Category Archives: Mac Software

Delving into Alfred version 2

I have already been using Alfred for Mac OS X for a good few years. I have it set so that when I press command and spacebar, Alfred pops up and I can easily start an application by typing in a couple of characters. What is quite nice about Alfred is the fact that you have a fuzzy logic, in that I can start typing in the word Chrome and Alfred will know which application I am looking for, even though the application is actually called Google Chrome. This fuzzy logic recognition will also let me type in dd and it will give me the option at the top of the list to open up DragonDictate. This is so much easier than using the built-in Mac OS X launchers that are available such as Spotlight or the iOS like, App Launcher. Other applications which do similar things would be LaunchBar and the recently upgraded Quicksilver.

Alfred and the Power Pack

The Power Pack is very inexpensive and well worth getting, as it allows you to do quite a few more useful things with Alfred. Alfred by itself is extremely useful anyway, but the Power Pack certainly takes it up a good few notches. What was of particular interest in this latest version of Alfred, version 2 was the ability to create workflows. Even though I already have the excellent automation possibilities of Mac OS X with Automator, Hazel, Keyboard Maestro and AppleScript, I was quite tempted with this new functionality within Alfred. It stands to reason that if you are using a launcher application on a daily basis to start your applications, that you use to do your stuff, that it is worth looking at what can be done to extend that functionality.

Although there is certainly a certain amount of overlap between these automation applications, some do work better than others and there is the possibility that you can use a combination of more than one to complete some tasks. For example when you are using Hazel, you can have AppleScript embedded within automations that will be triggered by certain occurrences within folders that are being watched. It is the same with Keyboard Maestro in that you can use AppleScript and other programming languages such as Ruby or Python to get other things done. To a large extent there is no limit to the amount of automation that you can program in, once you have worked out what it is that you want to automate.

Mac OS X automation and the non-geek

For the users that are not especially geeky, often the best way forward is to look at automation scripts that have been created by other more geeky users. Quite often the scripts that you can get are already capable of doing exactly what you want them to do on your computer. Sometimes it is quite easy to take something that has been created already and with minimal changes personalise it to your specific requirements. With this new version of Alfred with the workflows, the fact that there are very few tutorial videos showing what you can do with these new workflows and indeed how to make them, you really do need to grab what is there already. Even though I am a bit of a nerd or a geek, I am finding that I’d need to do a fair bit of twiddling and fiddling with previously constructed Alfred workflows in order to find out how to construct my own.

Alfred integration with other applications

Despite the fact that I generally use Alfred for launching applications, I only recently found out that it can also use it to do a good job of searching for files. I did already know that it was possible to have Alfred search for files, but for some reason I always jumped into the Finder application. I have even found a workflow that restricts the search to folders. You have a calculator built into Alfred where you can just start typing your calculation into the Alfred search window, as well as the ability to get dictionary definitions and spellings that you are not sure of.

Something else that is new to me with Alfred is the integration with 1Password, all you need to do is to start your search with the characters 1P followed by the name of what you want to use from 1Password. Alfred will then open up your default browser and log you into that website, very handy! Then, if you’re inclined that way, there is also the link into terminal and shell commands and access to a number of system commands. You have around 13 or 14 system commands that you can use, from starting the screensaver, emptying the trash, hiding an application to ejecting removable media.

Alfred and iTunes

By using a keyword, iTunes or using a keyboard shortcut which is set by default to be Ctrl Cmd Enter you can get into your iTunes in the form of a mini player. This lets you search for artists, albums, playlists and all the things that you need to do to listen to audio from iTunes. You can tell it to play a random album, switch to the next or the previous track as well as do things with the volume of the audio. If you want to, you can go into the preferences for Alfred and put a tick in the box to have it include movies and TV shows with the searches.

Alfred clipboard, snippets and clipboard merges

To a certain extent the facilities that you get with Alfred to use with the clipboard will complete with other applications such as with Keyboard Maestro and with TextExpander. It is quite handy to use the Cmd with pressing the letter C twice to have clipboard items appended to the previous clipping. This allows you to take text from various places and to put it back into another place as one clipped item.

Snippets

If there are certain lumps of text that you use regularly then you can create it in the preferences area of Alfred as a snippet. Then when you open up the clipboard viewer of Alfred, you will have an option at the top of the list to go into snippets. It is quite easy then to use the command + number to choose a specific snippet or to use the arrow keys to scroll through and see which one you want to use. I don’t think this will completely take over the usefulness of TextExpander, but if you don’t need that full amount of functionality, then this could be just the job for you. It doesn’t take too long to set up snippets in the preferences, although it would be nice to have some way to automatically add new snippets. I’m sure that it must be possible to do this with a little bit fancy scripting.

What you can do with Alfred version 2

The Mac20Q verdict on Alfred version 2 is that it is an application well worth getting on your Mac and it will transform the way that you work with your computer. It is easy for a beginner to use, but I would recommend starting off with the general easy-to-use part of the application and then working up to the advanced options one by one. That’s how you can add these new things to your habitual workflows easily in a way that you will remember them. It may well be that all you will need is the free version of the application and that you won’t need to get to the inexpensive and well worthwhile having Power Pack.

I think though, that it is quite likely that once you see some of the workflows that can be added to Alfred to make it do more things, then you’re likely to want to get your hands on the Power Pack anyway. There are plenty of other useful functions within the Power Pack that also makes it well worth having. If you have any questions on how to use Alfred and how to construct workflows then please feel free to add them to the comments below. Looking forward to hearing from you.

There is one scanner which is quite popular with Mac users and that is the various versions of the Fujitsu Snapscan. Recently they have brought out a new version of their top end scanner, but to be quite honest I really can’t afford it. On the other hand, I do have the application Scanner Pro on my iPad and my iPhone and I think it cost me about a fiver to buy. The application Scanner Pro works really well indeed and does the job that I want it to do.

Get the job done with some Mac automation

As with anything in life if it is too time-consuming or just too hard then you just won’t do it. That is also the case with going paperless. It is all well and good to scan your documents, but if you then have to put them in the proper place and to make them more searchable or findable, then you might not get round to finishing the job. With this in mind I have created a neat little workflow which has my Scanner Pro scanned documents automatically uploaded into Dropbox. I then have that excellent little automation application called Hazel watch the folder in Dropbox for new scans so that it can do its magic on them. The magic in the workflow is a renaming of the file, the use of some AppleScript to send the renamed file to Evernote and then finally a cleanup action to delete the file from the folder.

Notebooks and tagging in Evernote

The nice thing about Evernote is that it is not just one notebook with a whole load of notes in it. You can create a number of separate notebooks within the application and this makes Evernote much more useful. Proper tidiness, as everybody knows, is – A place for everything and everything in its place. So you can create my notebook which is just for your household bills and you can also have other notebooks for whatever special use as you see fit.

Tagging to find stuff

I like to use tagging on my Mac as much as possible. When I create videos, I give the videos for YouTube the tag ‘YouTube’ and if I create an article which is for YouTube and I can also use the same tag. It is as simple as anything then when I want to do a search for things to do with YouTube I can search for objects that have been tagged in this way. It doesn’t matter whether it is some text, an image or some writing, the search will find everything with that tag. I highly recommend using tagging in OSX which you can easily do with the application Default Folder which appears automatically when you are saving stuff on your Mac. There is also an application called Tag It. You will also find the possibility to use tagging within Evernote. With this system you could do a search that will find anything even if they are in different notebooks. When you are searching in the iOS application of Evernote you can do a search based on tags.

Using Scanner Pro

The application is very simple to use, all you have to do is to point the camera of your iPad or iPhone directly at the document you want to scan and take the picture. This is not just the same as using the camera app because you get extra facilities which are specific to scanning documents. You get controls to adjust the contrast and the exposure, but more importantly Scanner Pro will automatically find the borders of your document. This is particularly useful if you have taken the image and it is a little skewed, Scanner Pro will de-skew the image for you. It is better to try and get it as straight as possible, but very good to have the software correct where necessary.

Scan multipage documents with Scanner Pro

The files that are created are PDFs and therefore can contain more than one page. It is very simple to scan as many pages as you need to and save them as one PDF. When you are prompted to save the file it suggests a name starting with the word scan followed by the date. I usually leave the word scan in place and then just add a code letter, such as the E for Electric if I am scanning the electric bill. My automation workflow, the rules in Hazel will know what to do with that scan when it arrives in the Dropbox folder.

What to do if you have to scan a lot of documents

So far I have only been scanning one or two documents here and there. If I had a lot of documents to scan then I would set something up so that the iPhone or iPad was held steady in one position. I would then be able to quickly make the scan, take the document out and replace it with another document to make the next scan. Another thing to note is that when you do your scanning, the pages are generally white with black text on them, so you should place the documents onto a table that is not coloured white. I have placed documents onto a wooden surface and there has been sufficient contrast that the feature which finds the edges of the document works well in this case.

The Mac20Q verdict on the application Scanner Pro

Scanner Pro is a simple application that does one thing and does it well. It is good at finding the borders of your document and the skewing the document is necessary. The images of the documents once they have been scanned are top quality and great for the purpose of going paperless. It is better to scan using a roller feed scanner connected to your Mac, especially if you have introduced some creases and the paper is not totally flat when you make the image. If you store the documents as flat as possible before you take your scan image then you will have no problems in using Scanner Pro. In terms of value for money in comparison to the full-blown scanners like Fujitsu Snap Scan, you can’t go far wrong by using this iOS application Scanner Pro for scanning.

For a long time now have been using the application MarsEdit as the interface into my WordPress blogs. It is much easier and more convenient when you have more than one blog to have an application which lets you publish to all of them from one place. Now another application has come to my attention called PixePumper and this is my first attempt at using the application. My first impressions are such that it is a nice looking application with a clean interface. I don’t think is possible to get in to see the HTML of the post that you’re working on, so it might not really work out for my standard workflow that I normally use. At the moment I am dictating directly into PixelPumper with DragonDictate and I am quite happy with the way that is working so far. What I’m starting to wonder about is how it is going to be with regards getting a video from YouTube embedded into the WordPress post.

Working with multiple websites

I have just learned a lesson with PixelPumper. I was working on this post for the site and then decided that instead of posting it to the sits that I was working on, I was going to post it to another. So I went into the settings and added another website and then went back to the post I had been working on and not all of it was not there any more. I lost quite a long paragraph of text that I had also added an image to. Since we have been using Mountain Lion we get used to having applications save things for us as we go, and this one doesn’t do it. So you should certainly make sure that you’re working in the right website for your post that you are working on, or you should be sure that you click on the button in the lower part of the application Save As Draft. If you don’t do that then you could lose quite a lot of work, as I just did.

The PixelPumper interface

After you have logged into the websites that you are working on you will see a list of previous posts on the left-hand side of the application. You can choose one of these and start working on it again to update it and change as necessary. Or, what you can do is to click on the icon at the top for new post and start filling in your blog post in the area for editing. Within this area you have a space to put the title of the post and a WYSIWYG area underneath for writing your blog post. It is not possible to add photos to the text by dragging them and dropping them in, this is disappointing. It is possible to drag-and-drop an image that you can have set as the featured image, there is a space over on the right hand side above the place where you set the category for your post. To get an image into the post you have  to use the icon at the top for Add Photo. Once you have added the photo you get options for the text flow around the image. The settings are very basic and it would be very handy to have the option to to set where the want to have a margin around the image. If the image doesn’t have a natural margin around it, then it is often very handy to add 10 pixels of space in between the image and the text.

Styling it with Pixel pumper

You can select a paragraph and use the styling button in the icon bar at the top in order to set whether it is body text or one of the six available headers. I found it a little bit weird that the setting for the header is by slider. I was clicking on the button where it said H2, so that I could change it from being a header one and nothing was happening. It took me a little while to work out that I needed to move the slider across. I think this interface design needs a little bit more work. It is okay to have a slider, but it should also work by clicking on the header that you require. Those of us that like to use the keyboard will also be disappointed by the necessity to highlight your text and then use the icon for format, if you want to change some text to either bold, italics or underlined. In fact I think it is just plain weird that I’m not able to just press Cmd B if I want some selected text to be bold.

The Mac20Q verdict on PixelPumper

This is the second time that I have lost text and time while working on this article, this time due to the application crashing. The application doesn’t have the keyboard shortcuts in it that it should have and the best that I can say about PixelPumper is that it looks nice. It is most definitely a work in progress and I will not be changing away from MarsEdit. For somebody that really hates to work on the actual WordPress interface in a webpage, then maybe you would be prepared to put up with the limitations and the weirdness that is present in PixelPumper. In this day and age I expect to have my work to saved for me automatically as I work and it should be making use of iCloud or it should be written into the application.

As this application stands at the moment, I can’t give a Mac20Q thumbs up for PixelPumper, it is not ready for the big time just yet. I do hope that the application developer is able to do something about the shortcomings of this application because in some ways it is not a bad start and in time it could become an application well worth using.

You would think that the rival to Twitter could have thought of a better name than App.net, ADN, especially when it is positioning itself as a place for the elite. To get full use of ADN you have to pay to be a user of it, but now there is another way in through the freemium model. It has been recently introduced into ADN that you can join and have up to 40 followers for free. In a lot of ways the growth of this service as a paid service needs to have some way of inviting new members in and freemium certainly has been instrumental in getting me to try it out.

Who is using ADN

Naturally, you will be wondering when you first start trying out ADN whether you’re going to find your friends there. So far I have found that the people that I am likely to talk to, are using this alternative service. It is a place for the geeks and the tech heads and in a lot of ways it is great that it is smaller and the seemingly more friendly than is Twitter. So to a certain extent the question to ask is who is not using ADN. Well, the main absence is going to be those that are only using Twitter to advertise whatever it is they’re selling. The audience, the general populace that the marketers are trying to sell to, are not at all evident in large numbers on ADN.

What is it like to use ADN

One of the biggest differences is that you get 256 characters to work with. Obviously this is going to promote the ability to have intelligent chats with other users. So while Twitter lends itself to the short and pithy, ADN will give you the opportunity to string together proper sentences. You will be able to have sentences that will not need to be murdered grammatically to fit within the 140 characters of Twitter. For this I will be very thankful to app.net.

The temptation to become a full member of ADN

As of yet, I have not used the service for long enough to know whether I am likely to want to stump up the cash for the full paid version. The cost is 5 dollars a month or 36 dollars for a whole year, which actually seems to be quite reasonable. The reason why this could be better than using Twitter, could be that you are safe in the knowledge that you are a customer of a service rather than the product of that service. So whereas Twitter and Facebook are in the business of selling your data to those that would like to advertise to you, there is none of that with ADN.

I certainly like what I have seen so far on this Twitter rival and I have been using the application called Wedge on my Mac. I got a copy of the Tapbots application for ADN when it was made free a couple of weeks ago, so I have that available for use on my iPad and iPhone. It would seem sensible to me to give it some time to try out and see if I like it before laying down the cash. It seems that at the moment the only way to pay for it is with the use of a credit card, it would be nice to see that they also took PayPal. There is also a time constraint on using ADN. You also going to have to look after and cultivate a new social network, Do you want to do that? So you can find me on ADN with the username of Wizardgold and I will follow you back if I can, depending upon the number of users that I have followed already. Remember I can only follow 40 people.

Having recently been asked to do some editing for a book that a friend of mine is writing, I have been on the lookout for applications that I can use to do a job like that. Up until now when you needed to do some editing and wanted to track the changes, then the usual answer would have been to use Microsoft Word. Fortunately, there are other alternatives that do this job and do a good job of it too.

On my first attempt at any editing of the book I used iBooks on my iPad to read book which I had converted already into an EPUB format. In one way it worked quite well and I used the highlighter tool to mark where there needed to be changes. It turned out to not be a very good solution because it was not possible to actually make changes to the text. Nor was it possible to add comments to the areas that were highlighted to say what the changes were or why those changes needed to be made. Time to check out some word processors.

Nisus Writer Pro is one of the possible options

This is an application which had been sitting in my downloads folder for some time. I had been planning to do a review of the application to show on the Mac20Q website. I opened it up and I was quite impressed with what I saw of the application interface. It looks like a very capable wordprocessor and I was able to open up a word document without any trouble. I found the settings to be able to do some tracking of changes and immediately I was impressed. When you make a change to the body of the text when you are in change tracking mode, there is a sidebar window that opens up to show you the changes that have been made. Within this special area for showing you your changes, you can see what edits have been made, whether it is text that is been added or text that has been replaced.

Scrivener the best writers tool

Due to the fact that I already have Scrivener on the Mac, I had to have a look in that application to see if it also could do change tracking. There are some basic options for tracking some changes, but to be quite honest they are quite poor. All it really amounts to is that you can use a different text colour for new text that has been put in. Scrivener does not give you any indication of the text that you have taken out if you’re doing a text replacement. So while Scrivener might be the best tool for an author or a writer, it doesn’t really cut it for an editor with a full on editing job.

Apples’ Pages and using it for tracking document changes

Up until recently this application which is the standard word-processing application for the Apple ecosystem did not have the facilities for tracking changes in a document. It was because I heard in a recent podcast that the iPad version of Pages had these capabilities, that I decided to have another look at the Mac version. I will also be taking a look to see how it works on the iPad too.

I don’t know how this compares with the change tracking that is available in Word, but I found that the tool in the Pages was good enough for the job that I needed to do. It is easy to start the change tracking facilities with a menu option that is found in the edit menu. Once the change tracking has started you can do the necessary editing work and the application will record text that you take out, text that you put in and also the text that is replaced. You can have the application show you the changes within the text, so that the removed text has a strike though line to show it has been changed and the new text is in a different colour. You can change this colour to suit, which is useful if you have more than one person working on the editing. You can identify the author by the colour of the edited text.

When you have done all the editing that you need to do, you can go through your edits and decide whether you want to accept them or reject them. There is a bar that appears at the top just above the text entry area, which has arrows that let you move between edits and the Accept and Reject buttons. There are a couple of other options for setting how the edits are shown on the screen too. Over on the left side of the main editing area is where you see the notes for the change tracking and you also will see any comments that you have put in the text.

Nitty Gritty Time – Which one to use?

I have Pages already and so that is the one that gets the vote. If I didn’t have any apps with this function, then I would still get Pages as it has all that I need and at the best price. It would be nice to see better tools for change tracking in Scrivener, but it is still the best authors book writing tool.

In the past when I wanted to record something from my Mac I have been using an application called Wiretap Studio. Unfortunately, this application did not make the upgrade once Mountain Lion arrived. In fact, it is so long since I actually used Wiretap Studio that it may have got broken with Lion. I used this application all of the time for recording podcasts from Skype. It was very good, as I could have the recording put my own audio from my microphone on one track and the recording of the other person in the interview which was coming from Skype, on another track. It was very easy then to be able to split these two tracks and to be able to clean up the audio recording of the interview ready to publish. I did know that it was possible to record directly into Amadeus Pro , but I had never got around to actually doing it.

Recording internally from the Mac by using Sound Flower

It is a quite simple download from a website and an install of some free software that is called SoundFlower , although it does require a reboot of the computer. Then all you need to do is to go to the sound settings for your computer, which you can get to from the system preferences or by using the option key on the menu item at the top right of your screen. I usually prefer to hold down the option key and click on the speaker icon in the menu bar and then I can choose where I want to send the sound to. I am always changing this setting depending upon which application I am using, sometimes I use the large speakers which are connected to the headphone port of the Mac and sometimes I use the USB headphones that I use for Dragon Dictate .

So what you need to do is to choose the output as being Sound Flower (2ch) in your sound settings. This will direct the sound from your system to SoundFlower. Then you go into the settings within Amadeus Pro and choose to record from SoundFlower (2ch). That is all you need to do to have the sound from any other applications working on your Mac be directed into the Amadeus Pro application. So you can start the other application doing its stuff after you have first pressed record within Amadeus. It may well be that when you first do this, that you do not hear any sound from your Mac, and this is right as you have sent it to Sound Flower. To be able to hear what it is that you’re recording, you have to put a tick in the box for passthrough.

Working with your audio in Amadeus Pro

Amadeus Pro is a marvellous multitrack audio recording application that you can use to organise the elements of sound. In many ways I prefer to use Amadeus Pro rather than use Garageband , especially when it comes to making podcasts . Garageband can be much better if you are creating musical tracks, certainly this is the case if you’re going to use the loops that are available within that application.

So there you go, that is all you need to know to be able to record audio from your Mac into Amadeus Pro. It is also very easy to set up your Mac so that you can pump audio into the Mac from external sources and also be able to send that into Amadeus Pro. Amadeus pro is a good application to use to get vinyl records to CD or iTunes .

There are quite a few of us old dinosaurs around that still have vinyl LP records, possibly a couple of EP records and maybe even the odd single. I know that I have one or two vinyl albums around, from too many years ago that I care to mention. You have to decide whether you want to go down one of three routes. You can either buy the songs again in iTunes , just forget about listening to that old music again, or maybe you can decide to convert those songs into digital.

If you don’t have too many of those albums that you want to get into digital format, then maybe the best option is to just buy those songs again. Another reason why this might be the best option is if you don’t like to listen to the clicks, pops and crackles that you get from dragging a needle in a groove at 33 rpm. I do know that there are some people that like this, as it gives a certain feeling of authenticity.

You could of course do a bit of a mix and match, by re-buying some of the best songs in the digital format, assigning one of two songs to a forgotten history and maybe using some hardware and software to convert some of the favourites.

The hardware and software needed to do the job

It may well be that you have an old record player that still has a good needle in it and also has a way that you can connect a lineout from it to your computer. If this is not the case then you might want to invest in buying a USB turntable. What you could do is to convert all of your LPs and then sell on that USB turntable, once you don’t need it any more.

Splitting your sides

So then you need some software to deal with the problem of splitting the tracks of each side of the album into separate files. When you make your recording, you will record an LP to the A-side and the B-side recording tracks. Software such as Amadeus Pro can be set up so that it will automatically find the tracks based upon the silence in between songs. This is not always successful and sometimes you find there are moments of silence within a song which will confuse the software. With there not being that many tracks on one side of an album, I find that it is quite easy usually to look as the waveform in the software and see where each song starts. Also with Amadeus Pro it is possible to add the markers that you use to split the track up while the song is playing. All you have to do is to press one key on your keyboard to insert the marker and you even get the opportunity to add the name of the song as the name of the marker.

Amadeus Pro Tutorial – Vinyl to CD or iTunes

Here in this video I show you how you can use Amadeus Pro converting your recorded album sides into separate songs. It is really quite easy for you to add the meta data for the album, so that when the songs are split up they will all have the name of the artist and the name of the album as well as each individual song title. If you love your music, then you’ll probably find it worthwhile to spend the time doing a proper job of the conversion from analogue to digital of your old vinyl albums.

There is a use case scenario that I can see where using the transcription feature in DragonDictate will be extremely useful. I know that it is possible on some iPhones to do dictation, it is one of the Siri features . In fact on my iPhone I have the dictation application from Dragon, that I could use for some limited dictating of my words. The problem with both of these solutions is that you have to be connected to the Internet to be able to use them. Also, you can only dictate around about 30 seconds of audio, let the application send that off to the server for it to be converted into text and then be sent back to you. So while the service is useful for short pieces of text, it is not really the best way forward for a longer article.

A recording app and DragonDictate on the Mac

Using the same style of talking for dictation as you would in the DragonDictate Mac application , you can create an audio file where you dictate your article and save it for later conversion of the speech into text. The microphone on the iPhone is sufficient to record a decent quality audio and you also have a choice of applications that you could use. I have used the application Recorder Pro and I have also used Voice Memos. I am sure that there are plenty of other audio recording applications that will also do the job perfectly.

When using the Recorder Pro application you can send that file off to Dropbox. With the application Voice Memos you have to send the recorded file by email to get it into your Mac. Whichever way that you get your file onto your desktop computer, the next thing to do is to get it ready for conversion into text. With Recorder Pro you will need to convert the file into a format that is able to be opened by DragonDictate. I used Amadeus Pro to convert the .CAF into a .AIFF audio format file.

Getting DragonDictate ready for transcribing audio files

The first time that you use this service in DragonDictate, you will need to configure the profile that you are using, so that the application can do a good job for you. It is quite quick and simple to do this configuration and you only have to make sure that you record at least 20 seconds of audio to use for the configuration. You don’t need to do this every time you want to do some transcribing of audio files, just the first time in a DragonDictate profile.

When you have got the application ready you can then open up the audio file by going to the Tools Menu and choosing Transcription. The process is fairly quick and you will be soon done, just depending on the size of the audio file. Obviously it is going to make some mistakes along the way, same as when you are using the application directly. The difference is that when you do the corrections, you do them all at the end of the dictation rather than with each separate spoken part.

The pros and cons of using DragonDictate transcription

The pro-side of the equation is that you can create a lot of text quickly using your iPhone without having to use the tiny iPhone keyboard. You will be able to ‘write’ a 1000 word article using the iPhone in the most efficient way possible. It is not going to help you if you want to do something with that text actually with the iPhone, but it is most certainly viable as part of a two stage process.

On the con side of the equation, I find that if DragonDictate has not transcribed my words accurately so that I don’t get the meaning of a sentence, sometimes I will not remember what it was the sentence was supposed to say. What I would need to do is to delete the sentence completely and leave it out or create a brand new one. To a certain extent, it doesn’t really matter because when I am editing my dictated work, I always read through to make sure that it makes sense. This reading out loud part of editing is absolutely vital whether using dictation or not.

A thumbs up from Mac 20 Questions for DragonDictate transcription

I do spend quite a lot of time at my desk in front of my computer at home. There are occasions though when I am out of the house and I have the need to do some writing and I know that I will certainly be using this DragonDictate transcription. It is most certainly, a very useful addition to the capabilities of the application in version 3.5. I would recommend that if you have got DragonDictate on your Mac that you give transcription a try. I am very pleased that I tried it and it gets a hearty thumbs up from the Mac20Q website.

Initially I had thought that OmniFocus was far too expensive to buy and I was getting by quite nicely with using the application Wunderlist. Wunderlist is a good application and is great for making lists and most certainly was much more within my price range. Then I had some money available on my iTunes gift cards and I decided to get the iOS version of OmniFocus . I was disappointed to see that it is not a universal application, so that I can also use it on my iPhone, I just had the iPad version. Never mind, I started using it with a little bit of gusto and I found that I liked it.

OmniFocus – A sledgehammer to crack a nut

The thing with any version of the OmniFocus applications, the iOS version or the Mac version is that it is extremely powerful in terms of the facilities available within the app. Obviously this is not a bad thing, but when you are a new user it can seem quite confusing regarding how to start using and get the best from the system. As it is often times said, with something like this, you want it to function and then effectively get out of the way so that you can do the things that you really need to be doing. I did read some information about how to get started and I also looked at some of the videos by David Sparks about OmniFocus. Yet I still did get a little bit confused with the projects, actions and contexts that you use to get things done. Naturally, I wanted to try to use all of the facilities available and because of that, things did get a little bit mixed up and kind of thrown into the air. Maybe what would have been better, would have been to forget about using the contexts and concentrated on using the projects and actions. Maybe I should have organised my tasks, putting them into folders and separating what was home stuff and work stuff, but I tried to fly before I could really walk.

And then I found Asian Efficiency

At some point in time I found a website called A Better Mess and on one of the emails that were sent to me as a subscriber there was a link to another website called Asian Efficiency . Now this, is the real deal concerning what you need to be able to learn how to use OmniFocus. There are a number of articles on there about task management and a load of stuff on how to set up and use with maximum efficiency the OmniFocus application on the Mac.

OmniFocus tutorials

There is a whole 10 part series of OmniFocus tutorials. The first two of them deal with getting started with the application. What is also so good about this is the fact that it gives you a theme that you can use to, not just make your OmniFocus app look pretty, but gives it some colour coding to make it extra useful. On top of the excelent advice to beginners.

A fictional character

What made the tutorial so much better was the fact that they introduced a fictional character with a fictional life and fictional tasks. The tutorial showed how such a person would organise themselves using OmniFocus. This was exactly what I needed rather than an article about the best practices to use, or just a simple description that just said what went where. Like I said, I am a visual type of person and to be able to see diagrams and screen captures of how it was all working, made a huge difference to me.

Capturing the ideas and organising them

I had already worked out that the way to do this was to do a brain dump and capture the ideas and plans from my head and just throw them into OmniFocus. It is fairly easy to do that, putting stuff into the inbox before having to start dealing with the tasks, projects and actions. What I needed to understand was the next stage of the game, which was to turn all of these ideas into those projects, actions and a fully organised system that would help me get things done. Seeing how the fictional character did it, helps me to realise that I needed to understand my own workflow tasks and requirements. I have had to work out what things are projects and what things are actions within those projects. Really what I needed to do, was to learn how to break things down into smaller items so that I could be specific in terms of saying what had to be done.

Working out how to use the data after it has been captured

On account of the fact that I had originally made a poor job of categorising tasks and not splitting them up into small enough sections, I then found it difficult to get the information back out in order to use it. I have set up a Keyboard Maestro macro which opens up OmniFocus for me on weekdays in the morning and also the last thing at night. What I have to do now is to look into that system I have created, to tick things off as they are done. I also need to work out what it is that I need to look at within the application, so that I can have a manageable list of the next set of things that have to be done. Some sort of prioritisation within that list would be great also.

I am still learning how to use OmniFocus

It seems now that I have a good basic start organised for the use of OmniFocus. I also have a number of these tutorials from Asian Efficiency to work through and I will be cherry picking the best workflows and hopefully turning them into my own good habits. I know for sure that I really do need to do this, because there are some days when I get a huge amount of work done, then there are other days when I am left with a feeling of disappointment. I don’t know if I want to turn into a mechanised robot efficiency machine, but something close to that would be quite good. I already have things in place such as the use of DragonDictate to be able to write quickly. I can edit articles and have them published on my websites in no time. The process that I use for creating the screencasts for the VideoMagical , NoStylus and Mac20Q websites is working quite nicely and just needs a little bit of tweaking. So now I’m going to dive into this little bit more, learn some more stuff and I will report back and tell you what I find is working best for me.

In the latest version of iBooks author there have been a number of improvements making the application much better for creating e-books. There are new widgets available to add for increased reader interactivity. There is support for mathematics symbols, which some say should really have been in there in the first edition on account of the fact that iBooks is so good for creating textbooks. I am sure that one or two maths teachers must have been lobbying Apple to sort out that omission as soon as possible.

Portrait Only iBooks

It is now possible to create books which are portrait only. When the reader gets their hands on such a book they will find that it is only available to be viewed in the portrait orientation. Instead of getting the portrait version of navigation that you find in iBooks which can go to landscape, the reader is able to move through the book using the same navigation, table of contents and similar interaction as you would if it was a landscape oriented book.

Custom fonts for iBooks

It is now possible to use all sorts of TrueType and OpenType fonts in your iBooks and obviously this will give you greater control over the look and the design of your masterpiece. Of course you will need to make sure that you have the proper rights to use the fonts that you include in the book, just as you would with images, video and other media.

Internal improvements to the iBooks Author application

With the first version of iBooks author, I did find that it was a nuisance that it was necessary to make sure that the video files were of the absolutely correct type. some that i thought would work, didn’t.There are so many different types of video format and the old iBooks Author seemed to prefer just one format. This increased the work and the time involved with having to convert video files beforehand. Certainly, I found it surprising, video files that would play natively on the iPad didn’t work within iBooks. In this latest version of iBooks Author, this has changed and it now accepts all of the media formats that are supported by QuickTime.

Media is automatically optimised

You will find now that when audio and video media files are added there will be optimisation performed on those files, so that they perfectly meet the requirements for playing on the iPad. You will find that you may have to wait for the computer to do this optimisation for you if you add more than one single media file. This is because the files are optimised one at a time, but there is nothing to stop you from working on other parts of your book while this process is taking place.

IBooks author is now using all QuickTime audio formats

So now you also have a wider range of audio formats that you can add to your iBook. This will make your work putting together these multimedia elements much easier. iBooks Author will provide the audio with a scrubber bar and also a play and pause button. It is also possible to provide one image for the audio on you book, which can toggle pause and play if you want to use a custom design.

The iBooks Author publishing workflow gets better

There were complaints in the previous version of iBooks Author with the workflow that was necessary to get a book published. In this latest version of iBooks Author, Apple have improved the process to make it simpler and generally easier to use. It is possible now to check through your book for errors before exporting it into the iTunes Producer application. One of the things that you might want to do when creating your iBook is to produce a sample version of your book. When you are selling your book in the Apple iBook store you will find you will get more sales if you produce a sample book. iBooks Author now gives you the ability to make this sample book based upon one of your chapters.

Version numbers for your books

It is important for your own records, just as much as it is important for the readers to have proper version numbering for your iBooks. It is now necessary for you to enter new version numbers, each time you publish an update to books that are already available within the iBookstore. These new version numbers must be entered when you’re exporting your book, although it is not necessary when you’re exporting a book just as a sample. This will help the readers of your books to see that they have the latest version. When the readers upgrade to the latest version of a book, all of their highlights, notes and bookmarks will still be available for them to use.

iBooks author and the Retina Display

If you are lucky enough to have one of these latest MacBook Pro Apple computers with the Retina Display, then you will be able to get full benefit of that technology within this application. Your graphics, illustrations and images as well as the text, will be as vivid and sharp as they should be.

The Mac20Q verdict on iBooks Author

When you’re using the iBooks Author application first of all you may not notice much difference from the previous version. You will be more likely to notice when you start to use the new widgets that are available or if you are adding mathematical expressions to your book. it is just that some features have been added and the core usability is slightly improved in areas where it matters.

When it comes time to export your new iBook ready for iTunes Producer so that you can finalise the publication of your textbook, or whatever sort of book you are making, again you will notice the improvements over the previous version of iBooks Author. The first version of iBooks Author was by no means a disappointment, but this new version is certainly a very definite improvement and well worth having. It is still free to get your hands on this iBooks Author application from the Mac App Store, so you have no excuses regarding upgrading. There is a new version of the iBooks app for iOS also, to take advantage of the updates to iBooks Author. I will be looking forward to iBook 4 now because what we have now is a nice update on iBook 2.

On account of the fact I am not at home, working in the school in Girona, I am working on this post on my iPad. I used Byword to get at the writing/ dictating that I did last night and then posting using Blogsy. I am having to remind myself of how Blogsy works for putting the images and video into the post. I am pleased with the process and it feels good to be completely mobile and functional with the iPad.