Delight is in the Details

Shawn Blanc is a tech blogger but also much more. Shawn frequently inspires me with his posts about motivation and finishing a project. Shawn just released a new book, Delight is in the Details. As Shawn explains, the subject of the book is how to create substantive work that delights and excites your audience. The book is in multiple formats and includes interviews with many people I respect including Marco Arment, Michael Simmons, Jory Raphael, and Federico Viticci. The ebook is $20 or the full bundle (with the ebook, an audiobook, and interviews) for $29. I’ve just downloaded my copy and I’m looking forward to reading it on vacation.

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Mac Power Users Show 150 Live this Saturday

Can you believe the Mac Power Users are about to record show 150? Katie and I will be broadcasting live this Saturday at 10am PST in a very special Mac Power Users where I confront my growing Sonos addition and some of our smartest listeners join in with some workflows that will knock you out of your socks.

Mark you calendars for Saturday, August 10, 2013 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern/10:00 a.m. Pacific. We’ll streaming live on 5by5 so you can join us in the 5by5 chatroom or listen on the 5by5 apps for iOS and Mac. I’ll see you there.

MPU 149: Read it Later

In episode 149 of the Mac Power Users, Katie and I tackle the growing list of read it later services covering what we like (and dislike) about each of them along with a discussion of unconventional alternatives for all of you rebels out there.

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Chatology – Improving Mac Messaging

I wrote a few months ago about the troubles I have with messages. At the time, I decided my solution was to start deleting all messages that didn’t require action. That strategy lasted about a month. It was just too much work deleting messages and it didn’t take me long to realize I might need those deleted messages. Just as I was trying to figure out a new approach to all of this, Flexibits (the same guys that brought us Fantastical) released Chatology.

Chatology indexes your messages. It keeps track of who you’ve chatted with and what was said. It also remembers when the conversations took place and any pictures or links that may have exchanged. Using all of this data, you can search your messages several ways. For example, if if you know someone recommended a great Thai restaurant to you in the last month but can’t remember the name of the restaurant or who told you, type “Thai” in Chatology’s search bar and you’ll find it. Another example comes from my wife, who often sends me great pictures via messages. Using Chatology I can isolate these images and put them somewhere more permanent.

So partly as a result of Chatology, I’ve flipped on my initial workflow and now I’m keeping all of my messages. Chatology brings a much needed dose of sanity to managing a large message database. As to my initial problem (and post), capturing OmniFocus tasks on the Mac from Messages is easy enough with the OmniFocus text clipper. On iOS, I can forward a text message to my Omni Mail Drop address. I think I’ve now got this problem more or less wrangled. I still, however, prefer that people send me actionable information some way other than messages.

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ScanSnap iX500 now Scans Wireless to Your Mac

This week Fujitsu released a software and firmware update for the ScanSnap iX500 that lets you scan to you Mac (or PC) without a USB cable. I updated my scanner last night and it works great. Now I’m rethinking the location of my scanner. I could put it anywhere in the house and free up some valuable desk real estate. I’m already eyeing flat surfaces throughout my house. Perhaps even a corner in the kitchen. I can see it now: mailbox, kitchen scanner, recycle bin. If you’ve got an iX500, run your update and try it for yourself.

The Moving Timeline Keynote Trick

While attending the World Domination Summit I got to finally see (and meet in person) Nancy Duarte. Nancy is a remarkable communicator and helped many high profile clients with presentations, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation.

During the presentation she did some timelines where the timeline would move while she spoke. During the WGS geek lunch afterward, several people were asking how she did it. I was happy to explain this is a nut I have already cracked. In order to create a timeline that moves, you simply need to make a timeline bigger than a single slide and then stack them next to each other. Then you can use the Push transition to make it appear as if the timeline itself is moving when all you are really doing is transitioning from one slide to the next. For instance I will take the following three slides. Each one represents a small piece of a larger timeline.

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When creating this timeline, start out with one slide and get your timeline set exactly where you want it. Then duplicate the slide as many times as you need. If you need to make adjustments to the actual line, be very careful that you don’t move it vertically or it completely ruins the effect. I also usually add a small dot the beginning or ending of the timeline drawn with a keynote graphics element.

Then I will place them next to each other as they will appear in Keynote’s presentation. When assembled this way you can see it looks like one single timeline even though it’s three individual slides.

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After that it’s simply a question of setting transitions using the Push animation and setting a reasonable length so the audience can follow with you as the timeline tracks across. If this isn’t making any sense to you, I’ve made a short presentation that you can download here demonstrating the effect.

So many of the tricks I use in Keynote are just hacky little visual tricks like this.

Stop Motion Donkey Kong

Techhive pointed me to Guiz de Pessemier, who decided to build his own stop motion version of Donkey Kong using Perler Beads. Blink. I watched the whole video because growing up, Donkey Kong was my game. It was the game we played every time we got our hands on a few quarters. My best friend and I would call each other and make that great Donkey Kong jumping sound and hang up. There was no discussion whatsoever. No chance to make excuses or “ask my mom”. The recipient of the “jump call” then had no choice but to mount his ten-speed and race to the Donkey Kong machine at the corner of Vine and Holt. It was a matter of faith. On a recent family vacation I stumbled into a Donkey Kong game and played it with my daughter until, once again, I ran out of quarters.

I have a couple of complaints about this most excellent stop motion though:

1. Unless my dementia has gone off the rails, I’m pretty sure he has the levels out of order from the original coin-op machine.

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2. I really wish he had included the jump on level three that, if timed perfectly, let you skip most of the level. My friends and I simply called this “the jump” throughout our childhoods. My friend Scott would nail “the jump” every time. Not surprisingly, Scott is now an executive in the video game industry.

So here it is, my precious Donkey Kong.

Leap Motion and Better Touch Tool

About a year ago, I saw the demo for the Leap Motion controller and I ordered one. I wasn’t even sure how I’d use such a device but the idea of a control surface in the air in front of my Mac intrigued me so much that I parted with $80 anyway. When it arrived last week I was feeling a lot more sheepish about that expenditure as I looked through Leap’s Airspace store. It looks like there are some clever games and demonstration-type software, allowing you to dissect a virtual frog for instance, but nothing really grabbed me. Then Don McAllister told me Better Touch Tool has Leap support. Now we are talking.

If you haven’t downloaded Better Touch Tool yet, go do it right now. BTT is the result of a lot of hard work by Andreas Hegenberg. It’s free but Andreas accepts donations. You will end up giving Andreas some money because this application is really useful. Better Touch Tool lets you customize the touch pad with, for lack of a better word, finger macros to let you pull off more than Apple thinks you should with your trackpad and magic mouse. For instance if I rest my index and fourth finger on the trackpad and tap with my middle finger, it closes the application currently under the mouse. (This even works in Mission Control view.) If I rest my third and fourth fingers on the trackpad and tap with my index finger, it triggers ⌘-W, which closes the active window. (This is great for closing out Safari tabs.)

As you can tell. I already have a lot of affection for Better Touch Tool and Leap controller functionality is icing on the cake. So I’ve spent some time playing with this new feature and I’ve now got several gestures I can do in the air in front of my Mac. If I put one finger in the air and move it up, it closes the application, just like the gesture in iOS 7. If I put one finger in the air and pull it down, it closes the window just like my gestures I explained earlier on my trackpad. If I put two fingers in the air and swiped the left, I move right one space. Putting two fingers in the air and swiping to the right moves back one space to the left. All of this is a lot of fun. I’m only adding new gestures as I internalize the prior ones.

The process of taking my hands off the keyboard to wave them in the air to perform a gesture which I could do just as easily with keyboard shortcut, however, seems counterproductive. This is part where the Leap controller starts feeling like a novelty device. There are, however, times that I sit in front of my computer and I don’t have my hands on the keyboard. For instance, when I dictate. I’ve got a keyboard shortcut across all of my Macs that toggles the mic on and off in Dragon dictate, which is Control-Option-Command-M. It is easy to trigger when my hands are on the keyboard. But when I’m dictating my hands aren’t on the keyboard and the process of getting situated on the keyboard and finding the right keys takes time. So now I have a Leap gesture (two fingers up) that presses the magic key combination and turns my mic off or back on again. It’s more intuitive while dictating and faster. I’m also going to set one up to mute my mic while podcasting.

There is an artform to activating these leap gestures in Better Touch Tool. You can’t simply flick your wrist and expect it to pick up your finger movements. Instead you need to use your whole arm. I can see how that would get tiresome but the contexts that I’m using this in are infrequent and I’m not going to be spending hours manipulating my computer Minority Report style.

I don’t see the Leap technology replacing my mouse and trackpad but I do see it as an enhancement to them. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t use the Leap controller when it makes sense and ignore it when it doesn’t. I don’t regret purchasing this Leap device and I’m looking forward to seeing where this all goes.

Back to Instacast

There are two podcatchers which seem to command a lot of loyalty, Instacast and Downcast. I started out with Instacast and then migrated to Downcast about a year ago. A few months ago, Instacast released a Mac client that brought me back into the fold. I decided to wait awhile before writing about it to first make sure that the switch would stick. It did.

The Instacast user interface has improved since the last time I used it. A lot. The interface on both the Mac and iOS clients gives you a list of podcasts you’ve subscribed to and episodes available for download. The settings let you determine exactly what to do with each podcast you subscribe to. Some may only download the latest episode and others may download all unplayed podcasts. It’s up to you. (You can even download episodes over a cell network, which is really handy about 10 minutes before boarding a plane.)

In addition to the standard view, you can also create lists and smart lists. I use several smart lists including Partially Played (to help me finish shows I paused) and Most Recent.

The big reason for my switch was the release of the Mac app and the ability sync podcasts. I spend a lot of time behind a Mac. The Mac, iPad, and iPhone sync flawlessly. I can now listen to a show while at my Mac and pick up later in my car from my iPhone exactly where I left off on my Mac. Instacast doesn’t just sync listening position. If you delete an episode entirely, that also syncs between the devices. I like to clear out my feeds as much as possible and I particularly appreciate this feature.

With the switch back to Instacast, I didn’t find many WTF moments. Every thing works as I’d expect it to and I’m happy with the switch. There are rumblings that Downcast will get it’s own Mac app and I’ll probably be checking it out. Honestly though, I have all the features I need from a podcatcher and I don’t see a big reason for moving again.

Mavericks and Tagging

Every since Apple announced Mavericks, I’ve been meaning to write a post about tagging. Today Brett Terpstra did such a great job at it that I can cross this off my list. One of my big hang ups with tagging has always been the way it felt like such a hack. Apple didn’t really support it and I always worried that Apple would break third party solutions with the next OS update and my tagged files would just become an unorganized mess.

Now that Apple is supporting tagging, that problem is solved. There still isn’t iOS support but I have to think that is on the road map. Either way, this development has me much more interested in a tagging system. I’m looking forward to reading Brett’s follow up post.