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Paperless: A solid, easily customizable document manager for OS X
There are several bloggers here at TUAW who are slowly moving toward a paperless office. Steve Sande has had the best success, sharing some of what he's learned about culling out the piles of paper in his freelance business. However, it doesn't stop reams of paper from entering your life, or to even begin to manage it. Paperless from Mariner Software, formerly known as ReceiptWallet, aims to pull all of the paper pieces of your digital life into one location, then encourages you to keep going by adding to it by creating separate databases within the program to sort out different parts of your life -- a digital file cabinet, so to speak. Paperless works with almost any scanner and even offers a few bundled packages with Fujitsu's ScanSnap scanners that include a boxed version of Paperless. Yes, the irony of including a boxed version of a software designed to make your life paperless isn't lost on us. The folks at Mariner were good enough to let us dive into the software.
MacGourmet improves upon a winner
Let me tell you about the fly paper storage method. I spent my youth in a shoebox-shaped house in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It had vinyl siding, cracked slate sidewalks and an under-performing rose bush in the front yard. Inside you'd find my family: happy enough, God-fearing and terribly disorganized. The kitchen was a narrow galley with pink laminate counter tops and linoleum floors. A row of cabinets ran along the wall opposite the appliances, and inside the door on the far right was my mother's recipes. Unlike your mom's collection, Carol's never saw the inside of a cookbook. Instead, they clung to the back of the door from yellowing strips of tape. A Hellman's mayonnaise label dangled next to pages ripped from Family Circle magazine, supermarket hand-outs, index cards, torn envelopes with their stamps intact ... anything flat enough to write on and light enough to stick to the door was used. While the fly paper storage method keeps recipes accessible, it's a poor filing system. Anchovy paste mingles with blueberry cheesecake, which should never happen, not even in print. What all this means is that I've got chaos in my blood. I'm not a fly stripper, but a stacker. Piles of this and that are everywhere. I'm also a geek who wants a flying car, a lightsaber and a robotic sous chef. Instead, I've got a Saturn Vue, an iPhone App and MacGourmet. While the latter isn't Rosie, it's pretty darn close. We've written about MacGourmet before, so I'll give you a brief recap. It's extremely useful for storing and sharing recipies and creating shopping lists. You can create smart lists, add a wine library and more. In fact, it's a part of my Dream Kitchen Mac setup (I'll have to write about that someday). Earlier this week, Mariner Software introduced MacGourmet Deluxe 1.2, which adds unique features of its own. It includes a USDA nutritional database, letting you calculate the nutritional value of nearly anything you want to eat. You can also view the nutritional values of your own recipe collection and the individual servings. The coolest feature for me is the meal planner. Plan what you'll make on any given day of any given week and sync the results with iCal. As a father of two toddlers, I love this feature. It's a real treat to eliminate the whole "What are we doing about dinner?" question. You can even order a hard-bound cookbook of your favorites. For Mac-toting foodies, MacGourmet is a must-have (not as cool as Scotch Tape, but what can you do?). New customers can purchase MacGourmet Deluxe for $44.95US, while registered MacGourmet customers can upgrade for only $24.95.
Microsoft Office rolls up to 12.1.7, trial edition downloadable
There's an update in town, and it's all about locking it down: the 12.1.7 update to Microsoft Office 2008 (available within the suite via the software update tool, or downloadable from Microsoft) closes two security holes present in multiple versions of Microsoft Excel and first acknowledged by the company in February. These vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to create a specially-configured Excel file that, when opened, would allow full control of the target machine. The update package also bundles up all the previous patches to Office 2008, which lends it heft (it weighs in at over 150 MB) but simplifies matters if you're a few revs behind. Note that there is no 12.1.6 update in the sequence; the previous patch level was 12.1.5. If you haven't made the leap to Office 2008 yet (perhaps you're on a PPC Mac; perhaps you feel that you get better interoperability with Office 2003 users on Windows; perhaps you have to have Visual Basic support for macros), Microsoft is giving you the chance to consider moving up with a full-featured 30-day demo of Office 2008, now available for download in the USA. The package includes all the Office apps and can be upgraded to a paid license in the field without purchasing a boxed copy and reinstalling. Upgrades from previous editions of Office start at $240... of course, there are some less expensive alternatives out there. [h/t Ars Technica]
