One of the biggest advantages of Linux is their packaged installations. In one command, you can install a multitudes of packages. The folks over at Get Mac Apps are aiming to achieve the same experience with OS X.
The Mac App Store has revolutionized and eased the way we install the majority of our Mac Apps. No downloader to search online for; no worrying about whether your saved installers are up to date. However, not everything is in the App Store.
In my case, Dropbox, Chrome, 1Password (I opted for the non-Mac App Store version), VLC, Sublime Text 2 and more are not in the Mac App Store. So I would have to do the same ole' routine of find and download.
Get Mac Apps allows you to check-off what files you need and in return, it generates a curl command that you can copy and paste in your Terminal. It will then download and install your apps.
There are a few apps missing, but I'm hoping the collection grows. With the supported apps they have already, Get Mac Apps already saves me a lot of time.
As the inevitable approaches, Digg has released an update concerning their RSS service. From the two screenshots that have on their site, if that's what the released version looks like, it looks rather nice in my opinion.
However, I have my unwarranted doubts about this service. While there isn't anything to hint at it, my hunch is that the Digg service will play as the RSS service for the masses. What I'm searching for, and haven't been too impressed with the current offerings, is a seamless RSS service for power users. Hopefully Digg will prove me wrong.
Listacular is a list app for the iPhone that allows you to use plain text files from Dropbox. By specifying what folder you want Listacular to look in, the app will look through all the files and return back the data as a rendered list.
While the app also has limited Markdown support, it's power comes from unordered lists. By prefixing a list with a hyphen (-) instead of an asterisk (*), Listacular will treat that list item as a to-do item and render it with a checkbox. What makes this really neat is that when Listacular reads through all the files in the folder, the app return back all the to-dos (grouped by file) to the front page. On a side note, this became rather humorous as the app reported back 600+ to-do items when I linked it to my Dropbox notes folder1.
With due date support as well, you can set up a pretty capable plain-text based task management system.
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I always prefix my unordered Markdown lists with a hyphen — it's what I've used before I even learned about Markdown, TaskPaper, or Todo.txt. ↩
Choosy is an OS X utility that allows you to choose and set rules for what browser a link will open in. You can have this on a case-by-case basis, prompting you to choose which browser to open the link in. Otherwise, you can set specific rules to always open certain links in a certain browser.
I am a dual-browser user (Safari and Chrome) in which my use-case is:
- Safari by default
- Switch to Chrome (via Alfred) if the site
- needs Flash or
- benefits from a Chrome extension.
This utility can save me a lot of time by not having to manually route where to open links.
The Contextinator Chrome extension is a project-based tab/bookmark manager. While allowing you to do typical tab management tasks (saving and restoring), it also can show you unread emails (based on Gmail labels), have project-based bookmarks, and associate tasks with websites. Great stuff for researching.
➔ Contextinator | via Brett Terpstra
While Scribbler is a Dropbox-connected writing web-based app, it offers some very interesting features. While I am not too keen in the screenwriting field, the app does support Fountain along with project support (creates fub-folders in the Apps/Scribbler folder), a project-specific scratchpad (synced via scratchpad.txt) and wiki (uses .wiki extension).
The addition of these research and documentation tools makes Scribbler somewhat reminiscent of Scrivener. The best part is, they offer a pay service.
Maybe I can finally write my comic-book series based on yours truly.
Formerly known as Pomodorable, the Pomodoro Mac app Eggscellent has been rebranded and redesigned. Like before, Eggscellent integrates with OmniFocus, Reminders, and Things.
The OmniFocus integration is a little finicky (only displays directly flagged actions), but as someone who uses flags in that manner, it works well with my workflow.
I have dabbled with the Pomodoro technique from time to time. My biggest reason is that I have a tendency to stay focused on a larger projects for an entire day disregarding the quick projects I have ranted about many times on this site. While that "skill" may work well for some, my environment benefits if I work on said big projects spread out over a few days.
If only OmniFocus could share data on iOS with apps like Eggscellent — that'd be rather excellent1.
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I am so sorry, but I regret nothing. ↩
The creator of Cheddar (the iOS task list app), Sam Soffes, along with Drew Wilson have launched their cross-platform Markdown blogging platform, Roon. Roon currently supports editing through a Web UI and an iPhone, and by the looks of their website, a Mac app appears to be coming soon.
In a new to me post, Brandon Carroll shows us his Sublime Text setup/installed packages to leverage Markdown writing. I like the use of LiveReload in order to achieve a Marked style refresh on save.