Mike Zamansky has another video up in his Using Emacs series. This one is a continuation of his last video on Org Mode capture. Most of the video explains how Zamansky pops up an Org capture buffer even if he’s not in Emacs. I use a similar method all the time and find it really useful. If I want to make a quick note or capture a browser link for a blog post, I just pop up the capture menu and use the appropriate template.
Zamansky’s method is better than mine because his pops up a temporary frame that is deleted when he saves the capture and leaves him back where he started. Mine switches to Emacs and displays the menu but I have to switch back to whatever I was doing after I save the capture. It’s a bit harder to pop up a capture buffer with MacOS because you have to use AppleScript. I think if I install a keyboard macro app I can duplicate Zamansky’s method so I’ll probably give that a try.
The other nice trick I learned from the video is obvious but I never thought of it. Zamansky maintains an Org file of useful browser links along with helpful commentary. He exports this to HTML and then saves the file as a browser bookmark. That way, he can click on the book mark to bring up the page of his links and then click on the appropriate link to visit the page he’s interested in. As I said, it’s obvious in retrospect but a great tip if you haven’t considered it.