There’s some really great stuff in here for Star Wars nerds. As an aside, am I the only one that cringes every time George Lucas calls a lightsaber a “laser sword”?
Game Pick: Monument Valley
I stumbled into Monument Valley over the weekend and I’m hooked. This game follows a princess as she works her way through a series of intricate mazes and castles with levers, pulleys, and physics-defining ingenuity. You know those contraptions in the opening credits of Game of Thrones? It’s like that but not nearly as ominous. In fact, one of the things I like about the game is that there is no dying. Just some puzzles, a princess, and the occasional squawking bird. I’ve been taking my time with each level and really enjoying it. You can get Monument Valley in the iOS App Store.
MPU 185: Workflows with Dave Hamilton
This week’s MPU episode features a workflow interview with Dave Hamilton from The MacObserver and the Mac Geek Gab podcast. Dave is fun, entertaining, and full of great ideas for Mac users. Check it out.
John Coltrane, “Ballads”
Ballads is one of my favorite jazz albums. I’ve had a lifelong relationship with this album. While John Coltrane is best known for his more frantic stuff, this album proves just how sweetly he could play ballads. No matter how much I twist myself up, the opening riff of Say It (track 1) always unwinds me, immediately. When my daughters were babies, this is the music I used to put them to sleep.
Remarkably, all but one of the songs were recorded in one take. Crazy. I’ve bought it in vinyl, CD, and digital. Best of all, it’s now only six bucks on iTunes. So worth it.
My Favorite iOS Dictation App – Dictate + Connect
I often get asked about what app I use for dictation on my iPhone. There are lots but my favorite is, without question, Dictate+Connect. This app has a great iOS7-y look and feel and has more features than I’ve had in a handheld recorder. I can easily adjust the recording quality, mic sensitivity and playback speed. It also has a voice activation mode that automatically stops the recording when I pause to think, which in my case is often. The app displays a waveform of your dictation while recording. It exports to WAV, AAC, WAV IMA4, and AIFF and there is a native version for both iPhone and iPad.
On the sharing side, Dictate+Connect lets me share my recordings via email, export, or in a separate iOS app. For example, I use the Quickshare feature to send dictations (in WAV) format to the transcription ninja at my office. I also send WAV files to Transporter (or Dropbox) to transcribe with Dragon Dictate on my Mac. I still use a physical pocket recorder but am using Dictate + Connect more and more. Because it is an app, it’s always in my pocket.
TextExpander Touch 2.5
Yesterday Smile released TextExpander Touch version 2.5 for iOS. This free update includes a new iOS 7-style user interface and several tools to assist snippet management from within iOS. They spent a lot of time working on the little things and it shows. Some of my favorite new features are:
- Reordering Groups
- Sharing a completed snippet with the sharing menu
- The ability to disable specific snippets for iOS
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Gestures: three finger tap to share and two finger left swipe to copy
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iOS Keyboard Shortcuts:
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⌘+ and ⌘- increase and decrease the font size of selected text
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⌘N creates a new snippet, group, or note
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⌘Return functions as Done, or shares snippet or note
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Escape functions as Cancel
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⌘T toggles between Notes and Groups
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up and down arrows navigate through the list of snippets or notes on iPad
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I use TextExpander often on both the Mac and iOS. The new URL callback method for sharing snippet groups to apps has been working fine and I’m happy to see Smile giving TextExpander even more love. Did you know I’ve got a bunch of snippet groups right here for download?
Fantastical 2 for iPad
Today Flexibits Released Fantastical 2 for iPad. Fantastical has taken over as my home screen calendar app on the iPhone so I guess it is only proper for it to do so on the iPad as well. I’ve been playing with it all morning and there are some nice features including half-screen and full-screen week views, that Fantastical intuitive appointment parser, floating time zone support, and TextExpander support.
My favorite feature is the way it displays week view on the top half of the screen, a month view and a list view all at once without looking cluttered. A close second is the way it builds the event while you type in the details. This immediate feedback is so useful. The slash trick from the Mac and iPhone, where you can designate an event to a specified calendar with a / in the description, also works on the iPad version. For instance, putting “/p” at the end of an event description puts the calendar event on your personal calendar. There is even a slash on the included extended keyboard, that also has numbers and symbols appropriate for creating calendar entries while entering new events.
Michael and the gang have done some great work on the iPad. It’s available now on the iTunes App Store.
The Sweet Setup Reviews Dispatch
Robert McGinley Myers did a proper job of writing up Dispatch. There is so much to like about that app. However, I don’t use it as much as I used to because Sanebox already manages so much email for me. Another up-and-comer in the iOS mail racket is Boxer, that includes a lot of similar gesture based mail management tools (though not as much third-party app support). However, Boxer works on all your folders, not just your inbox.
LaunchBar 6 Beta
I love that there is some healthy competition in the app launcher, phone number-finder, keyboard-master, drive-my-mac software category that is Alfred and LaunchBar. LaunchBar is about to release a new version and I’m pickled. You can sign up for the beta right here.
Misty Watercolor Memories of Word 5.1
Last week at Macworld, the subject of Word 5.1 kept coming up in multiple conversations with multiple people. This was partly a result of Microsoft releasing Office for the iPad but I have to admit it is strange how much that application is universally loved by old nerds. When was the last time you truly loved a Microsoft app for the Mac? I wonder if it really was that great or if we are all just looking through rose colored glasses. I suspect that even if Microsoft wound back the clock, I’d still be spending the majority of my time in Scrivener, Byword, and Editorial (which is getting much more sticky for me lately).
While I usually make an effort to completely avoid the April Fools posts, I can’t finish this post without making reference to the near-legendary TidBITS April 1, 2011 post about Word 5.1 on the iPad. People wanted to believe that one so badly.