I’m always on the lookout for great apps that make my life easier. I recently discovered one from DEVONTechnologies, one of my favorite companies and the makers of excellent apps like DEVONthink.

This utility is packed with features that are incredibly useful when diagnosing or testing things on your network. It’s called Neo Network Utility 2.0, and it’s essentially a graphical user interface for many of the diagnostic tools and informational properties you might need. 1

For example, there’s an Info tab that lists all your network adapters for wired and wireless connections. It provides information like the MAC address for each adapter, shows you which one is active, and if you’re looking at a wireless connection, it even displays the SSID.

You can view Netstat information, ping remote devices to verify they’re reachable from your machine, perform lookups for different IP addresses, and run Whois queries to see the registration information tied to specific domain names.

One of my favorite diagnostic techniques is running a trace route to see where a connection starts and stops. This helps me verify that traffic is flowing from point A to point B as expected. If it’s not, I know exactly where to start troubleshooting.

Another invaluable tool is the port scanner. You can scan your local machine or a remote machine you’re troubleshooting. For instance, if you want to confirm that your Plex server is listening on port 32400, a quick scan will tell you immediately. If it’s not responding, you know where to begin your diagnostic procedure.

Last but not least, I use the built-in speed test all the time. While I typically rely on fast.com or speedtest.net, having one built right into the app is incredibly convenient. It may not be as flashy, but the information I need is clearly displayed, and that’s what matters.

Overall, it’s a fantastic app, and the best part? It’s 100% free

Whether you’re looking for a brilliant Pocket substitute or are new to the read-it-later game, these iOS apps will serve your reading needs well.

Now that Pocket, the popular read-it-later service, has shut down, Macworld published a helpful article covering some alternatives. Of all the options they listed, my favorite is by far GoodLinks.

It’s super simple to use. GoodLinks is a universal app that works seamlessly across my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You don’t even need to create an account to start using it because everything syncs across your devices using iCloud.

The interface is simple and intuitive, keeping the focus squarely on the article itself. The readability is amazing: clear, clean, and just a pleasure to use.

Once I’ve saved articles to read later, I can organize them into different categories. If I decide to keep an article, I can highlight the parts I’m most interested in and add notes. GoodLinks then shows me just the highlights and notes for each article, making it easy to review key information. It’s fantastic.

The app also offers customization options for light mode, dark mode, and even a sepia theme. While I haven’t explored this yet, it also provides Siri shortcuts, which I plan to check out soon.

If you subscribe to certain publications that have a paywall, you can log into those sites through GoodLinks, so you don’t lose access to the premium content you’re already paying for.

I love that it doesn’t require an account. By design, it’s completely private, meaning GoodLinks doesn’t track which articles you’re reading or collect any of the data that other services typically gather.

Finally, my favorite feature is the fully accessible voiceover support. I can load up an article and have it read to me, which is perfect for multitasking. I love this app and highly recommend it.

Just learned about Parachute Backup from the Mac Power Users and it is great! It downloaded the entire iCloud Photo library onto my NAS, which is worth the price of admission all by itself. But, it didn’t stop there. It also organized all of my photos and videos by year and month. Now, I have my backup and I can use the media in it’s organized state with other apps like Plex. I love it and highly recommend it.

A couple of weeks ago, I started to revisit Obsidian and have been using it daily for both work and personal projects. In fact, I’m writing this very post using it. Throughout each day, I jot down daily notes to maintain a running log of various activities, use Obsidian databases to track work-related items, and draft blog posts like this one.

For those who are new to Obsidian or returning to it after some time away, this video might be helpful. While it’s a bit lengthy, it covers the fundamentals needed to get up and running. It’s essentially a compilation of many of Nick Milo’s Obsidian tutorials.

OmniFocus 4.7 Brings Planned Dates, Mutually Exclusive Tags, Repeat Limits & More - Learn OmniFocus

OmniFocus 4.7 includes new and enhanced features that make it easier and more convenient to manage your tasks than ever before.

As a long time OmniFocus user, I am pretty excited about these new features. I can try to explain them here, but I suggest you check out the Learn OmniFocus link above and have the professionals break it down for you, instead.