Stuff I'm taking off my iPhone

Well, long-winded Jott post aside, here's what else I'm taking off of my iPhone, and why....

iWant - It was my survivor of the "service location app" wars. I tried several of them, and this looked like it wasn't necessarily the best, but it did more things well than the other options - ATMs, pharmacies, bars and restaurants, movies, gas, etc. I think one of the reviews pointed out that everything it did could pretty much be done with Google Maps. Looking back at it, yeah - it does work pretty well, good interface - but again - I've used it maybe once, and that was right after I got it, I think. I have used the Google Maps search function to find more things, plus I have Urbanspoon to look up bars and restaurants and Now Playing for movies, and I've never really had a problem finding gas. But it's taking up space, so I'm going to get rid of it....

YouNote - I was searching around for a better notepad app, and this won amongst several other choices. I like the fact that it has several different types of notes (text, drawing, camera, voice, web, and multinote), that I can tag and color code and sort on three matrices. But it is less than ideal in that a) I can't rotate the screen, b) there's no formatting, c) I can synch my notes to my PC using a desktop app - but it doesn't really use the Cloud. I think I'll stick with Evernote, which is Cloud-based, even if I can't format the notes in the iPhone app (but I can in the desktop application and web interface, and it shows up fine in the iPhone app) or rotate the screen. Plus - Evernote also allows for a variety of notes (not a drawing note, alas - but voice and camera notes), and eliminates redundancy.

PanoLab - Neat functionality - stitching photos together into panoramas. But the fact is, I can do this with PhotoShop elements - and I can do it better. I will likely not be doing any major photo manipulation on the iPhone and wait until I can load the photos onto the main computer.

Photogene - Similar thing. Decent functionality, but photo manipulation is better done on the desktop.

Sketches and/or NetSketch - Both of these are drawing programs. I'm thinking I should keep one of these - I don't have this functionality. But I'm not sure which one. I believe Sketches has better functionality, but NetSketch does allow you to share with other NetSketch people and collaborate on drawings via WiFi. I doubt I'm going to use this feature, and I'll likely stay with Sketches. But I might remove both - I haven't actually needed to use either.

There are others that I haven't used much - Units, Truveo, Shazam, Stanza, USA Manual, Baseball, Geocaching, QwasiPad (which seems to have stopped working), Easy Wi-Fi (which has never worked, but I think there's something wrong with my AT&T account and my phone). Plus there are a slew of games that have lost their luster but I just don't want to get rid of, namely Koi and Ocarina. But given that I'm about to kill Jott, at least 5 of the above apps, and I'm replacing my on screen web bookmarks with iDash Pad (a total of 5 bookmarks) - that's a total of 11 slots, about 2/3 of a page.

Good thing, because I've got several new apps I want to try....

Phoning It In

So, here's the quandary I'm in right now.

I have too many iPhone apps. I have almost five full pages of apps, and by God, that's too many. I need to start cutting them down. It's not that I mind five pages of apps, but I put some thought into creating logical categories of apps - 1 or 2 per page - and now that's thrown to hell. So I have to start trimming.

I'm a pack rat - and I think the reason I'm a pack rat is I always think - well, what if I need that later on. It's the same with my apps. There are several that I haven't used in awhile, and quite a few of those that I keep thinking - well, what if I need that later on? Better keep it.

It has to stop.

Now, one of the reasons I think I might "need it later on" is, quite frankly, I paid for the bleeping thing, and even if it was only $1.99 I hate to waste money on it. After all, I can't get my money's worth if it's not even on my device, can I? It's a bad attitude, I think, and just leads to me not being able to find stuff and my productivity - the thing the iPhone and the Cloud are supposed to enhance - takes a hit.

Another possibility is that it has some decent functionality that seems neat. But if I'm not using it - I'm not getting the benefit of that functionality. It also leads to a situation where I have some ill-thought-out redundancy. For example, I have two apps that do drawing. Each one has a decent feature or two that the other one doesn't have. I've kept both because - I never know when I'm going to need that feature! But I don't need two programs for it. In truth, I might not even need one - since I haven't used either enough to be happy with it....

You might notice that this entry is tagged "Cloud" - and that might seem to be a bit of a stretch when ostensibly this article is about iPhone apps. But my dedication to the Cloud concept is such that I think it should also be a feature in my iPhone apps. Does this app represent not just synching, but does it include a healthy Cloud consideration? All things being equal, I should keep an app that addresses the Cloud in some way, and get rid of the non-connected or just synch-to-a-desktop-program apps.

So enough of a preamble. On to today's thingamabob: Jott.

First, I love Jott the service. I first was turned on to Jott by Nozbe (more on that in another post) and then a David Pogue article hit pretty quickly after it. As Pogue says, Jott is your personal dictation service. It's pretty cool. You call up Jott, it asks you, "Who do you want to Jott?", you make a sort of coded reply, it confirms your choice, and then you dictate your message. The Jott service takes that message and does a pretty good job of translating it into text, and then - and here's the real killer feature - it does something with it.

That something is largely up to the way you have it configured, and in part based upon whether or not you want to pay. Jott connects to a variety of services through what it terms "Links," and some of the things it can connect to are blogs (Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, Live Journal), social networking services (Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr), about a million To Do applications (my personal fave Nozbe, but also Remember the Milk, Toodledo, Mentat, 30 Boxes, 43 Actions), plus a few others - like Google Calendar and Trapster. You can also create a list of contacts and dictate text messages or emails to them. And you can group those contacts and send out dictated text messages to the whole group. Jott essentially adds an easy voice entry system to all these things - blogs, calendars, to do lists, text messaging, and email.

Jott also claims to be a literal feed reader. On the go, but want to sort through your Engadget articles? Huffington Post? New York Times? Yahoo! Weather? ESPN? Jott can hook you up. It works, but throws you into a different area. (When asked "Who do you want to Jott?" you have to respond "Jott Feeds," and after confirming, you're asked what feed you want, with a typical phone-based menu - "Say or press 1 for the New York Times....") The machine voice is also a little tough to understand sometimes, due to a combination of flat tone and even pace. A neat idea, but one that is far from its core functionality.

The bad news, however, is that Jott isn't content with serving merely as a conduit to all these other things; it also fancies itself as a listmaker/todo app in its own right. You can leave notes for yourself, and organize Jotts into myriad lists. And you can check them off. Jott can send you a reminder on these items, as well.

The cool thing is that these items are all housed in the Cloud, on Jott servers, and there are several ways to interact with them. First, you can create Jotts through your cell phone(s). While your account is linked to one phone, you can set it up to recognize multiple phones (I have both my Verizon and iPhone pointing to it). Real manipulation of Jotts can be done via the website, a small desktop dashboard, or a newly re-engineered iPhone app.

Neat ideas, but Jott really suffers in the execution of all this functionality. It's a pretty simple and straightforward - almost elegant - list maker. You make a Jott, either by phoning it in, typing at a full browser, or tapping away on the iPhone. You can say it's a priority. You can move it to other lists. You can check it off and delete it..... and that's about it. Jotts are really wedded to their lists, so much so that you can move a Jott from Notes (which seems to be the generic catch-all area) into a list, but you can't move it out of the list and into Notes. You can see "All lists" and in the website version you can look at all the Jotts underneath each list. But you can't see all Jotts irrespective of the list that they're in.

Inside a list, you can sort Jotts by Date, Done, and Priority. You can move completed items to the trash (where they stay around forever until you empty the trash). Even in the website's All Lists view, you can't sort across lists. You also can't reorder Jotts within the list other than the specified Sorts - and I found that crippling. Have three priority Jotts and 10 non-priority Jotts, but one of those priority items really needs to be done first, and half of the non-priority Jotts aren't really important at all? Tough. Date, Done, or Priority.

Now, this simplicity might all be fine with you - and I found the approach appealing. So much so that I decided to try it in a full test run. I had Nozbe - a GTD to do list application - for all my personal things; but I had just moved into a new position and was getting a slew of tasks associated with work projects. I didn't want to crowd Nozbe with both my personal things and my work things; I initially started to and found that my next action list was getting HUGE. So I figured, let's try Jott. The functionality seemed like it would work, a different list for every project. And I could press the phone input into double duty - for personal things use a Nozbe link, and for work things either direct it to the Notes box or into one of the native Jott lists. If I was at work, I could easily type in a text Jott. In a meeting? I could use the iPhone app.

Entry was easy, and it worked really well. The problem for me came in trying to organize the Jotts. The thing I really like about the GTD approach - especially as executed through Nozbe - is that I can create tasks and put them into projects/categories. I can thus organize and deal with them that way and I can also pull the tasks I need to do now into "next actions" and view those all at once. You can't do this in Jott.

But this was a small quibble, I figured. Jott doesn't bill itself as a GTD tool, and this approach is really one of the hallmarks of GTD. Where I really became frustrated was in trying to sort the Jotts. What I swiftly came to realize was that I was adding Jotts true to their namesakes - I just wanted to jot things down, without worrying about what order they were supposed to go in. Frequently, I'll jot something down and realize - "Ooh. But before I do that, I have to do this." No such luck in Jott: Date, Done, or Priority. Going by Date, that is going to show up before this. I can prioritize this, but what if this and that have to do be done (prioritized) before some other thing? Again, both being prioritized, that shows up before this.....

Now, I also had some quibbles with the first version of the Jott iPhone software. It's layout really caused problems, because unlike the website, I couldn't see all my lists, even. I could display the three most important lists as icons at the bottom of the screen (and keep an icon for Recording), but as I came up with more work projects, I was coming up with more lists, and they (and Notes) were buried in the "More" icon. It just got really difficult to manage. To boot, using the dictation never seemed to work right. I would make a dictation, Jott would tell me to come back in a few minutes, and I would come back days later and it wouldn't be updated. That seems to be corrected in this latest version, which is a lot slicker and has a much better layout. But, still, the basic problem remains - I can't sort anything. As a to do list application, it still has problems - not as full featured as something like Nozbe, and in point of truth, it lacks some of the functionality of Zenbe lists (also Cloud-based, also very simple - a check box and the item - but with the added ability to actually move and hand-sort the items).

So, I'm going to remove the Jott app from my iPhone - but I'm going to keep my (pay) service because of the killer ability to use my phones to jot items, on the fly, into Facebook, Nozbe, GCal, and yes - with this little hack (also referenced here) - my Jotts end up in Evernote, as well. And that means, I can bypass Jott's software service even for those random notes that aren't status updates, appointments, or to do items. And that alone is worth it.

Google Syncing ... with better Contacts

Just noticed this recently.  Well, noticed it before I knew about it.

Last week, Google opened up synchronization of calendar and contacts with a bunch of devices, including the iPhone.  Pretty damned sweet.  

I had been using Nuevasync to do just about the same thing (basically set up your Google account through an Exchange server so your iPhone could sync with it).  It worked pretty well, but I did have some qualms with giving these guys access to my Google account, but, you know ... gift horse.  This just did the calendar synchronization, and it worked pretty well.  I was overjoyed at a clean way to get my calendar entries from GCal onto the iPhone, and even elevated the native iPhone Calendar app to my front page. 

I had also purchased Sync in a Blink to synchronize my contacts between GMail and the iPhone.  Sorta worked.  It was a bit of a laborious process to get things to match, and I ended up with a ton of duplicates that I was trying to slog through.  And the merging function was pretty laborious.  But it worked - got my GMail contacts and iPhone contacts all living in one, happy, dysfunctional family.  

And then they went and made a French version of it and fried the English version, so I was waiting.

But then Google came along and solved both problems in one great leap.  I made the changes right away, and then repeated it for my wife's iPhone.  Huzzah!

The process is pretty simple.  You basically:

1. Set up an Exchange account on the iPhone in the Mail, Contacts, Calendar, area of Settings
2. for the server use m.google.com

And basically you're set.

The step I initially missed and created some frustration was this:

Access m.google.com/sync from your mobile device.  This will allow you to choose up to five calendars to sync between your device and GCal.

The one bummer is that you can't seem to control the colors your calendar appears in on the iPhone.  The first calendar - your personal calendar - appears to always be red.  A bit of a bummer when my personal GCal calendar color is blue, and my wife's calendar is a hot pink; those colors sorta get transposed.  Spent about 15 minutes playing around with ordering things a bit, and at best it seemed like a slippery eel trying to get the calendars ordered.

So, I started mucking around with my contacts.  Now, GMail's contacts have been much maligned.  They were originally designed as sort of an afterthought, and sucked in every contact you had any email contact with.  After awhile, they added a couple of standard contact fields, and allowed you to add custom fields. 

But it appears that along with sync, they've updated their Contacts functionality.  Now, some of this might be because - with the Contacts functionality so poor at the outset - I largely stopped paying attention to what they were doing.  Some of this might have been in place for awhile.  (Though I must say, I checked in only a few months ago when I was looking at how to get friends' Shared feeds into Google Reader - which included some reference to a Preferred Group or something which I never figured out; at the time, Contacts did not look this different.)

The long and the short, from what I can tell is:

1. They've allowed for better grouping of Contacts. Much easier.  I was dragging and dropping people around, assigning them to multiple Groups.  Though they really should stick with one metaphor and keep it as labeling your contacts.  They now have essentially the same functionality in GMail, Contacts, and GDocs - and arguably in GCal - and they call it something different in each one.  Labeling, Groups, Folders, and Calendars.  But along with this better Groupness, they now have a Group called My Contacts.  You can move contacts in and out of My Contacts.  It's this group that gets synced with your devices.  All the other flotsam is still there, under All Contacts, but nicely separated out. 
2. Merge.  Merge is very nice - much nicer than Sync in a Blink - though that's largely because you have the whole screen to look at and it's mostly a manual process.  You click the checkboxes on multiple Contacts, click Merge these x contacts...  and it does a pretty good job of merging all the details together, you just have to click OK.  

As some people have pointed out, this increased functionality now means that Google has pretty much the same functionality as MobileMe.  I don't know; I don't have MobileMe, but this is a pretty big step in terms of Google functionality through the Cloud.  Now, if only they'd allow me to edit my docs on the iPhone....

Eeeeew. Janky.

More news on the GMail new labels functionality front.

First, here's the page where they give more info.

But I just tried something that really didn't work.  I got an email that I wanted to reply to.  So I hit the reply button and typed my reply.  I had just installed the Send & Archive button from Google Labs, so I figured I would use that.  But first I needed to label the thread.  

Conveniently, GMail repeats the button bar at the bottom of the email as well as the top.  So, rather than scroll up to the top to apply the label, then down to the bottom again to hit Send & Archive, I figured - cool, I can just use the Label button here at the bottom before I hit Send & Archive - no scrolling!

I hit the Label button and the "menu" popped up; or rather, like the original drop down box - because it ran out of room at the bottom - it "dropped up."  No problem.  But rather than scroll through the list of labels, I started to use auto-complete, and type my label in the box.  

And that's when all hell broke loose.  The "menu" dropped to below the button, briefly showed what I had typed, filtered the labels to correspond - and then disappeared.  The screen had shifted up - so half of my reply window was buried at the bottom.  And I lost my I-bar cursor.  All in like .5 seconds.

I figured it was because the list had run out of room at the bottom when it tried to filter, so I scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the screen hoping to purchase a little more real estate, and tried it again.  Same thing.

So I hit 'l' to try to bring up the menu manually, only to find that, in fact, the "menu" was still there - the 'l' was the next character entered in the auto-complete box.   But it was way at the bottom of the screen, and the box was the only thing you could see - you couldn't see the filtered list of labels.  Sometimes, I would get the very first label in the list - but I knew there were others that should be there.  So I would grab the browser's slider to slide down and ...  the "menu" disappeared.

I tried a variety of ways, and found out that I could use the arrow keys to push the page down and see more of the list, but if I scrolled past the last, "create new" entry on the list - the screen sorta bounced....  I also found that if you clicked on some blank area and then hit 'l' to bring up the Label "menu," it took you to the top to draw the "menu" under the top button.

I gave up and scrolled to the top, selected my label, scrolled back down, and hit Send & Archive.

What I would have liked, and expected, was that - like the original drop down, which dropped "up" when it didn't have enough room to drop down - the "menu" would have stayed put when I started auto-complete, rather than trying to redraw itself under the labels button (or whatever it was doing) and totally reorienting the screen.  It basically scuttles what would have been some convenient functionality between the Label button (which appears at top and bottom of a thread) and the Send & Archive button (which only appears at the bottom of a compose/reply box), and instead creates a perplexed frustration. 

Some more thoughts on the labels "menu."  

1. I complained that, after hitting the Label button, if I wanted to use auto-complete, I had to remove my hands from the mouse, and start typing.  I would get a winnowed down list - which was cool.  Unless it brought up a unique label, I initially thought I then had to lift my hand off the keyboard to go back to the mouse and point and click in order to apply the correct label.  A nit - but it took away from the "smooth" feel of the previous More Actions drop down.  
   
   I soon discovered that - after using auto-complete to winnow down the list - I could use arrow keys to navigate to the one label I wanted, hit Enter, and apply the label.  So far so good.  
   
   But what if I wanted to apply multiple labels - which the new functionality makes provisions for with the check box?  The example I used was - I have multiple Friends labels: Friends/Bob, Friends/Charise, Friends/Dennis.  What if my email involved both Bob and Dennis, and I wanted to apply both labels?  Then I would have to do the awkward mouse-point-click-keyboard-type-type-mouse-point-click-point-click dance for a fairly simple thing.  I mean, using the keyboard is supposed to be faster - but I can't use the keyboard to its fullest.
   
   The reason?  I cannot use the arrow keys to select multiple labels.  Remember, you have to hit Enter, and Enter applies the label but closes the "menu."  In order to select multiple labels, I need to mouse click on their checkboxes.  It would be nice if, say, I could navigate to the label with the arrow keys and hit the space bar, which checks the box.  But I can't do that, because the I-cursor remains in the auto-complete box.  So if I hit space, not only does it not check the box, it inserts a space in my auto-complete "search."  And I don't have labels that start "fr " - so my list of choices gets winnowed down to nothing.  Not good.
   
   
2. There is something that is really cool about this functionality if you want to remove a label using the Labels button.  In most situations, it's likely more efficient just to click on the little 'x' to the right of the label, but if you're in the Labels "menu" and want to remove a label... the email's applied labels all appear at the top of the list, nicely checked.  In one operation, you can uncheck the label(s) that you want to remove, and then go and find the label(s) you want to add, and then hit Apply. 
   
   This is much better than the previous functionality, where you had to scroll all the way down to the bottom of More Actions to get to the Remove labels section.  And if you were removing multiple labels, you had to do it again, and again..... 
   
   I can see this being very useful when I erroneously label and archive something.  Previously, if I pulled up everything with that (bad) label, and removed the label first, well, it would sorta disappear into the ether.  I used to have to first label it with the correct label, hit the More Actions button again, scroll all the way to the bottom, and Remove the label.  Now, it's just a simple operation of checking and unchecking, in no particular order, and committing the changes when I hit the Apply link at the bottom of the "menu."

So final thoughts?  I am really growing to like this Label functionality.  (I doubt I will use the Move to button, and would really like a way to get rid of it.  Additionally, I think this functionality could be much better accomplished with a drag and drop, as it appears in most every other email program AND in Google Documents.)  There are some really nice things which, in general, are far superior to the way the old More Actions drop down worked.  I am quickly becoming enamored of the whole checkbox approach.  But the thing still needs work to really tighten up the functionality and make it consistently good.  It just doesn't feel like everything has been completely worked and thought out, and instead its potential is marred.  This wouldn't be a problem if it were, say, a Labs feature - I sort of expect that.  But the fact that this was treated as core functionality....  Well, I'm a little disgruntled ... and worried.   

Google just did something funny

Google just did something funny with GMail. I now have, on an open email, buttons for "Move to" and "Labels." "More actions" no longer contains labels.

I don't remember it this way, and my wife's email doesn't display the changes. Is it a browser thing - I run my stuff in Firefox, and she runs her's in Chrome.

"Move to" appears to apply the label and then archive it. "Labels" appears to ... label ... the email. Kinda dumb.... There's a search box at the top of each button to search through the list of labels, and a Manage labels link at the bottom....

Similar changes to the Inbox....

That's all the changes I can see right now....

Happens in IE 6 as well. And now in Chrome as well. (Signed out of wife's account and into mine.) And now that I've signed into my wife's account - it's there as well.

And here we go....

"But it's not always obvious how to use labels, especially for people
who are new to Gmail and used to using folders, and it hasn't helped
that some common tasks have been more complicated than they should be.
For instance, to move an email out of your inbox and into a label you
first had to apply the label using the "More actions" menu and then
click "Archive."

It looks like it's also supposed to have auto-complete. Okay, there we go. The little "search" box is the auto-complete feature; start typing and it winnows down the list to all labels starting with those letters. Sorta helpful, because I have like 10 million labels.....

And they've added some keyboard shortcuts: press 'v' to bring up the "Move to" button, and 'L' to bring up the "Labels" button.

Huh. Odd they should cater to "people who are new to Gmail" - and allow them circumvent the second best feature of GMail and return to the crappy old "folder-style" way of doing things.

Enjoy!

-----------------------------------

Update : 2/4/09

It also looks like they got rid of the Search the Internet button, which I kinda miss.  

And this is proving to be a bit of a learning curve, as well.  I can't find the Delete button half the time, and I keep hitting More Actions to choose labels.  

To boot, the new functionality of the Labels button feels weird.  I had to pull up the old version because I can't remember now, but it felt smoother previously.  I think it was because of two things.  In the old version, if I clicked on the More Actions drop down I could simply run the mouse up and down the list.  This was great if the label I wanted was in the first 25 or so labels.  (Remember, I have like 10 million).  If it wasn't, the slider on the list was right under the drop down arrow.  So it was really easy to drop down half an inch and grab the slider and go to the bottom bunch.  So really it only took like two clicks to apply most labels, maybe three clicks (or more appropriately, click, click-hold-slide, click) for the rest.   

The new Labels button behaves like a menu - not a drop down - and shows only the first ten labels, greatly increasing the chance that I have to click-hold-slide.  So just about everything means I need to take three clicks.  Additionally, that slider is over to the right about an inch, and a lot smaller - so now I have to pay attention to grab it.  

The auto-complete is a bit heavy, too.  To use it, I need to click the button, let go of the mouse and move my hands to the keyboard, and start typing.  If I can type a couple of characters and get to the unique label, I just hit enter - and I apply the label.   But if I get to something that has a bunch of similar labels - for example, I have several labels that I lump together as Friends, Friends-Bob, Friends-Charise, Friends-Dennis.... - I then need to take my hands from the keyboard, move back over to the mouse, and point and click.  I guess I can actually just use the up and down keys, but for some reason I feel like I have to click the label - maybe because of the checkbox doodad they have there now.....

I think it might take some getting used to, and then I'll think it's pretty nice.  I just discovered something pretty cool, for instance.  If I'm in auto-complete, I can start typing a new label name, and I get the option to create a new label of what I just typed at the bottom of the menu.  The addition of the Manage labels link right there is welcome.

But they need to clean it up.  There still seems to be some inconsistency with the Labels button if I don't have an email selected. 

• If I don't have an email selected, I still get what appears to be the full functionality of the Labels button.  I can start blithely typing away in auto-complete, get several good key strokes in, select the label - and get an error message.  
• I get the Manage Labels link - which is good, but I don't get a Create Label link.  That would be handy; I have gone into the old More Actions drop down specifically to get to the New label link to create a new label.  These two would thus be the only reason to open this button if there was nothing selected.  If you do it for one, why not the other?   
• If I choose a label checkbox, I strangely get an Apply at the bottom of the "menu" - but it does nothing....
  

Okay, I see.  If I click on the label name, I choose that label and that label only for the email I have selected.  If I choose the checkbox, I can choose other labels as well.  When I'm done, I click Apply or the name of the last label I want to apply.  Handy.

But a better execution - when nothing is selected - is right next door, where the More Actions button options are greyed out if I don't have anything selected.... 

For the Move to button, Spam and Trash are redundanct - they didn't remove the old Report Spam and Delete buttons.  That's not unwelcome - I like redundancy.  I'd rather they remove the Report Spam button, since the Spam filters are so good, I need to use it like once in three months - and now my button bar is feeling a bit long, particularly if I add the Mark as Read button from Labs.

Like I said, these are largely nits, and I'll likely adjust to the learning curve.  Just seems a little stange.