Don Southard

56 posts on MacStories since September 2011

Former MacStories contributor.

[email protected]

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Diminish Debt with DebtMinder

DebtMinder is the latest creation from the talented developers over at Return7 and aims to help users eliminate their debt. You might already be familiar with their successful BillMinder app that helps users keep track of when bills are due to ensure that late fees are a thing of the past. BillMinder is known for being polished, reliable, and incredibly easy to keep multiple devices in sync. Thankfully the developers were able to bring those features and more to DebtMinder all wrapped up in a familiar interface.

DebtMinder allows you to input multiple accounts of debt into the app and it will help calculate the best payment plan to reduce your debt as quickly as possible. You can also customize this plan by telling DebtMinder that you either want to focus on debt that has the highest interest rate or debt with the lowest balance. This is known as the debt-snowball method. You basically pay off the smallest debt first while paying the minimum payment on the larger debt. It is the quickest way to decrease your total number of bills. Once a payment plan is created your monthly minimum payment is calculated and you can begin paying off you bills.

If you are a user of BillMinder then you will be able to pick up DebtMinder and feel as if you already know how to use the app. I was able to log in with my BillMinder credentials (new users will have to set up an account). As I added accounts to DebtMinder I had the option to link them with accounts that I had already set up in BillMinder. It was hard to appreciate this at first because it was so easy to set up, only two clicks. Once the account was linked and I added a payment to DebtMinder, I was able to launch BillMinder and see that the bill had already been paid. And not just on my phone, but on my iPad and on my wife’s phone as well because all devices are kept in sync under one account.

DebtMinder is my favorite kind of app for iOS because it is inexpensive, useful, and easy on the eyes. It will more than pay for itself when your credit card gets paid off ahead of schedule and unnecessary interest fees are avoided.

BillMinder is available in the iTunes App Store today for only $1.99

Extending Evernote: AppleScripts for Chrome, Safari, Instapaper and Alfred

Evernote is a cross-platform note taking solution that is adored by many for its ability to not just store snippets of information but also serve as an external brain. Among the many reasons users are drawn to this product is its extensibility. You may not realize this but Evernote has a very in-depth AppleScript dictionary that you can use to extend the feature set and make it do some pretty neat things you can’t do with it out of the box. I am going to show you how simple AppleScripting can add a few cool features to your Evernote workflow.

Note: These scripts work best when called with a global keyboard shortcut using an app like Keyboard Maestro, FastScripts, or Alfred.

This first AppleScript is used for storing a URL to whatever webpage you are currently viewing and it works with Safari, Chrome, and Chrome Canary. By default Evernote stores the entire webpage including images, navigational menus, and even advertising links. Having a snapshot of a page is great for some situations, but most of the time you just want to grab a link to the site and safely store it in Evernote so it can be easily retrieved. This script will check to see which browsers are running and it will grab the frontmost tab from the browser that is currently active; it’ll then neatly format the information into a note with the proper title and source url, and automatically sync Evernote.

Here is an example of a page I enjoyed and wanted to be able to find again at a later time. Everything is neatly formatted with no extra fluff.

URL to Evernote

URL to Evernote

Here is an example macro to launch it from Keyboard Maestro:

Download the script: Webpage Link to Evernote AppleScript Read more