TaskPaper 3

Posted on May 23, 2016 by

I have recently completed a large grant proposal and several research manuscripts. Such sticky projects involve hundreds of details that need to be remembered: “reformat table 3”, “find the page number in reference 76”, “ask someone to rework figure 5”, “read an article that the reviewer has pointed to”. I have no idea how I would stay sane, if not for TaskPaper, my favourite app for dealing with complex projects. Continue reading →

Posted in Projects, Tasks, Workflows | Tagged | 4 Comments

Citing organisations in Papers 3.0

Posted on April 25, 2016 by

Organisations, rather than people, often co-author reports and other materials which should be cited and referenced in scientific work. After many trials and errors, I have finally resolved how to elegantly cite organisations with long names and short acronyms using Papers 3, my pdf organisation and reference management software (extensively covered on this site).  Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographies, Writing | Tagged | 16 Comments

Annotating PDFs with Highlights

Posted on June 8, 2015 by

Note taking in the era of PDFs has clearly become an issue for most people working with electronic documents on a daily basis. As far as I know most reference managers now implement some form of a note taking/highlighting feature. However, we may not necessarily be happy with those built-in capabilities as they may not be well aligned with our own flavour of note taking. In this constant and incremental “apps vs. user needs” matching exercise it is nice to see new offerings with a slightly different approach. Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Notes | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

The future of email: an empathy algorithm

Posted on April 27, 2015 by

Some of our most popular entries are on how to write good emails: both what to say and what not to say. But what if the computer could tell you how to tailor emails to different people? Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | Leave a comment

BusyContacts and academic networking

Posted on February 14, 2015 by

Three months ago, I started using beta-version of BusyContacts, which a reader suggested in a comment to the post on organising academic contacts. Last week this software (developed by the maker of my favorite BusyCal) released the first official version. I have really enjoyed BusyContacts, which not only can replace Apple’s Contacts but can even compete with large CRMs such as Daylite. Continue reading →

Posted in Contacts | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Paperless scholarship with pen and paper

Posted on February 2, 2015 by

There has been a paradoxical shift in my classroom and my own habits. The students have stopped asking for printed handouts but at the same time they started to take their own notes with pen and paper. Similarly, I use more pen and paper while at the same time praising the paperless office. Why is this?

Handwritten lecture notes searched in Evernote

Handwritten lecture notes imported to Evernote and searched for a specific term.

Continue reading →

Posted in Notes | 5 Comments

Papers 3 library searchable by Spotlight

Posted on January 24, 2015 by

Since my first post about Papers 3, a reference and pdf-file management software, it has significantly matured to become one of if not the best in the field. The most recent addition (version 3.2.6) has been to make a Papers 3 library indexable by Spotlight. Although documents in a Papers 3 library can be searched by FoxTrot or from within the app itself, these solutions are not ideal for searching on the fly. Now you can find Papers 3 library documents directly from Finder.

Using Spotlight to search documents in Papers 3 library

Using Spotlight to search documents in Papers 3 library

Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographies, Files | Tagged , | 40 Comments