Lifehacker has posted a nice review, sort of, of DEVONthink with a good comments thread that also touches a few ways on how to use DEVONthink. Feel free to add your own comments :-)

One simple way to improve the Classify feature of DEVONthink is to exclude certain groups and documents from being used for classification. You could, e.g., exclude groups with indexed backup CDs or archived mailing lists from classification because they are ‘atypical’ for the contents of this database but you want to them in there anyway for easy access. To exclude an item from being used for classification, select it, open the Info panel (Tools > Show Info) and check ‘Exclude from classification.’

The whole DEVONtechnologies team wishes Bill DeVille all the best for his 75th birthday. Enjoy your wonderfully prepared and tasty Hallelujah Crab at Juban’s (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.A.), Bill!

Yours Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann & the DEVONtechnologies team

No Tuesday Tip today, but one, no!, two updates: We have just released the second public beta of DEVONthink Pro and Pro Office 1.3. DEVONthink Pro Office fixes a number of bug and adds a few requested features, and DEVONthink Pro 1.3b2 brings all the changes we have made to DEVONthink Pro in the recent weeks but have only published as part of DEVONthink Pro Office. (more)

A lot has been written about MacHeist in the last couple of days, serious criticism and defense. And as we participated in various promotion events recently, I want to say a few words to this controversy and about our engagement with MacHeist, MacZOT, and MacAppADay. To make it short, Oliver Breidenbach from Boinx Software and Roustem Karimov from onepasswd.com have said it all. I totally agree with them. (more)

While many people, especially in Germany, are complaining at the moment about everything becoming worse, this perception is distorted. Yes, some managers sack thousands of people only to drive their company’s shareholder value into even higher heights. The German health care system reform is a mess. And unemployment is dropping very slowly. But, from a meta perspective, this is clearly “Lamenting at the Top Level.” For people in many other regions of this World, our wealth and our high standard of living is beyond imagination. (more)

Are you still typing “www.google.com” over and over into the address field of a DEVONagent web browser window just to quickly look up a vendor’s web address? Don’t do it again. There’s a smarter way: In DEVONagent, some plugins (which are basically interfaces between the application and the search engine) come with predefined keywords that you can simply type into the address field, followed by a query (in the search engine’s format; don’t enter one of DEVONagent’s more sophisticated operators here.) DEVONagent will send you query to the desired search engine and show the result page. (more)

Last month I had announced that we’d send DEVONthink Pro Office to our team of beta testers. Now, we’ve released it as a public beta for all of you! Check out our updated product page including the unique features and the screenshots. Compare it with the other editions of DEVONthink. And, finally, DOWNLOAD and TRY it! (more)

To delete PhotoStickies favorites or states, select them with the Option key held. This immediately removes them without you having to open them first.

Many of you who are using our software now for a long time know that we’re sensible to today’s major problems, among them the unequal distribution of resources (leading to poverty and starvation in a rich world) and the destruction of our planet through pollution. So, some may ask, where are these sandal moments? Buried in commercialism? No, by no means. Here’s one again: We have just switched our electricity provider from traditional power, which is nuclear power here, to hydro-electric power. It’s environment friendly, does it not produce any waste, and, best of all, it’s cheaper, too. So, the DEVONtechnologies servers are now powered by a small hydro-electric 3 million kWh power station located just about 300 meters from here. It was build right after the second world war and was completely modernized just four years ago. By night, it’s even nicely illuminated! (more)