Home Screens – Ian Byrd


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Recently I attended a 5by5 meetup in Santa Monica where I met several Mac Power Users listeners, including Ian Byrd (Website) (Twitter). Ian is an experienced gifted-student teacher that got inspired to try something else. He did just that with his website, Byrdseed.com, where he writes about gifted education and develops videos to help teachers and parents of gifted children. Ian is also a big Mac nerd. So Ian, show us your home screen.


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What are some favorite apps?

I love Reeder. I use it as inspiration for lesson ideas as well as for pure entertainment. It’s fast, syncs with my iPad, and connects beautifully to Twitter and Pocket.

Instagram has become my favorite way of seeing what friends and family are up to. But, since I’m not too comfortable with it as an archive, I use a couple IFTTT recipes to grab photos I post or that I like and store them in my Flickr account for safe keeping. Mint is a seriously fantastic tool for tracking family spending, and I use Outright to stay on top of my business’ finances.

Moves is awesome for passively tracking walking, running, or cycling.  Much simpler than starting and stopping a dedicated exercise app. Plus, I love getting the weekly summary notifications.

I keep a folder of web shortcuts to my Byrdseed sites, stats pages, and a related app I am perpetually developing.

Finally, I’m a Downcast man for podcasts. 

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Definitely Foursquare. While I’m not too interested in competing for points or becoming a mayor, I do love tracking where I’ve been, especially when I travel. And I always look forward to landing at a new airport and unlocking the next Jetsetter badge! 

What is the app you are still missing?

My websites run on WordPress installations that I’ve tricked out quite a bit, but I can’t really access all of that power from my iPhone. The official WordPress app has improved a lot for writing posts, but lacks the level of control I need for organizing and managing everything. I always end up using MarsEdit on my Mac because of its great custom field support or simply logging into the web’s admin panel. I’d love a more flexible WordPress app that lets me control my sites on the go. 

What Is Your Favorite Feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I’ve accepted that my memory’s best days are behind me, so I love whenever my phone can act as a second brain. I set timers for everything. I have a Reminders list for library books I want to check out. I use Things to capture tasks on the go. I take photos of my parking spots, hotel room numbers, and receipts when I travel. And I’m hoping Siri continues to improve, because she makes it so easy to get the mundane into my phone.

Anything Else You’d Like to Share?

Just happy to contribute to MacSparky! Love everything you do for the community, David. Thank you!

Thanks Ian

 

Taking Better Meeting Notes with TextExpander


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At Macworld I sat on a panel with Jeff Taekman, my spirit brother from the medical profession. Jeff sits in on a lot of meetings and talked about how he uses TextExpander snippets and Drafts to speed up note taking. He even wrote it up for Macworld. I took notice and came up with my own meeting snippet, which you can download here.

Meeting Information

 Jeff uses a text description to make the note a header in Notesy (for searching elsewhere), like meetx-david and katie re show. I don’t store meeting notes that way. I keep a bigger note per project that contains a list of meeting notes throughout the project. Text is cheap and it is easier for me to access it all in one place so the meeting information portion of my meeting snippet is pretty simple: description, date, and time.

Attendees

I use fill-in forms for attendees. Since I work in a small office, I actually do this with an Optional eSlection for my co-workers and a few additional fill-ins for additional attendees. The purpose of these fill-ins is to allow me to use the names again below. Don’t forget how lazy I am.

Issues

My meetings often revolve around issues. My notes are typically a few bullet points per issue. This structure has evolved and works for me. It may not for you. You’ll need to get creative here.

The Checklists

I love having checklists from meetings. I love even more when other people know I have checklists. I used to just make it my checklist but now I add checklists for everyone in the meeting. Note how I’ve repeated the fill-in forms here. With checklists—as well as issue lists—I populate the template with many entries. It is much easier to delete than add, particularly on the iPad.

End Time

I like keeping track of how long meetings go. Subconsciously, the fact that I’m going to write down the end time helps me keep things moving, to the extent I have any power over that.

Next Meeting

If I’m really on the ball, at the end of the meeting we’ll agree upon the next meeting date (if necessary) and a preliminary agenda.

After the meeting…

I usually open this snippet in drafts. When the meeting is over, I can email it off to the attendees that have follow up items. I also copy the text and save it my nvALT file for the particular matter the meeting surrounds. On iOS, I can do it through WriteRoom, which is syncing to nvALT on my Mac.

Enjoy and let me know if you’ve got any improvements.

If this snippet is useful, you may also like my conference call snippet.

Download the Meeting Notes Snippet Here.

 

 

1 Billion Podcasts


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Yesterday afternoon Apple announced 1 billion podcast subscriptions through iTunes. Billion. With a “B”. I take pride in the fact Katie Floyd and I added a little dent to that number with the Mac Power Users. Ten years ago I never thought I could talk into a microphone about things that *nobody around me* cares about and hear back from appreciative listeners all over the globe.

Piling on the Surface

There is a lot of press the last few days over the Microsoft Surface, including this bit in the New York Times. The Surface hasn’t sold very well and Microsoft reports taking a $900M loss on the product. MacStories has an article today that looks at the problems with the Surface in detail, which I largely agree with. The problem, as I see it, is that the Surface was a tabletish computer designed for nerds. Its overriding design principle was not to be simple but instead run Microsoft Word. They largely succeeded but most people don’t care. The compromises required to reach that goal turned off most buyers. Microsoft didn’t go after the fat 90% of the marketplace but the niche 10% that wanted to run Microsoft Office. I’m guessing most of the people in Redmond would think that everybody needed that product but in truth, they don’t. Most people are looking for tablets that get them as far away from Microsoft Office as possible. Maybe the Surface isn’t a failure as much as a poorly aimed arrow.

 

Leap Motion Lamp

I try not to get sucked into unreleased product hype but when I saw the initial demo of the Leap Motion product, a box that sits in front of your Mac and reads your hand gestures Minority Report style, I bought one. The product is shipping later this month but they’ve been sending out units to developers for awhile and there are some really fun applications showing up. Today Brett Terpstra pointed out this video where a guy is controlling his lamp with hand gestures. This is pushing all of my nerd buttons. I wonder if John Lassiter has seen this.