Insight for Technologists
If you are looking for some amazing subtle backgrounds for your sites, apps, documents, even desktops, then I have to highly recommend checking out subtlepatterns.com.
I’m thinking about applying some of them to DevBurner and have been playing around with them on different development sites. Adds a nice touch to your design and free is always good.
It seems that every few months I repeat the same type of cycle when it comes to music:
It’s sort of annoying because when I was “younger” I was always into new music and new bands. I was in a semi-touring metal/punk band for about 6 years starting in high school. Music was always in the background of my life and I could almost put a song or band to any memory that I had. Music was very important to me.
I love being able to find new bands and new music for different activities in my life (working out, relaxing, reminiscing, programming, brainstorming, etc.) and these apps have been helping me out over the last few weeks. Oh, yeah, these are mostly iPhone apps 
Songza
Songza (iTunes, Google play) is great for being able to put music to a situation or mood. The idea is that you can go through a playlist based on the time of day. For instance, if it’s early in the morning when you launch the app, Songza will give you choices like “Waking Up”, “Working Out”, or “Morning Commute”. From there you can choose a category (my favorite for commuting is “Cure for Road Rage: Indie”).
Another neat feature is being able to explore music by Culture or even Moods. What’s great about Songza is that it has music that can paint your day. Using Songza I have discovered or rediscovered some artists during my day which is great.
Discovr Music
Discovr Music is an interconnected web of bands and performers. Type in a name of a group or artist then let the crowd sourced app show you a bunch of related music. From there you play that band’s top songs, play songs from similar artists, add the band to your favorites, and even open that band in Rdio (don’t know about Mog or others).
This app is perfect for finding “like” music of stuff that you already enjoy. It’s $4.99 but the utility you get from the app is well worth it. Discovr also has the same type of apps for app and movie selections.
Band of the Day
Although Band of the Day mostly features pop and indie music, I have found a handful of decent bands that I still listen to. The greates part about Band of the Day isn’t necessarily the music choice, it’s the overall design and usability of the app. The thing is gorgeous and gives you a bunch of information about bands that you probably would never hear of otherwise.
Some other mentions are Pandora (iTunes, Google play), Rdio (iTunes, Google play), Mog (iTunes, Google play), SoundHound (iTunes, Google play), but the three above have taken my music discovery to the next level. Instead of scouring the internet for “bands that are like ‘x’”, I’m happy that I can use some technology to figure this stuff out.
My colleague at Lifehack, Mr. Vardy, introduced me to a new app called 30/30 through his post yesterday on how he uses this tool to keep himself productive through the day. I, much like him, don’t really like the Pomodoro Technique of time management, mostly because it is too rigid and too cheeky for my taste; it feels like a gimmick to me. But, there is definitely something to this app 30/30 and the idea of setting aside time for work (or whatever you need to get done that isn’t done).
One thing that is different about the corporate work style and someone who works at home is that we don’t necessarily get the opportunity to “make our own time”. This means that if something comes up during the day, it needs taken care of and I have to push the work that I have defined for myself to get done to the side. What I have found with frameworks and tools like Pomodoro or 30/30 is that they almost assume the user lives in a vacuum and that they can devote a set amount of time, anytime, to work.
The hardest part about getting your own work done in a corporate setting after you have adopted some sort of productivity system, isn’t about how much work you have or how it isn’t defined, it’s about getting side-tracked and working on things that you may have nothing to do with. Yes, in a work at home setting you can have this too; kids, unexpected happenings, calls with annoying people, family, etc., but within a corporation it’s much harder to get away from.
So, how can we keep ourselves on track with our work while accounting for outside influences needing our attention (that will probably never stop)? I think that it’s all about “bookmarking” our work for later. David Allen talks about this on some of the David Allen Co. podcasts. Basically, when he is pulled away from something, he simply writes down on a piece of paper what he is currently doing, thinking, about to do, etc. and puts it in his inbox. Later, he picks up that reminder and after a few minutes can be right back where he left off.
What’s nice about 30/30 is that it allows you to pause what you are currently working on, allowing you to restart your task whenever you can get back to your own work. That is something that is vastly different from Pomodoro where if you stop working your “Pomodoro” then you can’t “count” it as a Pomodoro. I think that’s stupid and not productive. I can see myself using 30/30 the same way that Mike uses it, but it’s missing a couple of things to make it a true work bookmarking and day tracking system like being able to attach notes to tasks or syncing with a web/desktop version. The idea is great and the app is slick.
Being able to set up your day with the things that you need/want to get done and then staying on track is a tough thing to do without some sort of framework to help you out. Flat action lists and project lists are good for keeping stock of your tasks, but for getting to work and getting back to work on a daily or “minutely” basis, we need to use some sort of work bookmarking system.
Are you a Mac fanboy? A Windows “Power User”? Do you scoff at how “zealots” tote around their iThings and disregard anything and everything else as being a viable option? If so and you are a developer or creator of software, you may want to take a step back and consider including the “ubiquity feature” in your apps.
Cross platform app development is here to stay. So, rather than disregard it, use it as a feature of your software.
I have had quite the transition from Windows user, to Linux user, to Windows “power user”, to Mac, to anything under the sun user. What I still find hard to believe is that some developers only offer their software for certain “platforms”, even with the availability and growing power of creating a web and mobile applications. The fact is that there are other OSes in the world.
Many Mac aficionado tend to think that there are only Macs in this world. As Apple has been making a killing lately with iOS and even with OS X, we have to remember that the majority of people on earth run Windows. This of course will probably change as Microsoft has been digging their own grave for well over ten years now because of their stagnation, but the fact remains that there are many OSes and platforms out there to support.
There may be a number of good reasons why developers create software for a certain platform or another, but if they are creating frontward facing services for end-users, it seems like a real misstep for them to not use web and HTML 5 technologies to make their apps available to all.
Developers (especially fledgling ones like myself) should plan for this. Rather than develop apps for a certain platform, we should be opening them up to anyone and everyone. We are limiting ourselves because of lack of experience in a platform or just plain “zealotness”. At the very least, developers should offer robust APIs so that other developers that have an interest in a certain platform can interface with their software.
One good example of a software company that is doing this right (other than the whole not charging anything part) is 6Wunderkinder. They used Appcelerator’s Titanium products to make Wunderlist available online, for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS in record time. And for the most part, everything works without a hitch. We can argue whether Wunderlist has the features that one needs for tracking their todos, but what we can all agree on is that in this case Wunderkinder has made ubiquity a feature.
Twitter is a great example of an app and service that made a great API for developers. This can be argued to be one of the main reasons that popularity for Twitter grew so quickly.
Another good example of this is the webapp Toodledo. It may not be the most grand, exciting, or pretty app, but Jake at Toodledo has done a hell of a job of making his app ubiquitous as well as created a great API so third party developers can create applications that work with it. Yet another is the new app Asana (one that a good friend has adopted over an app that can’t be used cross platform) which has a very responsive web interface. The mobile app is sort of lacking, but new additions are made consistently.
Other apps like OmniFocus (or anything from the OmniGroup), Microsoft Office (although it’s getting better) and others are limiting themselves by not giving users the ubiquity feature or decent APIs for third party developers. These developers may scoff and say things like, “well, you can’t get real work done on a Mac anyways (yeah, that’s you M$),” or “we want to only cater to the Mac platform,” but the fact is that the OS is becoming less and less important with the availability of the web and the growth in the power of web and mobile technologies.
I can’t say that apps that are only for iOS or Mac or Windows won’t do well (because apps that are only for those platforms continue to do well). What I can say is that ubiquity is a feature, that cross platform app development is important, and should be added to any new application that is being released. Whether the apps are ported to a specific platforms, available on the web, or have an API that other developers can access, developers need to pay attention and make their apps accessible from anywhere at anytime.
A couple of months ago I wrote an article for Lifehack talking about going on an ‘App Diet’ with my iOS device. As I have strayed a little from this notion I have decided to come back to it because it makes a huge difference when using my iOS device, particularly my iPhone. Patrick Rhone talks about choosing 5 tools for his Mac other than the stock OS X ones. That is absolute nuttery too me, especially on the Mac. He has since clarified that it really isn’t about the number, it’s just the idea and thought experiment associated with the number.
So, all that being said, here are the 15 iOS Apps (and a little about them) that have made their way to stay on my white iPhone 4S
I’m not the biggest fan of the whole minimalism movement as of late, though it has started to lose a little steam as some of its purveyors have realized that it’s a fool’s errand to keep it going. I’m a strong advocate with choosing the right tools for the job, so if it takes 1 or 50 tools to get the job done correctly that’s fine. As you can see from last week’s article, I am anything but minimal when it comes to my toolset and the list above is yet another example of that.
