Alfred - Part 1

As promised, it's time to check out some of the more advanced features of Alfred, the superb application launcher and productivity enhance from Running with Crayons. I took a look at the basic operations of the free version of Alfred in previous show (SCO0325).

In this week's show, I take a look at some of the more advanced features enabled by the installation of the optional PowerPack module. I was impressed with the free version of Alfred, but as a staunch LaunchBar user, I missed some of the more advanced features.

However, once you purchase and install the optional Alfred PowerPack, many advanced features are enabled and accessible to you. This week's tutorial takes you through most of the advanced features that take Alfred to the next level, and turn it from being merely useful to indispensable!

The full show covers:

• Installing the PowerPack
• New PowerPack Features
• Fallback Searches
• URLs & History
• Email and Address Book
• iTunes Support
• Clipboard History
• File Navigation
• Terminal
• Alfred Extensions
• Search Filter
• File or Group
• Shell Script, AppleScript & Workflow
• Global Hotkeys

Please note that this show has not been sponsored or endorsed by Running with Crayons and is a completely independent production.

Although the support for Markdown on the iPad is pretty mature and there are lots of applications with Markdown support built in, the same can't be said of the Mac. With it's origins of being a formatting tool for the web, it's only recently started to be adopted by editing programs meant for long form writing, not just code editors. In the first part of the show, I mention a number of Text editors that don't quite meet my requirements and explain why.

I then show ByWord, a relatively new word processor for the Mac, Byword is great in that it has been designed to allow for long form writing, it's beautiful in its appearance, and has full support for Markdown formatting. As well as showing you ByWord and how you can use it it, I also show you how to export your formatted documents from the application.

I demonstrate how to convert Markdown documents into RTF using TextEdit, and also by the use of a simple Automator workflow, how you can create beautifully formatted e-mails.

There are also some tips about using TextExpander snippets within your MarkDown documents in ByWord. In the second part of the show, I explain how I handle the deluge of information I seem to come across every day. During the day, it's very rare that I will actually read something on the web, preferring always to send it to InstaPaper for later perusal. InstaPaper on the iPad is a great reading environment, but once I've read something, there are usually several options that I need to consider. Do I delete it, send it to Evernote for archiving and later retrieval, or do I need to send it to OmniFocus to create a task to act on the information. This section of the show shows you exactly how I achieved this workflow, as it is now possible to integrate all these different applications not only the Mac, but also on the iPad.

Please note the Dragon Dictate now supports Bluetooth headsets

There are some really good bluetooth headsets on the market now, which offer full audio support for the Mac, iPhone and iPad. So why can’t you use them with Dragon Dictate?

Well the good news is you can!

This tutorial demonstrates how to set up a Virtual Audio driver on your Mac to take advantage of the latest bluetooth headsets, as well as demonstrating how to dictate on your iPad and iPhone via bluetooth

In episode 295, I demonstrated Dragon Dictate, the premier solution for dictation on the Mac. Surprisingly, Dragon Dictate doesn't support bluetooth headsets?

In this tutorial, I show you how to use two free software utilities to create a virtual audio device on your Mac and use it in conjunction with Dragon Dictate - it works amazingly well.

Once you have your bluetooth headset, you can also use it to dictate on your iPad and iPhone - even dictate and send emails - very useful if you struggle with the virtual keyboard. This is achieved using the free Dictation application on your iOS device.

In the show I demonstrate:

• Plantronics Voyager Pro+ Bluetooth Headset
• Plantronics Voyager PRO+ Bluetooth Headset
• Soundflower for Mac
• LineIn

In this week’s tutorial, I take you through the basics of Dragon Dictate, the premier application for speech recognition on the Mac, including both the installation and also the training.

Once we have the application installed, I demonstrate just how easy it is to dictate, navigate and correct your document using just your voice. The show also includes sections on commands, using Dragon Dictate with various applications, and even a section on using it with Mail.

Time for another double length members show, this time with a twist! This year I did two sessions at Macworld 2011 as part of the User Conference sessions.

I'm always asked if the sessions are available online for those ScreenCastsOnline viewers who can't make it all the way to San Francisco.

Well this year, I thought I'd try an experiment and see if I could record at least one of the sessions and include it as part of the show. The session I recorded was ""Become a Finder NInja""and to my delight, the recording worked out just fine (although the audio could be better!). It's not just a standard keynote presentation, I also included lot's of live demos which I captured as a screencast. The recording worked out so well, that I've been able to include the whole session, pretty much unedited, it's almost like you're there!

The session includes:

• Finder Basics and Overview
• Keyboard Mastery
• Special Finder Hints and Tips
• Managing Column Widths
• Resizing
• QuickLook Plugins
• Using the Proxy Icon
• Overview of Finder Utilities
• FiWi
• LaunchBar
• Default Folder X
• DTerm
• Finder Replacements (Sort of!)
• TotalFinder
• Forklift 2
• PathFinder 5

A firm favourite of ScreenCastsOnline, Evernote has seen some incremental changes since I last covered it in Episodes 151 and 152. However, with the release of Evernote for Mac v2, it’s time to consolidate all the changes and some of the new features into a brand new show.

Consequently, this week’s show brings you fully up to date with all the goodness that is Evernote v2.

There are two versions of the show, a full members version and a shorter free version.

• Introduction to Evernote - A quick update on what Evernote is and how it can help you in so many different ways.
• New Mac Client Software - An exploration of the new Mac client allowing you access to features previously only available in the Web client
• Notebook Stacks - A great way to finally organise your Evernote notebook to suit your way of working.
• Using Tags - How to assign and organise your notes.
• Sharing Notebooks - Share your notebooks with the public, or securely with nominated individuals for easy collaboration.
• Creating Notes - How to create a note via the toolbar, by drag and drop or using the global shortcuts.
• Adding Attachments - With full support for storing attachments of up to 50MB in the premium version, Evernote is a great way to store many different types of files.
• Sending Emails to Evernote - One of my favourite features, forward emails directly to your Evernote database for storage and retrieval.
• Adding NoteBook and Tag Information to Emails - An extra feature is to send emails directly into specific notebooks, and even assign tags within your email client before you send it to Evernote
• Adding NoteBook and Tag Information to Emails with TextExpander - A great tip for using TextExpander snippets to label your emails to assign the destination notebook and assign tags. The full members show also covers:
• Evernote and Twitter - Link your Twitter account with Evernote to send public Tweets or private DMs directly into your Evernote account from Twitter.
• Scanning with Evernote - With support for lot’s of scanners, Evernote is the ideal place to store and retrieve your scanned documents. I demonstrate setting up a Fujitsu ScanSnap to scan directly into Evernote.
• Searching with Evernote - What’s the point of storing all this information if you can’t search for it easily. This section gives you hints and tips on searching, especially useful for finding all those notes your meant to tag, and haven’t quite got round to!
• Note History - A new premium feature - access your note history to see previous versions of notes.
• Migrating Delicious Bookmarks to Evernote - With all the rumpus about Delicious being closed down, or sold off, this section shows you a simple way to migrate all your Delicious bookmarks into Evernote. Not only that, but it creates a Notebook, creates a separate note for each bookmark, copies the bookmarked page into the note and assigns it with the Delicious tag - all automatically - outstanding!
• Evernote Trunk - An exploration of the new Evernote Trunk
• Evernote Accounts - So which account is best for you? This section describes the differences between the free account and the premium account, along with a mention of the new sponsored account.

Also for members, I’ve included a couple of videos I did for some new utilities

DTerm Promo Video Synk 7 Promo Video

This week, I take a look at a technique that's received a lot of kudos in both education and business and that's mind mapping.

This week's show takes you through the basics of mind mapping on the Mac using an application called MindNode Pro. I take a look at the basic concepts and show you how to use MindNode Pro to create beautiful mind maps.

Many mind mapping tools produce pretty ugly maps but MindNode Pro is very ""Mac like"" in that it allows you to produce very clean and elegant mind maps.

This week I take a look at a technique that's received a lot of kudos in both education and business and that's mind mapping.

You can create a mind map to help you ""generate, visualise, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organising information, solving problems, making decisions and writing"" - Wikipedia.

Wow! But what is a mind map?

Basically it's a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. It's not a list but an evolving tree like structure that helps you think about the central theme and allows you to visualise the information in a non linear way. Apparently, it matches how our brains work!

But you're not limited to just using mind maps within MindNode Pro, there's a whole host of export options to export your mind map in PDF, FreeMind, Image, HTML and Text formats.

Most interestingly, you can also export in OPML allowing you to transfer your MindMaps directly into OmniOutliner 3 and onwards into OmniFocus. Use MindNode to brainstorm and tweak your projects, then import into OmniFocus to track them!

Of course, it would be great to transfer or create MindNode Pro mind maps on the iPhone or iPad. Well you can with MindNode Touch. This contains a subset of the features of MindNode Pro but allows you to simply transfer mind maps created on the Mac onto your iOS device or vice versa.

MIndNode Touch also allows you to create new mind maps and amend existing ones on the go.

Finally, I demonstrate an alternative mind mapping application just for the iPad or iPhone - iThoughtsHD.

In detail, the show covers:

• Introduction to Mind mapping
• MindNode Pro Basics
• Creating Nodes
• Folding Branches
• Connection Lines
• Formatting Nodes and Branches
• Smart Layout
• Adding Images, Files and Links
• Exporting
• Importing into OmniOutliner
• Creating an OmniFocus Project
• iPhone and iPad Integration
• Transferring via eMail
• Transferring via WiFi
• iThoughtsHD for the iPad