Tag Archives: apple

iPhone 3.0 Update Improves GTD Productivity Applications

The much publicized Apple iPhone 3.0 update was released around 1000 PDT yesterday.

I started my update as soon as I could and installed the latest version of the iPhone OS eagerly waiting to test out some of the new features. All very well and good.

Today, my two killer iPhone Apps, OmniFocus and Evernote both got upgraded to take advantage of the iPhone 3.0 features.

OmniFocus

OmniFocus version 1.5 for the iPhone has been released.

The main feature in this upgrade include integration of cut, copy, and paste features as well as utilizing the integrated maps.

OmniFocus iPhone

The full blog post for this latest version can be found at the OmniGroup Blog. The OmniFocus for iPhone product page is also worth checking out.

Evernote

Evernote version 3.0 for the iPhone brings some great new features all that are outlined at this Evernote Blog Post.

These improvements include better synchronization, no “Pending” Tab, Instant Groups, Advanced Searching, Way Better Audio, Landscape View and many bug fixes.

The great guys over at Evernote have made a nice little video of the latest features of 3.0.

This is a great time to own an iPhone if you are into productivity!

Thoughts, as usual are welcomed..

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 1st March 2009

The main event of this week was the arrival of my new shiny 17″ MacBook Pro.

To mark this event I thought I would take a break from the usual and provide five great links that help you when you come to upgrade your Mac and o not want to use the migration assistant.

Apologies in advance to Windows and Linux users as this is obviously a Mac specific post.

Even if you are not buying a new Mac, the bloated way Apple handles media may mean that you have to move your iTunes or iPhoto library to an external disk so these links contain gems of information.

Here are a collection of five links that I have found useful this week when migrating from my old MacBook Pro to my new MacBook Pro.

  • My first link for this week is the Apple Page covering the Migration Assistant. This is an amazing tool that I have used before that allows you to copy all of your settings from your Old Mac to your New Mac over a Firewire cable. Makes upgrading a dream if you are happy with the build of your old machine.
  • My second link is a link to a post from eHow about how to Migrate your Mac Email. The post shows you how to move your email as well as preserve your settings such as Smart Mailboxes and Mailbox Rules.
  • My third link is a link to an olf post from Merlin Mann that covers Some Handy Mail.app Smart Mailboxes. I used this post to recreate these mailboxes that fit in with Merlin’s Inbox Zero methodology.
  • My fourth link is a thread on the Apple Forums about how to move your iPhoto library. I copied the whole of my library to my new MacBook Pro and everything was preserved, just how it should be.
  • My fifth and last link for this week is a post from the iLounge about how to move your ITunes library. My iTunes library is 40GB and I have it on my new MacBook Pro but I am thinking of moving it to an external storage device so I can share it through the house and also conserve space on my MacBook HDD.

Wishing you all a productive week, as always!

Andrew..

My New MacBook Pro – How I Migrated

I have been quiet this week due to being very busy with work and also receiving my new 17″ MacBook Pro on Wednesday evening.

MacBook Pro

I am just about done with the migration and though I would share some of my findings for anybody wlse who is moving from an old Mac to a new one.

I could have used the Migration Assistant and sucked my old laptop to my new one. I used this when I rebuilt my old laptop and upgraded the hard drive and it worked amazingly. As my old laptop was three years old, and had been used to test a lot of software I decided to opt for the manual approach.

Being an organized person, my data was all organized under my Documents folder. This made it pretty easy to move my Documents to my NAS, and then to my new Mac preserving the same structure as I had before.

I did a bit of pruning before the copy and got rid of old information that I no longer needed. I also archived some of it off to DVDs to go into the Someday/Maybe drawer that I use to good effect.

The data was the easy part. I then had to migrate Mail and all my media such as my iPhoto Library, Aperture Library, and my iTunes Library.

Let’s start with the media. I did expect problems when moving my media due to the customizations that I have done to my media including tagging etc. Well, to my surpirse, I copied my Aperture and iPhoto libraries to my new machine and they all worked fine. I then deauthorized my old laptop from within iTunes, copied the iTunes folder to my new laptop and all went smooth.

I was using iLife ’09 on both my old and new Mac’s so everything was very easy to migrate. iPhoto and Aperture both use a Library. These are package files that contain all the other files and represent themselves as a single file within the Operating System. Sure does make copying easier!

Now onto Email migration. I have a few mailboxes that I use on the Mail.app client built into the Mac Operating System. My main mailboxes are IMAP through Google Apps so these were as easy as setting up the new mail accounts on the new laptop.

I have a few old POP accounts and for these I created the POP account on the new laptop and archived the old mail onto one of my USB disks for storage and the ability to search through this at a later date if needed.

All smooth so far. Now to re-install some of the applications I use. There are a few killer applications that I use and could not live without. These are my core apps that I installed and I decided that if I need any of ther other apps on my old laptop then I would install them as required.

My core apps are:

I downloaded the latest version of each app and used my serial numbers where applicable that I always store in Evernote. This is a great use of Evernote and I have been storing my software licenses in it since I got it.

So, all migrated and working good. The new laptop is amazing. So much faster than the old one and I cannot wait for the dual link DVI connector to arrive so I can hook it up to my 30″ Display.

Had a real busy week this week and my head has been all over the place. I have been doing some testing for customers and my home office currently looks like a junkyard from PC World. I hate it when my office is cluttered and I am finishing this post to go and declutter!

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend.

Evernote iPhone Application Review

Evernote on the iPhone
Evernote is in my opinion one of the best productivity applications available on the Internet and, luckily, the iPhone application (which serves as translation to this service) is a great mobile access method.

I use the Web, Mac, and iPhone versions of Evernote and it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

The creators of the app have paid close attention to the strong suits of Apple’s gadget with the ultimate result of producing a strong, efficient and extremely useful tool.

The same features which users look for in the traditional version of Evernote are all represented here and have been tailored to complement the iPhone technology aptly.

Users are able to create and edit memo documents easily from the program’s menu as well as take quick reminder photos using the built-in camera. Evernote has also made good use of the iPhone’s microphone to allow for convenient recording of voice memos.

Synchronization and offline viewing help to extend the program’s functionality so that it is truly worth using and counting on within every situation where a note can be taken and/or organized.

The iPhone iteration of Evernote is certainly worth a download for both existing users and those just looking for a solid organizational program to help maintain or increase their daily productivity.

A wide feature base and design which encourages usage throughout any situation combine to make the Evernote iPhone app an invaluable productivity tool.

Do you use Evernote? If so, I would love to hear the cool ways in which you use this application to make you more productive.

Top 10 Free iPhone Productivity Apps

iPhone GTDLast week I blogged about the new Using your iPhone to Get Things Done micro site that Apple had just released.

I also released the list of the Top 10 Paid iPhone Productivity Apps according to downloads from the iTunes App Store.

As well as the list of the Top 10 Paid iPhone Productivity Apps, there was also the list of the Top 10 Free iPhone Productivity Applications.

These applications are the ones that are listed as Productivity Applications in the iTunes store. The ranking is based upon the number of times that they are downloaded from the iTunes store.

So, here are the list of the Top 10 Free Productivity Applications for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

I am glad to see Evernote on this list. Evernote is an application that I use all the time and really do find helps me with my capturing of notes, especially voice and photo notes.

I do not use any of the others, just going to check some of them out now to see what they are like. The iPhone really has been a hit for me as far as Productivity and their are some amazing apps coming out for it.

Do you have a story to tell about any of these Apps? Do you have other Free iPhone Productivity Apps that you use? I would love to hear so please comment.

Thanks,

Top 10 Paid iPhone Productivity Apps

iPhone GTDI blogged earlier today about the new Using your iPhone to Get Things Done micro site that Apple had just released.

One of the items on the micro site is a list of the Top 10 Paid iPhone Productivity Applications.

I am presuming this is based upon data from Apple and download information over a time period. However it is worked out, this is great data from Apple as you can see what other people are downloading in order to use their iPhone and iPod Touch as a productivity device.

So, below is the list from Apple along with links to Productivity Apps in the iTunes store.

The big shock for me is that my favorite GTD app on the iPhone, Omnifocus, is not on the list!. Maybe the cost of OmniFocus puts people off, and also the fact that you do really need the Mac App as well in order for it to work to the full effect.

The only real GTD or Task based item on the list is Things, which comes in at number 8!. Maybe

The category within iTunes for Productivity is quite big and covers a lot of areas. It is however interesting to see which applications are selling the best from Apples point of view.

What do you think? Are you surprised by this list of the top 10 Productivity Apps?

Getting Things Done GTD on the Apple iPhone – Apple Micro Site

Apple have just released a new iPhone Your Life micro site as part of the Apple Website.

This is a collection of micro sites that help you fit the iPhone into your life. The site has five further micro sites.

  • Around Town
  • World Travel
  • At Home
  • Getting Things Done
  • Fun and Games

As you can imagine, the Getting Things Done Micro Site is of real interest.

Apple iPhone Getting Things Done

This GTD Micro Site covers a lot of the main GTD related apps such as OmniFocus, Evernote, and reQall. All apps which I fully recommend for anybody looking to get the most out of their iPhone or iPod Touch as a Productivity Tool.

On the page they also mention some great Podcasts and material that is available via iTunes including the Getting Things Done audio book by David Allen. I have listed to the Audio book a few times and it is great as a recap whilst you are traveling and otherwise wasting valuable time.

Check the site out and I hope you find it useful. I am going to do separate posts with the Top Paid and Free productivity apps, according to Apple.

OmniFocus on the iPhone – GTD to Go!

OmniFocus Released

Well, after last weeks announcement from Apple about the release of the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) I was eager to see which people announced development of Getting Things Done apps for the iPhone.

I have had an iPhone since they came out in the US as I bought one and hacked it to work in the UK. Being a jail-broke phone, I would have loved some way to sync my tasks to the phone but there have to date been no workable solution. So the announcement of the SDK was met with glee.

Well, the OmniGroup, makers of OmniFocus have announced on their blog, and via there forums that they are already working on a iPhone and iPod touch native version of OmniFocus.

Further to the blog post, there was an interesting comment from Ken Case at OmniGroup about the sync functionality of the application.

The Mac and iPhone applications will be able to synchronize changes with each other through any WebDAV server (including Apple’s .Mac), so you won’t have to worry about plugging your iPhone into your Mac to synchronize your latest edits back and forth.

(Multiple Macs will also be able to synchronize with each other through the same WebDAV server, for those of you who might be wondering about that.)

Well, this news is great. I currently love my iPhone and OmniFocus set up but I rely upon the ability to send email from my iPhone to OmniFocus as a task (More coming in the next post about this). The ability to have working copies of my GTD system both on my MacBook Pro as well as my iPhone is fantastic. I can walk around with my entire GTD system in my Pocket and the ability to update this on the fly from anywhere in the world. Could this be the ultimate ubiquitous capture device?

Anyway, you can be sure I will be keeping abreast of further developments and I will also scour for other GTD apps planned for the iPhone.

Have a great day!

GTD Mind Mapping Tasks on the Apple iPhone

iPhone Mind MappingA while back I blogged about a really cool Web 2.0 application called MindMeister.

MindMeister is an application that allows you to create Mind Maps online. Now, I love Mind Maps and I Mind Map everything I can. They are such a cool way to logically plan everything from a complex project, to what to buy people for Christmas. I have over 1,000 Mind Maps that I have created in my personal storage that date back to 1999.

Now, I use Mind Manager as my application of choice. I use this both on Windows and on my Mac.

Here is a bit of blurb about MindMeister.

MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions.

Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map – and see each other’s changes as they happen. Using integrated Skype calls, they can throw around new ideas and put them down on “paper” at the same time.

So, MindMeister have now updated their little GeistesBlitz widget to run as a Yahoo Widget, iGoogle Gadget or as an iPhone Gadget.

Now i know a Mind Map is not the true implantation of the GTD methodology, but it is a great way to collect your tasks in a easy to use graphical manner. Nozbe have implemented their app with an iPhone web front end and called it iNozbe.

I have checked it out myself and played with it. It gives you a nice little interface where you can very quickly enter information which is saved to the Mind Map of your choice. I have left it open on my iPhone as a separate window, and this seems to get around having to authenticate everytime.

Be sure to give this a go as it is a great free way to collect tasks on your iPhone.