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Essential Apps for Time and Money

Sometimes when you grow accustomed to certain applications they disappear as they’re always there and you use them all the time. In compiling a list of apps that I use every day, I forgot about the ones that are so completely integrated that I don’t really think about them as I just constantly use them. Oddly they are all related to money and time.

I get things done and (frequently) stay within a budget with the following apps for my iPod Touch: OmniFocus, Spend, and Grocery Gadget. Interestingly they all use lists and two of them use the cloud to synchronize the data that they use.
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November 29, 2009 , , , ,

The Beauty of Simple Apps

iPods, Almost TouchingOver the past few months I’ve been relying on my 2nd generation iPod Touch more and more for connecting to the online world. On a recent 3 day trip I didn’t even take my MacBook pro with me and I didn’t miss it at all. All of my reading and email and even posting things online all stayed up-to-date all with the tiny little powerful computer in my pocket. While an iPhone would allow me to be connected all of the time, there were enough wifi hotspots to keep me connected for most of the day every day.

Another realization that I made is that the applications that I rely upon to stay connected are simple and powerful. The five apps I use throughout every day are Twitterrific, Tumblr, Simplenote, Reeder, and Instapaper. Simplicity is the key and if a choice needs to be made between something that is simple and works most of the time and something that may have a lot more possibilities, it’s obvious that simple is the way to go.

The other aspect of the five apps that I use every day to connect and share things with the world is that all of them rely on APIs to get and share the information that they use. That means that it doesn’t all just stay on my iPod Touch, but that everything is synchronized so I can check things out on my MacBook Pro or even another computer on the web and I don’t have to worry about losing something. Now I start and end every day in bed with my iPod Touch doing a little bit of reading and catching up using my favourite apps.
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November 22, 2009 , , , , , , ,

Synthesizing Stories on Bad Metaphor 11

bm11.jpgWith some of my online homes I’ve been quite active and with others, not so much. One of the things that is quite enjoyable to do is record audio podcasts with my son John. We started doing the Bad Metaphor podcast (an audio podcast) a few years ago and would sporadically update it. Due to some perfectionism and procrastination the output has grown increasingly infrequent, but John always wants to create more, so we’ve started recording podcasts again in a more casual way to try and get them done and up more often.

The wonderful thing about technology is that it advances and makes things easier and cheaper all the time. So last weekend we sat down on the floor with my MacBook Pro, my Zoom H2, and John’s Nintendo DSi along with a stereo omnidirectional microphone from Giant Squid Audio Lab and we recorded a new episode of Bad Metaphor in Soundtrack Pro. The neat thing is that we were able to do some multitrack recording right to disk with the audio from each of us going to separate tracks and the music going to a stereo track. This means we can adjust the levels after the recording and also means that it is much faster to edit. It’s a setup that works and I’m really glad that we figured it out and I hope that we’ll be doing a lot more soon. So go on over and take a listen to the under 8 minute episode 11 of Bad Metaphor: Synthesizing Stories where John plays some music using his Korg DS-10 emulator.

November 21, 2009 , , , , , ,

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