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Personal productivity on Mac and iPhone

Bruce — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:36:58 +0000

As mentioned in an earlier post on using faux Contacts for collecting, managing, and synching tasks offline on the iPhone, I've been reading Getting things done (GTD) by David Allen. I have to say I found the book a difficult, overly repetitive and non-engaging read, despite my motivation to learn from it. If you could get a lot of things done in the time it takes to read 267 anecdote-heavy pages, here's my somewhat condensed take on the bits worth sharing, along with a few Mac-specific embellishments. This is Part two of a two-part series exploring GTD using a Mac and iPhone. It may make more sense if you review Part one first. Introduction I've been hooked on task lists since I first installed Claris Organizer 1.0 from floppy disk (remember those?) onto my PowerBook 100. Organizer incorporated Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Tasks into a single interface—and I do appreciate integration. That app evolved into Palm Desktop and when I bought a Palm V in 1999 my obsessive list-keeping became mobile and subsequently synchronised via various apps including Entourage, iCal, iSync, and Missing Sync. While recent apps like OmniFocus and Things are rather pretty and more GTD-savvy, I'd prefer to rely the Apple-supplied tools I already have. Doing so is simpler (the less tools involved the better—that's one of Allen's recommendations), less costly, and makes use of the typically well-executed integration between Apple apps and devices. Reconciling task and time management Notice I said "typically" well-executed integration. Sadly integration of calendars, tasks, and notes between ...

Using faux Contacts for GTD on the iPhone

Bruce — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:16:28 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Despite strong indications of an imminent second generation 3G iPhone, the recent £100 price drop on the 8GB iPhone proved too tempting. I had hesitated because the iPhone failed to meet my minimum requirements for basic PDA functionality. With 1Password mostly overcoming the secure data exchange obstacle, the remaining challenge was to find a network-independent way of managing and synchronising tasks ("to do" items). I've also been wading through David Allen's book Getting Things Done in a search for ways to improve my personal productivity. Could I cherry-pick the key principles of the GTD religion and apply them on the iPhone using only the built-in apps? This is Part one of a two-part series exploring GTD using a Mac and iPhone. Part two is here. The essence of GTD The OmniFocus Basics Video does a good job of distilling the core ideas in the GTD method. It outlines three concepts: Actions are something you can physically do in a single step; Projects are activities that require more than one physical action to complete; Contexts are physical requirements for carrying out actions (e.g. being at work, at home, connected to the Internet, etc.) The video also summarizes three workflow steps to getting things done: Capture all outstanding individual ("atomic") actions; Organize those actions by grouping them into projects and/ or context; Do the outstanding actions. Let's put that graphically (adding horizontal reorganization as part of ongoing review): I'm not being strict about contexts being a physical place, person or thing: in my world a context can be a frame of mind, or an ...

More ways to avoid .Mac

Bruce — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 04:35:32 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

I just received my .Mac renewal notification from Apple. Since I don't consider .Mac value-for-money at £70 per annum I shall not be renewing, and have already found a WebDAV-based workaround for iCal sharing and a direct iPhoto-to-web solution. Independent software developers are obviously responding to a disgruntled .Mac user base, as options for achieving similar functionality without a .Mac account are on the increase. You can do a lot via Google, or if you like getting your hands dirty hack your own .Mac replacement. Most .Mac users, however, are likely to want "out of the box" solutions. Here are three that I've come across recently. iSynCal ($US25) allows scheduled synchronisation of iCal calendars between Macs, or between users on the same Mac—without a .Mac account or other WebDAV server (it makes use of standard Apple File Sharing). iSynCal can be used in demo mode for 15 days SyncTogether ($US50) from Mark/Space is a peer-to-peer application for synching iCal Tasks and Events, Address Book, Safari bookmarks and more on up to 3 Macs (formerly MySync). The clean interface will be familiar to users of M/S Missing Sync products, and this app is definitely the most comprehensive of the three. SyncTogether uses plugins & Apple's Sync Services technology (© Mark/Space) Spanning Sync is still in development (although you can download a beta as of this writing), and promises bidirectional data exchange between iCal and Google Calendar. The Spanning Sync System Preferences pane (© Spanning Partners) Update 13.03.07: GCALDaemon is a Java app that syncs between Google ...

Easily share an iCal calendar without .Mac

Bruce — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 04:37:11 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Attempts to duplicate the functionality of .Mac can be very technical (as here), or Google-centric (as here). In his recap of alternative options, Derek mentions a potential iDisk replacement called Box. Box offer unofficial WebDAV support; WebDAV is the same protocol used by .Mac that lets you publish your calendars and allow other folk to subscribe to them from within iCal. Unfortunately (mt), my web host, doesn't support WebDAV. I've already taken care of photocasting using iPhoto to bypass .Mac, although an easy way to share my calendar to my wife had eluded me until now. Register for a Box account (1GB free storage), providing a login (email address) and password that you're prepared to share with those needing access to your calendar; In iCal select the calendar you want to share and choose Publish from the Calendar menu; Choose to publish on a private server, entering http://www.box.net/dav as the Base URL (thanks Dan; https:// didn't work for me); Enter your Box username and password and hit the Publish button. Once you've published, folk can access your calendar via a simple "webcal" URL (Calendar > Subscribe... in the iCal menu). On entering this URL and clicking Subscribe, they will be required to supply the login and password as above. Your uploaded iCal .ics file can now be managed from your Box account, even made public if you choose. When you refresh your calendar in iCal, the uploaded file on Box is automatically updated.

Moving from .Mac to Google

Bruce — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 23:35:24 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

MacDevCenter have published a great article entitled Making a Smooth Move from .Mac to Google. Intend to ditch .Mac? The article covers forwarding to Gmail, importing your Address Book (not an issue if using Gmail via POP), iCal to Google Calendar (synch is sadly one way), Google Notifier, using gDisk for online file storage, .Mac Groups to Google Groups, iWeb to Blogger, iPhoto to Picasa, and Google Browser Sync for synchronizing Firefox bookmarks, etc.

Attach files to iCal events

Bruce — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:46:51 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

An iCal user since the beginning, I never knew you could attach any file to an event and open it by clicking on the url field. Ideal for those larger memos, or for integrating the list-making ability of Word or diagramming tools of OmniGraffle.

Subscribe to a Google Calendar using iCal

Bruce — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:54:03 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Subscribe to a Google Calendar using iCal: Google has released a web calendar that supports the iCal format... you can use iCal to subscribe to any shared Google Calendar... Google Calendar doesn't support Safari.

PHP iCalendar

Bruce — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 04:59:54 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

PHP iCalendar: a PHP-based iCal file parser to display iCals in a Web browser. It's based on v2.0 of the IETF spec. It displays iCal files in a nice logical, clean manner with day, week, month, and year navigation.

Tiger issues

Bruce — Sat, 07 May 2005 05:26:44 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

I've updated to Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and it's become clear that Tiger has a number of "issues". To minimise the chance of incompatibilities I wiped my hard drive and did a clean install, restoring documents and re-installing applications from a backup. Some of the issues are easily overcome, others a bit more concerning. I'll add to this list as I encounter new issues, and document any fixes as I become aware of them. Shared iCal calendars Under Panther you have the option to publish to .Mac (which creates a publicly-accessible web page) or to a WebDAV server. Under Tiger you have the option to publish to .Mac or to a private server. You can still enter the same .Mac URL as previously—provided you made a note of it (which I didn't!): Unable to wake from sleep This issue seems popular. Fix: set Never as the sleep option in the Energy Saver preference pane. Unable to revert to QuickTime Pro 6 I don't want an extra codec at a cost of $US30, having paid for several previous QuickTime Pro licenses and the MPEG-2 licence. Apple won't let me "downgrade" to QuickTime 6 Pro under Tiger. The QuickTime 6.5.2 installer says: The QuickTime 6.5.2 re-installer (apparently for Mac OS 10.3.9 only) says: Bruce says: "Bugger!" Adding a signature to a .Mac account in Mail 2.0 Under Panther I used aliases to protect my .Mac e-mail address. It turns out that in Mail 2.0 you cannot associate a signature with aliases to your .Mac account unless your also list you "real" ...

An iCal tip for hidden notes

Bruce — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:47:28 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Apple's iCal has its merits, but it also has its faults. One of these is that in month view it is impossible to see if an event or task (to do) has a Note attached to it. Here's a quick tip to make sure that important notes don't get overlooked. Every event in iCal has a Notes field associated with it, which can be a useful place to store a variety of information. This might include, for example: driving directions; questions to ask at a meeting; gift ideas if the event is a birthday; itinerary information for a holiday; companies to check out when your insurance needs renewal; etc. A typical event will appear in the calendar as a title only (see "Lorem" below). Simply add a symbol to the title that will indicate to you that the event has a Note attached (I chose ">"): The same trick works for items on your to do list: Personally I find this easier than using an additional application just for memos/ notes. If all my organizing is done in iCal on the Mac, I know I can find the same information in Calendar and Tasks on my Palm; I don't need to reply on a third party Memo app for the Mac or Palm (with Conduit).