On Friday I had the good fortune to stumble across one of the very hard to find iPad 2's in the world. After a couple of days, I'm still trying to figure out how it will fit into my workflow. The kids however, know exactly how to put it to good use. I'm still digging through apps and settings, but I'll have more posts related to the iPad in the near future. ]]>
I create a lot of text files. I want them backed up to the web and I want access to them all the time. I've tried Evernote, Google Docs, and an army of note apps on my iPhone, but none of them meet all of my needs. About a year ago, Merlin Mann mentioned a solution using Simplenote, Notational Velocity and Dropbox. It's amazing. Here's a link explaining how to set it up. I couldn't live without it. Thanks Merlin.
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I've been in St. George, UT for the last three weeks working on Ben Banks, an indie feature being made by some of my close friends. The film is coming along, the crew working ridiculously hard in the plus one-hundred degree temperatures. Meanwhile, I've been tucked into a dark corner of a condo managing the backup, transcode and sync of hundreds of files. Like the mail, it just keeps coming. Sometime last week the repetitive motion started getting to me and by coincidence my mouse, a logitech I purchased three years ago started to go south. Enter Apple's Magic Trackpad. My biggest concern was that it was lacking a few key mouse functions related to Spaces and Expose that I rely heavily on. I had read about JiTouch, a preference pane that adds those features so I grabbed that and started working. The second concern was that the Magic Trackpad wasn't going to be accurate enough to hit all the tiny buttons in Final Cut Pro. That has not been the case for me. I have been using the Magic Trackpad exclusively for the last couple of days and after a slight learning curve it's working great. The best part, my wrist seems to be doing much better. If you have had experience working with the Magic Track Pad let me know what you think @magicalmacs on twitter. ]]>
Awesome things are happening for magical macs. Right now I'm working on an independent feature film in beautiful St. George, UT (check out our behind the scenes here). There is however, a ton of work to manage, not only on set, but when I stumble back to my room at night. My only defense in the storm of info flying around me, Omnifocus. After reading David Allen's Getting Things Done four years ago, I've tried to repeatedly implement an organized, trusted system to help me manage my workflow. When I heard about Omnigroup's Omnifocus I bought the beta, when the iPhone app came out I bought it to, immediately. For the uninitiated, GTD as it's often called is a system of organizing all of the tasks we deal with in our media and information rich society. If you are stressed out all the time, it's probably because you aren't using you time the right way. Omnifocus on the Mac and iPhone are applications that work together seamlessly to help you keep track of all the information you face each day. It syncs via MobilMe, Bonjour, iDisk or WebDAV server and I seriously couldn't stay afloat without it. Let me know what tools you use to stay organized on twitter @magicalmacs.com
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You have a brand new Mac but nothing to write with? Microsoft Office isn't cheap. There are some free alternatives out there (more on that coming soon), but for creating simple text documents, taking notes on an exam, or writing a grocery list, TextEdit, located in your Applications folder is a great solution, and it comes installed on every Mac for free!
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