Category Archives: Automation

Custom Academic Searches on iOS

Posted on March 20, 2013 by

As a follow-up to my earlier post on academic searches on the Mac, here’s an easy way to replicate most of those custom searches on iOS. The key app is Drafts, which recently received a massive update. Among many other … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Notes, Workflows, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Custom Academic Searches on LaunchBar

Posted on January 31, 2013 by

Application launchers like Alfred and LaunchBar are Swiss Army knives of software, but to take full advantage of their flexible power you really need to tweak and customize their settings. The apps aren’t designed for academics, but because they’re so … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Workflows | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Custom keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word for Mac

Posted on January 19, 2013 by

Despite alternatives to Microsoft Word it is not possible to completely avoid using it in academic work on a Mac. If you have to edit texts in MS Word you might as well do it smoothly and efficiently, save time and … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Writing | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Searchable PDF annotations: Automating conversion to Skim notes

Posted on December 20, 2012 by

Many academics now read journal articles on screen, as PDF files. Holdouts—and they are everywhere—print out forest-sized stacks of paper that teeter on crowded desks. Freedom from clutter is just one advantage of digital reading. Another is searchability: a large … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Automation, Tags and folders | Tagged , , , , , | 23 Comments

Update on the Macademic Ninja kit

Posted on November 3, 2012 by

The Macademic Ninja kit posted a while ago  included TextExpander, LaunchBar, Hazel, 1Password and Dropbox. I still love and constantly use all of these small apps. But in the last 1.5 years five other apps have also become critical for freeing … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Workflows | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

Learning from Katie and David

Posted on October 20, 2012 by

I must admit that everything I know about Mac has either been directly learned or inspired by Macpowerusers (MPU), a podcast I started listening to about 3 years ago. Recently, MPU had their Episode 100 where they talked, among other things, … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Email | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Papers 2 is here!

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

My earlier post on Papers and Sente said that the biggest disadvantage of Papers is that it does not allow working with bibliographies. This has changed in Papers 2 immediately bridging the gap between pdf file management and scholarly referencing. As a … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Bibliographies, Files, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 30 Comments