ePic Mac Picture Viewer

I’ve been playing with the ePic Picture viewer on my Mac and I like it. Even better, it is on sale for this weekend only.

Automating OmniFocus Task Entry

Since publishing the first screencast on capture, I’ve received several e-mails asking for a way to automate task creation based on a text list. The idea is making a task list in a text file and having your Mac convert it to tasks. While I haven’t looked into this, Josh Betz did and came up with this nifty AppleScript.

Despite Josh’s scripting prowess, I’m still adding tasks from a text list manually. I do this because quite often something that seems like a good idea when I peck it into a text file, like perhaps running with scissors, doesn’t pass the sniff test when it comes time to add the tasks to OmniFocus. Moreover, it really isn’t that hard to add new tasks to OmniFocus directly on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

Home Screens - Wendy Cherwinski

I first met Wendy Cherwinski (twitter) in the Macworld speaker room several years ago. Wendy has this disarming, infectious smile and near encyclopedic knowledge of Keynote and presenting skills. It makes sense after all. Wendy pays her rent writing speeches and teaching people to communicate at Echelon Communications.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

We’re probably talking about the suite of apps I’ve named ‘productivity’. As a writer, I’m always reaching for a note-taking app such as SimpleNote to copy some gem I’ve gleaned from Twitter or the Web. It’s also great to have a text editor like PlainText handy so I can start working on a speech, presentation or article and then pick up the project later on either my iMac or MacBookPro. As you might guess, I’m a big fan of DropBox.

What is your favorite app?

My very favorite app is Scrivener, which is actually a Mac app. It’s superb for writing speeches because you can dip into your research so easily while you work on a draft. Using Scrivener and TextExpander together really helps chip time off speech assignments. My favourites apps on the iPhone are Captio and Say It Mail It. I generate some of my best ideas when I’m out for a walk. Captio lets me capture my thoughts and email them to myself. I use Say It Mail It to record spoken ideas that I want to share with my husband.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I’m mostly all business when it comes to using my iPhone. However, I like to relax with my Crosswords app on the iPad. Blocking out the world, and concentrating on what fits ‘down’ and ‘across’ for an hour or so is definitely a guilty pleasure.

What is the app you are still missing?

I just bought Notesy and can’t wait to give it a spin. It’s a note-taking app that syncs with DropBox so you can work across your iPhone, iPad and computer. Plus you can email your notes, which is a feature I find especially attractive. Actually, I’m missing every note-taking and text editing app that has yet to be invented. I love to get new ones and give them a test drive.

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

I use both of them too many times a day to count. When the alarm goes off in the morning I grab one or the other to check Twitter and email while I listen to the news on the radio. Over breakfast, I scroll through news sites while I read the paper. (I often have to search through sections of the paper to retrieve my iPhone before heading off to my office.) Basically, if I’m not in front of my computer, I have either my iPhone or iPad in hand. Before bed I set them up to recharge.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I love watching videos on both devices. My husband likes to shoot video on our holidays and then create tightly edited movies complete with music. In an idle moment I can watch a movie and enjoy the walk down memory lane. Priceless.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I would improve the integration between mobile devices and the desktop (less dependence on iTunes). MobileMe should behave more like DropBox and wireless syncing of docs between iOS and OSX apps would be terrific.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Another of my favourite Apple products is my iPod nano. I bought a band so I can wear it as a wristwatch. It works great!

Thanks Wendy.

OmniFocus Screencast Follow Up

Thanks everyone for the comments and questions about the second OmniFocus Screencast.

There were a few questions in the feedback here and at MPU. I’m responding to them with this post.

What no single action lists?

I didn’t cover it but I do occasionally use single action lists. I generally think in terms of projects.

I wonder how many tasks you manage in OF, and how many NA’s you have on your plate on a regular day?

Currently: 197 Projects, 1470 Actions

A lot of the projects are sequential. It takes me about 20 minutes to clear the inbox in the morning and it ranges between 30 and 80 actions. The actual daily list is usually about 30. These numbers are skewed however. I’m an attorney. I run a nerdy blog and podcast. I write books. I’m a dad. I’ve got tasks telling me to pick expert witnesses in nine months and reviewing corporate strategies with clients in two years.

And do you really abandon the use of contexts (given your Day Start perspective, which is grouped by project? And what makes this in your opinion different from a Project View?)

I don’t abandon context view. That comes in Episode 3 but I use context mode all the time during the day (usually on the iPhone and iPad) to knock tasks down.

How do you manage tasks you keep putting off? (When do you kick them out/alter them/etc.).

It’s all about the review. Be brutally honest. If it is not going to happen, kill it. Stay tuned for episode 3.

Do you create start dates for both projects and action items?

Action items: Usually.

Projects: Not usually but on occasion. When I do set them, they are normally with repeating projects.

Do you use the same methodology for “due dates” [use only if 100% necessary] for your calendar too? Picking tasks every morning seems reactionary and less intentional then scheduling out important projects. How do you schedule a meeting in OF / sync up your calendar?

I don’t schedule a meeting in OF. I set meetings in my calendar. I may have some tasks for an important meeting that requires preparation. Those tasks normally have a due date the day before. I think I talked too much about the peril of due dates. I use them all the time. I just don’t over use them so I don’t ignore them when they show up. Before I figured this out, I’d have 20 due items and OmniFocus felt like the boy who cried wolf.

If there is an item in your inbox that is less than 2 minutes to complete (for example: write quick email to David), do you simply punch it out and check it off as you are processing inbox?

Small items like that don’t even land in OmniFocus. I just do them.

The idea of Someday/Maybe lists is to have a place to park things that are grabbing your attention…but that you don’t have a specific commitment around. It sounds like you’re already doing this in a sense and are creating a reminder for yourself to revisit these items within a finite amount of time (e.g. 3 months). An alternative would be to revisit these items as part of a weekly review…or even once a month in some cases.

Touché

Do you use OF to keep lists of books to read, videos to watch or is OF not really ideal (ironically) for lists of potential items?

I don’t use OmniFocus for this. I used to do it in Zenbe Lists. About a year ago I moved the lists to Simplenote.

I am using Projects for my clients and am curious why you use Folders instead. Thanks again.

Often I’ll have multiple projects for a single client. (i.e. Apple Corporate General, Apple v. Samsung, MultiMillion $$ MacSparky Acquisition)

The Next Episode

The next episode should publish on the weekend of May 14. That episode will focus on getting tasks done and review. I’ll also do some follow up if there is time so get your questions in.

Home Screens In Depth

Mike Vardy did an interesting article about the whole home screen fixation, including a few quotes from yours truly.

Mac Power Users 48: Digging in on GoodReader

Mac Power Users Episode 48 is available for download. In this show, we cover GoodReader and iPad PDF Management.

You can get it on iTunes here or on the web right here. Enjoy.

Talking about Mac at Work

I did this interview at Macworld and promptly forgot about it. Sorry, but Flash is required.

Text Expander 3.3 Update

There is a nice update out for TextExpander adding several useful features including AppleScript support and keypress macros (tab, return, esc, enter) can now be nested in fill-in snippets (excellent!). Check it out.

Free Mac Notes App

I’ve always felt that Microsoft was on to something with OneNote. It is the one app that really worked on the Windows tablets. I recently received an e-mail from Microsoft expatriate Chris who has been developing his own useful Mac apps including a OneNote-like app called Notes. Chris has some great looking apps and they are all free. Check out the whole bunch.

OmniFocus Ninja Tricks, Part 2

Part 2 of the OmniFocus Ninja Tricks screencast is in the Mac Power Users feed. It is 50 minutes. I went nuts. Download it from the Web here or, better yet, subscribe to the Mac Power Users in iTunes here.

In case you missed it, Part 1 is right here.