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I’m like everyone else. I love a deal. Right now there is a good one going on but you only have a couple of days to take advantage.

Productive Macs has a special bundle of eight programs/apps for $29.99. There is something here for almost any apple mac user. Regular price for all these would total $221. I’ve been playing with some of these programs and I’m really impressed. I’ve found a couple of these that have really increased my productivity.

Mystery items

Mac computers run on the Apple OS X operating system which in many ways is less troublesome than Windows. For example, in a year and a half my computer has crashed only once. If you are running Windows you won’t be able to take advantage of this deal.

When it come to apps for OS X there seems to be a lot of small companies producing some great software. In order to get their products out in the marketplace they sometimes bundle their products for a limited time at a great price. I recently bought this bundle and have been really pleased.

Here is what you get:

  • A text expander called, well TextExpander.
  • A great app called Socialite that lets you view and use your facebook, twiiter and rss reader in one window in a rather simple and very productive manner. I can tell I’m going to be using this a LOT.
  • A nice little app called Pathfinder that gives you enhanced file management features.
  • Another nifty app called Today, lets you see just current days schedule without having to open up your calendar. You can quickly make new appointments without opening your calendar also.
  • Another app, HoudaSpot, lets you not only search for any file on your computer but also let you add tags to your files.
  • Keyboard Maestro lets you easily create macros. You don’t have to be a geek to benefit from this.
  • Blast will let you quickly launch any of the files you have recently worked on, regardless of the app you were using.
  • Mail Act-on2 brings some really nice features to apple mail.

Lets take a closer look.

TextExpander lets you save text and expand it with a keystroke combination you create. For example you could create a rule so that every time you typed .lol that it would expand to say “lol, hahahahaha, that it the funniest thing I’ve ever heard and I’m laughing so hard I can’t get up off the floor.

You could do that.

I use it for more practical things like. When I get to the end of this post I will type .blogend and it will insert the HTML code that creates the yellow boxes that invites you to sign up by email and to leave a comment. psst, please leave a comment.

Other common uses are for inserting you signature, adding your address or even inserting a logo or picture.

Socialite is a gem of a program. If you use both Facebook and Twitter it will save you a lot of time. It keeps you up to date without having to have any of these programs open in in your web browser.

Socialite for Mac OS X

As you can see Socialite allows you to separate the types of posts. I’ve found this helps me catch up quicker. It’s easy to burn a lot more time the I really want once I open Facebook. I’ve found out that socialite allows me to spend as little as 10 minutes to catch up.

I’m always tossing out some new fact and i get asked how I know all this stuff. Well I’ll tell you my secret. I use what is called a RSS reader. I have certain topics and some websites that I watch. But not by visiting all of them. Google Reader does the work for me, searching out new articles and then compiling them so that I can scan headlines and a couple lines of text. The items I want to check I click and it is saved on a reading list. This allows me to create what my own “newspaper” of stories that I can read when I have a few minutes. Socialite does a better job of displaying my Google Reader better than Google Reader itself. As you can tell, I’m loving this program.

Mail Act-On2 brings some nice features that I’m used to using in MS Outlook at work. In particular it allows me to quickly tag emails with colors. I use red for items that I need to act on at some point. Yellow means I’m waiting for someone to get back to me before I can act. Blue mean “done.” Act-On2 allows me to to tap F2-Y and I get a yellow tag. F2-R = red, etc.

I’ve found that Rules in Apple Mail don’t work with any consistency. Act-On2 rules allow me to to create shortcuts. For example I have a file for Receipts. By typing Control-R I can send the current mail to this folder and then move on to the next on.

Mail Act-On2 works inside Mail. What this means is you don’t really see it. The added productive features are just there for your use.

I haven’t really had a chance to use the other programs enough to comment on. However they seem really useful and I’ll probably be using at least a couple of them. If you want you can find out more at Productive Macs. But don’t wait, this deal will only last a couple more days.

Have you ever bought a bundle? What in this one looks most useful for your uses?

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