Today I give my annual talk at the elementary school about how the judicial system works. We conclude the talk with a mock trial concerning the untimely death of Humpty Dumpty. Was it an accident or was it murder? For legal minded nerds and teachers, I have all the materials for this session if you too want to volunteer at the local school. If you are interested, drop me a note.
Mac Power Users Episode 46 is available for download. This one is a 2.5 hour marathon session with Merlin Mann and even better than Merlin’s first workflow episode (that was awesome). Merlin bills this recent podcast as the nerdiest interview ever and it delivers. You can get it on iTunes here or on the web right here. Enjoy.
Even after publishing MacSparky.com for 4 years, part of me still sometimes forgets that other people read it. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard from writer, director, and actor David Wain (twitter and IMDb). You can learn a lot more about David at his Web site. I’m a fan of David’s from way back. If you’ve never seen it before, you really should check out The State, perhaps the best sketch comedy show ever. David, when not writing and directing the latest Jennifer Aniston movie, is busy playing with his iPhone. So David, show us your home screen.
What are your most interesting home screen apps?
I’ve been using GPS Drive while on an extended work trip to Los Angeles (normally I don’t drive when home in NYC). I love having one less device to keep track of, and I particularly like how it pauses the iPod (like when I’m listening to Mac Power Users) when it wants to tell me where to turn. It also syncs with my address book so I rarely have to type in an address.
The other one I find indispensable in the car (as well as when running) is FlickTunes which allows me to control my music and podcasts with simple one- two- and three-finger swipes - I never have to look down at the screen.
I’ve also been enjoying Dialvetica’s smart way of knowing which contacts I want to have in front of me when I open it.
What is your favorite app?
Instapaper, no competition. It has erased that agita I get whenever I come across something I want to read but don’t have time at that moment. When I get into bed at night, I read my Instapaper articles (in the dark mode that automatically kicks in after sundown). I prefer reading in bed on the iPhone vs the iPad because of the retina display and the much lighter weight. (It’s amazing that just a couple of years ago when traveling I used to bring books, magazines, a GPS, white noise machine, iPod, cell phone, address book, alarm clock and day planner. Now ALL of that is in the iPhone, and actually better.)
I also love MOG - like having an iPod with millions of songs. So much fun. Honorable mention: Simplenote, Yelp.
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
I play Words With Friends with my sisters pretty much every time I sit on the toilet. I know that sounds gross but you know what I mean. I love flipping through my Twitter feed but try not to because it’s so addictive.
What is the app you are still missing? The one that controls brightness without having to go to settings > brightness. I’m adjusting brightness all the time.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone?
I’m definitely one of those for whom the iPhone has become an appendage. It’s just so damn useful! I’m going to try to do electronics free Saturdays when I’m done with my current work stint, because it can get to be too much.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?
I love the overall “just works” factor. That things tend to happen the way you expect them too, and they’ve got it to the point where you don’t have to fiddle with it too much (if you don’t want to).
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change? I’d let those users who care to customize their experience be allowed to do so. They can still have the automatic user-friendly closed version for casual losers, but let the geeks go under the hood if they want!
Also I hate when I pull out my phone because I want to show someone my home screen image of my kids, but there’s a text message there so it blocks it. These are the kinds of things they should allow us to customize!
AND I hate the podcast organizing system. Why can’t you erase a podcast on your iPhone and have it then be erased on your iTunes!?
Anything else you’d like to share?
I’ve never publicly gotten so Mac geeky. Thanks for letting my inner nerd shine!
Thanks David!
I’ve been a fan of Matthew Butterick’s Typography for Lawyers web site for some time. Recently, Matthew expanded on the subject and wrote a book. Having spent the last few weeks with it, I recommend it to any legal professionals (or anyone else that generates formal documents).
Having spent the last 20 years reading poorly written, unpersuasive looking briefs, this book should be required reading for all first year law students.
While I generally prefer books in electronic form, this book is only available in the paper version. This make sense. It is, after all, a book about typography. Regardless, the book is a good (and attractive) read.
Dropbox just continues to get more useful every day. At this point, I believe it is mandatory for anybody who wants to get work done on an iPad. If Dropbox’s own developer API, letting you load and save documents to your Dropbox space from iOS devices, wasn’t enough, you can now turn your Dropbox storage into its own WebDAV server. Using DropDAV, I now have the ability to access my Dropbox storage through any Webdav enabled application. Most importantly, this opens all of the iPad iWork apps to Dropbox storage. I’ve been using it a few weeks without a hitch.
You still need to save the work back to Dropbox when you are done but at least it lets you thumb your nose at the iPad iWork team for not enabling Dropbox access. The services is free with a 2GB Dropbox account and $3/month with a 50GB account. You could also use this to sync your OmniFocus database. If any readers have ideas for other uses of a WebDAV connection to Dropbox, sound off in the comments.
BEEDOCS has been hard at work and recently released version 3 of their stellar timeline application, Timeline 3d. This release makes building and using timelines even easier. For instance you can now publish an interactive timeline straight to the web (or YouTube), add movies and audio, and even put a soundtrack to your timeline.
Navigation of 3d timelines also go easier with new tools and views to let you jump around in your outline. There is a lot more so go check it out. I’ll do a more thorough review soon.
In the meantime, I took a few minutes to talk to Timeline Developer Adam Behringer.
Adam, you took a lot steps to improve the sharing of timelines with this new version. What prompted that?
When I create the first version of our timeline software in 2005, my focus was on meeting the needs of the person creating a timeline. For example, the initial inspiration was lawyers who needed to create professional looking timelines quickly and with minimal fuss.
However, over the past six years my focus has shifted towards the needs of the end audience. For example, if a lawyer is showing a timeline to a jury, what does the jury want to get out of it? What do they need to see in order to make a good decision?
In version 2, which was released in 2007, the focus was on presenting timelines in real-time to an audience that was viewing the presentation from a distance. That is why the 3D feature was developed. I am proud of this emphasis because many new timeline products have appeared in the last 5 years, but we are still the only one that works well for live presentations.
In version 3, the keyword that drove the design and development was “storytelling.” Specifically storytelling to an audience that is not watching a live presentation. I improved the video export features so that they could use music, narration, and event video. The other major new feature is web publishing of interactive timelines.
The point of the new features is that the end audience can derive more meaning from the story being told. There are a lot of products that can collect data and display it in eye-catching ways. There are very few products that actually increase the understanding of the audience in any meaningful way. That is what I am striving for and that is what prompted the new sharing features.
I really like the new controls for 3D presentations. How did you develop them?
The “bee-line” is a bar code like interface that I have been designing and experimenting with for the past three to four years. The original inspiration was about data density. I wanted to see if I could show the relationships between several hundred historical events in a few square inches. I dreamed of timelines that function like a photo in a news story instead of being just a full-screen application. In other words, web timelines that would sit along side and supplement other story-telling content. Making timeline content understandable and easy to navigate in a very small space is necessary for this to work.
Though these experiments started before the iPhone had launched and before anyone knew about the iPad, it turns out that the interface works really well when using a finger to drag over the bee-line. So, we had a user interface control that worked well for the web and for mobile devices. The last step was to bring it to our full screen 3D interface. It happens to work really well there too because it allows skipping around to events in real-time, which is something our customers had been asking for.
We also introduced a control panel for 3D presentations that gives a visual interface to the functions that previously required a keyboard. To develop those, I listed out the functionality required and made a video of myself pushing all the buttons on the dashboard of my car. Then I sent it Kenichi Yoshida in Japan, and he designed a beautiful button panel.
What was your most requested feature request and how did you address it in Version 3?
I try to balance my efforts between the needs of three groups of people. First, I try to make sure that the experience for my current customers is always improving. Second, there is a group of millions of people who are not yet customers but could be. I am trying to figure out how to improve the software such that they will want to become customers. Finally, I spend about a third of my time working on things that make me happy.
For current customers, the most requested features were web publishing and event videos.
For “not yet” customers, we added support for timelines that go beyond calendar dates. Now people can create charts based on any type of quantity or measurement. I believe this will allow the software to find more uses such as project management, screenwriting, or scientific applications.
What is your favorite new feature?
For me, I wanted to increase the emotional appeal of timeline presentations. Though most of our customers are using timelines for things related to their work, some of my favorite timelines have been created by customers for weddings, funerals, birth announcements, etc… I wanted to find ways to make these timelines more cinematic.
Some of our customers with film editing skills have added musical soundtracks to their timelines using software like Final Cut Pro which have turned out wonderfully. I wanted everyone’s timelines to come alive through sound, even if they don’t have audio engineering skills. Can you imagine a documentary without sound and music? Well, then why should timelines be silent?
I’ve added a new feature that lets you drag and drop a song onto the timeline and when you export the timeline as a movie, it automatically fades in and out the music as appropriate to blend with the other audio elements in your timeline.
What is next for BEEDOCS?
We have taken a few years to develop these new features in relative secrecy. Now it is time for us to put them out there and listen to customers to see how they respond and how they use these features. Developing a software product is literally a conversation and it is our chance to listen and learn now.
We’ll make new plans based on what we learn.
Thanks Adam!
Full Disclosure: BEEDOCS sponsors MacSparky.com.
