Oolong Tea, Alarms, and Silent Judgment

I’ve talked about my simple (yet essential!) Siri task to help me not screw up tea on the Mac Power Users. (“Set a Timer for 4 minutes.”) Listener Bob White, wrote in to explain that he sets these timers as alarms. Specifically, you can set the alarm name with Siri syntax. “Set the Oolong Tea Alarm for 4 minutes.” The phone will create a new alarm in 4 minutes called “Oolong Tea”. The advantage of doing them as alarms over timers is that you can set multiple alarms at once but just one timer, as The Doctor explains. Indeed, going back and reading Dr. Drang’s post I realize he also explained how you can name the alarm with Siri. Hmmm.

As a complete aside, if you are interested in tea, I recommend the end of MPU 168 where I talked at some length about how I make tea and Katie Floyd was stone-cold silent. Never has a silence been so judgmental. It might be one of my favorite segments of the Mac Power Users.

Throwaway TextExpander Snippet Tips

Dr. Drang posted this week about the value of throwaway macros and snippets. He’s a fan. So am I. I’ve referred to this before on the Mac Power Users but never posted on it here. Whenever I find myself doing anything remotely repetitive, my nerd-senses kick in and I look for automation. With text, that’s usually done in TextExpander. For example, a few weeks ago I had to ask a series of repeated questions that involved a rotating set of variables.

Where’d you get the ACME dynamite on Contract #X?
Did you leave the dynamite in Y’s expected path?
Was it the same dynamite from Contract X?
Did Y run over it?
Did Y blow up?

My questions were actually a little different but I needed to ask them many times with various combinations of Xs and Ys.

In this case, the contract numbers were a 25 character string of gibberish and I already had a text file with all of the contract numbers in it. So I made the snippet with TextExpander’s clipboard function for the X. (Did you know TextExpander will insert the clipboard contents in a snippet? The syntax is %clipboard.) Before starting the snippet, I’d go to the text file and copy the contract number into my clipboard for my X.

For they Y variable I used a fill-in snippet. Don’t forget that you can have the same fill-in snippet repeat multiple times in a single TextExpander snippet. To do so, simply copy and paste the snippet syntax (e.g. %filltext:name=Sample Fill In%) in the snippet wherever you want it to appear. Then, when you trigger the fill-in snippet typing it once in the first instance fills it in at all of its other instances. Building the snippet took some time but once it was right, populating the questions (there ended up being hundreds of iterations) was fast and there were no mistakes. Overall, it took a fraction of the amount of time I’d have spent doing it manually and was much more accurate. Afterwards, the snippet was completely useless and went into the TextExpander dust heap but for a little while, it was my moon and my stars.

Speaking of TextExpander, did you know I have a whole page of downloadable snippets?

Super Retina, The New MegaPixel

Super Retina, The New MegaPixel Have you seen the new super high-density screens some of the Android phones are getting? The The iPhone 5/5c/5s phones have a 1136×640 screen with a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. I immediately appreciated these retina screens and consider it one of the best advances in mobile technology in recent years. Some of the Android phone makers seem to be taking this even further. The HTC One sports a 1920×1080 with a pixel density of 468ppi. LG has a new display that sports 1440 x 2560 with a pixel density of 538ppi.

While in terms of screen density, more is better, there is a limit. Specifically, when the screen gets dense enough that the human eye can no longer see a difference, increasing beyond that point doesn’t make much sense. I know people that can’t tell the difference between pre-retina and retina screens, which I believe are very different. I suspect very few people will be able to tell a difference between a 326ppi screen and anything even sharper than that.

Moreover, increasing screen resolution has a cost. More pixels need more battery. The phone either has to get bigger or suffer poorer battery life. Also, driving more pixels means the processor has a lot more to think about and the rest of operations will suffer a processor hit. I’m not in favor of Apple trying to make the screen significantly sharper than it already is until doing so will not result in significant battery and processor hits.

Nevertheless, I fully expect 2014 to be the year that manufacturers start making extremely high screen density a marketing thing, like the camera people have been doing with the elusive megapixel.

MPU 180: Feedback Extravaganza

The first MPU Live episode published this week. In it, we include some listener audio questions and cover tweaking automation workflows, organizing PDF files, going back to school with an iPad, and more. We are going to continue doing these the first Saturday of every month and I expect them to get only better with some short listener interviews and a live audience. Enjoy.

Home Screens – Heidi Alexander

This week’s home screen features Heidi Alexander (Twitter). Heidi is a law practice advisor and a geek. Heidi blogs here and co-hosts the Legal Toolkit podcast, where she talks about tools to make the practice of law easier. So Heidi, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Some of my favorite apps include: Wunderlist, Drafts, Hootsuite, Feedly, TuneIn Radio, 1Password, and WordPress. I recently started using Wunderlist as my task list, and I absolutely love it. Drafts is also a newish addition, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of its functionality. I use TuneInRadio almost exclusively for listening to NPR on my morning commute and WordPress to post quickly to both my work and personal blogs. Although I haven’t listed it as one of my “favorite” apps, I do like the Google app that serves up informative and personal “Google now” swipe-away “cards”. Today’s card read: “Winter Storm Warning in Massachusetts” (yet again). Additionally, of course, with a child under the age of one, the iPhone’s Camera, Photos, and Facetime are absolutely essential. And, it goes without saying that as a regular listener of Mac Power Users, I must keep a Podcast app on my home screen!

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

My guilty pleasure is definitely the Amazon store app. I have Amazon Prime and love the ability to buy with just one click. To help avoid too many impulsive purchases, I moved the app to my second screen.

What is the app you are still missing?

With so many great apps available, I honestly believe that there is an app out there for every one of my needs. The fun for me is in testing new apps (I even have a folder on my second screen dedicated to the apps that I’m testing).

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

I use my iPhone often, but not excessively (although my spouse might disagree). I use it primarily to listen to podcasts and radio, make phone calls, take pictures, view my calendar, and to navigate to a destination. I do most of my drafting and reading on either my iPad Air or iPad Mini.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Folders, folders, and folders! I love the ability to group and organize apps. Folders comprise my entire second screen.

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

I’d make Siri more user friendly. I find that Siri often has trouble understanding me (maybe it is my Minnesotan-New England accent blend) and thus I haven’t really focused on learning to use Siri. If Siri could just read my mind, I would never ask Apple for anything again.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Am I the only home screen feature that is still using an iPhone 4S? That’s a bit embarrassing. I’m just a few weeks shy of my upgrade and cannot wait for a new iPhone 5S. Because I use my iPads as much, if not more than my iPhone, I’ve focused on upgrading my iPads over the past couple of years rather than my iPhone. I love my iPads, so it all works out.

Also, in case you were wondering, my home screen wallpaper displays my eight-month-old’s first art project. I’m a very proud parent!

Good for you. I’ve still got art like that on my wall and my daughter is 17.

Thanks Heidi.

Jean MacDonald Puts Dent in Universe

We need more women in tech. Everyone agrees but few people have done much to change things. Then there is Jean MacDonald. I’ve been closely following Jean’s progress with App Camp 4 Girls. I love both what she is doing and the passion she brings to the job. Today Jean announced she is making App Camp 4 Girls her full time gig and I think it is great.

Dragon Dictate, Version 4 – A Worthy Upgrade

This week, Nuance released version 4 of Dragon Dictate for the Mac. I remember the days when dictation software on the Mac couldn’t hold a candle to that on the PC. We had applications like MacSpeech, which tried their best, but never could keep up with Dragon Dictate on the PC. When MacSpeech started licensing the Dragon Dictate engine, things turned around for us. When, a few years later, Nuance purchased MacSpeech and folded it into the Dragon Dictate line of software, things got even better.

Nevertheless, over the last few years, Dragon Dictate for the Mac has still been catching up to its well established and mature cousin on the PC. This newest version of Dragon Dictate for the Mac continues to close the gap. I’ve only been using it now for a few days but the recognition is noticeably better than version 3. Nuance explains that with this new version you can get up to 99% accuracy. For giggles, I dictated the passage I used in this MacWorld article where I tested Mavericks dictation and Dragon Dictate 3. Dragon Dictate 4 did better than version 3. Version 3 had nine errors. Version 4 had three. That is the most important take away from this new version of Dragon Dictate. It is more accurate.

The new version is now a 64-bit application with improved memory management and it is also faster. I dictate in the Dragon Notepad often but just as often I’ll dictate in Byword or Apple Mail. The application is definitely faster in these other apps than it used to be.

While version 3 had the ability to transcribe recorded words, the new version has more powerful transcription tools. You can now create transcription-only profiles that understand they are transcribing based on a recorded source rather than a live source. When you set up these transcription profiles, it will require a 90 second audio clip to create a profile for the speaker. Now you can sit in a room, or a college lecture hall, and just run a recording. Dragon Dictate then has the ability to transcribe that recording into words. This only works with one speaker.

Dragon Dictate also still has the command mode where you can drive your Mac with your voice. You can open windows, activate applications, and – with version 4 — control Gmail in your web browser.

My big take away from Dragon Dictate version 4 is that it is both faster and more accurate than its prior version. This alone makes it worth the upgrade. Nuance has taken Dragon Dictate for the Mac far enough that I’ve stopped using Dragon Dictate on the PC at work. If you’re already a version 3 user, you should upgrade. If you haven’t tried Dragon Dictate yet and you’re serious about getting your words into text quickly, now may be the time.

Like many things that get posted here, I am writing this by dictating to my Mac. To run Dragon Dictate you’re going to need an Intel Mac with Mountain Lion or better, 3 GB of free space on your hard drive and at least 4 GB of RAM (but they recommend 8 GB).

Pasting an Address in Mavericks Contacts

Did you know you can paste a single line address like this:

21 Shotgun Lane, Irvine, CA 92610

Screen Shot 2014-03-05 at 8.40.36 AM.png

into the street address field in Mavericks Contacts and it will automatically parse the city, state, and zip code bits out and put them where they belong like displayed here.

Clever.

10 Petabytes

Today Connected Data announced there is now 10 Petabytes of data stored on Transporters throughout the world. 10 Petabytes! That is 200 million 4 drawer filing cabinets worth of information. Crazy. I remember when I bought my first hard drive. It was 20 Megabytes and I thought I was set for life. Anyway, Connected Data made a fun infographic on the subject and my hat goes off to Geoff and his team. It wasn’t so long ago that the Transporter was just a good idea. Congratulations.

∞