Today DEVONthink 2 Go 2.1 is available it adds a major new feature: Document Provider service on iOS. There are not many apps on iOS that do this, but DEVONthink is a perfect fit. From within a compatible app, like Textastic or Ulysses, open a provider and browse to a file you want to use. There’s no need to manually shuttle a document back and forth. Turning on the document provider isn’t always obvious, and each provider needs to be activatecd one by one.

I absolutely love David Lanham’s artwork. I’ve had a Lanham illustration as my desktop for many years. My daughter’s room is decorated with his framed prints. He has a unique eye that fits within the world of Miyazaki. Now he has a new collection of wallpapers created from his personally photography and I couldn’t be happier to pay five bucks for it. There are 36 different photos formatted for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad screens.

I’ve rewatched David’s entire series on Vimeo and it’s great. It works everywhere Vimeo works plus you can still download the videos if you want. As with GTD itself, I find that an annual OmniFocus refresher is time well spent.

From Betanews: In Philadelphia, Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter said: “Though the retrieval of the electronic data by Google from its multiple data centers abroad has the potential for an invasion of privacy, the actual infringement of privacy occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States”. He ruled that there was “no meaningful interference” with the account holder’s “possessory interest” in seeking to access the data. This is a very slippery slope.

From the Plex blog: Think of it as a way to have events in Plex affect the outside world. We’ve made it so that any media playback event or media rating event can trigger a webhook. If you’re into home automation, you know how cool and powerful this can be: dim the lights when you start a movie, or send a tweet after you finish an episode of Scandal. Working with other home automation tools, you can even have Plex turn on your A/V receiver or close your smart drapes automatically as you sit down for an evening of Plexing.

This is a long and tedious post. It’s not really about beer, rather it’s about: Text files Note taking Python scripting DEVONthink Keyboard Maestro Beer Ok. It’s a little bit about beer. Let’s start this story already… I miss TapCellar, the iOS beer tracking app I helped make. It was my favorite app. But, we killed it because we are not idiots with bottomless bank accounts and free time.

While I really like DEVONthink for iOS, I’m frustrated by the lack of shortcuts and user editable smart lists. I can’t do much about the lack of smart lists, but Workflow gives me a very easy way to configure launchers for my most used DEVONthink documents and folders. The entire workflow is just three actions long. The first action is just a dictionary with a nickname and a URL to the location in DEVONthink.

I have a few of the Amazon Dash buttons in my house. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Amazon will provide a physical button that, when clicked, immediately orders a pre-set item for Prime delivery. As a customer I can choose a general category for a button like Tide laundry detergent and then configure the specific type and size of Tide to order. It’s convenient. What I didn’t realize is that Amazon now provides virtual buttons in their iOS app and on their web page.

Bookmarking services like Pinboard are great. I capture almost every web article I find interesting as a Pinboard bookmark. But if I’m doing actual research on a topic I don’t like to rely on the Pinboard link to the page.1 I prefer to capture as a PDF. On the Mac, this is ridiculously easy. I just use the DEVONthink plugin for Safari and capture the entire page right to my database as a PDF.

Oddly enough, pushing images to an FTP server on iOS is easier than pushing a plain text file. Many text editors for iOS only share the text. Few apps share an actual file object. 1Writer does this perfectly and makes pushing text files to Transmit dead simple. From 1Writer, just share the file as normal. Share to Transmit or DEVONthink or whatever app you want to accept the text file. In my case, I want to push the file up to an FTP server using Transmit.