Text Expander Snippet Repository? Yes Please.

Awhile back, I wrote about how nice it would be if we put together a web site to share TextExpander Snippets. Reader Alexander took the idea and ran with it. Opening its doors yesterday te-snippets.com is going to become the promised land for TextExpander nerds everywhere. Brett Terpstra is already in and once I get a moment to catch my breath, I’m going to post a several of my collections. If you have some interesting snippets to share or want to up your game, get to it.

Bento 4 Released Today

Today FileMaker released Bento 4. I’ve been kicking the tires for the last week and I like it. This upgrade addresses many past user requests including label printing, exporting/importing datasets, and making it much easier to share your templates with others.

The label printing is a big deal. Until now, there was no easy way to print your holiday card labels. I get many e-mails about this every December. Using this feature you can add a field for family name, (i.e. The Balmer Family), and then your holiday card label looks right. You can also add custom graphics and it works Avery and other pre-printed labels.

With the new export features you can export a template (with or without data) to share with others. They are also releasing updated versions of the iPad and iPhone applications adding location aware features and other polish.

Overall, it is a nice update. Expect a deeper review after I spend some more time with it. Bento 4 costs $49 for a single license or $99 for a family pack of five. Owners of Bento 1, 2, or 3 will qualify for a $20 rebate.

Notational Velocity Naming Conventions

In last weekend’s episode of the Mac Power Users, I spoke at some length about how I name files in Notational Velocity.

So how do I name files? I preface the note name with some pre-designed codes (which I hesitate to call “tags”). The text screen is always unique so typing the name lets me quickly filter my 700 notes down to something more manageable. As I type this note right now from my iPad, the note is titled “ms:post - NV Naming” The first bit is the important part. You could call these a sort of tag but they really aren’t. Everything related to MacSparky starts with “ms:” I can further narrow it down by categorization. For instance “ms:post” is a working post where “ms:idea” is some random thought for site improvement. Either way, if I type just “ms:”, I get all the MacSparky related notes.

I do the same for the day job with “law:am” (active matters), “law:cm” (closed matters), and “law:form” (text forms). You get the idea. If you are going to use a system like mine, here are a few tips:

  • No uppercase. Keep it simple so you can type it quickly on an iPhone or iPad;
  • Keep the list as short as possible. I’ve memorized my codes but I also have a note with a list of them.
  • If you use dashes after the code (i.e. ms:post – Bill Gates’ new iPad), keep the spacing uniform so when you organize alphabetically, things work out.

A couple of things I don’t do in the names are dates and Merlin’s Q trick. Ben Brooks makes a good case for using dates in Notational Velocity notes but I’ve never found a need for it. Perhaps it has something to do with the way I use Notational Velocity. I do frequently drop date strings in notes, however. For instance if I talk to someone, I may note it with a date string in a matter note.

Likewise, I don’t use Merlin’s ingenious Q trick because for me, things are always changing and I don’t like going back to rename. Again, it is a good idea but one I fortunately don’t need.

Also absent from my system is tags. You could create tags in the notes with a symbol, like “@law, @form.” Also, Simplenote now has a tagging system but tagging has always struck me as more fidgety than useful. Brett Terpstra explains why I may be wrong about tagging in the the last MPU episode.

Japan Relief through iTunes

When I went to pick up an iPad 2 and was too late, I didn’t care. I’d spent the day watching the tragedies in Japan and realized (again) the importance of perspective. I’m receiving e-mails now from readers and listeners who still haven’t been able to contact their families in Japan.
Take a moment today and do something.

There are lots of ways to donate money. Apple makes it easy through iTunes.

Service Sunday – Text to iTunes Audio

One of my very favorite web services is Instapaper. It allows you to clip any webpage for later reading. The trouble is, Instapaper makes it so easy to mark articles for later reading that I tend to mark many more articles than I can possibly find time to read. In effort to keep up with the deluge, I decided to start converting some of the articles to audio tracks.

Before digging in, let’s talk about what this service will do. You can highlight any selection of text, including an Instapaper article, and right click into a service that will grab the text, convert it to an audio file, rename it, and dump it into an iTunes playlist. This is remarkably easy. You just need Snow Leopard 10.6, a little patience, and about 15 minutes. So load up Automator and let’s get started.

The Automator Script

If you’ve never used Automator before, you’re going to love it. Automator lets you program your Mac without knowing how to program.

When you first load up Automator, you will be prompted to choose your workflow. For this project, choose to make a Service. This lets you to activate it contextually (right clicky). So click on Service and move along.

This service will accept text from any application. I normally use it in Safari, but it will work with Pages documents, long e-mails, RSS readers, and any other place that you have lots of text.

So Automator is kind of like programming tinker toys. You get one piece and connect it to the next. The first piece, called “Text to Audio,” converts accepts text and spits out an AIFF file. The easiest way to find it is typing “text to audio” in the search window.

Drag the action over and your screen should look like this.

This first step is the most important. It grabs text and converts it into an audio file. I save the audio file to the desktop with a temporary name “T2A”. The workflow will trash the file later.

Next, the workflow renames it with the “Rename Finder Items” action. By enabling the “Show this action when the workflow runs” option, you can type in a name when the service runs.

Next, the service imports the file to iTunes with the “Import Audio Files” action. Ticking the box, “Delete source files after encoding” cleans up your desktop for you.

Finally, the service adds the audio file to an existing playlist. I created one called, “Fascinating Text.” Here is the whole workflow.

For bonus points, set up a Smart playlist in iTunes that grabs all unplayed files from the Fascinating Text playlist and sync it to your iPhone/iPad/iPod and you are set. Wherever you go, great listening materials are a click away.

In Action

Just highlight some text and activate the service. I usually do it from the Readability view in Safari. For long articles, this can take several minutes.

Then give it a name.

Then Automator does the rest. If its a large file, this also can take awhile. Open iTunes and play.

The articles I most often convert to audio are non-techy long form pieces. So often, reading Mac and Legal stuff results in new OmniFocus tasks for me so I prefer to put in text like New Yorker or New Republic articles. Literature would work but the voice isn’t natural enough. I tried “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but listening to Alex recite Atticus Finch made me want to push an icepick in my ear.

Home Screens: Shawn Blanc

Shawn Blanc (twitter) is one of the premier Mac bloggers and recently made the ballsy move of turning his blog, ShawnBlanc.net, into his full time gig. I am a fan. I asked Shawn to share his iPad screen today, on iPad 2 launch day, and he was kind enough to help out. So Shawn, let’s see your home screen.

What are your most interesting home screen apps?

iBooks, OmniFocus, and Wired come to mind as being the apps that most capture my curiosity in the iPad.

  • Wired because I think it’s a great magazine and I enjoy reading it on my iPad every month. I enjoy how the icon color and loading screen change colors for every updated issue and I even appreciate how it notifies me when there are new issues for download.

    But really I like Wired because: (a) my roots in design are with print and layout; (b) I’ve had a longstanding affinity for software and technology; and (c) I love to read on my iPad. So, in a way, Wired represents the amalgamation of all these things: it’s a print magazine that discusses technology and which is moving to the iPad as a new medium for delivery.

  • OmniFocus because here’s an app that has been on the Desktop for years, and yet, somehow, they bust out a version on the iPad that blows the original out of the water. Here’s an app that shows just how exciting a future the iPad has for personal computing and getting work done. Or, put another way, OmniFocus is a great example of how such a complex application with layers and layers of information can work so well on a small touch screen tablet.

  • And iBooks because what I do most on the iPad is read. And though the reading environment in iBooks isn’t amazing it is pretty great. I’m not a total bookworm, like some people I know, but I do like to always be reading through a book or two. I’ve purchased several books from the iBookstore, and also have some other eBooks and PDFs that I’ve added into iBooks.

    And the fact that I can highlight, bookmark, and add notes makes it great as well. I’d like to start writing book reviews too, and so these extra bits of functionality make it great to jot down and highlight in preparation to return to the book and write a review of it.

What is your favorite app?

Instapaper. By a long shot. I’ve said before that if there was ever an app that was like a good cup of coffee it would be Instapaper.

By far and away the thing I do most with my iPad is read. And Instapaper is, in my opinion, the best reading app on the iPad. It is such a splendidly simple app and service that it fits into hundreds of different use-cases. I think that’s why explaining what it does is nothing at all like explaining what it is.

Instapaper isn’t just a service. It’s like some sort of placebo. When you find something great you save it and move on, knowing that something of value is now in a place you know you’ll get to it. And so Reading Later has become a favorite habit.

What is the app you are still missing?

It’s not so much an app that I feel is missing as much as a service. A syncing service.

I am hesitant to use apps that do not sync automatically between my laptop, iPhone, and iPad. I would love to see better over-the-air sync for all apps and other data. I think that MobileMe could have huge potential as a syncing server for all the data and apps on our iPads and iPhones.

Something as fast and easy to use as Dropbox — meaning it would sync and share info and files — but it would let other apps use it for syncing. Imagine setting up your iPhone with your Apple ID once, and then any app that has a Mac and/or iPad counterpart would sync.

Including the 3rd-party apps. If MobileMe could be used by 3rd-party developers it would make their jobs significantly easier

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

I use my iPhone much more than my iPad — especially when I’m out and about. And I work mostly on my laptop. Though I use my iPad for checking email, writing, checking Twitter, and playing an occasional game, I mostly use it for the things it does better than any of my other gadgets, which means reading and doing reviews of my to-do lists in OmniFocus.

What is your favorite feature of the iPad?

The battery. My iPad’s battery usually lasts for up to 12 hours. I’ve never owned a gadget like that. With my iPhone or laptop — and even my bluetooth headset I keep in the car — it’s common for the battery life to interrupt the workflow and interaction I have with the device.

With the iPad I rarely ever worry or think about the battery at all. It’s just something I’ve begun to take for granted. Even when it goes into the “red zone” it means I still have a couple hours of battery life.

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

I would give out free scoops of Rocky Road ice cream to people who stand in line every spring and summer to buy iPhones and iPads.

Anything else you’d like to share?

For those who may want to snag it, the background image I’m currently using can be found here (and I found it via Prettify).

Thanks Shawn!

OmniFocus Screencast Update

I’m getting lots of e-mails on the promised screencasts. The first one is nearly done and should go live next weekend. Two more will follow up in two week increments after that. They will be in the Mac Power Users feed, among other places. I’m having a lot of fun making them and they are looking great. I can’t wait to share these.

iPad 2: To 3G or not to 3G

The decision to shell out another $130 for the 3G connection is not so clear as it was a year ago. Now that the iPhone has a tethering and WiFi hotspot plan ($20 a month with AT&T), you may want to skip the 3G antenna and instead use your phone to get the iPad online. Doing so has its plusses and minuses:

  • It lets you save $130 on the purchase price;
  • It lets you save the extra monthly charge for iPad data (when active);
  • It saves you some battery life;
  • The GPS antenna is only on the 3G iPad so you’ll be without it on a WiFi-only iPad;
  • It requires you to always have your iPhone or other MiFi type device with you, charged, and turned on to get the iPad online. If you are using it a lot, it may challenge your iPhone battery life;
  • Going this way assumes you will always have that hotspot data connection for the life of the iPad.

I think at the end of the day it comes down to saved money versus convenience.

If you do go with a 3G iPad 2, give some thought to your carrier. Since you can now elect to get a Verizon or AT&T iPad, I recommend you get the opposite of your phone carrier. That way if you can’t get a signal on the phone, you may have a chance on the iPad.