If you find yourself constantly typing the same segments of code or snippets of text on a daily basis, Text Expander 2 by SmileOnMyMac.com is an excellent productivity tool that can shave time off your busy day. Recently upgraded and released, Text Expander 2 has been featured on 43Folders (Merlin Mann) and MacBreak.com.
To get started, simply create triggers inside the administrative preference pane, and then whenever the system recognizes that a trigger has been typed, it is immediately replaced by the content in the trigger. Formatted text and even images can be inserted in this way.
One of the really nice features is the ability to alter the placement of the cursor inside the replaced text. For instance, if I type:
"ahref"
a trigger is activated for the following snippet of code:
<a href="_?phpMyAdmin=829c481222f7t332f3e5">Insert Text</a>
and the cursor is placed where the underscore “_” is located in the example above, ready for me to type in a URL. What a timesaver!
Text Expander is a great piece of shareware and I highly recommend it to increase your productivity on the mac!
RememberTheMilk.com is one of my favorite new ajax-enabled, productivity enhancing sites. At its very core, it is nothing more than a to-do list but the added functionality of offering web services is really where Remember The Milk starts to come alive. It integrates seemlessly with both iGoogle and Google Calendar, as well as having both IM, email, and twitter support. It’s built-in API and google-styled keyboard shortcuts garners it some serious respect in my book. If you are like me and like to archive pretty much everything in your online calendar, Remember The Milk is a great complimentary product — and the price is right too!
Omni Group’s latest application, OmniFocus, was just released today into Private Beta. Unfortunately I had not signed up on the mailing list early enough to snag a copy but I’m anxious to get my hands on it when it is more publically available later in the next month or two. I’ve been using Midnight Inbox and iGTD but have been holding out for the Omni product since their other apps, OmniGraffle, and OmniOutliner are so damn great. If anybody has a copy, pleeeez share!
OmniFocus is a personal task management system, designed to quickly capture your thoughts and allow you to store, manage, and process them into actionable to-do items. Tasks can be assigned to projects and stored within contexts (for example: “Home”, “Work”, or “Garden”), with built-in visual cues to highlight the next action you need to take care of. With OmniFocus, you can narrow your field of concentration to only those areas—tasks, contexts, projects—you wish to view, which helps you stay on track and organized.
