I had already spent some time with OmniFocus when first researching the options available for task management. I must admit that my first impressions were not very good, certainly as someone who found Things intuitive, well developed and extremely proficient in it’s task, OmniFocus seemed comparatively complex, lacking the UI polish of it’s counterpart and to further the comparison – like Thing’s Dad. A little dated, perhaps more suited to a maturer audience and a little lacking in the looks department. Age however isn’t everything, as my dear Mum always says the wisdom it brings more than makes up for the shortcomings that accompany it. A more prolonged time with OmniFocus then and I began to see the masterful way in which it had been designed, what first may have revealed itself as complex and lacking actually proved to by superior to it’s younger sibling and certainly better for it’s maturity. OmniFocus is a great application that provides not only a robust interface to support task management but does so in a way which is fully compliant with the Getting Things Done methodology, which for me and many others is a complete game changer.

OmniFocus from the OmniGroup is, as my discussion so far may suggest, a task management application. It allows for the capture, processing, doing & reviewing of all your ongoing activities. OmniFocus is designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items. As previously mentioned it is 100% compatible with the Getting Things Done® system, but flexible enough for any task management style, OmniFocus helps you work smarter by giving you powerful tools for staying on top of all the things you need to do. Tasks can be captured through manual entry into an inbox or from within other applications via the quick entry process. Once captured tasks must be converted into actionable to-do’s given context and or assigned to projects. This process is cathartic and focuses the mind in and of itself as you mentally process what needs to be done and when. It is great to complete the mind dump process of getting everything into OmniFocus but actually have processed the tasks into actions is even more gratifying.

Once the process of capture is complete OmniFocus is great and keeping you focused on what must be done next, the next actionable step in any project is highlighted and due items made clear. Reminders can be setup to use Growl to flag up on screen when due tasks are approaching and lists can be printed in a very well formatted preset format for paper based task processing. As time moves on and projects evolve reviews can be setup to evaluate how things are going, this can result in new actions being added, additional contexts introduced etc. All serve to aid in the completion of outstanding tasks and promote reflection on the tasks you undertake. OmniFocus has proven itself to be a wonderful, complex and extremely powerful task management application. First impressions can be wrong and sometimes maturity reveals itself slowly – when it does however, sometimes you can be in for a real treat.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

CoverSutra launches as an application in your dock like most applications but the main interface to the application is to be found in the menu bar as great little music note icon : ) Clicking on this presents a search dialog box which allows for artists, songs, albums etc to be searched with the results displayed for selection. Tracks can be selected individually or an album selected for playback. In this way I can keep working with whatever I am currently doing but quickly and easily navigate through my iTunes library. There are many great little touches, with the change of every track for example CoverSutra displays a little pop up message to let you know the current track. Also you can access a separate control window via the application icon to adjust volume etc.

While by no means necessary CoverSutra does a fantastic job of enhancing the iTunes experience particularly for those that love using iTunes while they do other things. Some of the main features of the application are outlined below:

Now occasionally the need arises to work with versions of the files in both formats or more commonly a file currently in .pdf format is desired to be converted to .doc for editing purposes. In some instances this is easy as the master file from which the .pdf was created is available and edits can be made, but sometimes either through misplacement of the master file or indeed receipt of a .pdf from another source an editable version is not easily obtained. Up until now the only real solution was to type out the contents of the .pdf again and insert any tables or diagrams as appropriate. In a short couple of pages document this is a pain but in longer more structured documents it’s actually an impossibility.

Thankfully there is a powerful and intuitive solution from AnyBizSoft – PDF to Word which is now available for the Mac platform.

PDF to Word provides good conversion of .pdf files preserving:

• Batch-Conversion: Allow users to convert up to 50 PDF files at one time. This mode is useful when there are amounts of PDF files need to deal with.
• Partial-Conversion: Allow users to choose the page(s) to convert: Page Range, such as page 1-15 or Specific page(s), such as 5,7,14… This mode is useful when users just want to extract some pages but not the whole PDF.

I have used the application with MS Office 2008 Mac and PDFPen and everything works smoothly. Conversion is fast and files produced highly accurate with exact replicas of source files created. PDF to Word also provides support for encrypted files:

• If the PDF is protected by Owner Password:

PDF to Word for Mac can convert the PDF directly without entering the password.
*Owner Password: Password used to protect PDF files from editing, copying and printing.

• If the PDF is protected by User Password:

To protect the rights of the author or the owner of the PDF file, PDF to Word for Mac requires users to enter the user password to convert.
*User Password: Password used to protect the files from opening, so it is also called open password sometimes.

AnyBizSoft PDF to Word is a fantastic file conversation application for two of the most popular document formats in use today. It is highly recommended for anyone who works between these file types with any degree of regularity. PDF to Word is available via download and retails for $39.95

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Having conducted some research into possible software solutions I discovered Pixelmator, appropriately tagged “Image Editing For The Rest Of Us”. Pixelmator is a layer-based image editor. You can quickly create layers from your photos, other pictures, from selections or even your iSight. Yes, Pixelmator can add a layer to your composition directly from your Mac’s little camera. Not only can you link and arrange added layers, but Pixelmator allows you to blend layers, change their opacity, create clipping masks or even add layer masks to hide some portions of layer. With Pixelmator’s powerful, pixel-accurate collection of selection tools you can quickly and easily select any part of your images. That means you can edit and apply special effects to portions of your pictures, remove unwanted objects or even cut out objects from one picture to put on another. Thanks to the masks palette in Pixelmator, you can even save your selections for later. Already you should be starting to realise that not only is Pixelmator a very powerful image editing application but that it offers many features that so called industry standard applications charge significantly more for.

The current version 1.5 Spider offers a robust suite of tools to allow for many image editing needs. Pixelmator features a simple and elegant collection of intuitive color correction tools. Using these tools you can fine-tune hue, saturation, and luminance; adjust exposure, color levels, brightness and contrast; use Auto Enhance to dramatically improve less-than-perfect images with one click; even use Curves, Color Balance, Channel Mixer and much more. Pixelmator is the real filter-machine. It has over 130 filters and special effects for your needs. Just choose any of nicely designed distortion, blur sharpen, color, stylize, halftone, tile generator, transition and Quartz Composer filters and boom – you see the result in real-time. Pixelmator not only comes with handy and powerful selection, painting and retouching tools, but it also has everything you need for typing text on your pictures, analysing colors, cropping, transforming, moving anything in your pictures or navigating through your images. With Pixelmator’s easy-to-use but powerful tools you can do a lot more with your images than you ever could before.

Pixelmator supports over 100 different file formats. You can open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, EPS and scores of other image formats. Above all, Pixelmator can open and save Photoshop files with layers. Pixelmator is based on Core Image technology that uses your Mac’s video card for image processing. Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you’ll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of Pixelmator operations. Pixelmator is blistering-fast on the latest PowerPC and all Intel-based Mac’s. What if you just love having fun with filters, but think that Pixelmator doesn’t have enough of them? Well, think again—Pixelmator significantly outshines other applications with its powerful plug-in architecture that takes advantage not only of Core Image units, but also of Quartz Composer compositions. This means you can simply download or create your own Core Image unit or even Quartz Composer composition and play with it right away in Pixelmator.

There is a great community that have bought and love the application and a host of learning materials available all across the Internet from YouTube to the Pixelmator podcast For $59 you get a professional and feature rich image editing application where really you will only be limited by your imagination.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The wonderful people at Pixelmator have been kind enough to sponsor a competition through the blog. I have one Pixelmator serial key to give away. To win just respond to this post stating how you would use Pixelmator in your daily work flow. The winner will be chosen at random and announced in the near future. Good Luck!

Competition now closed – more competition news soon!

The next step was to run Time Machine, Apples Leopard and above integrated backup application. I love the Time Machine interface and the whole concept of time travel coinciding with the process of backing up is sheer geekgasm. Time Machine works by essentially taking snap shots of the system as it stands, files folders etc as the exist at present are recorded and indexed by date. A wonderful Apple interface allows you to “go back and forward in time” to retrieve and restore files as needed. It all works wonderfully well and as I write this the process is running on my system : ) Time Machine required an external hard drive formatted as HFS+ Journal and I suggest getting a drive with as much space as possible. Once full Time Machine will start replacing older backups with newer ones informing you of such before it happens. It is an extremely useful way of maintaining a record of your files as they are at present.

In addition to having an incremental system snapshot facility with Time Machine it is also highly advised to have a complete clone of a given hard drive. A clone of a system drive not only means that you have a working copy of all your data files but that all of the applications and system settings will be maintained. To implement my drive clones I use Carbon Copy Cloner which is available for free for personal & educational use. CCC offers many advanced and useful features but the basic premise of offering a bootable clone of your main system drive is the key feature available. CCC provides functionality for block level copying of data which means that not all of a given file need be backed up once changed, only the blocks effected. This has greater significance with larger files but makes the whole backup process quicker. The initial backup or cloning of a drive can take some time but incremental changes thereafter are relatively quick. Carbon Copy Cloner is fantastic application offering an intuitive and clean user interface, it provides backup functionality for just about every need and is free for personal use. Customer testimonials suggest that it is very reliable and a provides for hassle free backups and indeed restores when the need arises.

The final component of my backup strategy is Mozy. Any competent backup process will involve the backing up of data to off site locations – I had already signed up with Mozy and their US backup facilities but recently Mozy offered backup for UK and Ireland residents to local European servers. The main reason for this was to comply with European backup law but it also means that people based in the UK like myself have a faster backup procedure available to them. Mozy is widely considered one of the best backup solutions on the Mac platform, a recent study by MacFormat magazine identified Mozy as the most Mac like backup application and I have to agree. Mozy offers 2GB of backup storage for free, you simply need to sign up for an account and paid solutions start at £4.99 a month for unlimited backup of one computer. All user data is encrypted locally with military-grade encryption prior to transfer via 128-bit SSL connection. Users can choose a managed encryption key or choose a personal key for added security. Data is stored in state-of-the-art data centers that employ the highest security standards and are SAS70 or ISO certified. MozyHome the version for personal use and the one which I am using installs as an application and provides access to backup configuration through a menu bar item. All that is required is to select what is to be backed up, when, using how much bandwidth and you are good to go. Backups can be scheduled to take place during the night for example, with initial backups taking days or weeks depending on how much data needs to be seeded.

The development of a more robust backup plan has left me feeling a lot less worried about my critical data, I strongly urge everyone to explore the options available for themselves and take the necessary steps to implement a plan that suits you. Whatever you go with I guarantee you will feel better about it.

Having established the mass collaboration and sharing of information is inevitable and to be encouraged the next step is to facilitate in the process in a safe and reliable way. My experience with torrents has been something of a mixed bag, certainly back when I was using the PC platform it was a painful concept. Files failed to download, speeds were terrible, files I did get turned out to be something completely different than I desired and more often than not it involved security issues such as malware and viruses. Thankfully the downloading and distribution on the Mac platform, like most things I might add, has been painless and enjoyable. My BitTorrent client of choice is the freely available Transmission which provides a secure, easy to use and feature rich torrent management experience. Some BitTorrent clients provide the user with a dazzling amount of configuration options, form past experience tweaking these settings can reduce performance and lead to an application that almost doesn’t work. Even if you know what you are doing playing with the settings is not advised. Transmission provides a very much “works out of the box” scenario, after installation it’s simply good to go in terms of usage.

Another important function of BitTorrent clients are their memory footprint. Torrents whether it be uploading or downloading do take time – consequently it is desirable if that while they are running other system resources are free to allow other applications to function and perform well. Written in Objective C on the Mac Transmission provides Growl notification and dock badge notification identifying upload and download speeds. Moreover I have downloaded and seeded torrents while working away on lots of other things. Transmission has the features you want from a BitTorrent client: encryption, a web interface, peer exchange, magnet links, DHT, UPnP and NAT-PMP port forwarding, webseed support, watch directories, tracker editing, global and per-torrent speed limits, and more. I fully appreciate that the concept can and is abused on a daily basis but when used correctly torrents have a role to play in our digital society. They are a viable option for the sharing and distribution of data and Transmission provides a great client to support torrent management.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Have you ever wondered where all the space on your hard drive went? Have you spent time aimlessly navigating through folders trying to identify files that you no longer need to regain some much needed space? I think most computer users will know what I’m talking about. Enter DaisyDisk a wonderful, graphic driven hard disk analyser. DaisyDisk provides a visual mapping of any drives currently mounted on your system, internal system drives, external Firewire or USB drives. Once the application launches a listing of all connected drives is displayed, selecting the scan command initiates DaisyDisk’s scanning process which from personal use I can testify is incredibly fast. A 500GB drive takes about two minutes! With the scan complete a visual map is displayed on screen which outlines where data is stored, the size of directories, what files are taking up the most space etc. Navigation through this map is simply a matter of selecting the colour coded section. It’s a relatively simple concept but one which is significantly missing form the Mac OS X suite at present. It’s great for as part of Mac maintenance, preparing for a backup or the cloning of a drive and indeed for simply reclaiming hard drive space. DaisyDisk retails for $19.95 and is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

AppZapper is another very handy tool to have at times of maintenance. The removal of applications on the Mac platform usually consists of simply dragging the application from the applications directory to the trash. While this works for the most part it does not actually uninstall the application, rather you are simply deleting the application file. All of the associated application configuration files remain on the system, taking up space and possibly causing conflicts. AppZapper presents a window to which an application to be uninstalled is dragged. This in turn presents the user with a listing of all files associated with the application making it clear what exactly will be removed. The user then selects the zap option and in typical Mac greatness the screen flashes to confirm the application has been successful removed.

Until recently I was less convinced by my need for AppZapper – I, like many others, thought that the traditional use of the trash option was more than sufficient. However when presented with a problem with Launchbar recently simply removing the application in this way and reinstalling did not fix my problem. One of the application configuration files had become corrupt so I used AppZapper to remove all of the Launchbar data from my system and attempted a clean install. Moments later the problem was resolved and I have Launchbar back fully functional all thanks to AppZapper. AppZapper is an essential investment providing a clean and reliable way to remove applications from your system, it retails for $12.95.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Delicious Library is essentially a cataloging application, a digital repository for all of your stuff, CD’s, DVD’s, video games, books, gadgets, clothes, iTunes collection, toys, tools – you name it and this application can catalog it. Now if you think that sounds a little boring you are probably using a PC and would turn to something like Excel to do the job. Delicious Library is not only a great application it is a quintessentially Macintosh application, each line of code, each little subtle feature, the way the individual elements form a perfect whole – it represents in so many ways what is so special about the Mac platform.

From the second the application launches you are presented with a clean and pleasant interface, along the left hand side you have a listing of the various elements that make up your library. In the middle of the screen are the virtual shelves that hold your stuff with information about each of the items displayed on the right as they are selected. Be default there are two collections to start with, actual items that you own and your iTunes library elements. The first step is to get your stuff into the application, you might think this requires you to enter in the information, perhaps filling in a form with some nifty auto-complete functionality, but hey this is Mac – boring and limited are not options. Entry of information takes place via bar code entry, yes bar code entry – you click the camera icon from within the application and the iSight camera kicks into action with a scanning widow appearing along side the main interface. You simply align the bar code on the things you want to scan in and databases around the world are searched for matches, once found the item materialises on your shelf, accompanied by a audio announcement of what it is. All of the relevant information about the product appears in the information section on the right, including customer reviews and stats.

It’s a really wondrous and enjoyable process, I genuinely felt excited and happy as I scurried around the room finding stuff to add to my library. For the most part the comprehensive database will find what you scan in but on the occasions where it does not you can easily add the details through a manual entry process. You can give the items entered personal ratings and arrange and organise them as you wish using different filters. There are a number of reasons why this process is worthwhile, firstly it’s a great way of knowing exactly what you have and own, for example I own over 5,000 comics, books, DVD’s and video games – I have a fair idea of what I have bought but for comics in particular it can be hard to keep track. Second if anything should go wrong, flood damage, house fire etc – it’s great to know what you will be contacting your insurers for in terms of contents. Aside from those serious reasons it’s down right fun, genuinely geeky and the options to share your library online via MobileMe, FTP or to a local folder mean you can take the whole process one step further – building an online resource to show off the stuff you own and love.

It’s fairly obvious that I love this application – it’s a perfect representation of everything that the Mac represents – providing a solid, fun and unique way of cataloging your most prized possessions. I spend a lot of my spare time sorting through my stuff, going through boxes of old albums, old comic books – putting stuff away, taking stuff out to revisit. Thanks to Delicious Library that whole process has now been digitised and I cannot thank the developers enough. There are other great little touches such as the built in voice recognition for searches and the ability to export BibDesk compliant bibliographies but I think if you have read this far you are probably sold. If you own a Mac, have stuff and have an element of geek in your persona go buy this now.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Take a common everyday work flow, the production of a screencast. This will involve a script in a .pages file, the ScreenFlow project file, the exported movie (perhaps in multiple formats), the need to upload files via FTP to a server directory, archiving of related resources into a folder, deleting any temporary files. There are probably more steps but as a case in point these will suffice, up until now each of these stages involved the manual saving, moving, deleting, uploading and processing of each of the file types. Since getting Hazel I simply focus my time on the creative aspects of production and let the application handle the administrative side!

Hazel watches whatever folders you tell it to, automatically organising your files according to the rules you create. It features a rule interface similar to that of Apple Mail so you should feel right at home. Have Hazel move files around based on name, date, type, what site/email address it came from (Safari and Mail only) and much more. Automatically put your music in your Music folder, movies in Movies. Keep your downloads off the desktop and put them where they are supposed to be. Hazel can open, archive, set color labels and add Spotlight comments. In addition, you can have Hazel rename your files or sort them into subfolders based on name, date or whatever combination of attributes you choose. With Hazel’s rule-based engine, you can create powerful work flows to automatically organise and process your files. It’s incredibly powerful and can knock minutes off a daily work flow.

Hazel also offers functionality to deal with application removal, when you throw away applications, they can leave behind support files that never get cleaned up. With Hazel’s App Sweep, Hazel will detect when you throw applications away, search for its support files and offer to throw those away as well. Uninstalling applications is integrated with your Trash so you don’t even have to think about it. Made a mistake? When you pull the application back out of the Trash, Hazel can re-install the support files for you so you don’t lose a thing. In addition, App Sweep can work for all users on the same computer. If you throw away an app, other users of the app will get a chance to have their support files thrown away when they log in.

Hazel works quietly in the background allowing you to focus on your real tasks. Just set up your rules via a System Preferences pane and let Hazel do its job. Hazel tries not to hog up resources. You won’t notice it’s there but turn it off and you will wonder how you ever managed without it. It’s a complete game changer, guaranteed to improve and optimise your work flow regardless of what you use your Mac for. There is a 14 day trial for Hazel available from the Noodlesoft website, the application retails for $21.95

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

At the moment I have my dock crammed full of applications that I use with a degree of regularity, in fact I can’t at present come close to fitting all of my applications into the dock. Launchbar overcomes this problem providing quick and easy keyboard access to any application on my MacBook Pro. One of the key characteristics of LaunchBar is it’s use of the keyboard for all functionality, it’s amazing how much time this can save when you become use to the keyboard shortcut, files can be renamed, images re-sized, scripts run – it really is an amazing time saver. A simple press of ⌘ Space invokes the LaunchBar drop down panel into which all commands are entered, from there it’s a matter of key presses to execute any command. The application is also extremely intelligent remembering past choices and customising action lists to the commands commonly used by a given user.

LaunchBar has revolutionised the way I deal with files, I can now open, move, copy, rename and search files with a series of button presses without every having to touch my mouse. I can compress files into archives, copy a section of text and remove the formatting, add iCal entries without having to lift my hands from the keyboard. Yes it may take a little while to get use to but believe me, once you start using LaunchBar you will find it very hard to ever operate your Mac again without it. Up until now I have been a stickler for having as many applications as possible in my dock and a lot of my currently active files on the desktop, LaunchBar has tided all of that clutter and made my work a lot smoother and organised. It comes highly recommended, a free 30 day trial is available from the Objective Development website, LaunchBar costs 24 Euro.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Lots of very late nights, long days and working weekends are ahead of me so I need all the assistance I can get. This is my first year going through this process on the Mac platform and it will be interesting to see how it compares, I suspect that I will find dramatic improvements in the work flow but we shall see. One of the things that greatly assists at this time is having good software applications to make the processing of work that little bit easier or at least software that can make the process less laborious. There are quite a few applications already in my repertoire that I hope will be of great help, the latest of these additions is Rucksack from CreativeBe software.

Rucksack is a great archive processing utility, providing functionality to compress files into a variety of archive formats and to decompress already archived files into their source format. The interface is clean and stylish with a drag and drop approach utilised to create and unarchive files, the application icon is always worthy of note on the Mac and here it doesn’t disappoint, a cute and cool backpack graphic doing the honors. Rucksack provides some neat options to enhance the processing of files outlined in the diagram below:

A range of file formats are supported, once again these are outlined in the diagram below.

I’ve been using the application for only a few hours and already it has been extremely useful, easy to use and works a treat. The application is currently available for free through a MacBuzzer promotion – see here for more details. Be quick though the offer is only available for another eight days…

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

After conducting some research I decided upon On The Job from Stuntsoftware. On The Job is an application designed to help you track your time and expenses, and bill your clients by easily and quickly creating professional invoices. The application is straightforward and easy to use letting you focus on what’s important. On The Job provides for the management of client details and the jobs associated with each. From there you can create fully customisable settings for invoice number generation. Clients contain Jobs and Invoices, both of which can be organized into folders. Jobs can contain four basic types of items: Timed, Fixed Cost, Quantity, and Mileage. These items correspond to line items on an invoice.

Timed items track time in timing sessions. A new session is added each time the timer is run. If you need to quickly add or adjust times, you can use Quick Add (for those times a client calls you at one in the morning and the last thing on your mind is starting a timer) and Quick Modify (in case you forgot to stop the timer when you started working on something else). Automatic idle time detection is built in. If you’ve left the timer running and walked away from your computer, On The Job will alert you when you return and give you the option of removing the time from your job. Furthermore you can see the status of your timer at a glance with the handy menu bar status item. Quickly start or stop the timer, or switch to a different task without ever bringing up the main window.

On The Job offers flexible invoice creation including invoices for specific date ranges, covering a single job, or spanning multiple jobs. Several invoice templates are included, but the real power shines through when you use the integrated template editor to create your own templates. Easily match existing stationery by dropping in a PDF background, or lay out graphical elements within the editor. Choose exactly what you would like to appear on the invoice. Include information such as footers, payment terms or tax information. The template editor is flexible enough to create more than just invoices. Quotes or time-sheets are just a few clicks away, since you can arrange tasks by type or date, and hide any columns you don’t want to show up. Invoices can also be custom tailored into any language or wording you like – you’re not stuck with the built-in choices.

I have some freelance work lined up over the coming months and I really don’t think I could effectively manage it all without the help of On The Job, it’s intuitive, powerful and caters for every need of freelance work.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars