tech ronin

I'm Using MegaPhone to edit iPod touch and iPhone Notes on my Mac

MegaPhone used to be iPhoneDrive. MegaPhone 1.5, from Ecamm Network, finally lets you edit notes. There is a large caveat which is that it seems to need to reboot your iPhone or touch every time you edit an individual note. That's pretty inconvenient should you need to edit lots of notes. Each time you edit a note, prepare to wait 30 seconds or so while your device reboots.

Editing notes and pasting content from your Mac does work and that's the main thing for now. One interesting little extra. As soon as you are done editing notes or adding them by dragging or by using the copy to iPod (or iPhone) command, you can eject your iPhone or touch and you've got your new and newly edited notes with you.

The content you paste in will retain its font, color and style information. This means you can see color and different fonts and such in your iPhone or iPod touch notes.

You can copy PDF, RTF, RTFD and Word documents in as individual notes. Graphics will not make it over, RTFD and PDFs convert to RTF minus any graphics. I'm good with that. Graphics would be nice but that's not essential.

Thanks Ecamm!

Brad Isaac is doing some great blogging lately

Brad Isaac is blogging up a storm over at Achieve-IT!. I relate to Brad because he is so sincere and straight-forward. And that's not to say he isn't smart. He does excellent but not fancy or showy pieces of importance.

I am the ambitious sort myself, so I really appreciate his ideas about achieving your goals and other salutary bits of life wisdom. This is meat and potatoes. With lots of interesting meat.

His latest post today is called Anticipate Attacks as You Work on Your Goal. If you are working on a goal, you'll love this, his own personal story with an inspirational ending that will add something worthwhile to your day.

Brad has his own goal software product that I would check out if I used a Pocket PC. If this sounds interesting, go over to his page and try out a few of Brad's Best-of Achieve-IT! posts listed at the upper right on his front-page.

If you are afraid you've been surfing too much and don't have time for one more quick read, this post of Brad's might be the perfect thing for you: 7 Ideas to Help Prevent Mindless Surfing.

Technorati Tags: goals, GTD, weblogs

Two *New* Blogs I'm Enjoying

Tonight while browsing the web I found a blog called: The Wandering Novelist's Blog. The sub-title is: How Do You Write a Novel? I Guess I'm about to Find Out. This 22-year-old English chap decided on New Year's Eve to go for it and try to write a novel. Maybe I'm just a sucker for ne'er-do-wells but I find his 8 or so posts to be the beginning of an interesting story.

My second new blog favorite is PigPog | Creativity Anywhere. PigPog is a two-person blog whose authors are Michael and Sam. They are a couple and just this last week, Michael proposed and Sam accepted online. I know, now I'm really looking bad - I'm afraid I really look like a voyeur. Whatever, maybe that's normal human behavior - did you ever hear of People Magazine?

So, back to PigPog. The GTDers in my readership will probably recognize PigPog. Michael has written a lot about GTD including his very own PigPog Method. I enjoy the GTD posts as well as those on various writing and drawing implements. The honesty here is as close to 100% as I've seen. Oh, and Michael just recently quit his job and is trying to make enough money from blogging to avoid going back to a real job.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, GTD, Writing, Writing a Novel

Moleskine vs. Treo 650, from an Amateur Writer's Point of View

Pocket Moleskine - Great Capture Device

• No additional noise, stimulation from it.
• Satisfying writing experience. Analog - texture of paper, feel of pen when writing letters or drawing.
• Much quicker startup and shutdown for quick notes.
• Higher resolution.
• More flexible than any software can allow.
• Permanent. Unless written in pencil and still pretty durable.
• Can easily write at all angles. Best free-form drawing for simple stuff that doesn't have to look precise. Great capture device that way and also great for a quick sketch of something to show what you mean while talking with someone.
• Improves your handwriting if you try.
• Improves your drawing and sketching if you try.
• Cheap in relatively small quantities which is what most people use.
• Not intimidating - or at least not compared to PDA.
• No learning curve.
• Pocket in the back comes in handy.
• Low maintenance. No batteries or outlet required!

Treo 650 - Great Pocket Computer with Phone Capabilities

• A portable computer that is comfortable in your hand.
• Stimulating, may cause eye fatigue compared to paper.
• Digital means content can be transferred and repurposed without re-entry Can bring along a lot of reference material - but it is typically a bit of a hassle to get that stuff on there from your computer. Knowing what to bring and refreshing the content is an issue.
• Can surf for information with things like Wikipedia, Web, RSS reader Handwriting recognition not so great.
• Not as fast or comfortable to record information.
• Delicate due to electrical nature - be careful about spilling on this or dropping it.
• Extra functions like voice recording and camera are nice.
• Substantial learning curve.
• High maintenance, needs regular charging.

I carry both. My Treo is my cell phone, so I almost always need it with me. Sometimes I wish I had a small cell phone that was just good at being a phone, though. I think if I were a heavy phone user, I might use something that excelled as a phone. No QWERTY, no small numbers. I've yet to master using other functions while I'm on the phone because I don't want to interrupt the call. That's too bad.

Mobile Moleskines. Most of the time when I leave my home/office I have a large moleskine if I'm driving or a pocket moleskine if I'm on foot. If I am just walking in a loop and have no plans to go anywhere else, I bring my black Volant pocket Moleskine which is more comfortable in my pocket. I'm not expecting to write much and only occasionally do. Sometimes I limit myself to an index card for those loops. Depends on how long the loop is and what's handy that minute.

Treo. The Treo QWERTY is very nice in the occasional situation where I need to type out an email of any significant length and that happens at times. I like to check my email when I'm out because I randomly get big ticket software orders which I like to fulfill ASAP.

For all its fantastic modern swiss army knife features, my Treo doesn't inspire me to write. Although, there's one case that isn't true -- my web connection might provide me with stimulus to write. But just sitting there, it is inspiration neutral. If I need to record something and it is just a snippet, I type it in. I use it for: calling of course, looking up and recording phone numbers, writing down references such as books or movies I want to check out, reading the occasional ebook, reading RSS feeds, looking things up on Wikipedia or googling including using google maps to see where I am or to find something when I'm on the move. Lots of good stuff.

My Moleskines. Here's where a lot of my current writing is. It's an excellent, enjoyable tool for writing ideas and notes and drawings. And sketching if I were so inclined. Space and pockets are in short supply, so we tend to want to address multiple needs with the same tool, but if I had my way, I would just write in my moleskine. I would write about projects perhaps and write reminders, but I wouldn't convert my special writing object into a to do list or GTD machine. But, that's just me.

The Future. I'm hoping I won't have to choose. The Treo and its offspring will only get better. I guess when a PDA/Communicator starts feeling and looking like paper, the death knell of the moleskine and its offspring will sound. But meanwhile, I'll hunt for pocket space and enjoy the luxury of having both.

Technorati Tags: GTD, moleskine, notebooks, Treo, Treo 650, Writing

Moleskine Update

I've been especially enjoying my Moleskine notebooks lately. Maybe it is the holidays with that little bit of extra time for contemplation and writing. (No, this isn't my work. It's the dazzling work of Lisa Laughy at Ninth Wave Designs.)

I like reading moleskine stories, learning moleskine hacks and seeing what people are doing with them. Evidence of the Moleskine phenomenon is spread all over the Web, but places like moleskinerie, moleskinerie's flickr community, the moleskine squidoo pages (moleskinerie and moleskine resources) conveniently bring all this activity together where it's easy to observe.

Size Preferences. I have a strong preference for the large notebook over the pocket-sized version. It gives me room to create. My hand-writing isn't particularly small. To me, the large size moleskine notebook is a real prize. But, of course, I carry a pocket moleskine when I don't have room for a large one.

My Favorite Moleskine format. This is a hard one. I've only gradually learned how much different the moleskines are from one another. The sketchbook, with its exquisitely thick and smooth 100 pages, is the Rolls-Royce in the Moleskine line. I've used my pocket and large sketchbooks occasionally, but often feel that I'm sullying the pages with inadequate writings and drawings. Even though I used to draw quite a bit as a child, as an adult, my drawing is confined to doodling and simple diagrams. The squared journal feels too busy, although it is handy for drawing neat diagrams. The simple, blank notebook is too free-form -- I like my lines to be straight. So, for me, the simple ruled notebook with its 240 pages is best. It represents a perfect compromise for writing notes and ideas.

Clairefontaine too. If I had never written in a Clairefontaine wirebound notebook, I would be totally satisfied with my ruled Moleskine. The frictionless Clairefontaine paper is bright white and not quite rustic enough to match the moleskine brand, but it sure is fun to write on! So, I have to confess that I also use Clairefontaine's large, vertical, wirebound note pads for my note-taking with clients.

Moleskine vs. Index Cards and Books. I've found that I can read my moleskine rather than read a book when I have a few moments. This works especially well when I've already entered a fair bit of content into my skine. I have about seven or eight moleskines - pocket or large - circulating at any one time, so that's enough content to make the reading interesting. By alternating moleskines from time to time and quickly transferring urgent items to do lists and occasionally transferring content to my computer-based reference materials, it is stimulating and workable. And, of course, you can stick a few index cards in the back pocket for to do items, URLs and phone numbers.

Annotations and Additions. I like to bring four pens with me: black, blue and red 1.0 mm Uni-Ball Jet Stream plus a Bic yellow highlighter. This lets me annotate my moleskine entries or write new ones or improve organization by making entries to the table of contents pages. I find that my own previous ideas and notes often lead me to other thoughts. This way I further develop my thinking. The ability to annotate is a key advantage to paper and pen(cil). The red, blue and highlighter give me options. Writing notes in books while I read and annotating them is the same thing. It's just that here I'm furthering my own thinking and writing. That's what these books are all about.

Spreading the Love. It's tempting to dedicate whole moleskines to particular topics of importance like you might do with 3-ring binders. But, I've found that impractical. Too many moleskines to lug around. What does work is to have multiple books strategically located in places like (1) my home office desk, (2) my livingroom, (3) my nightstand, (4) my backpack, (5) the passenger seat in my car.

Pencils. Like I said earlier, I'm not an artist. At least not yet. Maybe never. But, I was readin' on the Net about drawing people and that sounded interesting. So, I did a little research on pencils. Wow! Once again, the Net has a lot to offer. Start at Pencil Revolution and go from there. The latest hot pencil seems to be the California Republic Palomino. At least, the aforementioned, Lisa Laughy, thinks so. From what I read, at least, these pencils might very well convert one from pen to pencil. They are available at the Pencil World Creativity Store on eBay and at Ninth Wave Designs.

Technorati Tags: clairefontaine, GTD, knowledgework, moleskine, notebooks, stamps

Recommending a Million Monkeys Typing

I've been reading A Million Monkeys Typing for a couple years now and every so often, I am just downright impressed. In fact, if the subject he writes about interests me the least bit, I can be virtually guaranteed to be greatly informed and entertained by his rich, interesting and well-crafted posts.

Douglas Johnston's so called random musings are often what I wish I would have written. My posts tend to be more often off the cuff thoughts only partially formed and thought through. His posts focus my mind and make me feel - well-informed. Kind of like an in-depth New York Times article but more authentic, casual and personal. And self-effacing. Which is so appreciated. I'm not diminished in the process – only enriched and stimulated in a salutary way.

You gotta bookmark this guy or subscribe if you like some of the subjects I cover here. You'll find less gadgets by far even though he's a technical kind of guy. And more and better of the best of what I've done so far.

One more thing, I can't leave the topic of Mr. Johnston without also pointing you to his cool D*I*Y Planner done with the same level of care. It's a planner system with custom pages. I believe he doesn't charge for his templates either. If you are a designer, you can take his templates and modify them if you like to your aesthetic taste. If you are not a designer, you might still like to customize the templates to meet your own particular needs.

Technorati Tags: DIY Planner, knowledgework, moleskine, Macintosh, GTD

KGTD Rocks

While perusing 43 Folders, I stumbled across Merlin Mann's comments and excellent review of the KGTD project that attempts to resolve one of the key conflicts in the Getting Things Done methodology. How to elegantly maintain and synchronize actions by project and actions by context.

Ethan Schoonover is something special. He's done some magic with Applescript that makes it into a GTD machine - including syncing with iCal. The quality of this .69 beta is amazing.

Of course, anything that operates in OmniOutliner Professional is all right by me. If you like lists and you like aesthetics, you are going to love this. Beautiful!

Technorati Tags: GTD, iCal, MissingSync, OmniOutlinerPro, Tiger, Treo650

Scored a couple Moleskine Reporter's today

I decided today to make a little search to see if I could find a vertically-oriented Moleskine Reporter. I first went to my local Barnes & Noble which carries Moleskine, but no luck. I did find the new A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink, though. I've been looking forward to this book for months. I'm sure I'll enjoy it. I could have saved some bucks by getting it at Amazon but couldn't resist - and at least I get B&N's 10% member discount.

So then it was on to my local high-end stationery store, Ideal Stationer's in Mill Valley's Strawberry district. I found their Moleskine section and thought they didn't have any. But then I looked closer and found that they indeed had both the pocket-sized and the larger reporter moleskines! Yay! I first got greedy and wanted to get two of each but calmed down enough to realize that I should test them out to see how well I like them before stocking up. They look really cool. That's part of the problem. Hard to resist.

I took my pocket reporter on my afternoon walk down to downtown Mill Valley to the Peet's Coffee & Tea and back. Since I don't tend to wear ultrabaggy jeans, the fit in my back pocket was a little snug. OK. But not ideal. But then, jeans really don't work very well to carry all my gadgets around. I've been using my iPod shuffle for music and I do wear it around my neck quite frequently - one more place to carry something. Cargo pants are really the way to go. I like my new black jeans from the Gap, though, so I might experiment with a little black leather fanny pack and see how that goes.

So, back to my Moleskines. Part of it is just the novelty. The new form factor is just more unusual and therefore cool. It is definitely a different feeling. More casual. More mobile. Less of a diary or journal kind of feeling. I love the way they look. Now it's just a matter of seeing how well they do in practice.

One last little thing. While at Ideal, I bought some clear Avery 5667 laser labels - 4 across and 80 to a page. I played around and got the format just right in FileMaker which has that label as one of the automatic format label choices.

I picked out 80 of my most frequently used contacts - friends, healthcare, hair salon, clients and colleagues and printed them. Then I pasted them into a pocket Moleskine address book. Looks great! I decided I want to have a phonebook that doesn't require a computer to get to. Sometimes I need a number and the computer is asleep. Then there are power outages. I plan to also paste these little addresses (a shorter list of them - maybe 20 - into my regular moleskines so I'll have my most used numbers handy.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, GTD, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink, labels, mobility

OmniOutliner Pro is so Sweet

Just upgraded to OmniOutliner Pro (OOP) last night. It's to die for. It's pretty well agreed that OmniGroup has the best OS X UI going. That's for sure. This could be the To Do List tool that works for me. It's so enjoyable to use. Remember how David Allen says that making GTD fun is half the battle?

Most of the cool stuff is also in the non Pro version but I thought I might want to export an outline to HTML at some point, and Pro does that really well. The upgrade is $50. That hurt a little but wow!

Outliner guru, Ted Goranson of About This Particular Outliner, loves OOP's UI and strong support of named styles for outline levels [Update: Named styles can be used and edited in OO but can only be created in OOP]. Me too. Every time I pop out at level 2, I get the style that I want. And I can change it if I need an exception. Here's what Ted says about the fabulous UI:

All this is wrapped in the Omni Group’s usual attention to user interface design. I think these guys are the leaders in Mac user interface expertise: their applications just feel more Mac-like than Apple’s. In this case, there’s all sorts of new user feedback: outline manipulation is, after all, a tactile experience. Like your first dip into Aqua, some of the indicators may seem garish at first, but the impression passes.

OOP has Folded Editing and a drawer that shows your main outline sections so you can show and not show pieces of your outline at will.

There's audio recording anywhere in your outline - little audio blurbs. Done to perfection. You click the record button and a little cute recording button appears in your outline where you are clicked an immediately starts in record mode. Just say something and click when done. Cool!

I don't show them in my screen shot, but OOP supports columns which will come in handy for sorting and grouping stuff for various GTD purposes.

There are a million outliners out there, but OmniOutliner Pro is spectacular.

Technorati Tags: OmniOutliner, OmniOutliner Pro, Outlining, Macintosh, Ted Goranson, GTD

43 Things Gets it - It's the Content Baby!

Finally, a social networking site that helps me for a change. It helps me manage and use my content. I have four blogs as many of you know. So, I'm into content. If I write things at 43 Things, some of them would be good posts to one or another of my blogs. So, I've registered my two more general interest blogs: this one and Janet's Genealogy Blog at 43 Things and when ever I make an entry over there, I can simply pick one of my blogs and hit the *Add this entry* button to do double-duty and get some blogging in.

Tonight I added a new goal: Take at least 1 genealogy research trip this year. And, then I posted a little entry about the trip I've got in mind. When it came time to hit the save button, I saw the blog selection button and decided to post to my genealogy blog. What a concept. That was the easiest thing I ever did!

Then, I fired up Marsedit to do some fine-tuning using some blockquote formatting, added more thoughts to the post and added a link to a book. I posted the edit there. Then I copied part of my post back to my entry in 43 Things. Cool!!!! This is exactly the kind of surpassing the SNS islands trick that we've been begging for.

I remember about a year ago writing to Ryze tech support asking them for a feature that would help me see my own guestbook posts and my forum posts. Nope!

43 Things lists all your most recent entries at the bottom of your *things* list. And there's a *See All of Janet Tokerud's entries* link handy. I want to see my own entries and if someone writes something interesting, I might just want to see theres.

And, a couple days ago I discovered how dead easy it was to get Flickr photos up on my 43 Things page. Thanks 43 Things for doing it right for a change!

And did I mention that it's got RSS feeds. Another content-savvy feature. As I said before, 43 Things rocks!