Month: December 2011

MG Siegler on Path  →

MG Siegler:

Mobile is not only the future of personal computing, it’s the most personal form of computing. It’s a machine you’ll have with you during all the most important moments in your life. That’s the opportunity here.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’ve been fiddling with Path for the past view days. I downloaded it on Sunday in order to check out the UI and UX of the app which we’ve been hearing such great things about, and while using it the app “clicked” for me. It get the point of it and how it could fit in to my life. I’ve been using it for the past few days and am very much impressed with the way the app looks and works. I don’t know if I’ll continue to use it long term, but I am very glad that I at least took the time to try it.

MG Siegler on Path

Sponsor: OmniFocus  →

My thanks to OmniGroup for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

You have goals — use OmniFocus to reconstruct fragments of ideas or projects into actionable steps to complete those goals.

Move the responsibility of remembering daily tasks from your brain to OmniFocus — gather everything into the Inbox for later review, and then organize those bits into folders, projects, actions, and contexts.

OmniFocus is as simple or advanced as you decide to make it, and available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone with free cloud sync. Move past mere task management and get things done with precision.

Read more about OmniFocus here.

[Editor’s Note: I am a huge OmniFocus fan. I have been using it for over a year and a half, and I highly recommend its entire suite of Mac, iPhone, and iPad apps.]

Sponsor: OmniFocus

Matt Alexander’s Review of The Jawbone UP  →

Matt has had his for several weeks and no trouble whatsoever. My first one, after its battery was first fully recharged, stopped holding a charge for longer than a couple days. So Jawbone sent me a new one a few days ago and the battery hasn’t yet needed to be recharged so I don’t know if my second unit is defective or not yet. But, goods and bads aside, perhaps the most telling thing for me is this: I’m not wearing it right now.

Matt Alexander’s Review of The Jawbone UP

Social Apps

A quick survey of my iPhone’s first two Home screen reveals 47 apps. Nineteen of them have a social component, a social network or their own, and/or are connected to a pre-existing social network:

  • Stamped: Has its own mini-social network where you “stamp” things you like and see what others are stamping.

  • Instagram: Has its own mini-social network, and it connects to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, where you take pictures of things and apply cheesy filters to them.

  • Tweetbot: A fantastic app for Twitter.

  • Flipboard: Connects with Twitter and Facebook to show you incoming articles and to allow you to share articles you find.

  • Twitter for iPhone: I use Tweetbot as my Twitter app, but I do like the Connect tab in Twitter that shows all interactions and not just mentions.

  • Path: Has its own mini-social network where you can share all sorts of things.

  • Words with Friends: The name says it all.

  • Gowalla (R.I.P.): Had It’s own mini-social network and connected to Twitter and Facebook; it allowed you to “check in” at locations and see where other people were checking in.

  • Ego: Tells me my Twitter stats, etc.

  • Rdio: Has its own mini-social network where you can share what music you are listening to and have collaborative playlists.

  • UP: The Jawbone UP app has its own mini-social network of “teammates”.

  • Decaf Sucks: Ties in with Twitter and allows you to post reviews of local coffee shops and find local coffee shops near you.

  • Goodfoot: Connects with Gowalla (R.I.P.) to suggest places to eat that are nearby.

  • Birdhouse: A notepad for Twitter.

  • Reeder: Connects with Twitter so I can tweet about an article I read that I liked.

  • Instapaper: Has it’s own mini-social network so I can see what articles my Instapaper friends have liked, and it also connects with Twitter so I can tweet about articles I read.

The iPhone has some native apps with have a social, sharing component:

  • The iPhone Camera app: Using the Twitter integration of iOS 5, you can post your photos to Twitter.

  • Email: Allows me to send notes and letters and pictures and movies to my friends and family members who also have an email address.

  • Messages: Allows me to send a text or multi-media message to my friends and family members who have a cell phone.

Apps like Rdio, Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Instagram are not social networking apps at their core. They primarily serve another purpose, such as listening to music, reading, or taking pictures. But in many ways these apps are enhanced by their social elements because people like me enjoy sharing ideas and moments of our lives with our friends and network of peers. And we enjoy seeing what others are sharing.

Social Apps

Thinking Time  →

For writers, business leaders, designers, developers, and anyone else who works primarily with their mind, taking time out to just think is so vital. No doubt, if you’re reading this, you know what I mean. And so Jacob Gorban’s post isn’t exactly a revelation. But it’s better than that. Because Jacob is actually doing it. He’s actually taking time out to think.

In the past 9 months since going full time with this site, taking time out of my week and/or day to be away from the computer and the RSS feeds and the hustle and bustle of the Internet has been one of the most difficult and yet important disciplines of my job. Like Jacob, I also try to take time out on Mondays.

It’s easy to forget that, as a writer, you don’t have to have your fingers on the keyboard to be doing your job. Sometimes your best work is only realized when you are away from the very place where that work will later be put onto the page.

Thinking Time

Blends App  →

Blends is a great and new-to-me iPhone and iPad dictionary app. It’s fast and has a very nice design. But what’s best about it are some power-user features I haven’t seen in other dictionary apps before:

  • Wild Card Searches: Say you’re looking for a word that ends in the letter “t”? Just enter “*t” as your search term.

  • Ready on Launch: Go into the iPhone’s Settings app → Blends → enable Ready on Launch. This means that when you launch the app, the cursor will be in the search field and the keyboard will be pulled up ready to go.

In my experience, 90% of the time I launch a dictionary app it is to search for a word, and yet a couple extra taps are always needed to do so. Not with Blends.

Just 2 bucks on the app store.

Blends App

The condescending UI  →

Paul Miller, on The Verge:

My problem with many modern UIs is that they never get past the telling phase. They’re always dressing up their various functions with glows and bevels and curves, and in the process they somehow become overbearing to my senses. “Did you know you can click this? Don’t forget there’s a save button over here! Let me walk you to your control panel.” Imagine a car that verbally explains all of its various knobs and levers the first time you get into the car. Wonderful, right? Now imagine that car explaining all of these various functions every single time you get in the car for the next five years, until you finally snap and drive it off a cliff.

I’ve never been bothered by the animation of a window minimizing into the Dock, but the new UI of Address Book drives me bonkers. Not only is it ugly, but worse, it is far less usable. There is surely a market for a “Address Book Pro” that harkens to the app of yesteryear and allows us to manage our contacts once again.

The condescending UI