Hmmm…. a Mac Documentary
Nerd alert :) And have a nice weekend!
- Jens Poder
An idea for an AppleScript: Template launcher
I fooled around with the application Document Palette yesterday, and quite liked the service it offered. Being able to make a new file from a template with a couple of keystrokes. But I hated having a dedicated app cluttering up my dock to do this.
I would like nothing more than be able to launch a new meeting minutes document, or a new prepopulated HTML document from my favourite launcher launchbar with a couple of keystrokes.
I think the solution could be a homebrew applescript to do this, so this is my new sideproject.
This would bring the number of applescripts deeply embedded into my workflow up to 4. I have these already:
- Take current mail, copy content to evernote with tags, then archive mail in archive folder.
- Take current mail, copy content to TheHitList (todo manager), then archive in archive folder.
- Tweet this via launchbar. Tweets to twitter with tinyurling and other niceties.
It's a geeky delight to be able to cut corners with these little scripts. Every time I invoke them, from a snow leopard service or from launchbar, smily wrinkles form around my blue eyes.
A simpler autofocused productivity system
Autofocus gives you a simple list and easy fun rules to guide your proces
I recently read about this system by Mark Forster. Autofocus is a todolist system based on simple rules, and an in-built trust in your own innate ability to sense the right thing to do right now.
The autofocus system will appeal to people with a fondness for paperbased systems, and particularly the Moleskine Crowd.
Here's how Mark Forster describes it himself:
1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them.
2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you.
3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so
4. Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it
5. Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out
6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process
7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items.
8. Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.
I like several things about the autofocus system:
1. it's compact
I love to be able to walk around with my system all the time. Capturing ideas depends on this. I must admit that my Iphone with Omnifocus is used a lot less, than I had imagined. My test-run of autofocus had me capture more stuff, and remembering more as well.
2. it's simple
It's not complicated. I tend to lose my perspective when everything is sorted in projects and contexts. Especially the context part of GTD makes less sense to me than ever. I don't really need anything besides @work and @home. Autofocus urges to have two lists. One for work and one for private stuff.
3. it gets rid of old todo-list garbage
The idea of dismissing old items when you look at a page without anything standing appeals to me a lot. The thing I get rid of this way, is the non-doable things, that seems to creep into every todo-list I make. In autofocus you highlight it, and then someday later you can review these dismissed items and totally forget them, put them on a someday/maybe list og or re-enter them in another form.
4. it's fast!
You can do this really fast. With 22 lines per page, you can quickly skim a page. Adding new items is lightning fast. And since you never grow your list to more than 10-15 pages, findign something is actually quite simple.
5. it's in a moleskine
Well... you gotta love a moleskine. I love touching them. I love carrying them. I love looking at them. Well... maybe it's just me :)
Anyways... that's it. A simple analouge system that you can check out at the blog of Mark Forster. The decribtion of the system is a mere 6 pages in the printer. So go ahead read about it. I have been using it for my home stuff for a week now, and I'm pretty happy. I am considering moving my someday/maybe lists into Taskpaper, but that's another story.
Oh... by the way... drawing on the top was made with wonderful children focused drawing app: Doozla.
- Jens Poder
Iphone Omnifocus: A quick review
So, at last I got my Iphone and Omnifocus, and thus the possibility to have one system for all my todo and GTD needs across platforms.
Overall, Omnifocus is very nice. It does everything you want it to do. It syncs with my mac through mobileme, and that is the killer value I wanted. One system to rule it all...
But it has a couple of problems, that I find annoying, especially considering the price. It is among the most expensive Iphone apps.
It's still in beta! You are actually participating in Omnigroups development phase. This means you're risking your vital data. I would be in deep trouble, should I loose my todo-data. This has happened to some users! So beware! Daily builds and upgrades is part of the iphone omnifocus experience.
It's rather slow! When opening, it loads everything, and it really takes quite a long time. I tend to leave Omnifocus running when putting my iphone to sleep. This lets me start my iphone in omnifocus and capture stuff to the inbox faster. I would love a quick fast capture app, to put stuff into the inbox, without loading and syncing and whatnot. Speed is of the essence, when you want to capture something.
Mobileme syncronization is expensive. I'm not a big mobileme fan. In my view it's just a pricey bundling of services pioneered by others. It's the one product category where Apple isn't innovating. So I would love a simple way to sync my data without the mobileme webdav. Perhaps some of you out there have ideas.
All in all, it works. But it isn't the power-experience you have come to expect from the makers of OmniOutliner, OmniGraphle and OmniFocus for mac. It works. But it didn't blow me away.
- Jens Poder
Omnifocus for Iphone preview at 43folders
Oh boy... I'm looking forward to this. OmniFocus for the Iphone. Merlin Mann has the details
- Jens Poder
Start saving for an Iphone – OmniFocus is coming to Iphone
At last I have found a reason to start saving up for an Iphone! , my favourite todo-manager for mac, is building on a version for the Jesusphone! They said so themselves in the latest upgrade version document.
As some of you know, I frequently use stuff I have an irrational craving for as rewards in complicated weekly review reward-schemes. Read about my quest for a semi-pro coffee-grinder if you want to know how I do it.
Since I switched jobs my review routines have been falling apart. So it's time for another round of "buy yourself something remarkable in exchange for good GTD behaviour!"
So something remarkable has to be:
- Expensive
- Something I have an irrational desire to get
- Something I wouldn't buy otherwise
I dare you to come up with something that suits this description better than an Iphone!
The Iphone version of OmniFocus will be released in june. So soon. I better be a good weekly reviewer.
- Jens Poder
A clutterless table for your peace of mind
Danish furniture maker Holmris Hansen has launched this cool table. MILK is designed to remove all cable clutter from your view, and offers a lot of discrete places to store stuff as well.
Check it out here: http://www.milk.dk
- Jens Poder
Questionating: Making power decisions with Questions
A question is a powerful thing. It guides us to find the relevant answers. And knowing what questions to ask is a skill that can earn you a lot of money as a consultant.
A new batch of ChangeThis presentations have been released and one of these is "Questionating" by Corinne Miller.
Questionating is a process to develop, use and improve QuestionBanks. QuestionBanks are organized collections of thought-provoking questions, conveying expert—as well as diverse—thinking on a particular topic to inspire innovative solutions. QuestionBanks can be used anywhere decisions need to be made: new products and services, leadership, meeting and event planning, sales and marketing, strategic planning, etc.
Building a Questionbank is a 4 step proces:
- Identify question sources: Where can I find questions relevant to my goal
- Collect questions: For example; write to 30 project managers and ask them what to ask before you start your project.
- Sort
- Refine: When you have used your questions a couple of times, then cut out the non-effective questions, to get to the core selection of important questions.
I really like this approach. I reminds me of the zen-idea of starting with a beginners mind. I will try this out soon.
- Jens Poder
Fast and Funky brainstorming with Bubbl.us (and a neat trick)
I Mindmap all the time! I use it for brainstorming, for outlining presentations and for structuring the complex clouds of knowledge swirling around in my messy head. Sometimes I do it the old school way, markers on paper, but I also like to do it on computer.
Changing my computer platform to a MAC has rendered my existing license on Mindjets Mind Manager software useless (UPDATE: Mindjet wrote to me yesterday and told me that they actualy would let customers switch from Windows to MAC for free!). Instead, I have been trying out some free online mindmapping tools, and the one that has caught attention is a cute little one called bubbl.us.
Nice graphics and Super Fast
The cute thing about Bubbl.us is of course the graphics. I love cute, simple, “hug me” graphics, with low level of complexity in the user interface. And Bubbl.us certainly delivers on this.
Every idea has it’s own little cute glassy round-edged box. If you delete one it dissappears with a little animated explosion and a pow-sound. That’s the sort of thing that makes smiley wrinkles around my eyes.
It’s very simple to drag and drop to reposition ideas, and you can change the color of boxes.
Making new idea bubbles is very fast. As you type you just hist ENTER or TAB to start typing in a new box. This can be quite confusing, but it certainly lets you produce a lot of idea-nodes in a short time. Great for brainstorming.
I get a lot Ideas into Bubbl.us quite fast, but the result tend be a bit messy. But you can rearrange them later.
They should though consider supporting a wider range of keyboard shorts. Navigating around your mindmap with the arrows and being able to delete nodes would be nice.
I use the mouse a lot when I use Bubbl.us.
Save mindmaps online and share
You save your maps online. This means you can reach them from any computer, and you can share them with friend to do collaborative maps. You can also get a piece of code to embed it in your blog.
This is standard web2.0 features, but I haven’t really found much use for it. My mindmaps tend to be pretty personal and not very easy to share.
Compared to Applications
Compared to an application like Mindjet Mindmanager, there’s a lot of features Bubbl.us doesn’t provide.
This isn’t necessarily a big problem. A lot of features can really be a mixed blessing for an app, but there’s range of tasks that Mind Manager does that won’t be effective with Bubbl.us.
- Outlining and exporting to Word
- Handling tasks
- Very big and complex maps. Bubbl.us has a limitation in the screen-real estate. Also hierarchies between things tend to be les easy to visually comprehend
And then there’s the keyboard interface. The basic keyboard navigation is much better in a rich application.
Great for Outlining & Brainstorming
What Bubbl.us is really suited for is brainstorming and outlining.
An this is probably why I like it so much. It’s the way I start almost any creative project.
Just get a load of ideas of your mind into bubbl.us, sort them, and then switch to another app, and start producing your content.
PNG - export
One thing I really love about Bubbl.us is the export feature. You’ll find It in the lower right corner under the “menu”.
The specific feature I use is the “export to PNG file” feature. Why?
Well first of all… It’s just really convinient also to have an offline copy lying on your desktop to instantly check out.
But on top of this Bubbl.us exports your map as a beautiful PNG with a transparent background. This means, that you can use it on top of other pictures.
If I need to make an illustration for Powerpoint or Keynote, this feature will let me put a mindmap on top of the background image or other images without. This is really cool. Check it out here:
Conclusion
So all in all I’ll really recommend Bubbl-us as an online mindmapping tool for fast creative brainstormy mindmapping.
It’s not the most tooled-up mindmapper out there. My old favourite Mindmanager from Mindjet.com certainly has a lot more bells and whistles.
But the point is… most of the time these features aren’t really needed, and then they just get in the way.
Happy mindmapping.
- Jens Poder
Related links:
- Mindmeister.com - another online mindmapper. Resembles Mind Manager from Mindjet a lot. Has a couple of cool dashboard widget you can download.
- Mindomo.com - Also a Mind Manager wannabee like Mindmeister.
- How to make a mindmap - Introduction to the technique by mindmap-inventor Tony Buzan
- Mindmap Ressources Compiled - By Diyplanner; a long list of mindmapping ressources.
Tags: mindmapping, bubbl.us, tools, creativity
Moving to MAC – Overcoming Video Worries
I had quite a shock when I loaded all my old videos from my digital cameras unto my brand new Macbook Pro. Video Nirvana here I come, I thought, launching Imovie... and then... nothing.
All my precious videos of the kids taking their first steps and playing and having their birthdays, they DID NOT WORK! This wasn't video nirvana. It was video hell!
And this brings to part three of moving to MAC posts. How to handle all your video when you're used to a world of DivX, AVI and Mpeg file-formats.
VLC Player:
Just to calm your nerves, start by downloading this wonderful player. VLC Player. It'll play almost anything video on your mac.
Perian:
But to get the most of video on your MAC you'd like to be able to watch it in the native player Quicktime. Only then will you able to preview video using Leopards quicklook feature, which actually is quite nice.
Download and install Perian. A busload of codecs for your Quicktime player, that'll let it handle almost all formats without problems.
Flip4mac WMV Player
When using websites that embeds Windows Media (those who still do) this is a nice little feature, that let your browser and Quicktime handle windows media.
MPEG Streamclip:
Finally to be able to use Imovie to edit all your wonderfull toddler-shots, you'll need a program to convert them into .mov files. Well luckily we have MPEG Streamclip that'll let you convert your AVI's and MPEG's and DIVX's into MAC's native quicktime-movie format. Then you can open Imovie, and start editing.
And that's all you need to solve your video worries on the MAC.
- Jens Poder
Tags: MAC, video, Divx, conversion, avi