What a productivity app developer does when not productive

Posted by William Gallagher

Take a read of this on Reddit. Those very words – actually, that very word
Reddit – should tell that it won’t be an easy read. Not because of anything actually harsh or hard in the piece, but because it’s on Reddit. Looks very ugly but it’s worth it for pieces like this:

Lately, I’ve been stressed out and find myself caught in a bad, unproductive cycle: I’m tired so I can’t work. But I’m stressed out so I can’t sleep. I wake up tired, only to realize I’m going to waste another day. This has been going on for some x weeks — maybe more.

This isn’t normal for me: I write productivity apps, and I (like to think) I really know my stuff. If you ask me about a common problem about productivity, I probably know how to solve it because I’ve probably suffered from it in the past.

I’m writing this down because I need to follow my own advice. Maybe you need to hear it too. If you don’t need this now, that’s fine. We go through phases in life. I probably didn’t need to hear this 6 months ago.

If you’re stressed out and got caught in a unproductive cycle, here’s something that might help. (self.productivity) – Reddit (20 September 2014)

Read the short but full piece on Reddit.

Ideas have their time

Posted by William Gallagher

I’m working toward various BBC Radio proposals – you get to submit them via producers in what’s called the offers round at certain times of the year – and I’ve done this a lot. The proposals. A lot. I mean, a lot. Quite often an idea will go very far through the process before it becomes clear it isn’t going to fly.

That’s not for any bad reason, it would often enough be that the BBC released notes on what they specifically didn’t want this time around and an idea or two of mine might be exactly one of those. Even then, the usual reason BBC Radio doesn’t want a certain type of idea is that they’ve just done too many of them. But like anything else you do a lot of, you keep doing a lot of them because they work. So sooner or later, they’ll be asking for exactly that type again.

But.

Usually when it’s been suggested that I bump an idea back to next time, whenever next time is, I’ve mentally regarded that as a rejection. I’m not being pessimistic or self-immolating about it, I think it’s factual. Because ideas go stale.

You have a finite time in which the idea is viable and exciting to you. After that, you’re at least struggling to get back the passion or you’re not even struggling, you’re just pretending.

Plus, I think that even the producer who says – and means – to bring it back next time will often not use it then for much the same reason. They’ve got their plate full of new ideas, one from last time will just seem stale.

There are exceptions. I’m involved in one right now. We’ll see how it goes but I’m into it with a passion.

But. Presume that this isn’t going to happen to you, so that you can the better enjoy it when it does. If you have an idea you want to write, write it while you still want to.

Or to put it another way, get on with it.

End contract prices when your contract ends

Posted by William Gallagher

You signed up for a contract mobile phone and accepted that it was costing you a bit for the service and a bit for the phone. Mobile phones are very expensive and the cost gets subsidised by the carriers so naturally we have to pay them quite a bit while we’re under contract.

But you don’t stay under contract. After two years, say, the contract is up. Yet people keep paying their regular monthly bill anyway.

I went a bit pale this week when friend-of-the-blog Steve Fitzpatrick pointed it out. Fortunately, I think I have always gone from one subsidised phone to another. But not this time.

This time I am just out of contract but I haven’t bought the new iPhone. So on Steve’s advice, I went back to my carrier and changed my deal. Now that my contract is up, I own my iPhone 5 so for now I’m keeping that and only paying Three for the service.

The difference is huge. I used to pay £42/month and as of this week, that’s down to £18. It’s a slightly better deal in terms of texts and phone minutes but who cares? It’s the all-you-can-eat data that I wanted enough to pay £42 for but I now have for £24 less. Per month. That’s a quarter of a hundred pounds less.

So thank you Steve. And if you’re in this position, go change to a new contract. Specifically a SIM-only contract.

Curiously, two reasons led to the conversation with Steve that got me this saving. One is that there are two iPhones out and they’re big. I need to see them in my hands before I can really decide whether they’re too big for me or not. There are reasons to like the new iPhone beside size but the size could put me off. Consequently I didn’t just pre-order or plan to buy on release day today.

But the second is that I couldn’t really make the numbers work. The price of the phone under a two-year contract is fine but no matter how I sliced it or how I considered switching to other providors, I didn’t like the numbers. All you can eat data is important to me and every deal was coming in at £45 or above.

Now I’ve gone SIM-only and own my iPhone 5, I’m suddenly looking at £18 a month I’m actually paying or anything above £45. That’s a big difference. That’s a big enough difference that I might skip this iPhone.

Incidentally, if I don’t skip it, if I go buy one, I am now committed to my SIM-only deal for £18. I couldn’t get a subsidised iPhone 6 from Three without paying some terminations fees. But I could buy one from Apple and pay over Apple Finance to get a monthly fee. That’d mean paying Apple a bit every month for the phone and Three a bit every month for the service.

It works out at pretty much exactly what I’d have been paying if I had gone straight for having Three subsidise me.

So I’m no worse off with my potential decisions but I am much better off with what I’m actually paying. And I go so pale at the thought I might very well have continued to pay my old monthly cost forever. You know people must do this. You know mobile phone companies would let them.

If that’s you, then, go sort it out and thank Steve.

Location challenge: Localscope vs Where To?

Posted by William Gallagher

There are many apps that tell you what’s around you or how to find various types of places. The very first and still one of the very few reviews I’ve done on the App Store is for one such app called Vicinity. I still like the title.

You can’t see my gushing review – I’ve just looked for it and it’s gone – and I’ll not give a link to Vicinity because by now you’d be wasting your time. It hasn’t been touched in a couple of years where some of its rivals are even now being iOS 8-ified.

There are two that I like so much I keep swapping between them. At any time, one will be on the front home screen of my iPhone but it’s 50/50 which it will be.

Call it 70/30 now.

Because I’ve just changed back and this time I think it’s going to stick.

But first, let me tell you the contestants so that you can ignore me and just go straight to getting them both yourself. In the green corner we have Where To? for iPhone and in the white corner we have Localscope. Both are very good. Both earn a place on my home screen – just never at the same time because when are you going to ask two different apps where the nearest theatre is?

When you’re testing them out, that’s when.

Both apps work in much the same way. You type in what you want to look for – supermarket, ATM, I don’t know, airport, bank, anything – and these apps show you the nearest ones in order of distance. Then when you’ve got that list, they can hand off directions to your Maps app or they can give you more details about the place.

So that’s four crucial things: 1) searching, 2) finding, 3) directions and 4) details. Let’s throw in 5) other bits too.

Searching

Both apps let you type in a specific keyword or pick from a list. With Where To? the app starts with a big circle containing broad types of categories like food or shopping. With Localscope you don’t get anything. Tap on the search box at the top and then you do, you get a list of categories. I think Localscope loses for being less immediately obvious but it also wins for how that list of categories becomes a history of what you’ve searched for.

You previous searches appear at the top, the categories are below. In my case, since I use it so much, the categories are way, way, way below. But they are there.

I most often search by specific name so this has appealed to me more than categories. Plus, Where To?’s categories are shown in the circle by icons. If you want, say, a hotel, do you tap on the shopping basket icon or the knife and fork one? Is it the Bafta-like drama and comedy mask meaning entertainment? Or the spanner meaning services?

Actually, hotels are under the icon of an aircraft, which stands for travel and transportation.

It makes sense but I regularly, regularly would stare at those icons and just have to go around all of them until I found it or did a general search. I ended up doing a general search a lot yet compared to Localscope, that felt like a bit of a pain. Where Localscope’s search is a box at the top, Where To?’s is a magnifying glass icon so it’s a tap there before you can start writing.

I can’t remember how Localscope looked before its iOS 7 incarnation so maybe they were more evenly matched before. And the reason for talking to you about all this today is that Where To? has just been updated to the iOS 7/8 look. It hasn’t changed or improved the magnifying glass search button nor has it made the icons any clearer to understand, but it has introduced a one-button Favourites option. Tap on that and you can ignore the icons circle entirely in favour of your own selection of broad terms like hotel.

2) Finding
I don’t know where Where To? gets its information from. I do know that Localscope gets its from Foursquare, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Factual (whatever that is), Yelp, Wikipedia and YouTube. There’s possibly more, these are just the ones I’ve kept on my copy.

I know it uses all of these because that is a key feature. Search for something and it will return the nearest one – I’m guessing via the Google part – but wait a moment and it will also return details from all of these services. So you’ll see a great review of a hotel on Yelp or you’ll see a twitter warning that environmental health officers have just been spotted there and they don’t look happy.

No doubt, Localscope integrates with many services and Where To? doesn’t appear to. But it must get something from somewhere because Where To? does include a photograph of a venue if you tap in far enough from the top level list.

Localscope is very useful for giving you an idea of how popular and/or expensive a local hotel is.

But ultimately it loses for the unbreakable fact that its results aren’t as good as Where To?’s. I was once trying to work out whether I was better off walking to the BIrmingham Rep or waiting for a bus. I knew where the Rep was, it came down to a question of how far that is to walk. So I asked both Localscope and Where To? for theatres.

Both returned a lot of results but Localscope’s didn’t include the Rep where Where To’s did. The End.

Except searching for the words “Birmingham Rep” were poorer on both. Both got it but so far down the list that you’d give up. You’d imagine that an exact match on a search would make that top of the list but in both cases distance wins. On Localscope, trying this right now, that means it thinks I am more likely to be wanting something called DotComSecrets Birmingham.

On Where To? a specific search for “Birmingham Rep” must mean that I want to go to Birmingham first. I can’t fault its logic there. But it’s a big city.

So neither is as fantastic as you would hope but Where To? wins for including places you’re looking for. Mostly.

I found the trick with Localscope was to wait for a bit, let it go through all its sources and then you scroll through them all. If you know what you’re looking for then you may well spot it in there somewhere. You’re stuffed if you don’t know, though.

3) Directions
Localscope threw me at first and for quite a while because its option to get directions is far down the long lost of results. But once you know it’s there, it’s quick enough to get to it and it hands off the address details to your choice of whatever map applications you have.

It’s a similar story in Where To? The directions detail used to be more obvious than in Localscope but in the latest Where To? it’s an easy-to-miss button toward one side of an photograph of the venue.

4) Details

Where To? has a nice display of addresses, phone numbers, and links to websites. Localscope has all of that plus a weblink to a page of more information – which is rarely very useful.

In comparison, Where To? now pulls in a description of the place you’re looking for and shows you that on the page without you having to tap through to anywhere else for it.

Plus, I just searched for my nearest Apple Store and Where To? also displays its opening hours today. I would’ve sworn to you that I’d seen this on Localscope too but I’m looking at both right now and can’t see it.

5) Other bits
I prefer the look of Localscope and until about three hours ago when I bought the new version of Where To? I greatly preferred it. Where To? has been stuck in a wood and leather look for a long time and Localscope’s grasp of the iOS 7 design ethos is part of what convinced me I liked that newer look.

Now Where To? has been iOS 7-erised too. It’s not as overt and obvious as with Localscope but it looks a lot better.

Where To? just loses out a bit on the look and feel plus a lot for how its icon is of a great big Exit sign – and I therefore keep thinking that’s its name. Exit might even be a better name as searching for the words “Where To?” can get you a lot of matches before you find this one.

Conclusion
Both are very good. Localscope looks and feels better; Where To? has recently been radically revised and its appearance is greatly improved.

But for accuracy and usefulness of its lists of what’s around you, Where To? wins. That’s what I have today swapped back to.

For now.

Localscope costs £1.99 UK or $2.99 US and Where To? is £1.49 UK or £1.99 US.

Career advice from successful women

Posted by William Gallagher

I hesitated over that headline because I think this collection of quotes is smart advice for anyone and so surely the gender of the speakers makes no difference. But some of it does address issues that especially affect women, such as sexism in the workplace.

Also, the more I thought about it, the less I thought it was necessary to use the word career in the headline. This is all ostensibly about work and careers and business but I’m taking general life lessons from it.

Actually, what exactly does successful mean either? If it means being successful at being a woman then if you’re a woman, success. I’m a man, so I’ve failed already.

And if I were the type of man who ignored advice because it’s from a woman, I would truly be a failure then. So I’m taking this advice.

I just suspect the better headline would therefore have been “Advice From”.

It’s Advice From a longish blog post that specifies it has 15 such tips, though I note they come from only 11 women: Tina Fey gets quoted four times. But my favourite of them all and the one I think is most relevant to us as writers is one of hers in which she says:

The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30…What I learned about bombing as a writer at Saturday Night is that you can’t be too worried about your “permanent record.” Yes, you’re going to write some sketches that you love and are proud of forever—your golden nuggets. But you’re also going to write some real shit nuggets. And unfortunately, sometimes the shit nuggets will make it onto the air. You can’t worry about it. As long as you know the difference, you can go back to panning for gold on Monday.

Tina Fey quoted in 15 Career Tips from Smart Women – Joanna Goddard, A Cup of Jo (16 September 2014)

Do go read the other 14. They are smart quotes. But then also go buy Tina Fey’s book Bossypants: I’ve never met Fey and don’t really know her work beyond a few episodes of 30 Rock yet the book feels like she’s sitting there with you telling you these great stories. Fantastic writing style and a huge amount to say.

Now the great, the great and the not so great of iOS 8

Posted by William Gallagher

All day I’ve been turning to my iPhone or iPad to do something and finding it subtly different because I’ve taken the free upgrade to iOS 8. And finding it subtly, slightly, gradually and superbly better:

• It’s easier and quicker and clearer to tell Apple Maps you’re walking instead of driving

• Voice iMessages. I had this on WhatsApp when I was reviewing that and thought it a nice idea but, meh, I’ll never remember to use it. Today, the first day it’s on iOS 8, I sent half a dozen voice iMessages, barely having to think

• “Hey Siri, take me home”. Just saying that aloud in the car and finding Siri firing up the map us unnatural

• Recent and favourite contacts. Double tap the home key to switch to another app and along the way there are icons for the people you speak and email and text with most often. Tap on one then text, phone or email them

• Today View. Being able to see my current OmniFocus To Do tasks and tick them off. Being able to launch quickly into Evernote right from there.

• Swipe that Email Down. Push your reply down out of the way while you peek to see what’s just come in to your inbox

• Sharing. Sending a webpage to Pocket, to Evernote, to OmniFocus and being able to add details before it goes

• Using 1Password from within Safari.

• Quick deleting emails with swipes

• Spotlight searching looks through your phone, your email, your browser history and the web and Wikipedia

That’s ten things right there. The killer thing for me is that I know there is more yet they’ve already become so familiar I can’t remember to question whether we’ve always had them. I used an iOS 7 iPad earlier this evening and it just felt old.

So, you know, reading between the lines here, I’d say I think iOS 8 is a hit.

The good, the great and the bad of iOS 8

Posted by William Gallagher

Bad things first, since you’re wondering.

Initially I thought it was running visibly slower than iOS 7 on my iPhone 5. It was. There was definite lag, even when swiping between home screens. But I’ve been running iOS 8 since last night and now, about an hour after I last grumbled at that lag, it’s gone. The phone feels fast again. But it really had been bad enough that I was going to suggest you hold off unless you have a new iPhone.

I’m going to suggest that anyway. Let everyone else work through this. But when you do update on an older iPhone, and it is worth it, be prepared for it to take a few hours to get back up to speed.

On my iPad Air, by the way, it was immediately perfect. Fast and responsive, not one single pixel of a doubt that if you have an iPad Air you should upgrade to iOS 8 now.

On both machines, though, Safari was irritating. There’s this thing called Private Mode – if you were fussed about nobody seeing who you bank with online, you switch to Private Mode and Safari doesn’t track the address, it doesn’t keep the details in its history. When you’re done, come out of Private Mode and nobody can see that you’ve been to Offshore Islands Dodgy Bank Co. Fine. I didn’t realise I’d switched into it but I had, on both machines, before upgrading. After the upgrade, all existing tabs were considered to be in Private Mode and there is no way to say no, hang on, I want this one to be un-private. I had to swipe-to-remove each separate tab. And to keep important ones, it was copy-and-paste on the address. It won’t be an issue again but it was a pain today.

So was setting up 1Password. The only part that was iOS 8’s fault is the way you have to set up the ability to use 1Password extensions, to be able to be there in Safari and say oi, 1Password, pop my username and password in here. It’s just slightly confusing how you do it, and since I’d been through a very similar but not identical process adding Pocket, it was more confusing still trying to fathom the difference. (Pocket isn’t a lot better: it gives you the error message ‘not logged in’ when you first try to use it but you’re on your own figuring out how you therefore log in.)

Generally I’ve found that 1Password is a marvellous app in every single possible way bar anything to do with upgrading to new versions. It’s just a bag of frustration. The company goes to lengths to make it all automatic but since it goes wrong every time, the automation becomes a barrier to trying to fix it. Less an upgrade cycle, more alchemy. I sweat through it every time because the app is worth it, but I do also file bug reports every time.

So this is 1Password’s fault rather than iOS 8’s per se and actually it worked perfectly on my iPad Air. But I had to delete and reinstall it on my iPhone to get it to stop crashing.

Other annoyances that aren’t really iOS 8’s fault: TextExpander is a paid upgrade. It’s only £2.99 and it’s of course fair to charge for the new functionality that I will use a lot, but there was no mention of this before so it was annoying. Also, the new keyboard that TextExpander provides is simply ugly. That doesn’t help. But the functionality, that’s great.

One part that is iOS 8’s fault: setting up TextExpander as a new keyboard could be more straightforward. It is pretty straightforward but there is a final option called ‘Allow Full Access’ and you can’t even see that option until you’ve been in, set up the keyboard, come out and gone back in again.

One last minor annoyance. This is the most unfair thing of me but OmniFocus needs an New Task button in the Today notifications.

But let me use that to segue on to the good and the great. The good to very, very good is this Today notification. Pick up your phone and without even unlocking it, just swipe down. We’ve had this for a time and I’ve rarely used it as much as I expected to, but now it’s got my choice of extras. I’ve chosen OmniFocus: it shows me my current tasks for the day and I can tap them as done, when necessary. I’ve also chosen Evernote, though, and that gives me buttons to create new notes.

I want both. I want OmniFocus to include a New Task button and I want Evernote to show me my recent notes. I think you can bet these will both come, but it’s oddly hampering today.

I really like the Today view though. And I really, really like the ability to get 1Password to pop in my details on sites. Apparently it won’t do credit cards yet, only logins. That’s a shame but also hopefully something we can expect changed soon. The number of times I book tickets or buy things online is exactly equal to the number of times I get 1Password to pop all that stuff in for me. So I want that too.

For all that I said Safari was irritating, in normal use after you’ve got past that Private Mode tick, it is really superb. Very fast, responsive, and I like how a pinch brings up all your current tabs and you can see what you’re doing, where you’re going.

The sharing extension in Pocket and Evernote is pretty close to fabulous. Again, once you’ve set it up. But to be on any website and tap to send it to Pocket or to Evernote, wallop, done, sold, I will be using this all the time.

The only reason I don’t call that full-on fabulous is that there is something else that is. Siri. When it’s plugged in to mains power, you can say aloud “Hey, Siri” and ask it whatever you want to ask it. At any time. Without pausing. I reckoned I would use this all the time in the car where I think of tasks I’ll need reminding of, but this morning I had an entire conversation with Siri without pressing the button once. Because it’s plugged in to mains by my bed while I charge it.

I need to say that Angela is away, I wouldn’t have a natter with Siri at 5am if she weren’t. So maybe I won’t use that all the time. But it is freaky fabulous.

Overall, now it’s setup, I think iOS 8 is pretty freaky fabulous. And yes, the first thing I did after installing it was buy OmniFocus 2 for iPad. Happy now.

Exactly how long you should work every day

Posted by William Gallagher

Twenty-four hours.

Sorry? Sleep what?

Recently, the Draugiem Group, a social networking company, added to this growing body of research. Using the time-tracking productivity app DeskTime, they conducted an experiment to see what habits set their most productive employees apart. What they found was that the 10% of employees with the highest productivity surprisingly didn’t put in longer hours than anyone else. In fact, they didn’t even work full eight-hour days. What they did do was take regular breaks. Specifically, they took 17-minute breaks for every 52 minutes of work.

“Turns out, the secret to retaining the highest level of productivity over the span of a workday is not working longer–but working smarter with frequent breaks,” wrote Julia Gifford in The Muse when she posted the study’s results. Employees with the highest levels of productivity worked for 52 minutes with intense purpose, then rested up, allowing their brains time to rejuvenate and prepare for the next work period.

The Exact Amount of Time You Should Work Every Day – Lisa Evans, Fast Company (15 September 2014)

Madness. But okay, maybe persuasive madness. Read Evans’s full feature for more – and particularly on what those most productive 17-minute skivers do during their breaks.

Get this right now, right now: 1Password for iOS goes free

Posted by William Gallagher

I believe this is unheard of and I believe you should be getting it now rather than reading this. Get it now. Hurry.

Look, I got my copy in a sale several years ago and it was a bargain price but it was still a price. When I learnt that it was free, I actually didn’t believe it. You know how the App Store doesn’t show you a price after you’ve bought something? It only and forever shows the word ‘Open’? Often I like that, especially if the app was expensive and has now dropped a lot in price. But it means it’s quite difficult to check these things out to be sure that they’re true.

Listen to me, I sound like I still don’t believe it. To put this in one perspective, free is just a £6.99 drop. But to put it in another, I’ve used 1Password a minimum of once every single day – every single day – since I got it around 2009.

It’s a password manager that creates strong passwords and then securely enters them for you. So on the one hand you’re never going to use ‘123456789’ as your password. And on the other, going to websites and logging in to them is now very fast. One tap and I’m at the BBC Radio Previews website, 1Password is popping my username and password in, and I’m off to the races.

That’s a feature that is going to get even better in iOS 8, which arrives today, and the new version of 1Password which will arrive at about the same time. That’s going to be a free upgrade for me, as an existing user, and it will be a free upgrade for you as an existing user – if you go get this bizarre free offer while it lasts.

Staring at my iPhone and iPad screens waiting for tomorrow to start

Posted by William Gallagher

Tomorrow sees the public release of iOS 8. I’m actually blanking on why I’m so keen; it’s ages since I saw what it would bring – wait, there’s one definite thing, there’s a great change to Siri that I want.

Specifically this: when I’m driving and the iPhone is plugged in, I will be able to talk to Siri without pressing a button first. I talk to Siri a lot. I mean, a lot. It’s like I have no friends.

Or at least no friends in the car with me who will also remember everything I tell it to. I add reminders to OmniFocus via Siri about once a minute when I’m driving. I think that driving just frees up part of my brain and let’s these things out.

Now I’m thinking that I’m not very safe on the roads.

But I’m also thinking of OmniFocus. It’s been confirmed that the new version for the iPad has been approved by Apple and will be released on the App Store tomorrow.

So just as it was with iOS 7 and OmniFocus 2 for iPhone, I will be updating to iOS 8 and instantly going to the App Store to buy OmniFocus 2 for iPad.

I’m just telling you this because I’m enthused and I’ll alone, not even Siri to talk to. Sob..