bangersandmash

The basic tools that I use every day are

1. A browser (leaning towards Opera at the moment…)
2. Skim for reading PDFs
3. Bibdesk for citation information
4. Devonthink 2.0 for collecting everything (notes, images, etc) into a single place and making them searchable in a wiki-like environment
5. Textmate

Basically, I read material using the browser or skim. If something — an entire document or just a passage — it gets copied into Devonthink for later. If it is really useful its citation information gets added to my bibdesk bibliography. All writing is done in Textmate because it integrates so well with Bibdesk. Because various bookmarklets, OSX services and other trickery allow me move data between the applications with a click of a mouse or a keyboard shortcut it feels as though these five tools behave as a single application. Perhaps one day I’ll get around to compiling a video of what this looks like in practice.