Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

I am, of course, referring to Evernote, a tool that’s designed to remember everything you throw at it – then provide access to your information from virtually anywhere.

If you’re unfamiliar with the tool, this video will give you a quick picture of what it does:

Despite the obvious awesomeness of its sync/access capabilities, earlier iterations of Evernote failed my acquired-information management criteria on numerous counts:

• It couldn’t accept basic documents like PDFs (flexibility fail)
• It wasn’t scriptable (extensibility fail)
• You couldn’t import/export data en mass (openness fail)

But the Evernote team have been hard at work, and with the recent addition of scriptability …

The 1Password iPhone application is now available for download from iTunes (link here). The benefits of the iPhone app are clear: true data synchronization; intuitive interface with multiple levels of security; robust enough to handle thousands of passwords.

But there’s a catch: the updated 1Password desktop app will no longer export to the login bookmarklet. iPhone users: the 1Password app doesn’t integrate with Mobile Safari, so using the iPhone app will box you into its integrated browser. Firefox users: you’ll need to use the less convenient web page export.

Fortunately, Agile Web Solutions makes old versions available for download, so you can always revert to version 2.7.2, the latest version to support bookmarklets. At present, you can switch back and forth between …

Newsfeeds provide an invaluable service: direct access to content of specific interest. NetNewsWire has long been my preferred newsreader, and the recent addition of synchronized online access makes it, for me, the clear best-in-class news client. Yet although NetNewsWire does a fine job aggregating news feeds, it’s a poor long-term information management solution.

Enter DEVONthink Pro, a highly reviewed research tool/information manager.

The NetNewsWire > DEVONthink bridge is a logical one, so it’s no surprise that DEVONthink Pro comes with preloaded scripts to archive information directly from NetNewsWire. (Sorry, DEVONthink Personal doesn’t include scripting support.) But the feature I really needed – the ability to archive entire RSS feeds into DEVONthink – is not included in these scripts.

To fill this gap, I …

Leave it to the OmniGroup to help you stay productive — even when you can’t choose what to tackle next.

The OmniFocus Dashboard widget (”OmniFidget”), released today, does just that. Tell it what contexts you’re in:

And it tells you what to do:

Clicking the task title takes you to the task’s project in OmniFocus. Clicking “No” skips to the next task (but who really wants to disappoint the OmniFidget)?

Get yours here.

In this month’s The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr explores human cognition in the light of the Internet. Rhetorical extremes notwithstanding(1), it is a worthwhile read. His premise: the way we use the Internet is fundamentally altering the way we think – and not for the better.

I read Carr’s article at a coffee shop. To get through it without distractions, though, I had to shut my laptop and read off the printed page. It was, I must say, a fitting way to experience the article. In fact, try this: Pause for a minute. Click this hyperlink. Read the original article. Go ahead; I’ll wait…

By habitually drinking from the firehose of the Internet, Carr argues, we’re losing our capacity to engage in protracted, …

Evernote, which has been in private beta, is now open for public registration. The service will remain in beta for the present.

Via Evernote blog

Facebook has added a feature to import blog posts as Facebook notes. On the face of it, this is a great thing: it provides visibility to people who are unlikely to subscribe to your blog in a newsreader.

It’s Facebook’s Terms of Use that concern me. Although you theoretically retain copyright of your content in some vague perfunctory sense, Facebook can and will use your content (photographs, notes, wall posts, etc — even your privacy-restricted content) for anything they please, thankyouverymuch.

Don’t believe me? Read the official terms page:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant… to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly …

Success in the information age hinges on manage the explosion of available information in meaningful ways. To even approach this goal requires a successful information management strategy, which revolves around the questions

• “How do I find relevant information?”

and its corollary:

• “How do I manage the information I’ve found?”

On a personal note, these are two of the questions that drive my own technological explorations. Brainstorming and note-taking methods and tools provide another side to the issue. This post is intended to provide some background and framework for said exploration.

How do I find relevant information?

Online information is typically located through complementary methods of search and discovery.

Traditional search technologies will long remain the first resort for information-seekers. Desktop search clients are also available …

The long-awaited OmniFocus iPhone app is officially announced. Features to include:

• Location-aware (knows when you’re near the hardware store to pick up that drill bit)
• Live automatic sync over the network (EDGE or WiFi via .Mac or WebDAV, according to the site, though they likely mean EDGE, 3G, or WiFi, via MobileMe or WebDAV)

Product page here.

From Dave Gray, a call for visual literacy:

…we have, over time, become more sophisticated in our reading of visual information. In a world where information is digital, where photos can be altered in Photoshop and where films can show impossible things like dinosaurs and talking animals with a high degree of realism, we understand that seeing is no longer believing.

But this kind of visual sophistication is not literacy. Literacy is the ability to both read and write. If a child could read written language but not write it – if he could read a mathematical equation but not perform such operations himself – then we would not consider him prepared for success in the world.

In our school …

John Gruber:

I think the old knock against Apple in the ’80s and ’90s from people who didn’t like them or didn’t get them was that they’re this company and they sell overpriced computer equipment to fans. And people would even say ‘Look, they sell keyboards for 160 bucks, what a rip-off…’ But here’s the thing: they were worth 160 bucks.

What if you said ‘Let’s make that’s top-of-the-line: better casing, better technology under the keys, something that’s built to last; this is what you would get. So no wonder the computers were more expensive – everything was built that way. The one I used in college, I used for 14 years consecutively through a bunch of computers, and then finally …

Optional excerpt: Double-click empty space in the tabbed document title bar (where your document titles are shown) to hide all the extraneous panels around your document. A second double-click restores the panels.

It’s the best of all possible worlds! Now you can brainstorm in XMind and import directly into OmniFocus via Udo Gaetke’s clever AppleScript. The script creates a project from your map’s root node and actions (or subactions) from the other nodes.

Thus, this:

Becomes this:

Via Skitch

Get the script here (forums.omnigroup.com)

Notes:

• Although XMind isn’t scriptable, the XML file format is open; his script digs into the XML structure to pull relevant data

• The script contains a property called import_folder. You’ll need to create a folder …

XMind 2008 v2.2 includes MindManager export, improved printing, and more.

Printing

Printing is vastly improved, to the point at which XMind can be trusted to print what you expect it to. XMind seems intent on printing in landscape mode, but this is a small price to pay for printing that works as expected.

The Print workflow has been streamlined as well, and the process feels more native, although printing is still a 3-step operation (Preview screen, Page Setup screen, Print screen).

MindManager Export

MindManager Export is a very welcome addition and works fairly well, even with non-basic map structures. For example, using this document in XMind:

Via

Tracking job opportunities can be tedious, particularly when companies use static pages to list their vacancies. The following methods can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your online search.

Tracking jobs with RSS feeds

The best option for tracking jobs, of course, is through the company’s own RSS feeds. Many companies provide said feeds, and in this case it’s simple: visit the site, subscribe with your newsreader, and wait for new opportunities to roll in.

Nice - but what about the (vast majority) of companies that don’t provide feeds?

Tracking jobs with OmniWeb

With its ability to periodically check your bookmarked sites for changes, OmniWeb (Mac only) can be an invaluable tool in the job hunt. Simply set your bookmarks and let it …

Purchasing filters for our Chemex coffee maker turned into a bigger ordeal than it should have been. Although there are numerous online outlets that sell Chemex filters, I couldn’t find any with free shipping.

The Chemex web site recommends you email or call them to find local retailers in your region. I called them, so — on the remote chance this information is useful to someone — here are the Chemex retailers in the Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia area:

• Dean & Deluca 3276 M Street NW, Washington, D.C. (202) 342-2500‎

• Coffee in the Works 1627 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, D.C. (202) 483-3050

• So’s Your Mom 1831 Columbia Ave NW, Washington, D.C. (202) 462-3666‎

• Le Grand Cafe 1327 Chain Bridge Rd McLean, VA (703) …

NetNewsWire often does a good job finding the newsfeed of a site — but it does sometimes choke.

The updated script will still attempt to get the newsfeed straight from NNW. If NNW has instant success, the script will display the feed and offer to copy it to your clipboard:

After one second, if NNW was unsuccessful, the script will direct Safari search for the feed. The searches initiated (in new tabs, of course) include Google (”site:x rss OR subscribe”) and RSS Micro.

Quick note about RSS Micro: unlike most blog search engines (Google blog search included), it provides direct links to the relevant feeds. Just click on the RSS icon:

For a browser-agnostic method of finding a site’s RSS feed, try this bookmarklet:

g:RSS

Drag it to your menu bar and name it what you will (”g:RSS” works for me).

When clicked, it will initiate a Google search of “rss OR subscribe”, restricted to the site you’re in. A little sloppier than the NNW script below.

Guy Kawasaki asked for quick ways to find the RSS feed of a web site. NetNewsWire does a fine job subscribing to sites so I thought it might be up to the task. It is.

Run this to pull the current website from Safari, subscribe in NetNewsWire, and return the RSS feed URL, optionally copying it to the clipboard.

[code lang=”AppleScript”] tell application “Safari” set thisPage to do JavaScript “document.URL” in document 1 end tell tell application “NetNewsWire” activate set subcount to (count of subscriptions) set theresult to subscribe to thisPage delay 2 –gives NNW time to retrieve the RSS feed set thefeed to RSS URL of subscription (subcount + 1) if thefeed is equal to thisPage then display dialog “No feed found” return end if display dialog thefeed buttons {”Clipboard”, “OK”} default button …

Important: 1Password 2.7.2 is the last version to incorporate iPhone bookmarklet exporting. (More info here.) As of 8/6/08, version 2.7.2 works interchangeably with the current versions, but this may change without notice.

Updated 7/28/08 to address truncation issues with Safari

1Password, the acclaimed password manager for Mac, recently introduced an iPhone export function that provides on-the-go access to sensitive data. This is accomplished by creating an encrypted bookmarklet in Safari, which is in turn synchronized to your iPhone. Excellent.

Firefox recognizes this bookmarklet as well — meaning that Windows-by-day users no longer have to suffer without their critical logins. (Note that this trick does not work with Internet Explorer.)

To accomplish this:

1. In 1Password, click on the “Sync to iPhone” icon in the

OmniFocus rocks. I can’t really imagine managing myself personally or professionally without this tool. Nevertheless, despite thousands of hours of development and beta testing, it has its share of quirks. Notably, in my work I have a few daily-type tasks I set to repeat every day. Unfortunately, there’s no “workday” option in the repeat choices, so every weekend I end up with a Saturday and Sunday repetition. I could either:

• Mark them complete (ignoring the fact that I’ve just claimed to have done nonexistent work);
• Mark them complete and delete the “done” items before they disappear (solving the first issue)
• Change the start/due dates in the Inspector (cumbersome)

My Defer script allows you to defer, or ’snooze’, selected projects or tasks …

XMind 2.2 was released last week. The upgrade introduces some improvements and bug fixes (list here), although printing remains buggy.

I’ve submitted formal feedback re: the printing issues; please do the same. Mango Software, the company behind XMind, have been very responsive to my emails in the past.

Managing the torrential flow of work email used to be an onerous task, but a healthy combination of email habits and scripts simplify the flow greatly. Personal experience has demonstrated that email is best handled with a GTD-inspired triage system, à la this one. Spotlight on the Mac and Copernicus on Windows make dredging up old emails a cinch.

Even with a simplified organization structure, it can be time-consuming (or RSI-inducing) to triage your inbox. I find that when it takes longer than a second or two to file an email, I’m more likely to just leave it in my inbox — defeating the value of the system.

Although Outlook in Windows is my preferred professional email client, I use Entourage

For what it’s worth, XMind is soliciting user feedback on the XMind user experience. I’ve already submitted comments regarding the quirks that bother me; please do the same!

Survey here: http://www.xmind.org/us/survey1.html

XMind is a recently introduced mind mapping tool available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. I purchased XMind several weeks ago and have found it to be a robust and rewarding tool, though it’s certainly not without its issues.

Basic features

Data entry – The ability to quickly add and edit information is the single most important feature of a mind mapping tool, and XMind makes input fast and painless. Return inserts a sibling topic, while Tab inserts a subtopic. (This is a faster interface than MindManager, for instance, which requires command-Return to insert a subtopic.) Return inserts a sibling topic. Command-Return inserts a parent topic, and Shift-Return creates a sibling topic before the selected topic.

Navigation – With a single-button mouse,

On a recent bus ride from work to the Vienna Metro station, I noticed the ride was rather rough and decided to take a closer look. Using SeisMac, a tool that uses my MacBook’s sudden motion sensor to take motion measurements, I recorded some key parts of the ride.

Because the computer was on my lap, the Y axis served as a crude accelerometer; when the bus accelerated, the front of the bus was raised a little (and I was therefore pitched back a little, causing the Y-axis reading to increase), and when the bus slowed down I was pitched forward, causing the Y-axis reading to decrease.

Exhibit 1: I-66

Getting on I-66, we began accelerating significantly at about 6:17:25. We

Jobfox provides some interesting offerings in the career marketing/job hunting field.  Unlike the traditional resume board model pioneered by Monster and others, Jobfox attempts to create more holistic profiles of both job seekers and employers, then provides opportunity matches that may be a better fit.

During the profile creation process, Jobfox leads users through specific areas of job experience as well as a host of employment-related preferences, from dress code to specific preferred benefits.

For me, answering the step-by-step questionnaires was valuable; the process helped me identify some skills that I had never specifically noted. Once complete, users end up with a personal profile page as well as an “inbox”, where you can see job matches that are the closest fit to your preferences,

We Bylers have a little problem with decision-making. Namely, we can’t do it. At all. Which is why we have to resort to more brute-force approaches.

So here we are. It’s come down to this. East Coast vs. West Coast…

Considerations:

• Location
• Location
• Location

…and of course anything else that comes to mind. Presumably, everyone’s been thinking already, so without further ado:

<a href=”http://micropoll.questionpro.com/akira/MicroPoll?mode=html&id=57445″>View MicroPoll</A><br /> | <a href=”http://www.questionpro.com” title=”survey software”>Survey Software</a><br /> | <a href=”http://www.micropoll.com” title=”web polls”>Web Polls</a><br /> | <a href=”http://www.contactpro.com” title=”email marketing software”>Email Marketing Software</a><br />

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IMG_3060, originally uploaded by bylerd.

Playing with David’s new Digital Rebel…

Greetings, friend or stranger (one might surmise that it’s all the same in cyberland). Not much to see here, so grab an RSS feed and forget about it – 

– or not.