I am pleased to announce the launch of a new website for the distribution of all my video courses, learn.MacSparky.com. I am moving all of my video courses to that site and encourage you to check it out. There’s plenty of free and paid material there to keep you busy.
First a Little History …
When I first started distributing videos, I did so with one large video file that you could download to your Mac. That worked okay for a while but it very quickly became evident that people wanted a streaming solution. Put simply, a lot of people watch these courses on their iPhones and iPads. That eventually led me over to Vimeo where I have been distributing my video courses for a few years. It was a service that allowed for streaming, but it was also entirely outside of my control. I received complaints from customers that didn’t like the Vimeo marketing, where they would send them advertising materials for videos entirely unrelated to geeky MacSparky stuff, and furthermore, Vimeo never gave me a list of who bought my stuff. Put simply, I wanted to have a direct relationship with my customers.
I’ve been hard at work on this problem for several months, and today I’m announcing the new website, learn.MacSparky.com where you can get access to all of my video products. Having set up the website, I am also able to now distribute a lot of the videos that I create freely. I think it’s better for you and better for me. I’ve summarized the current offerings below, and I hope you check them out. I’m thrilled to have made this move. Go sign up today and let me know what you think. Below is a list of the current video courses.
The Workflow Field Guide
I made this several years ago when workflow first was released. This has been a paid course since its original release, but now I am making it completely free.
The Hazel Field Guide
Hazel is one of my favorite Mac utilities. It takes so much of the TM out of file management and let your Mac to a lot of your work for you, unassisted. To get the most out of Hazel, you do need a little help in this course is aimed at solving just that problem. This course already has many happy customers who are automating their way to fame and fortune.
60 Tips Vol. 1 and 60 Tips Vol. 2
There are two volumes of this book I wrote with my pal, Brett Terpstra. The video versions have all of the same materials as the books and can help you get better at using your Mac every day. Both volume 1 and volume 2 are available in the new learn.MacSparky.com website.
The Photos Field Guide
Apple photos is a powerful and all-in-one solution for managing, editing, and storing your photos. This video course walks you through how to set up your library, manage pictures, and make edits. This course also goes beyond explaining some common photo management utilities, backup strategies, and all the other bits you need to manage your photos and video properly.
The Drafts Field Guide
This recourse includes this series of videos I have been producing for The new version of the Drafts app, one of my favorite writing and automation tools (yes, it’s both) for iPhone and iPad.
The Bonus Sparky Field Guide
I often release short little videos for free relating to new workflows that I find or products that I like. A lot of these are on the MacSparky YouTube channel, but if that’s not your thing, you can sign up for a course@learn.macsparky.com that will regularly update with the same content.
Automators Bonus Content
The Automators podcast comes with a lot of bonus content explaining how to create and run specific automation routines that Rose and I regularly discuss on the show. Again, we have a YouTube channel for that, but not everyone wants to spend time on YouTube. We are going to distribute all of the podcast supporting materials through this learning course in addition to the YouTube channel.
What About New Stuff?
Now that I’ve built this learning website, I’m back in full swing in creating new content for it. In the next month, I will be releasing an all-new course on Siri Shortcuts to coincide with the release of iOS 12. The new course is coming out great, and I’m working on it every day.
Also, later this month, when the Omni Group releases OmniFocus 3 for the Mac (or shortly after that), I will be releasing a brand-new edition of the OmniFocus Field Guide. This new version is shot entirely from scratch and nearly done. There is a lot of new material about how to get better at using OmniFocus and how to manage your tasks in a way that makes sense. In addition to having a lot of new material about technically managing the software, this new version also has a lot of discussion about productivity and strategies to make your task system work for you instead of you working for it. The new OmniFocus Field Guide is still in production but coming out great, and I cannot wait to share it with you.
Transitioning from Vimeo
If you were a customer for any of the above courses on Vimeo, and you would like to transition your course to learn.MacSparky.com, sign up for the learn.MacSparky.com website and send me a copy of your receipt. I can then send you a code for your account. Please note that is a manual process and I’m sure the initial flood of requests is going to take a little bit of catching up.
I am so happy to share this news with you. It has taken a lot of work, but this new website is going to be great for everyone. If nothing else, I encourage you to sign up for some of the free courses to check things out.