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.
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.
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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