Articles

My URL Schemes for Posting Links From My iPhone and iPad Using Poster

After publishing my iPad App Playlist, several folks asked me via Twitter and email to share the workflows I use for posting links to this site.

The app I use is Poster, and unfortunately it’s no longer available for sale in the App Store. Thus I didn’t make a big deal out of how I use the app because I assumed many people wouldn’t be able to make use of such nerdy information. But, based on the feedback I’ve been getting lately, perhaps I was wrong.

And so here are the details for how I use Poster on my iPad (and iPhone) to post links to this site.

* * *

There are three places I come across things worth linking to: Safari, my RSS feeds, and my Instapaper queue. (Technically there are four, counting Twitter, but I don’t yet know of a way to get from Tweetbot to Poster, and so often most things I want to link to that I find in Tweetbot I’ll either send to Instapaper or open in Safari.)

Since I use YJ’s Linked List plugin on my site to handle the “swapping” of the permalink URL and the linked-to URL in the RSS feed and on the Home Page, the name of the Custom Field in my WordPress install is linked_list_url. Poster allows you to add the value of a custom field from within the URL scheme by defining it as such: customfield_YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAMEHERE

Also, I have the callback_url set as this site’s homepage. That way once I’ve posted the link from Poster I’m automatically sent over to shawnblanc.net to make sure that the link properly posted.

Safari → Poster

If I’m in Mobile Safari on my iPad or iPhone, I tap this javascript bookmarklet and it will send me to Poster and create a link post with the Title of the website set as the title of my post, and the URL of the web page set as the linked-to URL for my post.

javascript:window.location='posterapp:///create?text='+encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())+'&title='+(document.title)+'&customfield_YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAME='+(window.location.href)+'&callback_url=http://example.com/';

 

I then can paste in the quote I want to use (if any) into the body, type in my commentary, and hit Publish.

One thing the Poster URL scheme does not allow is the pre-defining of a category. All my link posts are in the “Linked” category; all my articles are in the “Article” category, and I use some custom WordPress hooks for adjusting the style of a post depending on if it is in the linked category of the articles category. In the WordPress admin panel, I’ve selected the Linked category as the default. Thus, if I publish a post without first assigning the proper category, WordPress will automatically assign it to the Linked category. Therefore I don’t even have to set the category for my link posts when sending them from Poster (thus saving me a few extra taps).

Mr. Reader → Poster

I recently discovered that Mr. Reader supports custom actions. I’ve now switched over to Mr. Reader as my RSS reading app of choice, and build a URL scheme that allows me to take the title, URL, author, and any highlighted text and then place it into Poster so I can publish it as a link on shawnblanc.net.

My URL looks like this (with my personal site-specific tidbits swapped out for generic examples):

posterapp://x-callback-url/create?title={[TITLE]}&text={[AUTHOR]: > [TEXT-SELECTED]}&customfield_yourcustomfieldnamegoeshere={[URL]}&callback_url={http://example.com/}

 

To set up a custom action in Mr. Reader you tap on the Settings icon → Services → scroll down to Add → Other App

From there, if you have Poster installed on your iPad, you’ll see it in the list. Add it, insert your custom URL scheme, and you’re good to go. Now, when you’re reading an article in Mr. Reader that you want to link to from your site, just tap the actions button, and then tap Poster.

Instapaper → Drafts → Poster

Within the Instapaper app there is an option to share to Drafts, so I use Drafts as the “middle man” for taking an interesting article and getting the title, author, link, and any quoted text into Poster.

To start, when I’ve come across an article in Instapaper which I want to link to on my site, I highlight any text I want to quote and then tap the “Share” button which appears after highlighting. (If I want to link to the article without highlighting any text from it, simply tap the action button in the top right, then tap Share.)

When the Instapaper share sheet pops up, I chose to create a draft in Drafts.

Instapaper automatically inserts the title of the article on the first line, the URL on the second line, then a line break, and then any text I had selected.

This is where Drafts gets awesome. You can define certain lines, and/or ranges of lines, to be the content for different components when sending the text file into Poster.

So, after my draft is auto-created from Instapaper, I tidy it up a bit, by cleaning up the title (if need be), adding an extra line break between the title and the URL, and then writing out any additional commentary, etc., in the body.

I then send the Draft to Poster, using my custom action which defines the title (the first line) of the Draft as the title of the link post, the 3rd line of the Draft as the URL for the custom field, and then everything from line 5 on as the body text.

posterapp://x-callback-url/create?title=[[title]]&text=[[line|5..]]&customfield_linked_list_url=[[line|3]]&callback_url=https://shawnblanc.net/

 

(Tapping here from your iPhone/iPad should allow you to install this action in Drafts automatically (you’ll then want to tweak it of course to your own usage needs.)

My URL Schemes for Posting Links From My iPhone and iPad Using Poster

Pebble Steel, Et Al.

Yesterday Pebble announced the new design of their watch, the Pebble Steel. While I do think it looks nicer than the original (which isn’t saying much), I’m still uninterested.

My disinterest with smart watches like the Pebble (or the Gear, or the MetaWatch, or…) is three-fold:

  • For one, I don’t feel the need to be more connected to notifications (if anything, it’s the opposite). The things that the Pebble does best — such as notifying me of an incoming text message or phone call, telling me the outside temperature, etc. — don’t appeal to me.

  • And then on the flip side, for things like the Pebbles new apps such as Yelp, why not just use the app on your phone? Is it really that much faster and easier and more convenient to use the little buttons on your watch? I could be wrong here, but if the Pebble needs a smartphone to work (the apps can’t get their data without using the connected phone’s network signal) then what is the advantage of navigating a miniature version of the app on your wrist? Perhaps it’s more polite than pulling out your phone?

  • And then, not to mention, the watches themselves just don’t look all that cool or attractive to me.

People are saying that the trend today (and the future?) is wearable computing, and that may be true. But in my mind there is still a long road ahead.

Smart watches, smart glasses, smart bracelets, and smart tie stays (or whatever) need to reach a point where they are simultaneously more useful and friction-free than just using the phone that’s already in our pockets as well as being attractive and cool to wear.

The FitBit and FuelBand are good examples of this. They are subtle and do/did something that our iPhones didn’t: track our steps and movement throughout the day. However, our phones are getting more and more capable every year, and so wearable devices such as the FitBit also need to provide an advantage that our phones won’t make obsolete.

Pebble Steel, Et Al.

A Brief, Unordered Miscellany Regarding the Olympus E-PL5, E-P5, and E-M5 Cameras

(Why do camera names always have to be a mouthful of awkward? Nevertheless,) I’ve not been silent in my affinity for the Olympus E-PL5 which I bought over a year ago and have been using and enjoying ever since.

To give myself context when writing about the E-PL5, I’ve rented two other awesome M43 cameras: Last spring I rented the E-M5 (which was the Olympus flagship M43 camera at the time) and over this past holiday I rented the E-P5.

In a nut, each of these three cameras are more-or-less capable of producing the exact same quality of images in almost any circumstance (because they all have the same sensor and image processor on the inside). For the most part, the variables are the lenses and the burden is on the photographer.

However, there are some nice features and other bells and whistles that the E-M5 and E-P5 have which the E-PL5 does not. Such as:

  • E-PL5 doesn’t have any dedicated dials for adjusting Aperture, Exposure, Etc.
  • The E-PL5 has 4-axis In Body Image Stabilization, while the E-P5 and E-M5 have 5-axis IBIS.
  • E-M5 has weather sealing, E-P5 and E-PL5 do not.
  • E-M5 has a built-in viewfinder.
  • The E-P5 has a built-in flash.
  • E-P5 has an ISO range from 100 to 25,600 (the E-PL5 and E-M5 only go down to 200).
  • The E-P5 has a max shutter speed of 1/8000 (presumably for taking pictures of the sun at high noon with your f/1.4 lens’s aperture wide open) compared to 1/4000 for the E-PL5 and E-M5.
  • The E-M5 has good battery life, the E-P5 and E-PL5 have great battery life.
  • All cameras have a dust reduction system that silently vibrates the sensor each time you turn on the camera to help “fling” any dust which may be there and keep the sensor clean.
  • The E-P5 has a wi-fi mode that can connect the camera to the Olympus iOS app and send images to your iPad/iPhone.

In my two weeks using the E-P5 during this past Christmas and New Year, I oftentimes wanted to (and even did) reach for my E-PL5 instead. The E-P5 is noticeably larger and heavier (albeit, not significantly so). And, to my surprise, I hardly ever used the manual dial controls for quickly adjusting aperture, shutter speed, exposure, on the fly.

What I enjoyed most from my rental gear wasn’t the better camera, but was actually the 25mm f/1.4 lens. I haven’t used this lens in over a year and I had forgotten just how fast it is to autofocus when compared to the 20mm f/1.7 lens I have been using, and how much more character there is in the images it makes.

In my opinion, the advantages of the E-M5 and the E-P5 over the E-PL5 are almost entirely in the bells and whistles and not in the end-product capabilities of making photos. For many people, the extra features and controls are worth the extra cost. But for me, I think the $450 saved by buying the E-PL5 instead of the E-M5 or E-P5 is money better spent on a nice lens.

One day I’ll upgrade my E-PL5 to something a little bit bigger with a few more features. But for now, I’d much rather invest in another great lens (or two). The more I’ve tried different cameras, the more I realize the important thing is to just find a kit you love to use. If you find yourself saying “it’s magical” then you’ve got it.

A Brief, Unordered Miscellany Regarding the Olympus E-PL5, E-P5, and E-M5 Cameras

Unexpected Exceedings: Delightful Details in Film

This is a guest post, written by my good friend, Josh Farmer.

 

I love films. I love having adventures I’ll never have, seeing worlds I’ll never see, and asking questions I may never have asked on my own.

We’ve been told that it’s the little things that count, and one of the neatest things is when a filmmaker finds a way to express our human experience with little details to which we can relate. Think of them as movie Easter eggs. I’ve collected a few of these delightful details below.

Rise of the Guardians is a movie about holiday personalities joining forces against the evils of disbelief and fear. Santa, Jack Frost, and the Easter Bunny lead the odd pack of good guys. A detail that stuck out to me was how a flower pops up through the asphalt after the Easter Bunny creates a rabbit hole to travel through. We’ve all seen those pesky dandelions in the middle of a parking lot. Now we know how they get there.

Marvel’s Avengers teams up the leads from the last few films as they take on the aliens invading New York. Bruce Banner is goaded to smash a few alien ships with the simple, “Now might be a good time to get angry.” Banner, in a line that harkens back to a tense mid-flight argument with the rest of the team, finally lets us in on his big secret: “I’m always angry.” This tells us more about his real struggles with identity and responsibility than it does his anger itself.

Christopher Nolan’s first major film was a noir mystery and thriller called Following. A brilliant debut by a destined director, the protagonist fancies himself a writer and, by following those he is basing his characters upon, is led into two relationships, some burglaries, a murder, a cover-up, revenge, and much more. His B&E mentor invites him to take whatever he wants from a home, but instructs him to create more of a mess than necessary. That way, he says, the owners know that their most intimate possessions were seen, that their soul hidden in keepsake boxes was viewed in its most brute form — as plain, emotionless facts without context or justification. Against this smash-and-grab backdrop, one clue is said about the way we structure our lives. “I know how long to stay in a home I’ve broken into because they always write their return date on the calendar.” Don’t we all.

(On a side note, Nolan’s directing track record is impeccable: Memento, Following, Insomnia, The Prestige, The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception. Watch one of his if you want a guaranteed-good film but don’t want something seasonal.)

Ever notice that the monkey in Disney’s Aladdin only went klepto on items that were red? You will now.

In order to turn his head, the robot boy in Steven Spielberg’s AI used a two-step process. First he moved his eyes to where he wanted to turn, then he rotated his head to where he was looking.

Many Disney-Pixar films have one or more characters from another Disney-Pixar film, usually from the upcoming one rather than the previous.

Epic puts a miniaturized human into a magical woodland. Whenever the fairies’ arrows strike trees, a knot forms in that spot. So next time you see a knot in a piece of wood, tell your kids that magic happened there.

The Matrix was the genre-expanding philosophical sci-fi flick which explained that déjà vu was a software glitch within the world of the Matrix. If you like the possibilities of a Matrix world but have never read the comics or essays that went with the original 1999 release, you should (full list here, via Wayback Machine). This one, called “Goliath”, has great pacing and the feeling of various Matrix glitches occurring within the story.

The Matrix Reloaded continued the storyline with bigger explosions and with more commitment to functioning across the two worlds. It was panned by most critics, as most part-twos are, but it might have been because they missed the point: The monologues and dialogues are where the action’s at. Greek plays function on this same principle. The conversations push you into the next action sequence, but the philosophy of the Matrix world is preeminent. One detail I liked was how vampires and ghosts are just faulty, banished programs going against their orders, trying to stay alive even if that means embarking upon reprobate adventures.

Downton Abbey uses shaky handheld cinematography when the subject is the servants, but steady and composed shots when the wealthy figures take screen time.

Wreck-it Ralph brought early gaming history to the big screen with a great story. They tackled topics such as equality, sexism, racism, bullying, and of course friendship, loyalty, and destiny. The best little detail for me was the spot-on staccato movements of the people in Ralph’s game. Just perfect.

All these are examples of unexpected exceedings — when we are delighted because someone explains our shared human experiences; when we agree that we’ve done or thought something, but assumed we were the only one; when our philosophy is reflected back to us in a way or from a place we didn’t expect; when we came to be entertained but walked away impressed; when the Easter eggs hatched in our hot little hands.

Through delight, these small glimpses connect us emotionally to the art form. As artists, designers, and ones who produce, we serve others well by exploiting (I do mean this in the best way) the ability to delight.

Unexpected Exceedings: Delightful Details in Film

All The Lists That Are Fit To List

It’s the end of the year and we’re all encountering more lists than we can count. We’re looking back and aggregating then distilling the best ____ of 2013. Videos, articles, apps, magazine covers, you name it. Well, here is my list of the best lists.

All The Lists That Are Fit To List

My iPad App Playlist: Constraint and Creativity

This is the iPad version of my App Playlist articles. You can read my iPhone App Playlist here; Mac version coming next.

Constraint and Creativity

Though the topic of iPads and content creation versus content “consumption” sure gets its fair share of air time, I have yet to tire of the conversation.

The first computer I personally ever owned was a Dell laptop. I bought it with my high school graduation money and took it with me to college. Almost all of of my college friends had HP towers, Dell towers, or (like in the case of my roommate) built their own machine. Laptops were (and are) more expensive, but had less power, less storage, and less screen real estate. But I didn’t care.

Laptops have always been cool to me. My Dell laptop was succeeded by a 12-inch PowerBook G4, then a 15-inch MacBook Pro (the aluminum body), and then a 13-inch MacBook Air (the computer I use now). In a way, laptops represent a sort of “free spiritedness” that desktop computers don’t. And, over the years since that Dell, the tradeoffs in laptops have grown smaller and smaller — today’s laptops are so powerful and fast that most people are not sacrificing any noticeable performance tradeoffs for portability.

And now, it’s the iPad that’s the new cool. Except with the iPad Air and new iPad mini, the tradeoffs are all but gone as well. While we could compare the nitty gritty specs of how fast a MacBook Pro loads a web page versus how fast an iPad does, most of that is inconsequential for most users today. Not to mention, there are many hardware features of an iPad which make it superior to a Mac: the hours long battery life, the built-in LTE connectivity, the very small and light form factor, the retina screen with multitouch input.

You could say that pretty much the only “tradeoff” of getting an iPad as your main computer would be the tradeoff of software. But I don’t think even that is accurate. Because defining something as a tradeoff requires you put that tradeoff in context.

Regarding software, for many people, I think it’s fair to say the lesser machine is actually the Mac, not the iPad.

Over on The Sweet Setup, we recently tested 17 different iPad apps that manage and edit PDF documents to find the best one. Our pick, PDF Expert 5, is a fantastic app. And guess what? There are things PDF Expert 5 does — such as merging PDF documents, making annotations, or zipping up a group of files and sending them to someone in an email — which are far easier and more intuitive to do on the iPad app than on a Mac.

Sure, iPad software — and iOS — has its limitations. For instance, I can’t hack together awesome system-wide shortcut keys and scrips using Keyboard Maestro, nor can I get TextExpander to work in iOS’s Mail app. But that’s okay. Never once have those limitations hindered me from doing some great work from my iPad. In fact, oftentimes it is the limitations of iOS which empower me to do better work. Because constraint breeds creativity.

This is why, for me, the iPad makes for a fantastic writing device. I am neither a programmer nor designer by trade — the bulk of my work day is comprised of reading, writing, tweeting, and emailing.

A cup of hot coffee, my bluetooth keyboard, and my iPad is one of my favorite ways to write. The one-app-at-a-time constraint of iOS, along with the relatively difficult way to switch between apps (when compared to the Mac’s CMD+Tab), make iOS a nice “anti-distraction writing environment”.

But there is much more I do from the iPad beyond writing. And that’s the point of this whole post. So, without further ado…

Let’s start with the apps I use on a regular basis — my Mission-Critical Apps

  • OmniFocus: I’ve been using the OmniFocus suite of apps (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) for over three years now. Of the three apps, I find the iPad version to be the best. Coming back to one of the points I made at the beginning of this article, OmniFocus on the iPad is a quintessential example of iPad software being superior to Mac software.

However… once a year, usually around the New Year, I like to step back and consider if the tools I’m using are still the best tools for me. If the answer is “yes” then I leave things alone and get back to work. But if the answer is “no” then I try to consider if its my use of the tools or the tools themselves that are flawed.

Lately, I have been wondering if OmniFocus is now too complex for me as I’ve settled into a grove with my work-from-home schedule. But, as I’ve considered other alternatives, I just can’t conceive of quitting OmniFocus — it’s a task management system that I trust. I know that if and when an important task becomes due, OmniFocus will show it to me.

This is something that I will be revisiting in the near future but for now, OmniFocus remains one of my “mission critical” apps (on all devices).

  • Day One: This is the best journaling app out there. I keep Day One on my iPad’s Home screen even though I mostly write in it from my iPhone or Mac. I have no rules for how I use Day One, nor for how often I use it. My entries are all sorts of things, including photos, one-line milestone mentions about my kids, deep thoughts, brain dumps of ideas, and more.

  • Tweetbot: My go-to Twitter app on the iPad. I am very much looking forward to an update influenced by the iPhone version.

  • 1Password: 1Password is far more than just a password manager. If that’s all it was then the updates to iCloud keychain sync would have negated the need for 1Password. However, 1Password also stores secure notes, bank information, and pretty much anything else I can think of. Though I use 1Password most often from my iPhone or Mac, I couldn’t imagine not having it on my iPad.

  • Instapaper: Years later, Instapaper continues to be my go-to Read Later app. I love the design and I’ve got an IFTTT recipe that takes all of my Instapaper “liked” articles and drops them into Pinboard for me. I used to use the iPad version almost exclusively. But since having kids I now use the iPhone version almost as much as the iPad version. There are often times I’ve got just one hand free and it’s a great time to catch up on some reading. But still, my preferred way to read in Instapaper is on the couch with the Retina iPad mini.

  • Drafts: If you consider yourself an “iPad-toting power user” in any level at all, then you probably want a quick-capture text app. I’ve gravitated towards Scratch on my iPhone mostly because I like the design, but I use Drafts on the iPad.

There are a lot of articles I read in Instapaper which I want to link to on shawnblanc.net. For those, I have a cool URL-scheme workflow thing that helps me get links and text from Instapaper to Poster with Drafts as the mediator.

  • Diet Coda: The iPad has a few apps that just kind of blow your mind when you realize just how powerful and awesome they are, apps that are textbook examples of why the iPad is thriving as a personal computer. And Diet Coda is such an app.

With Diet Coda I connect to my site, navigate to the file I want, edit that file, and then save my changes to the server. I don’t have to juggle both a remote and local version of the file — I just open it, edit it, and save it. This is how Coda 1 worked, it’s how Coda 2 works, and it’s how Diet Coda works. It makes working in Diet Coda feel comfortable and secure.

  • Pinbook / Pushpin / Pinner: There are a lot of good Pinboard apps out there right now. Pinbook was my favorite for a while, but it’s in desperate need of a good update. Pinner and Pinbook are also quite nice. The jury is still out on this one, but needless to say, there are quite a few nice options for anyone in want of a good iOS Pinboard client.

  • TextExpander Touch: Though it’s not really an app that I launch, many of the apps I use support TextExpander snippets.

  • Dropbox: This app/service could go without saying, but yet, at the same time, it’s worth mentioning because Dropbox is such a critical back-end component to so many of the apps I use. I use Dropbox to sync my 1Password database between my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I use it to keep all my “Currently Writing” articles available to me on all my devices. I use it sync Day One, and my TextExpander snippets. Moreover, since all my current projects have folders in Dropbox on my Mac, I can access those files at any time via the Dropbox app on my iPhone.

  • Calendars 5: This is, in my opinion, the best calendar app for the iPad. It’s very powerful but also simple.

  • Reeder: My favorite RSS reader, though, I don’t go nuts over RSS like I used to. I usually will comb through my folder of favorite feeds about once or twice per day and that’s it. I already am finding so much interesting things to read on Twitter that I don’t often comb through RSS hunting for nuggets.

Let’s talk (a little bit more) about iPad writing apps

Hands down, the main thing I lean on my iPad for when it comes to work, is writing. As I mentioned at the outset of this article, the iPad truly is an excellent writing device. You can couple it with any bluetooth keyboard (and I do), but you don’t have to. I know several people who love to type using the on-screen keyboard.

For my professional work writing text that gets published on the Web, the iPad is awesome. But I think the iPad is an even better device for writing prose sans hyperlinks. I have used many writing apps on my iPad over the years (the original built-in notes app with Marker Felt and all, to Pages, to iA Writer, Byword, Writing Kit, Editorial, and more). The best each have their own bit of charm.

  • Simplenote: Speaking of writing, for me, hands down the most important “workflow thing” is to have text in sync between my iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac. There are a lot of apps which do this well, but for my needs, Simplenote is the best.

As I wrote in my iPhone app playlist, when it comes to my writing workflow, I’ve basically got two buckets for all my text. First there is my bucket of ideas, lists, thoughts, and all sorts of other miscellany. And second is my bucket of current articles I’m working on. The former is what I use Simplenote for; the latter is a Dropbox folder filled with markdown files.

My thoughts on Simplenote always start along the lines of how it’s the app I’d chose if I had to pick just one app only for use on all my iOS devices. It’s not that Simplenote, as an app in and of itself, is the best app on my iPhone or iPad. But there are a few things Simplenote does really well which make it indispensable for me.

Simplenote has amazing and fast search. Searching for a note searches both the note’s title and the contents within. Then, tapping on a search result from the list takes you the search results within that note where you can the see all instances of that term within the note’s contents. Because I just toss all sorts of ideas and other bits of miscellaneous information into Simplenote, being able to quickly and efficiently search all my notes is vital. That, and its ability to sort notes based on their modification date (which means all the notes I’m dealing with right now are floating at the top of my list), makes it very easy to handle hundreds and hundreds of notes with very little mental overhead on my part.

  • Editorial: The app that changed everything for me when it comes to long-form writing on my iPad. I used to use Writing Kit, and it was great. But Editorial has taken things to a whole new level. If you just write words and don’t do a lot of writing for the web, you may not geek out over Editorial like myself and so many others have been. What I love about Editorial is its ability to define and install custom scripts and workflows (making it easy to insert links, find apps in the app store, etc…), as well as its built-in browser. Editorial has a very nice and clean design, and it is easy to use. Since the vast majority of the writing I do is for the Web, and I write exclusively in Markdown, Editorial makes all of the little things I need from a text editor easier and more efficient.

  • Aside about Writer Pro: iA Writer was one of (if not the) original apps in the minimalistic-Markdown-writing-apps-that-sync-with-Dropbox category. The predecessor to iA Writer, Writer Pro, is an impressive app. While there are things about the iPad version that are deal breakers for me — primarily its lack of Dropbox syncing and its lack of auto markdown completion and markdown syntax highlighting — I do like the workflow paradigm built into the app.

For my work writing for the Web, Writer Pro is not the ideal tool because even if it did have the aforementioned features it will never include all scripts, workflows, and built-in browser of Editorial. However, for other a certain big project I am working on (like maybe another book) which does not require a lot of inline hyperlinks and other HTML-y stuff, Writer Pro could prove to be a brilliant app. Basically, the app itself could serve as the top-level folder for the book with each workflow state serving as the different “folders” for each chapter. I haven’t yet moved my current work into Writer Pro, but I think it could work quite well in this way.

  • Byword: Byword is the best Markdown writing app on the iPhone, and the iPad version is splendid as well. There is a lot to like about Byword — it’s fast, it has excellent search, it’s gorgeous, it’s powerful.

  • Poster: This is the app I use to post links and articles to shawnblanc.net. Alas it’s no longer available for sale because the developer, Tom Witkin, now works for WordPress. Fortunately for those who already have Poster, it is still being updated.

  • Editorially: Editorially is a web app, not a native app. And technically it is still in beta. But Editorially has proven to be an invaluable tool for the collaborative and group work we are doing at The Sweet Setup. We are using it to get a lot of work done without losing our minds. I can’t imagine what our workflow would look like without it.

And what about play?

  • Marvel Unlimited: I’m not nearly the comic nerd I was in my early teenage years, but I do still enjoy reading comics some evenings. I have a subscription to Marvel Unlimited, which, if you’re not familiar with the app, is a bit like Netflix for Marvel comic books. There are a lot of comics available through the app, and you can read any of them you like. There are a few drawbacks to the Marvel Unlimited app such as a pretty horrible process for reading more than one comic in a row (after each issue you have to exit back to your library, select the next comic, then chose to read it); no ability to save a whole story arc into your library (you have to save each comic issue one at a time); and the fact that most issues don’t show up in the app until they are about one year old. However, the good (the huge selection) far outweighs the bad. For someone who enjoys comics enough to read a dozen issues or more in a month, but isn’t serious that it’s important to own every issue, then Marvel Unlimited is a great thing.

  • Kingdom Rush: There are a few games I’ve played on the iPad that I’ve really enjoyed. But none so much as Kingdom Rush and Kingdom Rush Frontiers.

  • Loom: After Everpix shut down I switched to Loom at Bradley Chamber’s recommendation. There are a lot of things I like about Loom (such as its design and auto uploading of images from my Mac) and it’s still better than Photo Stream when it comes to don’t-make-me-think-about-it photo syncing from all my devices to all my devices.

  • Paprika: I’ve recently migrated all my recipes out of Simplenote and into Paprika. I don’t have a lot of recipes, but the ones I do have are delicious and it makes a lot more sense to keep them in a nice recipe app. Paprika is great, and having a 3-app suite across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad has proven to be quite helpful. Over on The Sweet Setup we tested quite a few recipe apps and found Paprika to be the best.

* * *

Earlier this year I began taking monthly screenshots of my iPhone and iPad Home screens so I could track, over time, how my usage of apps evolved and changed.

This is what my iPad’s Home screen looked like on May 1, 2013:

Shawn Blanc iPad home screen, March 2013

And this is what my iPad Home screen looks like today, Dec 23, 2013:

Shawn Blanc iPad home screen, December 2013

Most obviously, there is the visual change iOS 7 brought, and the new wallpaper I’m sporting. In terms of apps, my general types of apps has not changed, but a few of the apps themselves have. Most notably the replacement of iCal with Calendars 5, Writing Kit with Editorial, and the new Reeder with the native Feed Wrangler app.

Doing “work” from the iPad

As savvy readers of this site will know, I am an advocate for using the iPad to get work done. And often I prefer it to my laptop, especially when traveling. But, that is not to say I force the iPad into a workflow or use-case scenario that makes no sense just to “prove the iPad can be used for work”.

I enjoy the simplicity of the iPad, the change of pace its different apps bring, and, yes, sometimes I do enjoy the challenge of seeing what I can accomplish with it even when it’d be easier to just take my laptop. Because in a day and age where things are always speeding up and up and up, it’s nice to use a device that inherently causes me to slow down a bit.

My iPad App Playlist: Constraint and Creativity

First Thoughts on Writer Pro for iOS

The iPad makes for a fantastic writing device.

A cup of hot coffee, my bluetooth keyboard, and my iPad makes for one of my favorite ways to write. The one-app-at-a-time mentality along with the relatively difficult way to switch between apps (when compared to the Mac’s CMD+Tab) make iOS a pretty good “anti-distraction writing enviroment”.

Moreover, there are some truly exceptional writing apps for the iPad.

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of writing and note-taking apps. The ones that have stood out to me the most?

  • Simplenote (which I don’t really use for long-form writing, but I do use often because I have lots and lots and lots of notes in there).
  • iA Writer: For whatever reason, I never got into iA Writer all that much (neither on the iPad, iPhone, or Mac). Mostly because, as silly as this may sound, it didn’t have a “night theme”.
  • Byword: What I use on the Mac for all long-form writing.
  • Writing Kit: I used this app for quite a while because of its built-in web browser and several other nifty features.
  • Editorial: the iPad markdown writing app that changed the world.

Now, I am, of course, writing this text in Writer Pro on the iPad. It just came out a few hours ago and so naturally I can’t say too much about it yet. But iA Writer has a well-deserved fantastic reputation, and this new version of the app — Writer Pro — promises to take things to the next level. And, clearly, it does.

Is Writer Pro a significant upgrade from iA Writer? Absolutely.

Writer Pro has all the simplicity and charm of its predecessor but now applied to the whole workflow of writing process — from idea to done.

What’s special about Writer Pro is its obsessive focus is on the writing process. There are four “sections” your documents can be slotted in to: Notes, Writing, Editing, Reading. Each section has its own typeface and cursor color. The “Writing” section is, more or less, what the whole iA Writer app used to be.

This is an organization structure I could get behind. I follow this concept loosely already by keeping all of my notes and ideas in Simplenote and all of my “currently writing” articles in Dropbox (where I use Byword on the Mac and Editorial on the iPad). No other app that I know of has this sort of persnickety focus and structure.

So, after poking around and doing some typing, do I find Writer Pro awesome enough to pull me away from my current apps? It’s early to say, but I don’t think so…

I have three quibbles:

  • Unfortunately, Writer Pro on iOS has no auto-markdown completion, nor markdown syntax highlighting.

  • Secondly, there is no document storage option like iA Writer had (in iA Writer on iOS you could chose iCloud or Dropbox for document syncing). Writer Pro syncs with iCloud or nothing. Which means your documents are sandboxed into the app. And there is no export option to get out all the documents at once. (You can email individual documents out of the app.)

And, from what I can tell, if you use iCloud document syncing for both iA Writer and Writer Pro, the two apps do not have access to one another’s files. But, since Writer Pro on the Mac can access documents you have in Dropbox, if wanted to use Writer Pro on your Mac you could keep it in sync with iOS apps that have access to Dropbox (such as Byword, Editorial, etc.).

  • Third, when writing in Writer Pro with a Bluetooth keyboard (as I am now) the custom keyboard row does not persist at the bottom of the screen. And so to get access to the custom Editing and Syntax highlighting buttons you have to bring up the entire soft keyboard, tap your options, and then dismiss the soft keyboard.

Update: Anton Sotkov points out that the keyboard shortcuts in the Mac app work on iOS as well.

Update 2: The Writer Pro team told me via Twitter that many of these issues will be gone in future updates. I understand that you’ve got to draw the “1.0 line” somewhere, and I have a lot of appreciate for opinionated software like iA Writer and Writer Pro.

Is Writer Pro an impressive, beautiful, and useful piece of software? Absolutely. Is it going to find a place in my iPad writing workflow? I don’t think so.

First Thoughts on Writer Pro for iOS

My iPhone App Playlist

The iPhone changed everything. It redefined what “delight” in software means. It pushed the needle of mobile and touch computing far forward. It opened up a massive ecosystem of apps and services and has been a key player in the boon of social networks.

I’ve had an iPhone within arms reach since 2007 — it is one of the most important gadget I own (if not the most important). As the software and hardware have evolved over the years, here’s a look at what apps have settled in as the ones I use every day to get things done and communicate with other people.

Let’s start with the apps I use on a regular basis for work and for play, these are my Mission-Critical Apps

  • Simplenote: My thoughts on Simplenote always start along the lines of how it’s the app I’d chose if I had to pick just one app only for use on all my iOS devices. For me, hands down the most important “workflow thing” is to have text in sync between my iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac. There are a lot of apps which do this well, but for my needs, Simplenote is the best.

When it comes to my writing workflow, I’ve basically got two buckets for all my text. First there is my bucket of ideas, lists, thoughts, and all sorts of other miscellany. And second is my bucket of current articles I’m working on. The former is what I use Simplenote for; the latter is a Dropbox folder filled with markdown files.

What makes Simplenote my favorite here is its search functionality. Simplenote has amazing and fast search. Searching for a note searches both the note’s title and the contents within. Then, tapping on a search result from the list takes you the search results within that note where you can the see all instances of that term within the note’s contents.

  • Byword: Byword is my next favorite text app on the iPhone, and it’s the app I use for my second aforementioned bucket. For any article I’m currently working on, if I want to edit, add to, or create a new one from my iPhone, then I use Byword to access my “Currently Writing” folder.

Byword has some awesome features that I wish Simplenote did — namely, fantastic Markdown support and a dark theme. Byword’s search functionality is also fantastic — better than any other app I know of, save Simplenote. Byword would make a great app for all my “little notes”, but it doesn’t (yet?) show search results for terms within the note’s content (though it does search a note’s content when searching at the list level).

For more about why Byword is awesome, read our review at The Sweet Setup (written by Federico Viticci) where we crown it the best Markdown Writing App on the iPhone.

  • Fantastical: I’ve spent hours and hours testing, trying, and using many different great calendar apps for the iPhone. And Fantastical is the best. Natural language entry for creating new events is the easiest way to go about it, and Fantastical has the best natural language engine. Not to mention Fantastical has several excellent design layouts (day ticker with list view; month view with list view; and landscape mode’s week view) as well as reminders support. The only thing I dislike about Fantastical is that it lacks an iPad version.

  • OmniFocus: I’ve been using the OmniFocus suite of apps (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) for over three years now. Once a year, usually around the New Year, I like to step back and consider if the tools I’m using are still the best tools for me. If the answer is “yes” then I leave things alone and get back to work. But if the answer is “no” then I try to consider if its my use of the tools or the tools themselves that are flawed.

Lately, I have been wondering if OmniFocus is now too complex for me now that I’ve somewhat settled into a grove with my work-from-home schedule. But as I’ve considered other alternatives, I just can’t conceive of quitting OmniFocus because it’s a task management system that I trust — I know that if and when an important task becomes due, OmniFocus will show it to me.

This is something that I will be revisiting in the near future but for now, OmniFocus remains one of my “mission critical” apps (on all devices).

  • Day One: This is certainly the best journaling app out there. I keep Day One on my iPhone’s Home screen and write in it often. I have no rules for how I use Day One, nor for how often I use it. My entries are all sorts of things, including photos, one-line milestone mentions about my kids, deep thoughts, brain dumps of ideas, and more.

  • Tweetbot: My go-to Twitter app, and arguably the best Twitter client on the iPhone. I’m a huge fan of the big update Tweetbot received a while back and look forward to that update influencing the iPad and Mac versions as well.

  • 1Password: I sometimes like to refer to my iPhone as “Command Central”. It’s great for a lot of things, and then okay at a lot of other things. And while it may not be the best device for some tasks, I can still do pretty much anything from the iPhone if and when I need to. And since I have my iPhone within arm’s reach pretty much 24/7, it makes sense that I should be able to access critical information when I need to. And that’s why 1Password is so great.

1Password is far more than just a password manager. If that’s all it was then the updates to iCloud keychain sync would have negated the need for 1Password. However, 1Password also stores secure notes, bank information, and pretty much anything else I can think of.

  • Rdio: This is the app I use for listening to music on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The $10/month plan is well worth it for getting unlimited access to pretty much any album I want.

  • Instapaper: It seems everyone is using Pocket these days, but Instapaper continues to be my go-to Read Later app. I love the design and I’ve got an IFTTT recipe that takes all of my Instapaper “liked” articles and drops them into Pinboard for me. Since having kids I now use the iPhone version almost as much as the iPad version. There are often times I’ve got just one hand free and it’s a great time to catch up on some reading.

  • Poster: This is the app I use to post links to shawnblanc.net; alas it’s no longer available for sale because the developer, Tom Witkin, now works for WordPress. Fortunately for those who already have Poster, it is still being updated.

  • Scratch: If you consider yourself an “iPhone toting power user” in any level at all, then you probably want a quick-capture text app such as Scratch or Drafts. I’ve gravitated towards Scratch on my iPhone mostly because I like the design, but that in no way means Drafts is an inferior app. In fact, Drafts does a lot of awesome things that Scratch does not. I use Drafts on my iPad, and have a cool URL-scheme workflow thing that helps me get links and text from Instapaper to Poster (with Drafts as the mediator).

  • TextExpander Touch: Though it’s not really an app that I launch, many of the apps I use support TextExpander snippets.

  • Dropbox: This app/service could go without saying, but yet, at the same time, it’s worth mentioning because Dropbox is such a critical back-end component to so many of the apps I use. I use Dropbox to sync my 1Password database between my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I use it to keep all my “Currently Writing” articles available to me on all my devices. I use it sync Day One, and my TextExpander snippets. Moreover, since all my current projects have folders in Dropbox on my Mac, I can access those files at any time via the Dropbox app on my iPhone.

And now let’s talk briefly about the apps I don’t use all the time, but which I use often enough and are awesome

  • Check the Weather: This is my favorite weather app. It’s very easy to read, and I like that it has a radar and Dark Sky’s short-term precipitation forecast.

  • Google Maps: It’s just more reliable than Apple’s maps, and it’s far better at finding the place I’m searching for.

  • PCalc: PCalc is one fine calculator app. I use it not because I’m an engineer nor am I an amateur calculator nerd, but because it looks great and it’s fast.

  • Reeder: My favorite RSS reader, though I mostly use the iPad version.

  • VSCO Cam: My go-to app for editing photos I take with my iPhone.

  • Riposte: The best iPhone client for App.net.

  • Mileage Log: For years I used Trip Cubby to track all my business, medical, and charity-related driving. That app was recently retired and out of the ashes arose Mileage Log. I haven’t used any other mileage tracker so I don’t know how this one compares to the others, but I do know that Mileage Log is awesome and it complies with the IRS’s regulations for tracking miles driven for tax purposes. I’ve used the app to log 62 trips so far this year for more than 1,300 miles.

  • QuickShot: I use this to take photos of business-related receipts for tax purposes. QuickShot names them with the date and uploads them to Dropbox. Then I have a Hazel rule that moves those images to my receipts folder and I throw away the physical receipt. It’s faster than scanning them all in at once (especially since receipts are good at getting all wrinkled up in my pocket), and it’s a great way to keep track of receipts when traveling.

  • Loom: After Everpix shut down I switched to Loom at Bradley Chamber’s recommendation. There are a lot of things I like about Loom (such as its design and auto uploading of images from my Mac) and it’s still better than Photo Stream when it comes to don’t-make-me-think-about-it photo syncing from all my devices to all my devices.

  • Paprika: I’ve recently migrated all my recipes out of Simplenote and into Paprika. I don’t have a lot of recipes, but the ones I do have are so very delicious and it makes a lot more sense to keep them in a nice recipe app. Paprika is truly quite great, and having a 3-app suite across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad has proven to be quite helpful. Over on The Sweet Setup we tested quite a few recipe apps and found Paprika to be the best.

  • Checkmark: I don’t use location-based reminders on a regular basis, but when I do then Checkmark is the best there is. It’s fast and reliable.

  • Delivery Status: This is a swell app that keeps track of packages and deliveries I’m expecting.

  • Dropvox: This app is extremely dated, but it still works and I still use it to record Shawn Today episodes whenever I’m away from my Mac. And, so far as I know, there are no other apps which take a voice recording and pipe it to Dropbox.

  • Pinbook / Pushpin / Pinswift / Pinner: There are a lot of good Pinboard apps out there right now. Pinbook was my favorite for a while, but it’s in desperate need of a good update. Pinswift is new and pretty great. Pinner is also nice. The jury is still out on this one, but needless to say, there are quite a few nice options for anyone in want of a good iOS Pinboard client.

* * *

About 9 months ago I began taking monthly screenshots of my iPhone’s Home screen so I could track, over time, how my usage of apps evolved and changed.

This is what my Home screen looked like on March 1, 2013 compared to how it looks today:

Shawn Blanc iPhone Home screen comparisons

As you can see, aside from the visual change iOS 7 has brought, not much has changed for me in terms of my most-used and most-important apps.

I find this awesome and yet also a bit curious. It’s awesome because I feel comfortable with my current arsenal of 3rd-party apps; they do pretty much everything I could ask of them, I know what they’re capable of, how they work, and how to use them efficiently. However, on the other side of the coin, there are some apps I use that don’t have any other top-shelf alternatives which interest me.

Is that a bad thing? No, I don’t think so. Naturally, I want 1Password to stay the undisputed champion of password management apps because not only am I familiar and happy with it but also because I’ve invested a lot of money on it. However, on the other hand, competition breeds innovation. When an app sits as king of the hill, with little to no competition, I can’t help but wonder if it’s the best version it could be or if it’s just the best when compared to everyone else.

But let’s not end on a sad note. To wrap up, let me say that I find my iPhone as interesting, curious, and wonderful today as I did in 2007. My kids will grow up thinking iPhones and iPads are normal, and who knows what this stuff will look like when they’re my age. But I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to be right here, living and working in the midst of what is undoubtedly one the most significant evolutions of personal computing since the 1980s.

But now I’m crossing into iPad stuff. And that’s a post for next week…

My iPhone App Playlist

Recently, on ‘Shawn Today’

This past week, on my members-only podcast, Shawn Today, I spent 5 episodes on the subject of working from home.

I’ve been working for myself out of my home office for just about 3 years, and, as anyone else who works from home knows, it’s not all coffee and pajamas. Yes, there are many awesome advantages, but there are also many unique challenges and distractions.

While there’s no way I could fully exhaust the topic, I did want to hit a few of the areas that are hot topics for me personally right now. In the weeks ahead, I plan to continue this conversation on the podcast and here in written form as well.

Here’s a quick overview of this week’s episodes:

  • On Monday’s show, I talked about how taking time off is hard and shared some thoughts on working from anywhere and working all the time, and how it’s so easy to do (especially when you work for yourself).

  • On Tuesday’s show, I talked about “The Transition”. That time after work where you decompress from the work day and leave behind what was unfinished, and let it wait for the next work day. I shared some of my own pros and cons of working from home as it relates to having an office just one flight of stairs away, and thus the lack of a transition before and after the work day.

  • On Wednesday I shared many pros and cons to working from home as submitted to me by folks via Twitter in response to this question.

  • Thursday was about how to deal with the being alone (as in, not physically around other coworkers for face-to-face conversation and interaction) in our victories and defeats. When you’re working on a project alone how do you best celebrate the victory of shipping something and how do you best minimize the criticism that comes with a failure, learning from it rather than taking it to heart?

  • And on Friday, I shared some thoughts on defining our work by schedule rather than to-do lists.

A huge thanks to those of you who wrote something of your own, sent in emails, and/or shared your thoughts via Twitter after various episodes. These shows turned out better because of your feedback.

If you’re a current member to the site and haven’t already listened to this week’s podcast episodes, you’ll find them here (as always).

And, of course, if you’re not a member, you can sign up here. It’s $4/month and you’ll get access to the members-only podcast feed and the archive page with links to every single one of the 450 episodes recorded to date (including this week’s series on working from home).

Recently, on ‘Shawn Today’

Three Weeks With Two iPads

Gosh. Well, I’ve been using both an iPad mini and an iPad Air, side-by-side, for the past three weeks. The goal of my parallel usage is to see if the mini can be used for “real work” (it can), and ultimately to see if I’ll prefer the smaller form factor of the mini or the larger screen of the Air (I don’t know yet).

So far, when around the house, I’ve been grabbing the iPad mini more frequently. Part of this may still be the novelty of the smaller iPad. This is the first iPad mini I’ve used for an extended period of time and even though the iPad Air is crazy light and still nice and easy to use, the iPad mini is more “fun” to use around the house.

These uses mostly include:

  • Scrubbing my to-do list in the morning (in OmniFocus)
  • Streaming Pandora or Rdio to our living room’s Airplay speaker
  • Reading Instapaper and sometimes posting links to shawnblanc.net
  • Making edits and reviewing documents in Editorially
  • Doing email
  • Twittering

On the go, I do writing in Editorial. And, actually, I’ve felt no remorse when I’ve set up the iPad mini with my keyboard to do writing from it or to log into my website via Diet Coda and make edits to code when needed.

So far, the biggest advantage the iPad Air has over the iPad mini is when it comes to reading comics. I’m not an avid comic book reader, but I do subscribe to the Marvel Unlimited app and read a few comics during the week. Unfortunately, the Marvel Unlimited app is not very good. And one of the biggest things that makes it difficult to read on the iPad mini is that you have to view full page spreads (you cannot zoom in and read pane by pane). And so the iPad Air really does make a superior reading experience for that because the text is larger and more comfortable to read.

Typing on the on-screen keyboard of the iPad Air is obviously much more manageable. I don’t do much typing, but when I do it’s usually via the landscape keyboard on the Air or else the portrait keyboard on the mini. Those are the two more comfortable options for each device. Long-form writing with the on-screen keyboard of the mini would stink. But, since I almost always use a bluetooth keyboard when doing long-form typing, it’s virtually a non-issue for me as to which device’s onscreen keyboard is better.

Let’s answer some questions

I asked you guys on Twitter if you had any questions about the two iPads, and I’ve done my best to answer them below. Some questions I can’t give a clear and dry answer to because there are so many variables about how you, dear reader, use your iPad, what your budget is, etc. But I will at least try to put my thoughts down to maybe give you some context that may help you make the best decision.

  • What are your general thoughts on “content creation versus consumption” between the two iPads? This sort of is the quintessential question, and I think it boils down to this:

The iPad mini and the iPad Air are both equally capable and usable devices; pick the one you think you want and you will acclimate to it just fine.

  • Both iPads are sitting there, which one do you grab? The iPad mini. But I’m not yet sure if that’s telling of anything. I’ve had a full-sized iPad since the original in 2010 and this is the first iPad mini I’ve used at length. The smaller size is still a novelty to me, and I’m really enjoying it.

  • Which gets warmer during use? Both of my iPads get warm during use, but the iPad mini gets more warm than the Air. Neither get uncomfortable, but it is noticeable.

  • Do you notice the differences in display quality (PPI) in day-to-day use? Surprisingly, no. I was quite excited about the iPad mini’s 326 PPI display — it is the most dense pixel display Apple makes, and up until now it’s a pixel density that has only been in the iPhone. But now it’s in a 7.9-inch iPad. However, even when using both iPads side by side — with the mini showing my Twitter replies and the Air running Editorial as I type in the Questions and my answers — I cannot see a noticeable difference in the clarity and sharpness of the screens.

  • Have you noticed the difference in color gamut? Yes, but it’s hardly noticeable. and it’s only with some shades of red — the iPad Air displays them a bit more like firetruck and the iPad mini a bit more muted. But really, looking at the two screens side by side and comparing them using the same apps and images and Home screens, everything looks virtually identical.

My pal, Matthew Panzarino, traded his iPad mini in because of the color issues. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe he got unlucky, but I’ve had two Retina iPad minis so far (the wi-fi version at first that I returned to get an LTE version) and the screen colors have been fine on both of them.

  • How do they perform in note taking? If you’re a student and you plan to take your iPad to the classroom, or if you take your iPad to meetings, the biggest question to ask is if you plan to use an external bluetooth keyboard or not. If you plan to go sans-keyboard, then I would go for the iPad Air without hesitation. Its larger screen set in landscape mode makes for a much better typing surface than the mini’s on-screen keyboard. If, however, you plan to bring a bluetooth keyboard along as well, then it’s a toss-up. So keep reading some of the other questions below.

  • I have an iPad (1 / 2 / 3 / 4), should I upgrade? If you can afford it, and if you use your iPad a lot, then yes. This year is a big leap for the iPads and even going from an iPad 4 to an iPad Air is a nice upgrade. You’ll notice improvements in both performance and size. I upgraded from an iPad 3 and it was a huge boost.

  • Which iPad should I upgrade to? I got both iPads in the 32GB with LTE flavor. I highly recommend at least that combo and to get more storage if you think you’ll need it. As for if you should get the Air or the mini, well isn’t that what all these questions are about? In short, though, my advice this year still stands as it has been since the mini first came out: if you’re just not sure which one to get, get the mini.

  • Are there any specific tasks that one iPad is more suited for? Yes.

A few things the iPad Air’s larger screen is arguably better for: Writing and typing, because of its somewhat larger font size and bigger on-screen keyboard; reading comics, PDFs, and other “font locked” documents/periodicals; watching video; editing photos and videos; and taking hand-written notes, drawing, or painting (with apps like 53’s Paper). Is the iPad Air significantly better for these things? I don’t think so. And really, it just boils down to a matter of opinion and personal preference.

A few things the iPad mini is arguably better for: reading books, RSS feeds, twitter feeds, Instapaper queue, etc. In any app where you can adjust the font size, if the iPad mini’s display is a bit too dense for you, you can adjust the font size to be a bit bigger; and anything that would normally be done while holding the iPad.

Though the Air is great in size and weight, it’s not as light as the mini and the latter truly is easier to hold in one hand while standing, sitting, leaning back, etc.

  • In what contexts is the iPad mini “less of an iPad” than the Air? So, when does the screen size play the biggest role? Drawing, painting, typing, photo/video editing, watching movies. These are tasks where having a bigger screen really is nicer.

  • Are there any apps that work better on a mini? Any app that you use while holding the mini (specifically reading / browsing).

  • Is it difficult to use two iPads at the same time? Actually, no, not at all. Since everything I use on my iPad syncs to the web, the two are literally in perfect sync with one another.

  • How does each iPad fare as a laptop replacement? They both fare the same.

  • What use cases make me reach for one iPad over the other? When I’m doing writing, I reach for the iPad Air. For everything else (scrubbing OmniFocus, reading Twitter, RSS, quick email checking, Instapaper, etc.) I grab the mini.

  • When you’re using the Air, what do you miss about the Mini? If I’m typing with my keyboard, I miss nothing. If I’m reading Instapaper or surfing the Web, I miss the mini’s smaller size.

  • Which iPad do you tend to use when in the house? The mini. Since, when I’m in the house, and am writing, I am most likely at my desk using my MacBook Air. And thus, any other task

  • Which iPad do you tend to grab when heading out on the road? The iPad Air. Since, as I’ll mention below, the iPad Air still feels like my “real” iPad.

  • Which apps do you most use on the Air? Editorial, Instapaper, Drafts, Poster.

  • Which apps do you most use on the Mini? Tweetbot, OmniFocus, Instapaper, Safari, Pandora, Rdio.

* * *

So far, the iPad mini seems to be becoming my preferred iPad, but the iPad Air feels like my “real” iPad. Let me try to explain. For my needs, there’s nothing about the iPad mini that makes it less capable in any significant way — I can read and write just fine from the mini. However, the iPad mini has a “feeling” of being less capable simply because of its size.

Is the iPad Air a bit better suited for some tasks such as writing? I think so. For me, the larger screen size allows me to have a bigger font size and see more words on the screen at the same time (something nice for my aging eyes). And for times when I’m doing typing with the on-screen keyboard, the iPad Air’s larger screen is much nicer for hitting the keys. But for almost every other task (except for watching movies and reading comics), I find the mini to be just as good if not even better suited.

After 3 weeks, I’m actually leaning slightly more towards the mini if I had to pick one. Though I do work a lot from my iPad, the iPad is not my main work machine. I still spend most of my time at my desk working from my MacBook Air. And so, for the things I do use an iPad for, the iPad mini is better for about 80-percent of them and “good enough” for the other 20-percent. I plan to keep using both iPads, side by side, for at least another month or two, so I’ll check back in again soon.

As I said in response to the first question above, the iPad mini and the iPad Air are both equally capable and usable devices. Pick the one you think you want and you will acclimate to it just fine.

Three Weeks With Two iPads

The Olympus E-PL5 Mirrorless Camera: My One-Year Review

It’s been a year since the Olympus E-PL5 showed up at my door, and I want to give a report.

The Olympus E-PL5

The Olympus E-PL5

The E-PL5 is the first nice camera I’ve ever owned. A year later, as I look back at how often I’ve used the camera, the pictures I’ve taken with it, and what my opinion is of the camera itself, the short answer is that I still use it regularly and often, and I’m still very happy with it.

It was the fall of 2012 that I began researching mirrorless cameras to find a setup I could easily take with me anywhere I went, and which cost under $1,000 (for the body and a nice prime lens). I wanted the camera to have an Auto mode so I could just point and shoot if I needed to (I still am a beginning photographer, and don’t always know which manual adjustments to make to get the exposure right). I also wanted an Auto mode so I could hand the camera over to a family member to let them point and shoot with. But it also needed to have good manual modes so I could learn and grow into the manual controls as I learned more about the technical details of photography.

The setup I went with was the then-new Olympus E-PL5 and the world-famous Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens.

As I mentioned in my official review, it was the iPhone that actually led me to getting a better camera. I was taking more and more and more pictures, but wasn’t doing much with them other than keeping them on my iPhone. A year later, I still couldn’t be happier about my decision to get a nice camera and I am still very happy with the camera I chose.

I’ve had and used the E-PL5 through Thanksgiving 2012, Christmas, my son, Noah’s, first birthday, a few trips to Colorado, a trip to San Francisco, a camping trip, a trip to New York, the birth of my second son, Giovanni, and countless other weekend and weekday excursions.

Last year we bought several new photo frames to put around the house. And every couple of months I order a few new 8×10 photos printed from Shutterfly and we swap out all the pictures in the house. It’s inexpensive1 and it’s so wonderful to have high-quality photos of our kids and family.2

Something we did last year, and which we’ll do again this Christmas, was get a few of Apple’s iPhoto photo books. Photo books make great Christmas presents to parents and grandparents. Last year’s book was half photos from my iPhone covering January through October, and then half photos from my E-PL5 covering November and early December. This year the photo book will probably be 90-percent (or more) E-PL5 photos.

I still consider the E-PL5 to be one of the best-kept secrets in the mirrorless camera landscape. For the body only, it’s very reasonably priced. And it’s fast, has great battery life, works with all the micro-four thirds lenses, is well built, has 4-axis in-body image stabilization, and has the same sensor found inside the critically acclaimed Olympus E-M5. It’s a beast and it won’t break the bank.

On Twitter I was asked if a better camera in this space has come along. For the same price as the E-PL5, no, I don’t think so.

Of course, since I got my E-PL5 a year ago, the mirrorless camera landscape has improved quite a bit. There’s now the Fuji x100s and X-E2, the Olympus E-P5, and the new Olympus E-M1 (to name a few). These are all really great, but they’re also all more expensive than the E-PL5.

You can get the E-PL5 body and a very nice prime lens for about $800-$900 (depending on the lens you pick). The E-P5 is $900 for the body alone; the Fuji x100s is $1,300 and comes with a great lens (that cannot be swapped out), but it is not a beginner’s camera.

In my opinion, someone looking to get a great camera and a great lens (where by “great lens” I mean “a prime lens” — not the kit zoom lens), can’t go wrong with the E-PL5. It’s compact, it’s easy enough to use that a beginner could pick it up and take decent shots with it (no comment about technique), and it has most of the same internal components (same sensor, similar IBIS) found in Olympus’ top-of-the line cameras, the E-M1 and the E-P5.

Here are answers to a few other questions I got from folks on Twitter:

  • What’s the best first lens? The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7. It’s one of the less expensive among the good prime lens selection; it’s a pancake lens, so it takes up very little space; it takes wonderful photographs; and the 20mm focal length (which is the 40mm equivalent on a full-frame camera) is in the sweet spot range for all manner of photos. So, if you don’t know which lens to get, get the Panasonic 20/1.7.

Other great lenses include the Panasonic 25mm f/1.4, the Olympus 45mm f/1.8, and the Olympus 17mm f/1.8. I’ve rented the 25/1.4 and the 45/1.8 and they are both fantastic.

  • What is your most-used lens? Just the one I have: the panasonic 20/1.7. It’s a fantastic lens for the price and size. My favorite lens of all the ones I have used is the Pany 25/1.4, but I like the size of the 20/1.7 pancake too much. And, since the 20mm and the 25mm are so close in focal length, it seems silly to keep them both.

  • Have you been tempted by any other cameras? Yes; the E-P5. It has all that’s awesome about the E-PL5, but in a nicer body with more manual controls (without giving up automatic modes), and with an even better sensor and IBIS. However, the E-P5 is several hundred dollars more expensive, and I honestly don’t know if that increase in price is worth it for me at my current skill and usage levels.

  • How do you travel with it? For outings, I use my DSPTCH strap. As for a case, I don’t have one yet because I haven’t yet found one I like (well, the Hard Graft camera bag looks gorgeous, but I’d rather buy a lens).

  • What do you wish was different? What annoys you about the camera? The same thing that I’m tempted by with the E-P5: I wish the E-PL5 had better manual dials. You can set it in Aperture or Shutter priority modes, but you have to use the menu dial to quickly change the aperture / exposure / shutter settings. This can be a bit awkward or inaccurate. But… It doesn’t bother me so much to dislike the camera, and like I mentioned above, I’m not sure it’s worth the cost for me to buy a more expensive camera right now. I’ll probably keep the E-PL5 for a few more years and invest my money in lenses instead of upgrading my camera body.

  • Has your frequency of use decreased since you first got the camera? Yes and no. I’m not forcing myself to take it out like I did when I first got it. But I still use it often around the house and at family events, trips, and other things. Since the first day of owning it I have always felt silly taking it out and using it. But, looking back, I wish I would get out with the camera more often.

  • What about ergonomics? The camera feels great. It’s very light, it has incredible build quality, and it’s very easy to hold with one hand. The flip-out view screen makes it easy to take photos at all sorts of angles.

  • Auto-focus and other settings? The E-PL5 with my Panasonic 20mm lens does hunt a fair bit in super low light, but in my understanding it’s no better or worse than most other cameras like this. When I was renting the Olympus 45/1.8 lens, the auto-focus was a bit quicker, but not significantly so.

I mostly shoot in Aperture Priority mode, but when I’m having trouble I’ll switch to Auto and the camera does a great job at deciding what sorts of settings I want.

  • To what degree does the camera’s physical size impact when/where you use it. How often have you wished you had it but didn’t? The size of the camera is fantastic. It’s small enough to fit in my winter coat pocket or my small laptop bag without bothering me. It’s also light enough that when I’m wearing it with the shoulder strap I can have it on for hours and never consider its weight.

There are often times I wish I had taken it somewhere but didn’t. This, however, has everything to do with me not being in the discipline of taking the camera and using it. It has almost nothing to do with the size of the camera.

  • What is the most important thing you’ve learned about photography since getting this camera? That I regret 100% of the shots I don’t take. Too cliche? Okay, fine. But it’s true. Like I said above regarding frequency of use, I want to get out with the camera more often.

  • What is your usage of the E-PL5 compared to your iPhone camera? I certainly use my iPhone more often than the E-PL5 just because of the fact that my iPhone is with me all the time. But I don’t often take “great photos” with my iPhone. Usually they are cool snapshots that I will then share on Instagram, email to friends and family, or put into Day One. And that’s exactly why I got the E-PL5. I didn’t want to all-out replace my iPhone, but I wanted something I could use to take much, much better photos when it mattered most.

  • What are your favorite pictures taken with the E-PL5? This one is probably my most favorite:

Anna and Noah reading

These are also favorites:

The B&B Cafe

Nohawk

You can see more of the photos I’ve taken on my Flickr page.

* * *

So. If you’re in the market for an awesome and pocketable camera, I’ve got good news and bad news…

The good news is, there are a lot of really great options. The bad news is, there are a lot of really great options. Good luck!

  1. 8×10 prints are normally 3.99 each, but Shutterfly seems to have sales all the time to get things for 40-percent off or more. I’ve also heard great things about WHCC’s pricing and quality, but haven’t yet used them myself. ↵
  2. I’ve also been using the camera to take “fancy” hero images for use on this site and on The Sweet Setup. ↵
The Olympus E-PL5 Mirrorless Camera: My One-Year Review

Editorially

Leading up to the launch of The Sweet Setup, we were wrangling about 20 active documents. I was working with half-a-dozen different authors on their app reviews along with writing several reviews and blog posts of my own, and Jeff Abbott was editing everything.

To manage all of these documents we use Editorially.

It’s awesome. Here’s why.

  • Markdown support: All the writers we work with prefer to write in Markdown. I prefer markdown. And, well, Editorially supports markdown syntax highlighting in the browser. It also displays images inline. When you’re done writing you can export your writing as an html, markdown, plain text, Latex, rich text, MS Word, or ePub file. Wow.

  • Collaboration: invite people to join the document as read-only privileges or with editing privileges. You can highlight words and passages to make notes about, and you can comment on the document in general.

  • Track changes and version control: Editorially auto-saves as your working on a document, so if your browser crashes you don’t lose your work. It also keeps all the versions of a document, and allows you to compare the changes of one version with another.

  • Document status: Documents start as “Draft”, and as you progressively work on them you can change their status to “Reviewing”, “Revising”, “Copyediting”, and “Final”.

These states worked perfectly with our workflow, and followed perfectly the progression of our articles from the initial submission by a contributor, my reviewing of it, the author’s revising of it, and then Jeff’s editing of it. When visiting my Editorially dashboard I could see instantly what the state of each document was, and knew which ones I needed to attend to myself.

  • Dropbox support: you can link Editorially to a folder in your Dropbox and then send an article to that folder. This is Editorially’s answer to “archiving” since there is nowhere to move documents that are in their final state and which have been published and that you no longer need to keep on your dashboard. This is how I archive all of our published articles, and it works very well.

  • Pasting into a document: Copy rich or formatted text from one place and when you paste it into Editorially it will format in Markdown. Even images. Amazing.

  • iPad and iPhone friendly: Editorially is a web app only with no native apps. However, it has a responsive design that works great in Safari on the iPad and iPhone. It can be a bit clunky if you’re making lots and lots of notes and annotations, and I wouldn’t want to spending hours a day, every day, working in Editorially on my iPad. But I edited several documents from my iPhone and iPad with no trouble.

Our Editorially Workflow

Being editor-in-chief, I was reaching out to potential writers asking them if they’d like to do an article for the site. Once they submitted their draft to me I would paste it into Editorially and read through it.

Because Editorially lets me make highlight words and passages, it was easy to make comments about what I felt were good, what needed improvement, and what was missing altogether. I would also make general comments on the document itself such as, “All done. Your turn.”

If I hadn’t already, I would then invite the author to join the document so they could see all my comments and edits, and then they make any changes and leave comments of their own.

Some articles were done after just one pass. Others took several rounds of back and forth work to get it to a place where we were completely happy with it.

Once the article reached the point where the author and I were happy with it, then I would invite Jeff to join. (Jeff is the editor for The sweet Setup.) He would then read through the article for the first time, making sure it had a good flow, made sense, covered all the bases, and was free from typos and other grammatical errors.

When Jeff was done, he’d set the article’s status to “Final”. I would then export the markdown out of Editorially and paste it into our CMS. Editorially also supports publishing to WordPress, but I don’t use this feature — we have quite a few custom fields and other metadata tables set up in our WordPress install that hinder us from just publishing straight to the site from Editorially.

Technically, Editorially is still in beta. There are a few bugs here and there (for example, the dashboard doesn’t remember my preference for displaying documents in a grid format or a list) and there are some other features I’d love to see added (such as the ability to transfer ownership of a document from one user to another, or an “inbox” that listed all the recent activity on all my documents). But these are small issues, and Editorially has proven to be an invaluable tool for us.

We are using it to get a lot of work done without losing our minds. I can’t imagine what our workflow would look like without Editorially.

Editorially

Introducing The Sweet Setup

Today is the day. It’s here. The Sweet Setup has launched.

There are three groups of people I want to thank:

There is much more to say about the site, but right now I’m busy fixing launch-day typos and broken links. I hope you’re able to take some time to check out the site and read some of our fantastic and considered articles. If you’re not sure where to start, take the Dime Tour.

Introducing The Sweet Setup