Isolator is a menu bar utility that hides background windows, the dock and dims the desktop picture with the stroke of a hot key. It’s very useful and free. Requires Mac OS 10.5 or 10.6.

[Via Switched]

The folks at Overcommitted have made the official iPhone app for Highrise. It’s simple and effective, as one would expect any 37signals product to be. I like that the app’s main toolbar matches itself to the color scheme you’re using with the browser-based version. They’ve also made the initial synchronization fun, but I won’t give away how.

Highrise lets you manage communications you’ve had with contacts and customers as well as tasks and appointments. I’ve been a happy customer for years. Look for my review at TUAW this week.

I’ve never gotten much use out of notes on the iPhone because I dislike typing more than a few words on it. I’m slower with it than I am with a full-sized keyboard which is frustrating. Plus, the bundled Notes app syncs with Mail, which makes no sense at all.

Now that I’m using the combination of Notational Velocity, SimpleText and WriteRoom, my iPhone is full of easily-accessed, useful notes that I wrote on my Mac and transferred with no effort. Here’s how it works.

Notational Velocity is designed to create, store and retrieve notes. Its marquee feature is modeless operation. There’s no difference between searching for a note, browsing a note or creating one. It’s extremely fast and efficient.

WriterRoom is a full-screen text editor for the Mac and iPhone/iPod touch. It works well, but I’m really using it just to display notes.

SimpleText brings the two together. It’s a sync service originally created to let Taskpaper and WriteRoom users sync documents. Fortunately, it works with Notational Velocity, too.

Here’s how to set it up.

1. Open Notational Velocity Preferences
2. Open “Notes” preference pane
3. Select SimpleText’s folder for “Read notes from folder”
4. Under storage, select ”Storage and read notes on disk as Plain Text Files”

That’s it. Now every note created in Notational Velocity is instantly synced with WriteRoom and vice versa. It’s simple, it costs all of $4.99 to set up (the price of WriteRoom) and it “just works.”

Hipstamatic User Interface Demo from Synthetic on Vimeo.

I came across Hipstamatic for iPhone today and was immediately smitten. I’ll spend a lot of time with it this weekend and review it on TUAW next week.

In the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast, young Belle is admired by the townsfolk for her ethereal beauty and charm. The Beast is feared for his strength and power. Beauty and brawn are mutually exclusive.

Often times this phenomenon is found in software. Gmail, for example, is a great service that’s not long on looks. The folks at Marketcircle, however, have created a near perfect synthesis in Billings Touch for the iPhone and iPod touch. In the two weeks that I’ve been using it, I’ve upgraded to the paid version, purchased the companion desktop app and abandoned Freshbooks. Here’s why.

Brawn

What are the necessary components of a time-tracking client manager?

• Client management Easily enter client information on the fly, edit existing contact records, delete clients (it happens).
• Time tracking Start/stop timing for given tasks and projects, assign time spent “on the clock” to the appropriate project, move from project to project easily, generate invoices based upon time spent on individual clients/projects, report on time spent/money earned.
• Task management What are the tasks that must be completed to mark a project as done?
• Reporting Time spent, money billed, money received, money overdue, projected earnings.
• Invoicing Getting paid!

Special attention must be paid to mobility. Let’s say you’re working for Client A. Upon finishing Project A, you’re assigned Project B. It’s tremendously wonderful to be able to create that new project on the iPhone right there “in the field,” complete with a breakdown of all tasks with a timer for each.

Billings Touch satisfies all of these requirements beautifully.

Client Management

You’ve got three options when adding a client to Billings Touch: Create a new contact from scratch, import one from the iPhone’s Contacts or collect existing clients into a new group. Each works as you’d expect and contains all of the fields that are a part of the iPhone’s built-in contact manager.

Assigning a project to a client is easy. Just navigate to that client and click the “+” icon. From there, you can assign the project’s name, due date, status and project code. What’s really nice is that Billings Touch provides extra fields that you can customize to suit your needs.

As you assign and complete projects, they’re listed on that client’s page, sorted by completed and open projects, along with a running tally of what’s owed.

The fact that you can create a new client, project, task or timer on the fly while in the field, perhaps no where near your computer, is huge. “Dave, can you run up to the projector room and update the slideshow, transfer it to the Mac mini and make sure it’s set to run automatically at 4:00 PM?” Sure can, and I’ll set up in Billings on the way. No more scribbling in notebooks or (gasp) relying on my memory.

Time tracking

This is beautifully executed. The main UI of Billings Touch is divided into 3 areas: Home, Work and Timer. Clicking Timer produces a list of all timed “sheets” that are currently in play. To get started, click anyone and hit “Start.” You can pause and resume at anytime, and the app needn’t be running to keep timing. Has a phone call or text arrived? No problem.

You can create a new slip just as easily. Hit the “+” icon and select your rate, give the task a name, assign it to the proper client/project and begin. It couldn’t be easier.

Task management

This is really an invoicing app, not a project manager, but it sill does an admirable job of keeping things orderly. Click the “Work” icon to browse all clients, overdue invoices, unbilled slips and a list of recent projects. Click any project (or create a new one) and easily assign it to the proper client, note the start date, assign a project code, etc.

Reporting

As modest as they are, the “reports” that Billings Touch offers are fun: On the home screen, you can toggle between two bar graphs that depict the number of dollars earned over the last seven days and the number of hours worked.

You can absolutely use Billings Touch as a stand-alone app, but the paid version syncs with its desktop companion over Wi-Fi.

Invoicing

Once that magical time comes, the app is ready. Just navigate to the client and all of the completed projects are listed. Simply select “Make invoice” and choose from one of three templates, set the terms and add a note. Then click “Create” and it’s converted into a PDF that’s attached to an email message.

Beauty

Plain and simple, this is an attractive app. The homepage presents a lot of information in a readable, organized fashion and the blue-and-grey color scheme is quite nice. Moving from screen to screen is quite snappy on my 3GS.

The icons are especially impressive. Each would be instantly recognizable even without the accompanying text. The whole thing feels absolutely at home on the iPhone’s screen.

Two complaints

My first complaint is the business of sending invoices as PDFs. Freshbooks handles this online, and I can see when an invoice was opened by a client. Also, Billings Touch doesn’t offer easy online payment options. Instead, you must forward  your Paypal address for example.

But wait, there’s more

There are additional features here that I didn’t mention because I don’t make much use of them, like expense and mileage tracking, modest inventory tracking and something called “blueprints,” which are templates that can be used over and over.

—

While using Billings Touch, I realized how an application’s features and benefits affect its longevity. Specifically, the features attract your attention, while the benefits grab you for good.

Here’s an example. Billings Touch provides super-simple task and project management, client management, invoicing and (modest) reporting. All of this is presented in an attractive, readable UI.

Those are the features.

The benefit is a feeling of confidence that you’re using the right tool for the job. That you needn’t worry about timing this correctly, being on task or getting billing done right. It’s that piece of mind that’s the benefit. I know I can leave this app alone and do my work. That’s worth a lot more than $15 to me.

One of my all-time favorite Mac apps, App Zapper, has been updated to kick more ass then ever. It truly is “the uninstaller that Apple forgot.”

[Via 37Signals]

Note: This is an affiliate post.

Here’s me, 13 months ago:

I have to bill clients. And, uh, keep track of that. Taxes, line items, online payments … yeah, I have no idea what I’m doing. Sell the house, honey. We’re moving the kids into a cardboard box in the park. Yes, corrugated. No seriously, it’ll be awesome.

Here’s me today:

Hon, run down to the printer. It’s time to review what’s outstanding for the month. While we’re at it, lets review this quarter’s expenses and estimates. Have we paid all our contractors?

Freshbooks made it possible. For more than a year, this awesome web app has been my companion. Client management, time tracking, expenses, estimates and more are so ridiculously easy there’s no reason to not use it. The coolest part is when I can begin time tracking with MiniBooks for the iPhone. Just set up a timer, click to start and begin working. When you’re done it’s synchronized with your Freshbooks account.

If your clients prefer paper invoices (dinosaurs still roam the earth), Freshbooks handles that, too. In fact, they send you a demo paper invoice when you sign up, just so you can check it out. How cool is that? Lastly, I’ll say that the support guys they’ve got on Twitter are top-notch (I’m not the only one who thinks so). I’ve had questions answered in manner of minutes.

As I’ve said in my sponsorship page, I only promote products that are worth your time and attention. Freshbooks is on the top of that list. Thanks for being awesome guys, and for keeping my kids out of a cardboard box.