I found out the other day (thanks Digital Inspiration) that Techsmith had released a new version of SnagIt.  There are few applications that I absolutely have to have as soon as they came out, but I like SnagIt so much I downloaded the free trial of the new version.

First, what is SnagIt?  For me, I use it all the time to take screen clippings.  Sure, I could use PrtSc and then Paint to crop the resulting image, but that’s slow and time-consuming.  I take a lot of screenshots – some for blogging, but most for my research.  SnagIt does this extremely well – you can set up different profiles, e.g, I use F11 to just take a quick region of the screen.  I use Shift+PrtSc to take a region and then open it in the SnagIt editor for further processing (i.e., edge effects, blurring, adding annotations, FTPing, saving as a file, etc.).  I have another profile that lets me take the exact same region of screen every single time – very useful for capturing images of a particular program’s output so I have a consistent look in my reports, etc. etc. etc.

Why do I love the new version so much?  Let me count the ways:

1. New interface.  The old one was functional.  This one is revamped to use the new “ribbon” concept popularized by Office 2007.  That’s not the reason I like it though – I like it because it’s pretty *and* functional.  I find it easier, and more intuitive, than the older version.
2. Tight integration.  Before, it was like SnagIt had a multiple personality problem.  There was the window that you got when you wanted to take a clipping.  A different one for the editor.  Some other kind of library thingy that I never ever went too.  Plus a bunch of different places to change your settings.  This version is more tight.  The editor and the new-looking library are basically in the same application.
3. Better library.  The fact that I can get to the library without jumping through hoops is one good thing.  Another is that it is actually very useful. Below, I included a screenshot of the library window (and if you want to figure out recursion, try taking a screenshot of SnagIt with itself.  Ugh.)  Anyway, along the bottom, you can see thumbnails of things you’ve clipped lately.  Along the right side, is a panel that right now is showing my computer’s folder structure, but which can also show clips by date, or even tag.  Tags! Not only can you tag a clip, but SnagIt also keeps information about which program you clipped it from, and if from the web, what the URL was.  What a great way to keep meta information about your clips, especially for bloggers.
4. Automatic saving.  SnagIt will now save all your clips for you.  So, if you know you want to save something, you can put it exactly where you want.  But, if you’re not sure you want it forever, but don’t really want to get rid of it yet, SnagIt will just hang onto it for you.  In the nifty library.  SnagIt could even replace your old clipboard management software, if you deal mostly with images.

I’m sure there will be other things that I love about SnagIt 9, but those are the things that have impressed me most during the first week of usage.  I know I’m going to be upgrading my license soon.  By the way, you can use the trial of version 9 without losing your older version.

For more information about this new version, you can check out the Digital Inspiration post.  Even better, head over to the SnagIt 9 What’s New page, where they walk you through the new goodness of this version.

SnagIt 9 will set you back $49.95 (USD) if you don’t have a previous version.  For myself, with an 8.x version, it will cost $24.95 to upgrade – but I can save 20%, i.e., upgrade for $19.95 if I do the switch before August 12.  I’m collecting my nickels right now :)

Are you using Office 2007 with new, potentially befuddling, ribbon interface?  Do you find yourself yearning to know where esoteric commands are now?

It used to be the case that you would have to read the help (ugh), or even head online to an interactive guide (such as this one for Word) that essentially translated the 2003 menu to 2007.

But fret no more!  I’ve just now been informed (hat tip to Marc over at the EN forum) that there’s actually a search powertoy that will let you type in what command you’re looking for, and then find everything that matches.  Kind of like using Launchy, or even Vista’s new start menu.

It’s called the Search Commands powertoy, and you can get it directly from Microsoft Office Labs.  It is experimental, unsupported and works for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, 2007 versions only.

If you can’t remember, or don’t know yet, how to get to certain commands in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint 2007, give the Search Commands powertoy a shot.  I find this an almost-timely addition to my stable.  “Almost” because just two days ago I wasted about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to insert a section break (at the next page) in Word 2007.  Now, I can just do this:

Ahhhhh, progress.

Readers who have been around for a while might recall that I’m a big EverNote fan (note the capital N).  You may be wondering why I haven’t blogged about the new Evernote (note the little n) 3 beta here…

Well, I’d like to say that it’s because my mother taught me that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.  But that’s not it.  Instead, it’s more out of loyalty to the EverNote 2.2 that I know and love.  Plus, to be honest, I don’t feel like wasting any more of my time constructively criticizing EN3b.  I’ve done a lot of that on their support forum, and mostly to no avail.  Hence, no discussions at all here.

On the forum today, there was a link to a great article: The New Coke Lesson: The Compulsion to Upgrade Can Produce a Marketing Disaster. Consider Vista and (Maybe) Evernote 3 by Gary North. Right away, I was struck by this quote:

But even monopolies tend to dissipate (except for Arm & Hammer Baking Soda). Here’s why: an unwillingness to listen to clients. “What do they know?”

They know how to shop for alternatives.

Gary makes some great points, especially about how hard it is for a new user to find anything out about the stable, fully-functional 2.2 version of EN, and about how bad the user manual is.  (I’ve read it; it’s pretty bad.  Plus, they haven’t even kept the manual up-to-date with the beta changes, which means it’s essentially useless now.)

Gary also suggests that EN’s marketing team is missing the ball, since the only way they’re going to make money is off the tablet PC version of EN, which they’re not advertising.  I’m not saying he’s wrong, but I know from the forum that EN has an even bigger cash cow on its mind.  There’s going to be a free version of the beta, which will limit you to some amount of online storage (the new EN3 paradigm is that all of your information lives in the ‘cloud’ and syncs to whatever machines you have connected).  A premium version of EN will have, well, premium features, such as more storage space, and maybe better security.  Unfortunately, they’re still throwing darts at the wall trying to figure out the best combination of storage space and cost.  And it’s going to be a monthly subscription fee, so you know they’ll be milking this cow for as long as they can.

Another thing that is mentioned in the article is that EN isn’t really giving its current 2.2 users incentive to switch.  This is true.  In fact, some of the more vocal supporters of 2.2 have said that not only will they not switch to this crippled new version of EN, but they’re actively looking for alternatives.

So, what do users know?  Well, we know how to shop ;)

And my recommendation to you?  EverNote 2.2 is still the best software I’ve ever used for organizing miscellaneous snippets, web clippings, research notes, lists. etc. etc.  If you want to check it out, skip the main Evernote page, and go straight to here.  As for the new beta?  Well, I think you can read between the lines.

Although I do all of my serious work on a laptop, it sits right beside a desktop that is really nothing more than a glorified radio and backup device. Every week, I synchronize my files between the two machines - this synchronization depends on date/time of files and if the two computer’s clock are off by more than minutes, I run into trouble.

Every now and then, I notice that the clocks aren’t synchronized, so I manually change one or the other to bring them in line. Today, I noticed that the difference was three minutes, even though I had just manually synched them a couple of days ago. What’s going on? Is my internal battery going? Surely, there must be some way to synchronize the clocks, say with the Internet.

Internet Time

Now, I’ve been using Windows XP for years now, and if I ever knew about the “Internet Time” tab in the Date and Time Properties window, I must have forgotten about it. A bit of googling brought me to that tab. What a smart idea, said I.

After looking at the two computers, I noticed that one was syncing (or trying to) with the windows.com server. The other was heading over to time.nist.gov. Now it makes perfect sense that the two computers were not in-sync between themselves; they were both looking to different servers.

Easy solution, I thought. Just set them to the same server. Unfortunately, of the two choices in that drop down list, I couldn’t get either of them to work on both machines. Yeesh. And, there didn’t seem to be any way of adding to that list. What’s the point of having a drop-down list, if you can’t add to it?

Adding a New Time Server

A bit more googling, and I discovered that it is very easy to add to the list; you just need to get your hands dirty in the registry. I found these instructions online (standard warnings about messing with the registry apply):

1. In the registry, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / DateTime / Servers]
2. If you want to add a new time server, right-click in the right panel and select new string value. The name should be a number, e.g., 3 for the third item in the list, and the value will be the name of the server.
3. Some example time servers:
   • “1″=”tick.usno.navy.mil”
   • “2″=”time-a.nist.gov”
   • “3″=”time-b.nist.gov”
   • “4″=”128.105.37.11″
   • “5″=”europe.pool.ntp.org”
   • “6″=”clock.isc.org”
   • “7″=”north-america.pool.ntp.org”
   • “8″=”time.windows.com”
   • “9″=”time.nist.gov”
4. You can get a list of US government time servers here (via).

My registry entries now look like this:

Personally, I’ve been a big fan of the US Naval Observatory clock for years, so it’s going to be my time server.

Now, all I have to do is make sure that I can access that time server on all of my machines, and their clocks will be in sync. Note: it doesn’t really matter what time server you use, just as long as all your machines point to the same one and can get the time without error.

Let’s just file this tip under “things I wish I’d known ages ago” ;)

I recently introduced you to TodoPaper, a light-weight task/next action manager.  What I didn’t tell you was that the reason I was initially charmed by TodoPaper was that it reminded me of Tudumo, kind of like its little brother.

I first used Tudumo about eight or so months ago.  It’s a strong application that fits very naturally with the Getting Things Done philosophy.  The main reason I stopped using it was that I wanted to keep my next actions and my calendar together, which for me, meant moving back to Outlook.  But if you told me that I had to stop using Outlook tomorrow, I would switch back to Tudumo for my next actions. 

What do I like about Tudumo?

• I like the look.  See the screenshot above.  It’s nice and clean, and the icons in the left column indicate what kind of action you’re looking at.
• There is explicit support for the concept of action, next action (for those that insist that there should be only one *next* action for a project), waiting for, someday/maybe, etc.  Plus, there’s a “hold” status, for things that you can’t deal with yet.
• Unlike TodoPaper (or many other GTD apps I’ve tried), it provides date support.  In other words, I can put in tasks that have deferred start dates (making them “hold” actions), and have them show up when they need to be seen.  You can filter to see the next three or seven days, or see all actions.
• It’s easy to search for actions, e.g., @computer and @home (shift-click), @computer or @home (ctrl-click).
• There is support for projects, as well as notes on individual tasks. 
• You can have as many tags as you like on an action.  Plus, you’re not confined to tags that start with @.  (On the other hand, TodoPaper recognizes @xxx as a tag automatically; with Tudumo, you have to enter tags in a separate field.)
• There is an easy entry window; you can add multiple new actions at once.  They show up at the top of your list and you can organize them (including assigning tags and dates) later.
• Although the data is not in a pure text file, it is in xml format, and you can retrieve your information later if necessary.  The developer of Tudumo is a firm believer in the fact that you own your data.  I love that.
• Tudumo keeps count of actions in your list.  That lets you know how far behind you are ;)
• It’s feature rich: backups, keyboard shortcuts, ability to print, automatic archiving of done actions to a separate file, etc. etc.

I think one of the greatest things about Tudumo is its developer, Richard.  When I was initially testing out Tudumo, I found him to be very receptive to my suggestions.  And you know how much I love good service. 

Although I neglected Tudumo for a few months (and shame on me for not blogging about it earlier!), I’m glad to see it’s still going strong.  The application just keeps getting better and better.

If you’re looking for something a bit more feature-filled than TodoPaper, but not quite overkill like Outlook, consider giving Tudumo a shot.  There’s a how-to video and a 60 day trial to get your feet wet.  The app costs $29.95, which is eminently reasonable for keeping you organized.