New MacSparky Field Guide: Presentations

I’m pleased to announce the newest MacSparky Field Guide, Presentations.

Most presentations are terrible. That, however, does not need to be the case for your presentations. This book explains how to create your own exceptional presentation. This Presentations Field Guide explains how to plan a presentation that will connect with your audience, the technical wizardry to create a stunning presentation, and walks you through presentation day to make sure it goes off without a hitch. The book was built entirely in iBooks Author. There are more than 30 screencasts, audio interviews, and other rich media assets to help you make your next presentation riveting. The material is accessible to beginners and power users alike with a thoughtful, fun, and systematic approach to planning, creating, and delivering a stellar presentation.

This is the first book to reflect the new MacSparky Field Guide design and it’s gorgeous. Here are a few screenshots.

The book is now available for Pre-Order and shipping on July 21, 2014. Also, here’s the first ever video trailer for one of my books.

MPU 200: The Story So Far …

Episode 200 of the Mac Power Users is now available. That’s 200 shows. That’s approximately 300 hours of talking about how to turn average and beginner users into power users. That’s 300 hours of the best work of my life.

This show is a bit introspective but also includes some of our favorite tips and show recommendations. If you’ve been with us this far, you may enjoy this episode just for the sentimental value.

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MILOFest Early Bird Registration

Today is the last day for early bird registration for the annual Macs in Law Offices conference at Disneyworld this October. If you are practicing law with a Mac, this one is just for you. As an added bonus, this year, my pal KatieFloyd will be speaking.

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Sanebox Advanced Filtering

If you’re a Sanebox subscriber (or thinking about becoming a Sanebox subscriber), you’ll want to check out their new Advanced Filtering options. Sanebox still doesn’t read the contents of your email but you can do a lot with a subject line. With advanced filtering, you can tell correspondents to include a phrase in the subject line that puts their email right to the head of the line. You can also filter based on subject lines. For example, if you have an Internet business and want to auto-file your emails from PayPal to a particular folder, you could set up a filter looking for the PayPal header in the subject line and Sanebox will take care of the rest. I continue to rely on Sanebox for my email management and I like it now more than ever.

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OmniOutliner 4.1

The Omni Group just updated OmniOutliner 4.1 with several useful new features:

Row padding control has been added to the standard feature set.
There is a new set of colored toolbar icons. (Purists can switch to Graphite appearance in System Preferences to use monochrome versions of those icons.)
The Pro version now allows you to link to rows to quickly navigate or reference other sections. To make a link, select a row and use Edit > Copy As Link. Paste this where ever you’d like to make a hyperlink to that row. I often use OmniOutliner for witness examination outlines and deposition outlines. This new navigation trick will be huge for me.

The app also got improved Word export and other nice interface tweaks and attachment support. I’m happy to see the Omni Group giving my favorite outliner further love.

Pee Chee iPad Case

As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, how could I not resist posting this. Kensington has a whole series of these retro cases. They even have my old trusty Trapper Keeper.

LaunchBar is Sticking

I wrote a few weeks ago about the release of LaunchBar 6. I had moved over to Alfred but after spending a few weeks with the latest version of LaunchBar, I’m firmly back in the LaunchBar camp. Both apps are great but for some reason, the keyboard shortcuts with LaunchBar just resonate with me better. I’m in the throes of finishing a book, which means I’ve got files all over the place and a pile of emails from editors and other helpers needing assets and questions answered. I just caught myself this afternoon blasting through these items and finding files all with LaunchBar and thought I’d take a minute to pause and give thanks.

The LaunchBar team really stepped it up with this new version. I dig the new interface, themes, and the way it lets me drive my Mac so wicked fast. I can’t wait to dive in even deeper with its new power features … just as soon as the next book ships.

MPU 199: Video Workflows with Wally Cherwinski

This week, Wally Cherwinski joins us to talk about documentary video and how to do a multi-camera shoot with a few iPhones at your next family event.

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The EverDock Stand

My podcasting compadre KatieFloyd blogged about her new EverDock yesterday. I’ll second Katie’s endorsement. I got in on the original Kickstarter. I ended up ordering two of the Duos. This lets me simultaneously charge the phone and iPad. I’ve got one at work and the other on my night stand. I’ve been using it since it shipped (which I believe is about 6 months).

The EverDock remains tight against the surface and absolutely stays connected when I lift my devices out (several times a day). However, it is not as tight as it was when the device was new and it felt like I was going to need a crow bar to get it off the table. I suspect I may need to clean the micro-suction surface.

Occasionally, the Lightning cable starts to get a little wobbly in its housing, requiring me to pry the device off the table and pull the cable back down tight. Interestingly, you can see the cable tops listing to the right and left based on the channels I’ve pulled them to underneath. It is noticeable on visual inspection but doesn’t seem to be a problem when housing the iPhone and iPad.

This morning I took it apart and inspected the Lightning cables. I’m sure getting bent around the EverDock and having the strain of me pushing and pulling against it to repeatedly seat my iThingies is damaging them. They looked okay though. (If only the good Doctor lived closer, I’d let him experiment on my cables and write 3,000 words about it.)

The EverDock is the first third party dock I’ve stuck with. It does a great job holding my devices and when I lift them out, the dock stays put.

In Defense of Tim

Dan Frommer has a nice piece up about Tim Cook.

“In many ways, Cook is running Apple better than Jobs ever did.”

I think anyone following Steve Jobs has the deck stacked against him. Nevertheless, looking at all the news from WWDC, I also think Tim Cook is the right guy to follow Steve Jobs. If you think Tim is under heat now, just wait until Apple actually releases a watch or fitness band. That market is much smaller than the iPhone market. Even a product pitched by Steve Jobs with his reality distortion field turned up to full power is not going to touch iPhone numbers. When this inevitably happens, all the long knives will come out for Tim in the tech press.