The Omnigroup is testing deeper and more complete automation for OmniFocus on iOS. From their forum:
So we took this a step further, and added support for copying projects from OmniFocus as TaskPaper text and pasting them back into OmniFocus as TaskPaper text. And then another step further, creating an Editorial workflow. This Workflow accepts TaskPaper text with placeholder tokens and prompts for you to enter final values, then creates a project in OmniFocus 2.
I’ve dropped a few hints about using the iOS and Mac app Copied.app (that’s some brutal SEO) but I’ve never really explained what I mean.
Simple shortcut expansion is great when you have two key restrictions:
A memorable system of shortcuts A small collection of shortcuts I’ve discovered weaknesses in my systems for shortcut expansion as my collection grows. I just can’t remember all of them. Even worse, accidental triggers eliminate all of the efficiency gains for shortcuts.
I dislike wading into battles of opinion. While I may be cranky, I’m not all that self-important. But I’ve recommended the Mac and iOS app TextExpander many, many times and feel like I’ve endorsed it enough that I now have an obligation to all the people that listened to me, even if I don’t want it.
I recommend Dr. Drang’s post and the latest Back to Work episode for additional opinions from similarly invested nerds.
I can’t pass up a good article about Drafts. Tim Nahumck has a thorough discussion of how he uses Drafts for iOS.
I found this article to be a good summary of what’s going on with the FBI and their inept bungling. If true, it’d be pretty funny that Issa was more technically savy than the FBI.
But even with all of this, it’s still dependent on human frailty:
More importantly, this technique wouldn’t work at all had Farook used a complex alphanumeric passcode. The weak link in all of this has been Farook and his poor choice of security.
Calca is one of my favorite calculators for iOS, Mac, and Windows. Calca for iOS just updated with function graphing. Just like the desktop versions (see this link for more info), the graphs on iOS are pretty and functional. Calca is like the Markdown of math. I just type notes, numbers and equations. Calca does the hard stuff.
The iOS version is currently free but has a new patronage option through in-app purchase.
Finally, A.I. is doing some real work.
Computer science researchers from the University of Rochester have developed an app for health departments that uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to identify food poisoning-related tweets, connect them to restaurants using geotagging and identify likely hot spots.
A secondary benefit is that you’ll also know exactly where a Chipotle is without opening Yelp or Foursquare. In all seriousness, I’d love to see either of those services adopt this sort of metric.
From Serenity Caldwell, comes this beautifully drawn review of the Apple Pencil.
We have an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil. In my opinion, the best thing about the iPad Pro is the Pencil. It’s a wonderful device for creating art. I love to doodle and fiddle with the Pencil. It’s also where my daughter prefers to practice spelling. Maybe it’s the novelty, but I’m all for any device that makes homework more fun.
On my Mac, I’m a pretty big fan of Napkin and Acorn for annotating, cropping, and redacting images. They have all of the tools in one place and they all work well together. Napkin is easy to use but Acorn has real layers and loads more control.
While there’s a wealth of options on the Mac for image annotation, there are very few complete options on iOS. PointOut is wonderful for creating magnifier callouts but not much else.
A huge update to iThoughts for Mac and iOS is out today. We now get new map layouts, Scapple import, and complex relationship maps.
The new relationship maps are quite nice looking and have a lot of formatting options. There’s a very good description of the feature on the iThoughts Web site.
I’m just learning the value of summary and relationship maps but I already love the control that iThoughts provides over the details.
