macsparky

Review: OmniFocus Video Field Guide

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David Sparks writes a mean Field Guide book: I’ve read his work on going Paperless, on using Email and on giving Presentations. All good enough and interesting enough that his announcement of a video version was enough to be news. That it was a 150-minute video about OmniFocus made it a recommendation. And the fact that you could and can watch a sample segment from it on Sparks’ official site made it a certainty that I would tell you about it.

And a fair certainty that I’d buy it for myself.

Now that I’ve bought and seen it, though, there is more to say. If you do have OmniFocus then unless you’re so good that the Omni Group employs you, then it is easily obvious that you will benefit from this video and enjoy it a lot.

If you’re at the stage of looking into OmniFocus, of looking into To Do apps of any kind, that’s a trickier thing. It’s 150 minutes long but it doesn’t hang about: it gets very specific, very quickly and I enjoy that, but I don’t think it doubles as a selling tool. No reason it should, but if I were back at the point where I was trying to decide whether to buy OmniFocus, I think you need something more first.

Maybe not much more. Try the videos on the Omni Group official site: they’re adverts, of course, but they give you the flavour of the software. And if it looks good to you, try a couple of YouTube videos about it. Then buy OmniFocus and go buy David Sparks’ OmniFocus Video Field Guide for $9.99.

New: OmniFocus Video Field Guide by David Sparks

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I would tell you that I am an expert OmniFocus user but it’s a lie. I am expert at the specific bits of it that I use daily. (Hourly.) (Minutely.) David Sparks knows the whole thing and now shows it to you.

He’s done this before with the original OmniFocus in a whole series of screencast videos but now he’s done it more in the form of his Field Guide books. These are all very good, very excellent books that seem to cut through complex issues and just tell you what’s what and what you need to know now. Somehow they are that relaxed and yet by the end you know everything. The books are particularly fine pieces of work and now there’s a video one for OmniFocus.

It’s about all the versions from Mac through iPhone and iPad. And it’s 2.5 hours of video: 150 minutes. You can watch a sample on Vimeo or just go buy the whole thing from Sparks’ site here.

As expert as I think I am, I know about this new video because I’m on the guy’s mailing list and it can’t have been above four minutes since I got the email, checked the sample, bought the whole thing and came here to tell you.

Buy of the week: Email – the MacSparky Field Guide

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I use email every minute of every day and so do you. I thought I understood it and I really thought I was using it well but the original version of this book gave me so many Damascus moments. I’ve made tiny changes to my email now that get me more time to write and keep the distractions away.

And the new edition, just out, has been updated with new sections on services to mass unsubscribe you from all or your choice of those endless emails companies send you. Lots on the new changes in iOS and Mac Mail. gmail. Outlook 2014.

The best version of it is an iBook: that’s what I have and it’s gorgeously designed and readable. But you can only get that on iPads, iPhone and Mac and the email advice applies to every one of us, everywhere. So there is also a PDF version. Have a look on author David Sparks’s website for details.

MacSparky Email book updated

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I’d have said Email: A MacSparky Field Guide by David Sparks was the last word on email but I’d have been wrong. Maybe there can never be such a thing but an already very good go has just been improved. An updated version of the iBook is now available on the iBooks Store. Take a look at David Sparks’ official page about it for more details.

But while you’re at it, have a listen to him and colleague Katie Floyd on the latest MacPowerUsers podcast because that’s about the same thing. I’ve already read the original version of his book, my iPad is downloading the update as weak speak, but still I learnt some things from that.

One silly paper-based Apple story…

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I’ve been leaning toward the larger phone because I’m really curious about how a bigger screen would change my relationship to my iPhone. I really like my iPad and if I had some of those features in my pocket at all times, I may really like that. I’m so curious that I’ve made a mock-up with this template from Ars Technica. I printed the page, folded it around the 6 Plus size, and taped a stack of index cards to the back to give it the approximate thickness of the actual phone. I’ve carried it so far in my fancy work pants and my jeans. It fits fine in my pocket.

6 or 6 Plus? – David Sparks, MacSparky (10 September 2014)

Here’s the Ars Technica link if you really, really want to do this daft thing. I saw that they’d done it, I just didn’t think anyone would use it.

Sparks, who I might mock for this bit otherwise think is an interesting guy, explains more in his full piece and mentions the ribbing he’s had today.

The worthy and best way to present

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What’s it called when a book as one title followed by “Or” and another one? As in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus? This is The Worthy and Best Way to Present or A Longer Term Review of David Sparks’ Presentation Field Guide.

This iBook was released on 21 July and I started reading it immediately. I remember saying on the launch day that:

This book was released sometime overnight, I got it around 8am, I’m maybe a third of the way through the text – I’ve not looked at the many videos yet – and I have a complaint.

He’s so persuasive about preparing your presentation before you ever go near Keynote or PowerPoint that I resent the bejaysis out of him. I have one presentation to give tonight and three tomorrow. I wanted a quick fix! I wanted a magic sauce!

David Sparks’ Presentation book now out – William Gallagher, The Blank Screen (21 July 2014)

In the end, I actually gave five over those two days, 21 and 22 July. It’s complicated. But it was also true what I said about how good it made me feel that I was already doing some things Sparks recommends: that’s how persuasive and convincing he is, I read this book and feel that he’s right. Therefore whatever I do that is the same is also right, therefore I am right, therefore I feel good.

And then there’s the stuff he recommends that I don’t do. It was quite hard doing those five presentations with the book’s advice about planning in my head. The book’s very specific advice about how using Keynote is actually the last step, or at least toward the last step, as you should know what you’re going to say through planning and thinking first. The fact that I thought I had three and it became five rather tells you that I didn’t plan or, in my defence, couldn’t plan ahead.

I have not given a single presentation since then. But I have some coming up and I am using Sparks’ advice from this book. That may be the best review I can give it except that I think this leaves you only with the idea that the book is useful. It doesn’t tell you that it’s also fun.

Those five presentations went well but they were hard and they were part of a bigger project I enjoyed yet I’d got at the last moment. Even so, even with trying to plan in the gaps during the first day and then learning I really had to rework everything overnight, I was still going back to this book to read it at points because I was enjoying it.

Actually, as I write this to you, I still haven’t watched the videos or listened to the audio interviews. The book works without them but I’m expecting to find that they’re a good watch and listen too.

The therefore hugely recommended Presentations: a MacSparky Field Guide by David Sparks is available now in the iBooks Store for £5.99 UK, $9.99 US.

David Sparks’ Presentation book now out

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This book was released sometime overnight, I got it around 8am, I’m maybe a third of the way through the text – I’ve not looked at the many videos yet – and I have a complaint.

He’s so persuasive about preparing your presentation before you ever go near Keynote or PowerPoint that I resent the bejaysis out of him. I have one presentation to give tonight and three tomorrow. I wanted a quick fix! I wanted a magic sauce!

I do have the very smugly gratifying fact that a few of the things he says I do already swear by. So it’s not as if my talks this week will be bad, exactly. God, I was nervous enough already, thanks a bunch for this. But I do also recognise and am persuaded of how they could be better. So you just wait for next week’s talks.

Presentations: A MacSparky Field Guide is now out in the iBooks Store (and only the iBooks Store) for a truly ridiculously cheap £5.99 UK or $9.99 US.

This week’s MacPowerUsers podcast is all about the book and the topic of presentations so you can get a good idea of whether you’ll like the book from that. But, spoiler alert, you will.

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Bugger. Got to buy this.

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I bought an iBook called Paperless by David Sparks some time last year – wait, this is iBooks, this is the 21st Century, I can tell you in a flash… I bought it on 10 January 2013. It’s a very good read, it changed how I do a lot of things in my work, all’s good.

Then the same fella released a book about Email and I thought nah, I know from email. Then caught some of his MacPowerUsers podcast about the topic and thought, well, okay, possibly I don’t know quite as much as I thought. So on 15 November 2013 I bought the MacSparky Field Guide to Email

But that’s it. No more. What can this fella cover that I’d need?

Cue this morning and this announcement:

I’m pleased to announce the newest MacSparky Field Guide, Presentations. Most presentations are terrible. That, however, does not need to be the case for your presentations. This book explains how to create your own exceptional presentation. This Presentations Field Guide explains how to plan a presentation that will connect with your audience, the technical wizardry to create a stunning presentation, and walks you through presentation day to make sure it goes off without a hitch.

New MacSparky Field Guide: Presentations – David Sparks, MacSparky (30 June 2014)

I do a lot of presentations now. I have no choice. I’ve got to buy this. I would’ve bought it immediately and now be telling you what I think of it, but it’s not out yet. You can pre-order it for £5.99 UK or $9.99 US and it will ship on 21 July 2014. While we wait, here’s a short video trailer for it:

Recommendation – Mac Power Users podcast

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This is just a general recommendation for the whole series. Around a year ago, I was looking into whether it was worth my buying a Mac application called Hazel and my research led me to an edition of Mac Power Users. I remember listening to that on my way somewhere and learning that it was episode 79. They're now, today, on episode 187.

I'm sure I haven't listened to all of them but without doubt I've heard more than ninety of them.

Katie Floyd and David Sparks present this weekly show about Macs, iPads, iPhones and suchforth. Typically they'll take a topic – today it's a rather general one on word processing but it can concentrate on something more specific like Hazel or Evernote – and will bat through the basics and on to tips about it all. Even if you know the topic, they tend to have found new angels on it and it is a running joke that every listener ends up spending more money than they want because we've been convinced about some new software or hardware.

The topic interests me because I am pretty fully in the Apple scheme of working and if you aren't, there is nothing here for you.

But there are many podcasts about Mac things and I've tried a lot of them yet rarely got through an entire episode. Generally they are so poorly produced that the BBC Radio man in me starts twitching. Turn up that microphone. Stop leaving dead air. Bother to learn how to pronounce your guest's name. Things like that stop me listening and Mac Power Users is far more professional than that.

It also avoids the other main thing that stops me listening to various podcasts. Floyd and Sparks are equally knowledgeable and have similar experiences but they are sufficiently different that when one of them tells the other something, you believe that other one doesn't know it. I loathe the common format where one presenter tells another some amazing fact and the second one is appropriately amazed – but I can't help thinking they mustn't have read the script or paid attention during the rehearsals.

At least two presenters are better than many. There's a type of show that used to be known in UK radio as the zoo format: many presenters all together and chatting. Invariably, they sound like they're having a fantastic time. But we're not.

So considering that I used to produce a podcast, it became rare for me to listen to any. Mac Power Users is the only one I get regularly: every Monday morning, there's a new edition and I download it.

More useful than this new habit of mine, though, is the website catalogue of all the shows, all 187 editions so that you can look up any topic and leap right to it. Plus each edition has extensive notes online with links to the many products and other points brought up in the editions.

Try one. Here's the link to the official site though you can also subscribe through iTunes or every such route.