by John Chandler

Last Monday, I took the morning off to spend time with my two youngest while my wife was at an appointment. After adventures in the Lego store, we were waiting in the parking lot to pick her up. To fill the time, I did my usual thing…I checked Twitter on my phone.

But as I was checking Twitter while my kids were chattering, it occurred to me that my kids are far more interesting than the lot of you. No offense. In a moment of clarity, perhaps mixed with compulsive insanity, I deleted all Twitter apps from my phone. And the result:

Monday, I removed all Twitter clients from my phone. So far, my regret level is holding steady at none.

— John Chandler (@johnchandler) February 2, 2012

Don’t think me a Twitter hater. I am an advocate for it to those who don’t use it; I find it a valuable means to maintain connection with real life friends and also a viable way to make new ones. But I also don’t need to be checking it when I’m at stop lights, hovering over the grill, or doing anything with my family or anyone else who is present with me in flesh and blood.

Have there been some times I missed it? I suppose, but reading a few pages of an ebook is a pretty good alternative activity in those times methinks.

Ten days later, I can say with confidence that it has not turned out to be a digital apocalypse. I still follow the same crowd of people with apps on my iPad, desktop and laptop. I can still tweet on the go. Instagram lets me tweet a picture if I feel the need. Birdhouse can post a tweet if I absolutely have to say something. But so far, I haven’t needed to. Maybe I won’t need to, but its nice to know I can if 140 characters of genius strike while I’m grilling burgers.

Or if my kids say something that I have to share with everyone. They do say lots of great stuff that’s worth attention.

Late in 2011, I started doing something I hadn’t done for at least seven years. I started keeping an analog journal.

I’ve always been an erratic journaler, more streaky than the tears of a clown. I have seasons of daily scribbles, followed by months of silence. But one thing was consistent for the last seven years … all that journaling was hacked into a keyboard for digital capture by an asortment of different programs.

(Day One, which I started using last year, is my favorite journaling app. The only lament I have about what I’m telling you now is that I don’t get to use it in the same way. I journaled more last year than any of the previous seven years thanks to Day One.)

I have long tucked a pocket notebook in my back pocket each morning, probably for most of those seven years. But it was never a journal of any kind as much as it was a backup capture — in case my digital techniques failed me — or as place to scrawl out a crude website layout. These notebooks took me so long to fill that the covers disintegrated long before the last pages were filled.

Things changed in early November. I was listening to the MacPowerUsers 61: Workflows with Michael Lopp while driving back from some meetings in Dallas. He described how fastidious he was about writing things down, writing lots of things down. And an idea that was always romantic to me became reasonable.

Shortly after, I started using Field Notes notebooks for my field notes — for writing thoughts about life. I became deliberate about physically writing things down. I don’t journal as many words, but I check-in more often. The right pages are for prose, where I capture a page or two of random thoughts each morning, and sometimes again later in the day. These few minutes help me pay attention to what is really on my mind. Down the left side, I capture small details from my life: books I’m reading, movies I watched, people I met with, or friends I bumped into.

So far, I’ve filled two. There is a material and satisying sense of accomplishment as I complete a book and add it to the stack, if I can count two as a stack. At this rate, maybe that Colors subscription is also moving from the realm of romantic to reasonable. (Anybody in Austin want to split a subscription?!)

Last week, Smile Software released PDFPen for iPad, as well as an update to PDFPen for Mac to enable iCloud. If you have used Smile’s products before, like PDFPen or TextExpander, then you would have expected a well thought out app. And you would be right.

I begin with thumbs ups and pats on the backs of the collective Smile crew for the iCloud integration. This is intended to be a quick review of the iPad app, but as you can see from the title, the standout feature of the whole thing is the ability to easily access documents in iCloud. This is something that Apple has failed to provide so far with the Mac version of the iWork apps, and Smile has given me my first glimpse of how useful it could be.

iCloud integration is simple. A PDF opened in the iPad is saved to iCloud. A PDF opened on the Mac with PDFPen for Mac (previous review) can be saved to iCloud with a menu command. If you don’t have PDFPen for Mac, Smile has also been thoughtful enough to create a $.99 Mac app to access your PDFs from iCloud. There are a few shortcomings with the iCloud integration:

1. The PDF is removed from the Finder folder it was in once it is moved to iCloud, which could be a negative as that file is now no longer available to other apps. For instance, if you wanted to email a PDF, you either have to initiate the email using the Mail Document command in PDFPen, or save a copy of it back into the Finder so you can attach it from within Mail.
2. Another limitation, which I imagine will be short-term, is file organization. There is no way to organize your documents in the PDFPen section of iCloud. You simply have a single collection of PDFs to browse through, sorted by date, with no apparent means to re-order or search within the collection. That could become cumbersome in short order.

As for PDFPen on the iPad, it’s ideal use is editing and interacting with PDF’s documents, and especially forms. Yesterday, a client emailed me a W-9 to complete. I opened the PDF, filled out the form fields by typing in answers on the keyboard, and then signed and dated directly on the screen using my PogoSketch Pro. The combination of form completion and on screen scrawling make the iPad the best device for PDF documents, and PDFPen handled it perfectly. After emailing it, I saved it to iCloud so I’ll have ready access to it for all my clients this year.

For reading PDFs, like books or scanned articles, I’ll continue to PDF Expert (see my previous write-up on PDF reading apps). It seems to be more responsive with larger documents (on my 1st generation iPad), syncs an entire Dropbox folder to my device, and it gives me the ability to export all of my notes and highlights as separate text in an email. (I’ll revisit PDFPen for this, however, as I imagine both of these features will be address in future versions.)

PDFPen for iPad is currently $9.99 in the app store, which I believe is an introductory price. If you regularly deal with PDFs documents on the go, I recommend you add it to your home screen.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a promo code for this app from the developer. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Long before we had kids, my wife and I were on a trip to the mall. (After you have kids, time with just the two of you is far too precious to spend at such a soulless place.) We were visiting one of the many women’s clothing chains and she was looking to find a top to match a skirt she had bought in that store the year before. Or maybe another store just like it; I really couldn’t tell the difference. A saleswoman asked if she could help us, and my wife described the skirt she was looking to match. The helpful saleswoman didn’t try too hard to hide her condescension as she said, “Oh, from last year.”

Um, yeah. From last year.

We don’t like last year so much. A mobile provider commercial that has aired over and over during the football season makes it clear that we should even be disgusted with 30 seconds ago.

In the first week of a new year, certainly the thing to do is to look ahead. To talk about resolutions. Or to talk about how resolutions aren’t good, but goals are better. Or to talk about how goals aren’t good, but habits are the best. I think they all have some merit, but they are all about looking ahead. About moving on.

Quit reading if you like, but I want to talk about last year. The one that is so five days ago.

In the infancy of 2012, our best opportunities for growth don’t come in looking ahead to who we want to be in the year to come. Our best opportunities for growth come in reflecting on the year past and seeing who we actually were. And are.

Yes, we make our end of the year lists in December. Some of the more intentional among us set aside time amidst the hustle of the holidays to reflect on the year as it’s closing out. But even for those more intentional than me, the year is worthy of more reflection than we can offer it in the midst of boarding passes and eggnog.

There is a centuries old spiritual practice called the examen which serves as a reflection to close out each day. There are many variations, but the most common form of the examen is a set of questions about the day to be pondered and prayed through. It is an invitation to self awareness and an RSVP to a more meaningful tomorrow.

My best creative work, and I think I’m not alone in this, comes when I am most aware and present to myself. And if the examen is an invitation to self awareness, then surely it is a means to engage my creative nature. And yours too.

So far, in 2012, I’ve been more interested in 2011. You know, last year. In our spiritual community, we introduced some questions for year end reflection as 2011 was winding down, questions we will return to in the coming weeks. It is an annual examen of sorts. So below you will find some of the questions we are asking together. I know we are already over 100 hours into 2012, but 2011 is still worth at least a few more hours of your time.

• What have been the high points of this year?
• What have been the difficult times of this year?
• How have you grown this year?
• In what ways have you not grown this year? Or even gone backward?
• Where have you seen God at work this year?
• If you project this past year forward, who will you be in five years?
• Who do you want to be in five years?

I had one primary goal when I ordered a Kindle Fire: it would free up the iPad to leave home during the day for my wife and kids to use. (Okay, okay, stop looking at me like that. I also love shiny new things. Like you don’t?)

While the iPad has held a steady place in my workflow, my primary use for it during the day was reading. Of course, I love managing projects with OmniFocus for iPad, or browsing feeds, or taking a quick look at email between meetings, but most of my other daytime tasks could be handled just as well on my laptop. So, with the arrival of the Fire, the iPad spends a lot of time in the family room for use by my kids during the day, and for checking stuff in the evening. Or decimating malicious pigs with catapulted birds.

Based on the amount of reading I’ve done in the last few weeks, the Fire has become a welcome addition to my life arsenal. Negative and positive reviews aside, it has turned out to be a perfect device for one purpose: a hub of curated content. I’ve been protective of what makes it on to the Fire, and some of the limitations of the fire are helpful for this. When there are words that I want to give extended attention to, they make it to the Fire. Stuff like:

• Books — The books app on the Kindle is basic, but it does one thing better than any other Kindle or Kindle app I’ve used – it’s the most responsive and streamlined when it comes to highlighting text. (I also installed Mantano Reader for epubs, though Amazon has since decided it isn’t compatible with the Fire. Hmm.)
• Instapaper queue — InstaFetch worked well enough that I invested in the Pro version. It’s not as great an experience as Instapaper, but it’s convenient. (It seems a little dirty to use a third-party client to access InstaPaper, but I feel a little better about it having paid for the monthly $1 subscription via the iOSapp.)
• Music — It took a few days to upload my music library to Amazon’s cloud player, but it was worth the little bit of setup.
• Dropbox Notes — Syncing with NVAlt via Epistle.
• Bible Software — I’m still awed by how large of a reference library I can carry with me via Logos.
• The New Yorker — With it’s emphasis on words, the New Yorker is the only magazine I’ve enjoyed reading on any digital device.

What’s more valuable about the Fire is what I haven’t allowed on it. I don’t have a twitter app installed. I haven’t added an RSS reader. (I did browse briefly, but I wasn’t impressed with what I saw anyway.) I’ve never signed in to Facebook. I haven’t set it up for email, other than a private address used only for sending things to and from the Fire.

As an added [airquote]bonus[/airquote], web browsing on the Fire is nothing like web browsing on the iPad. It’s available, but it’s not a smooth experience, so it’s not pulling me into long sessions of aimless digital wandering. It’s useful enough for short term access when necessary, and in that case, it’s quite useful for things like Lendle or checking out ebooks through our local library. (Or reading about Tebowmania.) But it’s unusable enough to not be very distracting. (Except when it comes to reading about Tebowmania.) My experience isn’t matching up to the sales pitch they put on the great browsing experience of the Fire, and in my case, that’s a plus.

What comes down to is this: I’m spending more time with the content that I have decided is worth more time.

Since the first Kindle was released, Amazon has offered a device that’s the perfect storm for this tech-loving book lover. Or is it book-loving tech lover? Either way, I’m a lover, and tech gadgets and books sit high on my affinity list. Put all that together, and I took a serious look at the Kindle Fire when it was announced. That serious look was brief; I pre-ordered mine a few hours after it was announced.

Many reviews have already been written, so I won’t attempt a comprehensive review. But I will offer my own thoughts based on my experiences so far. The Fire fits in to a unique role for me, and I think it will for many others as well. I will write more about how I see it in my workflow in an upcoming post, but here are my impressions after some qulity time with the Kindle Fire since it was delivered last week.

What I Like

The Size – I mentioned this before, but a 7″ screen is a great size. It’s large enough for reading copy, but small enough to tuck away in lots of handy places. I don’t intend to watch much video on the Fire, but the smaller screen size seems adequate for a personal viewer, though maybe not so handy for a shared viewer. It’s not going to replace our iPad for entertaining the kids with a move on road trips.

The Feel – When I had a Nook Color, it didn’t feel flimsy, but it didn’t feel solid either. It felt, how do I say…a little creaky. The Fire doesn’t feel that way. It feels solid, but the rubbered back makes me feel like I have a nice grip on it.

The Screen – The screen looks great, and is a consistent brightness all across the screen. The Nook Color had a noticeable flicker when display darker images, but there is nothing like that on the Kindle. Text isn’t as sharp as on an e-ink screen, of course, but I’m used to reading on an LCD, at least in this stage of life. Maybe I’ll regret that in 20 years.

Responsiveness – Some of have said that the screen isn’t as responsive as an iPad. In and out of the operating system, that’s true. But for highlighting in a book, it’s perfect. The Fire responds to my touch to highlight some text as if I’m drawing on the page with my finger. At times, it might even feel too jumpy, but I prefer that over the lag I sometimes experience with the Kindle app on iPad. Or the directional pad on the Kindle’s I’ve had.

Music – The majority of my music comes from ripped CDS or unprotected MP3s/AACs from Amazon or iTunes. I set it all to upload to the Amazon Cloud Player months ago, so it’s all available from the Fire.

Some Handy Apps

Dropbox(!) – Dropbox isn’t available in the Amazon App Store. Thankfully, Amazon left in the Android setting to allow the install of other apps. A quick search for “dropbox apk” from the Silk browser led me to a link which installed Dropbox for me.

Mantano Reader – This is an app that is pretty ugly, but it gives access to reading epubs. Thankfully, once your are reading, the ugliness goes away, as long as you have a tolerance for Times Roman. The main benefit, though, is that allows me to export notes from epubs. My prior epub readers have been iBooks or the Nook app, neither of which can export notes, so this is a nice gain.

New Yorker – The New Yorker app feels like a smaller version of the iPad app, which has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. But, as a print subscriber, I could log right in and download the latest issues. (I assume the same benefit wouldn’t have carried over if I had subscribed via the iPad app.)

Epistle – I’ve mentioned Epistle before; it’s syncing with my Dropbox folder that is tied to NVAlt. It’s not drop dead gorgeous, but it’s handy knowing I access and add notes to my text file catalog from the Fire too.

I’m Neutral About…

The Silk Browser – It’s doesn’t compare to the iPad, and I wouldn’t choose to do an extended session of browsing on the Fire. It’s sometimes hard to hit targets, it’s not as fast as it’s touted to be and not as smooth as mobile Safari. But, it’s functinoal, especially for things like logging into my library website to check out a book to be delivered to the device.

Room for Improvement

The Home Screen – The home screen looks good in the screenshots on Amazon.com, and that the only positive I can say about it. I don’t like mixing all my content types. I’d much prefer to have an icon for each time, perhaps showing the most recently accessed item. And I won’t even go into how overdone the shadows are between the items. Or throughout the interface. Nope…won’t get into it. But I will hope for some customization options in a future software update.

Kindle App – The Kindle app is simple, lacking features like popular highlights. It’s gets the job done, but I’m surprised to see it lagging behind the apps for other platforms on the flagship Kindle device. Again, something I hope will be remedied with a future software udpate.

Android – Amazon has crafted and skinned their own version of Android, but it’s still Android, and there are things that aren’t as natural and intuitive, especially to someone coming from iOS. Particularly, I notice this with text entry and editing.

Audio Quality – I like having my music library available, but there is a subtle hiss with headphones, plus some pops and crackles when you first press play.

There are other areas I could nitpick about. They are matters of form over function, and they are usually related to comparing a Fire to an iPad; an unfair comparison for two devices with different primary purposes. The Fire is a $199 device with a lot of versatility, and I’m happy to tuck it in my bag each morning.

The links to the Fire above are affiliate links. If you do end up purchasing one, I’d be grateful if you’d click through those links to support my reading habit!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, while we were all listening to Peter Gabriel, I ordered the new $79 Kindle model. The three readers in our house have been happily passing it around the last few weeks. We’re making the jump from the Kindle 2 to this model, having skipped the Kindle 3 (aka the Kindle Keyboard).

Some might wonder why anyone would go for the $79 Kindle when the Kindle Touch is only $20 more. There are some nice additional features on the touch that you can’t have on the Kindle, like audio, 3000 books (in case 1500 isn’t sufficient), and added search functions. And the touch screen, of course. But the touch screen is exactly why I didn’t wait for the Kindle Touch. I still prefer to have the next page a simple thumb press away rather than the added motion of reaching for the screen. Not to mention that with little ones around the house, touch screens tend to lose their glamor under the grime of small fingers.

This Kindle is a fourth of the the price we paid for the Kindle 2 it is replacing. (I think they were selling for $379 when they were introduced.) Yes, we gave up the keyboard and navigating the onscreen keyboard is clumsy. I look for ways to avoid it. We also had to give up the free lifetime 3G data, but I don’t we will miss it. Everything else about it is a movement forward. It’s smaller and lighter. The screen contrast is better and page turns are faster. Of course, there’s the main reason we upgraded…delivery from our local library is direct to the device and cable free.

The stand out feature, though, is one handed reading. Being able to hold the Kindle in one hand with your thumb resting on the Next Page button is pretty doggone great. Initially, I had a gripe about the grip; the trim form factor makes it hard to feel like you have a good grip on it. After an hour or so of reading, I found that I could cradle it in my palm with my ape like thumb stretching up the side to the buttons. If you don’t have ape like thumbs, you might need to find your own position. (I can testify that my wife does not have ape like thumbs, and seemed to have no trouble paging through The Help with one hand this weekend while eating the fantastic gluten-free maple bacon pancakes that I had whipped up. (Excuse me while I pat myself on the back.))

But the stand out stand out feature is $79. I’m happy to see the price point dropping on e-readers and broadening the e-book audience. I know there are still some ebook skeptics out there, but $79 goes a long way toward soothing the skeptic souls, and wallets, of most who might not have taken the e-reader dive. And at $79, I’m far more willing to have a Kindle availably around the house for those smaller, and grimier, hands.

I reviewed Ulysses 2 a few years ago in anticipation of NaNoWriMo. I thought it was an impressive writing tool that’s merits consideration for any longer writing project. (I’ve used it some myself, though most of my writing projects have been shorter the last few years.) It’s one of those apps that might leave you scratching your head when you first open it, but once you’ve taken the time to learn a little about it, you see the possibilities blossom.

The developer contacted me a few weeks ago to let me know about some of the updates that have come about with Ulysses 2.1, and with NaNoWriMo starting off this week, it’s worth a mention. For a .1 upgrade, there are some significant additions that I could find useful:

• OS X Lion features like swipe gestures and full screen. (I don’t know about you, but I’m finding fullscreen apps far more useful than I expected I would.)
• ePub exporter. If you want to read and review your document or share it with others in iBooks or ebook reader, you’re all set.
• WordPress exporter. I prefer to write shorter items like blog posts in Byword, but if you want to have a single tool for all writing, Ulysses can do the job. A document can be exported as HTML without the extra header and body tags, so it’s ready to be pasted into your favorite blog editor.

The most important new feature is the price. Ulysses now sells for only $19.99 in the app store. I don’t know of another power writing app that can compare with this price. But if you’re interested enough, it might be free, because I have a promo code to give away. Leave a comment below or send me a tweet. I’ll pull a name from all the replies later this week.

(In the interest of disclosure, I did not receive a review copy. I was offered a promo code for review, but I’d already purchased Ulysses from the app store without hesitation.)

That David Sparks guy. Wow.

It was only last February I wrote up a review of Mac at Work, which David had been kind enough to send to me. Here we are less than a year later, and I’ve stepped out my front door to find another padded envelope waiting for me. This time it’s a copy of David’s latest manifesto, iPad at Work.

It might seem ambitious to call a practical technology book a manifesto, but you might not feel the same after reading it. David’s thorough writing (as usual) will quiet any skeptics who might say that an iPad is not a useful tool for someone in almost any line of work. As he did with Mac at Work, David breaks his thoughts up into the general tasks one might need to engage with in their career. Chapters cover a breadth of topics like email, travel, task management, enterprise, presentations, and of course, writing. Within each chapter, David shows how the iPad is able to slice through each task using either core iOS tools or some of the best apps from the app store. In a new twist in this book, which I’m sure many will find helpful, he goes into a little more detail about his particular setup, and what he finds works best for him.

I still use the original iPad I bought in April 2010 everyday. At least once a month, it becomes new to me all over again when I find a new app to work with and introduce to my workflows…and also my relaxflows. Reading through iPad at Work compressed several such discoveries into a few days, an experience I expect will be common for most readers.

What is best about this book is that is a labor of love. It is some kind of cyborg love child spawned by David and his iPad. David isn’t writing to be published, and he’s not writing for a check. He’s a lawyer, and he uses his iPad at work everyday. He’s passionate about this stuff, and its contagious.

That David Sparks guy. Wow.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

In the last few weeks, I’ve been using a few tools that are new to me, and they may be new to you too. All of them are worth a look.

1) PogoSketch Pro Stylus from Ten One Design. I carried the original PogoSketch stylus for most of the last year, but don’t use it so often. But, when given a chance to try the new Pro stylus, I said yes. It’s a nice upgrade, both in how it feels in my hand, and in how the tip feels on the screen. (It’s also been a nice size for my daughter who’s been learning how to write.) And, I’m finding that it works well with…

2) Noteshelf (iTunes) is a simple little iPad app for taking notes. I’ve been discontent with taking notes on the iPad, as typing apps are too restrictive for non text, and handwriting apps lead to large handwriting. The first few times I tried apps with an enlarged window for handwriting it didn’t feel write, er, right. Noteshelf gets it right, and I am now occasionally using my iPad to capture handwritten notes in meetings, etc. Once captured, I can toss them into a designated Dropbox folder for an automatic import into DevonThink.

3) Mijingo has started a series of screencasts called LunchWith. The idea is a brief tutorial on a particular software product, short enough to watch during lunch. I have both of the OmniFocus screencasts — Customizing OmniFocus and Creating Project Templates — and they are great. There is also a Markdown episode which is currently free.