SCOM0325 Alfred - Part 1

Two parts to this week's tutorial, covering two fantastic Mac utilities:

Bartender - It's so easy to run out of space on your Menu Bar as it seems every app wants to install a MenuBar icon. Take back control of your MenuBar with Bartender.

Clarify - There are sometimes when a step by step guide is just what you need. Clarify takes the pain out of creating and updating documentation with a built in screen capture tool, and optimised annotation tools. Once you've created your documentation, export as PDF, share to DropBox or Evernote or host using a free account on Clarify-it.com.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Bartender
• Clarify
• Annotation Tools
• Sharing Your Document

Time for a MacMontage this week, albeit with a bit of a theme. The theme is Sync and Storage, and I take a look at a couple of services I've been using over the past few weeks as alternatives to some tried and test services.

The first being OmniPresence, a possible alternative (or more likely supplement) to iCloud, and Copy.com, a potential alternative to Dropbox.

OmniPresence is a sync service built by the OmniGroup to support syncing between OSX and iOS devices. It has been built as an alternative to iCloud syncing, ostensibly to support the Omni range of products, but will support syncing any file format in OSX. OmniPresence is built into their supported iOS apps such as OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle and OmniGraphSketcher, and they provide a free Mac application to run OmniPresence on your Mac. In this tutorial, I take you through the setup and usage of OmniPresence in many different scenarios.

Copy.com is a syncing and iCloud service that potentially could be used as an alternative to Dropbox. With most, if not all of the features of Dropbox, Copy.com starts you off with 15GB of free storage (with another 5GB if you use a referral code such as http://screencastsonline.com/copy) and is over half the price of Dropbox if you have larger storage requirements. With full support for most major platforms plus iOS and Android apps, it's well worth checking out.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Omni Sync Server Account

  • Setting Up Mac App
  • Configuring on iOS
  • Syncing Non Omni App Files

• Copy - Dropbox Alternative?

  • Installing the Mac App
  • Using Copy Actions
  • Copy Preferences - File Management
  • Sharing Files With Copy
  • Using the Copy Website
  • Preferences - Notifications & Sharing

This week completes coverage of one of the premier business applications for the Mac - Daylite by Marketcircle.

Daylite is an application that allows you to keep everything related to your business in one place - Customers, calls, emails, appointments, notes and more - all in a single multi user application.

Following last week's introduction to Daylite, Tim Stringer takes us through using this powerful application.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Managing Contacts in Daylite
• Daylite Calendar
• Daylite Mail Assistant - DMA
• Daylite Objectives
• Daylite Tasks
• Home Screen

If you work with text, you need TextSoap!

TextSoap is the perfect application for fixing or cleaning your text.

With over 100+ built in text cleaners, TextSoap will fix all those niggling problems with your text, from extra spaces and returns to stripping out unwanted strings or even HTML code. You can even create your own simple text cleaners to match your requirements exactly, or built complex conditional cleaners to do things you never thought possible. Either way, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

In the tutorial, I walk you through the basic User Interface and introduce you to some basic cleaners, moving on to customising and even creating your own cleaners. I also use plenty of real world examples to give you a taste of the tasks you can use TextSoap 7 for.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Introduction to TextSoap 7
• TextSoap UI
• Cleaning Text With SCRUB
• Cleaning eMail Text
• Cleaning HTML Text
• Batch File Cleaning
• Customising MyScrub Cleaner
• Creating Custom Cleaners
• Creating Cleaner Groups
• Creating Advanced Cleaners
• Exporting and Importing Cleaners
• TextSoap Menu

The third and final (for now) part of the Alfred v2 Masterclass!

Alfred v2 has been re-written from the ground up to be faster, more efficient and easier to use.

This week, I finally take a look at the brand new workflows feature of Alfred v2, accessible via the optional Powerpack.

I think you'll be impressed!

In this extended episode, I take a look at some of the core principles behind workflows, and examine some of the provided sample workflows. I also take a look at some of the most popular (and most impressive) third party workflows to demonstrate just what can be achieved.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Workflows Overview
• Recreating Some Sample Workflows
• Workflow Templates
• Shared Workflows
• Battery Workflow Link
• Weather Workflow Link
• AlfredTweet2 Workflow Link
• Evernote Workflow Link

Alfred v2 Workflows: A Few of Our Favourites So Far

Continuing on from last week, it's part 2 of an Alfred v2 Masterclass!

Alfred v2 has been re-written from the ground up to be faster, more efficient and easier to use.

According to the Alfred blog, less than 15% of Alfred v1′s code was reused and every feature has been carefully improved. In addition, they've added in some neat new features, including WorkFlow, a highly customisable replacement for Extensions and Hot Keys.

This week, I take a look at some of the changes to the built in features of Alfred v2 with the optional Powerpack.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Calculator & Dictionary
• Contacts
• Clipboard History & Snippets
• iTunes Mini Player
• System & Terminal/Shell
• Customising Alfred

Alfred v2 has just been released, and this week, it's part 1 of an Alfred v2 Masterclass!

Alfred v2 has been re-written from the ground up to be faster, more efficient and easier to use.

According to the Alfred blog, less than 15% of Alfred v1′s code was reused and every feature has been carefully improved. In addition, they've added in some neat new features, including WorkFlow, a highly customisable replacement for Extensions and Hot Keys.

This week, I start from scratch and take you through some of the basics of Alfred, cover some of the changes, and demonstrate how to customise Alfred's default behaviour.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Installation & Upgrade Considerations
• Why You Need The Powerpack!
• Using Alfred - The Basics
• Configuring Default Results
• Searching and Opening Files in Alfred
• Navigating Your Files & Folders
• Configuring the Action Menu
• Actioning Multiple Files - The Buffer
• Web Search in Alfred
• 1Password Integration