Phew....

The Apple store was down again on Wednesday and I received a couple of messages telling me so.

Oh no!

After spending out on the new Mac Pro last week, I have to admit, I was a bit anxious as to what was the reason behind the downtime as there hadn't been any recent rumours flying around.

Much to my relief, the surprise launch was for the new iPod shuffle... phew!

Never really had the need for a shuffle although the new voice technologies looks pretty smart.

Actually, looking into it, it isn't new technology at all. I wondered how they'd managed to cram the voice synthesis into such a small device. I also wondered why the voice on the shuffle was different if you sync'd via a Mac rather than with a PC?

D'oh!

Looks like all the heavy lifting is done on the computer end using the voice technologies built into OSX or Windows. Your computer generates the track information using the OS voice technologies, then transfers it back to the shuffle.

What a very neat idea!

PS Don't know why so many people are upset that you have to use the supplied earbuds. Apple have moved the controls to the earbud lead. Surely most people buying a shuffle are buying it for the convenience and not because they are audiophiles.

Sheesh!

PPS Looks like third party manufacturers will be coming out with new, higher quality earbuds to support the Shuffle.

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A quick swim, sauna and steam...

I've been going to the local hotel leisure centre for the past year or so, trying to keep the inevitable middle age spread at bay (too much information?). I'm usually an early riser so I'm out and back in again to start work at 9am.

Can't say that I've really enjoyed it, I never was a great fan of physical activity, and I've kept my regime to a session on the treadmill, some crunches and a swim. The problem with the gym and especially the treadmill is its just so boring, so invariably, I'd take along my iPhone and listen to some podcasts.

Always something new and stimulating to hear.

However, with being stuck in front of the Mac all day, it's really difficult to completely detach and just think, especially with the distractions of emails, tweets and RSS feeds. I really needed a complete break from all inputs.

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to forget the Gym and just have a swim, sauna and steam in the morning and give up on listening to podcasts whilst pounding the treadmill, to give myself a break.

What a revelation!

I now find that the morning swimming session is fantastic for clearing my mind and just thinking.

No distractions, no information overload, just some quality time to ponder on various things.

A case in point was this morning. I'm just about to start recording this weeks show which is likely to be "technically challenging" as it's the one where I'm hoping to explain my way through the introduction of the new Mac into the production environment. It's likely to contain a bit more advanced info and concepts than usual, and it's also one where I'm likely to use more on screen graphics, etc. So during my swimming session, I was able to think long and hard about certain aspects and came up with some great ideas on how I might tackle them. I came away feeling refreshed and really ready to tackle this weeks show.

So I think I may abandon the gym and just stick with a swim, a sauna and a steam each morning, to give me some quality thinking time. It may not be as physically beneficial as a workout in the gym, but I think it's just as important to give your brain some space to workout too.

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So many info sources to update...

The blog a day challenge seems to be working out OK although, I just need to be careful I don't spend too much time on creating massive posts. I really need to extend it now from just creating a carefully considered paragraph (or two, or three, or four...) to also including interesting stuff I pick up on during my browsing during the day.

Or do I?

What is proving to be a bit of a consideration is exactly where do I post stuff.

Of course, there is twitter for my "micro blogging" activities - great or the occasional idea or throw away comment.

Then there's my blog for more considered prose, quite nicely serviced by the Wordpress RSS feed if you want to subscribe using an RSS reader.

But then, I also run the ScreenCastsOnline forum. This is a fantastic resource for mainly tech information about the Mac, but also a place for ScreenCastsOnline viewers to hang out and discuss the show as well as making suggestions for further subjects. What is really useful is that for each show, I post a separate thread, and that can be used to leave comments and corrections (hopefully not too many corrections!). I should really correct myself, in that I actually don't really "run" the forum. I started it, but these days it pretty much is run by an elite band of moderators who are so generous with their time and incredibly helpful for anyone with a Mac related question. It really is a "top" resource and I should really spend more time on there.

Then there's FriendFeed - OK - I don't get FriendFeed at all.

FaceBook - Yes I have an account but I have to admit, FaceBook is dead to me!

And finally, Google Reader. Yes, I can share interesting posts via Google Reader with anyone who wishes to follow my shared items in my Gmail account screencastsonline@gmail.com. I think this could be useful but I keep forgetting to use it!

I'm sure there is many other ways I can share interesting information but I feel some consolidation is required. In the long run, I think Twitter, My Blog and My Forum are the only services I'm likely to invest any of my time.

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A quandary....

Just received the last piece of the puzzle is setting up the new rig for ScreenCastsOnline. If you've been following me on the blog and on twitter, you'll know that I recently bought a second "end of the line" Mac Pro to incorporate into the ScreenCastsOnline studio setup.

It's been a really interesting week and I've learnt a lot configuring the second machine. I've also taken the opportunity to make some changes with the way I do things and also revamped the configuration of the original Mac Pro.

The quandary is what to do for this weeks show!

I'm wondering if I should do a special project based show this week, describing the process I've gone through to set things up, what changes I've made and how I've finally got everything settled down. Now I know very few people will ever need to setup two Mac Pros, (in fact very few people need two Mac Pros!), but there are some apps and techniques I've used that some people may find interesting. User migration, backups, syncing folders, RAID configuration, multiple monitor setups, networking configuration, KVM switches, lots of interesting stuff

Plus it also gives me the opportunity to justify what appears to be, on the face of it, an expensive harebrained scheme, to the ScreenCastsOnline audience, or would that be to myself all over again!

What do you think?

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Tips on managing high volume emails (Part 3)

Some further software applications I use to speed up my email handling workflow. As you might imagine, I've covered most (all?) of these applications as ScreenCastsOnline tutorials at some stage so I've included links to the tutorials and links to the vendors -

Note: None of the vendor links are affiliate links!

TextExpander - Vendor Link - Absolutely indispensable, not only in email but across the board on the Mac. Allows you to create small (or entire emails) in text snippets that you can call up by typing a few simple keystrokes or abbreviations. Handles plain and formatted text along with images. You can even use it to insert variables such as time, date or even access Applescripts. I use it a lot for common words I type a lot such as SCOn for ScreenCastsOnline, Cdon inserts an email sig with a graphic, boilerplate text, loads of things! Also great for automatic spelling correction or changing accented words automatically.

As can be seen below, TextExpander has saved me over 1,000,000 characters typing since installation, and that's on just one machine! ScreenCastsOnline tutorial - SCO0150 - TextExpander

Mail Tags - Vendor Link - Works either standalone or in conjunction with Mail-ActOn. Allows you to break away from the tyranny of complex hierarchical mailbox structures. Simply tag your emails with keywords or project tags and then retrieve of view using smart mailboxes. Really helps streamline the process of processing your inbox. There is so much more in this package! ScreenCastsOnline tutorial - SCO0174 - Organise Your Email - MailTags v2

OmniFocus - Vendor Link - I mentioned in part 2 of these email related blog posts that the secret to keeping on tp of your email is to process your inbox down to zero, not necessarily answering or actioning all your email. This is where OmniFocus helps me tremendously as I use OmniFocus to store all the emails that require action but not straight away. I move the non urgent emails from my inbox into OmniFocus, so I can then manage those emails, or more significantly, the actions the emails represent, in my trusted system. I can move the original email out of the inbox and know it's somewhere safe. Once in OmniFocus I can then plan or action knowing that I'm in control. The real beauty of using OmniFocus in conjunction with my email system is that I can copy the entire email directly into OmniFocus with a single keyboard combo shortcut. I can read the entire email in OF of I can retrieve the email from my mail system from within OmniFocus. Again, this is another app with hidden depths so checkout the tutorials - SCO0178 - OmniFocus Basics & SCO0180 - Adv. OmniFocus & iPhone Client

Of course, once the email is in OmniFocus, then you have the task of clearing your OmniFocus inbox but we'll perhaps look at that in a separate blog post!

MailSteward - Vendor Link - Although not strictly connected with managing your current inbox, MailSteward is a great way to handle your email archives and get your old emails out of your mail client and into a separate optimised SQL database for easy searching and retrieval - ScreenCastsOnline tutorial - SCO0189 - Archiving Mail with MailSteward

I hope you found this short series on handling email useful.

Feel free to leave any comments if you'd like to see more of this type of posting on the blog. Can you believe I'm up to day 13 of a new blog post every day for 30 days - nearly half way there!

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