Home Screens - Ryan Irelan

I’ve recently come to know Ryan Irelan (Twitter). Ryan is a busy guy working with Happy Cog and publishing his own screencast series at Mijingo. Ryan is also the guy did such a great job filling in for Dan Benjamin when he was on leave from 5by5. So Ryan, show us your home screen.

What is your favorite app?

Right now my favorite app on my home screen is Instacast. I only recently purchased it and after using it for a day I promoted it to my home screen. Even with wireless syncing in iOS 5, using Instacast to subscribe to and listen to podcasts is a much better experience than using iTunes.

As you can see from the screenshot, I’m a little behind on my listening. My podcast subscriptions consist of shows from 5by5, The Moth Podcast, NPR’s Planet Money, To the Best of Our Knowledge and, of course This American Life. I used to also listen to the Bob Edwards Show from Sirius XM but they cancelled the podcast version for reasons that I’m sure were ill informed. I’m not in my car enough to catch it on the radio.

Speaking of being in the car: I use the Rdio app and service as my main music source while on the go. As long as I have at least a 3G connection I can access just about any song or album I want. It has offline syncing so I can listen to my favorite albums while on an airplane or those other extremely rare occasions that I am without an Internet connection. To me, Rdio is how Apple would do streaming music.

What is the app you are still missing?

The one described in the stalled project in my OmniFocus database.

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

For the last five years I’ve worked from home so I don’t use my phone as much during the day as someone who is constantly on the go or isn’t allowed to access their favorite apps and services from work.

I do use my phone a lot while hanging out with my daughter to capture moments as photos and videos. The photos and videos are uploaded to her private Tumblr site or sent via text message to my parents, family, and friends.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Using it. Okay, that’s not a feature but the devices are a pleasure to use.

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

This is probably on the punch list for a future version of iOS but I’d like to be able to customize the Notification Center in iOS 5. It is a huge improvement over the old notifications and you can set per app notifications but there are some tweaks I’d like to see.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I mentioned this in my contribution to the 5by5 Steve Jobs tribute but the iPhone and the apps I use have been vitally important in documenting the first year of my daughter’s life.

My parents travel full time and we have immediate family spread up and down the East Coast of the United States and in Germany. Having an insanely simple, near effortless way to share photos and videos right from my phone makes living far away easier. Those moments you saw in the touching FaceTime commercials really happen.

Thanks Ryan

To read about more home screens, clicky here

Talking iPad on the MacCast

Adam Christianson is one of my very favorite people in the Mac community so when he asked me to come on his podcast and talk about getting work done on the iPad, I jumped. We did a one hour show where we talked about some of the points Adam raised at a recent talk he gave on the subject and some of the content I included in the book.

The No Journal

During the MPU iPad at Work show, I unexpectedly blundered into discussing my “No Journal” (time 63:35). Eddie Smith posted on it last week. I didn’t spend much time explaining the No Journal during the podcast, frankly, because it felt like my own personal neurosis. Nevertheless, I’ve received a lot of email questions about this so here goes.

“No” has always been difficult for me. The trouble is, I really enjoy saying “yes”. After all, I want people to like me and what better way to do this than saying yes to every crazy thing they ask? This was such a problem for me that I was always over-comitted and routinely shipping crap in most aspects of my life. I am certain I’ve missed out on some great opportunities over the years because I put myself in this morass. Moreover, I have no doubt that some of the projects I was truly passionate about ended up substantially less awesome because of my inability to say no to other things. Put simply, saying yes too often means that you will, necessarily, be mailing it in on everything. Merlin and Dan talk about this often on Back to Work.

A few years ago I vowed to change this. I became mindful about the words “yes” and “no”. Because I’m a little crazy, I eventually started keeping a list. I call it the No Journal. There isn’t any magic to this. I do it in a text file (stored in Simplenote). My No Journal is a running list of the things I say yes and no to. Here are a few of my entries (with slight modification):

Yes List

• Reading to my daughter

• Being awesome for my clients

• Improving the podcast

• Learn to play the hell out of Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear”

• Macworld article

• Stay on top of [friend]’s illness

No List

• ACME Board Seat

• Article for Windows Zealot magazine

• Steering committee seat

• Taking girls to movies

• NFL

• New Star Wars MMORPG

This list really helps me in my quest to break my yes addiction. I keep the yes list short. In fact, if the yes list gets too long, it’s a sure sign I’m falling off the wagon, again. The point of the yes list is that when I’m confronted with a new opportunity, I look at my yes list and ask if the new opportunity is sufficiently mind-blowing to unseat something else already on the yes list.

If it isn’t, I politely say no and add it to the no list. The act of writing these things down is therapeutic. It helps me cope with my overwhelming desire to always say yes and the guilt resulting from saying no to many worthy opportunities. Looking back over the list gives me an idea of how I’m doing.

Another benefit of saying no is that it reminds me how special those things are that make the cut. Whether it is writing an article, giving a killer presentation, or just taking a walk with my wife, those are items that I’ve chosen to do because they are so special. It makes mindfulness easy.

Sometimes I find myself looking at these lists and realizing things are out of kilter. When I’m more passionate about things on the no list than the yes list, I start making changes. I’d like to say I’ve mastered this, but I haven’t. I still often suck at saying no and am still overcommited. I think I could be even better at the things I love if I’d get the yes list even shorter. Nevertheless, I’m much better at this with my nerdy list. It’s a journey.

The No Journal is not to be confused with a task list. (It isn’t a someday-maybe list either. In most cases, no means no, forever.) This isn’t a list I read to figure out what to do next. Instead, the No Journal is how I keep myself honest. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to write two books and keep a full time day job in the last few years without first getting better at saying no. My only regret is not getting serious about this earlier.

Using Simplenote, I can access this No Journal anywhere but you could do it on a pad of paper, a notecard, or even a napkin. I’ve thought about building an iOS app around my No Journal. Sadly, however, that idea is still on the no list.

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

MPU 60 - The Case for Evernote

Mac Power Users Episode 60, The Case for Evernote, is available for download. Our guest, Brett Kelly, talks about how useful Evernote is and addresses some of my complaints with the service. Get the episode over at 5by5. Also, I hear that people who who subscribe to the Mac Power Users lead more productive and fulfilling lives.

iPad Lawyers

I recently joined the The Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network to talk about practicing law with an iPad. If your Venn diagram includes intersecting circles with “legal stuff” and “nerd” this one is right up your alley.

Speaking Gig - BlogWorld 2011

I’m speaking this year at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo November 3-5 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I’m participating in a panel session, Finding Sponsors for Your Podcast and Keeping Them, along with Dave Hamilton, Jean MacDonald, and Mark Fuccio. We’ve spent a lot of time planning this session and if that subject interests you, this will be worth your time.

Moreover, if blogging, podcasting, and new media is your thing, this is the place to be. There will be plenty of great content, speakers, and vendors to check out.

Standard Response to New Apple Technologies

Now that Siri is in the public conscious, the standard response from Apple competitors is in full swing:

1. First, they mock it.

2. In about 6 months, they’ll copy it.

3. After that (usually about a year), they’ll pretend they invented it.

Stay tuned.

MultiMarkdown Composer

MultiMarkdown is an extension of Markdown that adds several additional tools for exporting Markdown syntax for technical writing, created by Fletcher Penny. Fletcher is a full time physician who also created MultiMarkdown and also is now a Mac App developer.

MultiMarkdown Composer gives you all the table-generating, metadata-creating, LaTeX exporting goodness that is MultiMarkdown on your Mac. There is an introductory price of $8 and, frankly, if you use MultiMarkdown at all, just buy it. I did. I feel like I owe it to Fletcher after all the times I’ve used MultiMarkdown. MultiMarkdown Composer is fully Lion compliant. It includes Auto-Save and full screen mode. Learn more here

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

Siri is Lazy

Moving Spaces

In addition to giving us iCloud, 10.7.2 added the ability to click and drag spaces in mission control view. Very handy.