DIACARTA is the only app that lets you create a picture of your day. Like no other planner, icons represent your planned events in an interface that is intuitive, gorgeous, and fun to use.
In just-released version 2.0, Diacarta rises to a new level. Diacarta 2.0 is smoother and more precise, and best of all, it syncs with the iPhone’s native calendar. Facebook and Twitter integration are soon on their way.
At just $1.99 on iTunes, your day never looked better.
Especially our workflows.
Nerds tinker. We are always wanting to learn, dissect, and refine the minutia of the systems, tools, and toys that we use every day.
It can be easy to tinker too much. But I think it’s a far greater error to not tinker at all. For the workflows we live in every single day, it’s folly to simply set it and forget it.
When a new operating system ships for my Mac, that’s when I do my most serious tinkering. I always prefer to do a clean install so I am forced to re-evaluate what I want to keep on an app-by-app basis.
A new operating system is a good reminder that it’s healthy (and for a nerd, fun) to take time out to do a workflow audit. Now is as good a time as any to reassess the tools you’re using and how you’re using them.
Maybe it’s time to find a more advanced tool. Or, maybe it’s time to switch to something more basic. How can your processes be enhanced? How can they be simplified? Does something need to be added? Can something be removed?
When I do a major workflow audit like the one I’ll be doing this month some time, there are several things I look at:
And for the stuff that sticks around (which is the majority), it’s a great time to assess that software as well. The most demanding systems and tools that I engage with daily are:
The above systems and their tools each require their own audit. But, because each inbox and system interacts and interweaves with the others, a look at the entire workflow is also needed on occasion.
Our lives are ever-changing. As is our data. Our interests, our priorities, and our availability are always on the move. It’s worth the effort to take a long, hard look at our systems and tools. We want to make sure they are still the ones serving us and not the other way around.
An old promo video from NeXT about their then state-of-the-art circuit board manufacturing system and factory.
Many, many thanks to Paste Interactive for once again sponsoring the RSS feed. This is the third time they’ve sponsored the feed and they continue to be the reigning champs for most-clever promotional text. Check out what they wrote for this week’s sponsorship, as well as their first and second.
Paste makes web apps. Jumpchart is for website planning; Staction is for project management; Paprika is for productivity. These are guys that take great care in their work and who sweat the details. Their products are definitely worth checking out.
In episode 18 of The B&B Podcast Ben and I talked about my couple of days without Internet earlier this week (thanks to a construction mistake up the road), as well as the HP TouchPad and Google+.
This episode sponsored by Authentic Jobs.
Sometimes the best stuff is in the footnotes. Like this one from Lukas Mathis while discussing the application features of Google+:
Jumping in a Mario game is very simple. You hit a button, Mario jumps. But once you know how to jump, you can use this ability to jump over gaps, jump on top of bricks, kill enemies, destroy bricks, hit coins out of coin bricks, get mushrooms, jump on top of flagpoles to get points, and much more. Learning one simple thing unlocks a very deep array of options. These are the kinds of features you want in your application.
Oliver Reichenstein on the design of the Google+ interface, experience, and information architecture. I agree with Oliver’s thoughts — the UI and UX are perhaps the most compelling elements for me to join Google+ despite the fact that there are not yet a significant amount of people on the network.
Weird name. Weirder icon. Serious redesign of YouTube.
(Side note: I am liking the updated designs Google is rolling out.)
While talking about his iPhone home screen on MacSparky, Kourosh Dini (author of Creating Flow with OmniFocus) answers the question, How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad? Dini’s answer is a very thought-provoking aside about non-reactive working.
One thing I actively work on, and have been actively working on for sometime, is maintaining a non-reactive mode of working. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as technology continues its steady advance promising “convenience”, I believe it’s not really a convenience which it delivers. Rather, it’s a shortening of a distance between thought and action. If I’m not careful, this can lead to a more reactive way of working — checking email, twitter, and the like reflexively.
There’s more. It’s worth clicking through to read the whole post.
Straight from the Bot’s mouth. I learned a few things I hadn’t know about.
This brand new iPhone app from my pals at Sky Balloon Studio is for recording video in a moment’s notice. It records on launch and saves on quit. Boom. Just a buck in the App Store.
Just watched this short film and loved it.
Three big updates: (1) Their web-based cloud player is now “officially” iPad friendly; (2) all past purchase through the Amazon MP3 store can now be stored for free; and (3) you now get unlimited music storage with any paid storage plan of the cloud drive.
In short, for as little as $20/year you can store every single song you’ve ever bought from Amazon as well as any other MP3 and AAC music file you have on your computer. Not a bad deal.
Ian Beck, an indie developer for webOS apps, looks at some of the most-popular uses for tablets and reviews how the TouchPad’s App Catalog stacks up against the iPad’s App Store.
Beck is the developer of TapNote, the best writing app, and one of the best apps period, that I came across during my review of the TouchPad.