ScanSnap to OmniFocus Workflow

Here is a propeller-beanie worthy workflow that lets you stuff a piece of paper in your ScanSnap and get an OmniFocus action out the other side using folder actions and other black magic courtesy of Brooks Duncan.

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Thoughts on The Post PC World

I watched the Apple Keynote tonight and was struck by how often I heard the term “Post PC.” When Steve Jobs and Apple start using these catch phrases, it is no accident. Apple has its own lexicon that starts internally but, at some point, often finds its way into Keynote speeches and product descriptions.

I believe “Post PC” is the newest of these phrases. We’ve all speculated about the future of technology in light of the explosive growth of iOS and the growing legions of mobile competitors. To the people at Apple, I don’t believe this dialogue is anything new. Internally, I think they’ve been planning this for years.

Looking back, I suspect Apple first started contemplating the Post PC world when iPods were selling like hotcakes. I’m certain that by the time the iPhone showed up, Apple’s Post PC plans were already in full swing. When the iPad appeared, the shoe dropped for the rest of us. Steve Jobs confirmed this last year at the AllThingsD conference when he talked of trucks and cars and how the PCs we all know and love are going to become the trucks of technology: still useful, but not necessary for most.

This all culminates today with Apple’s repeated mantra about the “Post PC” world. Why are we just hearing about this now? Because Apple is already sitting on top of the mountain in this new order.

I’ve written before about Mac user’s fear of returning to those dark days. I suspect there is a certain degree of that also ingrained in the Apple corporate culture. I’m not sure I’d call it fear so much as resolve with this second chance. Never again.

Never again will Apple blow its lead. Never again will Apple seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Never again in this new Post PC World.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

Kensington Presenter Pro Review

My beloved remote has failed me. I’ve been using it for at least 6 years without a hitch and suddenly (despite new batteries, cleaning the contacts, and a few kindly whacks) it has stopped advancing slides. So time for a new one and I took advantage of Macworld Expo to do some shopping.

For me the perfect remote has four buttons: advance, backward, dark screen, and laser. I don’t want extra bells and whistles that I will start pressing in nervous fits. So that was my shopping list, a Mac friendly remote with just the right number of buttons. I found my new remote on the expo floor, the Kensington Presenter Pro with Green Laser and Memory.

The Kensington Presenter Pro ($99) (find the manual here) fits nicely in my hand and features four buttons: slide advance, slide back, laser, and dark screen. It includes a dongle that stores inside the remote. The device works on a 2.4 GHz wireless signal that worked for me up to about 100 feet. Everything just works on the Mac. What really makes this remote shine however are the little details

The Laser

The Kensington Presenter Pro uses a green laser. While green lasers aren’t as unique as they used to be, they are still a lot more rare than red lasers, which is great. When I’m speaking, my green laser looks different, and that’s good. People know when I point. There is also some science involved. Green light is right in the middle of the visible spectrum where red light is on the edge (meaning less visible). So it has a bright shiny laser with a different color. That’s a plus.

The Thumb Drive

The USB key does more than talk to the remote. It also has 2 GB of onboard storage and a micro SD slot supporting cards up to 32 GB. That means you can put a copy of your Keynote right on the thumb stick as a last ditch back up in case everything else goes wrong. It also means you could conceivably walk in a room with a remote only, plug it in to a Mac and start talking.

The Power Switch

Another nice touch is the inclusion of a sliding power switch. My old remote didn’t have one and it made me crazy. You never knew when the laser might get accidentally pressed in my bag and I’d get to my location to find the batteries dead. As a result, I still have this manic desire to carry extra AAAs whenever I speak.

The Case

The Presenter Pro also includes a zippered case form fitted to hold your remote. It fits nicely in my bag without a big footprint.

Overall, the new remote is a winner.

TechShow 2011 Discount Still Available

It’s not too late to take advantage of the early bird discount at the American Bar Association’s TechShow. If you are a legal professional and want to use technology to the detriment of opposing counsel, get yourself to Chicago. This will be my third year speaking and every time I learn new tricks. This year I’ll be giving sessions on alternatives to Microsoft Word and collaboration tools for litigators. Check it out.

Also, I’ll be hosting a dinner with my friend, Victor Medina, for fellow Mac legal professionals. I’ll see you there.

Mac Power Users 44: Taking Notes

Mac Power Users Episode 44 is available for download. Katie and I survey the best applications for taking notes on your Mac and iOS. I recorded it with a cold and by then end I was falling over in my chair which, in hindsignt, is kind of entertaining. You can get it on iTunes here or on the web right here. Enjoy.

Service Sunday - iPad Image Processor

I’m hard at work on the OmniFocus Screencasts. As part of it, I’m making several slides with iPad screenshots. The process of importing images into Keynote, rotating, and then resizing them is tedious. After banging my head on this 10 or 20 times, it occurred to me that perhaps I should automate. So here it is, my quick and dirty automator service to rotate, resize, and rename iPad screenshots. Now I just run the service on the images and drag them on to my slide.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

TextExpander Backups

I’m not sure when this feature snuck into TextExpander, but I dig it.

The Mighty Monocle

My friend, Darren Rolfe (the brilliant graphic designer who designed the MacSparky and Mac Power Users logos) has a new web comic premiering Monday, The Mighty Monocle. Sounds like just the thing to make Mondays more bearable. Do yourself a favor and subscribe now so you can be there for the beginning.

Home Screens - Joseph Nilo

This week I’m pleased to feature Joseph Nilo (twitter), one of the pioneers of Mac podcasting and a very talented video and audio production guy who co-founded HiLo Media. After having a multiple year e-lationship, I finally got to meet Joseph in person this year at Macworld and I was so pleased that he agreed to share his home screen. So Joseph, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

My preferred home screen apps are pretty standard-issue. My least recognizable are certainly DP Control, which is a controller for my audio production software Digital Performer, and Authenticator, which allows me to securely log into my World of Warcraft account.

Additionally I really like Flickpad Pro, which is an ingenious way to view my friend’s Facebook and Flickr photos. I do have to mention that, for the sake of this post, I had to pull my most-accessed apps out of their respective folders to make it more interesting. I like a clutter-free home page with folders. The dock holds my six most-accessed apps and I use the Spotlight search or just muscle memory to find the rest.

What is your favorite app?

I certainly spend the most time in River of News and [Instapaper]. My last hour before bed at night is spent going through RSS feeds and saving interesting stuff to Instapaper for later reading. Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Authenticator represents my real-life guilty pleasure: World of Warcraft (I can stop whenever I want to, I swear!). My favorite time-killer is Monopoly HD. How many times a day do you use your iPad?

I use my iPad quite often. It sits in my edit suite with me (along with a Mac Pro with three displays and a MacBook pro, it certainly is excessive).

The iPad gets used (for work) mostly as a script reader— I keep the script for whatever video I’m editing live on my iPad for quick access. Additionally it comes with me into the voiceover booth as I’ve long-abandoned printing out scripts for the sake of being green. And hating printers.

The tools I use for managing all my work stuff: Dropbox, Evernote, Simplenote, Things, and a Safari link to Google Docs. Plus I prefer the Gmail interface in Safari to the iPad’s Mail app. And then my iPad becomes a part of my nightly ritual of reading in bed.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

Usability. I am constantly amazed that Apple has designed a product that my four-year-old has an almost disturbing mastery of. If she needs to be occupied for a time at a restaurant or on a plane or in the car, I feel better about her interacting and problem-solving in her favorite apps then having just parked her in front of a movie for a couple hours.

Thanks Joseph.

Data Liberation, MultiMarkdown, and OPML

Fletcher Penney has been hard at work on MultiMarkdown 3.0. Perhaps one of the most inspired new features is the ability to work with OPML files. (Don’t know what OPML is? Read this.) Fletcher let me in on the secret early and it is absolutely nerd-tastic.

The Revolution

We are on the verge of something remarkable with our data. Simple data portability is here and it is killing the stranglehold of any one software developer over our digital toolbelts. This option-rich environment is letting people build their own workflows. For a change, the machines are working for us. How did we get here? I see a few reasons:

The Mobile Explosion

With the iPhone, iPad, and App store, Apple has turned the world of mobile computing on its head. Every step of the way, competitors laughed, then feared, then copied. People are digging these new multiple devices and, as a result, there are a lot of operating systems to play in.

Multiple Operating Systems

The whole Mac vs. PC thing arises from one dimension, desktop computing. Those days are over. There are now more operating systems than ever and people are no longer working in just one. I currently use three daily (four if you count the Web). Once the Tablet-aganza gets in full swing there will be even more options. People need to move their data between these operating systems. The text, markdown, and OPML standards are the foot soldiers used by every app to make this happen.

Home-Brew Apps, Inc.

An App stores supporting these new platforms create historical opportunities for small developers . Size doesn’t matter if you have a good idea and execute on it. These little guys are competing where only multi-million dollar companies dared a few years ago. The result is a rich environment of options where ten people can have their favorite App in any category and they are all different.

Cloud Sync

We finally have a way to easily sync files between computers, operating systems, and platforms. There is a reason everyone gets misty eyed when we talk about Dropbox: we remember how hard it used to be to sync. Now that syncing is easy, the data needs to work everywhere.

Just the Beginning

Us nerds are just figuring this all out. Things are only going to get easier and this speaks well for our future computing experiences. No longer will we all need to bend our habits to the foibles of a few applications. Instead we are going to pick the apps that work the way we think and move our data between them without a second thought. I can’t wait.