The Mind of Dr. Mac

TidBITS Publishing is having a 50%-off sale on all Take Control ebooks and Macworld Superguides through July 7th, with topics covered including Macs, Mac OS X, iLife ‘09, AirPort networking, and more. Here’s a partial list of the excellent eBooks you can buy for half price:

To visit the Take Control Web page and take advantage of this limited-time sale: Click here.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m an inveterate reader. I read tons of web pages, books, magazines, newsletters, and almost anything else that has writing on it including Read Me files and product documentation. One of the most useful things I read is TidBITS: Mac news for the rest of us.

TidBITS is available in many forms, all advertiser supported and available at no charge (though donations are gratefully accepted). I subscribe to the e-mail newsletter version and read it from cover to cover (top to bottom?) every week. They also offer information on their Web site and via podcast, RSS, and Twitter.

TidBITS has been around forever (well, since 1990) and is staffed by some of the most knowledgeable writers I know including founders Adam and Tonya Engst, Jeff Carlson, Glenn Fleishman, Rich Mogull, Matt Neuburg, and more. I receive a lot of press releases from vendors each day and let me tell you a little secret … many of the so-called “news” sites copy and paste the contents of said press releases and post them verbatim. But not TidBITS — every TidBITS article is original, thoughtful (or thought-provoking), and well-researched. It is (and always has been) one of my favorite information resources for in-depth coverage of Apple and Mac topics. So check it out — chances are it’ll become one of your favorites, too.

Click here for more info: TidBITS: Mac news for the rest of us.

And hey — if you find TidBITS as useful as I do, why not make a little donation?

As a chronic procrastinator I’m always on the lookout for ways I can cut down on distractions. I recently read an excellent article in this week’s TidBITS – Minimize Desktop Distractions by Doug McLean – that was chock full of excellent suggestions on the subject. 

My favorite part introduced me to Isolator, a freeware application that covers up your desktop and all the icons on it as well as the windows of every application except the one you’re using, making it easier to concentrate on the task in hand. I love it!

Here’s how it looks:

In this image I’m using Safari while Mail, OmniFocus, and the Finder are in the background, blurred automatically by Isolator.

Cool, eh? 

Enjoy!