Software

Software

Create strong passwords

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Lifehacker has an interesting article called Four Methods to Create a Secure Password You’ll Actually Use and I’d like you to read it, but I’m also amused how old-fashioned the whole idea seems to me.

Because I use 1Password. I can barely remember any of my very many passwords, not because they are all very strong ones but because I don’t need to. They’re all in 1Password and right there, securely, when I need them.

But if you don’t use 1Password or any equivalents, check out Lifehacker’s article because you need stronger passwords than you’ve got now. You do.

Video – and now top 5 productivity apps for iOS

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This is more of a curio, I think: it’s the top 5 productivity iOS apps from someone who clearly prefers Android. He has that Android fiddle-with-new-toy-itus where the ability to root your phone is more interesting than getting any work done.

And he says iOS is less interesting because you’ve heard of all the best productivity apps for iOS already. O-kay.

Herewith, then, five you haven’t heard of. I think that knocks the word ‘top’ off the description but I only disagree with one – I’d recommend 1Password over LastPass, though doubtlessly for the same reason he does, it’s the one I use myself – and there’s only one I have never heard of. Find out what in the world 30/30 does here:

Update: Microsoft restores Skype missing feature

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Previously, Microsoft updated Skype for iOS and took away voice messages. That old thing. Who’d use that? And wouldn’t be willing to trade in their iPhone for an Android device in order to listen to a voicemail message? See Microsoft Taketh Away.

You know it wasn’t a plan to rob iPhone users of a core feature but the way it was handled, it sounded as if it was and anyway, the result is that we were robbed of a core feature. And because of Apple’s usually handy automatic app updating, we got this improvement without noticing.

It’s now fixed. But Skype/Microsoft really doesn’t like to admit to a mistake however obvious. So the return of voicemail messages is not a bug fix and they obviously won’t apologise for the problem. Instead, it’s a new feature you should be grateful they’ve added in. I was grateful before, it is a good feature, but we had it and this is like ten fishing for compliments after screwing us around.

From the official blog:

We have been reading and listening to your feedback ever since we launched the new remastered Skype for iPhone and have been hard at work incorporating your suggestions. With Skype 5.1 for iPhone we included the ability to delete a conversation, edit a message and added a “Skype”-only contact filter, to name a few. Today, Skype 5.2 for iPhone adds more of the features you want most:

Voice message support: When you receive a new voice message from someone, it will show up in the conversation. To listen, just press play.

Skype 5.2 for iPhone – blog (7 July 2014)

Quickly get tasks out of your emails

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This happens. Someone sends you a giant email full of personal detail, personal conversation between the pair of you, and oh, in the middle, there’s a job they need doing. Actually, it’s a job where you need to ask someone something for them.

Highlight that bit. Just that bit. Only that sentence. Now hit Forward.

Practically whatever email system you use, you will now have in front of you a brand new email message with that highlighted text and nothing else.

You didn’t have to copy and paste, your email just did it for you. Address the email, send it off, done.

If that one email has several tasks for many people, do this to each one. Highlight, forward, send. Highlight, forward, send.

If it’s a task for you and your To Do app can handle this, you could do exactly the same thing but email the task into your app. OmniFocus users get a secret email address for precisely this job. And I use the bejaysis out of it. Highlight, forward a task to OmniFocus, done.

Free video tutorial for OmniOutliner for iPad

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This is the product that turned me into an outlining user. Not an outline fan, but definitely a user and appreciating the value of the things.

And this is a free tutorial on using the iPad version. It’s from Screencasts Online which is normally a subscription service but does the odd freebie. I’m not sure this is their best but there’s a lot in OmniOutliner and I learnt from watching it:

The Sudoku approach

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My wife Angela Gallagher taught me how to play Sudoku. She did it during one of our hospital visits when she was being treated for breast cancer. Not the happiest of times for either of us, really, yet there were moments. We would routinely spend five or six hours waiting, never knowing how long it would be, and she would play Sudoku on her iPhone. I can picture the seat I was in when she explained the rules and since that day I have played thousands upon thousands of games.

I still associate it with those times, even years later and when her treatment has been a success, but along the way I promise you that I have also learnt some productivity lessons. From a game. From a game Angela taught me in order to burn up some time waiting.

There is something to how you make decisions in this game where you don’t know where a certain number goes but you can make conclusions about it anyway. It’s got to be in one of these two spots, you’ll tell yourself, and that’s no use in that square but it does block out a line. Without knowing where it will go exactly, you do exactly know its impact on the rest of the game.

I think I’ve learnt from this that you don’t have to wait until you have a definite final answer, that sometimes you can draw enough of a conclusion that you can get on with something else.

But without doubt, this is the one thing I have really learned from playing Sudoku:

Walk away and come back later

I have struggled with a Sudoku puzzle, struggled and then when forced to go away to do something else, I’ve regularly come back and immediately seen the answer.

I have been of the school that says you work at something until it is done. But sometimes it’s better to stop, do something else, and then come back.

By the way, I’ve only ever played two Sudoku apps and the first one, the one Angela taught me on, is  no longer available in the App Store. But this one is for iPad, this one I’ve taken the screen grab from, that’s Sue Doku which is a just preposterously cheap 69p UK, 99c US. I’ve played this for hundreds of hours now, I can’t believe the pleasure and the productivity lessons I’ve got from a whole 69 pence.

Day One journal app goes free (briefly)

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Even if you can’t get around to looking at using it yet, grab this now: the acclaimed Day One diary app has just been made free for iOS.

I bought it a couple of years ago and it changed things. I recorded more diary details than I ever normally do and I enjoyed it.

I made a calculated decision to move away from it, though, because I use Evernote so much. I thought it would be the same, that I would journal just as much. Technically speaking, I was right. There’s no real difference between tapping out a diary entry in Day One than there is a note in my Journal notebook in Evernote.

Except that there is a massive difference. For the months I used Day One, I bet I wrote an entry every day. In the year since I stopped, maybe I’ve made two notes.

I should go back to Day One and if you haven’t already, you should go get into it now.

Free mindmapping software for Mac (but hurry)

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The new mindmapping application for Mac OS X, Quick Node, is temporarily free on the Mac App Store here.

I haven’t used it, I just learnt of the price drop from £13.99 UK and $19.99 US and wanted to tell you.

But I do use mindmapping now and I do sometimes find it very useful. I had a project I was late starting recently and I used Mind Node on my iPad to let me whack down every thought I could muster about it. Then I could see that okay, those two ideas could go together, if I find another one for here than that’ll sound better, and then I just wrote up what was in front of me. It worked too.

So visual thinking can be good but it isn’t for everybody and I find it isn’t for everything I do. So the chance to try it out for free has got to be a boon.

Note, though, that Quick Node doesn’t support OPML: you can’t very easily create a mindmap and then export it to something like an outlining app or a To Do manager. You can save in Quick Node’s own format plus TIFF image or PDF but effectively this makes it a personal-use-only tool. I only use Mind Node personally, I have yet to share any of the maps with anyone else, but I do regularly export to OPML so that my To Do manager, OmniFocus, can import it.

Quick Node – Easy Mind Maps and Diagrams for OS X is free today (July 3, 2014). If it’s gone off sale by the time you look for it, the price will probably be that aforementioned £13.99 UK and $19.99 US but in its short life the app’s price has bounced around a lot so it may yet be more.