As I am currently a solo practitioner, I have not put the multi-user version through its paces. I do religiously use Billings 3 for my billing needs, though, and highly recommend it. Time capture could be a little easier, but it is a solid program that has my full confidence otherwise.

The Pro, multi-user, version requires you to set up a “server” version of the application on any “stationary” mac. Billings Pro uses a web-based “Switchboard” to solve the problems related to “opening ports, worrying about static IP’s, or crawling on the floor in search of your router’s model name. Switchboard is the middle-man for your database connection.”

The system establishes a web-based Timecard interface that Marketcircle describes as “a simple and intuitive web interface for Billings Pro with a laser focus on active projects with quick time, expense and mileage entry. We built it for non-management staff and have kept out the stuff they don’t need such as financial data, reports, estimates and more.”

Whereas Billings 3 will set you back $39.95, Billings Pro will set you back $199.95 per user. An upgrade for one user to go from Billings 3 to Billings Pro is $174.95. This means, if you’re a solo using Billings 3 and you want to upgrade to Billings Pro to use with a partner or associate, you’re going to have to fork out $375, minimum. That’s quite a jump.

Of course, in light of the alternatives, the price-point probably makes sense. You can avoid the up-front cost by opting to go “Pay As You Go” and pay $24.95 per user per month. Of course, at $50/mo, after 8 months, you’ll be paying more than if you just bought two licenses.

That said, Freshbooks is $39.95/mo for two users, and Harvest is $40/mo for up to 5 users. Freshbooks and Harvest have their own benefits, but with Billings Pro, the data is always yours and always stored only on your own “server.”

Naturally, Billings Pro will sync with your iOS device via their app. Though, at the moment, it’s not clear whether there will be a new “Billings Pro Touch” as is referenced on their website, or whether it will sync with the existing “Billings Touch.” Presently, there is no “Billings Pro Touch” in the App Store.

Anyway, go check it out!

• “dt” = {YYYY}.{MM}.{DD} (e.g., 2010.04.25) – This is my go-to for naming files. Just about every file I name in my practice is prefaced with the date in this format. This way, when sorting alphabetically, my files automatically fall into date order.
• “dx” = {M}/{D}/{YYYY} (e.g., 4/25/2010) – This is how I record the date in my billing timesheet. As opposed to the reverse format above, this format is Numbers and Excel friendly, and will be recognized as a date.
• “ttm” = {h12}:{m} {a} (e.g., 12:36 AM) – This inserts the current time. This is very helpful when I’m entering my start and end times into my billing timesheet. Using this, I don’t even have to know what time it is – I just hit “ttm” when I start or finish something and it tells the time for me.

When I make or take a phone call and want to take notes on it, the first thing I do is type “dt” and “ttm” and automatically the date and time of the phone call are recorded and I don’t have to think about it or break my attention from the conversation. Ok now, go and have fun.

Instead of opening Pages or Word and then going into the templates chooser, by putting the templates folder in the right-side of your dock (or the bottom, if your dock is on the left or right side of your screen), you have two-click access to your templates.

• For Pages, your templates folder is in Macintosh HD > users > [YOUR USER NAME] > Library > Application Support > iWork > Pages > Templates > My Templates.
• For Microsoft Word [at least, for Word 2008], your templates folder is in Macintosh HD > users > [YOUR USER NAME] > Library > Application Support > Microsoft > Office > User Templates > My Templates.

Once you’ve located the folder, just drag it to the right/bottom side of your dock. Clicking on the folder spreads out the stack. Click again on the template you want to open. This opens up a new document based on the template you picked.

You just saved yourself a lot of clicks over the rest of your life. You can thank me later!

The developers are looking for a “limited number of beta testers,” and you can apply for the beta here. They say they’ll contact you “within a month or two.”

The new application will include a server piece (like Daylite), a way to use the application offline and then sync to the server (once again built upon Daylite), over-the-air sync (as with Daylite Touch), and Marketcircle’s expertise in desktop and mobile user interfaces.

Good luck if you apply to get in on the beta. I won’t be applying for this one since I just went solo!

As you know, the default paste command (Edit > Paste, or command-v), however, retains the formatting from the source (e.g., bold, underlined, font, size, color, etc…).

For most Apple applications (Pages, TextEdit, Mail, Safari, etc…), there is a universal command called “Paste and Match Style,” which will – you guessed it – paste and match the style of the document you’re pasting to. Using the Keyboard preference pane (System Preferences > Keyboard), it is possible to simply map a system-wide keyboard shortcut that will invoke the “Paste and Match Style” command in whatever application you’re using, assuming it’s available as an option in that particular application. I learned this tip a few months ago from the good folks at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, although I modified their suggestion slightly for my own tastes. I prefer to have the default Paste remain as command-v, and have the Paste and Match Style be command-shift-v. But that’s just my preference. You can make your shortcut anything you want, even command-shift-option-control-function-F7 if having crazy complicated keyboard shortcuts is your thing.

The simple steps to accomplish this Paste and Match Style near-global shortcut are:

• Go to System Preferences and click on the Keyboard pane;
• Select “Keyboard Shortcuts” at the top of the window;
• Select Application Shortcuts from the lefthand pane;
• Hit the plus sign at the bottom of the right pane;
• Select All Applications from the Application drop-down;
• Type “Paste and Match Style” in the field for Menu Title;
• Click in the field for Keyboard Shortcut and type the command you’d like to use.
• Click Add.

And, you’re done.

Except, if you use Microsoft Word a lot, like I do, this won’t do the trick there. Word for Mac 2008, surprise, does not use the standard Paste and Match Style command. Instead, the command is Edit > Paste Special…, which, by default, does not have a shortcut assigned to it. After clicking Edit > Paste Special… in Word, you are presented with the window below from which you must choose Unformatted Text and hit OK. So, instead of one simple keystroke, it’s a 4 step process.

The best I can do is reduce that process by one step, and I’ve got two ways to do that. One is to put the Paste Special command in the toolbar so you can just click it, and the other is to assign a keyboard shortcut to the Paste Special command. Either way, however, you are stuck with dealing with that window. If you figure out a way to automate that part of the process, please let me know!

Putting Paste Special in the Toolbar

To put the Paste Special button in the Toolbar for one-click access to the Paste Special command, right-click on the toolbar and select “Customize Toolbars and Menus…”

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be presented with this window:

Select the Commands tab at the top, select the Edit item in the lefthand pane, and in the righthand pane, find the “Paste Special…” item and drag it to wherever you want on your toolbar. I put mine on the right, as seen here:

Creating a Keyboard Shortcut for Paste Special

To create a keyboard shortcut for the Paste Special command in Word 2008, you can follow the same instructions above for the near-system-wide command, only instead of choosing “All Applications” from the drop-down menu, choose “Other…” and then choose Microsoft Word. You can use the same shortcut as for the near-global one you did earlier if you want. For the Menu Title, type “Paste Special…” instead of “Paste and Match Style.

Alternatively, you can assign the shortcut from within Word, if you’d prefer to do it that way. To do this, right-click in the toolbar again to select Customize Toolbars and Menus. Then, when the window comes up, from the bottom-right, next to the OK button, hit the Keyboard button. This will bring up the following window:

• In the Categories pane, select Edit.
• In the Commands pane, select EditPasteSpecial.
• Click in the “Press new keyboard shortcut” field and press your new keyboard shortcut.
• Verify it’s the right command, and click Assign.

NOW, you’re done.

Gee, now that I’ve written it all out, that seems like an awful lot of work just to save one click. But, hey, productivity takes time.

Google says the invites will not be sent out immediately, but I got mine within 24 hours of when I was invited, so, hopefully you have a similar experience.

If you are interested in a dedicated app to run Google Wave, you may want to check out Waveboard. Waveboard is basically a site-specific browser for Google Wave. You could accomplish essentially the same thing by using Prism or Fluid.

I, frankly, have not used Google Wave too much, and can’t vouch for how useful it is. This below graphic more accurately illustrates my experience:

Anyway, leave a comment, and I’ll get your invite in as soon as possible.

The reason I say that “Herald bumps Apple mail notification up a notch” is because Herald takes the idea first implemented by mail.appetizer and adds some nice improvements. In fact, Erik Hinterbichler freely admits that Herald is “[i]nspired by the excellent Mail.appetizer plugin.”

Herald improves upon Mail.appetizer in a few ways. Herald allows you to customize the color and opacity of your notification window, and enables you to perform a few additional actions right from within the notification window.

Here’s how it works: When a new email comes in, the notification window appears. It will disappear after a few seconds if you do nothing. If you hover your mouse over the window, it will become opaque and stay put as long as your mouse is over top of it. If the body of the email is too long to display in the window, you can actually scroll the length of the email to read the whole thing. Clicking the checkmark on the right marks the email as read and dismisses the window. Clicking on the magnifying glass opens the email in the Mail program. Clicking the reply arrow opens up a mail reply window and you can start writing a reply right away. The next button over is a junk box, which you can use to – you guessed it – mark the email as spam. Finally, clicking the delete button simply deletes the email.

Using this great plugin, I am able to deal with most of the email that comes my way, as it comes in, with a very minimal disruption to my focus.

Herald is graciously provided for free, so, if you really like it, please drop by Erik’s site and show him your support by clicking that Donate button on the right-hand side!

As you know, I have joined a firm that runs primarily on Windows. I’m the only Mac in the place, and pretty much everyone there uses WordPerfect. Of course, simply opening and/or editing WordPerfect docs on a Mac is no problem, since there are a number of applications that can handle them (AbiWord, OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice, etc.). The Mac Lawyer recently had a post detailing even more ways to access WordPerfect files on your Mac.

I wanted to take the solution one step further, and provide a quick and easy way to convert multiple WordPerfect documents to Word documents in one fell swoop.

My weapon of choice this time is AbiWord, which you can download here (direct download link).

This script isn’t quite as elegant as the Pages to Doc script, since AbiWord is not actually AppleScriptable. This basically means that instead of simply telling the application to “save” the file or “save as…” AppleScript has to go through a series of automated keystrokes to get the job done. The end result is essentially the same, but the code just looks a bit uglier.

So, here’s the code, if you’re interested:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in added_items
set this_item to item i of added_items
tell application “AbiWord”
open this_item
tell application “AbiWord”
activate
end tell
delay 2
tell application “System Events”
key code 1 using {command down, shift down}
delay 1
key code 2 using {command down}
key code 124
key code 51
key code 51
key code 51
key code 2
key code 31
key code 8
key code 36
key code 13 using {command down}
delay 2
end tell
end tell
end repeat
end adding folder items to

You can recreate the script yourself by pasting this text into your AppleScript Editor and saving it, or, you can just download it from here. If you want to know the ugly details, this script is literally just going through the manual steps, one by one: opening the file, hitting command-shift-s (“Save As…”), command-d (to set the path to the desktop), right-arrow (to set the cursor to the end of the filename), delete-delete-delete (to delete the “wpd” from the end), d-o-c (to put “doc” at the end), return (to complete the save), and command-w (to close the document), then repeating. I told you it was ugly, but it gets the job done!

After you have your script, place it in Macintosh HD/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts. When you have done that, right click on the folder you would like to be your “drop” folder, and select “Folder Actions Setup…” as seen below.

Select the script you just created (or downloaded), and click “Attach” as shown below.

And, you’re done! To test this, just drag one or more WP docs into the folder and see if AbiWord goes through its paces to save your new Word docs to the desktop.

You will probably experience a glitch from time to time, so, you’ll want to keep an eye on the process as it’s unfolding to make sure nothing goes wrong. Also, although it should probably go without saying, keep your hands off your computer until the process is completed. Any interrupting clicks/keystrokes will probably throw the whole thing off course.

One final thing I did to streamline things was to place this folder in the right or bottom side of my dock so that it’s always there for quick access for me to dump WP files into when needed.

The next great hurdle is the fact that Pages will not simply allow you to “Save As” a Word document. You have to “Export.” This means that you cannot just set the default save format as .doc. So, I would end up having two documents at the end of the day – one .pages and one .doc. Then, of course, every time I edit the file, I can’t just save it again, I have to export it and create yet another file. This is truly a cumbersome process.

I decided to come up with a better solution. The solution I had in mind was one where I could create a way to convert them all at one time. This would enable me to create my documents for work (correspondence, pleadings, notes, etc.) and store them in a holding folder, and then before I file them in their respective places on the server, I could convert them all at once.

What I ended up doing was creating a Folder Action using AppleScript. It actually works just as well with a single document as with many documents.

How It Works

Take your Pages documents, drag them into the folder you have set up, and the script will run and convert each document to a Word document with the same name as it had before, and save it to your Desktop.

To create this script, I borrowed some of the code from MacSparky’s post on creating a Folder Action to automatically OCR pdfs placed in a folder with PDFPen. The rest of the code, I borrowed from a page on the MacScripter forums, which is an AppleScript to convert Pages docs to Word docs.

I combined the two because I wanted the documents to convert automatically upon dragging them into a certain folder. It took some tweaking to get the code just right, but it works like a charm – for me, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

In any event, here’s the code I ended up with:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
repeat with i from 1 to number of items in added_items
set this_item to item i of added_items
tell application “Pages”
open this_item
set docName to name of front document
— Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript’s text item delimiters
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to “.pages”
— Add .doc extension.
set docName to first text item of docName & “.doc”
set AppleScript’s text item delimiters to prevTIDs
— Save file to Desktop.
set docPathAndName to (path to desktop as string) & docName
save front document as “SLDocumentTypeMSWord” in docPathAndName
close front document
end tell
end repeat
end adding folder items to

You can recreate the script yourself by pasting this text into your AppleScript Editor and saving it, or, you can just download it from here.

After you have your script, place it in Macintosh HD/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts. When you have done that, right click on the folder you would like to be your “drop” folder, and select “Folder Actions Setup…” as seen below.

Select the script you just created (or downloaded), and click “Attach” as shown below.

That’s it! Now, to test, just drag one or more Pages documents into the folder and see if Pages goes through its thing and deposits the new Word documents on your desktop.

One final thing I did to make my life easier was to drag the “drop” folder itself into the Dock. Now, any time I want to convert one or more Pages documents, I just drag them into the folder on the Dock, they get deposited there, and their new Word offspring show up on the desktop.

You can fiddle with the script to do anything you like, such as make the new Word docs save to a location other than the desktop.

If you’re interested in learning more about AppleScript, I recommend you check out these two posts from MacAppStorm:

• The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To AppleScript
• Advanced AppleScript Techniques