I talked about this on Mac Power Users but I thought it worth mention here. Thanksgiving weekend is the perfect weekend to share the 1Password love with all our family members. While us nerds get it, everyone needs a secure way to create, store, and access passwords. 1Password scratches all the itches and this weekend it is half off.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

I know times are tough but if you are looking for a reason to give thanks, Seth Godin nails it:

Your job, your internet access, your education, your role in a civilized society… all of them are a platform, a chance to do art, a way for you to give back and to honor those that enabled you to get to this point.

For every person reading this there are a thousand people (literally a thousand) in underprivileged nations and situations that would love to have your slot. Don’t waste it.

Of course there is also turkey.

Plans are afoot for Macworld 2012. I’m really excited about two sessions I’ll be participating in:

Workflows with Rob Corddry

Rob Corddry is an actor and comedian that you’ve probably seen several times. Rob’s work includes The Daily Show, Community, Hot Tub Time Machine, W., Harold & Kumar, and more. He also is Dr. Blake Downs on Children’s Hospital.

In addition to Rob’s many talents, he is a Level 1 Apple nerd. Rob agreed to join Katie Floyd, Merlin Mann, and myself for an Entertainment Workflows session on January 27, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. This session will be entertaining and educational as Rob explains how he uses Apple technologies in the entertainment business. With both Merlin and Rob going at full speed, I’ll consider myself lucky just to keep up.

40 Tips in 40 Minutes

This session is going to an absolute nerdfest. On January 27 at 10:00 a.m., Brett Terpstra, Merlin Mann, and I will be firing off as many Mac tips as we can in 40 minutes. (I guaranty it will be more than 40.) We’ve already started planning this magic show and it is going to be fantastic. This is the session I’ve always wanted at Macworld and can’t wait to make this happen.

Getting In

Both the Rob Corddry workflow and magic show are part of the Tech Talks. You can currently buy a $75 pass that gets you in all the Tech Talks. This is a significant discount over prior years (where the conference tracks cost over $1,000). There are lots of interesting Tech Talks plans in addition to these two and you’ll definitely get your money’s worth. However, the prices will go up slightly after December 5 so if you are interested, now is the time.

My annual trip to Macworld is always one of the highlights of my year. If at all possible, get yourself to Macworld in January and join the party.

Two weeks ago, my friends at the Omni Group told me OmniFocus was about to get Siri friendly and asked if I’d do some demonstration videos for them. Hell yes. So I’ve been sitting on my hands the last two weeks as I added tasks to my OmniFocus inbox using Siri and not telling anyone. It is a fantastic feature that completely removes all of the hacks we’ve all been using for years to quickly capture new task items.

There are three videos. Here is my favorite.

OmniFocus + Siri: Configuration from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

You can watch all three on Omni’s blog post.

So having used this feature for a few weeks, here are some tips.

• Asking Siri “Remind me to …” always results in Siri prompting you for second question, “When would you like me to remind you”. That creates an OmniFocus due date for the task.
• Asking Siri “Remember to …” creates the task without prompting for a date.
• Although you don’t have to, creating a separate Reminders list called “OmniFocus” [including capitalization] creates a nice place to put OmniFocus bound tasks. When OmniFocus adds those tasks to your OmniFocus inbox, it clears them out of the Reminders list. Doing it this way you can also keep non-OmniFocus tasks. For instance, I have a Reminders list called “Groceries”. With the Siri command, “Add Haggis to my Grocery List”, Siri puts it in my Grocery list Reminders list and OmniFocus leaves it there.

This really takes OmniFocus to a new level for me. If I think of something while driving down the road, walking to lunch, or gazing at clouds, I’m just one Siri click away from capture.

As for making the videos, it was a blast and the process probably merits its own extended post. Suffice it to say it was a lot more work than I expected but all fun. Also, thanks to JF Brissette (Twitter – @profmac) for the most excellent music.

I dictate a lot on my Mac using Dragon Dictate. One problem is unique words like company names and names of people. Even if you create a custom definition for these words, Dragon can sometimes get confused. For long projects, I often use substitute words. For example, instead of writing “ACME International Road Runner Traps, Ltd.”, I’ll use an easily distinguishable word like, “banana”.

Dear Sir, I must say I've had a spot of bad luck in the desert with my banana manufactured devices.

I’ve got a list of these words in my head. My favorites are monkey, banana, and alligator, which Dragon always gets right for me. (I wonder if these words arise in my head from all the times I sang about swinging in a tree to my kids.)

When I’m done, I do a quick search and replace and things get fixed up. Just make sure to proofread carefully. It’s probably a bad idea to send a letter out to Mr. Monkey.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

I know I’m late to the party on this but this morning I was able to listen to Hypercritical #42, where John Siracusa skewers the Jobs biography. Really great stuff.

I started MacSparky.com in 2006 and the design has remained largely unchanged. I decided it was time to shake things up:

Redesign

While I still very much love the logo Darren Rolfe created for me so long ago, I’ve decided to simplify. This is most certainly an iterative process and tweaks will continue to appear. Squarespace makes this way too easy.

Comments

I turned off comments a month ago and have had a few irate e-mails but far fewer than I expected. I gave up on comments for a few reasons:

• Management – I was getting an unbelievable number of spam comments, even with some fairly sophisticated filtering. Managing this went on my “No List”.
• Responding – Those non-spammy comments often asked questions and I simply don’t have time to go and answer each one. This made me feel bad.

For now, my comment system is Twitter. Perhaps I’ll get more involved with Google+ for this in the future but, honestly, probably not.

My orange iPad Smart Cover was starting to look pretty rough so I hit it with a little water and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. After just a few minutes, it looked like new. If I’d had the the foresight to take “before” and “after” pictures, you’d be really impressed. Here are a couple of tips:

1. Mr. Clean doesn’t need much water. Just a little;
2. Use a paper towel to dry off any excess water;
3. Keep the inside of the cover down so it doesn’t get wet.

I’ve made several attempts at online backup over the years. All of them failed. It always felt to me as if online backup was not quite ready for prime time. The Mac clients often felt clunky and the required bandwidth wasn’t there.

One of these failed attempts included a brief dalliance with Backblaze a few years ago. Since then my cable provider improved my upload speeds and Backblaze continued to refine its Mac client. A few weeks ago I gave Backblaze a new try and, finally, I get it.

I backed up my key data from my internal iMac HD. Here are a few timestamps on the data upload:

2011-11-05 14:45:39 - 137,239 MB

2011-11-06 08:20:33 - 123,057 MB

2011-11-08 06:58:42 - 78,046 MB

20111-11-10 17:19:54 - Done!

Every previous attempt at cloud backup required weeks and (sometimes) months for the initial upload. Backblaze got the job done in five days and I didn’t notice any latency. Version two of the software includes (obviously) faster transfer speeds, automatic throttling during peak times, and unlimited file sizes for as low as $4 a month.

I still don’t believe online backup should be your only solution but there is nothing wrong with a belt to go along with those suspenders.