MindNode Pro Updates

A nice update to a quality application.

New features include: * Visually Appealing Mind Maps * Full Keyboard Support * Images nodes * Visual File Links * Easily reconnect nodes by using drag and drop

Home Screens - Patrick Rhone

Today’s home screen post features Patrick Rhone, a very nice fellow and the curator of Minimal Mac, one of my very favorite Mac sites. Patrick is on twitter and you can learn more about his projects here.

Patrick summarizes the minimal Mac brilliantly.

I believe the most minimal computer is the one that is optimized for you. How you work. The menubar items you need. The dock items you need. The applications you need. The system you need. The peripherals you need. The tools you need to get the job done.

Patrick is the first guest to share his iPad home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

The one that is not quite released yet ;-).

What is your favorite app?

Too hard to choose between Instapaper and Simplenote.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Ego. I like to pretend that I don’t care about my numbers and that I have it mainly because it is the easiest way to log into multiple Tumblr accounts. But I really do check the numbers and care about them too.

How many screens have you filled?

Only two filled. Three icons on the third one. That said, most everything outside of the home screen are either things I am waiting for iPad versions of or apps for my two year old daughter and my wife. I rarely use anything not on the home screen.

What is the app you are still missing?

A decent Tumblr client. An iPad version of Reeder (which is so good that I’m using the iPad version on my iPad).

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use both pretty much most of the day. Combined, they make up about 80% of my overall computer usage.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

My fingers.

If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add to the iPhone/iPad?

They are both pretty perfect for my needs. Can’t think of anything I would improve. Perhaps a return of the aluminum back to the iPhone but that is an aesthetic thing.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Yes. You don’t need as much as you think you do.

Thanks Patrick!

MultiMarkdown Automation

A great post by Eddie Smith explaining a nerdtacular combination of Hazel and MultiMarkdown. I approve.

Dropping Facebook

I announced (ironically on Twitter) over the weekend that I killed my Facebook account. I’ve had several e-mails from readers asking me to explain my decision. For me it was not a difficult one. I have never been an active Facebook member. While I have connected with several old friends using Facebook, they were not particularly close friends and none of these contacts have resulted in actually meeting a human being or rebuilding some lost close friendship.

My first annoyance with Facebook is the signal-to-noise ratio. It sucks. While I occasionally discovered what happened to so-and-so, more often I was asked to join in Mafia Wars, Farmville, and other time sinks. I felt like it was tedious to go into Facebook and have to make decisions about agreeing to be friends with people I’ve never met and probably never will. At this level it is mere annoyance. What ultimately led me to cancel my account was my privacy concerns.

There are several people exploring Facebook’s privacy policy, or lack thereof. There were two posts in particular that raised my eyebrows by people I respect, Patrick Rhone and Christopher Breen. Looking into this I discovered that despite their words, Facebook does not respect my privacy. In hindsight, I’m not sure how a company that makes its money by sharing people’s personal information can respect my privacy.

At the end of the day, limited usefulness combined with lost privacy made this a simple equation for me and an easy decision. If an old friend want to find me, it is not that difficult. I’m not advocating that everybody abandon Facebook. I just hope that everybody makes their own intelligent decision and doesn’t blindly surrender their own privacy.

Mac Power Users 26 - Workflows with Dan Benjamin

Mac Power Users Episode 26 is up. It is our second show in the workflows series and features Dan Benjamin from Hivelogic and 5by5. Dan had some great ideas concerning his writing, programming, and podcasting. You can get it in your browser here or on your iPod/iPhone/iPad here.

iPad OmniGraffle Review

I have been using OmniGraffle on my Mac for years. It is, in my opinion, the premiere diagraming application on the Mac. I do some of my best thinking when I sit down and organize my thoughts visually with a diagram. The ability to quickly put together professional looking diagrams is a definite edge in my day job. I have even had other attorneys ask me what company I used for my "graphics" when in fact it is just me and a few minutes with OmniGraffle.

OmniGraffle on the iPad is not a simple port of the existing Mac application. The Omni team started from scratch. The user interface was re-designed from the ground up around the touch interface and the iPad's screen size. Interestingly, the developers did not have access to an actual iPad when developing this application. Instead, they used a fiberglass cut out in bits and pieces of paper with user interface elements printed on it to figure out how to put the application together. Regardless, the programmers overcame this handicap and released an outstanding product.

There are many features worthy of exploration in iPad OmniGraffle. The first time you open iPad OmniGraffle, you are presented with a series of documents that show you the ropes. You should go through the built-in tutorial. There is a lot under the hood with this application and you can save yourself a lot of time down the road if you learn the basics first.

There is no menubar but instead a series of smart icons that are context sensitive. For instance, hitting the pencil icon brings up icons which are a pre-formatted square and free hand drawing tool. Once you create your object, you can move, resize, shadow, and color it just as if you were on your Mac. It is remarkable how quickly the gestures built into OmniGraffle becomes second nature. You can even attach objects with magnetic lines that remain attached as you move them around the screen. While none of this is revolutionary in comparison to the native Mac OS X application, it is remarkable that this can be created so easily without a keyboard a mouse. It almost feels like playing the piano.

That being said, a few times the interface was more complex than it needed to be. Setting object order, for instance takes some doing from the layers menu. I would prefer a simple "Send to Back" button.

I found the physical process of creating and moving these boxes with my fingers even more intuitive than doing it in front of the keyboard. The Omni group also included smart guides which allow you to snap your objects in alignment with one another. Even better, you can set up a grid with custom spacing and snap your objects to the grid as you create them. With very little time you can have a precise looking diagram and, with the touch of a button, remove the grid.

iPad OmniGraffle ships with a nice assortment of images, connectors, shapes, software tools, and variables. If you have any favorite stencils on your Mac, you can copy them over to your iPad and OmniGraffle will import them.

iPad OmniGraffle allows you to assign your objects to layers and turn them off and on as the need arises. I have already found it useful when sharing data with clients. Building a diagram in small pieces and then adding the layers one at a time makes it much easier for the audience to digest complex data.

iPad OmniGraffle is an outstanding implementation of the touch interface. Any aspiring iPad developers should take a long look at the care and deliberation that went into this application. Since the iPad released, the Omni Group has already made a significant upgrade fine tuning the user interface now that they have got their hands on an iPad.

At $50, OmniGraffle certainly is more expensive than most applications you will find in the iPad store but it is a professional graphics application. The OmniGroup has gone on record to explain that if you buy OmniGraffle and are unsatisfied, they will provide a refund. OmniGraffle, in any iteration, is not necessary for everyone. But if you find yourself using it on the Mac, pick it up for your iPad.

This review is based on an evaluation copy of OmniGraffle provided by the Omni Group.

The Case Against Everything Buckets

Alex Payne explains my general bewilderment with all of the Mac bucket applications. Thanks to MPU listener Tommaso for the link.

Home Screens - Jeff Richardson

At this year's ABA Tech Show, I had the pleasure of meeting one of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Richardson, who publishes iPhoneJD. Never mind the legal focus, Jeff's blog is excellent for all power iPhone users. In addition to his insightful commentary, Jeff is an all around swell guy. You can follow him on Twitter, @jeffrichardson. So Jeff, lets see your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

LogMeIn Ignition is particularly interesting because it allows me to control a computer from my iPhone, which is almost like running a full desktop program (such as Outlook or my document management software) directly on the iPhone.  Because of the size of the iPhone screen, you don't want to do anything that is very time intensive, but for things that don't take much time it gives the iPhone the power of a full Mac or PC.

What is your favorite app?

It is impossible for me to pick one favorite app.  The third party apps that I probably use the most right now are Twitterific, NetNewsWire, Facebook, Quickoffice, Documents to Go, MoxtionX GPS Drive, NotifyMe, Dragon Dictation and LogMeIn Ignition.  But even to designate one of these as my favorite isn't accurate.  For example, I don't use Skype very often, but when I do have a need for it, it is a must-have app. 

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Probably word games.  I used to be addicted to Wurdle and 2 Across, but lately I've been playing Scrabble more.  But again, this changes over time.  I remember a period when I was addicted to Peggle.

How many screens have you filled?

The iPhone has 11 screens and I always have them all filled with quite a few on the "12th" screen, which means I can only get to those apps by doing a search for the app name.  I cannot wait for the next iPhone OS which will allow for folders and thousands of apps.  Yes, I suppose that makes me an appoholic, but there are so many useful apps that do so many useful things.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

I use my iPhone throughout the day and night.  How many "times" are there in a 24 hour period?  That's approximately how many times I use my iPhone in a day.

If you were Steve Jobs, what would you add to the iPhone?

We all have a sense of what is coming in the next iPhone thanks to Gizmodo incident that has been all over the news lately.  One of the rumored new features is a better camera, and I would appreciate that.  I love taking pictures, and for "real" pictures I use my Nikon D50, but SLR cameras are too big to have with you all the time.  I frequently take pictures or video with my iPhone just because that is what is with me, and even though the camera on the 3GS is an improvement over the 3G, I would love to see an even better, crisper, higher-definition camera that takes better pictures and video.  I realize that there is a limit to what you can do with a device as small as an iPhone, but that doesn't stop my from wishing for it.  Additionally, I would love to see voice commands integrated throughout the iPhone, and with Apple's recent purchase of the fantastic Siri app, perhaps we will see this soon.

Thanks Jeff!

New Tools - TextSoap

I've recently discovered Unmarked Software's TextSoap which has become a very useful tool for a text geek like myself. Expect a full review in the future. For now, just check out the new version.

1Password for Windows

For those readers stuck in Windows purgatory at the office, Agile Web Solutions has something for you.