You have a Mac, you may not have AV software. Why? Well many people think that “Mac cannot get viruses!” That’s not entirely true. As with anything in life, the more attention something (or someone) gets, the more people are likely going to want to exploit and see failures. Mac is heading into that space given their market share (and I would argue the say they treat their developer community). All that being said, you need some protection for that Mac.
Today Sophos has released a free version of their software for Mac dubbed Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition. I have yet to try this software, actually plan on installing it tonight since I just rebuilt my iMac over the weekend (had to use my Windows box to do it!?!?! That’s a story for a different post). Back to Sophos, you can download the free AV package here from Sophos website. Anyone have any others that they would recommend?
When you have more than one computer at home, the biggest pain is having multiple keyboards and mice to deal with. What are you options? Well if you are an old-schooler, you could setup a KVM switch, but why bother when you can use Synergy.
Synergy is an open-source client-server based application that allows you to configure your keyboard and mouse from on your main computer (server) and have all other boxes (clients) connect and use the shared components. In my case, I am using my iMac’s keyboard and mouse to connect to a Windows 7 computer that is right next to the Mac.
Configuration
I actually took the easy route on this one. For my Mac running as the server, I ended up using QSynergy. Why? It is easy. Rather than configuring a synergy.conf file and then running synergys -f –config filename and dealing with issues with my conf file, I just configured QSynergy as shown below:
As for the client config, that is easy as well. For Windows, I install Synergy+ and configured it to connect to the IP of my Mac.
See that, easy peasy! What you are seeing here is that my Mac is always on the right of my Windows 7 box. Doesn’t get much easier than that!
Continuing on with my love affair with Evernote, I am going to go over how I use their tagging and saved search functionality.
Tags
I’ve gone back in forth with how I tag, trying to figure out what works for me. At times I was over-tagging, adding too much metadata to notes. Other times I would not tag at all. What I’ve been rolling with lately are a few parent tags with multiple child tags. I use the parent tags to better organize the child tags and the child tags to add metadata that will be used later on in saved searches. They key to tagging is to make it work for your workflow. My way of tagging may not work for you, hell you may not tag at all.
My Parent Tags
Tagging & My Evernote Workflow
As for my workflow, tagging occurs while the items are in Unfiled prior to moving to one of the four main notebooks, that is unless I use the very awesome email feature that allows you to email, assign notebooks, and tag when sent into Evernote.
For example, if I send an email to blah@m.evernote.com with the following subject:
Cool Evernote Tip @Archive #evernotetips
This will put the note “Cool Evernote Tip” into the “Archive” notebook and tag it with “evernotetips”
This is probably one of the coolest new features that Evernote has released in the past year.
Saved Search
I just recently started using Saved Search as part of my regular workflow. This is probably the one part of my workflow that is a bit behind. Saved Searches are extremely powerful, they key is creating searches that are useful to you. To go over a few that I use, just as Unfiled contains items that have not been processed, I have a Saved Search that will show me all Untagged items.
Search: -tag:*
I also have a saved search to show me all notes in my Archive that are images related to star wars (at least episodes IV-VI):
Search: notebook:archive resource:image/* tag:"star wars"
Now rather than go thru every saved search I use or the various possibilities, check out section C: Search Grammar, in the Evernote API Overview.
As I am always trying to improve this workflow, I would like to hear from you:
How do you use tagging and saved search?
Previous: Evernote Workflow I: Notebooks
Next up: Evernote Workflow III: Mobility
I’m a big Evernote Premium fan, if you couldn’t tell by my review. It is funny how I actually ended up using Evernote. I was on a quest for a paperless office and all signs (and applications) guided me towards a Mac, which I purchased last year. I was excited about Mac applications such as Tags, TagIt, Yojimbo, and Leap; never once considering Evernote. After using the Mac-only apps for a month or so and trying out Evernote during my paperless office assessment I realized that I was over-valuing a “tag cloud” and under-valuing mobility and cross-platform capability. It was here that I gave Evernote a second shot and the rest is history. This series of posts will review the way that I use Evernote and hopefully will help you out along the way.
Notebooks
Now how do I use Evernote? I apply a simple GTD workflow to my notebooks (I do this for email as well, but that is another post). I keep it extremely lean by having only five notebooks: Unfiled, To Do, Waiting For, Someday-Maybe, and Archive.
Unfiled is used as a catch-all for anything I email into Evernote. If there are any notes in this bucket, I must process and get back down to zero
To Do is pretty straight forward. Anything in this bucket requires action on my part. This could be anything from reading an article to booking a doctor appointment to a race that I am running later in the year. If I have to do anything, it is there.
Someday-Maybe is a notebook for tasks and ideas that I might get to if I have time. No big deal if I never look at that notebook. If there are items in there that I should work on, well then I did not classify the item correctly.
Waiting For is another simple bucket. This notebook is used for anything that I am waiting on somebody to complete a task. Right now I have chat transcripts from Comcast sitting in there. They over-charged me (what a shocker) the past three months and I am waiting on them to credit my account. Once this is completed, that note will move into the Archive. Wish I could move Comcast into the Archive as well, but I’m stuck with them.
Archive is where all notes go to rest. Anything that has been worked on by me or that does not require any action by anyone (images, for example) will be placed in the Archive.
You’ll see Recipes in the image above. This is a shared notebook that I share with friends that details our favorite recipes, wines, beer…you get the point. Note: Currently Shared notebooks are only able to be worked on by others via the web client.
That’s all for Part I of this series. I plan on covering the remainder of my Evernote workflow in the following posts:
Evernote Workflow II: Tags and Saved Searches
Evernote Workflow III: Mobility
Evernote Wishlist
If you have any questions or would like to hear about other parts of this workflow in detail, please feel free to ask.
As many of you know, I’m a longtime user of Yodlee. Love the current platform, not so much the UI (when compared to the likes of Mint). However, after going thru the beta of Yodlee’s next version, Yodlee 10, I can seriously state that I love the current 9.x UI and hate where they are going. The new UI makes this software practically un-usable. I do not want to have to use scroll bars to see all my accounts. I do not want to expand app boxes constantly. I am not alone here as you can see in the image below, more than half of beta participants that have rated Yodlee 10 are not impressed. Hopefully Yodlee is listening.
In addition to the updated UI, the concept of the Yodlee FinApp store is somewhat concerning as well as all my data is aggregated to Yodlee, who I have trusted for quite some time, however the same cannot be said for a new developer adding whatever widget to their app store. What is the process for determining that these apps are safe? What happens if our data is compromised? We’re not talking silly Facebook posts or likes, we’re talking hardcore financial data. Maybe I am quick to judge at this point. I’d like to get your perspective on the new offering from Yodlee.
Boy has it been a long time.
Let me start off by saying that I wish I could blog more and that I am going to try to write on a regular basis, however I cannot promise anything. My time machine is broken and my power to alter and slow down time has diminished! Ahhh kids! It truly is amazing how your focus shifts after having kids and that free time that you previously had that you used for writing a blog post or brewing some homemade beer is now happily spent playing whatever game with your kids.
So back to that time machine. In the coming weeks I hope to complete a few posts on time management and organizational techniques that I have implemented that allow me to not only spend quality time with my family, but also work at a proprietary trading company AND train for triathlons/duathlons/marathons. Seems like a ton, but i am able to make it all work…maybe my time altering powers are coming back after all 
I am really starting to love drawing on my iPad using SketchPad Pro. The feature set of this application is solid, however make sure you periodically save your work, because I have had a couple instances where I was working on a wicked piece and *BLAMMO* SketchPad crashes and everything is lost. Still pissed that I lost a few of them…but for those that were saved, enjoy!
Waiting for the Apple Keyboard + Dock? No need to, just pair it with a Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard and use the charging base as a docking station.
As I said before, I’m a data nut full of random useless information (at least some call it useless). While I used to remember everything, in my old age, I have found that I need a tool for archiving the various data sets that I capture otherwise my brain will turn to mud. That is where Evernote comes into play. Evernote is awesome! Plain and simple. It is what Microsoft OneNote should have been (does Microsoft realize what they have with OneNote?). If I need to capture data, say at a pub, I just bust out my iPhone and take the note and save. Or take a picture of that crazy brew I had in Toronto, tag, upload, done. But that isn’t all, the key differentiator with Evernote is this: it is Cross-Platform! You can run Evernote on Mac OS X, Windows, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre (why?), and Windows Mobile devices. Outside of a Linux app, that pretty much covers everything that I can think of. Now to dig deeper….
Features
Premium vs Free
Evernote has two versions: Free and Premium.
The free version allows for:
Limited notetaking: images, audio, ink, PDF
40MB sync in the cloud
Ads within app (minimal)
Standard security (not quite sure what that even means)
For a measly $45 a year you get:
Notetaking: any filetype
500 MB sync in the cloud (25MB max file size)
No ads
SSL encrypted sync
Ability to share notes for collaboration
Platforms
Below are all the platforms supported by Evernote:
Web Clipper*
Mac OS X*
Windows*
iPhone & iPod*
Android
Blackberry
Palm PRE + PIXI
Windows Mobile
*I used all of these platforms!
Data Organization
I was short on Evernote after my first go around with it for one reason: tagging. I am used to being able to tag anything, anywhere in OneNote. Evernote handles tagging differently and it took some time to get used to this change. While I wish I could tag within a note, I am now fine with this different method of tagging. What I do like about Evernote’s method is the actual organization of tags via parent – child collections; it just neatens up everything.
Moving on to where data is actually stored, Notebooks. Anyone familiar with David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” should see the immediate value of this tool.
<GTD Soapbox>
As you can see from my notebook image, I know what buckets have notes and that I have two notes that require action on my part. You can also see that I have 20 items in my Unfiled bucket that require action (categorization). I used this bucket as a catch-all for all notes that I clip, dump, or email into Evernote. From there they goto the actionable To Do, Waiting For, and Someday/Maybe, or other reference buckets (every other bucket outside of those three are for reference). Can you feel your life getting simpler as you read this…
</GTD Soapbox>
Another cool thing to note about the image above is the $$$ bucket. That bucket is a local notebook and is not sync’d up to the cloud. This is an option when creating a new notebook in Evernote.
Sync
As I said earlier, the premium edition allows for 500 MB of syncing into the cloud (free version gets 40 MB). I have used the hell out of Evernote this month and still have yet to crack 250 MB, so 500 MB is quite a bit of capacity in terms of syncing data. In my opinion, this feature is really what separates Evernote from every other tool that I have used. The ability for me to capture a note on my Mac at home, tag it, dump it in a notebook and then have that note show up almost immediately (time depends on your sync config) on my iPhone or Windows 7 box at work is an automatic must have going forward for me. This makes it so my personal workflow is not broken based on the OS I am running. Technically I could also have this on my Linux box via the Evernote web portal.
Mobile
I never really thought about using my phone for note taking. It didn’t seem too practical to me at first, but I do it all the time now. I see something I want to read, or a beer I enjoyed, or a product to research; all I do it take a picture of it with the snapshot function on the Evernote iPhone app and sync. Pretty easy if you ask me!
Conclusion
To sum all this up, as you couldn’t tell from this review, I am a big fan of Evernote! The application has helped me become paperless at home along with improving my overall personal workflow.
