Mother’s Day Kaboo

With Mother’s Day this weekend, Mrs. MacSparky reports she wants a new Kaboo Bag for her iPad. Kaboo makes some nice purse-looking technology bags. This will be the second one we’ve purchased for Daisy and the first still looks new.

Pixelmator 2.2 – Blueberry

Pixelmator, my photo and graphics weapon of choice, just got a really nice update. There are a lot of new features in this update.

  • There are shape tools and pallets, with dozens of built in shapes. (Watch the video)

  • There is an intriguing new “convert text into shape” feature, to apply apply gradients, shadows, strokes, or even reshape individual letters.

  • There is a new paint selection tool to speed up selections with a brush stroke. (Watch the video)

  • They’ve also added a light leak effect for retro-illuminated images. (Watch the video)

It’s a free upgrade if you’ve already purchased the app. If not, I recommend getting a copy of Pixelmator. It is a really powerful photo tool for just $15.

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Text Expander Snippets: Date and Time

Here is another group of my TextExpander snippets.

My date snippets fall in a few categories:

Shortcuts

Why type August when “xm8” is faster?

Date Math

I don’t remember when TextExpander added this feature but I really like the relative date function. If I want yesterday’s date for instance, I type “d–“

Date Stamps

Because I date stamp notes from conversations in nvALT notes and they are always a heading two, I have two different versions of the date stamps, one with and one without markdown headings.

AppleScript Date Snippets

These are magic.

xdnm  gets next Monday

xdnw gets the date range next week

xdns gets next Saturday

xdnf gets next Friday

I’ve written most of these and collected others from the Web. All of the AppleScript based date snippets are courtesy of Ben Waldie. Also honorable mention goes to Tim Stringer, who sent in his list. If you think you’ve got me licked with something better, send it in and I’ll include it with the next update.

Download the Date Snippets

Fraser Speirs on iOS 7

In 2008, after the launch of the iPhone 3G, I wrote:

If you haven’t got it already, it’s time to move your head to this place: iPhone OS is Apple’s mainstream platform for 2012 and beyond.

That’s the world we now live in.

Fraser Speirs is one clever fellow. His latest piece on what iOS 7 needs to take the mobile operating system to the next level is great. What Fraser appreciates (and a lot of people don’t) is that iOS needs to keep its simplicity as a condition of moving forward.

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Free App.net Invites

I’m trying to figure out where App.net fits in my life. Until Twitter started getting weird I was very happy with my “social media strategy”. 1. Write silly things on Twitter. 2. Facebook? What’s that?

But as the Buddha explained, everything keeps changing. I signed up for App.net because I was curious about what they’d do and I didn’t want some other nerd claiming “MacSparky”. I’ve now been using it (off and on) since launch and … well … I’m confused.

The service is great with luxurious post lengths and what feels like a more intimate level of engagement with other geeks. In that way, it feels a lot like Twitter did when I signed up for it in 2007.

The problem is having two things. When I just had one thing, Twitter, it was really easy. Two things always make things four times as complicated. Also, there is an ethic to this that I still haven’t figured out. If you go on App.net and post something similar to what you say on Twitter, there is a group of people that call you out for cross posting. However, if you go on App.net and don’t post stuff you say on Twitter, there is a separate group that will never hear your most recent pearl of wisdom.

Vexing.

I don’t have any answers but do acknowledge I haven’t been using App.net enough to have an experience-based opinion. So I am going to try and spend more time on App.net for the next month to see if how it fits in my life. The good news is if you’d like to join me, I’ve got some freebies to get you in the club.

Just Click Right Here and the nice people at App.net will set you up. As is the nature of most free things, that link is not going to work forever so get to it.

Home Screens: Marcelo Somers


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I first met Marcelo Somers (Website) (Twitter) several years ago when he organized the Syndicate ad network. These days Marcelo spends his time as a user experience consultant and writing at Behind Companies. So Marcelo, show us your home screen.


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Chrome

Until recently, I was a devout Safari user. It wasn’t until I forced myself to try out Chrome that I understood it. Google is absolutely killing it with their apps on iOS. The physics of how you interact with tabs and the single omnibox is brilliantly done. When I’m back in Safari, I find myself craving the horizontal swipe to go between tabs, or how easy it is to open in a new tab behind the existing one.

It’s a little bit of a nuisance that links open in Safari by default, but I use Jon Abrams’ bookmarklet to send a page from Safari to Chrome. What’s interesting is that my bookmarks menu in Safari has really become like a second share sheet. The simple bookmarks interface is the one feature I still like better in Safari.

Listary

I’m an OmniFocus user for my day to day task management, but for basic lists like Groceries, Listary gives me a clean simple interface that’s exactly what I need. The Simplenote sync lets me share lists easily with my wife, and do bulk entry on my Mac. I have two wishes for the app: Dropbox sync and URL Schemes. The developer has shared that Dropbox sync would prevent list sharing, so I can understand that, and URL Schemes are supposedly coming in a future update.

1Password

I won’t beat the 1Password horse here, except to share one pro tip that hasn’t seemed to make the rounds yet. 1Password 4’s big update added the url scheme to open pages in the app. I wanted an easier way to do it, and Federico Viticci of Macstories obliged with this bookmarklet to send pages from Safari to 1Password. It’s 3 steps easier than manually adding ‘op’ to the beginning of a URL, and I use it constantly.

Maps

I’ve bounced back and forth quite a bit. I gave Google Maps serious consideration after it came out, and like Chrome they are doing an amazing job on iOS. However, I find myself coming back to the beautiful maps from Apple. The turn by turn interface is much more realistic with perspective. I do keep Google around though for the occasional time that mapping data isn’t correct. Waze is my 3rd wheel that I’ll use to check what is going on with traffic if I’m stuck in my commute and Maps and Google don’t help.

Mail

I hate email, but I’m a devout Mail user. I’ve tried Mailbox and all the other alternatives, but I keep coming back to the simplicity of Apple’s client. I have a simple approach to email: things in my Inbox need to be dealt with, once they’re dealt with they get archvied. No complicated folder structure or filing system, and I still haven’t found a better app for it on iOS.

I’m of the opinion that if you are constantly on the hunt for an app to fix your email problems, your approach to email is really what needs fixing. An app isn’t going to do it for you.

Calendar/Fantastical

Much like Mail, I still haven’t found a better iOS calendar app than Apple’s own. With the iPhone 5 and the additional appointments visible in Month view, it got even better.

With that being said, Fantastical is incredible for creating appointments. I use it much more devoutly on the Mac. I love the interface, but the iOS version just isn’t quite a fit for me for general calendaring. I like the Daily/Monthly view in Apple’s app.

Forecast

I was thrilled when the Dark Sky team released Forecast. It’s a web app, but it’s perfect. It gives me just the data I want with data visualizations that make sense.

Drafts

I’ve just started down the path of all the amazing URL Scheme actions that Drafts can do, but I love the idea of quickly opening the app to jot something down.

Launch Center Pro

Like Drafts, I’m still exploring the world of URL Schemes with Launch Center Pro. I’ve found a few key uses for the app. My biggest is keeping groups of contacts I reguarly message together (my parents, my in-laws, etc.). LCP makes it super easy to message them together without taking the time to select multiple contacts. My wife and I are expecting our first baby this summer, and I’ve even created a very large group to easily message updates when the time comes.

I also keep commands to Text my Last Photo, Place my last photo on the clipboard, send my wife a canned message that I’m on my way home, and some reguarly used app actions like taking a photo of a business receipt with QuickShot (via Shawn Blanc).

Instagram

I keep this on here as my “guilty pleasure”. I was a huge Gowalla user back in the day but never fell in love with Foursquare after the Gowalla team went to Facbeook. Instagram took that spot for me, and it all clicked when Josh Williams (Gowalla’s Former CEO) described the “M. Night Shyamalan moment”:

They made their own rules. They called it Instagram.

That whole see the world through the eyes of their friends thing? Turns out Instagram did a pretty good job of this.

While we were busy playing tug-of-war over check-ins, someone else found a path to the goal with less friction.

Other Apps I love:

OmniFocus (MailDrop) – I love the voice capture coupled with Daniel Jalkut’s Reminders Plumbing. However these days I find myself using MailDrop far more often on iOS.

Gmail – I keep Gmail around for searching my archive. Once again, they’re killing it.

Dropbox – I moved to David’s own Paperless system last Christmas when I got a Doxie. Dropbox lets me access all my records on the go, and I love it. It’s also saved me many times when I needed to share a work file on the go without a laptop.

Amazon – What a simple, but delightful shopping experience. I love using the app’s UPC scanner to compare prices when I’m out shopping, and they make it far too easy to one click purchase something I think I need. A large percentages of my shopping on Amazon is now done through mobile.

Dark Sky – It’s not used often living in Texas, but it’s so damn magical to get a push notification that it’s about to rain. It’s also saved me several times when I was going to forget an umbrella.

What am I missing?

There aren’t really any apps I desire, but what I want to see in iOS 7 is better inter-app sharing of content. URL Schemes are great, but they have their limits, and it’d be great to have it be more accessible. I also want better photo/video backup. I’m currently using Dropbox (which requires manual opening of the app). With my first child on the way, this becomes even more crucial. Also, more free space on iCloud for device backups. It gets tough to fit it all with a 16gb iPhone and iPad.

Thanks Marcelo.

If you’ve got an interesting story and home screen, let me know.

Capturing Text Message Based Tasks

When you are sending someone a communication requesting that they do something for you, spend a moment thinking about how convenient (or inconvenient) you are making things for your recipient. To me, text messages are a way to quickly share short spurts of information. They’re great for things like telling someone you are running late. Using a text message to ask someone to do something substantive, like write a sales proposal, doesn’t make sense. It is too hard to capture big projects out of text messages. If you are assigning or requesting work, I would argue that rather than send a text message, you should be writing an email (or sitting down with someone) where you can provide a more thorough explanation, giving your recipient a chance to better understand the assignment and have a nice easy platform to get it started from. Unfortunately, everyone doesn’t think the same way I do and I constantly bang my head into this when someone sends me text message that requires further action.

I’m great at capturing tasks from emails and personal conversations. Whether at my desk or out on the road, I can quickly capture those events into future OmniFocus tasks. Nevertheless, I’ve never been good at capturing tasks from text messages. Part of it is because I just don’t use text messaging as much as some people. Jumping when I get a text message makes me feel like a Pavlovian dog and if I’m busy, I may not read it. But that isn’t the only reason. It just isn’t easy to capture a text message. Regardless, I often find myself blowing something because someone asked me to do it to text message.

I’m trying to fix that. First, I’m making the pool of messages more manageable. I’m deleting message threads as they become irrelevant. For instance, if I have a thread between myself and Katie Floyd talking about what time we will record a Mac Power Users episode, once that thread has reached its conclusion (e.g., “Let’s do it at 8 AM.”), I delete the thread. No longer do I have a list of 50 or 60 threads just sitting there. The only threads I have are active ones. If there is task arising from a thread, I deal with it before deleting it.

Apple does not make this easy. There’s no way to delete multiple threads with one swipe. Moreover, deleting a thread on my phone doesn’t delete the same thread on my other iOS devices or the Mac Messages app. I’ve got to individually deleted it in those places as well (again without the ability to delete multiple threads at once.) As a result, when I first decided to try this, I did a lot of swiping and tapping on all of my various devices.

The next thing I did was change my own personal habits about how I manage text messages. When I read a text message and it requires a future action, I immediately capture it in OmniFocus. How I capture it depends on where I’m at and what I’m being asked to do. I’ve got Siri, Drafts, or the keyboard. One thing I don’t have is the ability to forward a text message to an email address, which would let me use the Omni Mail Drop service. (Update: “Turns out” you can forward texts to an imail in iOS so you can forward a text to the Mail Drop service.)

This new workflow is more work but I’m not blowing it on text message based projects anymore. What I’d really prefer however, is that people stop asking me to do actionable tasks in text messages.