Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

Too Much News?

October 16, 2008

Another article this week that caught my attention: The New York Times writes about the “Too much news” phenomenon, which hits many people hard especially in these troubled times.

This explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession. They find themselves taking breaks at work every 15 minutes to check the latest updates, and at the end of the day, taking laptops to bed. Then they pad through darkened homes in the predawn to check on the Asian markets. (more)

More on DEVONthink 2.0

October 6, 2008

It’s been a while since my last update on the development status of DEVONthink 2.0. We have continued to work on it silently but full steam ahead. We’re now very close to reaching the internal beta phase so I have posted a quick update to the development status thread in our announcement board.

Your Documents, Up in the Clouds?

September 25, 2008

There’s a lot of discussion about ‘cloud computing’ and storing your data ‘in the clouds’. Some new applications are based on this paradigm and are either built ‘in the cloud’ or use a servers cluster for synchronizing multiple clients and for giving web access to your data. While we clearly see the necessity for synchronizing a database between two or more Macs and maybe iPhones, we’re still unsure about what implications full web access to your documents has. My top issues are data integrity and data safety. (more)

Maintenance Updates

September 23, 2008

Just a quick note that we have published maintenance updates for all editions of DEVONthink as well as for DEVONnote. You can find all details on our news page as well as in our newsletter.

Back from the States, and Some Insight

September 18, 2008

As I had posted here before my vacation, we were not just visiting Chicago, IL, and the wonderful Lake Michigan in the last three weeks, but we also invaded Bill DeVille’s log cabin. We spend a wonderful and relaxing week with literally tons of great barbecue. Staying miles away from any civilization somewhere the Indiana forest has … challenges to it … but we mastered. And, I finally found out why we only get good marks for our customer support and so few complaints: See what I spotted on Bill’s mantelpiece. (more)

Would a Paperless Life Make You Happy?

August 14, 2008

Hugo of Streamlined Mind asks his readers if a paperless life would make you happier:

First of all it’s a good idea to eliminate as much of the incoming paper as possible. Let’s take some time to make a list of all sources of paper sent to us. Bills, obligations and notices, promotional material, things like that. Do we really need them? Do we read all that stuff? […] Do you think you can have a paperless life? (more)

Image Capture Support is Back

July 24, 2008

Today we released DEVONthink Pro Office 1.5.3 as well as updates for DEVONthink Pro, DEVONthink Personal, and DEVONnote. We’re re-introducing Image Capture based scanning including grayscale and document feeder support so you now have the choice: Image Capture or TWAIN?

Why Didn't They Tell Us Earlier?

June 26, 2008

When Mac OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ came out, it broke our scanner support based on the system’s Image Capture framework. We had been in exchanges with the Developer Technical Support and their Image Capture team at that time to find out why our capture function worked on Mac OS X 10.4.x but not on 10.5. To no avail. After a frustrating six months we moved on and licensed ExactScan Capture which is now embedded into every copy of DEVONthink Pro Office. This works with all TWAIN scanners but breaks with some scanners that are only compatible to Image Capture, not TWAIN. (more)