The first Advent is approaching, here in Germany the first Christmas markets have already opened, and people are decorating their homes for Christmas with hundreds of beautiful and warm lights.Time to remind ourselves that we should be grateful for all the good things that happened to us in the past year. So wherever you are in the world, I wish you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving week. Enjoy the upcoming Christmas season!

It’s update season here at DEVONtechnologies — and you shouldn’t miss it! We have added new functionality and eye candy, made all apps faster and more reliable, and, of course, fixed dozens of bugs and glitches. And we have added a brand new freeware app: Grid!

While we are working hard on behind-the-scene changes for a totally new sync technology that will soon do away with the current problems we have released two other new features this weekend for DEVONthink To Go: a brand new PDF viewer and a new rich text editor that allows you to use formatted text on your iPad or iPhone. This makes it now possible to view even very large PDF documents including scans on your device without making the app quit due to memory limitations and to edit formatted text, something iOS does not yet offer itself like OS X does. Of course, DEVONthink To Go 1.2.1 fixes a large number of bugs, too, and is fully compatible to iOS 5.

German handbook writer Michael Malzahn has put together a brand new workbook for DEVONthink in German language. DEVONthink — Das Arbeitsbuch introduces the reader to our information management software step-by-step from the installation to the deepest corners of the program. Many screenshots, tables, and a keyboard shortcut list make the 248-page ebook a must-have for German-language DEVONthink users. (mehr)

In a recent article on TidBITS Tonya Engst talks about how she manages school papers digitally:

The ScanSnap is addictive, and I’ve hardly begun to learn how to use it. Here’s how cool it is: My son comes home from the first day of school with a fistful of forms and handouts. I open the scanner, stick them in, choose an option from the ScanSnap icon in the Dock, and push the big blue button on the scanner. Within moments (or minutes if I chose to run OCR) the entire pile is onscreen, even the double-sided forms and the pages that emerge from the backpack slightly crumpled. (mehr)

What method to use for capturing thoughts is a highly subjective subject: some write outlines, some just a simple text, and some prefer mind maps. DEVONthink supports text and very simple outlines (e.g. using rich text lists), but not (yet) mind maps. Some options are: … (mehr)

To add a table to a rich text document place your insertion caret, then choose Format > Table. An empty table is inserted and the standard Mac RTF table panel appears that lets you change e.g. the numbers of rows and columns. (mehr)

After ironing out the compatibility issues with OS X 10.7 Lion we have now finally added the new window full screen mode, Quick Look support for attachments to rich text documents, and much more. Definitely a recommended update, and it’s free.

If you are using Getting Things Done (GTD) you know the concept of a “tickler file”: folders for all twelve months with sub-folders for each day of the month (also known as “43 folders”). You place documents into the sub-folder of the day on which you will need the document. If you want to postpone the task you move the document forward to another day. (mehr)

Finally, Apple approved DEVONagent Pro 3.0.1 today and released it to the Mac App Store. So if you were waiting for this to happen, today is your day. Click here to get to the DEVONagent Pro page on the Mac App Store.