Month: October 2013

I’m a little obsessive about data collection and retention. I’ve written a number of times about all the different backup systems I have in place to protect my data. And over the last few years the amount of data I’m collecting about myself (and family) has continued to grow. We’re taking exponentially more photos, posting many more status updates, and collecting real-time data about our sleep patterns, fitness activity, and location. From the day I was born until around the time I entered high school, my mom kept a standard, wall calendar for myself and my sister. Every night (or …

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Just a quick reminder that occurred to me today. Always remember to use the appropriate tool. Don’t be afraid to split your data across multiple apps and inboxes when appropriate. For example, I store all of my action items and tasks in OmniFocus. But last night I remembered I needed to buy water at the grocery store in the morning before work. I could have put that into OmniFocus, but I wouldn’t have checked it early enough in the morning as I don’t do my daily review until I’m at my desk at work. Instead, I used Siri to create …

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After migrating my company’s email away from Gmail a few years ago, I’ve become firmly entrenched with Apple’s Mail.app on the desktop. Everything works great, but I do miss having access to Rapportive’s Gmail extension. It’s great at providing extra information related to the person you’re emailing with. To make up for this lack of functionality, I’ve created a quick AppleScript that automatically opens up a new Mail window and finds any previous conversations I’ve had with the sender. I use it all the time whenever a customer emails so I can quickly see any past conversations. I’ve built the …

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