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.
Open Notational Velocity Preferences
Open “Notes” preference pane
Select SimpleText’s folder for “Read notes from folder”
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.”
I used Tags 1.x and liked it. It’s not really an “everything bucket,” but a powerful tool when combined with search. Version 2.0 is a free upgrade for registered users or US$29 for a license.
I ordered these the instant I received the notification email. I enjoyed the autumn colors, but simply can’t wait for these to arrive. They look beautiful.
Today I received my first message from Twimailer and promptly fell in love. It replaces the dull, generic and largely useless notification emails from Twitter with informative alternatives. Now, when I acquire a new follower, I see her avatar, bio, name and location. Plus, her following/followers ratio, 10 most recent tweets and a big old “Follow Back” button. No need to launch a browser to decide if I want to reciprocate.
Sign up for Twimailer and use it. It’s a real improvement.
Here’s a very simple trick that’s been serving me well this week. I made a “Postable” smart folder in The Hit List as pictured above. Now, whenever I get an idea, email or inspirational link that could become a post, I add it to The Hit List with the Quick Key Entry shortcut, tag it with “/postable” and it’s ready and waiting the next time I lauch WordPress.
Web-based checklist generator Printable Checklist is as simple as can be. In my experience, the best productivity applications mimic the simplicity of paper. Printable Checklist is as close as it gets.
Shawn Blanc applies his exhausitve reivew technique to Things for the Mac and the iPhone. I’m almost ashamed to say that I still haven’t decided between Things and The Hit List. Perhaps Shawn will convince me.
I fill it out at the top of each day. It helps me estimate how much time I might spend on a given project vs. how much time it actually takes, prioritize, monitor the “incidentals” that arrive in my inbox and keep things from getting out of hand.
It’s great to see the 3, 4 or 5 major tasks I intend to accomplish in black and white instead of floating in my head with all the incoming distractions.
Thanks, Dave! Your forms are wicked cool, as we say in New England.
