This week MacSparky is sponsored by DEVONthink, the app that organizes and tracks your data for you. I use DEVONthink for all of my research and record-keeping workflows. DEVONthink has all the tools: auto-sort, artificial intelligence-based search, automatic OCR, the works.
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 data, DEVONthink that do that job better for you than anything else. Check it out today.
Evan and the gang at Hoban Cards are masters at the craft of designing and making letterpress calling cards and stationery. 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.
If you’re set on calling cards, I also recommend going to Hoban for your stationery. I bought stationery from them years ago, and I love sending it to friends and family. In a world full of text messages and email, personal stationery sends a whole different message altogether.
Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.
Better email management. You want it? This week’s MacSparky sponsor, SaneBox, can help you get it. SaneBox uses A.I. to analyze your email history and identifies what is important to you, making sure you’re seeing the important emails in your inbox.
You don’t have to come up with rules for your email. You’ll train SaneBox, which is really easy. You’ll move emails from your inbox and Sane folders, and SaneBox’s A.I. will learn to get it right the next time. Have email filtered to @SaneLater, which you can check once a day to see which of the emails you actually have to process. You know all of those newsletters you get? Send them to @SaneNews, so you can read them when you’re ready for them, and not have them interrupt or distract you when you’re trying to get work done.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite, the only made-for-mac CRM solution. Daylite expands the definition of CRM and boosts your team’s productivity while maximizing leads, customer relationships, and profits.
Daylite includes a remarkable set of tools to run your business. Calendars, tasks, contacts, and all the other bits you need for a world-class CRM are right there. Moreover, Daylite *gets* linking.
I’ve written (and talked) plenty about how laser-like linking can improve your productivity. The ability to jump from this task to *that task* or bit of data without having to wade through inboxes and master lists can make all the difference between getting your work done and getting stuck in the data molasses.
Daylite gets that. With Daylite, you can link all over your Daylite database (and out to external links as well) to stay on target. Moreover, since all the data in Daylite is shareable with your team, they also get the benefits of your laser-like tasks so they can stay on task as well.
Hook Pro – this app is increasingly becoming a linchpin for me as I sort out ways to make it easy for anyone to use contextual computing principles. What I mean is, with this app you can link anything together really fast.
Nisus Writer Pro – Thought of by most word processing users as THE best word processor on the Mac.
Scapple – Quickly capture and connect ideas from the developer of Scrivener. This app is so underrated.
SummerFest doesn’t actually last all summer, so be sure to check out these and other apps at the SummerFest 2022 website before this sale ends.
This week, summer officially began with the summer solstice (I live in the Northern Hemisphere). It’s the longest day of the year, or at least the day with the longest period of sunlight. Will you be stuck inside all summer dealing with your email? You don’t have to be. You can make this fantasy a reality with SaneBox, MacSparky’s sponsor this week.
You can get your inbox a whole lot cleaner. How? You’ll train SaneBox to figure out what are important and unimportant emails to you. The emails don’t disappear. The unimportant ones go to your new SaneLater folder, allowing you to focus on what’s important. You’ll keep the distractions at bay, and can delete the unimportant ones later, all at once. You’ll get an email digest each day that summarizes what’s in your SaneLater folder, and if you see something that shouldn’t be there, you can train SaneBox to re-direct it to the right place. Get your email sanity back. Get your time back. Enjoy the longer days, the warmth of the sun, and the fresh air, and get out from those emails that are wasting your time. Give it a try with a free trial, and you can get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription.
For small businesses, it can be difficult to stay on top of clients, leads, and projects that are evolving every day. Here’s how Daylite can help supercharge your team to collaborate better, handle more clients, close more deals, and execute more projects. Designed for Mac, iPhone, and iPad exclusively.
Daylite is more than just a CRM app for small businesses. Its Productivity capability is what sets Daylite apart from other web-based competitors.
Here are a few productivity-boosting power features that thousands of Mac-savvy businesses couldn’t do without:
Daylite Mail Assistant (DMA)
Direct Apple Mail integration allows you to take action from your inbox and be more productive. Instead of drowning in emails all day, you and your team can capture all email communication, clear out your inbox and stay on top of the next steps. Save emails related to clients, appointments, and tasks, so you have a full history of conversations in one place. Plus, you can create tasks in Daylite right from Apple Mail.
Linking
Its linking capability is what makes Daylite shine. You can link emails, notes, tasks, projects, appointments, and other records to existing contacts in Daylite. This enables teams to quickly and clearly view an organization’s structure and access the information they need in a unique way.
Daylite Calendar
Daylite’s built-in calendar allows you to view your entire team’s schedule in one place. Set reminders for follow-ups and book meetings, so everyone stays in the loop and is always on top of their appointments. Set your calendar to “public” or “private”, so team members can only have access to the information they need.
CRM + Project Management
Daylite’s productivity-focused design helps you and your team get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects and winning business to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to following up on referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.
Daylite empowers small businesses by improving team efficiency and making collaboration easy—everything is organized, searchable, and accessible (even offline). You can easily access information and segment data tailored to your specific client’s history.
This week MacSparky is sponsored by DEVONthink. DEVONthink has been offering AI-based research tools for years on the Mac, but it has hardly stood still. DEVONthink is now on version 3 for the Mac and version 3 of DEVONthink to Go for iPad and iPhone. The apps are modern and take full advantage of the most recent and powerful tools available in the Apple Ecosystem. They just keep evolving right alongside Apple.
But when it comes to metadata, DEVONthink is leaving Apple (and the Finder) in the dust. DEVONthink has its own systems for organizing, tagging, sorting, automating, and updating all sorts of metadata for your files. One example is that I store contracts I’m writing for clients in DEVONthink. I use the app’s Annotations metadata to store notes on drafts of contracts. These are notes that only I see but prove invaluable when I come back a month later and ask, “why does this exist?” DEVONthink runs circles around the metadata tools available to you with the native Finder. Using the full array of DEVONthink metadata tools I’m able to cut through my files and get to what matters most fast.
And better metadata is just one of many features you’ll get with DEVONthink. To learn more head over to DEVONthink and download the trial and check it out for yourself.
Sometimes we subscribe to a newsletter or other mailing list because we want to keep up with what’s going on, or know when the next sale is, or if they’re offering a good discount code. We signed up because we don’t want to miss out. These emails can be very informational and fun, but not something I need to deal with during an average workday. These distractions not only clutter up your inbox, but they take from your focus and time. This is where this week’s MacSparky sponsor SaneBox comes in.
SaneNews is a great feature of SaneBox. You can train newsletters or other mailing lists you’ve subscribed to to go there. SaneBox doesn’t delete these emails. It takes these lower priority emails you don’t have deal with right now, and automatically puts them in the SaneNews folder (once you’ve trained it) so that they’re there for you to look at when you do have the time to check out the news articles or latest promotions.
