Minimal Mac

The concept is simple. Run it and it takes everything on the desktop and moves it into a folder with today’s date. A quick and dirty way to clean up your desktop…

Of course, just because there is an app for that, you really don’t need an app for that do you?

I mean, you could just create a new folder, give it today’s date, select everything on your desktop and drag it in there. Right?

Oh heck. What am I thinking? This is America. We have an economy to keep going. Go ahead people. Spend!

(via Lifehacker, your never ending source of things you don’t really need).

In its simplest form, TextEdit can be just a little box. It can be any size and fit next to any other window. It’s the easiest way to look at two things at once, and it can really accelerate your productivity.

Word up.

Anyone who has followed me for even a short time on Twitter, or The Random Post, should know how much I love quotes. It is not simply their inspirational nature or the food for thought, it is often simply the idea that so few words can convey such memorable and powerful messages. This appeals to me as a writer and someone who strives for minimalism.

Up until now, I have been using my combo of Simplenote and Notational Velocity to store the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of quotes I keep at the ready. I have made them as easy as possible to find there by prepending the word “Quote” to the title, with the title being something descriptive about it and then the quote and attribution and source in the body. Example: 

Title: Quote – Paul Rand on Simplicity

Body: “Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.” 

– Paul Rand

(via http://bobulate.com/post/2796466787/the-benefits-of-the-implied-or)

Thanks to the wonderful search features in both programs, this made quotes easy to find if I was looking for a specific one. That said, it did not make narrowing and/or browsing through all quotes of a particular author or subject very easy. It was a solution for sure but now one built for the task.

Enter Quotebook. Quite simply, it hits every single item in what I would have wanted in the ultimate quote storage, retrieval and sharing app with perfection. Seriously, it is even better than I could have imagined. It is super fast to capture quotes, browse through existing quotes via author, sources, or tags. You can even share a quote via Email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr with one tap. It will auto-detect quotes you have copied to the clipboard and allow you to easily add them. It has built in Wikipedia and Wikiquote browser support to find out more about the author or source. And, most importantly, you can back up all of your quotes via email or export from within iTunes to a text file.

I simply can’t believe how good this app is as a 1.0. I have needed something like this for a long, long time. It’s only $1.99 in the app store which is a steal in my book. I instantly added it to my iPhone home screen.

I’m sure you folks could care less about Myke and I talking about our work environments. Especially when you find out how truly un-minimal mine is right now.

For the three or four of you who do, click the link.

Go for the tip on creating strong passwords that you can remember. Stay for the Prince.

(Note to Jack: I happen to own one of the very few original Black Album vinyl pressings ever manufactured before they were pulled back.)

Many readers of this site may not know that I am also a proud member of the Read & Trust Network. A network of some of the best independent writers on the Internet. To say that I’m humbled to even be included amongst some of these names is an understatement. Seriously, this is the cream of the crop.

Premiering in April is a new Premium Newsletter offering exclusive writing around a pre-selcted theme from a selection of these writers on a monthly basis, yours truly included. The theme for April is “The Process” and I’m very proud of the piece I have submitted to it.

The price is only $5.00 a month. Seriously, this will be the newsletter to subscribe to. The contents will be exclusive to the newsletter and not available anywhere else. Subscribe today.

How on earth can it be so good, you ask? Well, it’s hard to say. But some have speculated that it runs on only the purest tears collected from Apple’s most prized unicorns. Alas, no one has ever seen one of these creatures, which are said to be stabled in a secret location outside of Cupertino.

There are some great tips here. I have been using Spotlight as both my app launcher and file finding secret sauce since moving to my MacBook Air. Once you dig deep inside, you will find that, in fact, the above statement is not far from the truth. 

(Even though I’m subscribed to Practically Efficient, the via goes to Ben Brooks because I often read my friends feeds first.)

“We wanted to make sure the back of the product was as well resolved as the front”

Stephen at Forkbomber strikes again with this wonderful find from the days when Jony had hair.

My work machine is a 2.8 GHz Core2Duo 15-inch MacBook Pro with the matte screen and 8 GB of RAM. It’s the fastest notebook I’ve ever used. It gives our 3.2 Ghz Core i3 27-iMac at home a run for its money. Most articles I’ve read by people who have upgraded to a SSD have done it to older machines. I was skeptical of what kind of difference it would make in an already fast machine, to be honest.

It turns out that this is the single best upgrade I’ve ever done for any computer. Period.

If you’ve been wondering if upgrading your Mac with an SSD drive is worth the money, read this.

practicalopacity:

Simple but bold: Only use your computer for work. Real work. The work of making something. Have a second device, perhaps an iPad, and use it for games, web commenting, online shopping, networking… anything that doesn’t directly create valued output (no need to have an argument here about which is which, which is work and which is not… draw a line, any line, and separate the two of them. If you don’t like the results from that line, draw a new line).

Interesting idea. I know folks who, though not stated, treat their desktop and iPad this way. The iPad is the device for reading, social networking, rss and the desktop is for work only. 

Self reblogging here because all of this stuff is connected.

This has northing to do with Macs or minimalism but, you know, when a friend does something you are proud of you should support them in every way you know.

Well, my good friend Aaron Mahnke (who designed the Minimal Mac Logo) has published his first book – The Hand of Andulain. As a writer and soon to be author myself, I know what a holy-frakkin-mother-of-the-gods big deal this is. It’s a sci-fi/fantasy affair so I’m sure it will be right up the alley of some of the nerds that read this site. Here is the description:

When his simple life is shattered, Bran Somnerson must enter a world of powerful magic, dangerous enemies and his own unknown destiny. Chased by hideous creatures from another land, and bound to an ancient bracelet that he cannot seem to remove, Bran is forced to leave his old life behind before he even knows what his new life may hold.

But while forces of darkness pursue him and his companions across the vast leagues of the Four Realms, Bran discovers that he is being followed by something else. Something more ancient and deadly than he fully understands. And it is pursuing him in his dreams.

Can Bran overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, both around him and within him, that threaten his life? The fate of the Four Realms may very well rest in his hands.

It’s only $2.99 on the Amazon Kindle store. It will be available in the iBookstore soon as well. Go support my friend and get a few hundred pages of quality reading in return.

I have discussed before why the Mac Mini makes the perfect server. It’s small, affordable, fast, and when running Mac OS X Server, has all of the features you need to offer enterprise-class services in a machine a fraction of the size and price.

That said, there are many reasons you may not want to host a server on your own. Security, power, and bandwidth are all very real concerns. Especially if you are doing hosting of web services, email or valuable personal data. For such things you want to ensure uptime and not everyone (i.e. only the privileged few) has a data center at their disposal.

Mac Mini Vault is a colocation provider specifically designed to host the Mac Mini. Colocation (or “colo” for short) means that you place the Mac Mini that you own in their secure data center. They supply the  power, bandwidth, and physical security allowing your Mac Mini to be ‘hosted’ on the internet. You can access it’s desktop or its command line. You can use it for file storage, web & database hosting, an e-mail server, or some of the built in OS X Server tools such as calendar, address book, wiki servers, etc. Because the hardware is compatible with Windows and Linux as well, you can configure it anyway you’d like before sending your Mini to them.

The pricing is simple and quite fair with two generous packages that start as $29.99 a month. This includes a static IP, 15MB/s Burst Speed, remote reboot, network graphing, and free hands on support during business hours. They are located near Milwaukee, WI so, if you are within driving range, you have the option of making an appointment to drive your Mini down and they’ll help you get it going. Of course, you can always configure your Mini and ship it to them. Heck, you can even buy one from them and have them set it up and get it online for you. You can even purchase additional storage from them or add an external drive of your own. The choice is yours.

Bottom line, this is the best-pratice route to go if you are looking to use the Mac Mini as a server solution. I use a Mac Mini as a backup server for my clients and I’ll be moving to Mac Mini Vault as soon as I’m able. If you have any interest in this stuff at all, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

Read the tasks because, well, they say it all (also, I’ve kind of worn out of reviewing these things).

I would like to take some time out to thank Ringer for Mac for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed.

As I’ve said, if often push back on sponsorship requests. I will only allow products that I feel are right for my audience. When I do so, I offer the sponsor a chance to appeal my veto. Make the case. Sell me.

Ringer was one that I pushed back on and the developer took the time to sell me on why he thought it was a great fit for Minimal Mac. Boy am I glad he did. It is. It has just the features you need to make perfect ringtones in the most frictionless way possible. It’s what we believe in.