Dealing with emails can be a nightmare, especially when you have hundreds of unread emails which keep growing by the hour, and dozens of flagged messages which need following-up on. Here’s a few simple actions you can take to clear your inbox.

6. Mail Checking

Change your mail checking preference to 15 or 30 minute intervals. Do not stop work to answer emails as they arrive, instead set aside time each hour to briefly deal with your incoming emails.

5. Actionable Folders

Create 3 folders and name them Follow-Up, Interesting & To Do. Then, as you check your emails file them straight into the applicable folder.

Later, when you have time you can go straight to these folders folder and work through them. It will be much quicker to see what needs attending to and you are more likely to might be motivated to spare a few minutes clearing your to-do folder.

4. Sub Folders

Organization is the key to accessing any saved emails. Having 2000 emails in one folder is a sure-fire road map to confusion and lost information.

Create folders, then subfolders residing inside these. For example for this blog I have this folder structure set up in Mail:

Do this for each different project you are working on, and as you get a related email file it right away. If it needs to be followed up move it into that folder, then to it’s normal resting place once it’s been actioned.

3. Inbox Clearing

Keep your inbox clear, do not be tempted to use it as a storage box. Each evening before you log off the computer make sure there is nothing left in your inbox. Go through each and every email and file it. Place it in its respective folder, or if it requires action put it in your Follow-Up, Interesting or To Do folders.

This allows you to start the next day fresh and organized.

2. Delete Old Messages

Get that delete button working. Sit down for an hour (or however long it takes) and sort through every single email in Mail. Press Delete on anything you will never need again. After this long deleting session it should be a lot easier to keep on top of the size of your Mail database.

Searching will be faster, and finding files will be more efficient.

1. Smart Folders

Receiving hundreds of emails each day? Filters, otherwise known as “Smart Folders�, are your answer.

Let’s say you run three blogs, create three smart folders with the rules:

This way you can keep different type of email in different places, and will have no confusion on what the email is related to.

Want more Apple Mail tips? Checkout any one of these articles for more tips and tricks.

I went through Flickr and picked out 7 of the cleanest, slickest, sexiest, most gear filled setup’s to display in front of you. No description necessary, just enjoy!

RSS feeds can be your best friend, they can also be your worst nightmare when you wake up and have thousands of new items to scan over, hundreds which dont even interest you.

5.

First step, get NewsFire! NewsFire is the best RSS reader, hands down. Simple interface, just the features you need, fast and with a neat sound effect to let you know something’s been downloaded. NetNewsWire has been around longer and has many more features, but that requires more configuration and thinking.

NewsFire is hands down, no argument, the best RSS reader for the Mac.

4.

Go through all of your feeds and decide which ones you no longer read. The more you remove the more free time you will have, and less time stressing over unread feeds. I generally remove feeds which aren’t regularly updated, or have drifted off-topic from the time of me originally adding them to my collection.

3.

Change the option of checking feeds every “x� minutes to 13. Studies have shown the longest people can focus on one task at any given time is 13 minutes. If you set your reader to refresh every 13 minutes you’ll be able to take a short break from your work, search through the feeds, then get back to work and repeat for the rest of the working day.

2.

If you feel a certain feed has so much content soaring through it and it’s a constant distraction, simple set that one feed to check every hour, or every day, not at 13 minute intervals like your other feeds.

Distraction diminished.

1.

My number one tip to keeping organized with RSS is to create groups in your RSS reader based on importance. Set up a folder for very important, important, normal, low importance, and very low importance. Then assign each and every one of your feeds to a folder. This way you’ll be able to actually read your news and know you have found out the important stuff if you dont have enough time to clear through everything, you can just check out the important stuff.

Technorati Tags: application

Last week in my post “5 Upcoming Projects In The Mac World� I talked briefly about the latest application from the AppZapper crew titled “Disco�. Today, I have some exclusive information, an exclusive screenshot, and some licenses to give away to you!

This weekend MacZOT is offering you a chance to pre-order Disco for only $4.95! This offer is only avaliable for the first 2000 people who take it up, then you’ll be back to waiting and have to pay full price for the application upon release. $4.95 is a huge bargain for an application from the same guys who brought you AppZapper (rumor is this exclusive MacZOT price for today is a discount of over 75% of the retail price Disco will be sold for!).

I managed to pick up a 100% exclusive screenshot of Disco for you loyal readers! It’s not too revealing but it will certainly keep you guessing as to what this application will be.

Here are a few new features/teasers that were today unveiled about Disco.

• Like AppZapper, it is a simple and sexy utility
• It has 3d particle effects (one word…smoke)
• It can take advantage of the motion sensor on a laptop
• It can detect when you blow in the microphone
• The above 3 features are totally unrelated to the core function

What are you waiting for? Head over to MacZOT now and pre-order your copy of Disco for $4.95, you wont be disappointed, and you’ll certainly have much more fun with Disco than a coffee you would have used that cash on…

Bonus: The 3 closest guesses to what Disco is in the comments on this article will receive a free copy of Disco upon release, so get speculating.

Technorati Tags: application

Welcome to the first article in the series of “Which Mac For Me�. This first part we will focus on which setup suits a photographer best, both on a budget, and with cash to splash. Upcoming article in this series also include Which Mac For: video editors, web designers, and writers/bloggers.

What Display?

Photographers who shoot for a living all have expensive cameras which produce files with huge resolution. The first step is purchasing a display which will show the true colour of your images at top quality. Apple’s Cinema Displays are very popular with photographers because of the exquisite quality of the panels and the rich colours they display on them.

The Cinema Display is available in 20, 23, and 30� size forms. If you are shooting 8MP images and on a budget a 23� display should be more than enough real estate to edit your images, but if your shooting anything higher than 8MP images, or you have some cash to burn, the 30� display is a great investment. It will allow you to view images much larger, work on many more at once, and also will be great for multitasking.

The Mac Pro will power up to 2 30″ Cinema Displays, while the MacBook Pro will power one 30″. If you have seen a 30″ display running before, you will know how huge and amazing they are to use. Now imagine having two of these, running Aperture full screen. Can’t you just picture all the work you’d get done in half the time..? If you want the option of powering two displays in the future, the Mac Pro is hands down the machine you need.

The recent price drop of the 30â€? Cinema Displays looks pretty attractive for photographers, in my opinion, shell out for the largest display you can possible afford, you won’t regret it.

Optimal Display Advice: 30� Apple Cinema Display
Budget Display Advice: 23� Apple Cinema Display

What Mac?

Now, you have your display, you can’t do anything yet without a Mac. The first thing you need to ask yourself is “Will I be editing in the field or away from home often?â€? If the answer is no, the Mac Pro is your answer, if your answer is yes, the MacBook Pro is your answer. Don’t worry, both machines will power the 30â€? Cinema Display flawlessly.

If you answered No.

Mac Pro

The Mac Pro is Apple’s latest desktop computer for professionals. It features an Intel Quad Xeon processor up to 3Ghz in speed.

For your work, the 2.66Ghz model is a sweet spot. Stack it with 3GB of RAM for optimal performance with Aperture and Photoshop, and 1TB of mirrored RAID hard-drive space. This way you will have 500GB of storage space for you images, which will automatically be backed up to the second 500GB drive for safe keeping in case of a disaster.

If you are on a tight budget but still want the best, the 2Ghz option should still do the things you want it to do fine, and will save you a few hundred dollars.

I would also recommend adding Bluetooth + Airport to these machines as it might pay off at a later stage when Bluetooth technology begins to be added to digital cameras.

Optimal Desktop: Mac Pro, 2.66Ghz, 1TB HDD, 3GB RAM, Bluetooth + Airport

If you answered yes:

MacBook Pro

The MacBook Pro is the machine you are after. With the power of a 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo processor, you will have the ability to run Aperture in the field at blazing speeds, but not as fast as the Mac Pro. In my opinion this is a very nice setup choice for a photographer, a MacBook Pro + Cinema Display. It gives you the freedom to work away from home, and still have a large canvas to work on when you are in the office.

The 17� MBP, with a 2.16Ghz processor, 100GB 7200RPM HDD, and maxed out 2GB of RAM will do the job with no pauses whatsoever.

If you dont exactly want to spend that much on your machine, the 15″ MBP model with a 2.16Ghz processor and 2GB of RAM will do the job all the same, minus the extra screen real estate which can be handy at times. With the 15â€? option you become even more portable, but you need to decide if thats worth losing the extra pixels for.

Optimal Portable: MacBook Pro 17�, 2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM HDD

What Software?

Every photographer should have Photoshop in their armory no matter if it’s a serious hobby, or a full time job.

Apart from Photoshop you will need an application to store, and catalog your images. Apple’s Aperture is perfect for this job. It will even fulfill some functions you need Photoshop to do, speeding up your workflow.

If you want a free alternative, Adobe’s LightRoom is still free as it’s in beta stage.

Optimal Software Advice: Apple Aperture
Budget Software Advice: Adobe Lightroom

Desktop Setup (On Budget) Mac Pro 2Ghz, 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 23� Display

Desktop Setup (Optimal) Mac Pro 2.66Ghz, 3GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 30� Display

Portable Setup (On Budget) MacBook Pro 15�, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM HDD

Portable Setup (Optimal) MacBook Pro 17�, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200RPM HDD

The Mac world is on a high from all the WWDC announcments at present, and the excitement doesn’t end there. Here are 5 things Mac users have to look forward to this year.

iClip 4

Inventive Software, winner of best Dashboard widget ADA 2006 have the full version of their popular widget iClip lite 2, called iClip 4 coming out very soon.

iClip 4 features many enhancements over iClip 3 the most noticeable been the brand new UI designed by Piotr Gajos. It’s had a total makeover and to put it in context, it’s changes are almost as extreme as Apple’s switch from OS9 to OSX.

Estimated Release Date: September 2006

MyDreamApp

Phill Ryu has a project in the works called MyDreamApp. He’s apparently teamed up with over a dozen Mac developers including Austin Sarner, Brent Simmons, John Casasanta, Dave Watanabe, and Wil Shipley. Other big names such as Digg’s Kevin Rose, GUI artist David Lanham and head TUAW blogger Scott McNulty.

Phill has revealed the site will result in some amazing software been produced, and prizes such as iPod’s, MacBook’s, and more will be on offer to contributors.

What could it be? My guess is it’s a site where people submit ideas for application, they are judged firstly by the public, then the top apps of the week/month are put in front of the judging panel where they discuss them and choose one to build. Resulting in the person who came up with the idea winning some amazing prizes, and the Mac community receiving some great software.

Estimated release date: Late August 2006

Waterfall Software “FL�

Dustin MacDonald is currently working on fun little application as a side-project from his normal duties at Waterfall SW.

The application, code-named “FL� requires a Mac with an iSight camera, Tiger 10.4, and a fairly new Mac.

I know what this application is as I have a pre release copy, and I know you’ll find it one of the most exciting, fun little apps of 2006.

Estimated release date: Late 2006

Dave Watanabe

David, the developer of application such as Acquisition and NewsFire has released the icon to his upcoming application … That’s right, all we know is the icon’s design, nothing else.

Let the speculation begin.

Estimated release date: ???

Disco

Disco is an application in the works by Austin Sarner, Brian Ball and Jasper Hauser.

Details which have been made public are the application will help fulfill a function Apple included something in their OS, but didn’t do well. Something to do with burning CD’s, but with a twist…

The UI of the application looks amazing from the screenshots we’ve seen so far, I cant wait to see exactly what this application does.

Estimated release date: Late 2006

Leopard is already looking like a huge step forward from Tiger, and Steve has only unveiled 10 features so far, with many more top secret features yet to come. How’s Leopard going to change the way you work?

Virtual Desktops With Spaces

We all wish we could be using one of Apple’s 30� Cinema Displays but in reality it’s not going to happen. With Apple’s latest Leopard innovation you can take advantage and enjoy your small MacBook or iMac’s display as much as the 30� Cinema, minus the sore neck.

Create up to 16 virtual desktops and switch between them at a press of a button. This will be very handy for those multi-taskers who are constantly emailing and browsing the web, while chatting and editing photos in Aperture. You’ll now be able to create three separate desktops for these tasks. One for Mail and Safari, one for iChat and Adium, and one for Aperture.

This should speed up your workflow and keep your workspace visually clean and un-cluttered.

Backing Up With Time Machine

I dont think I need to cover the main features of Time Machine because we all know what it is already, if not, the best way to learn is to watch Apple’s demonstration video here.

How’s Time Machine going to change the way we work? For starters, we are never going to lose a file again, by accidental deletion or by a hard-drive failure. Backing up will be made as simple as, well, doing nothing, and the 4% of regular people who backup will shoot up before we can blink.

Time Machine is going to save people a lot of stress from the normal backing up routines which become tiring. You wont even have to think about backing up, Leopard will do that for you. The only time you’ll need to think about it is when you lose a file, which you will be able to get back with a click of the mouse.

Organization With Mail

I’ve been pretty disappointed with Apple’s lack of an organization application in Tiger. How hard would it have been to implement something into iCal from the start? The main thing is, we are getting a brand new system wide notes and to-to organizer based in Mail, which will be able to be accessed from all applications, making Mail your true “one stop shop� for getting yourself sorted on your Mac.

With Leopard a Notes & To-Do tab will reside in Mail’s sidebar, allowing you to easily, and quickly keep tab on things you need to remember and do. In turn, this will keep you on target to get the things you need to get done finished, and will save you the embarrassment of forgetting an important date or meeting.

Business With iChat

When your wanting to show a Keynote presentation to a fellow student or business partner you usually have to either be next to them, or burn the keynote to a disk, mail it to them, and wait…You get no instant feedback on how they liked/disliked it, and it doesn’t feel very “personalâ€?.

iChat Theatre is going to change that, and much more.

You can start a video conference with a buddy, then begin a keynote presentation, or an iPhoto slideshow which will be played off to the side of the video chat. It’ll just be like your presenting this to them in the same room. This will be great for business people who are often on the go, and for families to show off holiday photos to their friends on the other side of the world..or fence.

Another wonderful addition to iChat which will make collaboration a breeze is “Remote Control�. You will be able to simply take control of another buddy’s computer directly through iChat, allowing you to work on podcasts, websites, or troubleshoot problems without any hassle. And if that cant get any better, iChat will automatically initiate a voice chat when you enable this feature so you can both chat and collaborate like no other before.

Dashboard

Forget checking multiple comic strips, eBay auctions, and status lists each and every day with the brand new enhanced Dashboard.

Simple create a “web clipping� widget at the click of a button, and make pieces of these web pages into widgets for quick and easy access.

The brand new Dashboard will save you even more time then Tiger’s Dashboard did, you’ll be smothered with by free time before you even know it.

Well, the keynote is a day in the past and we now have a great new professional Macintosh system in the open, the new Mac Pro.

Congratulations to the winners Caitlyn, and Bryan James.

Caitlyn guessed:

• Machine Name: MacPro
• Processor: Two 2.66GHz Xeon aka Woodcrest Stock
• Stock RAM: 1GB
• Stock HDD: 320GB
• Case Change: Yes (dual optical drive)
• Stock Video Card: ATI X1800 Pro
• Blue Ray: Yes HD-DVD: No

Bryan James guessed:

• Machine Name: Mac Pro
• Processor: 2x Xeon @2.66 GHz
• Stock Ram: 1 GB DDR2-667
• Case Change: Almost the same-will now have space for two optical drives
• Stock Video Card: nVidia 7900
• Blue Ray: No
• HD-DVD: No

Real Specs:

• Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
• 4MB shared L2 cache per processor
• 1.33GHz dual independent frontside buses
• 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
• 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
• 16x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Thanks to everyone who entered, this was just a small taste of things to come in the future. Enjoy your software! It will be on the way tomorrow!

ou look to the side of your desk and see an accumulation of paper and notes, you look up to the wall and see a collection of sticky notes with reminders on them. Isn’t there a better way to keep organized and clutter free?

Wallet by Waterfall Software is a great application for keeping passwords, software serials, to-do lists, credit card numbers, and other miscellaneous notes.

Wallet’s interface is so simple and easy to use, it actually makes keeping notes fun.

Two of Wallet’s striking features, which make it appeal much more then applications such as iOrganize and Yojimbo, is its 448-bit Blowfish encryption which is used to secure your data when you launch the application. This means no-one can access your data without a password, there is absolutely no way of cracking it. The other great Wallet feature is it simple interface which makes searching and organizing a breeze.

Adding a category into Wallet is as simple as hitting a button, and then typing a name for the category. To add an item to the list, simply hit the plus button, enter your details for the entry, press enter, and move onto the next one! Items can be deleted with just one hit of the minus button, so if you add something that you no longer need, it is a simple measure to eliminate it from the list.

Detail options are great in Wallet. When adding a new entry you are prompted for a title, name, serial number, organization, contact, and a notes area, which you can use for whatever you wish. You do not need to enter all of these details, it is just great to know you have them available to use.

What happens when you have hundreds of notes and passwords in your library and you need to access one quickly, the in-built search function which uses Spotlight technology is great for this situation, showing you your results in seconds. Can you do this while looking at the pile of notes on your desk?

Its well worth taking a few hours to catalog all your passwords and notes from your desk into Wallet, it will cut down on clutter and improve your working efficiency.

Go download Wallet, you wont regret working in a cleaner, more organized space.

Happy with the outcome of WWDC 06? I sure am, we got a nice early look at 10 fresh new features of 10.5 Leopard, saw the new Mac Pro’s and the Xserve, and price drops on the Apple Cinema Displays.

Mac Pro

Probably the most surprising thing that happened today, we all knew that the Mac Pro was going to be released, but for Apple to come out with only one model which can be customized to your personal liking wasn’t something I saw happening.

The Mac Pro features 2 Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running at 2, 2.66, and 3Ghz, 1GB of RAM (max 16GB, room for 4 hard-drives (to a total of 2TB), and dual optical drives.

There are over 4 million different combinations you can have when customizing the machine so there’s something for everyone, from a $2100 base system, to a $15,000 maxed out machine.

Surprisingly there were no changes made to the outside design of the case, bar the new dual-optical drives.

My take: Great deal on the 2.66Ghz machine, would have liked to have seen HD-DVD, but overall, a stonking machine.

Leopard

Although Steve is keeping tight reigns on the “innovative top secret� feature of Leopard, I wasn’t disappointed one bit with the 10 features he showed off to the developers this morning.

I’m really looking forward to using the brand new Mail 3, and most of all, Time Machine. Time Machine blew me away with it’s magnificent interface using Apple’s brand new Core Image developer tools.

Jobs also mentioned that there would be Front Row and PhotoBooth updates in Leopard, but thats all that was mentioned. Could Apple have something amazing up their sleeves for these two applications? Or were they just not important enough to go over in the keynote..?

Xserve


Nothing much to say here, they look like great servers which businesses will be all over.

Apple Cinema Displays

Nothing new here, as much as I would have liked to see new panels in 23, 27, and 30� sizes, with iSight built it and glossy screen as an option. The displays all had a minor price reductions though. Is this a sign of things to come over the next month or two? Does Apple want to diminish their current stock before unleashing some new displays everyone will have to have!?

Check out the folder in the dock on the Mac OSX Leopard 10.5 screenshot of iCal from Apple’s website. Notice the folder has a black triangle under it like applications do when they are open?

What could this mean? Post your thoughts below.

The Beta of the upcoming update to the Shiira web-browser, Shiira 2.0 has yesterday been released for public consumption.

Shiira 2.0 includes some exciting new features such as:

• Pagedock
• HUD Panels
• Shelf

• Full Screen Mode

• Enhanced UI

Check it out here

Technorati Tags: application

I’ve helped a few people purchase new Mac’s recently. And the hard question to answer is always “Is it worth having a portable and desktop, or should I just get one?� It’s really a personal choice, but here’s my opinion.

2 months ago I had a plan to purchase a MacBook Pro and an Apple Cinema Display, and discard my iMac G5. I ended up walking away with a MacBook 1.83Ghz, and an iMac 1.83Ghz. But why? Would the original plan have been more productive?

One of the reasons I went I discarded that original plan was the way I could have one main machine, my “digital hub�. The iMac is used as my hub, with all my documents, sites, images, movies, and music on it, while the MacBook is used as a portable machine with nothing stored on it bar applications, it’s mainly used for web browsing and writing.

If I had gone with the MBP + ACD option it would have been a pain having to unplug the display each time I wanted portability. With two machines, if one dies I always have another I can use until the other is getting fixed. It’s also nice to be able to be working on one, while the other is downloading or converting video files for the iPod.

The issue I have with using two machines is not keeping files in sync, because I just use Apple Remote Desktop to grab files from the iMac when I need them, then copy them back to the iMac when I’m back in range. The problem was with my RSS reader of choice. NewsFire. NewsFire doesn’t have an option to keep in sync between two Mac’s via .Mac, so when I’m on the MacBook and want to catch up on my RSS feeds, I have to open ARD and access NewsFire from the iMac remotely. Quite an annoyance.

.Mac is great for keeping my bookmarks and mail in sync on the two machines. I couldn’t be using two Mac’s without it, the sync and mail features are invaluable. If .Mac wasn’t sold by Apple I would be on the MacBook Pro + ACD setup, no doubt. But it’s so easy to keep all your vital information in sync with .Mac, I’ll be renewing when my 1 year subscription expires!

End the end, am I happy with my decision? Yes, I am, I’m very pleased with my current setup and will think it will suit me for at least another 18 months before I even need to think about upgrading or changing it.

David Lanham’s highly anticipated theme which has been in the works for over a year now has finally hit the shelves, at the brand new IconFactory site!

The theme, named “Amora� includes three highly stylish variations in the GuiKit, and also includes 6 wallpapers, along with an icon-set with over 100 amazing icons, specifically designed to accompany this theme.

Go check the theme out here, and the icons here.