BusyToDo 1.0

Since the very first iPhone, we have all been wondering when Apple will finally turn the switch and let us sync iCal to-do items directly to our iPhones. Indeed, an entire cottage industry of to-do applications has grown up around this void. For those of you still waiting for this sync, your prayers have been answered, not by our friends in Cupertino but instead the coding wizards at BusyMac.

BusyToDo is a $5 trouble-free, lickety-split syncing solution to get your iCal to-do items on your iPhone. I played with it through beta and had no troubles.

What I Want for Christmas

Sam England put together a fun site including several internet nerds and their christmas wishes, including yours truly.

Send to OmniFocus with E-Mail 2.0

One of my only complaints in the iPad OmniFocus review was its inability to process an e-mail inbox as easily as the Mac OS X version does. This is a limitation of the current iteration of iOS. I posted recently about using a mail rule to get around this. Today the Omni Group made this even easier unveiling the Send to OmniFocus Service. Using this new feature you can take any mail message and forward it to send-to-omnifocus@omnigroup.com. For this purpose I created a new contact in Address Book called OmniFocus with the magic e-mail address so this will be easier from the iPad and iPhone.

The Omni elves will then apply their secret sauce to your e-mail and send it straight back to the originating e-mail address. The returned mail will have a Send to OmniFocus button that, when pushed, opens a new inbox item in OmniFocus with the message subject as the task title and the message content as the task note.

This works great for adding tasks from an iOS device or (gasp) Microsoft Outlook on your work PC. This works nearly as well as Omni’s Clip-O-Tron 3000, which also embeds a link to the original e-mail in the task so you can call it back up with one click.

While not perfect, this solution certainly lowers the barrier of entry for getting tasks into OmniFocus. I’m looking forward to see where Omni goes with this next.

Nebulous Notes, Superior iOS Text Editor

Merlin Mann recently turned me onto Nebulous Notes, an iOS text editor and, after using it for just a few days, I’m hooked.

Nebulous Notes is another Dropbox linked text editor. It lets you access any folder in your Dropbox to open and save files. Now this is all fine and dandy, but there are several apps that do this. What separates Nebulous Notes are the extra features.

Specifically, macros. The top line of the keyboard includes a list of macro keys that you customize. It includes several useful pre-built macros, like a date and time stamp, but you don’t have to stop there. If you are coder, add curly brackets. Markdown nerd? Add square brackets and parenthesis. It is all user customizable so figure out what you need and go nuts.

There is also support for TextExpander. Between my mushrooming TextExpander snippet library and custom-built Nebulous macros, I have no excuse to do anything in the app but write. You can see why Nebulous Notes has quickly found its way to my heart and iPad home screen.

Additionally, the writing experience is very comfortable. There are several fonts, including an assortment of easily read monospaced fonts and you can adjust the text size. (Why is that suddenly becoming important to me?) There are several writing themes, my favorite of which is Matrix Coder providing the green text on black screen typing experience of my Apple II days. Once you have everything just right, hit the full screen button and go to town.

You can save your finished text to Dropbox or mail it off. Nebulous includes AirPrint support and works nicely with my Printopia enabled printers.

Nebulous Notes is $2 and universal, working on both the iPhone and iPad. Go get it.

Update on Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 10:39PM by David Sparks

I’ve received several comments and e-mails about how this works with SimpleNote. I still use SimpleNote often. I just do the heavy writing in Nebulous and move text into SimpleNote for syncing bliss.

Mac App Store, January 6

It’s official. I’m guessing they’ll suck us all in with new iWork apps the same day.

MacBook Air Outbreak Continues

Patrick Rhone loves his and so does John Chandler. With the generation 2 improvements, I believe the MacBook Air is going to have a lot more staying power than generation 1 did. The explanations of how they are getting by with just 64GB hard drives are fascinating although I’m not sure I’d want to slim down that much.

Asking Fewer Questions

Eddie hits another homer at Practically Efficient.

Audioengine N22 Desktop Audio Amplifier

As explained in my review of the Audioengine P4][p4] passive speakers, Audioengine has recently expanded their products to include unpowered speakers. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that they also now sell the N22 Amplifier to power your passive spearkers.

The $199 N22 looks like something from a Kubric movie, monolithic with a single dial in the middle. It looks great next to your Mac, on a shelf, or beside your TV.

The N22 measures in 7”(H) x 2.75”(W) x 5.5”(D) and weighs about 3 1/2 pounds. The back of the N22 includes several connections including gold plated connections for two speakers, and inputs for RCA and mini-jack connectors. There is also a powered USB port that can be used to turn your N22 wireless amplifier (with the optional W1 Wireless transmitter) or charge your iDevice. There is also a variable line out that accommodates a subwoofer or external amplifier.

Both audio inputs are active at the same time so you can run two sources simultaneously. I did this with a Garage Band audio filie and my WX-11 wind controller (a sort of midi saxophone) and it worked great.

The N22 delivers 22 watts per channel and cools through passive convection. The unit runs remarkably cool. There is a discreet headphone amplifier that works well with your headphones of choice.

With all of our digital media migrating to just a few devices, we no longer need the complexity of amplifiers that we had when there was a phonograph, CD player, tape deck and (gasp) 8-track plugged in. The N22 offers a legitimate light-weight option to the traditional receiver/amplifier without the compromises you’d expect.

Audioengine provides the same 30 day trial policy for the N22 that it has for its speakers. So long as you don’t damage it and keep the original shipping materials, you can return it within the first 30 days for a full refund.

Audioengine P4 Passive Speakers

Audioengine, the company that melds a former Apple designer with a speaker guru has, for several years, released some very powerful bookshelf sized powered speakers for all of your iDevices. Recently, however, the company started selling a new line of passive speakers, the Audioengine P4.

Until now, if you wanted to hook up Audioengine speakers to your existing receiver, you were out of luck. All of Audioengine’s speapers before the P4 included their own powered amplifier, which was great for plugging into iDevices but no fun if you wanted to plug them into your existing amplifiers or surround-sound receivers. The P4 solves this problem removing the amplifier.

The speakers have the standard 2 wire connections and include threaded inserts for attaching to stands, walls, and ceiling bracket systems. Despite, their small size, they are beefy and well-built. The speakers are 9 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide by 6.5 inches deep and ship in cloth sacks that would get the approval of Steve Jobs.

But how do they sound?

The AP4s sound great. I’ve always been happy with the sound output from the relatively small bookshelf sized Audioengine speakers. You can crank them up and get a minimum of distortion. The company cut its teeth in the speaker business engineering high performance studio monitors, those speakers musicians use when recording. I’ve spent my fair share of time with studio monitors in my musician days. The best ones have to be rugged and able to play loud enough to give you the mix back despite all the other noise. This pedigree comes out in the Audioengine speakers.

The speakers include several features common with Audioengine’s other speakers including hand-built cabinets, 5-way gold-plated binding posts, silk dome tweeters and kevlar woofers, and they are magnetically shielded.

All of the Audioengine products share the same tuning so they work great together. I’m using my existing P4s to replace my two primary speakers on my stereo but considering buying two additional P4s to replace my surround speakers so everything is tuned together.

Whenever I can find the time, I enjoy butchering Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson songs on my Midi keyboard. While this is just a dull memory of my past degree of music nerdiness, sound is important to me and the Audioengine products suit very nicely indeed.

Pricing starts at $249. Audioengine contiues to offer its 30 day audition. If you purchase the speakers from Audioengine’s online store and are not satisfied, you can return them in the original packaging in like-new, undamaged condition within 30 days of purchase and get a full refund of your purchase price.

Password Security Wake Up Call

I’ve been beating the password security drum for some time now. Today’s news had an interesting bit on Gawker Media (owners of Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and several other popular sites) and how they got hacked. Most telling was Forbes’ article explaining how Gawker chief mucky-muck, Nick Denton, knew his account was hacked and didn’t immediately change his password. To add insult to injury, he used the same password for Google Docs and Twitter letting the hacker into most of his electronic life.

The moral of this story is simple. Don’t use the same password in multiple places. Ever. The easiest way avoid this pitfall is with 1Password, which you can get with the Mac Power Users discount here.

Another disturbing part of this story is Forbes’ passage that, if true, reflects a complete lack of concern for Gawker’s users. Forbes writes

In the chat, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan, after hearing that it is just Gawker users who have been compromised, remarks “oh, well. unimportant”. Gawker’s Richard Lawson wants to know if the breach is limited to “just the peasants?”

The bottom line is you can’t rely on anyone to protect your password security but yourself and if you are using the same password at multiple locations, you are going to get burned. Finally, for good measure, twice a year set new passwords on all the really important accounts for good measure. (I do this when the clocks change.)