iPhone – JAMES MICHIE

There’s an app for that… [iOS Edition]

This is the second of two posts where I am sharing the apps that I use on a day-to-day basis to get the work done. In yesterday’s post, I discussed the apps that I use on my MacBook Air. Today I am focussing on the apps that I use on my iPhone.

Just glancing at my iPhone’s home screen, I realise that I have a lot of apps installed. However, there are a number that I do not use on weekly basis, let alone on a daily one. Therefore, I am just going to write about the ones that get regular use. Also, I have structured the post based on the folders that I use on my iPhone home screen…

Dock

Fantastical – Unlike on the desktop, I have found a calendar app for my iPhone which truly suits my needs. Rather than offering the traditional calendar views, Fantastical places emphasis on your agenda as well as providing an intuitive way to quickly look backwards/forwards to different days/weeks.

Wunderlist – As I said in my previous post, I would like to be using Any.DO but the lack of a desktop/web app is making me stick with Wunderlist for now. However, Any.DO is worth checking out. It has the most intuitive input for a todo app that I have found.

Chrome is also my browser of choice on my iPhone. Although there was some initial friction, many of the apps that I regularly use now allow you to open links in Chrome rather than Safari. As such Apple’s built in browser has been relegated to a ‘Sometimes’ folder on the second screen.

Launch Centre Pro – I am still training myself to use this app. As I have moved to organising all of my apps within folders, I wanted to be able to quickly launch them without having to go into folders all of the time. LCP allows you to launch actions rather than apps reducing the number of clicks needed. For example, with LCP open in one click I can be in the new email window of Sparrow, or the new event window of Fantastical. The more it becomes ingrained in my muscle memory the more efficient my use of the phone is becoming.

Folders

*A note on my folder structure. Each folder is named using a verb of the action that the apps are used for. They are also positioned on the screen based on the amount of use they get. As I hold the phone with my right hand, the folders with the apps that I use most frequently are positioned on the right hand side of the screen. The folders with the apps I use less often are on the left hand side. You can see this structure in the image at the top of this post.

*I am going to work through the folders in order of most used to least used…

Communicate

Perhaps unsurprisingly the most used apps on my iPhone are the ones I use to communicate with other people. This includes the Messages and Phone (Contacts) apps. I have Skype and Google+ installed although I rarely use them on the iPhone. My most used apps in this folder are…

Sparrow – Where I have managed to adapt Mail on my MacBook Air to be more aesthetically pleasing and user friendly, the same can not be said of the built in mail app on the iPhone. As such, even though development on it has been stopped, I am still suing Sparrow. It matches most closely the experience I get with using Mail on my MacBook.

Tweetbot is my Twitter client of choice. It was the first app that I installed when I bought my iPhone. It is a power-user client offering a huge range of features including people, keyword, hashtag and client filters. It offers a range of retweet styles, in app profiles, search, retweet information and also the ability to create and edit lists. With this app there is never a need for me to access Twitter via its web interface.

Read

Reeder is my RSS app of choice, like its desktop counterpart, it offers a beautiful reading experience, and offers a multitude of services allowing you to share what you are reading. I have mine set up to easily share to Twitter, Pocket and Delicious.

Pocket is where I read all of the stuff I haven’t got to yet. Although, progress is slow at the moment (check out the unread count on the folder!)

The Kindle app has had a significant impact on when I read and how much I am reading. As I have my phone with me at all times I can pick up and read whenever time allows. Moreover, due to small screen size and keeping the font at a reasonable size, I find that I am reading in bite-size chunks. I am not sure of the science behind this (and I could just be imagining it) but it certainly feels as though I am powering through books at a far quicker pace than I did with the printed page.

Write

Drafts deserves its own post, to be honest. It is so integral to my workflow that this post is significantly out of date now. I use Drafts to take notes during meetings, draft longer emails, capture ideas, and to write blog posts. It works with Markdown, meaning that I can be very efficient with my typing. However, the power of Drafts comes from the way that it leverages x-callback-urls allowing you to send the text that you have captured to a seemingly endless array of apps and places. I have it set up to share directly with my notes folder in Dropbox. It can be customised to follow any naming/tagging systems that you use. I have been so impressed with it, that I rarely use Byword anymore. I tend to only use it now to access and update existing documents in my notes folder. Most of the time I capture text in Drafts and push it straight out as an email, tweet or to…

Poster which is a beautiful blogging application for WordPress. It allows you to write, edit and publish posts/pages to multiple WordPress blogs. It parses Markdown meaning that when I push a draft post from Drafts I don’t need to do anything, apart from add images if appropriate. It has a clean and minimal UI which is pleasing. However, it is the ease of use that makes this such a great app. I have tried a variety of mobile blogging apps and have never been satisfied with them, usually due to a level of friction that they imposed on the writing/publishing process. Poster, on the other hand, makes the process seamless.

Evernote – As I mentioned in my previous post, I am using Evernote to organise my M.Ed. I use the mobile app for two specific tasks. The first is to capture notes during lectures and seminars. The second is to photograph sections of books, adding notes and tags. I stole this workflow from Doug Belshaw, which he write about here.

Listen

Beyond using my iPhone to get the work done, I use it to listen to music and podcasts a lot. In terms of music, I use the built in app. However for podcasts I use Instacast. The recent update to Apple’s own podcast app looks great but I’ve been an Instacast user since I bought the iPhone. It is looks great and is feature rich. The way that it displays and lets you work with show notes/links is particularly useful. Moreover, it offers a lot of customisation in terms of how you organise your subscriptions and playlists. I’m not going to list all of the podcasts that I listen to here but I recommend that you check out Back to Work featuring Merlin Mann and Enough featuring Patrick Rhone. They are both excellent and have really helped me in terms of focus and productivity.

Utilise

Dropbox – After Tweetbot this was the next app that I installed on my iPhone. I don’t think I really need to explain this one, see yesterday’s post.

Delicious is where I bookmark everything. While I could access my bookmarks via the web interface in Chrome, this app offers a far more pleasing and efficient way of searching them.

Calcbot is a beautifully designed calculator. If I am honest, it does not offer a great deal of functionality over the built in calculator. However, I am a huge fan of Tapbots’ applications and I use this one a lot. While I know there is a calculator built into OSX, I much prefer to do calculations on my phone. I guess this is the result of habit, having used a calculator so regularly in school.

Similarly, Convertbot is another Tapbots app. It offers a wide range of conversions including area, length, time, data size and currency. Like Calcbot it is beautifully designed with all the usual bells and whistles that you find in a Tapbots app.

Shoot

Although the iPhone comes with a very good Camera built into it, I only use it occasionally make use of it. I simply don’t take a lot of photos, I never have. However, I do use it to take photos from time to time. Usually, this is to capture a mind map or chart that I (or mu students) created in class. Sometimes, I use it to capture students’ writing so that I can put it up on the whiteboard for discussion. And occasionally, I do see something interesting when I am out and about that I think is worth sharing. The few photos that I do take are simply organised in the Photos app. I use the share function from with the app to send photos to my email account. I have Tweetbot set up to upload images via CloudApp when I tweet them out for the same reasons I explained in yesterday’s post.

Watch

I don’t watch a lot of anything really on my iPhone due to the fact that I feel the screen size is too small. However, occasionally I do use the YouTube app to browse for a music video. Invariably, I end up listening to the video I have found rather than watching it.

And there you have it. As with yesterday’s post, if you would like me to elaborate on how I am using any of the apps above, leave a comment or send me a tweet.

iPhone Apps (2)

Since my previous post I have added a few more apps and settled on an arrangement for my home screen.

Alongside Tweetbot, Instapaper, Reeder, Kindle and Notesy which I added almost immediately, I have now added the following apps:

Evernote – I have been using Evernote to manage and organise my M.Ed studies. It is an invaluable tool. I use the desktop app almost every day and have been making regular use of the Android version. On first look, as I have found with other cross platform apps, both the iPhone’s UI and UX are vastly superior. What’s more the quality of the display on the 4S is crystal clear.

Instacast – Like Tweetbot, this is an app I have wanted to use for some time. It has been well reviewed, with the consensus being that there is no better app for the job. As an avid listener to podcasts, I am very pleased with my experience so far. What this app offers over the built in music app is the ability to stream shows, download on the fly and access show notes within the app itself. This makes for a far richer listening experience.

Agenda – The built in iPhone calendar has a very poor UI. Agenda, is clean and minimal, utilising sound principals of typographic design.

Pop – I’m a huge believer in ubiquitous capture and even with Notesy installed, sometimes all you need is a piece of paper. That is exactly what Pop offers: a piece of paper on to which you can write stuff down and return to later. The only other options are: select, select all, copy all and paste. This adds what I would call ‘useful friction’ in that when I decide to act on the information I have captured in Pop I will have to make an effort to move each piece around. This means I will be forced to decide if what I noted down is really valuable or not.

Taking photographs with a mobile phone is an activity I have never really been interested in. I think this is due to the poor quality of cameras I have encountered in previous phones. With the iPhone 4S’ 8MP camera, I am planning to take this as an opportunity to capture images on a more regular basis. I looked to my PLN on Twitter to help me get started and they didn’t disappoint. I chose to begin with the following two apps:

Camera+ – I decided to get this app as it offered some interesting improvements on the built in camera app: Improved zoom capabilities and a stabiliser (perfect for a novice photographer)

Snapseed – Nearly everyone who replied to my initial tweet recommended this app, and I have already had loads of fun playing with it. It offers a wide range of features, from basic editing features such as cropping and rotating to more stylistic effects such as manipulating depth of field.

In terms of arranging the apps, my choices are based on frequency and tactility. Apps towards the bottom of the home screen are the ones that I use most often. As such I want them positioned where I can access them quickly when holding the phone in one hand. Beyond that the apps are loosely grouped: Photography, Sound & Video, Reading, Notes/Writing, Interruptions.

iPhone Apps

I have had a shiny new iPhone 4S (32GB) for less than 24 hours. I am installing apps as I feel that I need them, here is what I have installed so far, with a few thoughts:

TweetBot – This was the first app I downloaded and installed. Partly because Twitter is number one reason I use a smartphone but mainly due to the fact that I have been coveting this app since it was first released. As an Android user, I have had to read/listen to others talk about how good it is, while being stuck with only mediocre choices. And, my first impression is a significantly positive one. Both the UI and UX are superb. The only feature it lacks is ‘keyword block’ which I enjoy with Hibari on Mac.

Instapaper – This is another favourite, regularly used app that has been poorly served on Android. Marco has done a wonderful job with version 4.1.1; the attention to detail is meticulous. I can already tell that I will be opting to catch up with my unread items on my iPhone rather than on my MacBook Air.

Reeder – I have been using the Mac-based equivalent since I bought my MacBook Air last year. The iOS version does not disappoint, attractive UI and friction free UX.

Kindle – Most of the time I read on a Kindle Keyboard but I tend to use my phone when I am travelling to and from work. The iOS app is identical to the Android version and was a natural choice for inclusion at this early stage.

Notesy – This was the most difficult choice. I considered Byword, Writing Kit and Plain Text before deciding to try Notesy. Plain Text does not include Markdown support, making it easy to remove that from the selection process. Writing Kit was a little too feature rich and I was concerned that it would not fit into the minimal mindset that I have with regard to text editors. Based on some thorough reading and a helpful chart, I settled on Notesy due to the fact that I could customise the UI more than in Byword.

I’ll follow this up as I continue to add apps and use the phone.

Perfect ‘Simple’ Note Making

I’m always looking for ways to improve my productivity. Having been an early adopter of both Google Calendar and Google Tasks, I have felt for some time, that there was a link in the chain missing. While both apps have the ability to serve as a place to write and store simple lists, I don’t feel that their UI’s lend themselves to this function very well. For me, Google Calendar and Google Tasks are about events that are in the future: days, weeks and months away. Between them I schedule meetings, presentations, important tasks and events; input key dates from the school calendar such as parents evenings; and perosnal events like dentist appointments and birthdays.

What I wanted, was a tool in which I could keep and access my day-to-day ‘to do list’. Stuff like email Leah’s parents to say how well she is doing or finish marking my Year Tens’ writing assessments. And I wanted it to allow me to record random thoughts, blog ideas; to keep a list of books I wish to read; and to take notes quickly and efficiently in meetings. What would be even better if these notes could be synced in the cloud and I could access them on or offline wherever I was.

Que: Simplenote; Simplenote for iPhone; mNote for Android; and Notational Velocity.

These four tools/apps have provided me with the perfect ‘simple’ note making process that I have been searching for. These apps working in tandem truly represent what mobile sync was created for and the integration is seamless. Here is a break down of how this set up works (for me).

Simplenote – To get started you need to create an account. Like many apps and tools today this process is simple and efficient. Signing up allows the magic to happen providing the cloud based storage and syncing functionality for your notes. If you’r connected to the internet, got a wifi connection or are on 3G your notes will sync so no matter where you are or what device you have at hand you can check, add to, edit and delete your notes. Once you are signed up, you can move straight on to downloading the iPhone app.

iPhone – (iPod touch in my case) – The app is as quick to download as it is to sign up for the account. Once installed you are greeted by a series of helpful notes that are waiting to help you make the best use of Simplenote. The UI is clean; adding notes is a synch and while you are connected to wifi/3G your notes will sync frequently. Therefore there are almost no buttons to be clicked including no save button – it is simply not needed. Once you have added your account info you are away. I think that the native app has the most pleasing UI and most seamless functionality so I make use of it around the house, giving my HTC Wildfire a rest.

mNote – I also needed to be able to make and access my notes while at work and with no native app for Android I searched the Market and found mNote. It was as quick and easy to install as the iPhone app and while it is a little rough around the edges in the UI department, it certainly makes up for it in ease of use. The white on black interface displays well on my HTC Wildfire’screen and has become one of my most used apps after returning to school this past week. I have used it in numerous meetings and even recorded thoughts and ideas on the fly during lessons as they have occurred to me.

Notational Velocity – The final piece of the puzzle was to find a desktop app that I could use to access my notes while I was at my school desk or working at home. This would allow for copy/paste functionality and for me to continue to be able to make notes whenever they occurred. Notational Velocity offers an extremely lite client with a great UI (a common theme amongst Simplenote apps!) and boasts an impressive list of keyboard shortcuts (included as a pre-installed note) making it very easy to use. I have already used it for taking notes in longer meetings and even wrote the first draft of this post with it.

Like Google Calendar and Google Tasks before it, Simplenote has quickly become a staple of my day-to-day routine. What do these tools have in common? Great UIs; cloud based sync across multiple devices; and ease of use. A winning combination every time!