Applications

Celtx: Powerful Free App for Script Writing, Pre-Production, and Collaboration

Merlin — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:27:10 -0500

celtx - Integrated Media Pre-Production

QPR - CryingStore - "Cold Tulips" by merlinmann (Celtx - Project Central)

I've recently returned to using the Open Source (MPL-based CePL license) Celtx app for all the script-ish stuff I write. But it does a lot more than just collect and format drafts (which, unlike a text file or MS Word, Celtx does in a way that lets you focus solely on writing, rather than fiddly formatting). It's also an amazingly flexible and robust app for managing all the pre-production materials for screenplays, comics, audio plays, or what have you. And, again: it's totally free.

Celtx reminds me favorably of Scrivener, in that it takes into account that there may be much more to a very large writing project than just typing; that your final draft only serves as the jumping-off point for another, more giant thing that you will need to make out of all your words.

To this end, you can choose to let Celtx handle as little or as much of the process as you need — anything from storyboarding and conceptualization through shooting schedules, prop management -- even animal handling! (Memo to self: write more things that require animal handling.)

One neat feature I've just barely started playing with is the app's ability to seamlessly share versioned drafts of your script via Celtx's web-based Project Central. Looks like you can flip a bit to make it public v. private v. members-only. And, I still haven't touched the coolest online feature of all, which allows you to solicit criticism and notes from other users and even collaborate with colleagues, co-writers, and production staff -- kinda like "SVN for Screenplays," I'll dub it, in a way that will probably infuriate everyone who uses either of those.

Anyhow, here's the script for my recent public radio "CryingStore" parody as an example. Powerful app, and very flexible and fun to use. And at $200+ less than the commercial gorilla, FinalDraft, it's most definitely worth the free-as-in-everything download.

Celtx - FREE - Open Source - Application for Script Writing and "Integrated Media Pre-Production"

Celtx Links:

celtx - #1 choice for media pre-production. (Overview/Intro)
celtx - Screen Shots
Celtx Features: The Feature Tour
celtx - FAQ
Main Page - CeltxWiki
celtx - Download Version 1.0 (Dang, man: 4 platforms and up to 23 languages. Nice)

”Celtx: Powerful Free App for Script Writing, Pre-Production, and Collaboration” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 01, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ubiquity: Firefox Gets its Quicksilver On

Merlin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:37:36 -0400

Aza’s Thoughts » Ubiquity In Depth

Take a few minutes this week to look at the Ubiquity plugin for Firefox. So far, I've spent just enough time with it to have my mind blown by the Quicksilver-like interface it wants to bring to web browsing.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

And, like our favorite OS X launcher, Ubiquity also has an ambitious mission: to move beyond onesie-twosie key shortcuts by using user-extensible commands to intuitively hook together bits of information like model train cars:

Ubiquity’s interface goal is to enable the user to instruct the browser (by typing, speaking, using language) what they want to do.

[...]

We aren’t there yet. Instead, we have the rudimentary systems of structured natural language commands. You can select something and Ubiq “translate this to French”, or “email it to Jono”. In both cases, Ubiquity is smart enough to realize what “this” and “it” refers to, as well as knowing who Jono is (by talking with my web-mail’s contact list). It’s also smart enough to be able to understand commands like “map Chicago Comics” and “yelp Tapas near SF” and give you rich previews and search results to get you where you want to be quickly. Even better, both of those commands let you insert results directly into, say, an email you’re writing so that you never have to interrupt your chain of thought.

Install it, try it for yourself, and, as you get started, do make liberal use of the Key Commands page (only available after install). There's also tutorials (that I have not looked at much yet) that show how to make and share new commands.

Every quarter or so I'm sorely tempted to experiment with The Big Move from Safari to Firefox. It's never stuck before, but Ubiquity makes it damned clear that the latest experiment starts right now. This looks amazing.

[Ubiquity link via: Waxy]

”Ubiquity: Firefox Gets its Quicksilver On” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 27, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Delicious.com Relaunches with 1,000-Character Notes Fields

Merlin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:35:06 -0400

Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here

In the years since del.icio.us was acquired by Yahoo! it’s been hard to get why it remained such a red-headed stepchild. Despite an unbelievable lead in both mindshare, functionality, and ease-of-use (yeah, it’s been my preferred bookmarker for years), del.icio.us seemed to sit there while a dozen social bookmarking sites lapped it with fancier designs and (mostly superfluous) new features. Yay, Yahoo.

Today Y! revealed a beautiful new version of the site, redubbed Delicious.com. You’ve probably read way too much about this, but I want to highlight exactly one new feature: big, 1000-character notes fields.

This is huge for me as a blog dude, trying to collect links and tidbits for future posts. I can now write an entire short post just in the notes field, with room left over for attribution. See? Awesome.

Congrats to everybody on the relaunch of one of my all-time favorite sites.

[via Waxy]

”Delicious.com Relaunches with 1,000-Character Notes Fields” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 31, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

iPhone Apps I'd Totally Buy

Merlin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:30:59 -0400

As I wrote yesterday, I'm loving the new iPhone apps on the iTunes store. Also, as we mentioned on MacBreak Weekly yesterday, it seems likely that we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what people will do with that SDK.

But it got me thinking about the stuff I want -- the itches I want to scratch. So, iPhone developer friends. Please make these three apps.

Prime This

Elevator pitch: Scan barcode to instantly order an item via Amazon

Out and about and see something you want to buy? Maybe a book, CD, or DVD that you want, but don't want to buy/carry/pack right now? No problem.

Take a photo of the item's barcode, hit one button, and the item is instantly ordered through Amazon 1-Click using your default credit card and shipping preferences. Done.

Yeah, I know; I know. You want price comparisons, and wish lists, and an API for tagging and "mashups." Well, suck it up; you're not who this is for. This is for hardcore, mainlining Amazon Prime power users. That's why it has exactly one button: "Prime This."

Suggested price: Free (developer will make a killing on affiliate money)

iParked

Elevator pitch: Location-aware parking reminder

Open the app, hit a button, and your location is noted and added to a map. Optionally add an alarm (for the parking meter or street cleaning), notes and photos ("3rd level; Area G"), and other pertinent data ("Closes at 1am; after hours number is....").

When you're ready to go to your car, the app reminds you where you parked (with a walking map), and off you go.

Suggested price: $5

That Reminds Me

Elevator pitch: Lightweight, location-aware alarm app

Tell TRM the really mushy kinds of things that fall somewhere between a todo and a wish and a curiosity.

buy a lottery ticket on my birthday
pick up a crazy notebook next time I'm in Chinatown
grab a takeout menu next time I'm at Andy's

Using functionality similar to OmniFocus's flexible, location-aware contexts, add new items to your list with optional alarms and start/end dates. Then forget about it.

Next time you're geographically near where you need to be, you get a reminder and a map to get you there.

Suggested price: $5

The Question to You

What’s the iPhone app you crave? What would take great advantage of Location Services, the camera, SDK features, or what have you? What itch do you want to have scratched?

”iPhone Apps I'd Totally Buy” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 17, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

3 iPhone Media Apps (that Feel a Little Like Magic)

Merlin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:22:09 -0400

There are so many amazing new apps on the iPhone store that I hope to review here (and I'll certainly spend time on a few more over coming weeks), but today I want to point you to three applications that make me feel like I'm a music fan of the very-near-future -- where personalized data flies through the air, phones play rock music based on your personal preferences, and everybody listens to Silkworm on moving sidewalks and in tricked-out rocket cars.

Remote

Free | Download

Apple's own Remote lets you turn your iPhone into a foxy little remote control for accessing shared iTunes libraries plus your AppleTV box. In seconds, the contents of all shared material pops up in a very sexy, browsable interface that's similar (if not identical) to the built-in iPod functionality. Powerful and fun stuff -- double fun if you're streaming music to multiple Airport Expresses ("Airports Express?") in which case you kind of feel like George Jetson.

Tip: This is a handy way to star-rate stuff as you're wandering around the house. Remember why we star-rate? Yep.

Making it better: This can be a real battery hog if you leave it running the whole time (you do also have the option to not leave it running, which is considerate). But if the connection drops, it takes a few seconds to come back up. Which is bad if your mix suddenly pulls up a very loud Iron Maiden song during the baby's nap, and you can't get to the pause button in time. Or, so I hear.

Screengrabs:

Shazam

Free | Download

Hear a cool song on the radio and don't know who or what it is? Hold Shazam up to the speaker for a few seconds, let it upload your audio snippet to the cloud, and in seconds you'll find out the artist and album, as well as the name of the song. There's other stuff you can do (tag it, buy it, whatever 2.0), but the magic is in the identification, which for me has been well over 80% accurate on the first try.

Tip: For best results, turn the music up a little, hold the iPhone's mouthpiece (down there by where your mouth goes, duh) very close to the sound source, and try to minimize extraneous noises.

Making it better: Shazam fails like bad clams if it can't get a steady connection to their server -- and you don't find this out til after you've recorded the snippet (during which time you could have been writing down a string of the lyrics to Google later). Next version ought to fix this if possible. Very frustrating on an otherwise swell application.

Screengrabs:

Pandora Radio

Free | Download

Wow, have I ever been missing the boat by not using Pandora. The popular streaming service, which utilizes the alchemically wizard-like Music Genome Project, finds songs you might enjoy based on songs and artists you already enjoy. And it's really good at it. Thumb-up the ones you like, thumb-down the ones you don't, and skip past up to 6 songs per hour per "radio station." And, man -- how awesome are the explanations?

Tip: Create a lot of radio stations (so you can skip a lot if you get bored). In adding new stations, focus not just on artists -- try also adding 5-10 of your favorite songs as stations. The MGP seems way smarter about the genomic qualities of a given song, as opposed to bands, who can obviously be kind of all over the map, style-wise.

Making it better: The home screen gets crowded really fast. Add a way to a) organize radio stations into categories while also b) letting me quickly bubble up which stations' 1-hour/6-skip windows have recently reset.

Screengrabs:

Personal: A Word about the Silkworm Documentary

Almost totally unrelated. If it wasn't obvious in the screengrabs, I'm a huge fan of the late, lamented band, Silkworm. (A propos of nothing, I was wearing a SKWM shirt when my daughter was born)

If you are or were a fan, too, and want to help see the documentary about every indie rocker's third favorite band make it to a proper completion and release, please consider making a small donation to help make it happen. I did. Thanks.

Here's the trailer for Couldn't You Wait.

Viva, Dahlquist, friends. The man loved to rock.

”3 iPhone Media Apps (that Feel a Little Like Magic)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 16, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Quicksilver's Back; Nerd Hope Cautiously Restored

Merlin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:22:55 -0400

New Quicksilver builds | Hawk Wings

Since going open source late last year, things have seemed pretty quiet in the world of our favorite app launcher, Quicksilver. Today, our pal, Tim Gaden of Hawk Wings, posts on the availability of a bug fix release of Quicksilver that's come out in the last few weeks. He also points to a thread on the QS Google Group that suggests Quicksilver's auteur and flippered mystery bot, A1c0r, is currently hard at work on a substantial rewrite.

Please note that this is only a bug fix version, the creator of Quicksilver (Alcor) is working on a complete re-write of the frameworks of Quicksilver and should hopefully release it soon ;)

The post by user Patrick also refers to a separate, similarly numbered "Ankur's cleaned-up QS version," which refers to the work Ankur Kothari has been doing primarily to reduce the weight of Quicksilver's code.

These have been white knuckle months for me (and a lot of other Quicksilver nerds), dreading the inevitable OS X update that might break the aging Quicksilver build we've been using. This all seems like encouraging news -- although you have to hope at some point the different folks working on improvements will be able to consolidate their efforts into one big, happy, branch.

As far as the actual update, I installed it this morning without incident, and, notwithstanding the handful of known issues enumerated by Patrick's post, it seems to be running fine so far.

That said, this is a great chance to remind you of the fantastic rooSwitch application -- an indispensable OS X utility that lets you create multiple profiles which save separate versions of app settings and data in situ. Translation: if you accidentally break something important, it's really easy to roll back to a setup that will still work. rooSwitch is also super-useful for application testers and demonstrators who want to protect their "real" data while being able to test new functionality or do a demo with "fake" data. It's become my step 0 whenever I want to play with potentially unstable apps, and I do highly recommend using it with your inevitable Quicksilver experiments.

Screengrabs to give you the rooSwitch flavor:

”Quicksilver's Back; Nerd Hope Cautiously Restored” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 08, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Beeswax: Free Productivity App in the Spirit of Lotus Agenda

Merlin — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:34:22 -0400

Beeswax - Mind Your Own Beeswax

Wow, this looks like a really interesting project to watch — a GNU-licensed, command line productivity app that finds inspiration in a bona fide classic:

Beeswax is an information management system inspired by Lotus Agenda. It aims to recreate Agenda’s flexibility and efficiency in a clutter-free, text-based (ncursesw) user interface with vi key bindings. Beeswax views & reports will have specifications for sections, columns, filtering, and sorting…

The relationships between items of information are highly flexible. An item can be easily assigned to several different categories and the view immediately displays the new relationships. An item can just as easily be detached from categories. As you move items through Beeswax, their relationship to each other remains highly flexible.

You still hear a lot of people saying Agenda is the closest they ever got to their dream productivity app. And, depending on who you ask, Agenda's endless flexibility was either incredibly powerful or infinitely fiddly.

Beeswax is a very young application, but I’ll definitely be giving it a spin. There's certainly a long-standing itch for Agenda that lot of folks would love to have scratched.

The Question to You

Any of the old hardcore Agenda folks tried out Beeswax yet?

[via Anarchaia]

”Beeswax: Free Productivity App in the Spirit of Lotus Agenda” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 28, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

OmniFocus for iPhone: Location-Aware Contexts and More

Merlin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:54:42 -0400

The Omni Group - OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch

[Disclosure: I'm a consultant on the OmniFocus project. You can blame me for having requested any of the features you don't like.]

Oh, man. It's so nice to lift the veil on this one. It's been like I knew you guys were getting the big Lego Millennium Falcon for Christmas, but I couldn't tell you until Santa had gone back up the chimney (in his black mock turtleneck and jeans). Anyway.

Merry Christmas, Mac productivity nerds: iPhone synching for OmniFocus is coming. And it is gorgeous, usable, and location-aware. More here on OmniGroup's blog.

From the OmniGroup site:

Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.

Capture tasks anywhere, anytime with OmniFocus: you can enter text, take a picture, or even make a quick voice recording.

Yum. Screengrabs and more -- including a reminder that you should totally visit me at the WWDC OmniFocus meetup tonight -- after the iJump.

FWIW, I'm going to let OmniFocus answer any questions people have (blog post comments, forum) about details of their apps and plans and what have yous. I just wanted to take the opportunity to fist bump the OmniNerds on their fine hard work. They're pathologically dedicated to taking care of their customers, and you can see that in this app. It's crazy-smart and a lot of fun to use.

So! Yes. Tonight. Come to the OmniFocus meetup at the W and fistbump me:

The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus meetup in S.F. on 6/10/08

What: OmniFocus meetup When: Tuesday, June 10th 2008, 6:30 - 8:00 pm Where: W Hotel (map), San Francisco • 3rd Floor, Workroom 2

Please RSVP. Max capacity for the room is 150, so make sure you arrive on time to snag a good seat.

Also, completely off topic, there's a rumor that there might be a totally informal, last-minute You Look Nice Today meetup in SF tonight featuring @scottsimpson and me (@lonelysandwich is at a Fannypack Convention in Prague). Stay tuned to @ylnt for details as they emerge.

[Again, with the Disclosure: I'm a consultant on the OmniFocus project. You can blame me for having requested any of the features you don't like.]

”OmniFocus for iPhone: Location-Aware Contexts and More” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

James Fallows on GTD apps

Merlin — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:20:11 -0400

Bright side #5: interesting GTD software, including for Mac

The Atlantic writer (and recent Mac convert) James Fallows covers three apps that have caught his attention, including OmniFocus, ThinkingRock, and MonkeyWiki. Fallows says:

The GTD Way mainly involves habits of mind and action, but it also places a lot of emphasis on having the right tools, gizmos, and gimmicks to support those habits. Over the years I've used a variety of software to set up GTD-based systems on my computer.

And, if you're in a real "grab the shovel" mood, don't miss his link to a metric buttload of GTD apps.

As ever, though, friends, just remember: GTD's power is in what it does to your approach and to your thinking; it's not about magic beans and doo-dahs. Never allow yourself to obsess over tools to the exclusion of actually completing tasks. This is about action.

”James Fallows on GTD apps” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 02, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Slate Magazine on the market for "Zenware"

wood.tang — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:21:16 -0500

Sort of an add-on to the New York Times piece Merlin linked the other day about Scrivener and its cohort of new writing applications, Jeffrey MacIntyre at Slate coins a new term for programs that eschew the familiar, bloated twiddliness of Microsoft Office for simplicity:

There's an emerging market for programs that introduce much-needed traffic calming to our massively expanding desktops. The name for this genre of clutter-management software: zenware.

The philosophy behind zenware is to force the desktop back to its Platonic essence. There are several strategies for achieving this, but most rely on suppressing the visual elements you're used to: windows, icons, and toolbars. The applications themselves eschew pull-down menus or hide off-screen while you work. Even if you consider yourself inured to their presence, the theory goes, you'll benefit most from their absence.

MacIntyre's word processor of choice is WriteRoom, but he also includes desktop managers like Spaces, Spirited Away, and various interface tweaks in the zenware category.

I'm a Scrivener fan, and like everyone who's dealt with the auto-formatting, self-correcting madness of Word out of sheer necessity for all these years, the most drastic change I noticed when I started using it was that it let me jump right in and start writing. This may have been my own form of procrastination, but I always had this little ritual with Word every time I started a new document: set the margins, adjust the font, fill the headers and footers, etc. You still have to do this with Scrivener and its ilk, but the trick is that it's done after the fact, when you're finished writing and you're ready to export for printing or emailing. It's an artful dodge; Scrivener didn't remove or try to automate the necessity of formatting, it just shifted its timing to a place more conducive to the writing process. "Zenware" is a little too cutesy; that's just smart.

”Slate Magazine on the market for "Zenware"” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 24, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"