User Profile for matterman

TaskPaper 1.0 (Mac OS X)

Genius  

This thing is genius I have tried several GTD apps before, and all seemed overly complex, and incredibly rigid for my needs. Your needs are probably very different than mine, and a task management program / methodology is a very personal thing. There are no right and wrong ways, only ways that work and don't work for you in your particular context. What sets TaskPaper apart from all the other GTD / ToDo / task management programs is that it does not impose a strict structure on you. By liberating you from someone else's strict structure you are also liberated from having to tab from field to field and feeling like you are doing data entry. Entering information is just like writing notes. TaskPaper is is based on an incredibly easy to learn syntax that you type like punctuation. Projects are denoted with a : at the end. Tasks have a - at the beginning. Contexts or tags use a @. Thats it. Nothing more to learn. TaskPaper then takes care of all the formating, allows you to search in multiple ways, presents projects in different tabbed views that behave in much the same way as Safari tabs. Click a project and you view only that project in the current tab. Command click and your project opens in a new tab. A couple of pull down acts like bookmarks letting you go directly to a project, or tag view. Unlike any other so called productivity app, TaskPaper lets you change fonts, font size, font color and background colors. You can personalize it to look right for you. No more forms, with distracting fields all over the place, or columns that are too wide or narrow. It looks like a well formatted intelligent list, because thats what it is. The back end of TaskPaper is a plain text file. You can move that file to any device, email it in the body of your email, view it in a web browser and even edit it on a PC. Because the syntax of TaskPaper is so transparent you can even create your tasks on a PC then view them on a Mac. Price: If this sold for $1.00 someone would still be complaining it was too expensive. I guess those people just don't value their time, or feel like anybody should be able to make a living from their programming skills. If I consider how much time TaskPaper has saved me, it pays for itself in hours. [alert admin]

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Tuesday, October 23 2007 @ 02:34 PM PDT

SnapNDrag 2.1.3 (Mac OS X)

2.1.3 takes wonderfull to the next level  

2.1.3 is a massive update that alters the way the application behaves when taking screen shots. In all previous versions at the moment that you were taking the screen shot (unless it was timed) SnapNDrag would become the front most application. This meant that you could not see any other applications menu, dialog boxes or palettes. 2.1.3 changes this so SnapNDrag now does it stuff invisibly in the background and you only switch to SnapNDrag when you are naming your shot and dragging the shot off to its destination. A great application is now even better. [alert admin]

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Friday, February 09 2007 @ 11:45 AM PST

Notae 1.0.4 (Mac OS X)

A stroke of brilliance  

Notae is a minor stroke of brilliance. It is not a notebook app that tries to be all things to all people, nor is it an outliner or glorified to do list. The easiest way to think of it is TextEdit on steroids (doctor prescribed) without any of the harmful side effects that steroids often have. It's not bloated, doesn't have mood disorders (its totally stable) or have an interface that gets in the way of doing things. Because it is based on CoreData, searches are instantaneous across all of your notes. Tags let you add as many category markers to a note as you want, and then sort on these with the tag palette. Being able to lock a note stops you from accidentally deleting or changing things. One of my favorite features is auto naming of notes (your first line becomes the note name). For a 1.0 product it is remarkably mature and nearly all of its features work exactly as you would expect them to. The exception to this is using the search bar to search for a tag, but since you can do the same thing with the tag palette that is not a big deal. The developer is responsive, and gets bug fixes out fairly rapidly, he is also aware of features that need to be implemented like viewing only the columns you want like the Finder, Mail and iTunes allow. At $15 Notae is worth every penny. [alert admin]

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Thursday, May 11 2006 @ 11:21 PM PDT

Wallet 2.5 (Mac OS X)

Crash, crash, crash, crash, crash (says it all).  

Buggy, buggy, buggy. This thing crashes on me every few minutes. Miss a button by a few pixels BLAM its gone (as has your work). Change a group icon BLAM the damn thing crashes - and you lose everything AGAIN. This after not being able to install the thing because I had an old version on my drive and had to delete all the old preferences and associated files before 2.5 would even launch. To release this as a final build and charge for it is criminal, to call it a beta would be stretching it. Alpha would be closer to reality. STAY AWAY until 2.5.1 or 2.5.2. [alert admin]

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Tuesday, April 25 2006 @ 05:16 PM PDT

Freeway Pro 4.1.1 (Mac OS X)

Frustrating (to put it nicely)  

Freeway 4 is impossible to rate. When it works, it is easy to use use with a beautiful interface that produces standards compliant code. Problem is most of the time it doesn't work correctly, or rather produces standards compliant code that doesn't display correctly in the worlds most used browser. Softpress's response to this is 'not our fault'. True its not their fault that MS cant produce a decent modern standards compliant browser, but freeway needs to produce code that does work with the ugly beast or it is nearly useless. Then there are all the little but constant annoyances - like non standard keyboard shortcuts for zooming, panning and copying. If I lived in a world where I wasn't constantly going back and forth between freeway, photoshop and illustrator this wouldn't matter, but that is the world that web design takes place in. It is quiet clear that softpress rushed 4.0 out the door. It was full of bugs that they are, to their credit, slowly addressing. One wonders whether they ever listen to their customers when it comes to interface and what the product needs to do - produce web pages that can be viewed equally well in ALL browsers, not just Safari and Firefox. My previous experiences with GoLive and Dreamweaver are what keep me persevering, but every day I ask myself why, and know that it is only a matter of time before I am forced to jump ship. [alert admin]

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Tuesday, March 07 2006 @ 11:43 PM PST

SnapNDrag 1.6.7 (Mac OS X)

if only. . .  

It is difficult to praise SnapNDrag any more than it already has been. It just works, its intuitive, flexible and stable. Now that I have been using it for a few years, it is the little things that are beginning to bug me though. It wont let me do screen grtabs of my second monitor. This is a big deal as the only way to get a shot of an applications palettes is is with a timed screen grab. The reason for the second monitor is a place to put those palettes. Every time I need to shoot an applications palette I have to move it onto my main screen, then do a timed screen grab, drag the image from SnapNDrag to an image editor, crop, save to my desktop (or it will go into an invisible folder at the root level of your drive), then move the palette back to where it belongs. This is a pain when you have been spoiled by the ease that SnapNDrag does everything else. [alert admin]

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Tuesday, March 07 2006 @ 12:39 PM PST

CoverBuddy 1.0.1 (Mac OS X)

Great Concept, but still V1.0  

This ought to be iTunes, or iTunes should be this. The first time I tried it I found albums I had not played in ages. On my machine a 1Ghz G4 with approximately 500 albums this thing felt like wading through goo. Now that I can see my albums I would like to be able to create playlists, and re-categorize the ones that are miscategorized, but to do this I have to go back to iTunes which makes CoverBuddy way less useful than I would like. Perhaps those features will be in V2.0 or iTunes 5.0. [alert admin]

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Friday, June 17 2005 @ 08:47 PM PDT

CheckBook 1.4 (Mac OS X)

Stop looking, this is it.  

After wrestling with Quicken for the last 10 plus years and trying: Accounts, Moneydance, LiduidLedger, iCash, iBank, iMconfused and iForgot to try and find an alternative I think I finally have it. This program just works. Transferring my Quicken accounts was fast and painless, in fact everything is fast and painless with this app. For an application that is still in its infancy, it is remarkably polished and I have yet to find a single bug or interface inconsistency. There are a few minuses: No check printing: I only do this occasionally, but it was one of the features that kept me with Quicken. Interface Icons: They are intelligible, but very heavy handed and could do with some refinement. Then there are the little things: Columns can be moved around, but you cant chose not to display a column. 95 % of my entries are debits and seeing a minus sign in front of each is distracting. I know that it is standard accounting procedure, but I am not an accountant, besides entries are color coded to indicate credit, debit or transfer, for me that is enough. [alert admin]

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Monday, June 06 2005 @ 01:38 PM PDT

iPodderX 3.0 (Mac OS X)

DO NOT DOWNLOAD - wait for 3.0.1 or 3.1  

By the developers own admission iPodderX 3.0 is in need of more bug fixes than could possibly be listed here, or on their own support forum which is ablaze with angry and frustrated users. iPodderX 2.9 worked well, with a few rough edges, but it was reliable and intuitive. 3.0 is slow, counterintuitive unstable, buggy . . . . . iPodderX Lite 2.9 is still available on VersionTracker, but has been removed from ipodderx.com. If you need a simple podcasting client that works, iPodderX Lite 2.9 is the way to go, and its freeware. I don't think it is a coincidence that 3.0 was released on the same day that Job's announced that iTunes would have a podcasting client in its next update. [alert admin]

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Friday, June 03 2005 @ 07:15 PM PDT

SnapNDrag 1.6.1 (Mac OS X)

Simply the best  

I feel boring echoing everybody else's comments, but it is true. This is simply the best screen grab utility out there. Two weeks ago they released a new version with a history draw, I found a small bug, and suggested a improvement, now its implemented. These guys are amazing. As freeware, the price is incredible, but even at the pathetic sum of $5 it is a complete steal. Good work like this deserves to be rewarded. Pay your shareware fee, support these developers and gain access to a few more features. [alert admin]

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Thursday, May 05 2005 @ 07:13 PM PDT

No user comments.