Digital Tools

Life by Alt+Tab

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

Alt+Tab (Or CMD+Tab as the case may be depending on your platform).

For the purposes of this post we’ll go with Alt+Tab, given my office job ties me to a Windows PC. Alt+Tab being the keyboard shortcut which instantly takes you to another open programme, and one I use dozens of times per day.

I mentioned in a previous post how the concept of work life separation resonates with me far more than that of work life balance. All day, five days week, I sit and peer into two monitors, hopefully make a difference, get up and go home. I’m certainly not alone in this. Whether or not you sit, stand, walk or crawl(?!) around all day, you also get up, go home, then come back and do it all again.

How do we separate the work day from everything else? More importantly, how quickly and how often can we switch off from work and into…well, something else. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest my iPhone and iPad mini help me switch off from work. They’re just another screen right?

Not so much.

Morning

My morning commute generally involves listening to my favourite podcasts and a bit of music prior to walking through the office doors.

[Alt+Tab]
Once I hit my desk it all begins, with my focus on work and generally not much else. Though my iPhone is close at hand, it is rarely used, other than to reply to an occasional text message or to check either my calendar or Omnifocus.

Whatever you may think of “multitasking”, or the fact that replying to a text message only takes a few seconds (please tell me you realise how long it takes to regain the same level of focus you had prior to a minor disruption) – tasks that are not work and disrupt focus are the true productivity killers of the modern office. Don’t even get me started on the design flaws of the modern open plan office where “collaboration is king” – well yes, if you accept that 90% of all collaboration occurring is about the latest concert, Game of Thrones episode or why someone just needs to get out of that relationship.

I digress, so let’s just say I’ve been hard at work for a couple of hours by this point.

Middle

[Alt+Tab]
I exit my office building at approximately 11am for a mid morning coffee, call my wife to see how things are going, then open Tweetbot and catch up on my Twitter feed, check Instagram, or what my family are up to in Path. I may search or stumble across some articles to save for later in Pocket or ‘flip’ into my Brew magazine on Flipboard.

That is, an immediate transition from my office role into another virtual space where the interactions are all about my other interests and passions. Family, pens, coffee and technology being some. Some of these interests lead to interactions over the web and social media, with like-minded individuals both in other parts of the country, and around the world. There is nothing quite like providing feedback to a pen blog in the UK, or backing a Kickstarter project in the USA to instantly take your mind off the emails, phone messages or Excel spreadsheet waiting back at your desk.

[Alt+Tab]
Coffee break over – back into work for another couple of hours through to lunch time.

[Alt+Tab]
Lunch time. Again I leave the office. With iPad in hand, walk for bit, order some of the finest filter coffee you will find, sit, and draft the next post for this site. Once I’ve given a fair effort to something productive such as a blog post, then it’s on to personal emails and social media.

[Alt+Tab]
Lunch break over, and my focus switches back to work for the long haul through to the end of the day.

Done

[Alt+Tab]
Once I physically “clock off”, again it’s a quick switch back to my iPhone at the bus stop (usually a quick catch up on Twitter and Instagram whilst keeping half an eye out for the bus), and once on it, sink into watching a TV series on my iPad until home.

An Easy Escape

Each change of focus outlined above involves a physical change in my environment. The coffee break, the lunch break, the bus stop – all times I have left my desk and escaped outside, not simply to another screen. I suspect it is not by chance that these physical location changes greatly contribute to switching my thoughts away from work and into my personal areas of interest so quickly. Heading into the lunch room at work with my phone or iPad has no appeal to me.

Not only is it great to have outside interests, it is amazing the ease in which we can access them – whether on a break or walking across town to a meeting. It is this instantaneous shift in thinking which not only keeps me sane, but also provides the break I need to sharpen my work focus on returning to my desk. To me, the personal technology I use is therefore not simply another screen, but a powerful way to delineate work and personal boundaries, much like Alt+Tab is a powerful keyboard shortcut to access another programme in an instant.

Closing Thoughts

Are we really all slaves to technology?

Perhaps at times, however depending upon how you use it (I admit we are not all lucky enough to exert total control), it can be an extremely powerful means of breaking out of the mundane work mindset at various points during the day, and escaping into something that allows you to feel that each weekday is not just work. There is a portal to your world of other interests, communities and knowledge, and if used wisely, can add a significant amount of value to your life.

Outlined above is the digital perspective of my day. Any interaction with my digital devices is trumped (and often is) by human conversation. If you find me on one of these breaks feel free to chat – just don’t ask me to talk about work.

An Easter Trip Disconnected

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

After a trip to visit my parents in northern NSW (usually about a 2 hour trip south from Brisbane), a particularly appalling traffic jam on returning home highlighted a couple of things to me regarding how I use my phone on journeys like these, and the limitations still presented to us when doing so.

Lets just say I am very pleased for those people who were visiting the town of Byron Bay over the Easter Weekend (our destination was a little further south), however these were not my thoughts when stuck in northbound traffic for close to two hours over a stretch of the Pacific Highway approaching the Byron on-ramp (which we usually cover in 10 minutes), thus making the trip home a leisurely 4 hour drive.

Getting There

So how was my phone involved in all of this? Firstly, the day before I had sent my mother an invitation to share my location in the Find my Friends app on her iPad, allowing her to have a reasonable idea of when we would arrive that morning. All worked well for most of the journey, with the exception of a request by the app for a login which was at the time unknown to my mother. Minor aberration soon fixed upon my arrival. During this trip, I streamed my music collection though iTunes Match for a little over two hours (I have a generous amount of data on my current plan), with the connection dropping out just the once.

Trip rating 9/10

Getting Home

The return journey and technology – not such a great pairing. The almost two-hour traffic jam where we moved only a few kilometres occurred where our 3G signal was fairly poor, leaving us without any connection throughout the entire period we were stuck. A disaster? No, however it did get me thinking about how I tend to use my devices when traveling, and the possible ramifications of this.

Starting with the Find my Friends app. It was all well and good to download this for my mum on her iPad and set things up to enable her to track our journey when we visit. When we lose connectivity? A couple of concerned parents who wonder why the location is showing a position 2 hours into a journey we should have passed in the first half hour. A breakdown? Accident? They were not to know.

Relating to the above, we were also out of range when trying to send messages. For iMessage? Forget about it, and it was difficult even getting standard SMS through. My mother’s attempts to send iMessages (as she often uses her iPad for messaging not her phone) both to myself and my wife were obviously not received either. So, again, from their end – breakdown or accident? This was ultimately resolved by eventually getting an SMS through to my mother’s mobile phone.

Of lesser importance in the connectivity side of things, we were also unable to check maps (Apple, Google or otherwise) to see if any of the side roads afforded an alternate route; check the web traffic updates to confirm if what we expected to be the source of the problem was actually the problem (and hence should be resolved once we passed that particular point); and obviously no music streaming was possible to pass the time (heaven forbid should we all actually talk – kidding, we did plenty of this).

The alternatives? Listen to CD’s (remember those?), albeit the 6 CD’s loaded into the 6-stack in-car stereo afforded a little less choice than the 6000 or so songs in my iTunes match library, however got the job done; the kids watched videos on laptops or listened to music actually on their phones; I could have listened to the podcasts I had downloaded, however didn’t necessarily see the need to subject the rest of the vehicle’s occupants with my own niche interests. As far as knowing what was going on and alternate routes? We did exactly as we used to do 10 years ago, and just waited it out along with the other few thousand motorists doing exactly the same

Return journey rating 6/10 (well we made it didn’t we – there has to be some score for that right?)

Lessons Learned

In summary, although we arrived home safe and sound, the above occurrence did highlight a few shortcomings of this “all connected” world we live in (I do acknowledge those who live in areas who experience these problems every single day). Much of what occurred above I admit were classic “first world problems” and did not really significantly concern me at the time, however when they affect others in your family, you do begin to consider how worthwhile these bits of technology are without 100% reliable coverage to ensure they work all of the time.

In future? Perhaps the case for a fully loaded dedicated car iPod; actually using the phone to call (go figure) my family rather than hopelessly trying to reach the iMessage server or get an SMS through; and resurrecting such classics as I-spy and car cricket.

By the way, had a great day with my great family. Hope your easter weekend was just as good (and fully connected).

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie – Tech, Tech, Tech!

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment
Aussie Thong

Anybody seen the other one?

Amongst the subscriptions to various industry and management/leadership newsletters that arrive in my inbox at work, one in particular caught my attention recently. A weekly newsletter from Verne Harnish, author of The Rockefeller Habits (adding value and growth to your company), contained a snippet with the following:

Atlassian Valued at US$3.5 Billion – congratulations to co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brooks – now billionaires on paper after launching the firm in 2002!!

A further link to this Wall Street Journal article then explains how Atlassian, an Australian firm which develops online collaboration tools for business, is now one of the worlds most valuable venture-backed companies. The focus of the article cites how the company, now with over 800 employees, has seen an average sales increase of over 40% annually for the past 5 years, has done so without employing a single salesperson. How? An exceptional product I expect.

You will also find more on this in the The Australian Financial Review.

Yes, dept4 is far from a business news site, though articles like this get me thinking about the talent Australia has in the tech world, on both large and smaller scales. Need a great Australian made and therefore very accurate weather app (available both on iOS and Android)? Look no further than the Shifty Jelly developed Pocket Weather Australia. Not surprisingly, the developers also make one of the most highly rated podcast apps on the App Store (again for iOS and Android) in Pocket Casts 4. You can listen to developer Russell Ivanovic discuss the challenges and successes of Shifty Jelly on this episode of the Podcast CMD+Space with Myke Hurley.

Although I am not a gamer in any sense of the word, most of you would know the games Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, which were developed (amongst many other great games) just across town here in Brisbane by Halfbrick Studios.

Although I have highlighted only a small few here, there is no doubt about the quality of tech talent in Australia, nor the coverage on great sites like Reckoner (both web and podcast). Whilst it is a small few who will make their millions (or be valued in billions), there are countless others out there toiling away and demonstrating the immense talent in this sector of the country, all of whom are worthy of our acknowledgement, appreciation and encouragement.

My kids tinkering with the HTML on their Tumblr accounts? You never know.

Go little Aussies.

App Updates for Byword and Command-C

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

Recent updates added some nice features to two of my favourite apps, Byword and Command-C.

Byword

I have written previously about the use of Byword in my writing workflow, unsurprisingly around the time of a previous major update from developer Metaclassy. Although the current update is a minor one, a great feature has been added in the form of support for external keyboard shortcuts, shown in following screenshot from the app update screen.

Update Screen

Although the additional keyboard row from the onscreen keyboard remains visible when an external keyboard is connected (as you can see below), users who prefer, and are familiar with the keyboard shortcuts from the Mac app will welcome the increased functionality on iOS.

Byword Screenshot

Although I have recently been using Editorial for much of my iPad writing needs, Byword remains a great alternative (and extensively used one on my phone and Mac) with an elegant interface, additional keyboard features, and Markdown support. Robust syncing for the iPad, iPhone and Mac versions is through iCloud or Dropbox.

The addition of external keyboard shortcuts is a welcome addition for the iOS versions, which I’m sure will be well utilised by those doing a lot of writing in Byword. If you are a keen external keyboard user, check out the dedicated page of iOS keyboard shortcuts (including Byword) and the apps that support them at Macstories.

Command-C

Another app that has increasingly been of more use in my workflow over the past couple of months is Command-C, a Mac and iOS clipboard sharing utility. As probably the simplest and quickest way to share URL’s, text and images between my iOS devices and Mac, it is extremely useful in putting together relevant information for blog posts.

Once installed and set up on your devices, when copying and sharing contents of the clipboard, the receiving device gets a push notification which can be actioned directly from the Notification Center.

Command C Options

The latest update includes performance improvements, as well as a clipboard history feature for the iOS app, and is a nice improvement on the original version which I have always found to work extremely well.

Clipboard Hx

Read more on the update in this article at Macstories or of course directly from the developer Danilo Torrisi.

If you haven’t tried them out already, both these apps are well worth a look in the respective App stores.

Publish – a new feature for Day One

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

Day One imageFor a journaling app (or any app for the matter), Day One already had an unsurpassed feature set. Now it is even better. Developer Bloom has now added an additional feature called Publish, which provides a way to share individual diary entries with a select few, or the whole world.

I have written previously about one way I have used Day One, however the use case possibilities are endless. Along with a very clean, distraction free writing environment, Day One will also automatically add temperature, weather, location information, time and date, activity data (iPhone 5s) and even what music you have playing. A key feature for me has been the ability to tag entries, allowing use of the app for specific holidays, events, or themes running through the various unique individual entries.

Now, with Publish, users are able to do just that – publish individual entries to the Day One webpage, where those who have the unique URL, can view the shared entry. Social media accounts can be linked should you wish to share beyond a simple few, with data such as views, likes and total shares available to you in relation to each published entry. Or if you prefer to share entriesmore privately, the usual iOS share sheet options of messaging, mail, or copying the unique URL can be used.

Although most will likely use this feature as a means to share entries to social media, I cannot help but think this type of service would also be useful in sharing (read – sending) things such as health data with medical practitioners (e.g. home blood pressure monitoring, blood sugar levels, food intake); tracking and sending exercise data to your personal trainer (particularly for iPhone 5s users to track overall activity also); recording moods and feelings shared with a psychologist; or even time tracking / job details completed and sent to an employer. There really are endless possibilities with this type of service, however understandably many may be nervous about sharing such information in this way from a security point of view[1]. In any event, there are certainly emerging possibilities here.

Personally, I plan on using this on my next holiday, to share some of the craziness we get up to with other family members. For example a three day trip last year generated 43 Day One entries, most with photos. Given our family sharing occurs privately on Path, rather than posting entries to two services (or even a third in Twitter), a copied and shared URL via Publish is looking increasingly attractive as a simple, elegant means of sharing these experiences at whatever level I choose.

Day One is available through the respective App Stores for Mac and iOS, with the sharing feature currently available only on iPhone, though iPad support is coming soon.

Other reviews of Publish can be found on The Sweet Setup and Macstories, and was discussed recently on Episode 39 of The Prompt podcast.

  1. Comment from the developer around security can be found in The Sweet Setup post linked above.  ↩