To get you sorted in this digital mess, we present to you the 5 most important tools you can use to de-clutter your digital existence Evernote, Simplenote, Dropbox, Push the Page and Instapaper:

1. Evernote

   I have already told you about Evernote and how I’ve been trying to use it as a digital information manager, gathering my links, snippets, texts and quick notes. While the software’s user interface is not impressive, one can’t deny that Evernote is a real powerhorse, able to store pretty much everything you send to it, and even automatically tag the images/photos to allow for text search inside them. The main advantage of using Evernote is as a powerful sync tool of information files – be they text notes, web snippets, photos or other documents. The clients for iPhone / iPad / Android will sync these, so you can always access your data on the go.

2. 
   

   Simplenote

   Whenever I mention Evernote on my Twitter posts, there are always some replies like “Yeah.. Evernote is nice.. but I kind of prefer Simplenote“. Unlike Evernote, Simplenote only lets you edit and sync text notes, but does so with style and a fast minimalist user interface. It only has a web interface(a great one) and clients for iPhone & iPad (there are no official desktop clients), but there are 3rd party apps that fill the need(such as the highly recommended free editor Notational Velocity)

3. 
   

   Dropbox

   You surely remember Dropbox from my previous articles. The ease of use of the desktop client and the free official clients for iPhone & iPad make it a perfect tool to keep most things in sync across your various devices – so if you save a file from your computer, you’ll be able to retrieve it afterwards from your iDevice. If you want it the other way around, there are many apps with Dropbox integration to help you: for instance the free PlainText iPhone/iPad text editor or the $0.99 iPad text editor Clean Writer (developed by yours truly) that will save your text notes directly to your Dropbox account.

4. Push the Page

   To be honest, this is the real reason why I wrote this post in the first place. You might have heard of all these other apps, but chances are you haven’t yet heard about Push the Page. It is an amazing free app that does one simple thing.. but does it extremely well. Kind of the thing you didn’t know you missed until you see it. What Push the Page does is help you send, instantly, a link from your desktop to your iPhone or iPad.

   Let me explain this a bit.
   
   Imagine you are browsing the web on your computer, looking for a pasta recipe, which you want to cook tonight. When you finally find it, you usually have 3 options:
   1. you can take the laptop with you in the kitchen. But you probably don’t want to, ’cause there’s no place for it there, and it’s too risky anyways
   2. you write it down on paper, so you can take the paper with you. But it’s time consuming, and kind of beats the purpose of all the gadgets in the house
   3. or, you can open that web page on your iPhone or iPad, which are much more suited to help you in the kitchen(being smaller and more kitchen-proof than a laptop)
   In order to open that same web page on your iDevice, you used to have 3 ways : a. either type the url on the device to match the one on your computer, b. email yourself the link, or c. save the link in Evernote or Simplenote, open the Evernote/Simplenote clients on your device, sync, then finally click the url in the latest note.

   Push the Page brings a 4th, most direct variant: all you do is, on your computer’s browser, click on a bookmarklet and the page’s address is instantly sent to your iDevice. You’ll get a notification and tapping it will eventually load that page in the browser. Free, quick and painless. All you need is to set up an account on www.pushthepage.com, download the free Push the Page apps on all your devices, set them up and drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s Bookmarks bar. Easy peasy.

5. Instapaper

   Like its headline says, Instapaper saves interesting web pages for reading later. It’s more than a bookmarking tool, because it actually saves the web pages content, strips off advertising and clutter and magically saves the web article’s actual content, so that you can read it later. What’s best is that there’s a free iPhone client app (or a $4.99 iPhone+iPad universal app) that will retrieve these articles from your account, for you, so you can read them even offline, using your favorite iDevice. I can’t recommend Instapaper enough, and I think it’s probably the greatest web-related invention since the RSS reader. But that’s just my opinion.

If you don’t already use Dropbox, you probably should. Dropbox is the amazing file sync service and utility that I’ve told you about it in a post from a few months ago. You might also remember that it has a neat referral program, giving out 250MB extra space for each friend referred to the service.
What I didn’t know and only learned about today is that, this year, Dropbox has a pretty awesome internet contest / puzzle / scavanger hunt, called Dropquest 2011, with various prizes.
Now, since I missed the actual contest, I didn’t qualify for the mega prizes(which included 50GB of space, branded t-shirts and more). However, for all those who answer some(or all) of the puzzle questions, there’s a consolation prize of up to 1GB of space to be added to your Drobox account.
The complete list of questions and answers, as well as explanations for those, can be found on several places online; I found the most thorough solution page to be that of erroneus, with other versions available over at tuqiri or boio. For your convenience I’ll shamelessly paste, below, the walkthrough from tuqiri/erroneous:

And before I leave you with this resourceful online quest, here are a few of the tricks you can use to increase your Dropbox free account quota(for the full list check out this page):

1. use a referral link when signing up with Dropbox; it will give both you and your referee an extra bit of space
2. complete any of the tasks from this page and connect with Dropbox on Twitter/Facebook, for up to 640MB extra
3. complete the Dropbox “Get Started” tour for another 250MB of space
4. refer other friends to it; make sure they use other email addresses, and that they install the Dropbox client on different machines than yours

.. and now on to Dropquest2011

Go to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011 to start which is important and further on to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/D

5305404/18681 = 284

Go to http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=284 , look at post 3 and download Step4.zip

In the zip it says 38.889, -94.703 – Those are coordinates and they mention a mascot. Google Maps: 38.889, -94.703. This School is close by and their mascot is huskies

Open Step5.zip which is inside Step4.zip with the pass “huskies”, go to http://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/r

Finish the puzzle (solution) and you are sent to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/0

The 3612th prime number is “33739”, it will send you to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/p

It refers to this picture at the Dropbox blog

Look at the picture, in the background is a yellow paper with an address to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/b

Solve the sudoku (you can use this solver or look at the solution), it leads you to: https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/o

It wants you to go home, which means jump to the Dropbox homepage at https://www.dropbox.com

Go there and click the link at the top where it says it’s not over, it will lead you to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/x

The “book” is this forum thread

The post refers to this blog post

Click on Katana-ya at item 5 for your Step16.zip

In the zip file is a link to http://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/h and a image

The image from Step16.zip, it’s HEX color code is “BAFF1E”, enter it and you are taken to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/e

The names are anagrams for classic composers. The classic composer for Dropbox, is CEO “Drew Houston”, enter that and you are taken to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/a

The signs you see here are in braille and it says “help 206”, this is a hint for this page: http://www.dropbox.com/help/206

Download the Step21.zip

Place the picture from the zip in a dropbox folder and share it with dropquest@dropbox.com

Hint22.txt appears in the folder, which leads you to https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/3712/frozen-yogurt

This is a reference to Rian Hunter which can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/about

Click at Rian Hunter this leads you to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/R

The text is a reference to the game Chrono Trigger and the side quest Rainbow Shell, the link to the zip is therefore http://dl.dropbox.com/u/211024/rainbowshell.zip

In the zip you will find an address to http://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/t and a midi file

The key phrase is the notes from the midi file, which is: “badcabbage” and this leads you to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/s

Print out the paper, fold the paper to a crane and across it’s wings it says 11696 x 96911, which equels the the code “1133471056” on the wings. Enter the code and you are taken to https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/U

Last puzzle! Remember those dropquest URL’s? The last letter, they form the the last code: “Dr0pbox heaRts U”

And you are done: https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/finish_line

Check your score at https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2011/wall_of_fame

1. Download Calibre, a free powerful army swiss-knife on all things ebook. Calibre has conversion tools, ebook library management and even a desktop ebook reader. What it doesn’t have is a UI that doesn’t make you want to scratch the screen with your fingernails. Still, one heck of an app, one that you can easily use to convert most document formats into most ebook formats. Word to epub, pdf to kindle, etc. You name it, and Calibre probably has it.
2. Download this set of Calibre plugins(and hurry, who knows how long they’ll stay online) from this address. Unzip the archive.
3. In the Calibre app go to Preferences page(the rightmost icon), then to Plugins(in the Advanced section), then select Add a new plugin and chose, one by one, the 5 plugins from the archive you unzipped in the previous step.
4. Now, configure each plugin (click Customize for the plugins in the File Plugins section), as follows:(copied from the Apprentice Alf’s Blog page):
   • for DRM’ed Mobipocket ebooks you must enter the PID you entered on the retailer’s web site, or the PID of your installation of Mobipocket Reader into the customisation field of the K4MobiDeDRM plugin. The PID will be ten numbers and letters, with * or $ as the eighth character. If you have more than one PID, enter them separated by commas
   • for Amazon Kindle ebooks that were downloaded to your Kindle, you must enter your Kindle’s serial number into the customisation field of the K4MobiDeDRM plugin. If you have already entered a PID there, add the Kindle serial number as well, separating it from the PID with a comma.
   • for Amazon Kindle ebooks that were downloaded to the copy of Kindle for Mac or Kindle for PC that was installed on this computer, you do not need to add anything extra into the customisation fields.
   • for ePub or PDF ebooks that can be read in Adobe Digital Editions, you do not need to add anything extra into the customisation fields.
   • for Nook and all ePub ebooks from Barnes and Noble, you must enter your name and full credit card number into the customisation field of the Ignoble Epub DeDRM plugin. The name and credit card number should be the ones set as part of the Credit Card unlock code on your Nook Library page. Separate the name from the number with a comma and do not put any spaces in the card number or around the comma. For more details, you can check out the related README file from the tools folder you’ve unzipped way above.
   • for eReader ebooks from Barnes and Noble or Fictionwise, you must enter your name and the last 8 digits of your credit card number into the customisation field of the eReader PDB 2 PML plugin. Again, the name and credit card number must be the ones entered at your ebook retailer’s website as the DRM key/Unlock code.
5. Now, all you need to do is to import your protected ebooks into Calibre, and the DRM will be removed. The plugins ONLY remove the DRM when the ebooks are imported, so if your ebooks have already been imported into calibre you will need to remove them and import them again.

Attention! EPub ebooks bought from Apple iBooks or Microsoft LIT ebooks can’t, for now, be hacked by Calibre.

**Warning/Disclaimer! This blog’s author is not responsible for any damage, lost or other kinds of problems caused by this article. The responsibility of using the above information lies only on the reader. **
foto credits: kodomut

This year I promised myself not to make any public personal New Year resolutions. Life is unpredictable enough as it is, and year-long commitments are way too often bound to be broken. So, why purposely aim to disappoint myself later on? Why should I want to feel like shit sometime later for not having been able to do stuff that was not in my power to do so, in the first place?

Instead, for the past days I’ve started to try out some new professional, productivity and lifestyle changes. The difference from New Year resolutions is that they are just that – try outs; I won’t feel like shit if they don’t work out, but I will like it if they eventually turn into habits.

One of the things I decided to try out (for the past 4 days, but the outcome looks promising so far) is to use of a more organized note taking method(and tool). There are countless methods to do it, some of them already built into your computer. However, the difficulty is to stick to just one system, and to use it at its full potential.
Long before I owned my Mac, I used to take quick notes either using Windows built-in Notepad, YM-ing myself over Yahoo Messenger (along with enabling Yahoo Messenger message archiving), or even emailing myself. I also left out post-it notes all over the place, scribbled on the margins of notebooks or used online tools like Yahoo Mail Notepad. This combined approach resulted in a huge mess of information.
Since I got my Mac, I got into the habit of using the built in Stickies app, which I had immediately placed on my Deck. It is the simplest note taking tool you could get, at the same time pretty powerful(colored notes, multimedia capabilities, decent looks and, above all, small enough to launch in a matter of seconds). I’ve been using it pretty often; however, after a while, the Stickies space got really crowded and you’d need to remove older notes; also, it wasn’t fit to accommodate larger notes, such as blog posts or short stories drafts. Last but not least, it wasn’t compatible with the iPhone and the notes I take on the go. So I ended up needing to delete older Stickies notes(which later turned out to have been pretty important), and to have my blog post drafts scattered all over the place.

Another built in alternative that kind of takes care of the last two problems would be the use of Mail.app and its built in notes; they do sync with the iPhone’s notes app and can be used also for larger texts. However, the Mail.app Notes weren’t suited to my taste, not only because of the cartoonish design, but also because they were hard(read almost impossible) to organize, and sync-ing them requires my iPhone connected to the Mac(one thing that I almost never do).

The alternative I found out so far is the well known Evernote:

For the past 4 days I’ve using the free Evernote tool on a daily basis. I had actually given it a try long time before, by the time it had started to make the news. So far I feel that Evernote is a pretty complex app, with the Mac client a bit too constrained, of a cluttered design missing some pretty important(for me) features (fullscreen writing, quick appending). But I also feel that after the initial pains and the first day of using it, it has made me considerably more organized. It also seems like the perfect gather point for all the web snippets, quick ideas and long texts I try to write. I even(painstakingly) managed to manually import the list of interesting bookmarks from Chrome into it, and start using it as an imperfect(but still useful) research aid, by using its Chrome plugin to capture interesting web snippets and pages. The iPad and iPhone free app clients make for a great addition, ideal for quick note taking and photo snapshots, which easily syncs over Internet with their web service.

My setup is pretty simple so far:

• Evernote Mac client running all the time on my desktop
• 4 Notebooks
  • Personal
  • Projects
  • Cool links and web things
  • Other
• I’m not really using the tag system, although I might get to use it some time
• I’ve installed the Evernote iOS clients on both my iPhone and my iPad.

This tool is not perfect, and there are others(probably way better) out there. But my non-resolution for this year is to pick just one system and stick with it for as long as possible. Consistency is the base for all habits; the perfect tool might not exist, but it’s way better to pick one and use it all the time than to pick many and never use them(or use them all simultaneously).

Happy New Year and to many successful New Year’s non-resolutions!

Hyperdock installs itself as a System Preferences pane, and replaces the OSX standard Dock with a much more powerful version of it, kind of like a swiss knife of system goodies:

• Window previews – when you hover over the icon of an opened app in the Dock, you get to see a small bubble with live preview of the app’s opened windows.
• Powerful shortcuts – for all the apps in the Dock, you can configure particular or general shortcuts. Take the default shortcuts for instance – Option+Left click on any of the Dock apps will trigger Expose to show the windows opened by that app. Shift+Left Click will hide it, etc.
• Window Management – by far the best feature, allowing to quickly snap and resize windows(Windows 7 style) by simply dragging them to the screen edges, etc. It successfully replaces the $14 Divvy app and adds, on top of that, quick shortcuts for moving and resizing windows.

There are other features listed on the app’s page, but I stop at this for now. I can only hope that the developer will chose a small enough price for the app(I’d expect less than $10, but I’d really hope something like $5) to encourage wide adoption of this pretty great all-in-one app.
Give it a try and let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

If you’re in the same place as I am and too impatient to wait for your full-screen productivity boost, I found a temporary solution. An awesome one which, best of all, is completely free(although donations to their developers are welcome)!

First of all, download SIMBL – SIMBL (SIMple Bundle Loader) – pronounced like “symbol” or “cymbal” – is a nifty app that enables hacks and plugins into OSX apps that don’t normally support them. The latest (Leopard and Snow Leopard version) can be downloaded directly from this link. A list of the most popular popular SIMBL plugins is available here.
Like you already guessed, we’ll get ourselves a couple of SIMBL plugins.

• My favorite is called SizeWell. It’s free, easy to download, install and setup, and adds a simple to use System Preferences pane. What it does? It allows you to configure how you’ll resize and zoom the windows on your Mac. For instance, by holding down CMD when maximizing the window, it will grow to the maximum screen size(except for the MenuBar and the Dock), which is probably what you want like 90% of the time and the default behavior that Windows has for maximizing windows(a lame pun, sorry). You can also configure maximizing on just half of the screen(left or right or top or bottom), which is a dream come true for most multitaskers who don’t want to spend $14 on the nice Divvy utility.
  
• If you’re really craving for fullscreen, SizeWell won’t be enough for you. Instead (or, better yet, in addition to it), you’ll need Megazoomer, the latest version of which can be downloaded from here. After unzipping the downloaded archive, you’ll need to copy the included megazoomer.bundle to the /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/ folder so that SIMBL can use it. Once you do this, you can start toggling full-screen mode for your current windows by simply pressing CMD+Enter (or look in the Menu at the Window submenu for the newly-added Mega Zoom menu entry). Really awesome stuff in my opinion, wouldn’t you agree?
  

That’s it. One simple app and two plugins to install, and your operating system just got 50% better. My regret? That I spent 4 years on the Mac not knowing about them.

[Disclaimer/warning/footprint:
Like all OSX hacks, SIMBL and its plugins are not supported by Apple(obviously, since they only support their own apps) and might stop working at some point in the future. Also, we don't make any guarantees that they will work for your system. They should, but just don't sue me if they fail for your particular machine.]