I finally got around to listening to the Steve Jobs D8 interview in iTunes. The whole thing was extremely interesting and entertaining to me. But the one thing Jobs said that really resonated with me was this:

What I love about the consumer market that I always hated about the enterprise market is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go “yes” or “no.” And if enough of them say yes, we get to come to work tomorrow. You know, that’s how it works; it’s really simple. As where the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves. And the people that make those decisions are sometimes confused.

To me, that really sums up Apple’s success, especially in light of what Jobs said earlier about how Apple is structured like the largest “startup” in the world.

It’s all about thinking like a small company and knowing who pays you. It also speaks volumes about the power of consumer choice.

Whenever the cogs of consumer choice are not allowed to turn freely – whether due to government regulation or corporate bureaucracy – capital and resources don’t land in the optimal buckets. Free markets are all about wallet-based elections: voting yes or no by paying for things that work and passing on things that don’t.

I'd like to recommend a great blog called Unclutterer. Recently, it mentioned two of my favorite tools for reading and storing information I come across online: Evernote and Instapaper.

If something is part of an ongoing research project (like Unclutterer post ideas), I tend to save what I find to Evernote. If what I want to read later is interesting to me, but not necessarily related to a specific project, I’ll send it to Instapaper. I have both programs on my smart phone and laptop, so I can access all the documents on any device. When I know I’ll be traveling in the near future, I tend to “Read Later” a lot of documents to Instapaper so I’ll have many options to read on my journey.</p>

I generally use these two tools exactly the same way.

I found Evernote before I found Instapaper, and I initially used Evernote as a "read later" tool too.  But after using Instapaper for a while now, I much prefer it for reading web pages later -- primarily using the fantastic iPad Instapaper app.

Now, I use Evernote primarily to gather random web clippings for reference and also as a dumping spot for miscellaneous notes that may or may not turn into tasks or reference material. As Unclutterer notes, it's also extremely handy for gathering ad hoc project notes. Just recently, I used it while researching a car purchase.

In my mind tools like Evernote and Instapaper should be judged by 1) how easy it is to get information in and 2) how easy it is to get information out. For them to be useful, there should be virtually no friction on information entering and leaving.  Both of them perform well in these areas.

Evernote

How I get information in:

• Emailed notes
• Web clippings using the Evernote Firefox add-on
• Voice recordings from my smartphone (a Droid)
• Notes created in the Evernote app on my Droid
• Notes created in the Evernote app on my iPad
• Notes created at the Evernote website
• Notes created directly in the Mac Evernote application

As you can see, it's very easy to get information into Evernote. It's basically everywhere I am.

Getting information out is easy too.  If I'm near WiFi, I typically use either the iPad app or my Mac.  If I'm on the go, I can pull up all my Evernote information using the Evernote app on my Droid. Again, everything is accessible everywhere.

Instapaper

How I get information in:

• Emailed links
• Items from Google Reader
• Items from Reeder, a fantastic iPad RSS app that integrates with Google Reader
• Web links sent through the Read Later sharing service app on my Droid
• Web pages sent through the Instapaper browser bookmarklet

You can see all Instapaper tools on their extras page.

Like Evernote, it's very easy to get information into Instapaper. This makes it an excellent "ultimate destination" for any web page I want to read later. Whether I get a link through email, stumble across a page online, or want to save a longer blog post for later reading, there are a variety of ways I can throw it into Instapaper in a single click or tap.

Nowadays, I use the iPad Instapaper Pro app almost exclusively to read articles in Instapaper. The interface of the iPad app is brilliantly designed and easy to use.

Feel free to share your own tips for capturing and storing information electronically.

I often criticize the built-in "help" system in Microsoft Office.  One of its greatest shortcomings in my mind is that it beats around the bush before telling you how to do something relatively simple. Sometimes it never tells you. Recently I wanted to merge a Word document into another.  Naturally, I looked for an "insert file" command on the ribbon. But it was nowhere to be found. Alas, I would have to begrudgingly turn to "help" for help. I searched for "insert file," and was confronted with this convoluted message:

Symptoms You want to insert text from another document into the document that you are working on, but you can't find the Insert File command.

Cause The Insert File command has been renamed Text from File and moved to the Object menu on the Insert tab in Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Resolution Use the Insert tab to access the Text from File command.

Now, assuming that you don't feel like you've been diagnosed with a disease, by the time you're at the end of that robotic message, you have an answer. One has to wonder whether we're really any better off than we were in the days of clippy.

But this is how I really interpreted the "help":

Symptoms You want to insert text from another document into the document that you are working on, but you can't find the Insert File command.

Cause We renamed Insert File command to something less intuitive so that it's no longer recognizable by name (Text from File). We also moved it to the Object menu making it more difficult to find in Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Resolution Avoid using software with confusing interfaces and overly verbose help documentation.

Indeed, this is a better resolution.

One of the things I like most about Pages, Apple's word processor in the iWork suite, is that when you type a menu command in the help search field, the top hit shows you exactly where to find that menu item. Simple and genius design from people who actually use the software.

I’m a big believer and advocate of taking an Inbox Zero approach to email. The basic premise of Inbox Zero – at least as I interpret it – is that you should hold a bayonet to the throat of every message that lands in your inbox and force it to give you a reason to keep it. You are your inbox’s only sentry, so guard it well. Okay, that’s a bit dramatic… or is it? If you consider how much time you spend in email and how much it actually drains your productivity if it controls you more than you control it, then maybe it’s not so radical.

Letting your email know who’s boss takes effort, practice, and constant discipline. But the rewards you reap from taking this approach keep you in the habit.

The latest email frenemy I’ve managed to tame is the email newsletter – that needed but dreaded hunk of gaudy HTML that lands in our inbox every day. We know that in maybe one out of five of them, there will be some link, some snippet of information that’s useful. So we either 1) stop what we’re doing to read them, 2) let them stack up in a stress-inducing “read later” pile within our email system, or 3) ignore them.

Options 1, 2, and 3 are all wrong in my opinion. There's a better way.

Newsletters, like any other emails that don’t require a response should be purged from your email system. Exile them to a place where you actually can read them later. But how?

First, my email system

My email system is a heavily adapted version of the systems described in David Allen’s Getting Things Done and also borrows from Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero concept. I’ve been using my system for about a year now with great success.

The key is to always process your email inbox to zero (empty it) each time you enter. In the graphic below, the middle black circle should disappear when you’re done. When it disappears, you’re left with only good information (archived reference material) and actionable information.

You can then begin doing things and stop checking email. Really, stop checking.

Put another way:

1. Is it reference material? If yes, archive it.
2. Is it actionable? If yes…
   • If it requires a response, put it in a respond pile using a special label.
   • If it requires me to do something but no response is required, make it into a task in my task system.
   • If it’s something I want to read later but does not require a reply, get it out of my email system to read later.
3. If none of the above, it can probably be trashed.

I consider newsletters “read later” material. But I’ve found that storing them within my email system is bad because they can really accumulate. Further more, it’s difficult to decide when to read those “read later” messages and when to process, reply, and do other more productive things in my email.

I’ve found that the more I can segregate these activities, the more efficient I am. To me, email is much more useful if stays a communication system, not a magazine rack.

So what does a “read later” pile outside of your email system look like?

Enter Posterous, a ridiculously simple blogging platform built around email.

With Posterous, you can blog using email to post just about anything you would ever want to post on a blog. Pictures, video, PDF, anything you can attach to an email, you can fire right into Posterous. It will do everything required to make it viewable online for you. All you have to do is send an email to your Posterous email address (e.g. post@[yourdomain].posterous.com).

For more information on using Posterous, check out their FAQ.

It occurred to me that I can set up a dedicated, private Posterous blog solely as a dumping spot for email newsletters – or really anything that I want to get out of my email and into a “read later” pile.

I can simply forward email newsletters right into my dedicated Posterous blog, and it retains the formatting. The best part is that I don’t even have to visit the blog to read the newsletters: I simply subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed using Google Reader, where all my other “read-only” stuff awaits.

This means that when I’m in Reader and have time to read, I can read the full newsletter right there. I can also send it to Instapaper from Reader if I want.

And it doesn’t just work for HTML newsletters. I can also forward emails with attachments like PDF, and Posterous will embed and attach them to the post.

Everything is kept in one, searchable spot that I can come back to anytime. It also occurred to me that I could use comments in Posterous to make notes, but I haven’t found a need to do that yet. Accessing it from Reader seems to work just fine.

In the end, using Posterous as a “read later” repository has the following benefits:

• My email inbox stays cleaner
• I ensure that I don’t miss any important information in newsletters
• I can quickly scan newsletters for information when I’m in a “reading” mindset (i.e. when I’m in Google Reader)
• I’ve taken another step toward maintain an action-based approach to email handling

If you have any tips for processing email into distinct piles, or really anything related to GTD and email, please let me know.

PCWorld:

As the iPhone 4 preorder disaster worsens by the minute, the blame looks to fall squarely on AT&T’s shoulders as we learn more about what went wrong. The most damaging of these may be an source close to the carrier which now claims the system which AT&T was not tested before the launch.</p>

I think it was my sixth-grade English teacher who once told me "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

I don't remember anything else about sixth-grade English; that was enough.

One of my favorite Mac programs is TextExpander. I use it to expand shortcuts into full words and phrases, correct common misspellings, fill custom signatures in email, and even do cool tricks like pasting text by typing an abbreviation. It’s an incredible tool that pays me back every time I use it by increasing my productivity and cutting down on mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, one problem I seem to have over and over again is typing duplicate words (e.g. has has). I think my fingers just move too fast. It drives me nuts finding duplicate words in blog posts, emails, and anything I blast out to the world.

It occurred to me recently that I could create a special snippet group in TextExpander specifically to deal with this problem. Fortunately, Wikipedia had already published a nice list of common word repetitions. (How did we ever live without Wikipedia, right?)

The Wikipedia list is by no means comprehensive, but it's a great start. I was able to import most of what I needed by creating a text file in the following format:

a a     a
an an   an

Basically, the first two words represent the TextExpander abbreviation, and the third word is what I want to end up with. A tab separates the abbreviation and final result.

After importing, I had to do some manual cleanup.  I found that I needed to have a space after each abbreviation.  For example, I don't want "on one sunny day" to turn into "on sunny day"  So it's important to distinguish between "on on" and "on on ".

I also set each snippet to adapt to the case of the abbreviation.  So if I try to start a sentence like "On on" it will get corrected to "On".

I'm so bad at this, it even came in handy while I was writing this post!

If you use TextExpander and want to add this as a group, just do the following:

1. Download the group file that I created here and unzip on your Mac
2. Open TextExpander
3. Go to File > Add new group from file
4. Select the DuplicateWords.textexpander file and click Open

Feel free to share your own TextExpander tips and tricks.

Android Phone Fans:

It’s like AT&T spread a very infectious bug across the entire mobile world. Another carrier is set to follow AT&T and O2 UK in scrapping the concept of “unlimited data,” if MobileToday is to be believed.</p>

I had hoped that the practices of Europe's more progressive mobile industry would eventually spread to the US. But unfortunately, it appears that our UK friends will soon be feeling the effects of AT&T's new tactics.

My question: Is the first world already addicted enough to data for these new pricing structures to hold up, or are the carriers moving too fast? We'll see.

I'm really curious how the UK will react.

Update: iBooks 1.1 was released 6/23/2010. It offers several notable new features including PDF storage and an iPhone version. Macapper.com has a nice, concise review of the new features. I love to read. E-reading is one of the primary reasons I bought an iPad, and I’m now reading my fifth book on the iPad. I’ve split time almost equally between iBooks and the Kindle app.

I’ve had my iPad for a while now, but I wanted to reserve judgment on the iPad as an e-reader until I had a chance to do some real reading on the device. I wanted to form an opinion based on my true reading experience and not just the visual impression of iBooks and Kindle.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at just how much I enjoy reading books on the iPad. I was initially worried that eye strain or the loss of the traditional text reading experience would make it seem more like a gimmick than some revolution in reading. But those fears were quickly assuaged, and I’m now absolutely hooked on the iPad as an e-reader.

In this post, I’ll explain why the iPad is here to stay as an e-reader, and I’ll give you my personal comparison of iBooks and Kindle on the iPad.

Note: I’m writing this just a day after Apple’s 2010 WWDC event where they announced that enhancements to iBooks are coming. I will update this post, if necessary, after the new version is out.

Why e-reading makes sense on the iPad

• Companion apps like Wikipanion, Google Maps, dictionary apps, and other reference apps make for a much richer total reading experience. When I read books about history or books that talk about places in the world, I love to be able to see where things are on a map. It’s also great being able to tap over to Wikipanion to get more background on some historical event, person, or anything. Having all of this information literally at my finger tips blows my mind. If this is not a revolution in information accessibility, we’ll never see one. Incredible.
• There is no physical space requirement for your books, no more cluttered bookshelves, and no more dust bunnies.
• Books are backed up digitally. It’s harder to lose them.
• Forget about book lights. Night reading is a pleasure since the screen is back-lit.
• Mark up and annotate text without harming a page. Undoing annotations is a snap too.
• The iPad’s long battery life makes e-reading very practical. Not long ago, I used my iPad steadily over of a ten-hour period during a long car ride, and the battery still had 29% remaining at the end of the day.

The cons of e-reading: What you give up when going digital

• You can’t just lend a book to a friend.
• A book is no longer a physical object. It can’t be signed by an author, a loved one, or bear other marks that make it special to you.
• Reading outdoors is not as easy, especially in bright light.
• An iPad is more likely to be stolen out of your car than a Hemingway paperback.
• You’re not looking at paper anymore; for some, this is a problem. I wondered if it would be for me, but I’ve found that I’m not experiencing any eye strain at all, even after reading for hours at a time.
• Page numbers are no longer consistent. The page count of an e-book changes as you adjust the text size. So you can’t just tell a friend that you liked the paragraph on page 205.

Now, a comparison of iBooks and the Kindle app…

Things both iBooks and the Kindle app do well

• Highlighting text
• Page turning is easy; swipe from side to side or tap in the margin
• Work well both horizontally and vertically
• Remember where you left off
• Have screen brightness adjustments built in
• Allow text size adjustment
• Quick access to table of contents and library

What iBooks does better than the Kindle app

• Integration with App Store books. You can browse and buy books without leaving the app. You can still buy books for your Kindle from the iPad, but you have to do it through Safari at amazon.com.
• Tens of millions of free public domain books available in the App Store. Great news if you like to catch up on classics in the public domain (for free).
• iBooks has more visual appeal. Things like the realistic 2-page book view in horizontal mode and the way the app does a cool flip rotation when going into the book store look fun and make you smile. They probably also help sell the device to others. But honestly, this doesn’t do anything for reading experience.
• Built-in dictionary. This is a true joy. I’ve always liked keeping a dictionary handy when reading. When smart phones came out, I thought it was amazing that I always had a dictionary in my pocket. Now, all I have to do is touch a word in iBooks to define it. Amazing; simply amazing.
• Search. iBooks lets you search the entire text for words or phrases, while Kindle has no built-in search capability. This is incredibly useful for revisiting something later. It’s also one of the reasons e-reading is here to stay. Very practical.
• ePub support. You can import your ePub books right into the app.

What the Kindle app does better than iBooks

• Easier on the eyes. You can hide everything around the page so that all you’re left with is the page text. I find that reading in the Kindle app vertically is the best reading experience on the iPad. The entire screen is dedicated to the book text.
• Kindle remembers your brightness setting. For some reason, iBooks sometimes forgets the brightness level if you leave the app or if the screen goes to sleep. This is actually pretty annoying. But Kindle always remembers.
• Kindle is superior for reading books that you want to highlight and annotate because you can access all of your annotated snippets online at amazon.com. This is incredibly useful if you want to quote an author or see your annotations somewhere other than your iPad.
• Kindle shows popular annotations made by others.
• Kindle allows you to make notes about parts of the book. This is ideal for capturing a quick thought inspired by a sentence or paragraph in the book you’re reading.
• Adjusting the background color. Sepia and black are available in addition to plain white. I find reading difficult if the background is anything other than white, however.
• Kindle loads books faster. iBooks sometimes takes a noticeable amount of time to load a book that you’ve already started reading. There is a delay in loading the pages.
• Kindle books are cheaper -- generally by a dollar or two than those in iBooks.
• Kindle carries books published by Random House, a publisher who hasn’t entered Apple’s bookstore yet.
• Kindle isn’t limited to the iPad.  If you also own a Kindle, iPhone, iPod Touch, or anything else that can render Kindle books, you can read them there too.

Which one is better?

Both iBooks and Kindle are great reading apps. I’ve read several books in both. From a reading experience perspective, the Kindle app is slightly better. I really like the clean, uncluttered look of the Kindle app when reading. However, iBooks has a few notable feature advantages like the built-in dictionary and text search that make it more practical to use at times.

So I’m declaring Kindle the winner from a readability perspective and iBooks the winner from a usability perspective. Both are great, and both will only get better. It’s quite amazing that these apps are so good in their first versions.

Which do you prefer?

Maybe Apple is just really good at marketing. Okay, I know they're really good at marketing. But every time I see a new Apple product or service unveiled, it feels like we advance noticeably into the future. The technology landscape is redefined; bars are set higher. And we inch a little closer to a world where sci-fi and reality are one. The new iPhone 4 is just the latest inch.

When I ordered my iPad, I really thought it would primarily be a “consumption” device. In other words, I thought I would use it to primarily consume media, not create it. However, the more I use the iPad, the more I have the desire to use it for content creation, specifically writing. It just feels like it has potential beyond consumption. And it’s always-on, highly portable nature makes it beg to be a “thought pad.” The iPad can’t be a viable writing tool unless you can easily type on it. I’m a touch typist on a real keyboard. I’ve always been able to type while looking at the screen—or looking at a page. I don’t look at the keyboard when I type.

I wanted this ability on the iPad, but I’ve been resisting the urge to buy a bluetooth keyboard to go with it. I really wanted to see if I could integrate the iPad into my workflow without “peripherals.” I wanted to see if touch computing could walk without a cane.

At first, I didn’t think touch typing on the iPad was possible. After all, touch typing relies on tactile signals that tell our brain where our fingers are as they navigate the three-dimensional terrain of a traditional keyboard.

The surface of the iPad’s keyboard is flat. It’s a screen after all. There is obviously no way to know where your fingers are using your sense of touch. But the good news is that the iPad keyboard is much, much closer to a full computer keyboard than a mobile phone keyboard. And your muscle memory may be better than you give it credit for.

Moreover, Apple has has really figured out this multi-touch thing. The iPad is so good at detecting finger contact, it’s almost magical. You can tap rapidly across the keyboard, and every tap registers. Nothing is missed. Having used other touch devices, like Android phones, that sometimes miss a letter if two are pressed nearly at the same time, I can really appreciate what Apple has accomplished.

A few weeks ago, I committed to learning to touch type on the iPad. At first, it felt really clumsy, and there was really no speed improvement over using two fingers to “hunt and peck” like I do on mobile phone.

But it started getting better with some practice and patience. And the more I tried it, the more I became convinced that it was not only possible but very doable. Now, I touch type on my iPad with regularity, and I much prefer touch typing over using two fingers. In fact, I wrote much of this post on my iPad.

What follows are eight tips and suggestions I’ve come up with to maximize efficiency while typing on the iPad’s virtual keyboard.

1. Stay horizontal

(The iPad, that is.) Touch typing while holding the iPad vertical isn’t worth it. The keyboard is too small. But while horizontal, the keyboard size is not that much smaller than a real keyboard. This gives your fingers plenty of room to do their thing.

2. Good posture and screen angle are critical

As with typing on a real keyboard, it helps to sit up straight and get your arms at 90-degree angles. Touch typing on the iPad while laying in bed, or with the screen really close to your face is hard. Ideally, you’ll want to place the iPad in your lap or on a table and sit up straight. It also helps to use the Apple case or something else to position the iPad at a slight angle so that the screen is tilted toward you and not laying completely flat.

3. Hand position is important

Fortunately, not all sense of touch is lost with the iPad. I find that it’s helpful to keep the bottom corners of the iPad gently at the base of my palms. This helps ensure that my index fingers are always in the neighborhood of the F and J keys (essential for effective touch typing).

4. Double tap to make fast corrections

Double tapping is the fastest, most accurate way to highlight a word and make corrections. Once highlighted, a smart little contextual menu will hover hover the word. If you tap Replace, you’re offered several suggestions. Even if the right word isn’t there, you can simply begin typing a new word, and it will overwrite the highlighted word. If you need to replace a word for any reason, double tap it; don’t use backspace.

5. Trust your fingers

This is more abstract, but I find that the more you relax and just assume that your fingers will find the right landing spot on the screen, the more successful you’ll be. This also gets easier with practice.

6. That damn “it’s”

By default, when you type “its” the iPad converts it to “it’s.” I suspect that the contraction of “it is” is more common than the possessive “its.” But “its” is common too, so you’ll often be correcting the iPad. Instead of using backspace, a better way is to double tap the word and select Replace, as described above. Then, choose “its.”

I can’t stress enough that double tapping is your friend.

7. Use shortcuts

Apple put some shortcuts into the keyboard interface that are very useful:

To type an apostrophe without tapping the shift key, simply hold down the comma key for a second or two. An apostrophe will pop up, and when you release, it will insert it where your cursor is. This is much faster than constantly tapping shift to type an apostrophe.

If you only need to type a single number, you can tap and hold the .?123 key at the bottom of the main keyboard, then drag your finger to the number key you desire. When you release that key, the number will be inserted, and the keyboard layout with instantly switch back to the main ABC layout. This eliminates the need to tap the ABC key again. The tap and drag trick always works with any other key in the .?123 layout.

8. Edit errors in batches

As you type on the iPad you will make mistakes. This will happen no matter how good you get. I recommend editing your mistakes in batches, not one-by-one. If you mistype a word and a red squiggly line appears under it, keep going.  Every two paragraphs or so, you can go back and fix these mistakes by double tapping each word and either using the Replace feature or simply retyping the word.

Editing in batches is far more efficient than stopping each time you make a mistake because you'll constantly interrupt your thought process. That said, it may be a good idea to immediately correct mistakes that result in real words (i.e. that aren't underlined and spelling errors) so that you don't miss them later.

Practice makes (closer to) perfect

It takes time to get better at touch typing on a virtual screen, but it is totally doable. I find that I can easily touch type a 2-3 paragraph email in roughly the same amount of time I can on a full keyboard.

Touch typing on the iPad isn’t as efficient as typing on a real keyboard, but by getting good at touch typing on the iPad, you can take another step in freeing yourself from your desktop or laptop when you’re on-the-go, or anytime you want to take a break from having a full blown computer in front of your face.

Most importantly, you’ll avoid forming a habit of carrying around a second object with your iPad.

Update 2: If you're interested in developing Notational Velocity, read this too. Update 1: In my original post (below) I use MultiMarkdown and Markdown interchangeably when talking about Steve Frank's forked version of Notational Velocity. Currently, it only supports Markdown syntax, so it will not display MultiMarkdown-specific elements (e.g. HTML tables). See the comments for more discussion.

***

In my last post on MultiMarkdown, I received a great comment from CraigM, who recommended Notational Velocity over TextEdit for “simple” writing on the Mac. Since I had been meaning to try Notational Velocity for a while, I decided there was no better time than now.

I took Craig’s suggestion and downloaded a version of Notational Velocity developed by Steve Frank with a MultiMarkdown preview pane attached.

I love it.

It works exactly as advertised. As you write in the main note pane, the MultiMarkdown pane updates in real time.

Notational Velocity has an extremely simple interface. In fact, that’s probably its strongest “feature.” It is truly designed to be a frictionless medium through which thoughts pass freely from wetware to software.

The search field in Notational Velocity is pure brilliance. It doubles as a “create new note” field, for lack of a better term. You can simply start typing anything, and Notational Velocity will show notes that match your keywords. Or you can type the title of a new note, hit RETURN, and instantly begin writing. Your fingers never have to leave the keyboard.

Notational Velocity’s search field met another need I had on my Mac: the ability to instantly capture a thought with just a few keystrokes. Even with TextEdit, I would have to open TextEdit, type something, then “save as.” I would have to make a decision about where I wanted to save the file. With Notational Velocity, all I have to do is invoke LaunchBar (CMD+SPACE), type NV, type a title, and press RETURN. There are no decisions about where to save the file, and I know I can easily retrieve it later.

In the pre-digital world, Notational Velocity would be like having a pen and notepad handy and magically being able to file it instantly–and recall it at a moment’s notice later on. It’s actually quite interesting that despite all that computers allow us to do, they took away the ability to jot down a quick note, perhaps the most basic step toward conveying human creativity.

As a side “note,” I had been using Evernote for this purpose for a while, but I’m finding that I favor Notational Velocity for writing my own thoughts and Evernote for capturing other random bits of information, like web clippings.

Bringing Hazel back into the picture

In my last post on MultiMarkdown, I was really plugging Hazel and its ability to automate the creation of HTML documents from MultiMarkdown files. The Markdown preview pane in Steve’s version of Notational Velocity shows you a preview of the HTML. This is great for previewing, but I still needed way to actually copy the HTML code (so I could post it to the web).

Fortunately, Hazel is still able to take care of this for me.

I quickly realized that since Notational Velocity allows you to archive your notes as individual text files, I could take advantage of file name changes to trigger Hazel. I’m sure I will massage my taxonomy a bit in the future, but right now I have a system that makes a lot of sense to me.

How Notational Velocity and Hazel play together (for me)

When I first start writing something bound for the web, like a blog post, I begin the name of the note with “draft.” For example, “draft Notational Velocity MultiMarkdown.” This has the benefit of keeping my drafts grouped together if I sort my notes by title.

As I write a note, I like to keep the MultiMarkdown pane pulled down so that I’m only seeing the text I type. It’s like pulling the shades down for better concentration.

As I near completion, or if I want see how things are coming out, check link references, etc., I pull the MultiMarkdown pane back up and read over things. It’s really great being able to preview the HTML.

When I’m happy with the result, I replace “draft” in the note name with “pub” for publish. I created a new Hazel rule that’s triggered anytime Hazel sees a new file beginning with “pub” in my Notational Velocity notes folder on my Mac.

When Hazel sees the new pub file, it copies it to a folder I created called PublishHTML. When Hazel sees new TXT files arrive in PublishHTML, it generates an HTML version using the same kind of rule I described in my last post.

Finally, another Hazel rule runs every so often to clean out the PublishHTML folder since it’s really being used temporarily.

Overall, I like this process much better for these reasons:

• Writing in Notational Velocity’s interface is really appealing
• Hazel runs less often–only when I’m ready to create the final HTML document
• My drafts are stored in Notational Velocity and can be easily located at any time using the fantastic search built into Notational Velocity
• I can sync Notational Velocity with Simplenote. This allows me to edit my drafts on my iPad, iPod Touch, or really anywhere I have an internet connection. (Simplenote is a must-have if you do anything with Notational Velocity.)
• I also keep my Notational Velocity notes folder in Dropbox, which gives me an easy way to restore files and also gives me another way to access files on the go. Note: You should only use Dropbox or Simplenote (not both) to keep your notes in sync across multiple Macs.

A bit of extra applause for Simplenote

It’s worth emphasizing the convenience of Simplenote, a free service that syncs text-based notes created in the Simplenote iPad / iPhone app with servers. The syncing is seamless and fast. To my knowledge, it’s the first step toward Dropbox-like editing on the iPad. If I change anything in Simplenote, the changes are almost immediately available within Notational Velocity on my Mac. They also have a web interface, so you can access your notes anywhere you have an internet connection.

So thanks to CraigM for giving me another nudge toward Notational Velocity. And a big thanks to Steve Frank for adding the Markdown preview pane.

By the way, Notational Velocity, Simplenote, and Dropbbox, are all completely free in their basic versions. There’s no reason not to try them if you’re interested. Please let me know how you like them or if you have any writing workflow tips of your own.

One more thing

After I wrote this post, John Chandler left a comment on my last post describing exactly the same process I outlined above. I’m glad someone else has stumbled across the same workflow, and it really affirms my decision to move into Notational Velocity as my primary MultiMarkdown text editor.

The comments on MultiMarkdown and Notational Velocity have been great. I look forward to hearing about other creative uses of these simple, but powerful tools.

I decided to give the site a makeover. It's a very simple design. My goal is to make this blog as readable as possible. I hope you like the new look. Feel free to let me know either way.  I also freshened up the About page to give you a better idea about who I am and my intentions with this blog. Speaking of readability, do you often find it distracting to read articles and blog posts at site with a lot of adds and flashy stuff around the page? If so, I highly recommend checking out the Readability bookmarklet. A bookmarklet is a special bookmark for your browser than performs an action instead of taking you to a web page. I recommend keeping the Readability bookmarklet in your bookmarks toolbar so that it's always visible and always one click away.

The recent news that Apple surpassed Microsoft in market share is an obvious symptom of an acute problem Microsoft is facing: it’s not innovating in the eye of the consumer. I’m not anti-Microsoft, and I don’t think all Microsoft software is bad. Far from it. But I do observe that Microsoft seems to be standing still in a world that is changing rapidly around it. We live in a time when people expect constant, incremental improvement with technology. Microsoft may be delivering this to developers but not consumers.

Microsoft’s harsh reality is in the market share numbers. When you have close to 95% of the market share in the desktop market, you’ve really got nowhere to go but down. If Microsoft’s user base begins shrinking as tablet computing overtakes traditional desktop computing, it will spell trouble for Microsoft—a company that has essentially be abandoned by HP and other companies making tablets to compete with the iPad.

And as the cost of PCs continues to fall, so too will profit margins. The idea of spending $200+ on a copy of Windows for a machine that costs that amount or less will seem increasingly silly to the common consumer–those who essentially use their computers to check email, Facebook, and browse the web. I don’t think we’re far from a day when we will pick up tablet computers off of Target end caps for less than $50.

Shrinking margins coupled with shrinking sales volume is a nasty cocktail that Microsoft will have to swallow or somehow do a major, major reboot of their system and change its current image as a non-innovator. If they don’t, Gen Y, born and raised on Apple mobile hardware, Google web apps, and Facebook connectivity will think of Windows as the OS their parents used. To them, using Windows to take care of daily web activities will seem like using a rotary phone to make a call.

Something has to give, and it’s not just on the consumer front. I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is a principal of an elementary school. He filled me in on the cold reality many schools are facing right now. A major education funding crisis is now in full effect. Schools are getting no help from governments, and PTA groups can only do so much.

And as bad as funding problems are today in schools, challenges are likely to increase–particularly in the realm of technology. There are legions of Windows-based PCs sitting in schools that will decay away in the next few years. Forget about buying Windows 7 licenses and upgrading hardware; just supporting the existing machines is becoming cost prohibitive.

Barring a major reversal of events, schools will have to make very difficult decisions as to how to keep technology in their classrooms. One solution could be to install free operating systems like Ubuntu or the future Chromium on the aging hardware. Believe me, principals who have to choose between ditching Windows or increasing classroom size will be open to any alternative offered. So it’s not hard to imagine that a significant number of school children will gain experience in non-Windows operating systems and non-Microsoft software in educational settings.

When you’re at the top, there’s nowhere to go but back down… unless you create a new top. That’s what Apple has done in the mobile space: set a new peak to climb—one that rises into a vast white space that was previously unknown. Google is doing a good job of keeping pace, but Microsoft seems content to stand at the bottom and watch—perhaps hoping that others will fall to their death—or simply fall back to the present, which looks more like the past every day.

[Photo by Monster via Flicker]

My intention with this blog is providing clear, not-so-geeky explanations and ideas on using technology to improve your life. However, I’m going to momentarily shift toward the geeky end of the spectrum in this post and talk about my writing workflow with MultiMarkdown. I’ve noticed that a significant portion of the traffic I get from search engines are people looking for information on MultiMarkdown, which I wrote about in an earlier post.

I owe much of my awareness of the programs I use in this workflow to the Mac Power Users (MPU) podcast, an excellent resource on a variety of things Macintosh. If you are a Mac user of any experience level, I guarantee that you will learn a lot by listening to MPU.

My writing workflow utilizes several tools that I discovered through MPU. However, I feel that I’ve created my own unique combination of these tools in a way that suits me. Maybe it can help you too.

Most of my workflow is centered around MultiMarkdown, but it becomes even more useful with the following additional ingredients…

• LaunchBar
• Hazel

This post is essentially a recap of my journey with MultiMarkdown (so far) and how I’ve implemented the tools above.

Why MultiMarkdown

Obviously, people wrote long before computers. And in some ways, the pre-computer world was a better one for writers. There were fewer distractions, fewer traps between thoughts and text. The writer was not encumbered by decisions as to font choice and line spacing. Those decisions came later, and they were the domain of the publisher. The writer’s job was simply to move a pen across a page.

Now, I don’t use pen and paper, at least not very often. But I do use the closest computer substitute there is: the text editor. My choice is simply TextEdit, the basic text editor that comes with Mac OS X. I know that many Mac gurus prefer more feature-rich editors like TextMate, and with the MultiMarkdown bundle, I’m sure that it’s a powerful tool. I may test drive that setup at some point, but right now I’m trying to keep things simple: black words on a white background; nothing more.

Writing MultiMarkdown in TextEdit makes me feel closer to a purer state of content creation and the art of writing. It liberates my brain from making visual decisions as I write.

In the summary I wrote of MultiMarkdown earlier, I discussed the basic syntax, which is mostly derived from Markdown, created by John Gruber.

I think writing in Markdown or MultiMarkdown is fairly straightforward. Where some people may be intimidated is the process of converting MultiMarkdown to HTML (or whatever publishing format you desire). The most basic way of doing this conversion is using a Terminal command like:

mmd2XHTML.pl file.txt

Terminal commands often intimidate people for various reasons. So if this step makes you fearful, it’s likely you won’t try MultiMarkdown. I mean, what’s the point of using a tool that you perceive to be difficult? That’s logical enough, and I won’t attempt to assuage your fears of Terminal.

Fortunately, Fletcher Penney, creator of MultiMarkdown, provided a nice to solution that curbs the geekiness of this step a bit. Using his drag and drop apps, you can simply plop your MultiMarkdown text file onto the appropriate app. A little progress window will appear, and magically your file will be converted to HTML, PDF, RTF, etc. The new file will be sitting right next to your text file in Finder.

Drag and drop is nice, and maybe it’s suitable for most people. But I wanted something even more seamless.

LaunchBar + MultiMarkdown: a pretty darn efficient workflow

LaunchBar seems to find its way into just about all of my Mac workflows. It’s an indispensable layer on top of the core OS that I use so much now that I take it for granted–until I’m on a computer without it. Like its aging predecessor, Quicksilver, LaunchBar ensures that launching an app, opening a file, performing a quick calculation, and myriad other actions are only a few keystrokes away.

Initially, I was using LaunchBar to process MultiMarkdown for HTML conversion:

1. CMD+SPACE to invoke LaunchBar
2. Locate my MultiMarkdown text file
3. TAB
4. Type “multi” (or less) to find MultiMarkdown2XHTML.app
5. RETURN

This sequence tells LaunchBar to open the text file with MultiMarkdown2XHTML.app. It works really well, and once I got this down, I thought I had found the ultimate solution for quickly processing MultiMarkdown files.

Then, I discovered a new tool.

Hazel: not just a maid but a writing helper?

For me, Hazel was one of those Mac apps that I heard mentioned every so often but just never got around to investigating, at least not until recently. Brief descriptions of Hazel usually don’t win it any glamor points. It’s beauty is not beheld until seen in action. And like so many great apps, it adds value by staying out the way and doing its thing.

At first blush, Hazel appears to simply be a way to keep your Mac tidy by emptying the trash, cleaning up your downloads folder, and doing other automated file/folder actions. It’s worth buying just for these benefits alone.

However, Hazel is capable of much more. Its framework allows for so many different automations that it truly begins to mold itself to person using it. Hazel’s forum is filled with interesting uses. MPU also did a really good episode on Hazel not long ago.

After playing with Hazel a bit and thinking about things you do on a regular basis, it’s likely that ideas will start popping in your head.

With my LaunchBar approach, I would typically write a decent first draft in TextEdit first. Then, I would preview what I had written by invoking LaunchBar to generate an HTML file. In this editing phase, I found that I was invoking LaunchBar a lot. I often find many typos and decide to do heavy tweaking while editing. This means frequently going back and forth between the MultiMarkdown text file and the web browser (invoking LaunchBar in between).

Repetition often indicates opportunity for automation.

Hazel is good at keeping up with all kinds of file attributes, some of which aren’t even monitored by OS X. When I noticed the “Date Last Matched” variable, a light bulb came on. I created the following Hazel rule for each folder where I compose blog drafts:

By saying “Date Last Modified is after Date Last Matched,” it tells Hazel to act on the file any time it changes. Within a second or two of saving each draft, Hazel runs the text file through MultiMarkdown2XHTML.app, and out pops an HTML version of the document.

So when I’m ready the view the draft in a web browser, all I have to do is find the HTML file, double click it, and view. As I make changes and save them in the text file, all I have to do is refresh the browser page (F5 in Firefox).

This really streamlined my writing workflow. By letting Hazel worry about making HTML, it freed up even more time and energy to focus where the writing happens: TextEdit.

When I’m finally done, I simply open the HTML file in TextEdit and copy the code into WordPress, or other blogging platform.

Bonus: I also created another Hazel rule to delete the XHTML version of the file that MultiMarkdown2XHTML.app creates since I don’t need it.

Conclusion

I don’t claim to write well. Writing, like most things in life, is something you can improve on but never perfect. My general goal with writing is to do it better than the last time.

Taking steps to ensure that I focus my energy as efficiently as possible while writing helps make my writing better, I think.

For me, MultiMarkdown + Hazel is a pretty powerful marriage. In this case, power means simplicity. It provides an extremely efficient, simple interface that lets me focus on writing in plain text. It also forces me to put off formatting. (And sometimes I don’t have to do any formatting at all when I’m done.) I also don’t have to trip over HTML mark-up as I write, and I don’t have to spend any time converting MultiMarkdown to HTML.

If you like to write on a regular basis, you may want to give MultiMarkdown a try. By liberating yourself from ADD-inducing word processors and clumsy web-based blog editors, you may find that you produce higher quality content (text).

Please share your writing workflow tricks in the comments.

I'm going to take a break from writing about passwords. . . at least for a little while.  Here is a recap of the password posts I've made in the last few weeks: Start caring about passwords - Why passwords are extremely important in the current era of the web and common pitfalls.

Continuing our quest for a better password - Tips and tricks for creating strong passwords without using software.

Another great password trick - A short post describing a nice password trick shared by a Lifehacker reader.

More perils along the journey to a better password - Highlighting the problem with using passwords on non-https sites and the perils of using the same password for multiple sites.

Continuing our password journey: moving from complexity to simplicity - Why you should use a password manager program to create, manage, and use passwords.

Tips for password management on a PC - A review of two great options for password management on a PC.

1Password: my top recommendation for password management on a Mac - My personal favorite password manager and why.

You can always find these and future posts on passwords by clicking tag: passwords.