. Sadly, however, Clips has spoiled me and I will forever look at Jumpcut a little jaded. A Clips license will run £19.50. With the current exchange rate that brings the price up to nearly $29. While the application is very useful, that is a lot of money for a clipboard enhancement. Thankfully, the developer does offer a free trial period and I would recommend giving it a spin before buying. You can find it at www.conceitedsoftware.com.

You can listen to this review on Surfbit's MacReviewCast #189.

The LaunchBar/Quicksilver Shuffle

I noticed today that LaunchBar has released a beta of their new version 5. I've tried LaunchBar a few times in the past but I always seem back with my beloved Quicksilver. Tonight I loaded LaunchBar yet again. I'll be using it for the next month and reporting back. If you are a LaunchBar power user, sound off in the comments or send me a note. I'd love to hear your tips.

The Macalope Weighs In About the the Virus Support Note

Once again, the Macalope nails it.

On the passive/aggressive scale, Krebs’s blog post [initially identifying the Apple virus support article] is like your Aunt Edna wondering aloud at the dinner table why you’re having a glass of wine when you’re always on Uncle Larry for his alcoholism.

Apple’s response wasn’t much healthier emotionally, though. They pulled the note.

That’s kind of like glaring at Aunt Edna and pouring the glass of wine out on the floor.

Ach, see, now it’s awkward.

Lifehacker: Most Popular Top 10's of 2008

Best Of 2008: Most Popular Top 10's of 2008

My favorite remains "How To" #7. Fold your shirts in 2 steps. Good times.

Snow Leopard is Still A Cub

AppleInsider ran an article explaining Snow Leopard still needs a bit of work under the hood.

Although there's been some evidence to suggest Snow Leopard could hit the market several months ahead of expectations, new information reveals that Apple remains heavily engaged in building out some of the features first previewed back in June.


There were some rumors that it could release as early as January 2009 but I always considered that unrealistic. When it comes to OS software, I'll take quality over speed every day.

On Macs and Viruses

The whole question of virus software on Macs is back the last few days. First Apple put up a page advising users that virus software may not be a bad idea. Then they took it down. I've received several emails from readers asking what to do. I'm pretty careful about my computing. I'm anal about data encryption. But to be perfectly honest, I'm not very excited about running virus software. I've got no virus software on my Macs. Some day I may decide I need it but at present, I'm just not convinced.

As Apple marketshare increases, things may change and Mac users are probably going to end up needing virus at some point but for me, not yet.

Return of the Moose

There used to be an application on our vintage Macs that we all used. It served no real purpose, frequently caused system crashes, and was completely irresistible. I'm referring to the Talking Moose. I didn't realize until recently that the Moose still exists in OS X. It is a lot of fun and nostalgic having the Moose return to randomly crack jokes and insult me. I won't be running the Moose everyday but sometimes, there is no substitute.