Creative use of tags

Uno_Lavoz

@benfdc Point duly noted. That risk should be taken into account by the average user who might be a bit sloppy in their deletion. In all my decades of computing I've never been in a position where I've had to recover specific database items/passwords/files. If I delete something it's because I want it gone forever.

However, if someone is in a situation where they worry that they'll want to recover specific database items, then here are the things that protect against that: Time Machine, Storing "Older Database Backups" folders inside their sparsebundle on Dropbox, and lastly (if needed): Using a backup service with much longer revision history.

One overarching thought I've been having this whole time is that living a reliable paperless life really does require a lot of advanced computer skills in order to stay safe. I'd never tell the average Joe Schmoe with 10483 viruses on his Windows computer to go paperless. He would lose all of his data.

There's a market opportunity for someone who can provide all of this security in a simple package. Some service providing totally secure, client-side-encrypted (to prevent snooping) cloud backups along with at least 6-12 months of history/revisions for all of your files. You'd ideally have a Dropbox-like vault folder on your computer, where every file you drop in that folder becomes encrypted with your own private key and then uploaded to the service. Then, to add in the "paperless/database" backup aspect, you'd have a simple, graphical tool which you give a list of folders to watch (such as 1Password, DEVONthink and OmniFocus) and it'll keep those databases backed up too. It could even come with presets for the data-locations of popular apps.

Call it "The Paperless Cloud of Fluffy Rainbow-Unicorns . com". Even I would sign up, even at a pretty high cost. That would absolutely be the ideal cloud service. Pre-encrypted, syncing of all desired files and databases, totally secure, long file revision histories. It'd be awesome.

The only reason I casually mention this idea for free, rather than creating a startup company and securing funding, is that I have A) Another destiny in life and have no time to run a company, and B) It's not exactly the strongest business idea; it's too easy for competitors to improve their sync-clients to provide the exact same cool features that I just described, and then compete on cost. It'd be a race to the bottom.

But still, I hope some existing cloud provider out there does what I just described. It'd be the ideal cloud client.

For now, I settle for automation scripts to automatically collate and encrypt all of the important data, the way a desktop client would do it. Which brings me full circle: It'd be so cool if Knox could have this sparsebundle-rsynced database/library/file backup feature built-in. I'd actually buy it.

Okay, back to topic?

Ben, and everyone else: I'd love to hear other productivity tips for you. How do you manage your workflow? Any cool apps to recommend? What are your vital apps? I know, I know, the topic was originally about tagging, but that's been discussed to silence already, so we might as well carry on the productivity-trend. ;)

[Deleted User]

A discussion about organizing files on the Mac must include Hazel. I use it to rename, move and tag (works with both Openmeta and Mavericks tags) my files, and more. It can even find the payment day in an invoice and name the pdf with that date, for example.

And Quicksilver for the manual stuff...

benfdc

Stuff I use daily (besides 1Password):

Workflowy (referral link) It’s an app for iOS and runs in the browser on the desktop. Workflowy is first outliner / organizer / to do app to really grab me since MaxThink for MS-DOS, which was my right-hand app back in the day.

Evernote as freeform database and clipping manager. All platforms.

MoneyWell to track my spending and keep my balances handy. OS X and iOS.

SpiderOak (referral link) for secure sync and backup of stuff that I do not keep encrypted on the desktop. All platforms.

LastPass (referral link) for easy “away from home” access to passwords and the like. All platforms.

Uno_Lavoz

@benfdc I just saw that you edited your prior post to link to an article about sparsebundle corruption on Dropbox. I therefore have to comment on this so that people don't get the wrong impression: There is no sparsebundle/disk image corruption issue with Dropbox. That guy was doing it wrong, by trying to mount a disk image on two computers at once. That obviously won't work - for the same reason that OS X itself doesn't allow you to mount disk images on more than one computer simultaneously: Each machine would have its own "idea" of what is on the hard disk and the various writes would conflict and the state would be totally messed up. Of course there's going to be chaos and inconsistencies. It had nothing to do with Dropbox.

@Xe997 A discussion about organizing files on the Mac must include Hazel.

Holy balls, that's the kind of app I've been looking for! I could see so many uses. The first thing I am going to do is set it to watch my "incoming files" folder and automatically sorting everything in it into a neat hierarchy based on filetypes and dates and stuff like that. This is a definite buy from me. Thanks!

Quicksilver is nice too. It's the best keyboard-based launcher I've used. But I actually haven't used it since like 2008. Nowadays I exclusively use Spotlight to launch documents and apps. What are you using Quicksilver for that Spotlight can't do? I remember it having lots of plugins for neat things.

@benfdc Workflowy

Hmm... That's a very dangerous tool. At first glance, I saw the demo video and thought "cool! it's like an endlessly nested wiki." But there are some huge issues with using it for to-dos, etc: You end up endlessly nesting and dumping info until it's just a huge pile of unsorted nothingness, which in turn means no overview/knowing where to start, which in turn leads to procrastination.

It's better to use OmniFocus to break down jobs into their components and assigning contexts + locations to every task so that they actually get done. Contexts are things like "Online," or "Home" or "Garage" or "Office." The idea is that you tag every task properly. Then, instead of looking at a huge pile of to-dos (a la Workflowy), you just switch the Context view to "Home" (if you are at home) and start crossing off things you can do while you're at home. It keeps track of your progress in everything and supports both parallel and serial tasks, deadlines, flagging important tasks, reminding you to review your to-do lists to ensure it's still accurate, etc. It even supports location-tagging and has mobile clients, so that your cellphone can beep at you when you're near the grocery story and say "Buy turkey for thanksgiving!" It's awesome.

That being said, Workflowy could be super useful for sketching out ideas rapidly in a much more structured manner than a text document. It's sort of like a text-only mindmap.

If I were to use such a thing, I would use Tree instead, which I've been checking out lately. It's like Workflowy (a text tree) but totally offline and private. Maybe worth you checking it out if you want an offline version of Workflowy?

The main reason I haven't bought Tree yet is that I avoid all software that makes you dump everything into one place. It leads to a mountain of data that becomes really hard to sift through. We have to remember that the most blissful state is to not have any data that needs sorting, not to build a great container for stuffing it all into and putting a lid on it.

@benfdc Evernote

That's a fantastic tool. Used to love it until DEVONthink. There's a lot of overlap between the two. What settled it for me is that Dt is offline (private) and has a fantastic Artificial Intelligence-engine that auto-guesses where incoming data should be sorted and suggests possible folders. Makes it super easy to jot down notes or clip URLs or import files, which all get dumped into its Inbox, and then you auto-sort them into appropriate folders later.

Both tools are great, but Dt is a lot more powerful. I've been using it for years and probably only use 10% of its features. It's absolutely jam-packed.

@benfdc MoneyWell

Oooh, that is the best finance tracker I've ever seen! Beautiful and really advanced. Nice find! <3 :)

[Deleted User]

Quicksilver is nice too. It's the best keyboard-based launcher I've used. But I actually haven't used it since like 2008. Nowadays I exclusively use Spotlight to launch documents and apps. What are you using Quicksilver for that Spotlight can't do?

It takes time to understand exactly what Quicksilver can do. When I started using it in 2009 the development of it was dead. It crashed, and I didn't understand why I should use it instead of Spotlight. It got resurrected some time later and I gave it another shot. It helped that the new team had collected the documentation and plugins in one place, and of course fixed the stability issues. Now I can't use a Mac without Quicksilver. I still use Spotlight, but that is another kind of tool in my opinion.

Spotlight can search for objects and then do two things: open them (enter) or reveal them in Finder (cmd + enter). Quicksilver can do so much more. The UI is, as you know, built out of 2 or 3 panes (depending on action). In the first pane is the object, say a document, application, URL or even a 1Password object. In second pane there is the action. For example, move, copy, rename, add tag (see? I'm staying on topic), get path, show info, compress, reveal in Finder, open in Terminal. And where Spotlight only opens documents in their default application, Quicksilver also includes an "Open with" command. Works with URL as well, so Chrome and Firefox can access my Safari bookmarks for free (and vice versa). The action "Quit" can be used to quit application that doesn't live in the cmd + tab switcher, like 1Password mini, Dropbox and other "background" apps. Want to launch a second copy of an app, like two VLCs to compare two videos? That can be done in Quicksilver too.

Instead of using the File > Open recent menu in an application, I use Quicksilver to right arrow into an application, displaying recently opened files.

Then there is the plugins that extend Quicksilver's functionality. Like:

UI Access plugin: probably my favorite. Can be used to display all the menu items of the current (or any running) application.

Display plugin: adds the action "Set desktop picture", and makes it possible to change the resolution of the screen.

Services plugin: Services are useful, but are hidden away in the right click menu in the Finder. With Quicksilver they act like any action.

Safari, Firefox and Chrome plugins: add browser bookmarks and other things to the Quicksilver catalog.

Web search plugin: perform web searches.

And of course, triggers. I have a lot of triggers set up. That way, I don't have to search for Safari every time I want to open it (even if Quicksilver finds it after just typing "s"). Instead I simply press F16. Is Safari already open, then F16 hides the app instead. And I hate ejecting volumes with the normal right click or dragging to trash. I use a Quicksilver trigger to quickly get a list of all mounted volumes, and then I use the eject action on them. Another trigger invokes the clipboard history, another displays the contents of the Downloads folder. And so on.

Yes, there is a learning curve. There are a lot of settings that needs to be tweaked to get it right, and the default interface is ugly as sin. So that is likely why people give up on Quicksilver.

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 Wow, this reminded me of why I had to quit Quicksilver. It was right around 2009 when development stopped and the project seemed dead. It's great to hear that it has been revived.

Better yet, you reminded me of why I need Quicksilver! I manually do all of the things you describe. I could save a lot of time, sanity and friction by using Quicksilver instead! It had been so long that I had forgotten how powerful Quicksilver is, and how limited I am with Spotlight's only ability to open documents.

Thanks a lot, I'll save the description and use every plugin you recommend. I'm installing Quicksilver right now.

I'm all about power-user apps and having as few (and as great) apps as possible, and this is absolutely worthy of daily use.

You mentioned the "UI Access" plugin for getting access to menu-items inside of Quicksilver. I'll do you one better in that regard:

KeyCue - the developer is known for being a jerkface and the price is high, but it's so good and perfectly does what it's designed to do. There's nothing that comes close to it in this regard (the free "CheatSheet" blows).

I hold down the Cmd-key for about 3/4 of a second (don't press any other keys or move the mouse) and it gives me a beautiful overview of all available key shortcuts - and it's searchable! They light up based on what modifier-keys I hold down or what search strings I type in. You'll master the shortcuts and advanced features of all your software with this. Not only will you find what you were looking for, but you'll discover things you had no idea existed.

If you look up KeyCue videos on YouTube, be aware that they're all at least half a year old and are for the OLD version. The new Version 7 introduced the free-type searching.

I'd say install the trial and begin referring to it regularly to learn your software. You'll wonder how you could ever stand using computers without it. All of those "hidden" app features are suddenly presented to you in a way that will allow you to learn the keyboard shortcuts rapidly. It's awesome.

One setting I recommend changing is setting the "system-wide shortcuts" key to a different modifier than Cmd, so that Cmd is devoted to just showing the active application's shortcuts. Otherwise you'll have the menu populated with lots of useless extras describing how to take screenshots in OS X, enabling dictation, etc. ;) In fact I set my system-wide one to Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-Shift since I barely ever need to check those out. Anyway, enjoy!...

benfdc

@Uno_Lavoz—

Online versus offline is a trade-off. Lose privacy, gain ubiquity and easier sharing. One of the things I like about Workflowy is that I can share some lists with my wife (like the grocery list and the to-do list for our move) and keep others to myself. Sharing can be view-only or edit. And Evernote lets me share notebooks.

OmniFocus reminds me of GrandView from the MS-DOS era. Some of my old law firm colleagues took to GrandView, but I was solidly in the MaxThink faction. I like lists of lists, not stuff with too many dimensions, and not even outlines qua outlines. I’ve always been an admirer of Dave Winer’s work, but his style of outliner, including his extremely intriguing new Fargo project, doesn’t appeal to me. Heck, I’m so finicky that I never took to the Windows version of MaxThink.

Uno_Lavoz

@benfdc Ahh, sharing to-dos and grocery lists is a neat use of Workflowy! I've sometimes thought about apps for sharing grocery lists. But usually I do the shopping.

As for GrandView, I can see how OmniFocus reminded you of it. There are several similarities in prioritizing tasks and so on. However, OmniFocus was written using the latest interpretation of David Allen's Getting Things Done protocol and how it can relate to computers, with input from productivity gurus like Merlin Mann and David Allen himself. It's the pinnacle of GTD apps. I say that having tried the competition. :-) OmniFocus is very clean and efficient. However, to anyone reading I'd say it's worth holding out on a purchase, though, because OmniFocus 2 is in beta testing at the moment, so you can save money and avoid paying twice if you're not in a hurry.

You can get all of your "lists of lists" with OmniFocus, because it allows endlessly nesting and grouping projects and tasks as deeply as you want. You can go for a deep workflowy-like hierarchy if you want to. Give it a spin.

[Deleted User]

KeyCue seems like a nice app, but I'm not sold on how the search works. I must move the mouse to reach the search field. With UI Access, a trigger (ctrl + space) invokes the complete list of the current application's menu items (that's 135 of them in the Finder, and 860 (!) in Word). Searching the list works just like searching for files, so I just type some letters and it filters the results. For example, typing "hi" in Safari makes "Clear history" the top result. Pressing enter presses that item, done. With KeyCue, the same thing seems to highlight the item but I have to move my mouse to click it. A nice thing with UI Access that got added in a recent update is that not only does it search for the item itself, but also its place in the menu hierarchy. So typing "hi" doesn't only show "Clear history" but also every item in the History tree, even when they don't have "History" included in the name. The same update also gave Quicksilver the power to learn what items I was looking for, just like it always has been learning about files. So after a few presses, Quicksilver now only needs the single letter "h" to know that I'm looking for "Clear history".

You're right though: KeyCue makes it easier to actually discover what items there is, and what their keyboard shortcuts are. So if your goal is to learn about them, then KeyCue is a better choice. With UI Access, the point is instead to let your forget the keyboard shortcuts, and instead rely on your muscle memory to type the name of the items quickly, without even looking at the interface. But you have to have atleast some idea of what you're looking for.

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 KeyCue seems like a nice app, but I'm not sold on how the search works.

You're using the latest stable version, I guess? Enable beta-access. There's a shortcut that was added recently, Cmd+Shift+F if I remember right.

UI Access invokes a complete list of the current application's menu items (that's 860 in Word).

Oh dear. That's a lot. KeyCue shows only the things you can actually do at this exact moment, not any of the inactive shortcuts, and this means you get a concise overview of available actions and will discover things you didn't even know existed. It's amazing to open an advanced piece of software and holding down one key to get a sheet of available actions that simplify your life.

For example, typing "hi" in Safari makes "Clear history" the top result.

That's what the search function is for in KeyCue. So if you know that you want to clear history, you type hi and it will highlight all shortcuts with "hi" in the name.

There are two ways to find shortcuts. Holding down modifier keys (cmd, shift, ctrl, option) will highlight all shortcuts with any combination of those. Activating the search field lets you search by shortcut name instead.

There are also two ways to activate shortcuts. Either clicking with the mouse. Or pressing the keyboard shortcut that it is trying to teach you (so that you don't have to use the KeyCue interface at all next time). If your search was currently active, I believe Escape clears it and lets you activate the shortcut via the keyboard method.

Anyway, switch to enabling Beta updates in the Preferences to get keyboard-search. :)

[Deleted User]

Installing the beta made it a little bit easier to reach the search field, but I still prefer the Quicksilver way of instantly be taken to search, and to instantly choose the item instead of clicking the highlighted item, or learning the specific keyboard shortcut. KeyCue simply isn't fast enough for my needs. Also, I am so used to the Quicksilver interace for file and URL interaction so it makes sense to use it for menu items as well.

About the differences in number of items: Quicksilver doesn't show items that can't be pressed. However, it shows all items that can be pressed, including those lacking a keyboard shortcut. KeyCue doesn't seem to show shortcut-less items. I would guess about 600 of those Word items are actually fonts, for instance, and they don't have their own shortcut.

If we take 1Password as an example, items like New vault, Install extensions and Check for updates all lack shortcuts. But with UI Access I still get keyboard access to them, without having to set up custom shortcuts for them in System Preferences.

benfdc

I'm wondering what you power user types think of Rixstep's stuff—CLIX, the Xfile suite, ACP Web Services, and the rest of the AppleCore Project. I have dabbled with CLIX and AWS from time to time, but most of the rest is over my head.

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 Oh, now I know what you mean. Yeah, KeyCue is for teaching you the actual shortcuts so that you can perform them by heart. I have various editing suites with hundreds of keyboard shortcuts and KeyCue helped make me a much faster and more fluid editor in every single one of them. However, you've given me a great idea. I'll be using Quicksilver's UI Access to search through menu items for things I need, and if it's a menu item I use repeatedly then I'll go into OS X's Keyboard preferences (menu overrides) to bind it to some shortcut, which I'll in turn be able to see via KeyCue, taking me full circle. This will be a super powerful combo! Now I'm even happier at having re-discovered Quicksilver.

@benfdc Sure, I'll bite. I'm having a look right now :)

CLIX - Smart piece of software. They've made a Terminal replacement that verifies permissions, executable parent IDs, etc, so that there's almost no risk of evil executables "piggybacking" off of a sudo-authenticated session. They also provide lots of shortcuts to perform commands you use often, etc. I can see how a Terminal-warrior could like it. Almost all of them seem to use iTerm, though. My personal favorite (just for fun) is Cathode. You can find lots of videos at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mac+cathode - there's a certain bliss to an old-school terminal and a full-screen VI text editor running on an emulated 300 baud modem with appropriate line scrolling speed, sounds and flickering CRT effects. :D

Xfile - Reads all popular UNIX filesystems and displays all files (even hidden ones). If someone is ultra-geeky about what they have on their system, and live in the terminal (see CLIX above), then they may want to have a full Finder-replacement that gives them the same super-detailed view of their filesystem. Personally, I use the Terminal if I need a detailed view of the filesystem. For someone that just uses their Mac day-to-day to get work done, this is totally useless. If you're looking for Finder replacements, get more user-friendly ones such as TotalFinder and PathFinder.

ACP Web Services - Looks like a really nerdy way of launching your web browser to different webpages. They integrate into the "Services" menu of the OS and let you do things like googling the selected phrase, looking for that phrase on google images, and hundreds of other sites. There are much nicer looking tools that do similar things. Alfred and Quicksilver are two of them. In their case, you type a shortcut (like "wp" or something for wikipedia) followed by your search term, and it opens the browser with that search query, such as "wp goats". I don't see a need for the ability to constantly have that same power for selected-text via the Services menu (which seems slow to me), since it's so easy to rapidly type or copy-paste the query into one of the nicer GUIs I mentioned. If I were to use anything, it'd be Quicksilver.

The rest of the AppleCore Project - Well, it continues the same trend of admin/IT-guy style apps. They're all very, very nerdy. If someone is heavily into UNIX and wants absolute, deep control of every aspect of the filesystem, terminal, Access Control Lists, etc, then there are some good things in there I suppose. None of the software is useful for 99.9% of people. It's all for the really, really hardcore UNIX nerds. Even most nerds get by just fine without this stuff.

benfdc

Cathode looks awesome. I could pretend I was back writing Forth programs on my Atari 800XL.

Uno_Lavoz

@benfdc Hehe, it's awesome indeed. It's extremely inspirational to write in fullscreen mode using Cathode. The sounds and effects teleport you to another time. There are loads of settings to get the exact sounds and style that you like, including modem-speed settings to limit the terminal rate for that authentic early-modem text rendering speed. :D For a real blast, look up some telnet BBSes and telnet into them using Cathode (with a 300 baud modem setting) and you'd think you were on the first BBSes predating the internet again. ;) Fun stuff.

@Xe997 I spent the whole day today getting used to Quicksilver again, installing plugins, tweaking everything. I honestly have to thank you sincerely for getting me back into it. To think that I've been stuck with Spotlight for years, only being able to search for files and opening them. I remember Quicksilver being quite bad back in 2008-2009 when I used it (when it was near-dead), but it's come a long, long way and is super stable and efficient now. Now I can quickly do every action that previously used to take me so many steps. Like opening a directory in terminal used to be: Spotlight to find the folder, Enter to open, Spotlight to type Terminal, Enter to open, Type "cd ", Then click and drag the "icon" of the folder over to the terminal and drop the path, Enter to change directory... Now, with Quicksilver, I type the folder name, Tab, oter (open directory in terminal), Enter.

You were right that the default skin was ugly and very cramped. I tried every available Interface design and evaluated them based on design and how much text they can fit. The clear winner is the 3rd party Nostromo theme. It's not even a subjective opinion. It clearly is the best. :P You can fit so much text in it, which is great for long menu-bar items, long folder names, etc. It lets you tweak font sizes and colors as well. Gorgeous theme.

I'm getting used to the UI Access (Menu Bar Items) plugins and it feels great being able to search for any menu item even if it lacks shortcuts. I was right in my suspicion that KeyCue is in a whole different class, though. KeyCue is the real powerhouse for learning to become productive (memorizing shortcuts), but UI Access is absolutely fantastic for things where I know that there's no shortcut and I just need to access it once. It's faster than using the mouse-menu. Best of all, it lets me find actions that I'm not sure where they are in the real menus. And if I use the action often, I bind them to a keyboard shortcut and memorize it with KeyCue. It all works together beautifully.

The Services plugin is finally getting me to use services more often, and I can anticipate setting up lots of Triggers as well.

Now I'm at the point where I've tweaked all preferences and am just getting used to plugins and workflow, but I can already tell you that Quicksilver will save me probably ~30 minutes every day. Thanks so much!

And @benfdc if you don't use Quicksilver already, trust me and Xe, and just get it. :D

semblance

@Uno_Lavoz I combine 1Password with DEVONthink Pro Office & a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 (a very common combo) - the world's best office document scanner, cost an arm and a leg (about $600-800) but so worth it. I can put a pile of papers in the top and press one button and it'll scan them faster than I can flick through them. It's insane how fast they are. And then I end up with completely digital PDFs of all important legal documents. I also store all digital receipts as "print to PDF" in there. It's basically a library of everything I own if I need to look things up.

That sounds very efficient and admirable. The amount of paperwork companies send is ridiculous — they routinely 7 sheets of A4 containing information that would easily fit on to one, and absurd things like a copy of their "terms and conditions". Why would I want a hard copy of that, it will be out-of-date in a few months anyway? I have no idea where they expect me to store all this stuff; I would need a room full of filing cabinets.

I'm sure being paper free makes you feel "lighter" and freer, in the sense that you are not weighed down by stacks of paperwork among your possessions.

I have absolutely zero papers in my life. None. Zilch. Nada. I even refuse to keep original paper copies of legal documents. I scan them and shred them. I refuse to live in some stone age where we use paper for everything.

Well, I'm not sure the world is quite ready for you yet. I'm sure you can get rid of 99% of it, but the last 1% — really?

Somehow I don't think that when you go on holiday you stroll up to border control with your iPad, fire up an image of your passport and say "Hi! I've gone completely paperless so I had to shred the original — that's alright, isn't it?" :-D

semblance

@benfdc @Xe997 @Uno_Lavoz

There are some great productivity tips in this thread, which I will try and check out when I get time.

But I feel the sheer depth of this subject alludes to a great irony of productivity tools: they can take so much time to evaluate, compare, configure and maintain, that it can all-too-easily become something of a productivity killer!

Once you've got your perfect working nirvana, I don't expect the tool maintenance overhead to be over — oh no, then you have to battle with upgrades to the various OS's and platforms, as well as the tools themselves, any of which can and do break your workflow in unexpected ways.

If I followed all the advice and suggestions in this thread, I'd probably become the most productive person in the world — and then just when I was ready to actually produce anything, I'd feel like collapsing into my grave.

Of course, I'm joking ... otherwise I wouldn't be here ;-) But it is a concern. A good example is the 1Password Beta — it's taken quite a lot of my time, but one of the reasons I joined was because 1P was becoming such a major part of my, ahem, workflow, that I felt the need to see if I could influence the product in directions that will benefit me and not hinder me.

For what it's worth, I use Cultured Code Things as my task management app of choice, which I like for its zen-like simplicity. For example, I like the way you can re-order tasks in the most natural way by simply dragging them into the order you want them in, which makes sense to me, much of the time, because the priorities and dependencies are too trivial to go to the effort of representing explicitly with attributes, tags, contexts and whatnot. And when you order tasks in this naturalistic way, Things preserves that ordering across different views (including what David Allen calls the "horizontal" views like Today/Next and the "vertical" views like a Project/Area). I don't want to be forced to apply various attributes and properties just to get a simple list of tasks in the order I want them (although you if you need to do more attribute-based sorting, you can do that as well in Things using focus-types and tags, for example).

[Deleted User]

@semblance

Good points. I try to keep only the applications that I really need. If you need an application like Bartender to manage the menu bar icons, then you probably have gone too far, for instance.

Spot on about the maintenance. An example: I have used Openmeta tags, so right now I'm not ready to migrate to Mavericks until I'm sure there is a stable tool that converts those tags into Mavericks tags. And I'm still waiting for Quicksilver to support Mavericks tags, and while Dropbox works fine with Openmeta, it is seeing some issues with Mavericks tags.

One solution is of course to skip the odd numbered OS X releases, in fact I did go to 10.8 from 10.6. But then I will miss the Mavericks-only feature of displaying album art in the iTunes notifications. So that's not the best solution.

Uno_Lavoz

@semblance That sounds very efficient and admirable. The amount of paperwork companies send is ridiculous — they routinely 7 sheets of A4 containing information that would easily fit on to one, and absurd things like a copy of their "terms and conditions". Why would I want a hard copy of that, it will be out-of-date in a few months anyway? I have no idea where they expect me to store all this stuff; I would need a room full of filing cabinets.

>

I'm sure being paper free makes you feel "lighter" and freer, in the sense that you are not weighed down by stacks of paperwork among your possessions.

>

Well, I'm not sure the world is quite ready for you yet. I'm sure you can get rid of 99% of it, but the last 1% — really?

>

Somehow I don't think that when you go on holiday you stroll up to border control with your iPad, fire up an image of your passport and say "Hi! I've gone completely paperless so I had to shred the original — that's alright, isn't it?" :D

Just because the world has gone mad doesn't mean that I have to be mad too. :)

Here is the complete list of physical things I own:

• Wallet (ID card, credit card).
• Passport
• Birth certificate

Nothing else. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Zoop-bop-de-boop!

You'd be guessing right when you suspected that it's liberating. Why should my house be a pile of shit with a cover on it, just because everyone else's is? I don't want to store someone else's garbage. When they send me papers, it's like they're saying "Here, you throw this away. We don't want it."

For that reason, I have zero non-essential websites (in fact, if I don't check my email inboxes for a whole month, I'd only have a backlog of about 10-30 emails in total, that is liberation if I ever saw it - most other people number in the hundreds or thousands of unread emails due to all of the useless websites and newsletters they're slaves to). I have zero non-essential software (it's all being used and it's all important). I have zero papers (I throw away everything that has no value, and scan the little that does). I refuse to take on tasks/jobs that are meaningless (more people need to learn to say No when they mean No). Why should I be as mad as the rest of the world, filling my life with an endless stream of information-overflow diarrhea? On that note:

@semblance There are some great productivity tips in this thread, which I will try and check out when I get time.

>

But I feel the sheer depth of this subject alludes to a great irony of productivity tools: they can take so much time to evaluate, compare, configure and maintain, that it can all-too-easily become something of a productivity killer!

No truer statement has ever been said. That is why I don't waste my time endlessly seeking out new apps. Instead, I truly ask myself "Is this something that would improve my life in a substantial way?" - if the answer is no, then why even bother looking at it?

But when I do need to solve a problem, I take the required time (usually takes 1 whole day but no more) to really get in-depth and comparing all of the competition, because you don't want to get stuck with a solution that is suboptimal. You're dealing with your life and finite time here. Who cares if it takes ONE day to evaluate the software, when choosing the best of the best will save you years of your life, while also making you happier and preserving your sanity in the process?

What I seek is a frictionless workflow. That is not just some buzzword. Frictionless means not having to waste energy on a problem - it just takes care of itself without you having to waste energy thinking about it.

That is how I ended up with the following:

Uno_Lavoz

• Needing the best way to store digital documents, scanned PDFs, etc: DEVONthink Pro Office is the world-leader. There's nothing out there that's as powerful (Evernote is like a lite-version of Dt). I am constantly grateful that I evaluated all of the competition and made this choice early on, as it has everything I need and 10x more. Everything I scan becomes OCR'd to be digitally searchable and indexed by Spotlight, and its incredible AI engine automatically suggests the proper tags and folders based on similarity to other documents. In fact, folders are tags in Dt and things can exist in more than one "folder", which is incredible. I also really enjoy its ability to merge and split PDFs on your chosen page boundaries, which lets me collate related things into a single PDF.

• Needing the best way to manage my projects and to-dos: I'm sorry but Things is useless compared to OmniFocus. If you like the zen-like interface, that'll be coming to OmniFocus 2 which is in the final stages of open beta and will be out soon. Anyway, with a simple global hotkey, I can bring up an interface where I can easily dump all thoughts, using the tab-key to fill in the Context, Start-date and Due-date (or I can wait with that categorization until later) and it'll be dumped into an Inbox. Once everything is out of your mind and into your inbox, it's trivial to assign them to appropriate projects. Next, you simply go on with your daily life, and have OmniFocus remind you of what needs to be done. The iOS location-based reminders are the best of them all. If you're driving near a hardware store it'll literally beep at you and say "Hey, you need to buy a flamethrower to burn all of those legal papers people insist on sending you. You're near a hardware store. Let's do it!" Then, when I'm at the computer, I go into "Context" mode and switch it to "Home", which shows me all tasks doable from Home, Online, Email, etc. I then just start working on sub-tasks of larger projects, without needing to worry about the larger picture. It optimizes what you get out of your time in life, by making you do several unrelated tasks at once, rather than suboptimally "staying fixed on one project". Here's an example: If you've got a project for building a chair, and you do it all sequentially, you might do this: Order some stuff online (at computer), then drive to the hardware store to buy some other parts, and voila - there's a huge part of your day gone. Instead, OmniFocus keeps you in one "Context", such as Email. If you'd have stayed home and focused on doing email-related tasks, you might have finished thirty tasks related to Email/Online work in that day, rather than just a single order online and one long drive that just wasted a lot of your time. Think of OmniFocus like "grouping" your sub-tasks together, so that your overall tasks get done MUCH faster. This is why you're making a mistake when saying "it's a waste of time categorizing things." On the contrary, that's the way to efficiency; collating seemingly unrelated tasks into one big productivity-orgy. ;) One more important aspect is that if a task is easy, I do it right then and there on the spot; it has to be done sometime, so you might as well get it over with rather than wasting more time (in management) by lazily deferring it for later.

• Needing the best way of storing passwords and software licenses: You all know this one. There's nothing out there that's as well-designed and as powerful as 1Password. It takes care of >100 software licenses (90 of which are related to my profession, mostly plugins for audio/video editing suities, and the rest being general software), and ~100 websites (again, almost all of which are related to my profession). With 1Password I have secure storage that's available everywhere. I couldn't dream of anything more. It's brilliant.

• Needing the best way to rapidly schedule appointments in iCal (for things that aren't major enough to be managed by OmniFocus): This is where Fantastical kicks in. I have it on both my Macs and my phone, and it lets me hit Opt+C to bring up an interface where I can type "Lunch with the President on monday next week at noon at Eleven Madison Park." and it'll schedule exactly that. Now you might be thinking "No way! It couldn't understand all of that!" and that's where you'd be wrong. ;) Not only does it do all of that, but it also shows me all of my upcoming events with that same Opt+C keypress. And since OmniFocus syncs with iCal, I see all deadlines in there as well! I don't want to live a life without Fantastical.

• Needing the best way to become even more effective as an editor, by actually learning the keyboard shortcuts: For anyone that's been paying attention in the thread, you'll know that the answer is KeyCue. Holding down Cmd brings up a cheat sheet that shows you all menu actions that you can perform, along with their associated keyboard shortcuts. I might look at a shortcut a few times, after which I'll have memorized it and be that much more effective at my tasks. It works for all applications.

• Needing the best way to save time while typing the same thing over and over again: The answer is Smile's TextExpander. To type out my full name, I'll just type "nname", and to type out my full address, "aadd", and my full email, "eemail", or my social security number, "sssn", etc. You can choose any shortcut, but it's recommended that you simply repeat the first letter, that way you won't forget what you called the shortcut since they all have logical names. Why waste time and energy repeating stuff, when you can just type a few letters and have it done for you? That's what I call frictionless.

• Honorary mentions: I am extremely strict about adding things to this setup. Quicksilver and Hazel were mentioned in the thread, and are currently installed on my MacBook Pro where I don't mind installing trial software. Hazel has already fallen away. It's neat that it can auto-sort files for you, but I looked around at how people are using it and most people seem to be saying "so, uh, this is SO cool..." but not actually showing any great uses for it. Most people seem to use it to sort their downloads-folder to remove junk from it, sort things into neat subfolders, auto-import downloaded music into iTunes, etc. I saw zero need for any of that, since I barely ever surf the web (I'm too busy doing awesome® things instead). But Quicksilver is very close to breaking through to being a must-have that'll soon be installed on the Mac Pro as well. It replaces Spotlight entirely, and its search interface is way more intuitive in that you can type "sysinf" to find "SYStem INFormation" - which is something that Spotlight would never understand. It also adds incredible features via a myriad of plugins. You can launch websites, open terminal windows, get info on folders, search through menu bar actions, etc. It's chock-full of features, and it looks VERY beautiful with the "Nostromo" theme that I mentioned. Another honorary mention is BetterTouchTool if you have a Magic Trackpad. I've set up some neat multitouch actions that let me switch back/forwards between apps and tabs, close apps/tabs, etc.

At the end of the day, it's all about achieving a frictionless life where your tools are capable of either doing the work for you or at least greatly assisting you to the point where you don't need to waste any energy thinking about it. You know and trust that the data that matters is in there and being taken care of and that you're free to relax.

Most of all, it's about never taking on junk in the first place. As I've said before:

We have to remember that the most blissful state is to not have any data that needs sorting, not to build a great container for stuffing it all into and putting a lid on it.

[Deleted User]

Birth certificate

I'm glad that my government has been wise enough to implement a centralized register of all its citizens, that way I don't need some paper document to prove who I am. I simply visit the government and state my personal identification number. And to get some important documents (taxes, pension, study loans) from the government, I simply log in to my personal inbox that the government has given to me.

And speaking of digital documents, that is mainly what I use Hazel for, @Uno_Lavoz. True, if you are not downloading much then their is no point with Hazel. But if you discover that you are doing some file moving and copying on a regular basis, then Hazel is the tool. Example: I receive no paper bills (ok maybe 1), instead I get them as pdfs directly from the companies. This is true for government papers as well. Because a document from Company A always goes to folder A, this task can be automated. Hazel makes it very easy to automate this. Then it takes care of the rest. I don't have to move the document, and I don't have to manually read it and copy its payment date for use as a part of the file name.

I sometimes download applications as well. Most of the installation files, I do not wish to keep. So Hazel trashes them. Some are kept in a separate folder. Not very complicated, but it's nice to not have to do that myself.

I also like Hazel's feature of taking the trash out. The computer's trash is a great safety net, but I don't need the items there to be kept forever until I delete them. So I keep them there for 24 hours, then they are gone. Also, Hazel usually "just works" (™). It works in the background and does its thing. I like that.

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 I was focused on the filing-aspect of Hazel while evaluating it. It's indeed neat that it can do things like: "For documents with a download source of SomeWebsite, look through the contents and extract a date following mm/dd/yy format, rename it to yyyy-mm-dd SomeWebsite.pdf, and move it into DEVONthink's Inbox folder." I was very focused on that aspect of Hazel, but at the end of the day I had concluded that I don't need that feature. Almost everything I file is OCR'd from papers which ends up directly in DEVONthink by the scanning process, so it has no chance to pass through Hazel. But most of all - it's trivial to type "2013-10-25 SomeAgency" into the "Title?" window that pops up immediately after the scanning process. As for Hazel's ability to "take out the trash," I always clear the trash after anything I delete. Time Machine is there for restoring files. That only leaves one other use for Hazel - automatically sorting your "Downloads" folder, but I don't waste time surfing the web so that was no use to me either.

Speaking of which - this is the only forum on the entire Internet that I'm signed up to, and it was all because of big flaws in 1Password 4 that I wanted to help bring attention to. I'll be gone from here as soon as those things are fixed. In the meantime I've been having some fun conversations here thanks to all of the free time that a perfected life workflow gives me. ;)

Hazel is good at what it does, but it just so happens that none of what it does is useful me in any way; nor to most people that use it judging by the lame usage cases most people have for it. It arouses that "wow, that's such a cool little gadget" thing in people, but only solves very specific problems and doesn't even really save time except in a few very specific cases, such as the automatic PDF naming. That's not worth $28 to me. And this is coming from a guy who would gladly pay $1000 each for all of the applications I have listed above. Price is not the same as value and I'll gladly pay a lot for great solutions, but there is no personal value to me in Hazel. Nor to most people, if you Google Hazel examples to see how others are using it. Most of them are doing completely useless things with it, mostly involving shuffling around worthless data that they shouldn't even have on their computer in the first place.

I like your PDF renaming/filing usage case and consider that one of the only legitimately good uses, but it didn't work for me. I really badly wanted it to be useful since it was so cool, but it just didn't happen.

The less information overflow you have in your life, the less need for something like Hazel since there'll be nothing for it to clean up.

However, I sincerely have to thank you once again for bringing Quicksilver back into my life. It doesn't replace spotlight, since it doesn't search inside of files, but that's secondary to the fact that it lets you instantly find things by filename/app name and do incredibly powerful things with those items. Greatest of all is the feature that lets you search through menu items to find things that lack shortcuts.

Those positive aspects aside, I'm still evaluating it carefully since many of its features aren't that vital. Searching for files/folders can be done in Spotlight. Quicksilver doesn't search inside of files. Finding menu items that lack keyboard shortcuts can already be done with BetterTouchTool (I've got "Opt+Z" which triggers "Show Application Menu," which opens a menu under the cursor with all available toolbar menus right there).

Quicksilver's menu search is very powerful but still needs to prove itself a lot more useful than the Opt+Z menu to actually be worth adding to the system.

However, here's the thing: No matter how I look at it, that keyboard search of menu bar items is indeed very powerful and almost single-handedly makes Quicksilver worth it. Add in all of the other features, such as the ability to do way more than just mere "Open" actions on files, and you've got something that's on the way to passing the entrance exam for being in my permanent toolbox.

As an editor, I deal with massive applications full of thousands of functions, and anything that helps me access those functions faster is worth having: KeyCue, BetterTouchTool's Opt+Z context menu... and now Quicksilver.

Thanks again. You managed to do the near-impossible: Finding an app that actually adds something valuable to my life. I'm leaning towards adding it to my workflow, but it'll have to keep proving itself useful for a while longer before I decide. That's how strict I am, and that's the reason why I'm not drowning in a sea of productivity tools. I don't pollute myself with a bunch of barely-useful things. Just select the best of the best - the truly revolutionary tools - and then stick with them and learn them inside and out. Do this, and you'll find that computers simplify your life rather than complicating it. There's more to life than the Internet and computers and technological frippery. :)

I got something out of this conversation: Quicksilver and some tips on 1Password 4 tagging. It was worth my time. I hope others got something out of what I've been saying as well.

I wish you all the best. ;)

[Deleted User]

Thanks again. You managed to do the near-impossible: Finding an app that actually adds something valuable to my life. I'm leaning towards adding it to my workflow, but it'll have to keep proving itself useful for a while longer before I decide.

You're welcome!

I should explain how I use Quicksilver as a file browser, and how I user Finder/Spotlight. Spotlight is indeed better at finding documents when you know what you are looking for, because it is aware of the metadata. But when it comes to file browsing, that is, clicking through folders (or tags) not really knowing what to look for, I prefer Quicksilver's way of right-arrowing and keyboard filtering. As a result, I have turned Finder into what is called a spatial file manager. This means turning off the toolbar and the sidebar. That also means that a Finder window is more likely to keep its look and position after closing. So, I don't use Finder as a file browser, but only as an application that displays the contents of any given folder. And Quicksilver is how I get to that folder.

Although, according to some guy named Siracusa, Apple don't seem to like the spatial Finder. So that is not good.

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 But when it comes to file browsing, that is, clicking through folders (or tags) not really knowing what to look for, I prefer Quicksilver's way of right-arrowing and keyboard filtering.

Mind = blown. I hadn't realized it can drop down deeper into folders. To try it, I just opened Quicksilver and typed "Dow" (for Downloads) and then pressed the right-arrow... When I saw it list all files, I knew that the evaluation period was over. This is something I need. Not only does it textually search menu bar items (which is super useful even with the other tools I have in that arena), but it lets me drill down to files that I don't know the name of - and then lets me open, rename, edit, email, zip, open terminal, get info, and all of the myriad other things that Quicksilver can do. And once I've drilled down to a particular folder, further keyboard searches will filter within just that one folder. This is incredible.

You, sir, just instantly pushed Quicksilver over the threshold of "cool but not sure yet" into life-changing with that one sentence. It now provides plenty of revolutionary features and has earned a spot on my workstation. That's one hell of a feat.

Now that my eyes have been opened to such a feature, I can't imagine using Macs without it anymore.

Guess what? I'll be off to install it on the Mac Pro now. ;)

[Deleted User]

Great! And be sure to try out holding down the alt key while right arrowing. That displays hidden files and folders, like the command line ls -a.

With applications, there is also a difference between arrow and alt-arrrow. Arrow displays recently used files, alt-arrow shows the packages contents (because as you know .app is actually a folder).

And if you have right-arrowed to the recently used list, left arrow will take you to the application's parent folder, and alt-left arrow to the file's parent folder.

Quicksilver is full of little things that no one will ever know about. Some examples:

The catalog pref pane has a plus button for adding folders to the Quicksilver catalog. This opens the standard clunky Finder window. But, there is actually a hidden action called "Add to catalog" (at least when I installed Quicksilver this action was not enabled by default). But clearly, it makes sense to expand Quicksilver's catalog by actually using Quicksilver's way of browsing the file system. A third method is to display the folder in Quicksilver and drag it to the catalog window.

A similar issue is with the creation of triggers. In the trigger pref pane, you get this mini version of Quicksilver's two (or three) panes. But the real way of creating triggers is actually to use the "Add trigger" action. I believe this one is also disabled by default. But once enabled, how do one actually use it? After all, a trigger is itself a combination of an object and and an action. A simple trigger is "Toggle Safari". To create that trigger using Quicksilver's main interface and not its mini self, one should search for Safari, and choose Toggle as action. But instead of pressing return, you press ctrl + return, which combines Safari and Toggle into a single object. Then you select what action should be taken with this combination of an action and object, in this case creating a trigger (sadly, it then displays the trigger type "Group" as default, but you should use "Hotkey". Why? I have no idea…)

Then you are taken to the trigger pref pane where you simply select the hotkey.

Now, that sounded very complicated in written form. But in practice, when used to the Quicksilver metaphor, it works very well.

EDIT: I just discoved that Quicksilver can be used to add software licenses to 1Password. That is because of the "Open with" action which is more liberal than the Finder's. Quicksilver just dumps every application into this menu and leaves to the user to try if it works. Applications don't even seem to have a Open with menu in the Finder.

Now, I don't add a lot of software licenses. But the trick can be used to quickly update an entry's version number.

Because I can drag apps to 1Password's icon, 1Password can be used to "open" other applications. This also makes it possible to open folders with other application than Finder, if they support drag and drop. For instance, I can find a folder in Quicksilver and choose "Open with... Daisydisk" to scan the folder. This is useful for apps like Daisydisk that lack Services.

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 Thanks man, your explanations of Quicksilver tricks are not going unnoticed. I'm memorizing it all like a sponge. Quicksilver is the gift that keeps on giving. When I get back to the workstation's full-sized keyboard, I'm going to be setting up triggers for common item+action combos.

I wish QS also leveraged Spotlight under the hood to also provide full metadata searching via Spotlight's database. That way it could completely replace Spotlight and you wouldn't need to use both in conjunction like some sort of hackjob. There's a "Spotlight" plugin which is a year old, broken and clunky. Quicksilver would benefit greatly if they could add native Spotlight search support to it.

But that annoyance is no dealbreaker. I will in fact set Spotlight to Opt+Space, and let Quicksilver take the prominent and easier Cmd+Space command. In time, I'll probably barely find myself needing Spotlight's metadata search at all. Either way, Quicksilver is a swiss army knife that's here to stay. :)

Edit: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/73769/quicksilver-and-spotlight

I'm not alone in that concern. Seeing the response above, I'll be trying Alfred to see if it has any plugins that match the awesome things that Quicksilver can do. Quicksilver is awesome, and I don't expect Alfred to be as powerful, but we'll see. :) The features I need are folder-drilling, menu item searching, and the variety of actions that can be taken on files.

I'll report back. I'm trying Alfred 2 + the paid Powerpack now.

[Deleted User]

Bah, Alfred 2 is just a shiny rip-off. They even stole the purple color theme. And look at how amazed they are at menu search in 2013, when Merlin Mann himself showed of the Quicksilver menu seach almost 7 years ago:

http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1993-menu-search/page-3?hl=learning

http://www.43folders.com/2007/03/12/tme-quicksilver-application-menus

And the Safari bookmarks seem to slow the Alfred plugin down? Please, with Quicksilver I can search through all 700 Safari menu items (about 600 bookmarks) instantly, on a Core 2 Duo Mac with a mechanical hard drive.

And then I have not even begin to talk about the vastly inferior learning algorithm of Alfred...

Uno_Lavoz

Holy.... shiiiiiiiiiiitttt.....

Sorry for swearing but Alfred just blew my mind. This is no slight against Quicksilver, which was fantastic, but where Quicksilver felt very hacky and hobbled-together by a community of enthusiasts, Alfred has incredible polish. It started as a Quicksilver ripoff, for sure, and I remember looking down on Alfred users years ago back when I used Quicksilver too. But now I've had a chance to try Alfred 2.

Searching menu bar items:

• In Quicksilver, searching the menu bar takes a lot of actions: Opt+Space, "Appname", tab, "Menu Bar Items", tab, "Help" (to search for help).
• In Alfred, it takes these steps: Opt+Space, "m help". That's it. "m " is the prefix that tells it to search the menu of the active application (you can change prefix of course).

The other incredible feature in Quicksilver was the way it can drill down into folders:

• In Quicksilver, you press the right arrow key.
• In Alfred, you press the Return key (configurable if you want it to be rightarrow/leftarrow instead, but by default that's for selecting actions and is better that way)

Quicksilver's biggest failing was the failure to integrate Spotlight data:

• In Quicksilver, you are stuck with filename-searches. If I search for "my book project," then I have to be damn sure that "my book project" is in the actual filename or I won't find it.
• In Alfred, all search results come from a seamless combination of Spotlight and Alfred. If I type "my book project" and that term occurs inside of a file, it will show up in Alfred. This feature can be turned on or off, if you'd prefer the Quicksilver way of just searching by filename.

When it comes to plugins/features, I still liked Quicksilver a lot, but let's compare them there as well:

• In Quicksilver, it comes with mostly several years-old, hacky plugins. Most of them have a date of 2012 or earlier, some as early as 2006-2007, and many don't work. The ones that do work are great, of course, but I couldn't shake the fact that it was open-source software with very few maintainers. Here are two screenshots of the full Quicksilver plugin list: One. Two. A third are half a decade old, the majority are from 2012, and anything but the latest from 2013 are in various states of being broken. And there are no maintainers, since it's all open source and hobbled-together.
• In Alfred, with the Powerpack, you have all the plugins you need. It comes with every prominent feature that I saw in Quicksilver, but in far more polished versions, such as superb iTunes integration. If you need more? Go to the forums. If you need even more? Write it yourself in any language you know. You can indeed write shell scripts, ruby scripts, python scripts, Objective-C programs - anything you can think of. As long as it returns an XML-spec to Alfred, it can be a plugin. That is how the Menu Bar search was implemented, by a user: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1993-menu-search/. That user did indeed write that he disabled traversing the History menu of Safari due to the high item count, but that's just because of the ruby script that guy uses for doing the menu parsing. Convert that plugin to Objective-C, or write it in a smarter way, and there'll be no issue no matter how many items it returns. And I don't put much stock in that comment anyway, because I tried menu searching with it and it was absolutely instant and gave a far better overview of results than Quicksilver's plugin. As for searching browser history items - Alfred does that built-in, no need to bog down the menu plugin with it.

So what about user interface? Well...

• In Quicksilver, you get a 3-pane view of Item + Action + Object, where you type something in, then press the downarrow to review the available search results that matched that query. It's slightly tedious (as demonstrated in the "searching menu bar items" bullet list above). Everything takes several key presses, tabbing, arrow keys, etc. You can set up triggers to simplify this, so that "F1" immediately performs "Get info on Current Item" etc, and I was planning to do exactly that, but...
• In Alfred, every available action is automatically mapped to the keyboard. You just type to find what you want, and then press something like Cmd+1 to do action 1, Cmd+2 to do action 2, etc. If you want "Quicksilver-style" triggers, you can easily define "hotkeys" for specific actions to be performed on the selected object. Not only that, but Alfred lets you define what's known as "text triggers", which are far better than Quicksilver's tedious searching. One example is the "m "-prefix example above which searches menu bar items. Another is "1p " which searches your 1Password database from within Alfred! I could for instance type "1p agilebits" and it'll show my agilebits results instantly, no need to tab around and mess around like in Quicksilver. I greatly prefer this method of searching, since it gives a fantastic overview of result items that you can apply the chosen action to. Adding to all of this, Alfred is gorgeous. There are loads of themes but the default is beautiful as well. It presents a large list with a great overview of all search results, unlike Quicksilver's insistence on showing one item at a time unless you press the downarrow or enable the permanent search-list.

The end result is that Alfred does everything Quicksilver does, and is far more polished, has Spotlight integrated (so that you can disable Spotlight from the mac menu bar and unbind its shortcut key!), has plugins for everything you need, lets you write your own plugins (or view the forums) for anything else that you can dream of, and feels like a real, slick product unlike the hacky "open-source swiss army knife where not everything works" that is Quicksilver. Perhaps most important of all - navigating the results in Alfred is a lot faster, thanks to the bigger results list and the keyboard-shortcuts for rapidly selecting the results further down the list.

Quicksilver was awesome. I'd suggest you too check out Alfred, however, because it's not what you think it is. :) I'll be off to buy a license now.

I always had this wrong idea that Alfred was the poor man's Quicksilver and just a rip-off. That couldn't be further from the truth. It's like Quicksilver with everything done right, in a slick, infinitely extendable package. Everything I liked about Quicksilver is there in Alfred in a slicker form, and when I saw that it lets me get rid of Spotlight completely it sealed the deal for me. With Alfred, I know that it's backed by commercial funding and will always be working with Apple's latest features.

I still owe you everything for planting the Quicksilver/Alfred idea in my mind. Without you, I wouldn't have either of these productivity enhancers. :) I used to dismiss Quicksilver because I remembered how buggy and unstable it was for me in 2008/2009, and I used to dismiss Alfred because I thought it was a Fisher Price version of Quicksilver. At least the latter statement was false; Alfred is amazing. Not sure about the former. Quicksilver is a lot better than it used to be, but I still managed to crash it 100% of the times I opened it, typed "itunes" and then pressed the downarrow. Heh. :P

Uno_Lavoz

@Xe997 By the way, you're currently waiting for Quicksilver to support Mavericks tags. Why wait? http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/3383-mavericks-tags-handle-mavericks-tags-with-alfred-2/

Alfred has a commercial development team and a bustling community. It's worth checking it out, I'm telling ya. :)

And again, if I hadn't met you I wouldn't have either of these incredible tools, so I am grateful that we met and that I got to spend some time with Quicksilver to learn how such a solution can assist your life. Thanks to you I knew what to look for when I evaluated Alfred. I'm telling you, it really does everything Quicksilver does and more. The community for Alfred is amazing, as are the developers. Slick, slick, slick presentation. None of the rough open-sourcey edges of Quicksilver.

Edit: I found that Alfred can define Hotkeys to perform specific actions on the selected object, exactly like how Quicksilver can define Triggers. So that takes away the final advantage that Quicksilver had. Wow.

Edit: Saw your edit above regarding how Quicksilver lets you select an app, choose "Open with," and then choose another app such as 1Password, and how you could use that to instantly add an app to 1Password. I just tried that in Alfred - it worked. Everything I've seen in Quicksilver can be done in Alfred, and more. :O

Edit: Woah, the Workflow-builder lets you use lego-like pieces to construct things that go far beyond what Quicksilver can do. Here's an example:

I just type "movie Superman" and it queries three sites at once... This is awesome.

Uno_Lavoz

Compare Quicksilver's small collection of plugins, most of which are half a decade old and/or broken: http://i.imgur.com/ksaIcqm.png http://i.imgur.com/7yiHdRA.png

With Alfred's 36 forum pages of user-contributed plugins:
http://www.alfredforum.com/forum/3-share-your-workflows/

That's a testament to how easy it is to write "workflows" - plugins written in any language you want to, such as shell scripting, AppleScript, Objective C, you name it. The ease of creating plugins really allowed Alfred to leverage the community.

Thirty-six pages, with 30 plugins (threads) per page, that's 1080 community plugins for Alfred, just counting in that forum.

If I want something custom, chances are it's already been written for me. If not, I can fire up my code editor and write something in python in an afternoon.

Brb going over to my workstation to buy Alfred, and then I'll go eat food. I got so caught up in Alfred's awesomeness that my food's gone cold. I even accidentally left the fridge open for an hour, because I had just planned to take a quick look at Alfred before lunch... ^_^