iPhone Web Apps I Actually Use

Having just taken a small vacation and coming up two months of iPhone ownership, I thought I'd take a look at the web apps I routinely use on my iPhone. There are a lot of very nice iPhone web apps out there programmed by very bright and imaginative people. I've probably got about 50 of them linked on my "iPhone Applications" favorites bar but I've been making a conscious effort to track those applications that I actually use and thought I'd report on them here.

NewsGator Mobile

Not long after I switched, I went ahead and purchased a license for NetNewsWire which is an excellent news reading program loaded with features and constantly being refined by an active, committed Mac developer. It came with a free subscription to the NewsGator service which is an online reader component. It syncs with NetNewsWire and their iPhone app is really clean and easy to use. I toyed a bit with Google Reader which is free (that is always a good thing) but found the NewsGator/NetNewsWire combo easier for me to use.

Anyway I can check my subscriptions anytime on the iPhone and read through, trash, or clip for later viewing on my Mac very easily from anywhere (including the Edge network). This is my most frequently clicked iPhone web application.

Tadalist.com

I've previously blogged about how I use this simple online to-do application from 37Signals with its accompanying browser application for grown up computers to drive shopping lists and other to-do items between my iPhone and OmniFocus. It is free and Edge friendly. My good friend, Darren over at MacWingnut.com prefers todoist.com which is, frankly, much sexier in a geeky sort of way with gmail integration, quicksilver support and other things that sound fun but I like the simplicity of Tada. This is partly because I view it only as a stepping stone to getting tasks in my actual task vault, OmniFocus, wherein Darren (I believe) uses Todoist for the whole nine yards.

I am also trying 37Signals' accompanying product BackPackit for a month to see if it is worth the trouble. This is sort a Kluge to get around the fact that Apple does not sync the Notes on my iPhone or give me a way to secure them. Ugh. I'll report more on BackPackit at later date when I've had more time to work with it.

Traffic

A necessity for living in Southern California. This is a great supplement to the little red lines I keep seeing in Google Maps.

Applists.com

This is a collection of all the various iPhone web applications that appears to be updated more than most and gives you a simple place to look for what is new.

There are others. Many, many others. But as pretty and neat as they look, I really don't load them very often.

I am hoping Apple opens the iPhone up. If I could get an iPhone version of OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, and Yojimbo, I would be one very happy camper.

Review - Pages 08

I was not a fan of Pages 06. I'm sure it was perfectly fine for making brochures and flyers, but unfortunately I never had much need for brochures and pamphlets so there it sat on my hard drive, unused and neglected. That being said, I wasn't particularly happy with any other of the word processors on my Mac either. I played a bit with Bean and NeoOffice but when it came down to it, I usually ended up in Microsoft Word. Word reminds me of one of those RV's you see driving down the road. The kind with bicycles tied on the back, a boat bolted to the roof, and spare luggage falling out the window. Like the old RV, Word has every possible feature bolted on and wedged into the various menus. While it has everything you could possibly need (and quite a few you will never need) it drinks system resources and is a real chore to use. Nevertheless, I, like many others, have been using Microsoft Word for more than 15 years and anything else I try will be compared to it.

So Steve Jobs announced the new Pages 08 and explained that now it is a word processor in addition to being a page layout tool. It is in this new word processing mode that I spent most of my time kicking the tires on Pages 08.

All word processors are fundamentally the same. From the days of my 8-bit Atari computer to sitting here with my fancy MacBook Pro, I still am forced to put the words together and get them onto the screen. When it comes to word processing, the devil is in details.

The details in Pages 08 are very nice indeed. There is a contextual format bar that monitors your activity and puts the applicable tools in easy reach. Whether you are typing text, working in a table, or inserting shapes and diagrams, Pages puts the related tools in the top bar.

Pages also incorporates several of the graphical tools added with iWork 08 to this Pages program. This allows for Instant alpha, customizable frames and other graphic tools. They work just as slick as in Keynote. I don’t think I’ll have a lot of need for these tools in a word processor but it is nice to know they are there.

Change tracking has also been added. This is a very important feature for my work. I often exchange documents with others where change tracking is critical. The implementation of change tracking in Pages is both easy and slick. Even more important, it has worked flawlessly with Microsoft Word. Since most of the people I am working with are using Word, this is critical.

Another new feature is automatic lists. This, of course, has been the bane of existence to all Microsoft Word users for years. Apple’s implementation of this feature is a bit more forgiving. It actually adopts your formatting instead of imposing its own. For instance if you type a number 1 and then period and two spaces, it will apply the same with the autoformatting.

The compatibility with Microsoft Word is generally good but not perfect. I put some format heavy contracts into it and made several adjustments while tracking changes. I then exported them to Word format and viewed them in Mac Word 04 and and Windows Office 2003. They looked fine and my windows colleagues were none the wiser. I also tried this with a legal pleading document and the conversion was a mess. Legal pleadings have a very specific format with lines down the left side, line numbering and a variety of other formatting requirements that don’t make a lot of sense but hey .. its the world I live in. Anyway, while the Word pleadings imported just fine into Pages, they did not export to Word properly after changes in Pages. The page formatting, font sizes, line numbering, and just about everything else were screwy and unusable without plenty of work. So for me that means I need to do pleading work in Word or just do it as a text file and send it to others for formatting.

Another issue I never quite sorted out was exporting to different versions of Word. Apple beat Microsoft to the punch with compatibility with Office 2007 but I don’t run Office 2007 so I can’t report on that issue. I tried to figure out if there is a setting to export to Office 2007 or Office 2003. Perhaps if I could sort that out it would solve the problem of exporting pleadings properly but after spending an hour trying to figure it out on the internet, I’m officially kerfluffled on that issue. In short, if you need to work with Word files and use complicated formatting make sure to give it a test run before you commit.

Pages 08 runs much cleaner than Microsoft Word in OS X. It loads quickly and happily exists far down in my activity monitor. As I typed this review in Pages, it ranged between one and ten percent of the total system resources. When I clicked out of Pages it pleasingly dropped to zero percent.

The included templates are very well designed and cover just about any need. It is telling of just how much of a stranglehold Microsoft has on the word processor market that my biggest problems with Pages are not its own feature set but its ability to play nicely with Word. Separating that issue, running Pages is easier and less intrusive than Word. It allows me to think less about the program and more about the words on the screen. While the feature set is more limited, it has everything I need. While Word still remains on my hard drive, I’m quite pleased to leave the Winnebago in the garage.

You can listen to this review on Surfbits MacReviewCast Episode #122.

Organizational Chaos

I am currently working with EagleFiler in anticipation of preparing a review for Surfbits. It is a very impressive little application that sorts just about anything into an iTunes-like three pane directory. The thing is I seem to use all of these organization applications. I have Yojimbo, Yep, and now EagleFiler. The trick is figuring out which ones work best for me. Stay tuned.

Polish Your Presentation

On the theme of my Keynote review last week I stumbled upon Merlin Mann's excellent post summarizing some very good practices for making outstanding presentation along with some great links to more information. You can check it out right here.

Vegas Baby!

Hi Friends,

I'm taking a small family vacation for a few days and throwing the kids in the car and driving off to Las Vegas. This is all kind of funny since I'm not much of a gambler but we are saving for the big vacation next year (Maui) and this seemed like something fun and not too rough on the wallet. So I probably will not be posting much the next few days, but then again .. it is REALLY hot in vegas and the Mac will be in the hotel room. Hmmmm...

Review - Keynote ‘08

Presentations and word processing are my bread and butter. That is, I earn my living writing and presenting. I have been writing Power Point presentations for years. I'm actually very good at them and occasionally freelance for my geek challenged colleagues. It is with those years of experience in mind that I was initially skeptical about using Apple's presentation software, Keynote. That was, at least, until the first time I saw a Keynote presentation.

I think Keynote (even before this recent update) is superior to PowerPoint in both ease of use and final product. With the release of Keynote '08, the gap has just grown larger. For the purpose of this review, I'm going to skip over a lot of the features that already existed in Keynote and focus on the new additions. If you are not familiar with Keynote, even before the upgrade it was full of stellar templates, transitions, and text effects that made producing convincing presentations a breeze. Indeed there are even more new transitions and effects but that is just the start of some fantastic changes and additional features.

With the new point to point animation you can tell an object where to go on the screen and how to get there. For example, if you have a map of the forest and want to show exactly how the wolf went to the three little pigs homes, you can plot the motion paths with a one click procedure for each stop and Keynote does the rest. With each click during your presentation the wolf will move across the screen at the speed, acceleration, and motion path that you set. The way I used to accomplish this was a very convoluted procedure involving Final Cut's Motion program and a lot of praying. Now its a breeze.

Another new feature is one I didn't even realize I needed but now I couldn't live without. Its called "Instant Alpha". It allows me to incorporate picture, pdfs, and other objects and remove the background. I've talked about how much I like using OmniGraffle but what I've never posted on is the frustration of making a beautiful diagram in OmniGraffle and then having to look at that ugly white background when I import it into Keynote. I guess I could have removed the background all along in Photoshop Elements, but to be honest I never really thought of it. Regardless, with the new Keynote, you just tap the "Instant Alpha" button and then put the mouse inside the color you want to remove. You click and drag and it removes the background on screen for you. When you get it just right, you hit the enter key and its done. It is really easy and extremely useful.

Inevitably, every slideshow I prepare has a run of pictures. A lot of my work involves construction projects and buildings and pictures are essential for demonstrating particular issues. The new keynote has an excellent feature called "Smart Build" that lets you put an entire series of pictures into one slide and easily pick a transition that is flashy or subtle.

Keynote will also now insert a frame around a picture or text box. This is really nice for setting a picture or highlighting text I pull out of a document image. In powerpoint this took two separate images and it was an absolute pain. No more “send to back”. No more resizing and moving multiple objects. Just one clicky. Thanks Apple.

Navigating and sorting also got easier with adjustable sizes and new views. Formatting and auto-correcting also got a lot easier with new tools to make production of your keynote faster and more efficient.

Apple also improved the movie import and export function. You can now key a quicktime movie on a mouse click instead of it starting automatically on the slide transition. It also allows you to export your presentation to Quicktime. This export is not, however, just a static movie but you can actually set it to advance on clicks just as if you are viewing it in Keynote. Are you getting this? That means you can take your Keynote and play it on any machine that has Quicktime. Even a beige box that has requires Norton and is covered with stickers that say “Intel inside”. This feature will be extremely useful to me when I have to give a presentation using somebody else’s windows rig. It will also leave them all wondering, “How did he do that?” And that is a wonderful thing.

So in case you haven’t figured it out I’m giving the new Keynote two big thumbs up. You can purchase it as part of the iWork suite for just $79 or $99 for the family pack. Next week I’ll be following up this review with my look at Pages ’08.

You can listen to this review on the Surfbits MacReview Cast Episode 121.

MacBreak Tech Podcast … UberGeeky, UberFun

This past weekend I built a new shed in my backyard. Now this wasn't exactly the smartest thing to do on one of the hottest weekends this year in Orange County but nonetheless there I was handling sheets of hot steel, balancing the drill, and generally doing a series of unsafe acts at the top of my ladder. There was a ray of sunshine though. I downloaded the latest MacBreak Tech podcast where John and the gang talked about maximizing the use of the Finder. This podcast is excellent for the geeks among us. There was so much good information I actually listened to it twice. The common sense advice included a discussion of using the bar on the side instead of the bottom to save valuable laptop pixels, the different paradigms for file organization and other techy topics that kept my mind off the heat. If you haven't already, you should add MacBreak Tech to your iPod.

Carpe Diem

I love to poke fun at Steve Jobs.  This is kind of silly when you consider that I love Apple computers but there it is.  I can’t help myself.  I’ve read quite a bit about him and it is obvious he is a very intelligent and driven man and maybe that is why it is fun to take a shot at him now and again.  I’m not alone.  Fake Steve Jobs is a sensation.

All this being said, Real Steve made a statement at the new iMac presentation that really sunk home with me ....

Steve: "Our Goal is to make the best PC in the world, and make something we can recommend to family and friends. There is some stuff in our industry we wouldn't be proud to ship. We can't ship junk. Thresholds we just can't cross. But we want to make the best personal computers in the industry...”

This statement betrays a philosophy that I share.  I try to do the same thing in all the various roles I fill (attorney, father, and husband just to name a few.)  In all of these endeavors, I’m frequently given the choice between doing something fast and something right.  I like to do things right.  It doesn’t always “pay” to do things right, but in the end it is the only way I can operate and look at that guy in the mirror every morning.

So there you have it Steve, I’m with you.

Review - MacWare’s FontLibrary

You can hear this review on Surfbit's Macreviewcast #120.

I have a particular affection for fonts. Back in 1987 I first learned the word "Fonts" when I leaned over a funny looking little beige computer in my college computer lab that said "Hello" when you turned it on. Granted that was a long time ago but the truth is the first thing that really impressed me on the Mac was the way that I could change the screen type. I'm sure I abused this newfound freedom turning in several papers with what could have only been called a font explosion. Does anyone else remember the original "San Francisco" font that bordered on anarchy?


So it was with this nostalgia that I installed the FontLibrary Library from MacWare. This package includes some 600 fonts in several categories including refined, classic, designer and creative. In addition to truetype, it also comes with the fonts in OpenType format. The FontLibrary fonts are licensed for commercial use in printed materials and electronic mediums.

You can manage them in Font Book but I liked the included Mac FontManager better which allows you to see all available and installed fonts and move them as you please. Not only does this let you put some of the new fonts on, it also lets you take the existing ones you don't use off.

This package really gives you just about anything you could ever need in terms of fonts. I've become a bit more subtle since those early days but occasionally have a need for something unique and this package has it for everyone but the most demanding. It retails for about $50 online.

Moleskine Revisited

I've now been using the Moleskine for a few months. I wasn't exactly sure how I would incorporate it into my life but knew I wanted an easy way to capture tasks on the run. Of course in the mean time, a few things have changed for me in terms of productivity. First, I bought an iPhone. That has had very little impact on the way I capture tasks. Why ... do you ask? Because the iPhone doesn't have a built in task list!? There is a bit of a hack but I'll discuss that below. This post is supposed to be about Moleskines.

Anyway, I don't keep a "journal" in my Moleskine and rarely draw a diagram. It is, primarily, a list. For instance, I'm on the phone with someone and he says, "Hey Dave ... I got a new job making roadrunner traps. My new email address is Joe@ACME.com". I'll write a line in my Moleskine "Joe@ACME.com" As I go through the day I'll accumulate these small entries and at some point I'll sit down in front of my Mac and input these items. They can be OmniFocus entries, address book entries, or maybe a simple task that I'll just do. Either way, very quickly they get processed and crossed off in the Moleskine. Like I said, nothing fancy but it gets the job done.

While I really like the pocket sized Moleskine it still is kind of bulky in my pocket so that one stays at my desk at work. I picked up a three pack of the thin softcover Moleskines that are perfect for putting in my pocket. I keep one in the car, one on me, and one in the briefcase and that works just fine. So at the end of the day I could have several Moleskine's I am processing. It sounds confusing but actually it works quite well.

I'm thinking I may start taking meeting notes in a bigger one and process them the same way. We'll see.

The iPhone Wrinkle

I have faith that Apple will eventually get around to putting a task list on the iPhone but I'm not all that certain I'd actually use it. If I had OmniFocus on it maybe. The current Omni solution that would require me to turn my laptop into a server is useless to me. But for now, such pipe dreams along with about ten bucks will buy you a cup of coffee. There is one slight hack. I have a "Ta-Da List" account which is great. I mainly keep shopping lists on it. For instance, I have a "Target" , "Grocery List" and a few other. I also put an "OmniFocus" list on it that allows me when not near a Moleskine, to put a task in there for later input.

I'm getting plenty of emails from readers with good ideas. Don't be afraid to place comments with your tricks so everyone can benefit.