Devonian Times Masthead

The DEVONtechnologies Blog

April 3, 2018

Something Beautiful

Data, data, data. Words and numbers, graphs, and figures. Necessary in our work and lives, but we all need a break from looking at these things. Though it doesn’t contribute to your efficiency or enhance your workflows, desktop wallpapers provide a nice break for your eyes. Apple has always provided great desktop pictures for us to use, but it can’t hurt to have more. (more)

April 1, 2018

DEVONthink to Adopt Blockchain Technology

The most-discussed new technology in the last few years is clearly the Blockchain. While it’s best known as the basis for Bitcoin it’s main advantage is its highly decentralized approach to data storage. Data is added in encrypted form to a robust chain of byte blocks that make tempering with it impossible. Reliable versioning comes with the approach as a free extra, and as all data is not only stored locally but also on an uncountable number of other computers world-wide data loss is something no longer worth thinking about. (more)

March 29, 2018

Search DEVONthink with HoudahSpot

HoudahSpot is a powerful utility to find documents, images, and other files. It uses your Mac’s Spotlight database but gives you many more options that let you narrow down your search to exactly what you’re looking for. (more)

March 27, 2018

Highlighting the Web

Highlighting is a tried-and-true method of isolating details in a body of text. At a glance, more important information is easily distinguished from the less important content. Many people know you can highlight passages in PDF files. But many people also clip a lot of web content — web archives, formatted notes, and HTML pages — and still have the need for highlighting. DEVONthink has that option covered too. (more)

March 20, 2018

Search Depth in DEVONagent

With DEVONagent Pro, there are several built in Web search sets. These range from the quickly returning Web (Express) to a much longer running Web (Deepest). While the tendency may be to opt for the deepest searches possible, you should understand these searches will take much longer as links are followed more deeply … (more)

March 14, 2018

DEVONthink To Go 2.5 Adds Security Features

We know that you care about your privacy. But we also know that from time to time you hand your iPhone or iPad to friends or colleagues. Which means that they could, in an unattented moment, open DEVONthink To Go and have a look at your databases. With its new app-wide passcode version 2.5 makes sure that they can’t. (more)

March 13, 2018

Federico and Eric Talk About iOS, the Mac, and More

In his most recent exclusive Club MacStories newsletter Federico Viticci chatted with me about the tech industry, the difference between Mac and iOS apps, and how DEVONtechnologies approaches the problem of the data flood. We also talked about iOS 11 productivity features, Project Marzipan, and about using iOS in light aircraft cockpits. (more)

March 6, 2018

Shorten Long Filenames

Names. Names should allow us to quickly identify something at a glance. Tiger. Yeah, I know what that is. 2012 Taxes. Got it. 4d0f1bfec91ff2472.doc… wait, what?!? To make things easier we can create a more specific name, like BankOne VISA - January 2018 Statement - PAID - 2018-01-15.pdf This is certainly more clear but such long filenames may not fully display in all applications or on smaller form factor devices. And word-wrapping can sometimes add to the confusion. (more)

February 27, 2018

Sheets of External Data

One of the coolest features in Microsoft Excel is the ability to link a spreadsheet to a delimited text file (like comma- or tab-delimited) in the Finder. This allows you to populate and update the spreadsheet with the data from the text file without having to type in the data yourself. When the text file changes, Excel reflects this change in the spreadsheet too. (more)