A flood of emails is coming. Black Friday this. Cyber Monday that. A coupon here. A sale there. Your inbox will be flooded with deals, and while saving money this holiday season would be great, you still have work to do. You can ward off these distractions with this week’s MacSparky sponsor, SaneBox.
With SaneBox, you don’t have to wade through these messages to find the really important ones — the work or personal emails you have to deal with *now*. SaneBox sorts the email sent to your inbox. The important ones will stay in your inbox, and the less important ones, the distractions you don’t have to deal with right now, are moved to your SaneLater folder. SaneBox allows you to focus on actual work. Work now. Shop later.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite, which just added its new Daylite Opportunities Board.
Unlock your sales potential with the new Daylite Opportunities Board
For small businesses, acquiring new business often means juggling multiple priorities at the same time, as each deal has its own time frame and different client requirements. That’s why you need a tool that will help better manage your sales pipeline, so you’re making the most of every sales opportunity that comes your way.
Meet the Daylite Opportunities Board
The DayliteOpportunities Board lets you visually track your deals’ progress at every stage and helps you prioritize sales opportunities. This powerful feature gives you a holistic view of your sales pipelines, allowing you to track where each Opportunity is in the process, so you and your team can focus on the most valuable ones. The drag-and-drop functionality allows you to move opportunities from one stage to the next, and you can easily classify deals as “won” or “lost” by dragging them to the respective status categories. Learn more about how this powerful Daylite feature has become a game-changer for Apple-savvy small businesses.
I really like this new feature. Something visual like this is the best way to keep all of your team on the same page. Because it is so easy to access and adjust, it means your team will get invested and use the tool. There is a reason why boards like this are so popular.
About Daylite
Daylite is an award-winning CRM and productivity business app that empowers small businesses to get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. Daylite is a native app built exclusively for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. From meeting prospects and taking control of your sales to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to winning more repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.
And now, with the Daylite Opportunities Board, you can finally better manage your sales process and unlock your sales potential.
I often hear from listeners/readers looking for a research solution in the Mac ecosystem. My favorite app for this, without a doubt, is DEVONthink. DEVONthink is the most professional document and information management application for the Mac. It’s the one place for storing all your documents, snippets, or bookmarks, and working with them.
The Integrated A.I. assists you with filing and searching, while the extensive search language with advanced Boolean operators.
DEVONthink features a Flexible sync system that supports many cloud services – or lets you synchronize over the local network too – with everything securely encrypted. This gives you the choice for however syncing works best for you!
It has Smart rules and flexible reminders that let you automate all parts of your workflow and delegate boring, repeating tasks. Let DEVONthink automatically organize your data with rules you define!
DEVONthink’s AppleScript dictionary is one of the largest on the Mac. There’s no part of DEVONthink that can’t be automated. Extend DEVONthink’s functionality with your own commands by adding them to its Scripts menu.
Even templates can have scripts inside and you can set up new documents with data from placeholders, or inserted by your own AppleScript code.
And, of course, there’s so much more, from an iOS companion app, email archiving, scanning, or even an embedded web server for sharing your data securely with your team.
I’ve heard from so many people that use DEVONthink in so many ways ranging from managing bills to writing their doctoral thesis. It is that good. I love the way the DEVONthink developers have thought through all the little details from syncing to using the built-in artificial intelligence.
I find the combination of innovative features and automation support irresistible. Interested? MacSparky readers can get a 20% discount on DEVONthink..
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing, the stress-free solution to Time Tracking. Timing tracks your time automatically, so you don’t have to.
Tracking time, for me, is actually an antidote to stress. When I have a better idea of how I’m sending my time, I can be much more intentional going forward. But the process of time-tracking can be stressful in itself. That’s where Timing comes in. You install it on your Mac, teach it some rules, and it does the work for you. It gives you accurate time-tracking data without you having to press any buttons like a monkey in a lab.
Timings Developer is dedicated to helping you get the benefit of time tracking without the stress of time tracking. He’s even written a helpful articles to help you understand these challenges and how to address them:
Timing truly is an app designed to help you stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work. It is the easiest way I’ve found to get accurate, stress-free time-tracking information. I recommend it. Check out Timing today.
Do you want to make an impression on every colleague you meet? You can do that with a thoughtful calling card. I’m not talking about the junk that gets “printed” at the office supply store or the things that come off your printer. I’m talking about classy, tastefully designed, letterpress cards from Hoban.
Your calling card represents you. Why not bring some intentionality to your game? This week, MacSparky is sponsored by Hoban Cards, where they use a 1902 letterpress machine to make cards that your colleagues, clients, and customers will never forget. I sure love mine.
Evan and the gang at Hoban Cards are masters at the craft of designing and making letterpress calling cards. They have some beautiful templates to choose from, or you can roll your own.
I love handing out letterpress cards. It is always a conversation starter. Hoban Cards is where I go to buy them, and it is where you should too. Throw out those ugly, conventional, mass-produced, soulless business cards and reach out to Hoban Cards. Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.
My thanks to MacSparky’s sponsor this week, SaneBox, for maintaining inbox sanity. Have you ever counted how many emails you receive in a day? Let’s just go with a lot. SaneBox does a nifty job of taking your emails and putting them into useful buckets so you won’t even see them in your inbox, saving you time and energy. Spend your attention and keep your focus on your more important tasks. SaneBox will handle the non-essential emails until you’re ready to deal with them. Train SaneBox to have your unimportant emails sent to a folder, like SaneLater, and SaneBox will summarize them in a digest, where you can quickly bulk-process them.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite, which just announced its new Daylite Opportunities Board.
Unlock your sales potential with the new Daylite Opportunities Board
For small businesses, acquiring new business often means juggling multiple priorities at the same time, as each deal has its own time frame and different client requirements. That’s why you need a tool that will help better manage your sales pipeline, so you’re making the most of every sales opportunity that comes your way.
Meet the Daylite Opportunities Board
The DayliteOpportunities Board lets you visually track your deals’ progress at every stage and helps you prioritize sales opportunities. This powerful feature gives you a holistic view of your sales pipelines, allowing you to track where each Opportunity is in the process, so you and your team can focus on the most valuable ones. The drag-and-drop functionality allows you to move opportunities from one stage to the next, and you can easily classify deals as “won” or “lost” by dragging them to the respective status categories. Learn more about how this powerful Daylite feature has become a game-changer for Apple-savvy small businesses.
I really like this new feature. Something visual like this is the best way to keep all of your team on the same page.
About Daylite
Daylite is an award-winning CRM and productivity business app that empowers small businesses to get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. Daylite is a native app built exclusively for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. From meeting prospects and taking control of your sales to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to winning more repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.
And now, with the Daylite Opportunities Board, you can finally better manage your sales process and unlock your sales potential.
My thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week. TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard so you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful.
Moreover, in an era where so much software is more about data mining than giving you a service, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection.
With TextSniper, you can:
Quickly get a text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos.
Copy text from anywhere, even images and websites that don’t let you select text.
Quickly grab data like email addresses, phone numbers, and links.
Read QR codes and barcodes.
Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.
I use TextSniper constantly. Anytime I need text from an image, TextSniper comes to the rescue. You can even use your iPhone or iPad camera to take a photo for TextSniper to perform its magic.
TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop
Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever it may be. Use promo code TS2022 to get an additional 25% off.
Since 2002, Rogue Amoeba has been making amazing audio apps for the Mac. Whether you’re a podcaster, musician, or just someone who listens to audio on their Mac, Rogue Amoeba can make your life better. Whatever your audio needs, it’s a good bet they have a tool to help you. And right now, for a very limited time, you can save 20% off any purchase.
I first discovered Rogue Amoeba through Audio Hijack, the app that lets you record and manage audio in ways I never thought possible until I tried it. Over the years they’ve added more great apps to their line-up:
Audio Hijack: Record any audio you hear on your Mac, and so much more.
Loopback: Get ridiculously powerful audio routing to pass audio from one application to another, without needing cables or mixers.
SoundSource: It’s the sound control that should be built into MacOS, with per-app volume and output control, audio effects on any audio, and fast audio device switching.
There’s also Airfoil (home audio streaming), Farrago (the Mac’s best soundboard app), Fission (fast and lossless audio editing), and Piezo (charmingly simple audio recording).
Just to give you a few ideas about how we are using Rogue Amoeba apps in the Sparks house, my wife uses Piezo to get the music tracks from Disneyland parades off YouTube videos. I rely on SoundSource to manage audio sources on my Mac. I use Fission for nearly all audio edits I make. More importantly, Audio Hijack is my tool of choice for podcast recording. With every show I record, I get three separate tracks: 1) me; 2) the guest; 3) the guest and me combined. They are all recorded at once, but give us the separate tracks we need to make the best possible product for our listeners. Rogue Amoeba delivers for me, every day.
Free fully-featured trials are available for all these products, right from MacAudio.com. Better still, in celebration of 20 years in business, Rogue Amoeba is offering a very rare sale. If you buy before October, you’ll save 20% off every purchase from Rogue Amoeba.
You don’t need any coupon codes or special URLs, but act fast. Just visit MacAudio.com before the end of September to save. You’ll be glad you did.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by DEVONthink, the app that organizes and tracks your files and data for you. I use DEVONthink for all of my research and record-keeping workflows. There simply is nothing else that has DEVONthink’s combination of file management, meta-data, and artificial intelligence tools. Also, DEVONthink performs OCR (optical character recognition) on everything for you.
Since releasing the DEVONthink Field Guide I’ve heard from so many people that rely on DEVONthink. To name a few:
I heard from a high school student that tracks all her class work in subject-based DEVONthink databases. (That would also work for college.)
I heard from a pH.d student writing his thesis with DEVONthink.
I heard from a listener that builds plastic models of WWII aircraft. He researches every plane before a build and uses DEVONthink to store his growing database.
Stephen Hackett, our too-young but too-smart Apple historian has gigabytes of Apple data in his DEVONthink database.
These are just a few. If you have need of tracking, sorting, organizing, or searching, or analyzing data, DEVONthink is the tool for you. Check it out today.
