Get Your Hands Dirty

This post is admittedly off topic but I wanted to acknowledge a friend, Conor Fitzpatrick, a small businessman with a big idea: turn city-folk into farmers. Conor’s company, MiniFarmBox,, sends you everything you need to grow your own vegetables. Spring is theoretically on its way and now is the time to get set up. Conor even has an Earth Day Special. I’m growing strawberries with my 9 year old this year and they will be delicious.

Home Screens – Ben Waldie

This week’s home screen post features Ben Waldie (Web site and Twitter) is the godfather of Mac automation. Ben has written books and published some excellent screencasts on the subject. Indeed, when Microsoft wanted to add Automator tools to the office suite, they went to Ben. I had the pleasure meeting Ben this year at Macworld and he is just as nice as he is smart. So Ben, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

Well, I should probably begin by explaining my home screen app organization process. As you can see, I organize my apps into folders, which are arranged alphabetically. Within each folder, I arrange the apps themselves alphabetically too. By doing so, I always know where any given app resides. The only exceptions are games, which I don’t organize alphabetically. Why not? Because I have multiple folders of games, and I don’t want to reorganize every time I install a new one. (I also arrange my Mac OS X Dock alphabetically, and yes, I realize I’m a freak.)

While I probably wouldn’t consider them most interesting, the apps I use the most are the ones that let me get work done efficiently while on the go. I use Mail and Safari regularly, iCal and AddressBook (with MobileMe sync), Dropbox, OmniFocus, and LogMeIn.

The app I find most interesting and fun is Star Walk. Just point your iPhone at the sky wherever you are, and it shows you real time information about stars, planets, satellites, and more.

What is your favorite app?

My favorite app changes on a regular basis. At the moment, it’s probably Reeder, which I use to keep up to date on the latest tech news. I love its ease of use, nice interface, and sync integration with Google Reader, which eliminates the need for me to read the same headlines when I switch devices.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I freely admit that I love Facebook for keeping track of what’s going on in the lives of friends and family.

What is the app you are still missing?

This isn’t an app, it’s more of a feature… I’m still missing a way to wirelessly keep my entire iPad/iPhone in sync with my Mac. Sync is super important to me, since I never know what device I’ll have with me at any given time. I have configured some apps to sync using Dropbox or MobileMe, but I’d like to see something on a more global scale.

An app I’m missing is one that will eliminate supermarket and other retail membership cards, so I don’t need to carry them in my wallet. I have actually seen some apps designed for this, but they don’t work with most checkout scanners.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

It’s difficult to calculate, but I would estimate that I often don’t go for 5 minutes without using one or the other. My wife just considers them extensions of my arms.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

My favorite feature is probably the camera. I love having such a great quality camera with me wherever I go to capture the funny things my kids are doing, special events, UFOs, or whatever else I encounter. I also love using apps like Photoshop Express and Camera+ to manipulate and improve photos right on my phone. And, of course, the ability to video chat with the kids when I’m away on business is simply awesome.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I’m sure there are a million things I’d add or change. One would be to improve the printing capabilities. Another would be to allow FaceTime usage over 3G (in the interim, Skype works great for this).

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks for your interest in checking out my home screen!

Thanks Ben.

Mac at Work Update

Mac at Work continues to sell and I continue to receive e-mails from people all over the world enjoying the book and every single one of them makes my day. Thank you all for your love. Moreover, when Merlin Mann said the book was so good he wanted to punch me in the face, I realized I need to add testimonials to the Mac at Work page. It is now easier than ever to buy the book or download a sample.

ABA TechShow Next Week

I can hardly wait to head to Chicago next week to participate in the American Bar Association’s annual TechShow. I’m putting the final touches on my presentation about my love affair with text and working on my equally fascinating presentation on collaboration tools for litigation attorney. Even as the Grade A nerd that I am, I am constantly surprised at the new things I learn at the ABA TechShow. Moreover, every year I make new friends. The people in attendance (both presenters and attendees) are all tech savvy and everyone adds something interesting to the conversation.

If you are a legal professional, get yourself to Chicago next week and join in the fun.

NV Naming, Redux

It wasn’t so long ago that I wrote about my Notational Velocity naming system. Critical to my system was the use of a colon in the note names as my Frankenstein-like naming and tagging system. On our marathon Workflows interview, Merlin talked about a similar system using an “x” in replacement of my “:” After we finished recording, I thought about it and switched. The reason wasn’t so much a concern about Unix conflicts (since the use is inside Notational Velocity and I’ve been using this system for ages with no problem) but instead the iPad and iPhone keyboards, that require two taps to get to the colon versus just one for an “x.” Now instead of legal active matters coding at law:am as I explained here, I now use lawxam. Thanks Merlin.

If you want to get nerdy about colons and Unix, check out Dr Drang’s piece here. The good Doctor publishes a great blog.

Writing a Book, the Master Outline

When I announced the new book, I promised I wouldn’t torture MacSparky.com readers with the tedious (and often) boring details of writing a book. I have, however, received several e-mails asking me to share some of the workflows so I will make occasional post about what I’m up to.

Writing a tech book is fairly straightforward. There are no plot twists, things usually move linearly, and the butler never did it. So outlining such a book is not that difficult. I started in iThoughts HD with a single entry in the middle, “iPad at Work.” Then I started adding branches. Most of the rough work was done at Peet’s over tea.

When things started shaping up, I synced the file (as OPML) over Dropbox to my Mac and looked at it in OmniOutliner Then I sent it back to the iPad and iThoughts HD. With Mac at Work, this work was about 90% OmniOutliner and 10% mind map (MindNode Pro is my favorite mind mapping app on Mac OS X). With this new book, those numbers reversed. I attribute this to the iPad (which didn’t exist when I outlined Mac at Work), which makes mind mapping more intuitive (for me). Either way, the big outline is done and looks great. Here it is from MindNode Pro on the Mac.

Once I was happy with the outline, I saved the OPML file on Dropbox and imported it into Scrivener, which built the book file. I’ll write more about those steps in a future post. The word count is now 10,000 and I’m having fun.

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