Category Archives: technology

Post Subtitle:How OmniOutliner Saved My Wretched Life

We continue highlighting the applications I use on a daily basis to keep my busy life organized. This week we feature:

OmniOutliner 3 Professional

OmniOutliner Professional is a very powerful outlining tool. Besides simply being able to make hierarchical lists of all types, it also can be used for many other purposes as well. For instance, I use it to track expenses, track my bills, build Keynote presentations and much, much more.

It’s simple and straight forward interface easily unfolds to reveal a vast power underneath. Smart checkboxes, customizable pop-up lists, a powerful styles system and the ability to attach graphic, audio and video files (all viewable in the document) are just a fraction of the options at your command. Apply styles to rows, create multiple columns and column types, batch find specific words via the handy slide out drawer and export it all to Rich Text, HTML or Apple Keynote… Go nuts!

There is a “Standard” version of OmniOutliner that contains all of the features heretofore mentioned but I use the “Professional” version. Why? Well the additional features of course. For instance, the built-in audio recording allows one to record voice notes, meetings and lectures. With Pro, you can save your documents as templates to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. The sections drawer allows one to view the entire document framework at a glance. It really was worth the extra money to get the Professional version.

I have used OmniOutliner since version 1.0 and have never looked back. It really is the centerpiece of my organizational life. As a matter of fact, it has so many of the features that NoteTaker has, if not for a couple of key ones I could use OmniOutliner for everything. The two serve different purposes for me so I never really find them “overlapping” each other in my usage. OmniOutliner saved my wretched, unorganized life and it will save yours too.

Also of note, The OmniGroup is a great bunch of folks that have been committed to Mac OS X since day one. They provide really good and fast support and listen to the feature requests of their customers. Their other products are worth a look as well. They are deserving of your hard earned dollars.

Here is an article by Amit Singh at Kernel Thread that I find fascinating (in that geeky über-nerd sort of way) about the ten things Apple did between Mac OS 10.0 and 10.3 to make the operating system faster. Rather brilliant. There are many ideas here that others (Microsoft) could use:

Making An Operating System Faster

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…

AquaMinds NoteTaker

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.