Home Screens - Reid Trautz

This week I’m heading to Chicago for the ABA TechShow. TechShow is the best collection of attorneys on the planet. It is lots of great technology talk without the ego nonsense that usually comes with a big group of lawyers. The chair of this year’s TechShow is my friend, Reid Trautz (Twitter), who tirelessly works to make this show happen. So Reid, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Zite is my favorite news magazine reader. iHome+Sleep is my new morning alarm clock when dropped into my bedside recharger/speaker bar. Of course, the just-released ABA TECHSHOW app made my home screen!

What is your favorite app?

I really think Notability has quickly become a productive must-have app. It does the work of several others I now rarely use.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Scrabble. I know Words with Friends is far more popular, but I grew up playing Scrabble.

What is the app you are still missing?

I’d like a dictation app that is truly integrated into email and my calendar. It might exist, I just haven’t found it.

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

I use my iPad 10 times a day when away from the office especially when on the road, but I use my iPhone far more day in and day out.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

The form factor. I think Apple and Steve Jobs got the size, weight, shape just right. I’ve read more books in the past year than the previous four without a iPad; also, kicking back in a comfortable chair with the iPad makes late-night work less of a chore than with my laptop.

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

I’ve been a MacBook user for at least 5 years, but use a PC at my office. I really miss having both the Backspace and Delete keys on my Mac.

Anything else you’d like to share?

One thing. Buy David’s iPad@Work book. I learned a great deal!

Thanks Reid.

For more home screens clicky here.

Divorcing Google

Tom Henderson explains:

You see, I’m leaving Google, in toto — meaning in every single possible personal way. What you’re reading is the first seven days in the attempt, which is ongoing.

via George Starcher

Macworld Evernote Article

Yesterday Macworld.com published my latest article on Evernote. I’m so pleased to be part of the Macworld family. Also, my previous Scrivener for Business article is in this month’s print edition.

Task Management When the Bullets are Flying

Lately things around me are nuts. I don’t understand people who brag about how busy they are. In fact that guy makes me a little nauseous. Why would you be proud of being too busy to do anything right? Nevertheless, lately I am that guy. Between commitments at the day job, some very cool projects for MacSparky, the increased podcasting schedule, and my speaking gig next week at the ABA TechShow, I find myself underwater.

Generally, when things get nuts, I’m tempted to shut everything else out and just get to work. It is very tempting to ignore my task management system entirely and start pounding rocks. With this latest influx of work, I’ve tried a different strategy. I’m trying to manage my tasks at the same time that I’m overwhelmingly busy. It is working for me. While it now seems obvious, it was initially hard for me to justify spending any time on task management with bullets flying around me. So here are two ways to pull this off.

1. Review Every Day

This is a new practice for me that I started at the new year. While I used to do a weekly review, sometimes the review projects stacked up to such an extent that I was unable to get through them mindfully. Observing myself, it is clear that after reviewing 10 or 15 projects, I become much more about pressing the “Review” button and much less about actually paying attention. So I added a daily repeating task, “Review OmniFocus”. Now once a day I open the review tab in the OmniFocus on my iPad and review whatever is due. Sometimes it’s just one or two projects while others it may be ten. It’s never 50. This lets me take the time necessary to actually review each project. The practice has made my reviews more efficient and useful. Right now with things so busy, I am not giving up this practice and it is paying dividends. Despite having several plates in the air, there is no broken china at my feet.

2. Forecast Each Day

No matter how tired I am, every evening I spent 20 minutes looking at the forecast view for the next day and getting realistic with myself about what I can actually accomplish. While I still review my day’s tasks again in the morning, the triage has already largely occurred. Maybe this is a personal failing but going to bed knowing that I have the next day mapped out really helps. When I don’t plan the next day and wake up to find a day with 100 tasks needing sorting, it feels like icewater on my face. Maybe this is because I’m a morning person but when I get started I really want to be pounding rocks and not planning.

While both of these tips are useful every day, when things get hard the temptation will be there to ditch them. I certainly have in the past. With this latest scramble however, I have made a conscious decision not to do that and in fact comit to myself keep up with daily reviews and forecasting. It’s working. Life is nuts right now. I’m not.

MPU 77: Dumping Google

Mac Power Users Episode 77, Dumping Google, is live. Katie and I cover why you may want to consider scaling back your Google presence and how to go about pulling that off. Get the episode over at 5by5. Also, don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes.

Sponsor: TextExpander

I’m so pleased to have TextExpander as the RSS sponsor for a second week.

TextExpander can be as simple or as geeky as you want. Whatever your level of experience, there’s a TextExpander tip for you:

Getting Started: Make a snippet for your email address. You’ll be amazed at the keystrokes you’ll save not having to type that over and over.

Intermediate: Add one of the Predefined Groups, like HTML/CSS snippets or instant URL shorteners. There’s even an AutoCorrect group to fix your typos.

Advanced: Try fill-in snippets, which have multiple variable fields. For example, you could have a form letter with blanks for name, product, company, etc. Type your abbreviation, fill in the fields and you’re done.

Even More Advanced: Create your own AppleScript and shell script snippets.

Get the free demo. Don’t miss the 20% off special discount. Use the coupon code SYN0312 in the Smile store (Expires March 31, 2012).

Home Screens - Aaron Mahnke

Aaron Mahnke (twitter) is exactly the kind of creative junky that I dig. He does frelance graphic design by day at Wet Frog Studios and writes books by night. In his spare time Aaron also curates the Read & Trust Network. So Aaron, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

My home screen is honestly just filled with the basics. I have replaced the calculator with Calcbot because I prefer the design and features. Plus it’s just darn sexy, right? And Weather has been replaced by Shine. But most other apps that came with the device are still on my home screen.

Other exceptions:

I use PlainText for writing on my iPhone instead of Notes. The app syncs with Dropbox (and nvALT on my Macs), and can even be connected to Scrivener. That’s helpful if you do a lot of writing in Scrivener, and I do.

I quickly removed the iPod app from the dock (it’s easy to reach with a double-tap and a swipe) and placed OmniFocus in its place. That app is the core of my work life, and I capture everything in there. I don’t get fancy with OmniFocus, instead just depending on it as a place to file away tasks, assigning them due dates, a context and a project, and then I work from that database each night when I hand-write my paper to-do list for the next morning.

Oh, and Instacast has found a place on my home screen as well. I have a few regular podcasts that I enjoy, and also love to see my own artwork in the app (I design most of the cover art for the shows on the 70 Decibels network).

What is your favorite app?

Hands-down, my favorite app is Tweetbot. I’m a freelance designer, working from home by myself, so it’s very easy for me to look for connection through the community on Twitter. Tweetbot allows me to manage that “relationship” in ways that helps me stay productive. I can mute hashtags, twitter clients and even users. I want to stay caught up and find the quality content, but Tweetbot shines in helping me avoid the stuff that gets in the way.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

If I’m not taking care of email or browsing webpages, my guilty pleasure is the Kindle app. I’m a writer and a reader, and sell all of my books through the Kindle store because of how easy it is to use and interact with. And so when it comes to spare time, I run right to the Kindle app on my iPhone.

What is the app you are still missing?

As an author and publisher, I frequently interact with Kindle’s KDP dashboard, where my book sales are updated live. I would love an app for KDP stats. I realize that it would probably appeal to a small market, but it would be infinitely more useful than using Safari on the iPhone.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone?

I have my iPhone on and docked beside my keyboard all day while I’m at my desk. But it gets the most use in the morning before work and in the last couple hours of my day.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone?

I’m easy to please for the most part. I’m in love with the Notification Center. Sure, there are issues and things I’d fix (like those darn little “x” and “clear” buttons…ARGH!), but for the most part it has made using my iPhone so much more convenient.

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

I would love to have the ability to move specific Notification Center widgets (such as Stocks or Weather) to the iPhone’s lock screen, so that I don’t have to press the home button, slide to unlock, and then drag the NC open. That would be my top request for a future update to iOS.

Anything else you’d like to share?

As a little kid in the 80’s, I used a magnifying glass to burn a small piece of scrap wood from my dad’s workshop. I burned a drawing into the wood. A drawing of a screen, buttons and nobs and switches. I really believes that someday we would be carrying our computers in our pockets.

The ten-year old me loves living in the future.

Thanks Aaron.

For more home screens clicky here.

Call For Hazel Geekery

We are planning an April Mac Power Users show on Hazel 3.0. If you’ve got an amazing Hazel rule, send it in (with a screenshot) to feedback@macpowerusers.com.

Byword for iOS, Review and Screencast

While I understand you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting another iOS markdown text editor, today there is a new contender, Byword (App Store). I’m so pleased to finally be able to talk publicly about Byword on the iPad. I’ve been using it for months as it went through its various beta iterations and I think the final release is fantastic.

You may be familiar with Byword on the Mac. It is a rock solid simple text editor. I rely upon Byword for most writing projects on my Mac that don’t require Scrivener’s research and planning tools. I fell in love with this App immediately with its minimal interface and “just right” number of options. It makes writing markdown a snap and the app displays markdown intelligently, graying out markdown syntax while leaving your content text dark, which makes proofreading a breeze. Indeed, I would attribute my failure to fully embrace applications like BBedit to Byword’s low friction writing environment perfect markdown and simple HTML. Likewise, Byword will generate HTML to a file or your clipboard from your markdown text, which makes moving your words to the web incredibly simple.

Byword for iOS is a universal app that runs on both the iPhone and the iPad. It features iCloud syncing and it works great. Start writing a text document on your iPad, and iCloud seamlessly sends it over to your iPhone without delay or pain. I’ve used a lot of different syncing services over the years. Byword uses iCloud exactly the way it was intended and it is something special. I can keep the application open on both my iPad and my iPhone and quite literally watch the words appear on my iPhone just minutes after I type them in my iPad. I’m not required to close the app or worry about any conflicts. In the months I’ve been using the beta, I’ve never had a single conflict.

The iOS interface also reflects a lot of thought by the developers. Like its Mac counterpart, iOS Byword nails that fine line between useful and fiddly with features and options. While the Mac version includes support for keyboard shortcuts, the iOS version adds a row buttons across the top of the screen that displays the word count. Swipping the word count to the left, you get an additional row of buttons with the most used syntax for writing markdown. Swiping this row again displays buttons for headings, links, image links, and bulleted lists. It’s all very seamless and if you write in markdown, you’re going to love it.

The application also supports local storage and Dropbox. While there still are things where Dropbox is best, syncing text in this fashion is not one of them.

To exit edit mode you to swipe from the left side of the screen. The application settings include options to export to HTML and e-mail along with an option to copy the existing text in its HTML format for pasting somewhere else. This is great for bloggers on the road. There are a few monospace and proportional fonts to choose from and options for auto capitalization, auto correction, spell checking, and (of course) TextExpander support. I created a short Screencast showing off Byword for iOS at the end of this post.

The iOS application is currently $3 but the price will raise to $5 so get your copy now.

Byword for the Mac also got an update. The update adds just a few feature requests including text zoom (which I really appreciate), auto completion, and support for the latest and greatest multimarkdown. The headliner with this update is iCloud support on the Mac. You can move any any existing or new Byword text file to your iCloud storage and it immediately shows up on your iPad and iPhone. The circle is complete.

Byword is the app I use for active writing documents. While iCloud feels like it has been a long time coming, I am really pleased with its performance in Byword. Below is a short screencast showing it off.

iOS Byword Introduction from David Sparks on Vimeo.

Jonathan Ive on Navigation

This Jonathan Ive interview is really good. I thought his answer to the question of what makes a great designer was instructive.

A: It is so important to be light on your feet, inquisitive and interested in being wrong. You have that wonderful fascination with the what if questions, but you also need absolute focus and a keen insight into the context and what is important - that is really terribly important. Its about contradictions you have to navigate.

I’d argue this answer can apply to a lot more than just design. Any intellectual endeavor needs exactly this agility.