Posts Tagged ‘Software’

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Review: Things – a stylish task management app for OS X

Things, a task-management application for OS X, debuted this year at Macworld after a lengthy public beta. Despite being Cultured Code’s first foray into the world of task management apps, Things is an extremely polished, attractive app – but does it actually make you more productive?

UI & Design

Cultured Code really nailed the visual presentation of Things: The UI is very “mac-like” and looks very nice. Features are easy to discover and UI elements are easily identified.

The list view Things uses to display your tasks feels as though it is very iPhone-inspired does a good job of displaying your tasks and metadata without clutter. Cultured Code make a point of not using the typical column-based layout you see in other apps, and only show the information you’ve entered – not empty columns.

You won’t find any revolutionary UI innovations in Things, but the UI works and is well thought out – far more important in this type of application.

Ease of use

One issue I’ve had with other todo managers in the past has been the barrier of entry: Managing todos is something you can easily do with a pen & paper, so a dedicated application needs to offer functionality beyond that. However: if entering todos is too convoluted and time-consuming, you may question whether it’s worth the effort – particularly if the task isn’t that important, time-consuming or complicated. Task managers can only help you avoid “I’ll get to it in a minute”-syndrome if entering tasks doesn’t become its own chore.

Extremely stripped down managers tend to be too simple – preventing you from adding supplementary information or tags to your tasks. At the other end of the spectrum you have todo managers that are too complicated, overwhelming you with sub-categories and scheduling features – so you end up spending more time managing your tasks than completing them.

Things manages to strike a nice balance between those extremes. You can use it as a simple notepad to scribble down a list of things you need to get done, but you can also set up projects, repeating tasks and areas of responsibility, if you’re so inclined.

Quick Entry

To allow for even quicker task entry, Things offers a Quick Entry hud-panel, that can be activated via a system-wide keyboard shortcut. Tasks added via the panel will be discreetly added to your Inbox, allowing you to continue working on whatever you happen to be doing.

Tagging

Things offers powerful tagging features, offering some features that cause clutter in other task management apps: You can of course just assign regular keywords, but Cultured Code also suggests assigning your tasks time estimates, difficulty ratings and priority levels. Using tags to add that sort of metadata is a very clever way of hiding complexity: Users that don’t need that kind of detail won’t be distracted by those fields cluttering up the task entry interface, but power users still get the features they need.

Adding tags to your tasks is also nicely supported: In addition to iPhone-esque tag autocompletion, Things also intelligently assigns each tag a keyboard shortcut. Just select a task and hit the corresponding letter on your keyboard to tag it. Shortcuts can be edited later on, but by automatically assigning keyboard shortcuts, Things removes another step on your path to productivity.

Syncing

Under preferences, you’ll find syncing options for iCal and a companion iPhone application, which I’ll be reviewing separately soon. Those two options make it simple to get your tasks onto your mobile device, but there’s no built-in support for Mac-to-Mac syncing. But Things does support selecting your own library location, so you can easily set up syncing using a free Dropbox account.

Suitability for students

Students will appreciate the flexibility Things offers: You can choose to create Projects for some more involved courses, or just add your assignments and reading requirements to a semester-specific project or area of responsibility.

For team projects, the ability to delegate certain tasks to teammates is also very useful, helping you to keep track of jobs and follow-up with collaborators if necessary. On campus the iPhone application has proven invaluable, as it allows me to quickly make a note of something I can later follow up with when I sync up with my MacBook.

(And if you think Things is a bit expensive on a student’s budget, be sure to check out Cultured Code’s generous educational pricing offer!)

Hidden gems

While preparing this review, I found myself frequently coming across little points of detail in the application, that just go to show how much attention to detail was paid by the development team, including the ability to print lists with several formatting options, support for teammates, including iChat status indicators and Address Book integration, automatic regular database backups and the Things wiki, which is full of useful tips and scripts, such as a useful ‘Mail to Things inbox’ script

Conclusion

Things has definitely helped me get organized and plan out my university assignments, work to-dos, personal projects and other errands. It’s easy to pick up the habit of adding even mundane tasks to your Things inbox and there’s nothing more satisfying than crossing off something you’ve completed.

The intuitive interface makes it easy to enter to dos, but also allows you to focus on certain tasks and plan out your day – something more basic task managers usually don’t offer.

But most important of all: Things stays out of your way and allows you to focus on your tasks and not on managing them, allowing you to get things done.

Things is available for $49.95 or $34.95 after educational discount. Be sure to check out the free demo!

Posted by Aptmunich

May 24, 2009 at 8:22 am by . | No comments.

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One last Best of the Booths

I do believe one final Best of the Booths post is in order.

There was so much to do and see this week, I didn’t even get a chance to take a nap in one of the sleeping pods Pzizz had been kind enough to set up for us.

January 18, 2008 at 10:57 pm by . | 2 Comments.

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More Mac games at the Expo, Part 2

I’m very glad EA has returned to releasing games for the Mac, because they have some of the coolest titles that are available on the platform. I already discussed Spore at length, so I’ll concentrate on a few of their other games that are demoing at Macworld 08.

January 18, 2008 at 3:19 pm by . | 6 Comments.

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The Washington Post and the news on the net

If you haven’t ever seen any of the short videos in the onBeing section of WashingtonPost.com, you should do yourself a favor and check them out. They are incredibly funny and profound, yet the idea is simple: People from the Washington D.C. area talking on the subject of being themselves.

The web arm of The Washington Post is one of the most innovative news organs out there. Rob Curley is head of the “skunkworks” team that conceives and builds the newspaper’s creative web presence. He gave a presentation on Thursday at Macworld in which he described himself and his team as “Mac nerds from Kansas trying to save a dying industry from the Internet.” He sees that salvation coming from local and even hyper-local news delivered through a variety of inventive web tools.

January 18, 2008 at 3:43 am by . | 1 Comment.

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Thursday’s Best of the Booths rundown

Chris and I happened by the never-ending table of MacBook Airs and I snapped a few photos of it for you to enjoy. Enjoy.

There’s a lot more pictures of Expo booths after the jump.

January 18, 2008 at 12:42 am by . | 1 Comment.

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David Pogue at the O’Reilly Media booth

You never know what you’ll see as you cruise the show floor. I noticed a fairly large crowd around the Oreilly Media booth so I stopped by to take a look. All the commotion was over a speaker they had in their booth, none other than David Pogue – New York Times columnist, sometime reporter for NPR’s Morning Edition, and CBS news correspondent – sharing a few tips from the latest in his Missing Manual book series, Mac OS X Leopard Edition: The Missing Manual.

He’s a very personable speaker. He regaled the eager throng with one especially interesting anecdote about the time a retailer told him that if he packaged a CD of software with his Missing Manual books he could charge $5 more for them. Since, from what I gathered, all of the software he discusses in the book is either free or comes with Leopard (and hence you already have it if you’ve bought the book), he simply had a CD graphic printed on the back page, along with a URL for downloading the software, and a quick note letting his readers know they just saved $5.

Pogue said that writing the Leopard Missing Manual was “the ride of my life,” and spat out a few statistics to explain why. The stats that really caught my attention were that Mac market share has gone from 2.3% to 7.9% since his last Mac book, and that Macworld attendance has increased by 10,000 people since last year.

There was too large a crowd for me to be able to listen closely and record a few of his tips. Oh well, guess you have to buy the book.

January 17, 2008 at 5:54 pm by . | No comments.

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A few digital photography tips

I am an atrocious photographer, so I thought I’d attend a couple digital photography sessions and learn a few things. Turns out the first one I attended was way over my head, and the second was almost too basic. All the same, I picked up a few tips that I thought might come in handy to someone else.

Chris Orwig did a session on “The Art and Craft of Digital Photography” that was nearly two-thirds an inspirational speech centered on two quotes: “Stillness of hand does not make up for emptiness of heart” (Rodney Smith); and “The chief enemy of creativity is common sense” (Pablo Picasso). The remaining third was dedicated to Photoshop tips that I’m sure were fantastic if you could follow them. Chris Orwig certainly knows what he’s doing because many of his photos were absolutely beautiful. He continually stressed finding new uses for the tools you have available to you. “Color Balance,” for instance, is a Photoshop tool considered by many to be low-quality, but Chris considers it quite useful if you find other ways to use it than what the tool is intended for. Another tip he had was that the Unsharpen Mask tool (Filter > Sharpen) was really good for deepening contrast in your photos.

Macworld senior contributor Jim Heid gave a presentation on “Flickr in the Mac World” that was mostly an introduction to the hugely popular photo sharing site. I did pick up a few tips on uploading photos without having to use the uploader on Flickr’s page. For instance, you can email your photos to your Flickr photostream. You have to set this up when you create your account, at which time you’ll be given a secret email address to send your photos to. Or you can use the Flickr Uploader, a free widget that lets you drag and drop photos from iPhoto, give them names, captions, and tags, and upload away. You can also upload your photos directly from iPhoto or Aperture with plug-ins available from Connected Flow, but those cost money.

January 16, 2008 at 11:06 pm by . | No comments.

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How to keep your Mac running smooth

By far the best and most useful session I attended today at the Users Conference was “Running Your Mac Lean, Clean, and Mean” by Dave Hamilton. He presented his qualifications as follows:

• Mac Observer – 9 years
• Mac Geek Gab Podcast – almost 3 years
• Geek … forever!

January 16, 2008 at 10:31 pm by . | 1 Comment.

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Office:mac 2008

As I sit in the Microsoft Blogger Lounge, I thought it would be appropriate to spend a minute to give you my very early first impressions of the newest version of Office for Mac.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, as I hope someone from the Mac-Forums will volunteer write a full review. But I will say that I’m impressed. Not only is it faster on Intel Macs, but the completely revamped user interface just provides such a better experience using Office on the Mac.

I’m going to to be honest, I have been using iWork exclusively for the last few months since I found Office 2004 just too slow to use on a daily basis. And while I do love iWork and think it has promise, it just doesn’t compare to the power and versatility of Microsoft Office. At $149.00 for the Home and Student edition, it’s definitely more than worth the price.

January 16, 2008 at 6:35 pm by . | No comments.

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The Mac-powered digital studio

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus made a stop at Macworld Expo 08 and offered tours, plenty of digital music equipment to play with, and a very helpful guy named Nick to talk about their amazing digital studio setup.

January 16, 2008 at 6:27 pm by . | 5 Comments.

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