The future is smudged. Multi-touch is rapidly becoming the dominant form of UI interaction and an unfortunate side effect is the ever present finger smudge. A low-tech solution is to carry around a microfiber cloth. However, sometimes they can be hard to keep track of or get buried at the bottom of a messenger bag. That’s where the Carson Stuff-It microfiber cloth comes in handy. It can be had for about $4 on Amazon and is much better than carrying around a stray cloth.
David Sparks' book is officially official. I’ve had mine for about a week and it’s great. If you thought paper books were dead, this book proves otherwise. It’s printed on high-quality paper with full color images. There are QR Codes to look-up any apps he mentions. Even if you’re Scott Forstall, get the book just for the high-quality content. I plan to give this as a gift to several people this holiday.
Beer Tracking Trilogy Episode 4
See this post for the introduction and ground rules
Bento I started this project in Bento. A couple of years ago, I created a Bento database for cataloging beers I drank. The purpose was to know what to buy again, and what to avoid at all costs. Bento worked moderately well but had some frustrating rough edges.
Bento on the Mac has two different views into the data.
The Trilogy This is the opening crawl to a trilogy. Like any good trilogy, it will begin with episode 4 and never, ever speak of episodes 1–3.
The trilogy will describe a quest to find the ideal solution for curating my collection of micro-brewery beers. The quest spans several suites of applications: Bento, OmniOutliner and iWork Numbers. I’ve learned a lot about how I can use these tools and I hope someone else gets something out of this series.
Macworld reviewed Moom from Many Tricks software back in April. They gave it a good rating and I figured for $5 it was worth a try. I was already using BetterTouchTool and Keyboard Maestro to move windows from the keyboard but I thought the design was interesting. I've been using Moom for several months and I am very happy with the features, stability and ease of use.
Moom has a unique interface as window management applications go.
I work on a windows machine during the day and generally connect to a half dozen unix and windows machines throughout. I toil away in front of my monitor for many hours without direct sunlight. Needless to say, I do everything I can to lessen the irritation of working on Windows. To that end, I’ve been using the Das Keyboard for about 18 months.
I really like the feel of the keyboard and appreciate the heft of the object.
Ken Case schooled me about OmniOutliner for iPad so I updated my last review. At least we both agree that we can't wait for better file syncing in iOS5. Oh yeah, and he confirms that it is coming for OmniOutliner!
David Chartier tooted the other day about someone asking for a promo code:
Entire email: "Do you have a promo code?" Translation: "I have a site and write 'stuff' on it so I don't have to pay for software." Rudeness and sense of entitlement of the emailer aside, something struck me. I don’t want to see reviews from people that get promo codes. I want a review based on the same decision making process that real users follow.
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.
It’s been 90 days since OmniOutliner (a.k.a. OO) for iPad was released. You can find my initial impressions here. One thing about “initial impressions” posts is that they only scratch the surface of a complex app. My post was as much about my expectations as my actual usage. But I would argue that any “review” that is posted within a couple of days of the product release has the same slant.
