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Will Apple’s MobileMe change everything? Clearly, that’s a ridiculous question, but the announcement of MobileMe has already changed the apps I’ll be using to manage my calendars contacts and email.

Background: CRM/contact/calender apps I’ve purchased for the PC (Act, FileMaker, GoldMine, Maximizer and Outlook) and Mac (Contactizer Pro, Daylite, FileMaker, Now Up to Date and Contact and SOHO Organizer). Email clients I’ve purchased for the PC (The Bat!, Eudora and Outlook) and Mac (Claris Emailer, Entourage, Eudora, Mailsmith, Opera mail, Outspring Mail, PowerMail, QuickMail and Thunderbird). Clearly, I’ve invested significant funds attempting to discover a communications system that works for me.

Going forward I’ll be using Apple MobileMe, Apple Address Book, Apple iCal, Apple Mail, BusySync, MailTemplate, Things and Things touch. Yes, it’s a simple solution, but it’s also surprisingly powerful! Multiple devices (iMac, iPhone and MacBook Pro) always in sync and my stuff is available everywhere I go. Mac OS X is a wonderful thing.

Small business owners who have chosen to use a Mac often wonder, “What’s the best contact manager for the Mac?” The answer, obviously, is, “It depends on your needs.” I’ll describe my situation and decision, my hope is that you might find my story helpful.

I’m a retired medical doctor. I run a small business from home. I communicate with thousands of customers and hundreds of team members internationally.

Solutions I’ve purchased:
- FileMaker (last version owned v7.x)
- Now Up to Date and Contact (NUDC) (last version owned v4.x)
- Chronos’ SOHO Organizer (last version owned v5.x)
- Marketcircle’s Daylite (last version owned 3.5.x)
- Contactizer Pro

It hasn’t been easy for Mac contact manager developers:
- the transition from OS 9 to OS X
- Mac’s switch from Power PC to Intel processors
- frequent OS X version updates, most recently OS X 10.5 Leopard
- integrating with Apple’s Address Book app

Apple’s Address Book is more powerful than many users realize, but it can be difficult, even impossible, to make it work for a small business.

SOHO Organizer and Daylite install an OpenBase SQL database on your Mac. I understand NightHawk will also us a SQL database, but not OpenBase. Syncing SQL databases with Apple’s Address Book has proven to be problematic, particularly in a multi-user environment.

Frequent visits to the developer’s support forums suggest that there are currently quite a few disgruntled Mac contact manager users. Some NUDC users are frustrated because the release of NightHawk, a new version of their app, has been significantly delayed. A few Daylite users are perturbed by Marketcircle’s delay releasing a 10.5 compatible version. Some grumble Daylite’s calendar and UI is showing its age. The Chronos forum disappeared altogether suggesting that frequent negative feedback might have been hurting SOHO Organizer sales.

I happily used Daylite until the arrival of Mac OS X Leopard caused me to rethink my data management strategy. My needs are very simple. I wondered, “Could I get by with just Address Book and iCal?” The biggest problem I encountered was easily sending customized ‘boilerplate’ email. This task was very easy with Daylite. Finding an email merge solution that leveraged Apple’s Address Book and Mail proved impossible, although, MacTank’s MailTemplate, Christian Fries’ Serial Mail and Joe Pagliaro’s Mailings came close.

Interestingly, Contactizer Pro was mentioned, in a positive way, a few times in other developer’s forums. I briefly used the, version 1, predecessor of Contactizer Pro; it was beautiful, but unstable on my system, so I abandoned it. I decided it was time to have a fresh look at Objective-Decision’s Contactizer Pro.

Here’s what I discovered:
- Contactizer Pro has grown up
- it’s still beautiful
- it has become very versatile.

The Contactizer Pro developers are carefully crafting a solution that is very tightly integrated with Apple core technologies. Contactizer Pro looks and feels like a modern Mac application. It is remarkably intuitive. Working at home is fun and now I’ve discovered a contact manager that doesn’t feel like a smug corporation. My compliments to the developers, Guillaume W. Rager, Aurelian Hugele, Michael L. Noyon, Pierre Oleo, PY Bertholon and Matthew Ouvrard. Thank you for your continued hard work! I’m looking forward to watching your application develop in the coming years.

Contactizer Pro is currently the best contact manager for the Mac, for my needs. If you’re a sole proprietor or very small business, I recommend that you check it out for yourself; the developer offers a fully functional thirty-day demo.

Click here to visit Contactizer.com

This is a brief tech note blog for my fellow Mac users. I recently connected an inexpensive monochrome laser printer (Brother HL-2070N) to one of the Ethernet (10/100 LAN) ports on my Apple Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11n - the square one). Setup was quick and easy (Two iMacs, 1 PowerBook and 1 MacBook all running Mac OS X 10.4.9). Brother advertises the HL-2070N as network and Ethernet ready. From personal experience I tell you the Brother HL-2070N works very nicely when connected to the Airport Extreme Base Station.

Have you ever watched ABC TV’s ‘Extreme Home Makeover?’ If so, were you struck by how many times the family members said, “Oh, my God!” when they viewed their new home for the first time?

A company called Panic presented me with a new home, of sorts, yesterday. My home is a new Mac OS X program they’ve named Coda™. When my new home was revealed, I found myself saying things like “Wow,” “Neat,” “What Fun” and I’ll bet I even said, “Oh, my God!”

Panic describes Coda as ‘one-window web development.’ Coda helps me organize, visualize and conceptualize my web sites. I can edit, upload and download. Coda even teaches me about HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. Coda does all sorts of impressive things, but I’ve discovered that the very best thing Coda does for me is that it facilitates my productivity.

The good folks at Panic clearly had a web site coding epiphany; one of those ‘Duh’ moments. Perhaps that’s why they called their new baby ‘Code Duh.’ Coda is brilliant! Click here to check out Coda for yourself.

Have you ever asked yourself, “How can I organize all my PDFs?”

Consider using Yep.

On first launch, Yep locates all the PDFs on your Mac, and shows them to you in a simple iPhoto-like interface. Yep then displays your PDF documents in one place. It’s a simple, intuitive, but amazingly powerful, PDF management system. Yep is actually easier to use than it is to describe.

I downloaded a trial version and purchased it a few minutes later.

Has anyone ever engineered a computer software program just for you?

It feels like Marketcircle did exactly that when they released version 3 of Daylite. Daylite fits my business needs perfectly.

I’m told there are approximately 13,000,000 network marketers in North America. If we assume they all own a computer and we accept that Apple’s Macs make up 6% of those computers, that means at least 1,690,000 Mac users should be lining up to check out Daylite as soon as possible.

Daylite is a very impressive, powerful, information-management tool that sports a gorgeous Mac OS X interface. I’m amazed how much I’ve accomplished in my first week using this software.

That said, it gets even better. Marketcircle’s DMI (Daylite Mail Integration) module achieves seamless integration with Apple Mail. I’ve concluded that Daylite used in combination with DMI is simply brilliant! I easily crafted 22 letter templates that allow me to quickly respond to my new customers and team members.

Background

A long time ago, I purchased the very first release of Daylite. I quickly decided that, although it showed great promise, it simply wasn’t ready for prime-time. Later, I purchased Now Up-to-Date and Contact, OD4 Contact and recently SOHO Organizer. None of these packages delivered exactly what I was looking for. I even tried a kludged together ’solution’ that made use of a combination of Apple’s Address Book, MailTemplate, Serial Mail and iClip.

A week ago, I decided to give Daylite another whirl. I’m really glad I did. Wow, as you can tell, I’m truly delighted with the new Daylite! I look forward to discovering more of Daylite’s potential in the years to come.

My recommendation: Test Daylite to see if it fits your business. Take advantage of Marketcircle’s 30-day free trials of Daylite and DMI.

When I last wrote about my use of web browsers and bookmarks in Mac OS X I was actively using Camino, Firefox, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari and testing Shiira. I’m no longer using OmniWeb, Opera and Shiira. Safari has become my primary browser. I use Firefox or Camino, in the increasingly rare circumstance, when I encounter a web site that’s problematic for Safari.

My bookmark management scheme has also changed; I no longer use URL Manager Pro. I synchronize my Safari bookmarks with Camino and Firefox using a nifty little app called Bookit. I maintain 15 links in my bookmarks bar and about a hundred more in my browsers’ bookmarks. These days I’m using WebnoteHappy to keep track of the thousands of other interesting sites I come across. WebnoteHappy is one of those delightful OS X apps that just feels right. It makes you feel, well… happy that you’re using a Mac.

- Take notes and tag web pages
- Find your webnotes with an iTunes-like search
- Integrated with del.icio.us
- Navigate your tags with the Tag Browser
- Organize your webnotes within Folders
- Create Smart Folders - like Smart Playlists in iTunes
- Open the associated web page for any webnote
- Import from Safari to better manage your bookmarks
- Merge duplicate bookmarks when importing from Safari
- Import from and export to XBEL
- Export to a bookmarks file
- Works with all major web browsers on OS X

I picked up a family license for just $29.95. Check out WebnoteHappy for yourself.