The Escapers (makers of Flux, Stuf and more) have an interesting new task management service called Instruktion. Or maybe it’s called “New York Minute”, it’s not clear to me. It is cross platform and the apps are free. It requires a $20/year membership which sounds like a good price.
It looks very nice on all of the application platforms and works offline too. I’m an OmniFocus user but I’ll keep an eye on how this evolves.
Just fired up Parallels with WinXP for the first time in 10 months.
How many OS X updates have there been in the past 5 years? I bet it’s less than this.
I just noticed that ResophNotes, the Simplenote client for Windows, has been updated recently. I had thought it was abandoned-ware after a long delay in patches and feature enhancements. I was wrong. ResophNotes now supports pinned notes and syncs much faster. This is the definitive Simplenote client for those of us suffering on Windows.
It is now obvious that Siri has elevated the iOS Reminders app to the winners circle of productivity applications. It has become the quintessential ubiquitous capture device for me. One unexpected side effect is that I am now using the Tasks functionality in Outlook on Windows much more.
Through my day-job I am forced to use Microsoft Exchange and Outlook on Windows. I loath Outlook but I have come to accept it as my lot in life. I use very few features of Outlook and one that has never fit my workflow was the Tasks system built into Outlook. Looking back at my completed tasks in Outlook, I can see that I tried using it in 2006 but never added more than a few tasks. But now that Siri is running my life, Outlook tasks are becoming more attractive.
My employer provides access to Exchange from iOS and that’s been great for email and calendar access. Now, Tasks also sync to Apple’s Reminders app. I’ve discovered that through judicious selection of task list names, I can create project and context buckets that work well in both applications. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still an OmniFocus devotee, but having access to my task list from Outlook and being able to add actions through Siri have a tremendous allure.
I’ve fiddled with tasks in Outlook for the past couple of weeks trying out different configurations to reduce their friction and get as much value as I can from Outlook. In Outlook on Windows, tasks can be organized into task folders. Folders can also be nested. Unfortunately, the iOS Reminders app does not nest task lists. That means any structure created in outlook is completely flattened on iOS. A nested task structure in outlook like Work >> Email becomes two task lists, Work and Email and in Reminders.
As a consequence, I am using the lists as single action buckets rather than contexts. This turns out to be better for entering tasks with Siri. As long as the names of the lists are unique, I can say “Add Check with Jim to my Work list” or “Add finish database refactoring to my Legal list” and Siri places the task in the correct list. The key is to define mutually exclusive buckets. I can’t have a “Personal” list at work and on iCloud or it becomes to much work to make sure Siri adds it to the right list.
I’ve created a list for each major project in Outlook. I don’t plan projects in these lists. I use them as a layover for tasks on their way to OmniFocus. If I can clear a task out in less than 2–3 minutes then I don’t bother transferring it to OmniFocus. I just do it.
In addition to lists for each project, I also have a general “Work” list for anything that is not project specific. It’s also a catch all for when I can’t remember the name of a project[1] or it applies to more than one project. I also have a “Personal” list. This is a list of actions that don’t specifically apply to work but I might need to do when I’m at the office. It’s also nice to be able to add a quick task for home while I am in front of my Windows computer rather than getting out my iPhone or iPad to add the item to my iCloud list.
One thing that I like about the task lists in Outlook is that I can add emails to the list for followup. It’s a nice way to hoist an email out of the thickets of Outlook priority flags, which are completely useless for me. I can then see the entire email as a note in the Reminders app when I am away from my office.
Another nice benefit, is the ease at which I can add quick ideas about a project to my work lists. Siri makes the process so simple, there’s no excuse to get down every small idea and get it into my project. OmniFocus on the iPhone is great, but to add an OF action, I need to unlock my phone, open OF and then type in the action. With Siri I hold the home button down and then say “Add ‘Schedule a meeting with Jim to my Legal list.’ ” Boom. Done.
I’m adding an unprecedented (for me) number of actions now.
You might be asking, “if Exchange lists are working so well, why keep anything in iCloud?” I certainly asked that question. Two reasons: I want to share lists with my wife and I want to have access to some lists from my Mac.
My wife and I share “Groceries”, “Home”, “Weekend” and “Home Depot” lists. She can not use my Exchange lists because that would be a violation of corporate security policies. So the best way to share lists within our family is to use iCloud.
I also want some lists available when I’m on my Mac. I may not have my iPad or iPhone next to me while I am in front of my Mac. In that case, I can pop into BusyCal to add or process tasks. I can also easily copy them out to OmniFocus if necessary.
Some of my projects run for multiple years. There may be no activity for several months while I wait for some other group or project to progress. I also have over a dozen projects running at any one time. Remember the exact list name can be a challenge. ↩
You know an OS is great when it it makes MS Outlook even slightly tolerable. In this case iOS 5 adds syncing Exchange tasks with the new Reminders app in iOS 5. I have avoided uses Outlook task since my first iPhone arrived. I preferred to hop from my work windows machine to my iPhone or iPad rather than use Outlook any more than I was forced to.
I missed it in many of the great iOS reviews but discovered it last night when my old completed tasks from work showed up in Reminders (>4 year old tasks that were surprisingly completed).
You can find more here at the Macworld iOS 5 FAQ.
Here’s a great looking and feature rich Markdown editor for Windows called WriteMonkey. It’s a portable application, which means no installation is necessary.
What’s more, it is beautifully simple. On first launch you get a black window with a blinking cursor. There’s no menu or other chrome by default. Hitting F1 brings up a simple keyboard shortcut screen that also offers Markdown syntax reminders.
F10 opens the preferences dialog. The application is deceptively simple. The preferences reveal a huge amount of features such as text replacement shortcuts web look-ups of selected text, scratch repository and dynamic Markdown shortcuts. This application is a phenomenal implementation of a simple Markdown editor
The best description of this application is that it is WriteRoom for windows but with the Markdown support of NVAlt and the feature set of TextWrangler. If you know what all that means and you work on Windows, then go download this FREE application. Please donate to the developer if you find it useful.
I love me some NVAlt and Simplenote. However, I’m stuck in Windows at work and do not have the pleasure of using Dropbox on Windows. There is a decent enough Simplenote client for windows but development seems to have ceased and it is not feature complete.
So I recently started using the Simplenote webapp for my notes on Windows and it is a great experience. It’s closer to an NVAlt experience on Windows than any other native application I have tried.
Here’s a list of the features you get in the webapp that just don’t exist in a Windows application:
Not to mention the interface is gorgeous. It really feels like a native application.
Dropbox is incredibly useful and I enjoy extending it’s utility whenever I can. I also enjoy choosing projects that will teach me something new about my Mac. My latest project was to provide SFTP access to my Dropbox account. For security reasons, I am not allowed to install Dropbox at work. I considered several options for direct access to my files (email, webdav) but FTP is the most simple and universal access I could develop.
There are many advantages to having an always on local server. In particular, it means the various Apple TV’s in the house always have a movie library available without having to go to another room and start a computer. It also means I can tinker with server projects locally with a Mac rather than strangling myself with a remote unix server on Amazon or my web host.
To create a Internet accessible Mac server you will need to make some minor changes to your Mac and your broadband router.
Open the System Sharing Preferences and turn on Remote Login. I limit access to a single user account for a bit of added security. I’m the only one that needs to access the server, so this works fine for me.
Open the Network Preferences and locate your IP address.
Connect to your broadband router and locate the Port Forwarding configuration settings. This will be different for every router. The main point is that this needs to be configured at the router that connects your home to the Internet. If you have additional routers between your computer and the broadband router, you may need to enable additional settings. My Mac Mini is directly connected to my router through a LAN.
Configure the SSH port forwarding on the router to go to your Mac Mini IP address. The SSH port is generally set as port 22.
While you are in your router’s admin portal, write down the IP address of your router. This WILL NOT start with “192.168″ but rather will be a unique IP address that your ISP is providing to your router. You will need this for the next step of this tutorial.
Getting to your Mac Server on your local LAN is easy. Getting to it over the Internet is a bit more complicated but there is a very easy way to enable a DNS alias to your home Mac.
Go over to DynDNS and sign-up for a free account. From within your free account you can configure up to TWO new hosts. Importantly, you can choose host addresses that are memorable, rather than 10 digit IP address. For example, “myawesomeserver.dyndns.org.” I use the “Host with IP address” option. This is where you will enter the IP address of your broadband router. Once complete, you should have a static IP address that now maps back to your Mac server at home. The only problem is, when your ISP changes your home IP address, everything will break.
DynDNS has a nice solution to help resolve this issue. Go to the DynDNS Update Client page and download the Mac Updater. Install this on your Mac Server and enter your account credentials. That’s about it. Make sure this application always starts up with the server. Now when your local IP address changes, the DynDNS Updater will notify the name server of the new address.
Finally, install Dropbox on your Mac Server.
There are several options for connecting to your new server. SSH terminal connections give you direct access to the shell of the Mac. This is quite powerful. Unless you are accustom to using the terminal on your Mac, I do not recommend experimenting from a remote location. However, SFTP is a fairly safe way to access files on your Mac Server.
On windows, I use Filezilla for SFTP. It’s far from the quality available on the Mac with Transmit, but it is free and simple to use. From within Filezilla, create a new server connection using the DynDNS host name you set up. Provide the user credentials that are defined for the Mac Remote Login settings. Finally make sure to use port 22 (which you mapped in the router settings). This port is generally reserved for SFTP connections.
That should be all you need to connect to your Mac. Now you can navigate to your Dropbox directory and manipulate files until your heart is content.
Voilà, Dropbox FTP access.
These are links I found useful or interesting while building this service.
http://www.macinstruct.com/node/152
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_build_your_own_online_cloud
http://www1.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_enable_ssh_your_mac
http://www.dyndnscommunity.com/questions/3849/mac-osx-snow-leopard-bt-homehub-2-and-ftp-server.html
Dropbox (referral link) is the service that Mobile Me should have been. Apple really missed the mark with MobileMe especially in the file syncing arena. Innovation does not tolerate a vacuum or even a partial suck. Dropbox filled that void nicely and the ubiquitous integration with iOS apps has made it indispensable. That’s one reason I am a happy paying customer.
If I pay for a service, it’s usually because I am deriving significant value from it. There are many tools I develop myself but some are so well done that I don’t want to waste my time trying to make a pale reflection. Dropbox is one of those services.
I do, however, build my own tools around Dropbox. One of those tools is my send to Dropbox email rule. Since I am already running a Mac 24 hours a day, why not make the most of it. With Apple’s Mail always on and filtering messages, I get fewer spam message and my incoming messages get sorted into their appropriate folders automatically. I don’t need to see things like iTunes and Amazon receipts unless I want to. Another tool My Dropbox Mail rule is fairly simple. In Mail.app I set up a rule that processes messages sent to my task email address I talked about here.
If the message subject begins with “Dropbox:OF” (for Dropbox OmniFocus) then the attachment is processed by an Applescript that moves it to Dropbox.
using terms from application “Mail”
on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
tell application “Mail”
repeat with oneMessage in theMessages
set {mail attachment:theAttachments} to oneMessage
repeat with oneAttachment in mail attachments of oneMessage
save oneAttachment in (“Macintosh HD 2:Dropbox:Todo Files:”) & (name of oneAttachment)
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from
That’s all there is to it. Any file I can email will be added to Dropbox. My work machine is locked down to prevent application installation. That means no Dropbox on Windows for me. That was my primary motivation for developing this little tool. It works so well, I also use it from my iPhone. It is a modest and simple version of Evernote. Take a quick picture of a whiteboard from a meeting and email it to my inbox on Dropbox. Boom! Seamless workflow from meeting to Inbox.
OmniFocus from Windows
There’s no doubt that OmniFocus by the Omni Group is the quintessential mac app. It’s elegant, easy to use and simply makes work easier. It has nearly solved the digital ubiquitous capture problem. It’s an iPhone app, it’s an iPad app, it’s desktop app, it’s a whipped topping. Unfortunately it is not a windows app (yet).I spend most of my work hours on a Windows machine. I have developed a couple of rountines that allow me to integrate OmniFocus with my workflow on Windows. An easy way to add tasks to OmniFocus is by way of email. I’ll briefly describe the hack and subsequently tell you that it is no longer needed.
Tasks by email
This is really just a modification of the excellent workflow described by Shawn Blanc. I’ve made some changes that make it a little more accurate and contemporaneous. All of this requires a mac at home running full time. That’s not a problem for me since I already had my mac running as a server for several reasons. Maybe I’ll write some posts about those other users. In OmniFocus for Mac, turn on the mail rule in the preferences
Head over to Apple’s Mail.app and look at the newly added mail rule. I added an extra trigger that looks for mail to a special gmail address.I actually signed up for another email account that was prefixed with “qqq” so that it’s easy to remember and type and is likely to be unique in my address book. Gmail also allows you to place a dot in the middle of your gmail address and still receive the mail. For example, “myemailaddress@gmail.com” also works as “my.email.adress@gmail.com” for receiving messages. Give it a try. I use the “qqq” prefix because it’s easy to type to get an auto-suggestion in Outlook. I also added a rule that only accepts tasks from my preferred list of email addresses (Note that you can set that in the OmniFocus settings as well). Namely, my personal and work email accounts. This helps, in case the spammers get smart enough to start sending OmniFocus enabled emails. How aweful would it be to get spam tasks. The horror!
Adding a task from Outlook on Windows is simple. Fire up Outlook and send an email to your special address like this:
Now we have a precise rule that adds tasks to OmniFocus, except we have to wait for OmniFocus Mac to sync to the cloud before that task is available everywhere else. I wasn’t happy with waiting. I decided to modify the Applescript that the Mail.app rule uses. I added a couple of lines to force OmniFocus to initiate a sync everytime it receives a taks from Mail.app.
tell application “OmniFocus”
synchronize default document
end tell
Everything is working well. So why did I abandon this workflow? Spootnik!
Spootnik Sync
I first discovered Spootnik when I was looking for sync server for OmniFocus on iOS. This was before Omni Group offered their terrific and free sync service. Spootnik is much more than a sync server though. The primary reason I continue to pay the $3 per month for Spootnik is for the fantastic web interface. I can now access my task list from any browser. Specifically IE and Firefox from my work computer. I can review, check-off and add tasks from the web interface. It’s a pretty full featured product. The only things you can not do is add due times to tasks or move tasks to another project. It is primarily intended as a simple web front end to your tasks in OmniFocus. It accomplishes that very well.Spootnik also offers integration with Bascamp from 37Signals. I’m not a Basecamp user so I can not describe the integration or the quality of the results. Based on the sync and web services from Spootnik, I’d bet it is a good implementation of Basecamp.
There’s a whole lot of buzz around the latest Parallels beta release. They have added a new feature called “coherence” which allows OSX and Windows to co-mingle on your desktop. At first, this seems wrong and creepy. But once I appreciated what this will mean for the future, I found peace with Windows on my Mac.
Here’s the gist, you can drag documents between the Windows and Mac desktops and folders. Sadly, they do not “move” but simply copy from one environment to the other. Hopefully this will be changed in the near future. That’s not all, with the coherence mode turned on you can also drag an OSX window into the MS Windows desktop environment and copy and paste between applications using the default Apple short cuts. This is nothing short of monumental in the evolution of virtualization on the Mac.
I’m imagining a future where you can right click on a document anywhere and choose to open it in either the windows or the OSX environments. Or better yet, predefine that certain file types always open in the desired environment. The software will just work. No need to worry about the operating system. Web browsde in linux, rip DVD’s in Windows and take care of photo’s in iLife without ever concerning yourself with which environment is actually running.
I am blessed enough to be running dual monitors. This allows me to dedicate one to the Windows VM on Parallels and one to OSX. I couldn’t ask for a better setup for getting my work done. The coherence mode of Parallels allows me to drag OSX windows into the Microsoft environment with no problems (however, you can not drag Microsoft application windows into the OSX environment). The image below shows Microsoft Media Player 11 running overtop Vienna and iStat (both Mac applications).
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Parallels, Review, Software, Windows
I really wanted to bring my DVD’s on a recent cross-country flight. I was familiar with backing them up using a PC, but I had never done it on the Mac. I played around with several options and decided that Handbrake is the best solution if you want a file for your iPod or in iTunes while Mac the ripper is the best if you want a dvd image file at full quality.
You can find a complete description of the process here and here while Macworld also has a nice write up here. This seems pretty satisfying, but I think I would still prefer to remaster the disk like I did on the PC. I was able to strip out the multiple languages, menus and extras to produce a much smaller DVD image that I could load up in any DVD playing software (including windows media center player in the living room ).
Technorati Tags: Aperture, iPod, Mac, Tip, Trick, Video, Windows
The latest revision of Parallels Desktop for the Mac is running butter smooth on my Mac Pro with 2GB of RAM. No hangs or crashes. In fact, right now, I’m using Ecto for Mac to write this post while watching DL.TV Episode 100 and installing software updates on Windows XP.
To be more specific, the update is for my Sandisk 4GB flash drive. I can’t recommend this drive enough. It is fast, small and holds a ton of data. It also came with U3 Cruzer security software that allows me to carry sensitive data from my day job home totally encrypted. The down side is that the software is Windows only. But now that I have Parallels on my Mac, I have access to the secure data any time I want. While getting the Cruzer software installed and running under Windows was pretty quick, the Windows update that I performed on my system was another story entirely.
Check out the number of updates in this set. 59!!! Has Apple even had 59 updates ever? This seems pretty crazy, but I went ahead with the updates. I don’t want to get any of the Windows nasty little bugs in my Parallels install.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, OSX, Parallels, Security, Windows
Parallels has just released RC2 of Desktop for Mac. While the Mac Pro received some love a few weeks back with a beta release, Parallels has put some real quality into this release candidate. Not only is it compatible with Vista and developer builds of Leopard, but there is no longer a RAM restriction. Parallels was only recognizing 3GB before.
I have to ask myself though, are there people out there with $2K of RAM in their Mac Pro that do not have a PC sitting under their desk to run windows on?
Here’s the FAQ sheet for this release:
No RAM limitations
No hardware reconfigurations
while using Windows and it’s critical applications on new 64-bit Mac Pro towers and iMacs.
Other improvements & fixes that make Parallels Desktop even easier to use:
New! Compatibility with developer build of Mac OS X 10.5, code-named “Leopardâ€
New! Experimental support for Windows Vista
Solaris guest OS no longer hangs after suspend/resume
An improved Parallels Tools package
Full support for OpenBSD 3.8 as a guest operating system
G4U hard disk cloning tool now works in virtual machines
Better video output improvement and acceleration
Added multi interface USB devices support (including Windows Mobile 2005 devices)
Added isochronous USB devices support (including WebCam devices)
Keyboard support improvement: Eject CD key support, left/right Shift/Ctrl/Alt (Option)/Windows keys difference support
Added virtual disk cache policy option: Mac OS X performance optimized or guest OS performance optimized
Image Tool fixes
Optimized disk cache policy for Suspend/Resume feature
Windows ME Suspend/Resume fix
Shared Folders first time access acceleration
Clipboard synchronization tool fixes (unreadable symbols sometimes added during copy and paste)
Sound playback and recording improvement
“Unable to allocate virtual memory†during virtual machine power on fix
Technorati Tags: Apple, Hardware, Leopard, Mac, OSX, Parallels, Software, Windows
