I’m so pleased to have Hoban Cards back as a sponsor. Hoban Press and Hoban Cards make beautiful letterpress business cards and stationery using their 1902 massive letterpress machine. I use Hoban Press business cards and love the envious look I get from other lawyers when I share them as they hand me back their mass-produced, soulless cards. There is a long history of calling cards and the gang at Hoban Press wrote an informative article explaining it. Did you know that Egyptians had the first calling cards and they were made of clay?

Hoban Cards has some beautiful, typographic designs you can choose from. Hoban Cards doesn’t just operate the heavy machinery, the owner is a graphic designer and can help you make your own custom business card if that’s your thing.

For years I’ve been buying stationery and cards from the Hoban team, and their customer service has been excellent. They’re currently running a monthly contest to win $100 in Hoban Cards. So head over to Hoban Cards and make sure to use the promo code “MacSparky” to get $10 off any order. 

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. I was just speaking with the folks at SaneBox, and they report that 70% of the MacSparky readers that try SaneBox end up signing up for it. That’s crazy but not surprising to me because SaneBox works. Why not straighten out your email by getting a SaneBox account and bringing a gun to a knife fight. If you sign up with this link, you even get a discount on your subscription. 

This week, MacSparky is sponsored by the Omni Group. Did you know that the Omni Group is going to do some amazing work this year on all of the Omni apps that you love? Ken Case recently did his 2018 Roadmap post, and we have a lot to look forward to:

OmniFocus 3 for Mac and iOS

Tags … check. 

Manual sorting … check.

Flexible scheduling … check.

Improved notifications … check.

Updated design … check.

Collaboration … check.

OmniFocus for the web … check.

OmniFocus 3 is easily my most anticipated new software app of 2018.

OmniGraffle

They recently released the 7.6 update for Mac that makes using Stencils easier than ever. I use Stencils often in OmniGraffle when building diagrams, and you should too. Later this year, they will be releasing an update that makes improvements to diagramming tools.

OmniOutliner

We just got OmniOutliner 3 for iOS last week. It’s great!

OmniPlan

There are several updates for OmniPlan in the works. There will be a new “Project Summary Inspector”, and they are making improvements to the “Publish & Subscribe” sync functions.

JavaScript-Based Automation

Best of all, the Omni Group is pushing forward with its JavaScript-based automation tools across the board with its apps. Using these tools, you will be able to automate these already powerful apps with your own custom scripts, which will work in both Mac and iOS versions. Dust off your JavaScript chops, ladies and gents. This will be fun.

This is why I love Omni Group apps. As powerful as these apps are, the Omni team never rests. Go check out the Omni Group today and make sure to read the full 2018 Roadmap.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Tinderbox, the tool for notes. Tinderbox is a Mac App that lets you collect your thoughts and slice and dice them any way your brain prefers. The application does a great job of adjusting to the way you think. With Tinderbox, you can make a mind map, a check list, timelines, charts, outlines, and more. My favorite feature is that you are not tied to any paradigm with this app. Put your data in and start moving it around to help you make connections that weren’t there before.

People are using Tinderbox in all sorts of ways from writing novels to planning a computer network to organizing a complicated corporate merger.

Tinderbox recently released version 7.3 with more than six dozen visible improvements and a bunch of new technologies. The app continues to improve. Tinderbox can now look at your ideas from Notes, Evernote, Dropbox and more on iPhone and iPad. The new version also has quick links to connect notes instantly and composites to build big ideas from small notes. The new fonts also look fantastic on your Mac.

Perhaps best of all, the Tinderbox developer has agreed to give MacSparky readers a limited time $50 discount. That’s a great deal so if you’ve been wanting to try Tinderbox, this is the time. Go check out Tinderbox today.

There are a lot of time zone apps out there but there are very few that go beyond the basics. What if I want to know a time difference for some time other than now? What if my friend doesn’t live in a major city so the app can’t figure out their time zone? I’ve always wondered what it would be like if someone really sunk their teeth into making a time zone application. I got my answer with this week’s sponsor, World Clock Pro (website)(Mac App Store) (iOS App Store). World Clock Pro converts times throughout the world within seconds. It doesn’t just show you time conversion. It also helps you plan meetings, travel, and coordinate with other people. One of the things I like is the ability to drag an indicator inside the application to change the start time for your time zone calculation. If I’m trying to set a conference call with someone in Manila or Luxembourg Tuesday afternoon, World Clock Pro makes the task trivial. You can even add events to your calendar directly from the application. World Clock Pro supports 142,000+ locations. 

World Clock Pro is not for everyone. It’s sold on a subscription model but for professionals, who deal with time differences on a regular basis, there is no better tool. There are versions for both iOS and Mac. The application even gives you the weather for every time zone you’re looking at.

Also, World Clock Pro’s developer was kind enough to give me a few promotional codes for the application. If you’d like to enter the contest, send me an email with the subject “World Clock Pro Contest”, and you’ll be entered in the random drawing. Please note the winners will be awarded by February 9.

This week’s MacSparky sponsor, is SaneBox, the email tool that everybody could use. You may have heard about some of the innovative new email features like inbox auto-sorting, deferred email, and reply tracking. The trouble is that early implementations of those features were all app-specific. You had to switch to a different email client that you didn’t necessarily like to get those features.

SaneBox fixes that. SaneBox has all of those cool new email tools (plus many more), and it works with just about any email client. Over the last few years, I have been jumping between iOS email clients trying to find the right app for me. Throughout this process, my one constant has been SaneBox because no matter which email client I’m using, I can still get auto inbox sorting, deferred email, reply tracking, and a pile of additional email tools via SaneBox. The service gives me the freedom to try and use any email client that tickles my fancy.

There is a lot more to SaneBox, but in addition to all of that, SaneBox gives you email client freedom. To learn more head over to SaneBox and sign up today. Using the links in this post, you’ll even get a sweet discount.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by OmniFocus. A lot of people, myself included, use the new year to rethink what worked in the past year and where we could improve in the future. If you are feeling a little out of control, one of the best things you could do is use some powerful software to help you take control of your tasks.

In my mind, there is nothing better for this than OmniFocus for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. I’ve been using OmniFocus for years, and it is my not-so-secret weapon for holding my life together. OmniFocus is so much more than your typical task management application. It’s powerful but at the same time can be simple. It includes features for things like the routinized review of pending projects and all of the iOS 11 drag-and-drop goodness. 

Perhaps best of all, OmniFocus is designed by the wizards at the Omni Group, and they sweat every detail. Even the little circle that you check off as you finish tasks is designed in a way to be attractive and, at the same time, convey information to the user.

I love this app, and I expect if you need help with your tasks, you could love it too. So head over to the OmniFocus website and download the trial and start out the new year on the right foot.

Welcome to 2018! Want to get things better this year? A great way to start would be by discovering where you’re spending your time on your Mac.

This week’s sponsor, Timing, is a tool to help you get rolling. I realized several months ago I was increasingly under water with my own productivity. So I started drilling in on Timing, and it’s beautiful reports showing me where I was spending time. Timing is a timer app that doesn’t require you to manually start an stop timers. Instead, it pays super-close attention to everything you do on your Mac and then reports back to you.

Timings reports are always enlightening and sometimes brutally honest. Reading my own reports, I found that I was sinking a lot of time into some work-related tasks that could easily be off-loaded to someone else. So I did that and got back to work. After a few weeks, I had newer-fresher Timing data that helped me further get rid of unwanted work and identify my own personal time sucks. 

The folks at Timing are serious about productivity. They even write about it on their blog with this post with some solid advice for New Year’s productivity and habits.

Timing doesn’t put your data in the cloud. Timing has been crucial for me, and I expect it can help you too. Don’t believe me? Download their free trial software and see for yourself. 

Try the free 14-day trial and get 10% off until for a limited time using this link. Let Timing help you get 2018 started right.