Month: August 2010

‘The Acceleration of Addictiveness’  →

Paul Graham on why I don’t have a Facebook account:

Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction. We’re all trying to figure out our own customs for getting free of it. That’s why I don’t have an iPhone, for example; the last thing I want is for the Internet to follow me out into the world. […]

Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn’t it? It always will when you’re trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. Maybe I can’t plead Occam’s razor; maybe I’m simply eccentric. But if I’m right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.

‘The Acceleration of Addictiveness’

ESV Bible+ App [iTunes Link]  →

The best Bible app available for the iPhone and iPad has got to be the ESV Bible app. It’s free, it looks great, and it works great.

This past weekend Crossway released the ESV Bible+ app. It has all the awesome of the free version and also comes with more content for studying, audio of the Bible, and a significantly better UX for taking notes within the app itself. Also, it’s on sale for the rest of this week.

ESV Bible+ App [iTunes Link]

Regarding 1Password, Yojimbo, Things, and Apps That Do Not Sync via the Cloud

In a recent link to 1Password’s incorporation of over-the-air syncing between desktop, iPad, and iPhone apps, I wrote the following:

I mostly use 1Password on my Mac to generate and save passwords and logins for websites. But on my iPhone and iPad it makes for a fantastic way to keep notes and other top-secret info safe and secure. And now that it has free cloud syncing via Dropbox (which works perfectly), 1Password just became that much more useful and vital to me.

With the amount of shared information I keep between my iPad, iPhone, and Mac, apps which sync via the cloud are becoming a necessity while apps that don’t are quickly becoming so cumbersome to maintain they’re almost useless.

I received a little bit of feedback from that post, and for the most part people were asking two things: (1) If I’m using 1Password to keep notes on my iPhone, what about Yojimbo?; and (2) if apps that don’t cloud sync are so cumbersome now, what am I doing about Things?

The short answer is that I still use both of these apps every day. Yojimbo and 1Password have much different uses, and the lack of cloud syncing in Things has not yet become so cumbersome that I’ve abandoned it.

I use Yojimbo to store just about anything and everything, while 1Password keeps only important info. The vast majority of info I curate is done when working on my laptop and therefore lands in Yojimbo.

As I wrote in my review of Yojimbo, one of the premier features is its encouragement of perpetual info capture regardless of the type. Yojimbo is the simplest way I know of to save any bit of spontaneous information, no matter how indispensable or arbitrary that information is.

1Password on the other hand is hardly geared for this type of frictionless data capture. Quite the opposite in fact. When you launch 1Password you’re greeted by a locked steel door requiring a combination before you gain access the app.

I primarily use 1Password for generating and storing passwords and for logging in to websites. The only other info I store is that which is most likely to be useful to me when I’m on the go. Such as Anna’s and my cars’ license plate numbers, my iOS device UDIDs, and a few other things.

It has never bothered me that Yojimbo does not have a mobile app and that I do not have access to my Yojimbo library when on the go. In fact, not only does it not bother me, I’ve never even been in a real-life scenario where I was out with just my iPhone and wanted access to my Yojimbo library. (And the only time I’ve used the Yojimbo Sidekick mobile website library thingamajig was to test it.)

However, I am daily in scenarios where I am out with just my iPhone and wish I had access to the latest version of my to-do list.

I’ve been using Things since it was in beta, and I still love it. It works seamlessly with my daily workflow of getting tasks in and out. And I love how simple it is — the structure of tasks, projects, and other information is not too simple, nor too rich — it’s just right. But I don’t just use Things on my Mac anymore. I am adding and checking off tasks on all three devices throughout my day. My multi-device to-do list is slowly becoming so cumbersome to maintain some days it’s almost useless. Cloud sync for Things is almost a necessity for me.

It’s no secret that the Cultured Code team is working on a Cloud Sync solution. Considering their reputation for development I have no doubt it will be worth the wait. But in the mean I’ve resorted to managing tasks using email, and often I’ll scrub my to-do list in Simplenote.

On the other hand, it has been fascinating to glimpse into how I daily get things done, as I become increasingly more aware of these speed-bumps caused by Things being out of sync. It not only shows how much more work I am doing away from my laptop (by using my iPad). It is also showing just how valuable it is to have my work and tools in constant sync, regardless of the context of the device.

And my next wish? A cloud-based service like Instapaper, but for to-do items. I want it to be available in apps like Tweetie, Reeder, and more, so when I click on “Do Later” it sends the link or item of note into a running to-do list (that syncs with Things, of course).

Regarding 1Password, Yojimbo, Things, and Apps That Do Not Sync via the Cloud

OhLife  →

How cool is this? OhLife sends you nightly emails asking how your day went. You reply with a sentence or a novel, and your journal is cataloged. It’s an incredibly clever idea wrapped in a attractive and simple website. And hello!—it’s free.

(Via Utility Journal.)

OhLife

Go Gowalla

Several months ago I began checking in to places on Gowalla.

What first turned me on to Gowalla was its design. The website and mobile apps are beautiful, and Gowalla’s use of cute icons and graphics throughout makes for a great experience.

But it’s not just the design that I like about Gowalla. It’s fun, and it’s meant for people who like to get out, whatever the reason. Errands, dates, local events, road trips, and the like — if you like to get out you might like to Gowalla.

And this focus on travelers (adventurers?) is what makes Gowalla so interesting and fun for me. I don’t have to have a metric ton of “friends” on to make it worth using. And though I suppose it would be more fun to use if more of my friends Gowallad, chances are good that even the 30 friends I do have aren’t paying much attention to where I check in. And that’s okay. Because what is most enjoyable about Gowalla is the cataloging of your own journey.

I just returned from a two-week vacation in Colorado. On the first day of our trip I put the Gowalla iPhone app right on my home screen and decided that while I was traveling around the Colorado Front Range and the Rocky Mountains I would check in at every spot I could.1

Also, in preparation for my Colorado vacation I created a Gowalla trip called “Classic Castle Rock“, which features some of the premier spots around my home town. I built most of the trip on the Gowalla website before I even left Kansas City. There were a couple spots I wanted to be a part of the trip that weren’t created already, so once I got in to town last week I spent one of my mornings driving around and creating the final few spots.

It’s unfortunate that creating new locations and checking in at spots is limited by my connection to the internet. If I’m not connected I can’t check in. And this is particularly unfortunate because some of the most fabulous, visit-worthy locations are in areas with no cell service and no wireless internet.

For instance, my family and I spent a few days in Pine Grove staying at my grandparent’s cabin. It’s an old, red cabin that sits right by Elk Creek. And a half-mile upstream is the Bucksnort Saloon, home of the Buck Burger. We also spent one morning in Bailey to have breakfast at the Cutthroat Cafe and visit Coney Island’s new location. Sadly, my AT&T-connected iPhone couldn’t get a lick of signal at any of these fabulous spots.

It just so happened that on The Big Web Show last week, Jeffery and Dan interviewed Josh Williams, the founder of Gowalla. And they discussed this very issue of mobile connectivity versus spot check-in and creation. Josh is hoping that the Gowalla team will find a way to store GPS location data on your phone even when you don’t have cellular service. Then, once you’re connected to the internet again, you could use that stored GPS location data to check in and/or create the spots you were at.

This would be a great solution considering the situation, but ultimately we just need better cellular coverage. You see, it’s one thing for me to be able to create the Bucksnort Saloon 48 hours after being there, but that won’t necessarily help someone in the area use Gowalla to find the Bucksnort when they’re out in the middle of No Network Land looking for great burger joints.

It has taken me a while to decide how I use Gowalla (though I’m still not sure exactly what that is). At first I had to check in as soon as I arrived at a spot — as if I was punching in on a time clock. If I didn’t check in right away, I wouldn’t check in at all.

Now I check in when I have a few spare minutes. But there are some people who check in to spots they don’t even walk into but that they just walk by and notice. Is that breaking the rules? What are the rules, even?

For me, I prefer to only check in at places I’ve actually walked into and spent at least a little bit of time. But even then there are times I am on the go and don’t have a few spare minutes to check in with Gowalla.

And this is perhaps the most frustrating part of using Gowalla. It usually takes at least a minute or two to fully complete the check-in process on my iPhone. And that’s assuming the spot I’m checking in to has already been created, and I have good 3G coverage. It takes an extra couple of minutes if I also need to create the spot I’m at.

I would love to see a part of Gowalla’s future solution for checking in at places where you don’t have service to also include a way to check in quickly, or even in the background. If my wife and I are out on a fancy date you bet I want to check in at J. Gilbert’s. But giving my wife the attention she deserves is significantly more important. Which is why I want Gowalla to let me check in for my hot date at the best steakhouse in town while also letting me ignore my iPhone and have a great evening out.

Coming back to my question, I don’t think there are any rules. Much of what makes Gowalla so cool is that it’s still being defined and discovered by its developers and users. Every day I seem to discover a new use for Gowalla, and as it grows the more useful and fun it will be.

  1. This check-in behavior is different than what I normally do here at home in Kansas City. Here, I normally only check in to a few spots per week. Though that is mostly because I forget or else don’t make too much of a point to check in to the same place more than once. ↵
Go Gowalla