Ahh, MacWorld Keynote Day! It’s like a second X-Mas, except at this one Santa sends me an invoice for all the toys he left under the tree. Bittersweet, to be sure, but a wonderful and exciting time to see the latest in Mac Goodness.

Except this year, I didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone looks fantastic (I was literally quivering with delight as I read Engadget’s play-by-play coverage), and the Apple TV, while not my cup of tea, also looks like a very slick product.

But come on, the whole keynote was spent talking about a product that we already knew existed (and pretty much what it would do – HD and iTunes support was a given, all that was left was a bit of confusion over the connection with the Mac and its support for other formats, as well as the nitty gritty of how it looks/acts), and a product that won’t ship until June.

To add insult to injury, NEITHER of these products are Macintoshes. They’re in the same consumer electronics category as the iPod (which Steve, for the past couple years, has made a point of NOT covering in detail, since it’s MACworld expo, not APPLEworld expo). In fact, both products fully support PCs as well as Macs.

And sure, the MacBooks were recently updated to the Core 2 Duo processors, but the Mini and iMac haven’t seen an update since September, and the Mac Pro hasn’t ever been updated since it was released in August. Where’s my new hardware? I can get a Dell with faster processors than are on any of the Macs (even four more cores on a workstation class dualie). And say what you will about anodized aluminum, but I can’t help but feel a bit bored with Apple’s pro enclosures. Nope, I was waiting the whole time for a “one more thing” revealing an eight-core Mac Pro.

Furthemore, iSights are unavailable, but Apple’s displays don’t have a camera in them. iLife and iWork still say ‘06, which makes them start sounding a bit (dare I say) Microsofty. (Word 2004? That’s so Web-1.0-era!) And don’t even get me started on how badly .Mac needs an update to justify its ludicrous price!

Do I want an iPhone? Yes, desperately. But it’s not a Mac product. Neither is an iTV. Heck, if they’d thrown in a pity demo of Leopard, I’d feel better about it, but as it is, I can’t help but feel that just as Apple Computers became just Apple today, the Mac officially got its keynote hijacked to push Just Apple’s new products.

Adobe has a free web-based application out called Kuler.

In a nutshell, Kuler is a color picker that helps you design a color scheme of complimentary colors. It lets you start with a base color, and will generate a family of related colors based on some simple rules (whether you want a high contrast or low contrast color scheme, for example). Any of the automatically generated colors can be overridden as well, should you happen to want to.

Where Kuler really shines, however, is in the community around it. You can publish and share and browse other designers’ color schemes. You can rate the schemes you browse, and the best and most popular ones naturally rise to the top.

Color schemes are annotated with RGB, CMYK, LAB, HSV and and HEX/HTML color values, so you can punch ‘em right into your application of choice. You can also export your scheme as swatches compatible with all Adobe Creative Suite applications.

For people like me who have enough design sense to know that we design poorly, but not enough to design well, a good color scheme can mean the difference between an ugly garish design (this site) and wonderful attractive design.

Kuler is 100% free. If you do any design work at all, you owe it to yourself to go check it out.

Here at Nik’s Picks, I try to dig up some of the best software out there and share it with you. But I’m just one (lazy) guy, and there’s a lot of smart folks out there.

So, to make everyone have a little something new all the time, I set up Squidoo lens that tracks the top MacOS X software.

Just pop over to the lens, and you can vote on your favorite software, and vote down any software you don’t think is deserving! Should be fun.

You can see the top few results here in the sidebar, or best of all, at the page itself. Get out there and vote! (And, if you like the lens, be sure to give it a nice rating!)

Go vote now! What are you waiting for?!

And, as a disclaimer, I make no money on this. All the ad revenue generated by the lens is automatically gifted to charity.

In case you haven’t read this elsewhere, MacHeist has made a great bundle of software available at the culmination of the incredibly fun MacHeist game/software giveaway.

The bundle has some of the real cream of the crop Mac applications, including Delicious Library, TextMate, RapidWeaver, and a Pangea game of your choice, and it’s only $50 – $12.50 of which is donated to a charity of your choice.

If you’re a newish Mac user or mostly stick to open source apps, I highly recommend picking up this sampler so you can see what some of the top independent Mac developers are capable of producing. This is the sort of software that will make you switch to a Mac or keep you from ever being able to quit the Mac fold.

If you’re interested, go take a look and buy a bundle if you like what you see.

For quite some time, my 12” Powerbook G4 has been crashing (kernel panic) erratically. I finally narrowed down that when the left front part of the case (across from the battery) flexed (like when I picked it up on that corner), it crapped out!

After discussing this with some techs online and off, I came to the conclusion that the most likely problem was a miniscule crack in the motherboard or in some of the traces on the mobo. When the board flexed, the traces no longer made a connection, and the computer crapped out. Made sense, it fit the symptoms, and mobo damage from flexing has been known to happen with various laptops that don’t have totally firm cases. (i.e. All plastic, aluminum and titanium ones.)

So, I remembered where the kill spot on the case was, and handled my Mac more gingerly to avoid the kernel panics.

Then I dropped it. Right on the corner next to the kill spot. Dented the case nicely.

Next thing I know, Airport (wifi) went haywire. If the computer woke from sleep, it would fail to find any access points.

I figured this was all related. The airport card connects around the kill spot part of the case, and it made perfect sense that if the mobo was damaged, the wifi would suffer for it.

But then the wifi died entirely. “No airport hardware was detected”, said Internet Connect. Grr…

So, I pulled the airport card. Took a look at it. It looked fine, but what the hell do I know? So I put it back in. (The old unplug and plug it back in again trick!)

Guess what? It works now. Moreover, my computer doesn’t crash when I flex the part of the case right under, yeah, the airport card connector.

So what I think REALLY happened was that my airport card got jiggled loose. I’d flex the case and effectively unplug my wifi card while the computer was on, causing a kernel panic. Eventually the card worked its way even looser, which finally got me to zero in on the problem.

So, I’m psyched things work now. But boy, strange problem there.

I recently whomped together a little TiVo decoding application, that lets folks convert the videos on their TiVo into something they can actually use. This has caused me to get a little more interested in other programs that enhance the TiVo experience. So here, for a Very Special Nik’s Picks, is a rundown of some of the best software out there to assist you in using your TiVo. Best of all, they’re all free!

Tivo Desktop

This is a nifty little application provided by TiVo that lets you stream your iTunes music to your TiVo and also view iPhoto slideshows. While its functionality is a bit limited compared to some alternative programs, it does what it does extremely well. I especially enjoy using it to play my MP3s through my home stereo, since I have full control over the player from the TiVo itself, unlike other solutions (such as Airport Express) that force me to go to my computer and muck with iTunes. Download TiVo Desktop

TiVo Now Playing Widget

This deceptively simple widget gives you a nice view of what’s waiting on your TiVo for you to watch. It effortlessly pulls down listings of what’s on your TiVo, and with a click, downloads the .tivo file to your computer. Downside is that it takes a while to load (especially if you have a 160 GB TiVo, like I do), but once it gets the list of shows, it’s quite responsive. Download TiVo Now Playing Widget

Galleon

Galleon is the mack-daddy of TiVo software. It lets you add a variety of custom applications to your TiVo. I mean sure, the TiVo Desktop program lets you stream iTunes music or watch your iPhotos on your TiVo, and that’s pretty cool. But what about using your TiVo to monitor your computer over the network? What about automatically downloading shows that meet certain criteria? Or what if you want to view video podcasts, play any internet radio stream, or do a variety of other strange things off of your television?

Well, Galleon handles all that. Behind its somewhat daunting configuration lies a powerhouse of a system which has been tastefully and cunningly integrated into the TiVo interface. True, many of its functions are built into TiVo now, but it still has some gems of applications in there.

To make installation and configuration much easier, I highly recommend the Galleon Bundle for MacOS X which manages some of the initial configuration and makes it much easier to launch and use Galleon on your Mac. Download Galleon

The latest beta of LaunchBar adds support for sending text to items in the services menu, via specially formatted search templates. This can be a very cool way to quickly enter data into a variety of applications without ever having to write a line of AppleScript or anything.

While LaunchBar’s included “look up in Dictionary” example is pretty slick, if you have programs with more expansive Services offerings, you can do some truly wonderful things. Here’s a few of my favorites…

Let’s start with a basic one as a sort of tutorial, and create a LaunchBar entry that lets us create a new sticky note in the “Stickies” program. Just open LaunchBar’s configuration, and enter the following search string in a new search template called, I don’t know, “New Sticky” or something:

> x-launchbar:perform-service?name=Make+New+Sticky+Note&string=*

Then select “New Sticky” in LaunchBar, hit space to get into the text entry mode, and type in the text for your new sticky note and hit enter. Bam! Stickies opens (if it wasn’t already open) and creates a new sticky note. Pretty cool, eh?

Now, where this really takes off is if you have some very cool services installed, specifically the Calendar Creator and Contact Creator services from QI Software. These services let you enter iCal and address book information using plain English. So you can select text labeled “Meet John tomorrow at 3 PM” and Calendar Creator service will turn that into a meeting for tomorrow at 3 PM. Nice and easy.

To use those services, just download and install them, and then add the following search templates to LaunchBar. Once you log out and in again (necessary to reload the Services menu), you’ll be able to smoothly and easily add contacts, to dos and events to iCal and Address Book.

• x-launchbar:perform-service?name=CalendarCreator/Add+Calendar+Event&string=*
• x-launchbar:perform-service?name=CalendarCreator/Add+To+Do&string=*
• x-launchbar:perform-service?name=ContactCreator/Add+List+of+Contacts&string=*

And if you’re using Entourage, and you have synchronization with iCal and address book turned on, these utilities will work just as well for you, provided you set up your defaults so that calendar entries go to the Entourage calendar instead of to the CalendarCreator calender. Just type the following terminal command, and you’ll be all set:

> defaults write com.qisoftware.calendarcreator “DefaultCalendarName” “Entourage”

So there you go! Go make your own services plug-ins for whatever you like. It’s quick, easy, and will almost certainly speed up your computing time!

A couple folks have asked that I build a “weekly review” script for Entourage. I have just one question, what would it do?

I can easily see that it might build a list of projects without next actions, overdue tasks, maybe even upcoming events from your calendar. But all that is really at your fingertips anyhow, isn’t it?

Let me know what a review type script or application would do for you. Sound off in the comments!

John Gruber ran an excellent article, ‘Beta’ is Not an Excuse, dissecting the important difference between beta software and simply buggy, but released, software. His target: The much ballyhooed CD burning application, Disco. His point was simply that calling Disco “beta” is disingenuous, because as long as they’re selling the software, they have an obligation to their customers to create software that works.

Simple logic, but it misses the true genius of their approach: They’re using pre-sales as a means to gain investment capital to fund the final development of Disco!

Disco, you see, is still in beta, and still has some bugs which I can only classify as henious. As an early adopter of the software (I got it off the pernicious MacZot, a site that seems dead set on capturing my pocket change), I have found it to be exciting to look at but incapable of burning anything more functional than a coaster. (By the admission of the program.)

But here’s the rub: I paid for this software.

I must be stupid, right? Well, yes, perhaps so. But the folks at Disco are nothing short of geniuses!

Let me ask you this: How do you fund a software start-up?

Most people use some combination of credit cards, personal savings and outside capital (either The First Bank of Mom and Dad or, if they’re exceptionally lucky/well-known, venture capital bucks). This money often is hard to come by and runs a very high interest rate. So start-ups often try to stay exceptionally lean until they have a first release and can finally start bringing in revenue and pay off their loans and investors.

Not Disco, though, no sir! They’ve managed to create such a feeling of trust and excitement (through some phenomenal viral marketing, aided by MacZot), that people (thousands of people) were willing to pay $5 for the software before they even knew what it did! Furthermore, once the software’s final purpose, features, and so forth were released, excited users could buy it at half price ($15) before it’s so-called final release.

In one fell swoop, Disco was able to build up a few thousand dollars in sales without even the requirement that their software exist, let alone be stable, feature-complete, and reliable! If that’s not a stroke of true marketing genius, I don’t know what is.

And, of course, they no longer have to worry about paying folks to beta-test for them. A paying customer will be quite eager to download the latest point releases and test them out, hoping beyond hope that the program will justify the $15 worth of expense.

The danger inherent in this approach is that the Disco developers now have a true obligation to these paying customers to deliver a fully functional application, and moreover, to deliver it quickly. If they don’t, they will lose credibility and won’t be able to pull this stunt again (and others will find it far harder as well).

As for me, I’m still Toasting my CDs, as Disco just hasn’t proven itself reliable enough to handle my backup needs. Maybe the next release will reliably burn a disc…

Learn how to transform Microsoft Entourage into the ultimate GTD productivity system. If you haven’t already, read the previous articles in the series to get started before diving into these details.

If you’ve been following the series, you’ve now had a few days to try out the system and see how it works. In that time, I’ve received a number of comments and questions, so I figured I’d include some answers to those questions to help fine-tune your application of GTD in Entourage, as well as cover some tips on how to handle your reviews, the best way to carry your tasks with you at all times, and some ideas on how to capture information and keep your projects straight.

Projects and Next Actions

Canonical GTD leaves you with a task list containing nothing but next actions. If that’s how you want to work, power to you. For myself, I want to list all my tasks and have them ready to pop up as the next action as soon as I complete the task before it. It lets me keep rolling and is especially useful if I’m going to be away from my lists for a while.

That’s the whole point of using priorities in this system. Actions which are, er, actionable, will be high priority, and others will be lower. Actions which are on hold get dropped down to lowest (deferred) priority.

This lets you outline everything you need to do for a single project when you first think up the project. But, as always, don’t be a slave to old ideas. If you think a new task is necessary or one you originally entered isn’t right, go ahead and make changes as needed.

Best Practices for Send to Entourage Script

The Send to Entourage script lets you immediately create a task, project, context and even set an alarm in one easy step. Use this feature sparingly. Your goal is to capture and then review. If you have 50 projects running at once, the last thing you want is to accidentally attach a task to the wrong project because you’re in a hurry, or to delay getting an item filed away because you had to spend time considering its context and whether it was more appropriately a project of its own.

Send a single sentence to your task list and it’ll show up in your Inbox view, waiting for your next review. Keep moving, keep being creative, and then when you’re feeling like getting all your ducks in a row and being the boring well-organized you, you can visit your Inbox and file things away perfectly.

About the only time I’ll use the script to drop a task right into a context and project is during my review. (And it’s a huge timesaver.)

Taking it With You (Palm syncing)

If you have a PalmOS device, you can synchronize Entourage with it. You have two different ways of doing this: You can use Entourage’s built-in support for Sync Services to sync to iCal and Address Book and then use Apple’s conduits, or you can use Entourage’s own conduits.

Use Entourage’s. Trust me.

If you don’t, you’ll lose categorization for all your tasks, and without categorization, you can kiss you lovely contexts good-bye!

You will notice that your Palm doesn’t have projects on it, only contexts. This is, in my mind, a good thing. The PDA is a way to carry your to-do lists with you, it is not a terribly good replacement for your Mac. (Try entering 100 tasks with categories on your PDA, then do it on the Mac using the Send to Entourage script if you don’t believe me.)

You can, of course, use your PDA to capture new tasks. My recommendation is to not categorize tasks at the PDA. This will ensure that they end up in your inbox view (well, they will regardless since they don’t have a project), and will thus take the pressure off of your stylus-hand to make you enter a thorough and well documented task. Instead you can jot down “donaldson paper thursday”, and when you do your review that reminder will get transformed into “Turn in economics paper to Dr. Donaldson next Thursday and remember to print two copies”. Life’s too short to spend your life hammering on a thumb-keyboard or mucking with a stylus.

Reviews and Entourage

A few people have emailed me and asked why there isn’t a “review” script. There’s a simple answer: That’s impossible! But, this method is set up to make your review simple. Here’s a quick list of things to check to get your review going (in addition to the usual review steps as detailed in Getting Things Done.).

1. Empty your email box! Some of those emails will end up in your inbox. It’s up to you whether they now become part of this review or if you want to put those off until later.
2. Check your Inbox view and file away everything in there. This is obvious, but is a great first step
3. Review your projects. For each project, consider whether it’s still active or whether you’re done, and make sure you have at least one action associated with it as a next action. (If you don’t, take a moment to determine a next action and enter it immediately!)
4. Check off any tasks you’ve completed within each project, or defer tasks which are no longer necessary or are now on hold.
5. Look at the next actions in each project as well. Is it truly the next possible action? If you’re using the scripts to automatically assign actions, it may be a completely inappropriate item as a next action, in which case you should defer that action or at the very least put in a new next action immediately.
6. Review your raw task list. Make sure you don’t have tasks mis-categorized or otherwise funky due to manual error.
7. Review you deferred projects and actions. If you’re waiting on something, you may want to add a new action of “Remind X that I’m waiting on something.” as an agenda item. If you have a project that’s been on hold for a long time, maybe it should move to the someday/maybe list instead. Deferred does NOT mean that you aren’t responsible anymore. It simply indicates you cannot take immediate action on that item.

Lists and Reviews

I highly recommend keeping any and all lists associated with your review processes in Entourage. This ensures that they will be available when you’re actually doing your review.

Additionally, if you have a PDA that you’re sync’ing to, you can use the PDA to read your lists and run through them, while actually walking through the process on your Mac. It’s like having two computers!

Questions and Answers

How do I use the Entourage script menu? This question came in a lot of different forms, ranging from “I can’t set a keyboard shortcut for a script menu item” to “Scripts aren’t showing up in the menu, what’s wrong?”

First, read the help. Just open up Entourage’s help and search for “Script Menu”. There you go.

If you want more detail this post on the Entourage User’s Weblog may be just the ticket.

The Send to Entourage script doesn’t correctly match projects and/or contexts, what am I doing wrong? That was my fault. Re-download the script and it should work fine.

How do I handle sub-projects? I already answered this in the comments, but I think it’s worth noting here. I don’t believe in sub-projects. Either it’s two projects that are not necessarily dependent on one another, or it’s one project. Even if the projects aren’t necessarily dependent on one another, but they both work toward an ultimate goal (e.g. you want to sell your house, so you’re going to paint it and redo the plumbing), consider whether your mind would be more at ease tackling one and then the other. Otherwise you’ll end up with a half painted house with holes in the wall as you run back and forth between these “sub-projects.”

But, if you want sub-projects in Entourage, it obviously doesn’t handle it out of the box. Instead, you could use a naming convention, create a note that lists all the steps toward your ultimate goal (a good idea for any major goal or objective!), or just trust your brain to keep it straight, thanks to your regular review process.

You keep mentioning Kinkless GTD. Do I need that or OmniOutliner to make this all work? No. Kinkless GTD was the inspiration for this methodology, that’s all.

You keep mentioning GTD and David Allen. Do I actually need to read that stuff? I recommend that you do. Getting Things Done is one of the few personal organization books I’ve read that correctly puts the emphasis on being productive, creative and happy rather than organized. I don’t care how many stack of crap I have piling up, provided those piling stacks feel under control and I am confident I’m spending my time doing what’s most important to me. It’s a wonderful way to live.