BusyCal Turns 2.5



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Today marks the release of BusyCal 2.5. This update is huge if you are using Exchange or Office 365 in that it includes full calendar sync. It supports Exchange Calendars and Tasks, calendar sharing, and meeting scheduling (including viewing free/busy time).

So using BusyCal 2.5 you can now sync with iCloud, Google Calendar, and Exchange. BusyCal is a great replacement for the built in Apple Calendar app. It is actively developed by some really smart (and nice) folks so it gets a lot more love than Apple’s Calendar application (which is only updated with each new iOS release).

There have always been a lot of good reasons to use BusyCal and now Exchange sync means Exchange users can finally get in on the action. Learn more at BusyCal.com.

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Home Screens – Author Michelle Muto


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This week’s Home Screen features author Michelle Muto (Website) (Twitter). Michelle write urban fantasy and paranormal books. She’s also a geek and loves her iPhone. Okay Michelle, show us your home screen.


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What are some of your favorite apps?

Evernote

It’s one of the best places for me to jot down notes about story ideas & research. It’s also helpful when I need to remember room dimensions, vet or doctor records, and auto service records.

Grocery IQ

It syncs between the iPad and iPhones, scans items by barcode, keyboard, and voice, and does what we need it to do. It’s a favorite because it does the job needed for our weekly shopping.

1Password

I don’t know how anyone with a mobile device, computer, or tablet gets by without it.

PayPal Here

It comes in handy during book signings. Easy to use.

Harmony Remote

We just bought a Harmony remote and it is dead simple. No more looking for various other remotes or trying to figure out how to use them.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Bejewled. I try not to play it much though.

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

Dozens. At least. It’s sad. I have a 27″ iMac and at any given time, someone could walk into my office to see my iPhone on my desk, and the iPad propped up with something on it, too.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Siri – There are times when it is more conveinent to listen to or reply to emails and texts using Siri. It also looks up words for me, and is helpful when I need to research topics. I want Siri for the Mac.

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

I’d make it easier for people to upgrade their iMacs and MacBook Pros. I’d create a way to run rules on sub folders within emails. Hazel for email! Oh, and Siri for the Mac.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’m mad for a shortcut or a way to make things simple – as in grass roots simple. Everything you must have owns you, right?

That said, thanks for all the tips, tricks, and thought provoking topics both on your blog and Mac Power Users. I’m also addicted to your videos. Precise, short, fun.

Thanks Michelle.

 

Editorial, iPad Writing Re-Imagined

There has been a secret society of tech nerds using Editorial (Website) (iOS App Store Affiliate) for months now. The app is done and the Internet is having a nerd-gasm over its release. Speaking on behalf of the secret society, I’m here to say this enthusiasm is justified.

Until Editorial arrived, I felt like iPad text editors really didn’t have much room left for innovation. Boy, was I wrong. Editorial combines thoughtful Markdown integration with iOS scripting that will curl your geek toes. (Editorial’s developer, Ole Zorn, is the same guy that brought us Pythonista.) Editorial includes a bunch of pre-built scripts with useful functions like linking, versioning, statistics, and web searches. You can also roll your own by stacking pre-built blocks or writing your own. I’m not a Python programmer but I’m able to use the heck out of this. 

This app is really powerful. In a lot of ways, Editorial is more powerful than anything I’m using on my Mac. I need to spend more time figuring out exactly how many of these shiny things I’ll put to use. This is going to be fun.

In the meantime, there are some very in-depth reviews from Federico Viticci at MacStories and Gabe Weatherhead at Macdrifter. (With Editorial, both Gabe and Federicco have published the first iOS app reviews I’ve ever seen with Tables of Contents.)

Is the Mac Power Users going to revisit iOS writing in light of the advance? Magic 8-Ball says “most likely”.

 

PDFConvert.Me – PDF Conversion Service

While I really enjoy working on my iPad, occasionally I run into roadblocks on it. One such roadblock is my desire to save an email as a PDF file. I’m not talking about a PDF attachment to an email file but the actual email itself. For instance, if I buy something on Amazon and I want to keep the receipt for future reference, Amazon sends me an email telling me about my purchase. I want to print that email to PDF and save it to a folder. This is really easy on the Mac. It is not so easy on the iPad or iPhone. There is no Print to PDF command on iOS. So I usually stick these types of emails in my Action Folder and deal with it when I’m sitting at my Mac later. However, the fact that I can’t deal with it on my iOS device does make me a little crazy. I bemoaned this on a recent episode of Mac Power Users and, of course, one of our clever listeners answered the call.

Brian Almeida has just released a Web service at PDFConvert.me that solves this problem. You can forward any email to the service and it will convert the email to PDF and reply to you with the newly minted PDF as an email attachment. Of course you are sending an email to a third party so this isn’t appropriate for confidential email but I could do this for my Amazon receipts all day long.

At this point, it’s a beta service and he’s trying to figure out the business model. Either way, I think there is a demand for the service and I’m already using it. If you’ve also wanted the ability to turn email into a PDF effortlessly from an iOS device, go check this out. Brian has also been adding features. For instance, if you send a Microsoft Word document to your magic PDFConvert.me email address, it’ll spit back a PDF of that file to you as well.

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My Sony Dictation Recorder



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I once mentioned on a MPU episode that I use a small digital recorder with Dragon Dictate. Since then I’ve had a lot people asking which recorder I use. It’s this one (Amazon Affiliate Link). I picked this up at an office supply store and didn’t do a lot of comparison shopping. There are a few things I really like about it though. The USB port folds into the device so I don’t need to find a cord when I want to download. The battery life is great and it is light in my pocket (plastic). It saves audio files to MP3, and my voice sounds great even when I record while walking down the street. 

Why don’t I just record onto the iPhone? The physical buttons make a real difference for me. I start and stop between just about every sentence. I also can turn it on and record virtually anywhere without looking at it. As an example, I’ll often take a walk after eating my lunch and record into the Sony for later transcription. It’s also great for diary entries.

Air Turn for iPad Sheet Music

I’ve digitized all my sheet music and I display it on my iPad via forScore.  I only have two complaints. The music is a little smaller on the iPad so I have to pay a little bit closer attention when reading it. I recently purchased a pair of reading glasses (I know) and that seems to be solving this problem. The second complaint is turning pages. The app has an easy enough gesture to reach up and flip the page but because it is not tactile like sheet music and because computers aren’t perfect, sometimes it doesn’t go just right and I end up turning two pages.

Today Macworld did a video review of the Air Turn device that solves this problem with a Bluetooth foot pedal. Tap it with your foot, and the page turns. This seems like a no-brainer for a professional musician. Maybe it’s a Christmas list item for me.

Voice Dream for Instapaper and Pocket Text to Speech

On the heels of our recent Read it Later show, I received an email from listener David Ianni concerning an app I’d never heard of before, Voic Dream ($10). If you’ve ever wanted to have your iPhone read out loud entries from your Instapaper or Pocket lists, Voice Dream is exactly what you’re looking for. It grabs any selected article and reads it to you out loud. I’ve always got more stuff I want to read than time to read it. I’ve also got a 30 minute commute each way every day. Using Voice Dream, I’ve started listening to the long form articles that I feel like I never have time to read. It comes with an American female voice but if that doesn’t float your boat, you can buy a variety of other male and female voices for three dollars each. I bought Rachel, a British female voice, because that’s just how I roll. Voice Dream can also read from your Evernote and even Dropbox folders. There is a crippled free version if you want to see how it works before buying.

In addition to reading you the words, it also displays them. I could see this being useful for someone trying to learn English as a second language. You can also set the reading speed. I’ve got mine set to 80 words per minute and it works just fine. Voice Dream is one of those apps that I’ve always wanted but never really articulated. It solves a problem in my life and it may for you too.

 


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Helping Alice Verpoorten

Tim Verpoorten was the first person that ever put me “on the air” and a helluva nice guy. We all knew Tim was sick but his sudden death threw us all, including his wife Alice. Tim left a lot of Apple gear and Allison and Steve Sheridan have cataloged and put it all up on sale at Amazon. If you need some slightly used but well-loved tech gear and want to help out one of our geek family, go check out the details at MacRoundtable.com. They also have a donation link.

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