Alfred is my #1 favorite productivity tool for the Mac, and over the years I have developed some ferocious tricks to support the tasks I do everyday as an Instructional Designer. My work is equal parts content development and web design, so I like to mix conventional productivity tools with modern...
Google Play Music is my favorite music streaming service – but running it in my main browser has some drawbacks. Luckily Loop has emerged as a nice standalone desktop app for Google Play Music. It lets you keep your music player separate from your main browser, improving your overall performance...
One of the most valuable tools for an instructional designer is a great screencasting app. Being able to record your desktop with voice narration frees us to share techniques on our computers in live motion video.
Many of us IDs have learned to depend on tools like Jing, Screenflow, Screenc...
I attended my second hackathon this weekend, and my teammates were noticing all my keystroke magic tricks that help me quickly prototype professional‐looking app mockups with remarkable speed. A teammate asked me what my secrets are, and so I decided to share it as a post.
My keystroke magic is...
Apple products like to hide the ugly inner workings of the computer from you – that “magic” feeling you get from a Mac or an iPhone is enhanced by the fact that you can’t see how it works!
In recent versions of Mac OS X, they started hiding file extensions (like .mp3, .jpeg, or .docx) in the Find...
This week I had a taste of fear and regret when I thought I left my laptop on the bus. I spent a whole work day freaking out, trying to secure my sensitive data and recover my valuable files. I am writing a reflection on those terrible hours to share what a godsend cloud services can be when you los...
This week at work, they replaced my ailing but valiant Dell XP laptop with a new HP Windows7 notebook for work, and then surprised me with a dual‐booting iMac desktop for me to aggressively customize and evaluate the next wave of standard applications w...
A couple months ago I added a free, open source plugin to my Mac called f.lux that promises to relieve eye strain and insomnia caused by blue screen glare. It adjusts my screen’s color temperature based on the time of day to reproduce more natural lighting conditions.
It turns the whites on...
If you haven’t heard of Chrome OS, it’s Google’s attempt to do away with the desktop altogether and have everything that happens on your computer happen inside the browser. This means that instead of opening Outlook for your email, you go to Gmail or Hotmail on th...