If you want to add additional information to a document in DEVONthink, that’s what the Comment field is made for. You can find it in the info panel that opens with Tools > Show Info or by pressing Command-Shift-I (we didn’t choose Command-I like in the Finder as this would collide with ‘make selected text italic’). Best of all: Comments are searchable.

If you are, like me, working almost ten hours a day with your Mac, you’re repeating the same hand movements over and over again. If you’re susceptible to RSI (repetitive strain injury; more accessible info here) try the litte utility AntiRSI.

Naming the documents that you put into your DEVONthink database can be a science or even an art in itself. Some prefer to use some systematics, other precede the documents with the current date (something I used to do but have long abandoned) , and even others simply try to describe the contents of the file. For most documents, however, a good name is already there: the headline of the captured article. To quickly rename the document, select the headline or whatever text passage you would like to use, right-click or Control-click, and choose Set Title As from the contextual menu. (more)

Last week I came across an interesting backup and archival solution: JungleDisk. It uses Amazon’s S3 storage and makes it available as a local WebDAV disk. You can use it to make regular or incremental backups, or use it for longer-time archival, e.g., of your documents. And if you’re worried about your privacy: JungleDisk encrypts not only the transmission but also the files before uploading. The main difference compared to other online storage services is, however, that Amazon S3 charges not for a fixed storage size but per GB of used space and per GB transferred. Rates are as low as 15 US cents per GB and month. The ‘disk’ is never limited to a certain selected size. Check it out. (more)

If you are searching with DEVONagent Pro you may get results in multiple languages because especially technical terms are often the same in English, German, even French. To avoid confusing both yourself and DEVONagent Pro’s AI with [insert whatever language you don’t understand here] gibberish, use the built-in language filter. Maximize the search window so that the toolbar is visible, then switch to the Settings tab. Select your language of choice from the Language pop-up menu to restrict searched to that language and uncheck Ignore Diacritics if you want to search for words with umlauted or accented characters. This setting is temporary, you can also add this to any search set.

If you like using roman numerals for naming items, you may not be satisfied with Mac OS X’s ability to sort tem correctly. Our power user ‘kalisphoenix’ has posted a nice workaround in our online forum that uses Unicode characters, each one representing one roman numeral. You can easily copy the numerals from the posting and paste it wherever you need them.

Hello everyone, we’re officially back from our winter holidays. I hope that all of you had a wonderful time!

I used the quiet time to organize and archive all the stuff that collected … itself … in the last twelve months. Chat logs, scanned letters, web clippings, and, of course, email, email, email. In an Internet-based business like ours all this stuff quickly takes over all available space — and so attention. Fortunately I am working for just the right company :-) So here’s what I did: … (more)

If you need to get table-like data into DEVONthink Pro or out of it, nothing easier than that. From, e.g., Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice export your data as tab-separated or comma-separated values (.tsv, .csv). Import this into DEVONthink Pro and it will automagically appear as a sheet. To get a sheet out of DEVONthink, select it (not the individual records) and choose File > Export > As Files and Folders. It will get exported as tab-separated values that can be read by all spreadsheet applications on any platform.

DEVONagent allows you to search not just using Google, but with many more specialized search engines. For serious web research, you should use this possibility. Choose the search set that best suits your needs instead of just using the default ‘Internet (Fast Scan).’ To choose another search set (a parameter set for the next search run), select it from the little magnifying glass pop-up in the search field. (more)

If you are suffering the heat as much as we do here in Europe at the moment, here’s my favourite summer drink that helps you survive the afternoon: Lassi or Ayran. All you need is yoghurt, water, sugar or salt, and some ice. Get the yoghurt from your Turkish dealer, Turkish yoghurt is a bit sour. But some lemon juice also does the job. Fill your glass between 30 and 50 percent with yoghurt, then fill up with water. Add sugar (Lassi) or salt (Ayran), and ice cubes to make it really cold. Enjoy!