Doozla Contest

You can read my review of Doozla right here. The nice folks at Plasq have agreed to let me give away two Doozla licenses. So I’ve decided to do this with a contest. Download the Doozla demo and send me your kid’s masterpiece. My 6 and 11 year old daughters will then pick their two favorites and the winning artists will get Doozla licenses. Send the pictures to me at email link on the left and mark the email as “Doozla Contest”. I can’t wait to see the creative kids in your world produce. I’ll announce the winners next week.

Doozla Review

Plasq, the makers of Comic Life and Skitch, is one of those developers where you should just automatically download their new applications. So when Doozla was released, I put it on the family iMac and I’ve watched my kids enjoy it all year.

Doozla is a drawing program aimed firmly at the little ones. When you first start it up there are four icons that send you into its four drawing functions. The top icon leads to a virtual coloring book with a several fun images the kids can color in with the mouse. My six year old reports this is her favorite part of the application. Another icon leads to a blank canvas and gives you a variety of simple to use tools for drawing pictures and adding text. Another of the opening icons brings you to a screen with a variety of colorful backgrounds upon which you can add your drawings and finally, there is a fourth icon that allows you to take an iSight picture and mark it up. My kids found this particularly fun when marking up a picture of their dad. That is right: they had me with big blue hand drawn glasses and lipstick.

Behind all of this fun is a fancy bit of programing. Doozla uses curves, not pixels, to draw so using the mouse, even the youngest Mac geeks can make smooth lines. You can run it in full screen mode so the kids don’t stumble into things like ... I don’t know .. the system preferences or terminal?

Doozla is like Skitch but for kids. If you are looking for something fun on the Mac with your little ones. Give it a try. The application costs $24.95 and you can download a demo at plasq.com.

You can listen to this review on Surfbits episode 179.

Guest Post - Slife Review

By John Chandler
Like many Mac users, Merlin Mann holds a strange power over me and I am compelled to do whatever he suggests. A few weeks ago on MacBreak Weekly, his pick of the week was Slife. Like Merlin, I had taken a look at the program before and didn't think it would be of much benefit for me. But Merlin gave it a second chance, and so, like Merlin, I did too. And, like Merlin, I'm glad I did.

Slife is a free program that runs in the background and measures how you spend your time. After it has been running for a while, you can go back and evaluate what you've been up to. It gives you a visual breakdown of what apps you've been working in, hour by hour, as you can see in the image to the right. It can be helpful...and guilt-inducing.


That was my first impression of the program when I saw it a few months ago. It didn't seem to offer much...other than guilt. Now that I'm using it, I am finding a lot of benefit to mingle in with my guilt. Besides showing what programs I use, it can also show a breakdown of what documents and websites I've been lingering on:



If you do work where you need to track time for clients, this, of course, can be useful. But, it is also helpful to get a good idea of how much time I'm spending on certain things. I can define the values I want to hold, but seeing the reality of where I am spending my time is an opportunity for me to be honest with myself and then begin to grow from there.

All of this is nice, but what makes Slife worth the CPU cycles is a feature called "Activities". You can lump programs and documents into different activities, or categories. So, for instance, if you want to know how much time you spend social networking, you could lump Facebook.com, Twitter.com and iChat into a single activity. Any combination of apps, websites, and documents can be measured.

Defining activities could become tedious and eat up more time than it is worth. I have found it best to define some general categories to get an idea of where my time is going -- creating, collecting, connecting, and planning:



Right now these are activities are defined only by apps. I don't think I will take the time to define them further by websites or documents. It's not a perfect system, but it gives me a good opportunity to reflect on how I am spending my time.

I've had Slife collecting data for about two weeks now. In another week or two, I'm going to start reshaping my workflow around what I am learning. I'll share some my journey on Creativityist -- you are welcome to come along for the ride.

A special thanks to MacSparky. I stumbled on his blog early this year. I am always pleased to see a new post appear in my reader, and I appreciate the voice he brings as an avid day to day Mac user.

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A note from MacSparky.
I just want to thank John for contributing this post. I'm now in week one of what looks to be a three week trial and having friends like John help keep things interesting on MacSparky is absolutely priceless.

You're a PC. That's Great!

The day job has been keeping me busy as of late. When I finally got a moment to check my RSS feed, I found a lot of jabber about Microsoft's latest ad campaign where they "take on" the long running Apple adds. My first thought was, so what? Why do so many Mac people get obsessed about what Microsoft is doing? Despite the fact that I love my Macs, I don't tell people to buy them. If windows does it for you, by all means use Windows. If Linux rocks your world, rock away. Just because I don't evangelize, doesn't mean people around me tend to buy Macs. I would like to think that is more a result of them using my Mac and seeing the results I get from it more than anything else. Regardless, I think as a community, us Mac users need to stop getting so obsessed with Windows and just enjoy our Macs.

iPhone LED Football - I'm Done For

Growing up in the 70's, I was lucky to have one of the very first hand-held electronic games, Mattel Football. This was old school electronics. There was no pass key, no lifelike football players. No. All you had was a couple of flashing LED dots, your imagination, and a burning desire to "pound the rock." That being said, I wore those little plastic buttons into oblivion as I trounced imaginary foes.

This is probably lost on younger readers but my nostalgic middle age head still pines away for that football game. As one reader explained in an email to me, "Your prayers are answered." That is right. Mattel Football found its way to the iPhone. I've installed it and I love it. They nailed the layout. They even nailed the sounds. I do miss my well-worn analog buttons but it sure is a trip pulling Mattel Football out of my pocket ... again.

Windows, You are Dead To Me!

My office runs a windows network and, as a result, I keep a Parallels version of XP on my Macs. I've recently, however, set up a VPN solution with the office PC that allows me to tunnel in without needing to bother with Parallels. This left the approximately 12 gigs of windows on my computer solely to run one legal related application. However, in the last six months I've actually booted that application on my Macs 2 times. I could have easily just run it remotely via VPN and with an ever shrinking hard drive, today I officially put a bullet in the head of the XP files on my Mac.

So there you have it. I have 12 gig more space, slightly less flexibility, and no regrets.

I'm a Creativityist, Are You?

I've been corresponding with my friend, John Chandler, on and off for sometime now. What I didn't realize until very recently is that John runs an excellent blog himself called, The Creativityist. In it John writes about everything from art to using Quicksilver to drop ideas into my favorite writing application, Scrivener. This one is very RSS worthy.

Sena Macbook Air Pullino Case Review

Sena Cases specializes in high end leather cases for your portable devices like Blackberries and iPhones. These leather cases bear little resemblance to the mass produced cases you are used to seeing in your local big box retailer. Naturally, I was interested in their MacBook Air cases and they kindly agreed to loan me one for a few weeks.

First I must comment on the unboxing. The case came in a cloth bag and makes you feel like you are buying something special. I think a lot of Apple consumers appreciate careful packaging and Sena certainly does that.

The particlar case I reviewed is called the Pullino. It is a sort of leather envelope custom tailored to hold your MacBook Air and nothing else. This is not a case to hold your power supply and other gear. It just holds the computer. I didn’t carry it alone so much as put my computer in the Pullino and then carried the Pullino protected computer in my briefcase or bag. It is tailored from Italian napa leather and sewn up on three sides with the fourth side open for you to slide your computer in. The stitching appeared sturdy and attractive with a contrasting leather color on the edge. Also inside is padding and velvet lining to protect your MacBook Air while parked inside.

The most unique feature with the Pullino however is its design. Built into the case is a wide leather strap that loops to the bottom and up the back side of the case. When you push your computer in, it pushes the strap down leaving just the handle at the top which you can then fold over the open side of the case and tuck into a small enclosure. When you need to get your computer back out, you lift the handle end and pull. The other end of the handle, which is looped under your computer, lifts the computer out of the case for you. It is kind of like those fabric ribbons you put underneath a set of batteries. The whole mechanism is deliciously analog and pulled off with leather strips and some tricky sewing. I get a kick out of the fact that this ultra modern computer has a case using technology that is literally thousands of years old.

My only gripe with the case was the fact that while the handle folds over to protect some of the open end, it does not protect all of it. There are several inches of the edge of the computer exposed on each side of the case. I worried about it damaging the edge of my MacBook Air banging around in my briefcase. It would have been nice if the case were about a half inch deeper so the edges of the computer could have been recessed.

If you are looking for a case that can make a statement, this one is worth a close look. This case retails for $240 and can be found at senacases.com

You can listen to this review on the Surfbits #177 Podcast

Everything is Going to Be Okay

Have you ever noticed how creative a lot of Mac users are? One of the perks of being a Mac geek is that you get to meet a lot of those folks. One such person that I like to call a friend is Dorothy Yamamoto who, among many other great talents, is a fantastic artist. Dorothy decided to do a collection of drawings of some of her friends (several from the Mac community) making the "OK" symbol with their hands. It looks fantastic, even mine! Check it out here.

Manage Tasks Under Fire

I write about personal productivity quite a bit. What I don’t do often enough is talk about how much I truly suck at it. The day job has been real busy lately. A looming jury trial and a colleague’s vacation have combined into a perfect storm of anarchy in my life. The last three days I’ve been putting out fires, and completely ignoring my OmniFocus data while watching the unread email multiply like rabbits.

Finally, this afternoon I shut the door, put the calls on hold, and did what I knew in my guts had to be done. I got caught up. I sorted and processed emails. I prioritized and adjusted projects. All in all, it took about an hour and a half. Several of my projects have been pushed back but at least they are done so under my terms. Of course in doing this I found several time bombs which I was able defuse in their last seconds. I am so much less stressed now that I have a handle on what I’m up against and amazed at how quickly things can descend into chaos when you don’t pay attention.

This whole exercise of falling off the wagon and getting back on reinforces something for me. When you have the least amount of time available for keeping track of your projects and tasks is precisely when you need to stop and do it the most. In other words, when the chips are down, you really need to suck it up.