There’s probably about three people out there who are interested in this, but here’s an OS X system service (.zip) that converts documents to pdfs.

It uses LibreOffice, so you need to have that installed, and it supports everything from text files to .doc, .docx, .odt, .ppt and .pptx.

You need to edit the line mv "$f" /Users/YOURUSERNAME/.Trash/ so that it fits with your user name. The rest of the installation might be as easy as unzipping and double-clicking the file, but I’m not sure. In case you need assistance, here’s how to install a system service on OS X.

Simply select the files you want to convert, wait a second, and they should all be there as .pdf files. The Service moves the original files to the trash.

Thanks to the person who posted the script line I used for this on stackoverflow.

In case you didn’t hear, Paul Miller left the Internet for a year. Now he’s back, and there’s not that much more to it. The sky is still blue, and at the end of the day (or a year), you still are who you are and you do what you do.

However, I think it’s a valuable service to our community what Paul did. Now we can cross it off the list and admit to ourselves what we knew all along:

But at least I’ll know that it’s not the internet’s fault. I’ll know who’s responsible, and who can fix it.

Thies totally ties in with thoughts on abandoning smartphones and technological conservatism.

Granted, at first I thought that app.net was ‘just’ a Twitter clone. A Twitter clone though, that wouldn’t one day crack down on third-party developers, regulate and limit access to their API like crazy, and try to make money by advertising. That is a long way of saying that I would’ve been completely okay with app.net being a Twitter that I pay for, but that also stays true to itself. And doesn’t shut out another service basically every other week.

To be fair, that is what join.app.net says. But Dalton Caldwell, head of app.net, said they’re working on that. Because it is wrong. That only is a small part of what app.net is.

I only learned when I listened to The New Disruptors episode 13, in which Glenn Fleishman interviews Dalton. And by that, I finally learned what ADN reallyis about.

I try to keep it as short as possible: App.net is a platform. They take money for offering APIs of all kinds. Alpha.app.net, the ‘Twitter clone’ was and is a proof of concept, nothing more, nothing less.
Granted, most app.net-specific apps out there are clients for alpha.app.net. But there are also apps that use the storage you get with your app.net account and manage files on it, Orbit and Appchive. Like Droplr or Cloudapp, but on the webspace you have paid for. Feels good, and both apps are in an early, but promising stage. And there’s more:

• Climber, basically Vine for app.net, but also using your storage.
• patter, a chat room thingy.
• Amy, which puts app.net messaging in OS X Messages.app.

As far as the twitter-like clients go: Netbot, to be honest, is a bit boring by now. And tapbots have signalised that they aren’t gonna implement a wide range of ADN features (not every ADN feature), like multiple recipients in direct messaging.

Felix and Riposte are very interesting. Felix is a bit more ‘extreme’ in its ways, but also more fresh and innovative. Riposte is a bit more conservative, but goes definitely also in the right direction. Can’t wait for a proper iPad version of Felix or Riposte, because Netbot currently is the only real option out there. That’s it. I think I have an invite left, if you’re interested. Oh, and my ADN nick is @tschoof, just as my twitter one.

See also zero’s post with a sign-up link.

It’s all over the Internet: Alfred 2 is out, and you can do awesome stuff with it. The short version is that you can use Alfred for free, but you’re somewhat limited. You can’t use workflows, mainly. Custom, precious and powerful workflows. For those you have to buy the Powerpack. I think it’s worth it.

I lost a few days getting into Alfred, discovering core functions and workflows, and now it boosts my productivity to a degree I never dreamed of. It really feels like an intermediary between me and my laptop has been removed. It feels like discovering the one shortcut you never knew existed again and again. Like when you finally remove this annoying little piece of popcorn that’s been stuck between your teeth.

As a German law student, for example, I regularly browse dejure.org to look up provisions. With Alfred’s custom web searches, I now hit the Alfred shortcut, type in ‘433 bgb’, hit return and Safari shows me the provision for a contract of purchase. Saves about 3.5 seconds for every lookup. Sum that up over the time of my studies, and I’m a considerably younger graduate.

The iTunes controls (Mini Player, they call it), the system controls (shut down, empty trash), the 1Password integration, custom web searches (if you don’t want to do your own workflows), clipboard management: the list is long.

If you want to hide the OS X Spotlight icon in the menubar, since Alfred of course does everything Spotlight does, you might find Broomstick useful.

But, of course, the workflows.

Alfredworkflow.com is a good place to look if you just want to get started with a few simple workflows, or just browse to see what they’re like. The Alfred Forum also has a corner for workflows. Here are a few more suggestions from the Alfred folks themselves. Florian Pellet has quite a few workflows he’s working on. Simon as well.

My favourite Workflows

You can tweak workflows however you like regarding modifier keys, exchanging shortcuts for keywords and the other way around etc., or even alter the scripts contained in them. It doesn’t get more personalised and individual than this.

• There is a big group of ‘suggest’ workflows. Searching Google, Amazon, IMDB, piratebay, YouTube and Wikipedia with suggestions makes way more sense.
  Many of these workflows are out there in several varities, these particular ones are just my favourites.
• WolframAlpha, Leo Dictionary and Urban Dictionary offer inline results, directly there, in Alfred. Amazing.
• Forecast.io workflow by conigs – Takes forecast.io’s brilliant weather data and shows you directly if you’ll get home dry.
• Reminders workflow by Jack James – Lets you create reminders that go directly into Reminders.app. A bit buggy, but James is working on it, gets better every other day.
• Open current Safari tab in Chrome by runar – Does what it says, for all Flash-less Safari users out there. I was able to uninstall a Safari extension that did the same because of this simple workflow. Less clutter.
• Domainr workflow by dingyi – Checks for availability of an URL, with different TLDs. If you’re a URL buying junkie, don’t get this.
• URL to Clipboard by Michael Matochkin – Copies the URL of the current Safari Tab, which doesn’t have to be active or even in the front, to the clipboard. I can’t find the original source, so I uploaded it to my Dropbox.
  I also made a ‘reverse’ version of this workflow that opens a URL from the clipboard in a new Safari tab and brings it to the front. Here you go (updated, see further down). (I use cmd+opt+u and ^+opt+cmd+u as hotkeys, respectively)
• If you’re like me and don’t like having stuff in your menubar the battery workflow and the date and time calculator workflow come in handy.

Themes

As far as theming goes: You might be interested in the blur hack. This theme goes well with it. The forum has more.

Update: Alphred 2 by mina lets you post to app.net, now with PMs, sharing of the frontmost Safari tab and more :)

Bigger Update, April 23

I figured out a bit more about Alfred, but didn’t want to spread it out into another post, so here we go:

The Mac Power Users Episode on Alfred made me aware of a few core functionalities I had missed. Like the actions menu Once Alfred recognises an app, you can go to the actions menu via the right arrow key, and with another stroke, you’re in its recent documents, for example.
If it’s a folder or a file, the actions menu lets you do other stuff. Here the buffer comes in, which lets you perform actions on multiple files. Going through a few documents you want to send via email is way more efficient all of a sudden. Powerful stuff.

From the shownotes of that episode, I highly recommend Tim Stringer’s Screencast. It made me realise how easy it is to make workflows for really rudimental stuff, and how much sense it makes.
At first I thought I didn’t need a shortcut to launch Safari, cause it’s running all the time anyway. But the shortcuts also unhide apps (and hides them if you check the right box), and that is quite handy. Hotkeys for folders, and searches from selection are also quite nifty. Tim takes his time in the Screencast, but it’s really worth it.

I discovered two more ‘top notch’ workflows

• EggTimer is very nice, does what it says in a nice way.
• Uni Call is quite amazing, lets you call phone numers or skype or facetime contacts from Alfred, in a very fast manner.

I updated the above mentioned URL to Safari Tab Workflow from a crappy script to built-in functions, so that it actually only works with URLs.

Finally, my global ‘New Byword Document’ workflow is in ‘shareable’ shape. It should work in every situation, with Byword running or not. Also shouldn’t be too hard to edit it to fit the texteditor of your choice.