This week’s sponsor, SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:

• Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant. 

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They’ve even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service.

The SaneBox team has been hard at work lately improving the SaneBox interface and releasing even more new tools. For instance, now you can have SaneBox send an auto-reply when you defer an email. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account today. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription. 

When someone asks you for a business card, what are you handing them? Why not have some business cards that truly make you stand out? 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. Want to get hypnotized? Watch the Hoban letterpress process in action.

Evan and the gang at Hoban Cards are completely dedicated to making the best possible calling cards. They have some beautiful templates to choose from, or you can roll your own.

There is no doubt I am a geek, but I have to admit that I really love handing out letterpress cards. It is always a conversation starter. Put simply, Hoban Cards is where you go for the unique and classy alternative to conventional, mass-produced, soulless business cards. Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order.

What if all of your Mac apps were as easy to update as those on the App Store? Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Instead, you only see most Mac application updates when you want to launch (and work in) the app, which is precisely the worst time to be updating apps.

MacUpdater solves that problem for you. Launch MacUpdater, and get a list of all the apps that need to update on your Mac. MacUpdater even walks you through the process. Most apps are a one-click update. MacUpdater can also notify you when your indexed apps get updates so you can get those updates installed on day one. Also, do you have any of those apps that don’t have their own self updater? MacUpdater will track those and let you know about updates fro them too.

MacUpdater solves the Mac software updating problem. There is a free trial, and if you like the app, you can use the offer code MACSPARKY to get a 10% just for MacSparky readers.

Download the free trial and get all of your Mac apps up to date with MacUpdater.

My thanks to MacUpdater for sponsoring MacSparky this week.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by one of my favorite applications, OmniFocus. Grown-up task management is the key to staying on top of your projects. These days we have more commitments than ever and we need powerful tools to stay on top. That is why I use OmniFocus. It is so much more than just a task manager with built-in tools to manage project reviews and tags giving you so many ways to capture and manage your tasks.

From the beginning to the ending of my workday, OmniFocus is there for me, to help me keep on track so I can complete the important work and ignore the unimportant. The Omni Group even now has a web-based version that lets you access and modify your data from any computer with a web browser. I use this app every day. It is how I’m able to keep my act together. Do you need a little help? Try OmniFocus. I don’t know how I’d get by without it.

There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence in modern computing but this week’s sponsor, SaneBox goes beyond the hypothetical and dives right into the practical. SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. Imagine if you had an assistant that worked for you 24/7 doing nothing but sorting and managing your email? Wouldn’t that be nice? That is what SaneBox does. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:

• Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They’ve even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service. I’ve heard from so many readers over the years that finally figured out email when they signed up for SaneBox. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription. 

This week’s sponsor, SaneBox is the solution to so many of my email problems. SaneBox is the email service that adds a pile of productivity features to your email, regardless of what email client you use. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain point, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox at your back, you can:

• Wake up every day to find the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant. 

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks, so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time. They’ve even added a new feature that can optionally auto-reply to snoozed email with something like, “I’m sorry, but I’m underwater right now. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services like Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

The list goes on, and MacSparky readers love this service.

The SaneBox team is constantly improving the SaneBox interface and releasing even more new tools. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account today. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription. 

This week MacSparky has a new sponsor, Jamf Now. Managing your Apple hardware should not be something you need to spend a lot of time on and no longer demands a full, dedicated team. Jamf Now democratizes the process of Apple device management.

With Jamf Now you can manage your team’s Apple hardware, so everyone has what they need to get the job done without you being invasive and inhibiting work. Jamf uncomplicates Apple device enrollment, deployment and management so you can have everyone up and running without breaking the bank.

Apple products unlock a lot of productivity and potential if managed right. Jamf Now makes that possible. If you are using Apple hardware with a team, go check it out today.

Time is your most precious resource. You need to know how you are spending it.
But time tracking is no fun, especially when you forget to start or stop a timer.
What’s more, having to worry about starting timers all the time makes you lose focus quickly.

Enter Timing.

Timing automatically tracks which apps, documents and websites you use — without start/stop timers.

See how you spend your time, eliminate distracting activities, and improve your client billing.

It’s like Screen Time on steroids.

Timing lets you stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead.

Timing also offers a web app to track time from anywhere, not to mention the ability to seamlessly sync data across all your Macs.

The Timing team even offers a set of Siri shortcuts to start and stop timers as quickly as possible.

And if you spend a lot of time in meetings, you will be delighted by Timing’s ability to record time for calendar events with a single click.

Not convinced yet? Read what David himself has to say about Timing. (Spoiler alert: He likes it, and it helps him be more productive.) Or download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year!

PowerPhotos is sponsoring MacSparky.com this week and this is the perfect time to pick it up and start cleaning up your Apple Photos library. I use Apple Photos for all of my photo management but there are certain features that are just too close to the “power user” end of the spectrum for Apple to ever ship them with Apple Photos.

That’s where PowerPhotos comes in. If you have photos scattered across multiple libraries that you want to merge together, have a library that you want to split up because it’s gotten too large, or want to get rid of duplicate photos, PowerPhotos can help you get your photo collection back in order.

PowerPhotos gives Apple Photos the tools it needs, but Apple didn’t provide. With PowerPhotos, you can work with multiple Photos libraries and store them wherever you want, including on an external drive or a network drive. You can also split up your giant library into smaller ones by copying photos and albums with a simple drag and drop, preserving metadata such as descriptions and keywords along the way. Or, if you already have multiple libraries, use PowerPhotos to merge them while weeding out duplicates along the way. PowerPhotos also features a powerful duplicate photo finder, a browser to let you see your photos without even opening up Photos itself, a multi-library search feature, and more.

PowerPhotos has all those tools you’d want for Apple Photos but Apple will never add. As we head into the new year, why not take control of your Photos library with PowerPhotos? You may recall an app from the iPhoto days called iPhoto Library Manager that gave you a similar set of tools. PowerPhotos is by the same developer, and it’s just as reliable.

So go check out PowerPhotos today.

This week MacSparky was sponsored by SaneBox, the email service that can help you get control of your inbox. For a lot of folks, email is a constant pain, and it doesn’t need to be. With SaneBox, you add a powerful set of email tools that can work in just about any email client. SaneBox allows you to:

• Wake up everyday to find that the SaneBox robots have automatically sorted your incoming email for you so you can address the important and ignore the irrelevant.

• Defer email for hours, days, or weeks so it is out of your life until a more appropriate time.

• Set secret reminders so if someone doesn’t reply to an important email, SaneBox gives you a nudge to follow up.

• Automatically save attachments to the cloud (like Dropbox).

• Use their SaneForward service to automatically send appropriate emails to services such as Evernote, Expensify, and Kayak.

• Move unwanted email to the SaneBlackHole and never see anything from that person again.

One of the best parts about SaneBox being a web services is that it works no matter which mail application you prefer. If you want to jump between different mail apps on your iPad, no problem. SaneBox is a set of tools that will move with you between different applications on different platforms with no trouble at all.

Why not straighten out your email today? I’ve been a paying subscriber for years and can’t imagine getting by without it. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount off your subscription.