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The Holy Grail Of Ubiquitous Plain-Text Capture | Lifehacker Australia:

Ubiquitous capture — that is, the ability to snag any thought or idea any time and anywhere it happens to crop up — is a key component to nearly every productivity philosophy. You want to capture those fleeting ideas before they’re gone, and you don’t want to waste brain power obsessing over remembering it until you can write it down somewhere. Below, I’ll walk you through the best ubiquitous capture system I’ve ever encountered.

Great writeup on how to use Simplenote as a hub to get your plain-text files available to you anywhere. This is pretty much the setup I roll with but, as you may have read in a recent interview, I take the added step of storing my .txt database in Dropbox. This gives me the added bonuses of deletion protection and versioning.

A matter of time - Bobulate:

What you actively spend time on, and (far more difficult) what you choose not to do, who you choose not to spend time with, and who and what you decide to say no to — what you choose, then — is how you mark time. And that is all there is.

I’m actually cross posting this here and at Practical Opacity because it is just that important. Time is the most valuable and finite commodity that any living thing has in this world. Think about it, everything – you, me, people, plants, animals, even the Earth itself – has a limited and set amount of time. Even our solar system is but a minute of time in the history of the universe. The average human lifespan does not even register on the clock. In many ways, time defines life itself.

Therefore, treat it as the most precious thing in existence, because it is. Don’t squander a single second. Perhaps, even more importantly, don’t waste time regretting the time you do squander. Instead, look to how you are going to use this very moment to do something… Anything. Make a mark. Don’t worry about the next until the next comes along. This moment is far too important.

Finally, I don’t know if I could suggest a better use of your time than spending a few moments on Bobulate. The rewards I get in return, daily, are a fair trade and sqaure deal.

The USB clip, designed by Germany based industrial design agency Emamidesign, was recently awarded with a Red Dot award for product design 2010.

The way of reinterpreting the functional principle of a steel paper clip and translated it into the design of a storage medium to make data transfers and archiving easier was highly praised. The clip can be attached easily onto paper documents and can deliver additional information, like for example a multi-media presentation. The slim shaped and light in weight clip comes in several appealing colors.

Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere:

“Then Steve comes in,” [Mike] Evangelist recalls. “He doesn’t look at any of our work. He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard. He draws a rectangle. ‘Here’s the new application,’ he says. ‘It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says burn. That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.’ “

Great article about a few of the things that allow Apple to succeed where others stumble. Including this little gem of a story from my friend Mike (who, at the time, was product lead for iDVD and DVD Studio Pro).

Pester is a simple alarm clock and timer for Mac OS X. Use it to remind you to catch the bus or attend an upcoming meeting. It is modeled after xalarm in functionality—though not in interface design.

Not sure how I overlooked posting about this here before but, thanks to both Daring Fireball and Wolf Rentzsch I have been reminded of, and have now corrected, that error. In the words of Manute Bol, “My Bad”.

How-To: Combining Hazel and Dropbox to Automate File Management:

Simply put, Hazel takes the idea of mail rules and applies them to the entire system. At its core, Hazel is a watchdog. You tell it to keep an eye on a folder, and if certain criteria are met, perform an action. We’ve covered Hazel before, but I wanted to focus specifically on combining it with Dropbox.

Hazel is one of those apps I need to eat my own dog food on and spend a few minutes a day learning something new about. It can be amazingly powerful, and save a ton of hassle and time, especially when combined with other tools. That said, every time I read a post like the one linked above I have one of those “Holy crap!” moments of how I can put it to better use.