One of the longest ongoing debates in the productivity/Getting Things Done crowd is about which app works best for keeping tasks in order. Different factions support everything from power tools like OmniFocus to good old pen and paper. Apparently, though, some people miss classic command-line productivity apps like Lotus Agenda. If you're running a Unix-like OS, and you need a solid GTD system, you might find Beeswax, a free, Agenda-inspired app, worth a look.

It's a little tricky to explain how this works, so you might need to check it out for yourself, but we'll do our best. Basically, you have to-do items, and you have categories. If you assign sub-items to an item -- you know, something that takes multiple steps to do -- it's treated like a category. Items can be assigned to multiple categories, so everything is flexible. If you're someone who hates anything that requires a mouse, this is right up your alley.

[via 43Folders]

MacVim is a port of the popular open-source text editor Vim for Mac OS X. It supports tabs, full-screen editing, and transparent backgrounds. The toolbar is also helpful as it provides easy access to save files, run vim scripts, make a project, save/load sessions, and undo editing.

MacVim also has handy syntax highlighting to make editing/reading text files easier on the eyes. If you need to edit remote files, you can use the --remote switch.

Vim is basically an enhanced version of the vi editor that comes on UNIX systems. If you'd like a quick lesson on vi/vim syntax, check out this University of Hawaii tutorial.

[Via MacUpdate]

It happens to the best of us. We forget where we put things. Car keys. Flash drives. Yes, sometimes we even forget where certain files are on our computers. We can't really help you with the car keys and flash drives (although we inexplicably find things like that in the refrigerator here), we can help you out with finding missing files.

Coming from a Windows environment, you might be familiar with the graphical Search Files/Folder application. You know the one, it has the weird little cartoon dog that sometimes finds your files and folders, sometimes returns a lot of stuff you don't need, or sometimes doesn't return anything at all, even though you know it exists.

Linux also has graphical search applications. With them, you're able to configure your search parameters a little more tightly than with Windows (or maybe it just seems so, because we're not rushing to get the search done and make the freaky little dog go away). However, this usually isn't the quickest, or easiest, way to find your files.

This is definitely one of those times it's more productive for both old pro and new Linux users to use the command line. The confusing thing, even for some more experienced Linux users, is choosing which command to actually use to find the file or folder in question.

The command line. It strikes fear in the hearts of many a new Linux user. They open their terminals reluctantly, and there the prompt sits, with the cursor blinking in rhythm with their racing hearts. What does that blinking cursor want? It's expecting something... It wants something...

All right, so maybe it's not horror movie material.

But it is intimidating for many new users. Navigating the command line might be a mystery to you, or maybe you've read a little about it and wonder: out of all those commands, which ones am I really going to use? Which ones are the most help in a given situation?

Either way, we've got you covered. These are the commands we've found are most useful to new users. They range from basic navigation to commands that are great for troubleshooting.

LeopardMOD 2.3 (for Mac 10.5 only) provides an easy way to change some Leopard interface options without having to use the (gasp!) command terminal. The tool utilizes the tabbed look found in some Mac system pref panes, with tabs for Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Safari, and Menu Bar.

LeopardMOD lets you change the menu bar to a solid color (white or grey) instead of the Leopard default of transparent. You can disable the Dashboard, change the Dock from 3D to 2D, add Dock spacers, and change Finder window titles to display the full path of the folder instead of just the folder name.

Of course like any good system-tweaking tool, LeopardMOD provides a "Restore Defaults" option.

Have I mentioned that I use the command line a lot? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have. At any rate, one of the most useful features of the Windows command line, which I'm sure many of you use very day, is tab completion. In short, instead of having to type out an entire long filename, you can just type the beginning of it, press tab, and its name will be completed for you. This is especially handy for file and folder names that have spaces in them, which can otherwise be a pain. In case this is new to you, you can acquaint yourself with the feature with this guide from Microsoft blogger Derek Dysart. Oh, and in case you use Windows 2000, for which this feature is mysteriously disabled by default, Dysart tells you the magic registry setting for turning it on.

[Via Lifehacker]

I spend about half my time in Windows with at least one command prompt window open, and usually more than one. Some things just go smoother with a CLI to work with, though that obviously depends a lot on what kind of computer user you are. But after a few days this week of having three consoles open constantly I began to wonder about tabs. My web browser has tabs, my text editor has tabs, why not my console? A Google search turned up a few-but not many-options, and the winner was called, simply, Console. It's an open source project that gives you a nice, configurable, tabbed interface to keep all your consoles in. It customization options are plentiful, letting you choose fonts, colors, transparency, background images, shortcut keys, even cursors. You can also set up as many different kinds of consoles you want-you're not just limited to the standard Windows command prompt. You can run any Windows command line app in its own tab, e.g Windows PowerShell (Monad), Cygwin, your favorite programming language's interactive prompt, or even Zork, and you can set each one up with its own keyboard shortcut. It's not a perfect app, though: it's easy to use, but some of the settings are cryptic and documentation is non-existent, and though I wouldn't call it a memory hog, it does take up more memory than the regular Windows prompt, especially if you're using several tabs and some of the eye-candy options. But it is a very cool app, and one that could easily become an indispensable part of your workflow. Oh, and it stores its configuration in a .xml file, which makes it portable-storage-friendly. Since the Sourceforge download pages can be a bit confusing, here's a direct download link to the latest beta version (or you can grab the latest stable version here).

Remember Monad, the next-generation command shell that was supposed to be part of Windows Vista? It's still not going to be part of Vista, but development continues and yesterday saw the arrival of the first release candidate. Microsoft has given it a new name, Windows PowerShell (I gotta say I liked Monad and MSH better), and given it its own web site where you can learn how to use it and even its own team blog. You can download PowerShell RC1 from the Microsoft Download Center, but you'll need to get a Passport account if you don't already have one.

[Via Slashdot]