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.

Instacast for Mac

Vemedio just released a public beta of its Instacast for Mac app. Now that I think about it, a podfeeder for the Mac (syncing with my phone) makes a lot of sense. I’d no longer have to set the phone down next to my Mac (or fiddle with unsynced web versions) to listen to podcasts. If they get syncing right, they are on to something.

I have to admit feeling a little snake bit by Instacast though. I’ve paid for it several times with their various upgrades and I prefer DownCast on my phone. Nevertheless, syncing to my Mac may be enough to bring me back into the fold.

History of “Workflow”


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In MPU 133 (about Alfred 2), I speculated about this word “workflow” and how we now hear it everywhere. The first time I heard the word was in relation to professional photographers but it turns out I was way off. Listener Mark, a confessed word geek, dug deeper and shows it in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1950:

work flow n. in an office or industrial organization, the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.

He also found uses of “work flow” going back to 1950 with a book by I. A. Herrman, Office Methods, Systems, & Procedures vii. 131 “Work flow diagrams are effective in solving various kinds of problems.”

There was also an instance in 1976, National Observer (U.S.) 19 June 2/4 “Byrd is a master of legislative detail with a reputation as a fair-minded manager who accelerates the work flow.”

Mark dug even deeper with Google’s Ngram Viewer (above) demonstrating that the word took off around 1992 and the combined form “workflow” (vs. “work flow”) has got some legs.

I know the word seems overused but it just seems so appropriate for the process of getting our work from coneption to delivery that I can’t stop using it.

Thanks Mark

Home Screen: Eddie Smith


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It’s been a long time since Eddie Smith first showed his home screen here on MacSparky. I thought it was time for an update so he shared one. In case you don’t know them already, Eddie writes the Practically Efficient blog and is one of my best nerd friends. We even wrote a book together. So Eddie, show us your home screen.


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What are some of your favorite apps?

Every app on my home screen is a favorite in some way. They range from really sophisticated task managers like OmniFocus to single-feature gems like Lighty. In fact, Lighty, my favorite flash light app, is one of the most important apps on my phone. I use it all the time, and it’s probably saved me real dollars in the foregone cost of replacing batteries in little flash lights around my house.

Productivity Apps:

One notable trend on my iPhone in the last year is the inclusion of more and more Google apps. Until the last year, I felt like Google intentionally avoided putting development resources into its iOS apps, but that seems to be changing.

I tried very hard to use the default Apple Maps app that debuted with iOS 6, but I’ve found the search in Google Maps (Google’s response to the new Apple Maps) far more intelligent. Given that I use maps apps primarily for location and phone number searches, the Google Maps app is a better fit on my home screen.

I use Google Voice as my voicemail solution—partly because it provides a convenient text transcription of voice messages and partly for the entertainment value in how poorly it often transcribes those messages.

Google’s Gmail app really sucked until version 2.0 came along. It seemed like a slow, laggy mobile version of the full Gmail web UI. 2.0 is much better, and while I’ve tried using the default Mail app, Mailbox, and others, the Gmail app suits me best the way I use email on my phone—which is mainly to process incoming mail and search for archived mail.

Another notable Google app I’m using (that isn’t on my home screen) is the new Google Drive app. For the first time, I feel like I can reliably edit Google documents and spreadsheets from my iPhone and iPad. In fact, I think the spreadsheet interface in Google Drive is the best mobile spreadsheet interface I’ve seen so far.

Enough on Google.

If the Gmail app is my favorite app for pulling email, Drafts is my favorite for pushing email. In fact, I’m composing more and more of all kinds of things in Drafts. I just love the simplicity of having a single point of entry for text on my home screen. I think of Drafts as a more natural human way of entering text—more like a sticky note in the pre-digital world.

While most digital interfaces for text entry—from email clients to task management systems—encourage you to “title” something and choose its destination first, Drafts encourages you to get the message or content down first, then choose its destination. I would love to see this design concept bleed into other mobile and desktop interfaces.

Day One, Evernote, and Notesy give me access to most of my personal information. I love tracking simple goals in Day One. Evernote is like a paperless filing cabinet in my pocket. Notesy gives me access to all of my plain text notes in Dropbox.

Soulver is my favorite calculator app, not only on the iPhone but on my iPad and Mac as well.

For task management, I mainly use OmniFocus. The OmniFocus iPhone app is really useful for capturing inbox items. I’ve starting using Drafts to send things to OmniFocus instead of starting with OmniFocus, though.

I use the built-in Reminders app for short-term but important reminders that I want pushed to all of my devices (e.g. “Put jeans in the dryer” when I really need to remember to do that.)

I’m glad this is a home screen post because I would be embarrassed to show you how many weather apps live elsewhere on my iPhone. Today is my current favorite for checking current weather and daily forecasts. The new Forecast.io and Dark Sky, however, both get a lot of use, too.

While we’re talking life management, it’s worth noting that I have two calendar apps on my home screen. I really like Fantastical’s natural language entry system, and I use it a lot—mainly in situations where it’s not appropriate to speak aloud to Siri. I can’t bring myself to remove the default calendar app because I really like having today’s date displayed on my home screen.

Entertainment:

I prefer to read on my iPad, but I actually read way more on my iPhone because it’s with me all the time. I’ve really been digging Newstand in the last year. Marco Arment has done a great job with The Magazine, which lives in Newstand along with the New York Times app and The Economist. The Times app is easily the best news app I’ve ever used. If they would get rid of ads in the paid version, it would be even better.

Tweetbot, Reeder, and Instapaper live in my News folder. Tweetbot lets me capture important links on Twitter, and Reeder is my favorite place for following RSS feeds. And Instapaper, of course, my favorite place to read the articles I find in Tweetbot and Reeder.

I listen to a lot of audio through my iPhone. Virtually all of it comes from Instacast, my favorite app for following podcasts, and Pandora.

What app are you still missing?

I’m really looking forward to see how Google’s killing of Google Reader will change the way we subscribe to websites. I would like to see someone develop web services and apps that make it easier to not only follow newly published information but that also make it easy to subscribe to archived information. For example, I wish there was a way to browse older content more easily when I find, say, a blog that’s already been active for years—kind of like working through a box of old Life magazines.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks for having me back. It’s always a pleasure working with you, reading you, and listening to you.

Thanks Edddie.

Instapaper: Under New Managment

Marco Arment’s sold Instapaper (at least most of his interest in it). It appears, however, he didn’t pull this off by finding the biggest company willing to write a check with the largest number of zeros but instead sought out a company, in this case betaworks, willing to shower love on Instapaper as he did.

I sure hope there is some anal-retentive person at betaworks willing to sweat the details like Marco does. I’ve been using Instapaper since it was just a web service. With the arrival of the iPad, my infatuation turned into love and Instapaper still is one of the most used apps on my iPad.

I get overcommitment and I can’t wait to see what Marco creates next. I wish him luck but I doubt he needs it.

Drafts 3.0, Better and Better

Drafts 3.0 (iPhone) (iPad) is out and this app just keeps getting better and better. I know there are some other applications claiming to do the same thing as Drafts (quick text capture and processing on iOS) but I’m so in love with Drafts. First, in creating Drafts, Greg Pierce filled a huge void in the iOS market that I didn’t even realize existed. Second, he just keeps raising it to new levels.

At version 2.5 he added some really useful Dropbox workflows. This new version 3.0 gives the same treatment to Evernote. There is more though. Libraries of tasks are easier to manage, there are URL schemes, and other bits of trickery to pull off automation on iOS that makes my nerd-heart go pitter patter.

For a really good review, go check out Federico Viticci’s write-up at MacStories. For OmniFocus geeks, go check out this trick from Sid O’Neill that lets you add multiple OmniFocus tasks from Drafts. If you’re still not sold on Drafts, listen to Merlin Mann and I wax poetic on it in MPU 132.