Here is a great article on e-mail management and effectiveness. It is written by Stever Robbins and is featured on the Hard Business School’s Working Knowledge website. There is so much here to chew on, all of it so good, that I dare not even try to summarize. Just read it (You will thank me later)
Yearly Archives: 2005
Monday Mac Tweak #6
I swear to the gods that I am going to actually start posting on time again. Honest. I swear…
If you could not tell from the way I post updates here, I struggle with organization. It does not help that I have so much on my plate. The work I do at Carleton, my Consulting Business, being a full time single father. It all adds up to, well, not much as far as time is concerned. There are a number of tools that I use on a daily basis to (try to) keep myself organized. I thought it would be a good series of Mac tweaks to review each one here over the next few weeks. We start with…
NoteTaker is a digital notebook that gives whole new meaning to the term “full featured”. On it’s face, it is a basic notebook, like a paper multi-subject notebook. It even has spiral rings and tabs on the side to divide your entries into sections. You can create and have as many separate notebooks as you wish. But that is where the similarities leave off and the true power begins.
NoteTaker has an parent child multiple entry style that makes it a powerful outlining tool. You can order and number your entries if you choose in Legal, Hard or other styles. Or leave the styles off and simply use it as a way of organizing and defining otherwise free form information. It also can store images, sound files, movie files and link to key documents. Say for instance you are at a meeting and discussing a memo that has been distributed to the group as a Microsoft Word Document. You can not only take notes of the meeting but also provide a link entry for the document in question. Double clicking the link will launch Word and open the document. Very handy!
Furthermore, it leverages the built in Services feature of Mac OS X to clip information from other sources (For instance, documents, e-mails and web pages) into new entries in your notebook. It will also include header information about the source where the information came from.
But the real surprise is when you enter a URL (web site address) into a notebook. It places a little “@” sign next to the entry. Double clicking on the text of the link will launch your web browser and bring you to that page. Double clicking on the “@” sign will load the page in a little mini browser, in line, right there in your notebooks page. How cool is that?!
I use NoteTaker to jot down ideas, thoughts, clip and save information from many sources. I use it for so many other things and it is truly part of the foundation of information on my Mac.
Monday Mac Tweak #5
OK, so I know it is not Monday and that this Mac Tweak is a little late but…
Have you ever wanted to rename a bunch of files in bulk? Like a bunch of music or photo files that you want to name and number in a certain order? Well, it would normally take hours of “click, hold, rename†futzing around that no one really has the time for. Especially if you have a whole bunch of them.
Next time download and use this cool little utility called Renamer.From the applications website:
Renamer4Mac makes it really easy to rename a big number of files according to a preset pattern. It lets you rename your files in many different ways:
• Search & replace
• Insert/overwrite of text
• Number the files
• Convert upper/lowercase
All can be done with an easy user interface and real-time preview, so you can see how the files will be named just while you’re configuring!
It is donationware so, if you find it useful (as I have recently) throw a bone or two their way.