When I click my keyfob to lock my car
I sometimes imagine that I'm an cool-as-ice action hero detonating a bomb
Of course, on seeing this picture, my wife surmised that I must be an 80's action hero. You know, due to the short shorts and the Schwarzeneggerian haircut.
Another day, another convoluted workflow to accomplish something simple.. .
I wrote in my last post about how I was using Doit.im as my GTD (Getting Things Done) app. It might be less feature-rich than Omnifocus but it seems to do almost everything I need.
I say almost because Omnifocus does have one feature that I covet: The ability to use Siri to capture tasks. In other words, a person can trigger Siri and say "Pick up my pants" and that task will be added to Omnifocus. To do something similar in Doit.im I need to open the app, create a quick task (very easy - just swipe down), click the microphone on the keyboard, and dictate my task. Since I'm often thinking of things I need to do while I'm driving I'm not comfortable with this many steps.
From their user forum it sounds like the nice folks at doit.im may be working on a solution to this, but I'm not sure when we'll see it.
While we wait for this to be built into the app there may be another [roundabout] solution. I learned today that IFTTT (IF This Then That) now has an iOS app that can use triggers from some of the native iPhone and iPad apps. The apps that can trigger events include Photos, Contacts, and, of interest to us, Reminders.
I took advantage of this to capture Doit.im tasks with Siri.
First, I decided to create a new Reminders list on my iPhone called "Do it". This can be done by opening up the Reminders app, clicking "Create New List...", and calling it "Do it".
You'll also need your Doit.im email mailbox. If you haven't used this already I'd recommend it - it let's you add tasks to your doit.im inbox via email. For example, when I get a statement from my daycare I have a rule set up in Gmail to forward it my task mailbox. It shows up in my inbox and I can process it as I see fit.
Your doit.im task mailbox can be found on their website or in within the app by going to settings -> account info. For this example let's say my address is nerd.ribuck@doitim.in.
Then, I downloaded the IFTTT app onto my iPhone. You can create a new recipe by clicking the mortar and pestle icon in the upper right corner. This will expose your recipes, and you can add a new one by pressing the "+" sign. For the trigger, scroll through the options until you find the Reminders app.
We'll want the option that says "New reminder added to list". The list we want is the one we created earlier, "Do it".
Note: you will probably have to "activate" the Reminders "Channel" to give the IFTTT app permission to access its content.
Next, we'll select our action. I'm going to use Gmail, so I'll make that selection and enter nerd.ribuck@doitim.in as the "To address".
Save the recipe.
I did make one little tweak at this point. Your task in doit.im is going to be the subject of the email that you're sending, and I want to keep that as simple as possible. I opened the recipe, clicked "edit recipe", and changed the subject from what it was to just "{{Title}}"
Now, I can grab my phone, trigger Siri, and say "Remind me to change my socks in my 'do it' list". IFTTT will see this and email the text to doit.im, which will add it to your inbox to be processed the next time you open the app.
So, it is a bit of a workaround, but I think it'll get the job done until DoIt comes up with a native solution.
I've implemented a loose Getting Things Done (GTD) method of task management, and it really is helping me keep my life in order. These days it makes sense to use our technology for GTD and there's a plethora of options to help you do that.
All the cool Mac users swoon over Omnifocus. Omnifocus sure seems great, although a bit pricey and complicated (neither of which I mind very much). The biggest issue I have with Omnifocus, however, is the fact that it's Mac and iOS only. I try to spend as much time as I can in the Apple universe, but for a big chunk of my day I'm using a PC and Android phone for work.
After trying a few apps I settled on Doit.im. I like the fact that it has apps for all the major mobile platforms and it has a nice web app for me to use in the office. From a GTD perspective is has all the things I need. I can quickly capture tasks, assign them to contexts, group them into projects, and create reminders and alerts. I can even create tasks by forwarding important emails to Doit.im.
There are definitely fuller-featured apps out there, but this one is scratching my itch.
Google acquired Waze earlier this month. I've played with a lot of the GPS / navigation apps on the iPhone and they all have their pros and cons. However, I discovered and wrote about Waze last summer and it has emerged as my favorite..
So how do I feel about Google buying Waze? There's always the concern that a big company will screw up the services they acquire, of course. However, if these two companies combine their strengths I think this could be a good thing for consumers.
This got me thinking. What would be my ideal app? I think it would be a hybrid of the most popular apps.
I'd take the search capabilities of Google. That's a no-brainer. In fact, this was the major weakness of Waze, and it's the thing that makes me the most excited about the collaboration of the two.
I'd also take Google's maps and driving directions. It's really the standard, and as Apple's well documented mapping problems demonstrate, you can't just pull mapping out of thin air.
I'd take the social aspects of Waze. Most of the major navigation apps try to provide some traffic data, but nothing beats the reporting in Waze: Speed traps, accidents, traffic slowdowns, detours - you name it. Adding all the Google users will only make this crowdsourcing better.
I would, however, add one social aspect of Twist. Twist is pretty much a one trick pony, but it has a nice trick - it lets people at your destination know how soon you're going to be there. Waze has tried to do something like this, largely via Facebook, but I like Twist better.
Of course, this feature would also really work well if it could be combined with the iPhone's Find My Friends app.
Despite how widely panned Apple's foray into mapping has been, I actually kind of like it. I haven't had any issues with navigation, but I know it IS an issue (that's getting better, but it's still an issue). However, it has a very nice aesthetic and, of course, it's nicely integrated into the operating system (read: Siri).
So, make me an app that combines all these features and I'll be happy.
Make sure it's easy to use though :)
I decided I wanted a quick easy way to keep track of my EyeDock business expenses. I don't have a lot of expenses, it's mostly just software utilities to help me work more efficiently. Accounting software can do this of course, or I could just keep a spreadsheet. However, I wanted something that would be even faster to add entries and reference, even from my phone.
I decided to just maintain a text folder in Dropbox listing my expenses. The text file could be viewed or appended to in any number of iOS text editors such as Elements or Byword.
However, to make things even easier, I once again made use of the Drafts app. Drafts allows you to quickly enter some text and append it to a Dropbox document, which will work well for our needs today. I wrote more about the Drafts app a while back so I won't dwell on its other features here.
To make a Dropbox action, click open the app and hit the settings icon (the gear). Scroll down to and click Dropbox Actions, then click the plus sign at the top to create a new action.
Give the action a name (I called mine EyeDock expenses), tell it the path to your text file. I have an EyeDock folder in Dropbox, and I decided to nest a 2013 folder in there so I can separate my expenses each year. The actual file name is expenses, and it's a text (.txt) file.
Setting up a Dropbox action in Drafts
Now, I can open up Drafts, type the date, the payee, the expense type, and the amount. When I'm through I click the EyeDock expense action I created and my text is appended to the expenses.txt file in Dropbox.
Entering text in Drafts and selecting the EyeDock expense action
However, this is still too much work for me (I'm lazy). I don't want to have to enter the date - my phone already knows the date, why can't it do it? I only need a few categories, and I don't want to have to type them in. This sounds like the perfect place for Textexpander. If you're unfamiliar with Textexpander, it essentially allows you to create system-wide text macros. So, if you're sick of typing in your address, you can assign a text trigger, such as ".address", and every time you type that it'll insert your address. The macros you make on the Mac can sync (via Dropbox) with your iOS device, which can come in very handy.
Textexpander got even more useful a while back when they added fill-in snippets. They describe fill in snippets like this:
You can add fill-in fields to a snippet to make it easy to create customized boilerplate text at the time you expand an abbreviation.
I made a fill in snippet to automatically enter today's date, a blank field to enter a payee, a list of expense types (software, advertising, hardware), and a blank to enter an amount. I set the trigger to be ".exp", for "expense".
It looks like this, if you're interested:
%m/%d/%y, %filltext:name=payee%, %fillpopup:name=type:default=software:advertising:hardware: %, $%filltext:name=amount%
So, I open Drafts, type ".exp", and it immediately takes me to the Textexpander fill-in. The date is already there, I type in my payee, select the type, and enter in an amount. I hit Done and return to Drafts. I hit the EyeDock Expense Dropbox action and I'm done.
Using a fill-in form in Textexpander
The output of the Textexpander fill-in snippet in Drafts
Opening the expenses.txt file in Dropbox I can see that the text was appended to the end of my document appropriately.
The text appended to the expenses.txt file in Dropbox
In this case I'm basically creating a no-frills ledger. I like working with a simple text file because it's easy to open, read, and append to. However, the file is essentially a comma separated volume, which means that I can at any time change the extension to .csv and open it up in a spreadsheet. This might be helpful at the end of the year if I want to quickly SUM the expenses column.
Next I'll show you how I enter expenses while using my laptop.
I downloaded the Drafts app to my iPhone quite a while ago, but it took me a while to get into the habit of using it. As time has passed I've started to incorporate it more and more into my workflow.
On the surface Drafts is incredibly simple. When you open the app you're presented with a blank screen that allows you to just start typing. So it's a notetaking app, you ask? Well, it can be, but it's so much more. After you've typed (or, better yet, dictated) your text, you can can take apply a large number of actions to it, such as emailing it, sending it out as a text message, a Facebook post or a Tweet, and a whole slew of other options.
So why use Drafts as opposed to the email app, text messaging app, the Facebook app, etc.? Well, if you can make using Drafts a habit, it's very fast. When you use the same interface every time you want to enter text you become very efficient. In addition, this app presents you with a cursor and a keyboard a split second after you open it. Contrast that to the Facebook app, where you have to open the program, find the "status" button, then wait for the compose screen to pop up. This actually doesn't take that long, but I find that every app I use is set up a little differently. The "compose" buttons are in different places in my Facebook app, my email app, my text messaging app, my Twitter client, my blogging app, etc.
In essence, I feel that Drafts reverses my writing process. In a good way. When I have a brilliant thought, I capture it first, then send it where it needs to go. Without Drafts, I find the place where the thought needs to go, then I compose it.
It doesn't end there, though. The newest versions of Drafts added the ability to pass text on to files in Dropbox and Evernote. With these additions, and the fact that it can be heavily customized, Drafts starts to become an automation tool.
In my next post I'll write up a little blurb about how I'm using Drafts to keep track of expenses.
While writing my recent post about Android development I meant to point out that big companies, such as Google, Yahoo, EA Sports, Zynga, etc can devote resources to developing on all platforms, whereas individual developers and small companies pretty much have to choose one platform or another.
However, it seems that even the big companies have issues with multi-platform development. For example, yesterday the BBC responded to a complaint that the British broadcaster prioritizes their iPhone app over the Android version. Their response? Yes, we do. And for logical reasons. Their inquiry found that:
It noted that developing for Android was different from developing for iOS; while iOS provides a relatively homogenous environment, Android is fragmented with almost 4000 devices from around 600 manufacturers," the report said.
This is the issue that really intimidates me. When I made the EyeDock iPhone app I had to design for one screen size, and I had to program for a couple versions of the OS. Eventually they made a larger iPhone screen, but you didn't necessarily have to change your app (I actually haven't yet). As time has gone by new versions of iOS have been released, one of which forced me to make some changes for my app to work. It was a pain, and I can't imagine programming for (and providing support for) thousands of devices, all with their little idiosyncrasies.
Android development is complicated and expensive, even for a big company. For an individual, especially one that spends most of his day looking at eyeballs, it's nearly impossible.
I made a little illustration for my son's third birthday. Overall I'm pretty happy with it...except for the face. I think I spent as much time working on that as I did on the whole rest of the picture.
Faces are so tough, and they have to be just perfect. If you draw something wrong on a truck, it's not that bad. If you screw up a face it just looks freaky.
I'm really in awe of people who can do this well.
