News

Google searching you

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The Washington Post’s Caitlin Dewey writes:

According to Google, I am a woman between the ages of 25 and 34 who speaks English as her primary language and has accumulated an unwieldy 74,486 e-mails in her life. I like cooking, dictionaries and Washington, D.C. I own a Mac computer that I last accessed at 10:04 p.m. last night, at which time I had 46 open Chrome tabs. And of the thousands and thousands of YouTube videos I have watched in my lifetime, a truly embarrassing number of them concern (a) funny pets or (b) Taylor Swift.

I didn’t tell Google any of these things intentionally, of course — I didn’t fill out a profile or enter a form. But even as you search Google, it turns out, Google is also searching you.

Everything Google knows about you (and how it knows it) – Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post (19 November 2014)

I just had a peek for myself and Google seems to know far less about me than it does Dewey. Also most of it was a bit rubbish. Apparently I boguht one thing via Google Walllet some time. I don’t ever remember doing that. But also my last Google group of any description was something related to the To Do app by Appigo. I haven’t touched that in three years.

Still, Dewey is interesting and raises points here that I’m pondering away about. Read the full piece.

Ulysses coming to iPad soon

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How soon is soon? Ulysses is a Scrivener-like app for Mac that, like the perhaps more famous Scrivener, is a kind of writing studio. The official site describes it thisaway:

Ulysses lets you focus when you need to concentrate. It keeps all your texts neatly stuffed in its intuitive library. With a few clicks, Ulysses can create beautiful documents from your manuscripts: PDFs, web pages, even iBooks-ready ePubs. With its simple, clutter-free interface, it will turn work hours into fun time. And mere thoughts into powerful stories. If you love to write, and write a lot, Ulysses is made for you.

Ulyssesapp.com

Now it’s coming to iPad and the company has begun a beta test. This could be enough to convert Scrivener fans because that app’s iPad version has been in the works for years. It may come out in 2015 but we’ve heard that before.

Take a look at the Ulysses iPad video and then check out the official site.

Ulysses for iPad – Coming Soon from The Soulmen on Vimeo.

App Santa is here

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Listen, I know you’ve dropped a few pennies on The Blank Screen book sale but there are other Christmas deals and I think the best is one called App Santa.

You’re used to deals where for a pretty good price you get one pretty good app and ten you’d never imagine using. But App Santa has genuinely excellent apps and you cherry pick the ones you want.

This year it includes several apps that I have recommended, most especially Drafts 4 for iOS, MindNode, TextExpander touch and Clear. Each of which is half price.

There are others and apparently some savings are up to 80% off so do take a look at the whole list.

Productivity lessons from Strictly Come Dancing

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You’re thinking oh yes, really, there is productivity to be learnt from the UK’s version of Dancing with the Stars? Yes.

Such as this. Right now as we speak, it’s the gap between the two episodes making up this year’s final. It’s about an hour, just shy of an hour, and it’s short enough and the timing is awkward enough that there isn’t a whole lot you can usefully go do before the show’s back.

But you could write.

I would be writing if I weren’t talking to you. So this is definitely a case of very specifically do what I say rather than what I do.

And this is what put the idea in my head. But once it was there in my noggin, I realised that there are productivity lessons aplenty.

Maybe it’s not a shock. Strictly runs for, what, 16 weeks? Once it starts, it is a train and there must be hundreds of people working flat-out on it. Every person vital – this is the BBC, they ain’t paying for people they don’t need – and that means everything they each do is crucial. Vital, crucial and time-dependent. Tina Fey has a great line that I remember a lot when I’m vacillating over projects I’m writing:

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.”

Tina Fey, Bossypants

We spend a lot of time as writers going around in circles over whether something is ready and whether something is good. Sometimes that is exactly the right thing to do. Sometimes that is what makes us writers and makes our material sing. But sometimes: let it go. It is done, get it gone.

I believe in debating what needs to be debated and finishing what needs to be finished. And the deadline of a live show every week is like cement-lined evidence to me.

But do you follow Strictly? I don’t watch The X-Factor because it seems the same every week to me. Someone comes on and they can sing or they can’t. Next week, they can sing or they can’t. No difference. With Strictly, people are visibly transformed. They’re transformed by many things but one is confidence: facing up to dancing in front of millions changes them. And always, always, when a celebrity’s personality comes out, they dance better.

Drama writing requires us to dig deep. Dancing requires letting go. But both require us to listen to the music and that’s productivity to me. Hear the rhythm, the beat and get going.

Recommended: Snapselect for OS X

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This week I began writing software reviews for MacNN.com and as I was doing this one, I thought of you. While we’re writers, we do have to be so conscious of images and graphics now plus we can’t help but have a great camera in our pockets – because our phones all have them. I think one consequence from this is that we get eleventy-billion images.

I know I did.

Years ago I was enough into photography – I’ve had some published in US books – that I invested in Apple’s professional image application, Aperture. I’d have to check this, don’t make me swear to it, but when Aperture came out, it was so new and in such a new field that nobody quite knew what to make of it. They tried comparing it to Photoshop, where it failed because its image editing is much more basic. They tried comparing it to iPhoto and it failed because it isn’t as easy as iPhoto.

Yet I believe Adobe got it, they understood. Or maybe more likely they were eying up the same issues that Aperture was intended to solve. Adobe Lightroom became the other application in this new genre of serious photo management.

I was a bit fascinated by this because it reminded me of TV drama reviews where at first everyone is criticising a show and then later they’re adoring it. In this case they were poo-pooing an entire form of software and very quickly they were using it. But then I was also a lot fascinated by how they used it and how these two applications did the same thing in different ways.

Very broadly, very crudely, Aperture was a smash-and-grab do-anything kind of application where you bunged in your photos and then you worried about them later. Whereas Lightroom required you to add them in a certain way, process them in certain steps and really go through a particular workflow. I’m not that disciplined and Aperture just seemed to suit me better, so I bought Aperture.

Unfortunately maybe I needed a touch more discipline than I have. Or perhaps Aperture did. Because I added a lot of photos and then by mistake added them again. And again. Over time there are up to five duplicates of some shots and one thing Aperture is bad at is helping you spot those and delete them.

Flashforward a few years. I’ve pretty much stopped using Aperture because it was full brimwards with these duplicates and near-duplicates from when I would over-shoot events. Also, Apple abandoned Aperture. That was a big surprise to me and I think it was a big mistake. As ever with software, you can carry on using something. Nobody comes and switches off Aperture just because Apple doesn’t sell it any more. But there will come a time when they might as well have. There will be some moment in the future when you have to choose between getting some Apple OS X upgrade and sticking with an old one to keep Aperture alive.

I will upgrade. I say this not just because I know myself but because I know that I’ll upgrade before I notice that it kills Aperture.

So I have been mentally preparing to move my images out of it and I haven’t because I’m not mentally prepared to slog through all those bloody shots. Which is where Snapselect came in. Do you remember reading the word Snapselect about five miles up above this line? I reviewed Snapselect and it did – it is doing – the job I need. It’s taking me a time to work through everything because it is slow and I am busy but every few hours I take a minute to schlep through a few images and kill off the duplicates and the bad ones.

And my telling you that tells you the story behind this paragraph from my review:

We imported a fairly disastrous Aperture library that had over 30,000 images, and took up around 300Gb. It took Snapselect 11 minutes to load it, and then not far shy of 150 minutes to produce the thumbnails — which then took over two hours to analyze. Be smarter than us: bring in a few folders at a time. Snapselect makes that easy, but we just wanted to show off.

Hands On: Snapselect photo management app (OS X) – William Gallagher, MacNN (19 December 2014)

Read the full piece to get some screenshots – watch for my finger in frame in one – and details of how to get it. If you don’t need it, you may not even see the point. But if you do, go buy Snapselect because it solves the day.

Spoiler: it’s better to come in third

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Now watch an hour-long video about why. This is author Malcolm Gladwell on whether it’s best to be first or, you guessed it, third. I’m not actually convinced because it feels a bit lazy to wait for other people to do things before you bother standing on their shoulders. But Gladwell is a good speaker and makes both pointed and wide-ranging points. Watch the first ten minutes or so and see what you think. Then get a biscuit for the rest.

There’s a colour of the year

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I didn’t know this and I don’t know what the colour for 2014 was – I’m sure there’s a joke here but I can’t find it – but the colour for 2015 is…

Marsala.

Introducing Marsala – Pantone website (16 December 2014)

Of course, you’ll know it better as Pantone 18-1438.

Here it is adorning the Pantone website:

And because I know you’re looking at me like that, the answer is that 2014’s colour was Radiant Orchid.

Nod of the hat to The Loop for knowing these things.

Best new app in ages: Workflow for iOS

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I’ve been holed away in an apartment in Paris, as you do, with only barebones internet connection and a lot of gorgeous city to look around. It was meant to be a working break and some work was done but, between us, it worked more as a break. A stillness, a bubble. And I thought I’d be recommending that to you.

I may yet.

But the last thing I downloaded as the Eurostar train went under the Channel was the newly released Workflow for iPhone and iPad.

Wait. This is more relevant than you’re thinking. If I hadn’t gone off for these days, I would’ve downloaded Workflow and I would’ve fully reviewed it but there’s a difference between fully and fully. The fully reviewed review I would’ve written you would doubtlessly have been praising and it would’ve begun:

Workflow lets you automate various things your iPad software can do. So things that take you several steps and need several of the regular iPad apps can be turned into one.

This is true. I’d have sounded enthused too, because I am, but I think you’d have got that more from the tone than from anything specific. Automate. Great. I’d have given you an example, too, but while I got the concept and I’ve been looking forward to this app, I wouldn’t have done you a great example. I couldn’t have done you a great example because I couldn’t think of one.

But being away, having the time to play, I’ve got one. Full disclosure: it may not seem that great to you. But, grief, it’s great for me and this is what’s so good about Workflow: it lets you create tools that are great for you.

Previously on this… In one of my freelance jobs it helps me to keep an eye on various news outlets and when I see something that could be useful, I save it to Evernote. Now, I’ve got an Evernote notebook for it and I could copy the text from an article and paste it there. I’ve done that. I can also email the article from the web straight into Evernote. I do that a lot. What I don’t do is remember how.

I can remember how to email into Evernote, that’s fine. But saying which notebook gives me pause because I can never remember its name. And I’d like to add tags, things to help me find articles later, but I can never remember how to do that.

And now I don’t have to.

With Workflow, when I spot an article online that I want to save, I tap Safari’s Share button. There’s a Run Workflow button that appears. Tap that and I get all my Workflows. Pick one I’ve called Research and, wallop.

Workflow takes the article, the web address, pops it into an email, does the trickery to say what notebook and what tags there are, and it’s gone. Sent. Saved.

It doesn’t actually save me a lot of time but it saves me enough that I do it more often. And that’s the thing about automation; it makes things easier as well as quicker.

Workflow is on sale at £1.99 but the price goes up soon. Get it on the App Store.