This sparked a quest for a stylus to call my own. I eventually settled on this little beauty in blue (it had the virtue of being the cheapest one I could find, basically–I still wasn’t altogether committed). I then set about researching and acquiring the two apps that my stylus-using lecturemate recommended. They were both reasonably priced, and each had their advantages and downsides.

See, the thing is, I have a special need when it comes to styluses and touch screens: I’m a lefty. Even when I write on paper, a pen with a wetter ink (or less porus paper) will result in my leaving a smudgy mess in my wake, because my hand curls around and rubs against the lines that I have written as I move down the page (I used to write backwards as a child–mirror writing, essentially, starting at the bottom right of the page–because I found this smudginess such an annoying effect–especially since my fingers also get ink on them. But of course I was the only one who could read it, so I ultimately stopped).

PenUltimate

This is a nifty app–no question. It has the beautiful UI that I value so highly, and provides not just the illusion of a print book, but is also  pressure sensitive, so my writing has the potential to look far prettier on it (this is important to me. Part of the pleasure of handwriting for me, is basking in creating the nicest penmanship I can) than on apps that don’t feature this bonus. You can also download other papers for it, including various music sheets, if you’re a songwriter and like to jot things down by hand or are on the go and don’t have decent access to Sibelius (weird coincidence–shortly after I typed this, Valse Triste by the other Sibelius just started playing on my ipod–didn’t even know that it was ON this playlist!).

It’s a very good-looking app, and I suspect it works rather well for most right-handed folk. It even has a setting that causes the app to adjust, based on left or right handedness, and wrist position. Basically, this helped to minimize the stray marks that were caused before I changed the setting, by what the touch screen picked up of my other fingers touching the screen. That was great. BUT, what it really really needs as well is some kind of switch that either flips the interface. All the other buttons are at the top of the screen, you see–and so as I started writing, whenever my hand grazed the top of the touchscreen, it would navigate me to whatever location whose button my hand happened to graze–a frustrating effect that made the app basically unusuable for me (because I had to lift my hand to avoid grazing those nav buttons–and this was both uncomfortable and messed up the aesthetic pleasure I get from writing by hand). (**Note to Penultimate creators, should you stumble upon this post–drop me a note if you’ve made updates, or plan to, and I will update this post accordingly. I really do like this app and would likely use it a lot if not for this problem).

However, for those who do not hold their styluses at such vexingly awkward angles, this app has a lot to recommend it–including easy exporting of one’s writings, and dropbox and evernote integration (neither of which I got to the stage of setting up).

Note Taker HD

This was the other recommendation made by my lecture friend, and my subsequent researches seemed to indicate that it was a reasonable writing app to try out.

The interface is far less intuitive, and also less elegant. It seems to have a lot of features, but it took me a while to figure out where to tap to open documents inside folders, what the little icons meant and general navigation. I have only skimmed the surface of all the stuff this app can do (it seems like there are lots and lots of features, and so it is potentially a very powerful app)–and this is in part because I’m “a dig right in rather than read the manual type”. I don’t have time to go through the help files to figure out all the other nifty things I can do with it–and while the icons do have explanatory text (e.g. “duplicate” “tumbnail” etc.), I don’t really know how that plays out.

In all, the visual experience is less satisfying than with penultimate–it feels like one of those endearingly stolid, but slightly clunky, UIs from my PC days, rather than the pretty mac-designed apps and programs. It’s immensely functional, once you know how to use it, but not geared to wow a user with the aesthetics. Same goes for the way that it processes the input (here’s me with penmanship again)–it makes my writing look shakier and less pleasing (to me) than it tends to be in the analogue world, and since that’s a big part of why I like handwriting–because of the aesthetic of it, just for my own enjoyment of the visual–this is a point against. But I also write for other reasons: to access different parts of my brain, to move out of the linear constraints of typing, to diagram, etc. And for that, this program would seem to work reasonably well–with the advantage of having the infinite reproducibility of digital copies of any notes made. The flow is pretty good, once you get used to the mechanics of the app (there’s a zoom where you write an auto-advance mode, and a spot to tap on the adjacent screen to move to the next line).

The big plus, however, is the mechanics of the left-handed mode. This basically puts the zoom area at the top of the screen rather than the bottom. There are no other buttons or navigations there, and so I have had no difficulty writing multiple pages of notes and journals in this program–so for lefties who wish to use styluses on their ipads for taking notes, Note Taker HD wins hands down over the PenUltimate.

Clarifying Note: for diagramming, both of the apps are equally good–or bad–for lefties (or indeed, for anyone whose hand drags on the screen when they write). It’s mainly for the functionality of its left-handed text input mode that Note Taker wins. And let’s face it–I’m not really a big diagramming person, so this is a key point in my case.

Procrastination-Buster

I love the idea of being productive, but often when faced with the prospect of it, I find facebook intensely compelling and also feel the need to tweet about a variety of things. Enter, Easy Relax Ultimate, and the wonder of a timer. I set myself a bargain: 10 minutes of work, and then if I feel like it, I have permission to do facebook. ERU is timer-based, and so I put on one of its “white noise” tracks (waves and windchimes with a binaural beat of “busy thinking” for instance–more on this latter bit later), set the 10 min timer and go at it. And it works. Either I get 10 mins of work done that I wouldn’t have otherwise done (before losing myself in FB for an hour, instead of just FB-ing for an hour and ten mins!) OR I end up finding the focus I needed and continuing with the work I started, and enjoying a productive morning. Win-win. More or less. ERU is great for this kind of self-bargaining, which I find works so well with my own particular reward-incentive way of thinking.

A Fine and Private Place

I often like working at places like cafes and busy spots because it means that I can’t wander off and get a snack, or check what’s on tv at the drop of a hat (yet another trick I use for trying to get work done). I have my computer etc and don’t want it to be stolen, so I have to sit and work (esp. if I’ve been clever enough to NOT ask for the wifi password for the cafe hotspot). But, this can mean that all manner of oft-bizarre conversations can intrude on my conversation (though the bizarre ones are often interesting enough to be worth the distraction–it’s the blazingly normal ones that are simultaneously intrusive but also not interesting enough to me as a stranger to justify the distraction). ERU’s white noise tracks, esp. in conjunction with my noise-cancelling headphones (sony; on sale at best buy last year. I loathe the design of them which seems to be unfit for most human contours, but they’re fine, functional, and reasonably compact) are just the ticket. I put on the sound of rain or waves or any one of the other options of sounds that go at it. Brilliant stuff!

Binaural Beats

I’m not totally convinced about whether this actually works or not. The idea is that by playing one pitch of sound in one ear, and a different one in another ear, the [beta? sine?] wave that is created is the same as the brain wave that corresponds to a given activity (memorizing, meditation, etc.) so that by listening to the two pitches, one in each ear, the brain interpolates the wave and moves into that state of being. I’m not totally convinced by this, but play them anyway, amid the white noise because I figure, hey, any help I can get to concentrate/memorize etc. I’ll take. It’s a neat idea, and if you feel it totally works, then this app presents an affordable way to make use of them, while also not having to just listen to the pure pitches themselves (which are quite unpleasant on their own). The app offers a lot of different types of “beats” and so you can move into a variety of modes by playing the right beat (cue echoes of “Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep” here).

Fully Customizable

The final thing that’s great about ERU is that you can create your own mixes. There are a variety of different sounds and types of white noise, like wind, rain and so on. You can also add in incidental noises from a long list (crows, wind chimes, a Japanese flute, to name but a few). You can create anything from relaxing meditation music or campfire drumming (sans beats) for a quick relaxation break to the sound of being in the eye of a storm, with binaural beats for everything from memorization, to meditation to sleep induction. This is a great feature, though after playing with it a bit, I ended up settling on a few custom made ones, and a bunch of the pre-made ones and not really doing more. I just use my old faithfuls.

Sound Quality

I’m not great in this regard. I am using it as a background, secondary function, so I am not all that emphatic about the waves sounding totally real, with no compression artifacts etc. I don’t notice this stuff too much, particularly when I’m using it as background for other work. If you’re concerned, start by downloading the cheaper versions (I think there might be an Easy Relax Lite that is free–unless they have since removed it) and see if it’s okay for you. The other features on ERU are what make it a star for me, and many of the sounds are plenty realistic for me. With some of the sounds, the moment when the sound loops is detectable, but again, this isn’t important to me.  It sounds realistic enough to me, and I mainly want neutral sounds to wash out other distractions. I also find that the sound distorts and gets partially blocked when I turn on the noise-cancelling function on the headset (when it’s not super noisy in my environ, but for whatever reason, I want to cancel out some of the surrounding sounds). It also often sounds more artificial when that function is turned on, I assume because the cancellation sounds are blocking parts of the sounds generated by the app. So, be warned. The counter to that is that it’s usually loud enough that the artificiality is not really noticeable and the noise cancelling helps more than hinders.

In all, however, this is one of my most useful, and most frequently-used apps for getting work done and helping to boost my productivity.

I’m actually not joking, when I say it’s a life-changer: this app has improved my quality of life in a significant way, by allowing me to minimize my wait times for the buses and streetcars. It does this by providing real-time updates on when you can expect the vehicle to arrive.

Another additional, supremely useful, piece of information provided by the app consists of little arrows, indicating where the buses or streetcars are, along the route you’re looking into. This of course means that if there are a whole lot of streetcar arrows clustered in a row further back along the route, you can assume there’s an accident and take a different route. Similarly, you can see if you’ve just missed your bus, and check back along the route, in order to make an informed choice about whether to wait for the next one or move on.

It may seem like minutiae, but on a miserably cold or rainy day the fact that you can walk down and only wait a few minutes in the nasty weather can make a real difference to how you view the rest of your day (dry shoes, non-soaked pant legs, etc.). Similarly, being able to make note of delays and decide on alternate routes can also make a difference in preventing the commute from eating up a ridiculous amount of time, particularly if you live near a few alternative routes that you need to decide between.

(Aside: sorry for the long lag time in posting more reviews–school has kept me swamped for the past few months. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to posting here more frequently once the semester is over… at least for a little while. I do have many apps I’d love to review–I’m as incorrigible as ever in that regard!)

Final Product: Crow Girl Poster

So, as my few crossover readers already know, I started a publishing company recently, in furtherance of my self-pub projects. It’s called Crow Girl Publishing. I needed an image to associate with it. Enter: my old friends, the apps that I know and love.

I’ve blogged about Phoster before, of course. Despite its limitations (e.g. text boxes that are limited to a certain size, and the inability to add or remove text boxes), it comes with a nice variety of poster designs that look good and are customizable enough that they look reasonably diverse once you’re done with it.

The other two apps mentioned in the title are new to me.

So this is what I started with. The purists may object to starting with an already filtered pic. Oh well.

I started with a photo that I took via another app, actually–my old fave, Hipstamatic (aka “hipstamagic” because it magically makes me better looking than I actually am).

Next stop, Snapseed, for more fun with filters.

I then pulled it into Snapseed and played with filters and effects. One of the things that sets Snapseed apart from other photo editing apps (many of which have decent filters) is that it is both fantastically customizable and it is very intuitive. An up and down gesture will swap effects, while a side to side gesture on the image will dial the effect up or down, as needed. For many of the filters/effects, there are multiple options (e.g. different textures) at the bottom of the screen that can be swapped out and then dialed up or down, using the side to side gesture. You can then “apply” anything you are happy with–this locks the changes. You can always continue layering filters and effects from there, having locked a given set of effects.

Phoster to add the text, for yea, I am indeed clueless about such things...

Once I was happy with the image, I moved it into Phoster and added text. This could, of course, have been done in other apps, but if you’re like me and don’t really think like a designer (I never know where to begin, with a blank screen), then Phoster provides some good templates and starting points. I swapped out some fonts, got rid of text boxes (as mentioned, you can’t delete them, so they are still there, but with no text in them) and moved things around until I was happy with the way the fonts interacted with each other on the page. I made a few variations and saved them. They now serve as a set of final products that I will use in multiple contexts, including the header of the Crow Girl Publishing blog.

CODA: as anyone who has read my photo comic apps reviews know, I am also a frustrated artist (frustrated in the sense that I haven’t the skill). So, I wanted to take it a step further. Enter PencilSketch HD.

Gilding the lily (so to speak)--or just a fun variation? You decide!

I am always a little cynical of the “make it look like a drawing or a painting” filters. They often look kind of shite and cheesy (not to put too fine a point on it). But the free sample of this one, with watermark that makes it unusable without the upgrade, was impressive. So, that was my final step. The interface is very very basic (they didn’t waste a lot of time with that). I also could wish that there were options for borders, rather than the ragged, pencil sketch one that it defaults to. But, generally the results are somewhat eye catching.

And voila–with a little bit of playing around, I’ve got a decent looking set of graphics for my pubco website and business cards (I’ve printed half with the pencil sketch and half with the photographic image).

I also used another app, which I’ll talk about some other time, to create additional effects that I will use for generating small, promotional giveaways like bookmarks and the like.

So, about 1.5 years in, I ended up faced with the kind of dilemma that is either the result of extraordinary fortuitousness or very shrewd product planning on the part of the designer: get a new phone (endure the bad battery life until the iphone 5 comes out, in my case) or shell out money for the Apple people to fix it. In both cases, they win, and in the former case so do the phone providers, since the phone upgrade is usually accompanied by an extension of the contract, if you want any kind of subsidy.

But I wasn’t mad about either of the choices. I don’t think I’m eligible for a phone replacement, I feel sad about the wasted electronics that are still perfectly good but are set aside for the next generation, both in our culture and in our house (old palm pilots, laptops and cellphones, in our case). As for going to Apple–it rankles to do that. It’s expensive (about the same cost as a warrantee that we didn’t get). I also remember hearing that in the past, they had gratuitously replaced parts inside devices they were servicing, so that they became more difficult to tamper with. To me, that’s like a dealership mechanic replacing a bunch of parts in my car without my knowledge, when I take it in for service–if the changes are simply to make it more difficult for me to get into, rather than to help it work better as a gesture of goodwill or for safety, then that’s just annoying. So, my husband and I looked into replacing the battery ourselves.

We went to iphonebatteryreplacement.com and ordered our kit. At the time, we looked at the video and were struck by how ridiculous it was to undertake a simple battery replacement. The detailed steps are here (they do a very good job of showing what’s involved and walking people through, and I have no interest in replicating the work!). I suggest you check it out if you have any interest in this sort of thing for a glimpse of a jaw-droppingly intentional, difficult to get at battery replacement procedure. This kind of pissed me off further–you just see how carefully designed it all is to keep people out, and dissuade them from tampering. It’s like a mobile phone designed with a Scrooge-like sensibility (but with a gorgeously minimal, Swedish-for-common-sense aesthetic). TWO levels of connectors (7 connectors in total) that have to be removed; a second board below the screen that had to be taken out to get at the battery; eight internal screws of different sizes that cannot be mixed up. Several of the connectors are also really tricky and difficult find and detach.

It’s basically like the electronics version of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with booby traps everywhere, ready to mess up the unwary do-it-yourselfer, and fry their phone. It made me all the more determined to do it (I can be stubborn that way).

The “kit” arrived recently (suction cup, couple of cheap, tiny screw drivers, a plastic prying thing and the replacement battery itself) and so we set up to give it a try. I was ready to do it myself, as I enjoy this sort of gadgety task, but when my husband offered, I willingly handed over the task to him because he has electronics experience and worked for a mobile phone manufacturer for a number of years in R&D. I then watched in fascination as he followed the instructions.

We had a few misadventures along the way: in detaching the camera apparatus, some little pin came undone that was not in the video. However, we figured out its use (it was screwed in to hold the camera steady) and reaffixed it. There were also a total of 7 connectors and 10 teeny tiny screws that needed to get unscrewed and disconnected before you could get at the battery. Far trickier of course, was the screwing back in and reconnecting end of things. We lost one screw in the carpet (under connector number 7–the screw that had the sticker informing us that by removing the screw, we voided  the warrantee that we did not have; and yes, I know, doing this all on carpet was probably not the best idea).

We reconnected everything and turned it on–and the screen came on as just a white blank. So then, we worried that it was the missing, warrantee-voiding screw that was messing it up. This was about the time that I was remembering that while I had done a backup, I hadn’t transferred my dockets to the docketing software at work, nor had I exported them… and so I was thinking “damn–always forget something!” and quietly trying not to panic, as my husband was feeling terrible enough already.

So, I got the strongest magnets we have on our fridge and started going over the carpet with them–and after a few moments, success! Up came the lost screw (and yes, we kept the magnets far from our electronics!!). In it went. We rechecked all the connectors and closed it up. Still a blank screen.

We then googled it–thank you iphone forums of the world–and found that a hard reset might do the trick. A few tense moments–and then the little rebooting apple came up on the screen. Big sigh of relief. The data on the device was also seemingly intact (including my dockets) and now I have a new phone battery in there! This should hopefully get me through with my current device for a while longer–though the upgrade may become necessary after the 5, as more apps potentially stop supporting the 3gs with any updates and it starts to go the way of the 3g… So yes, it’s a stopgap. But it also means that I can actually use the phone for the whole day, rather than worrying about where I’ll be able to top up its charge when I’m out and about! I’m also glad it cost a little over $20 instead of $80–and more importantly, that I got to undertake a tiny little gesture of independence in my walled garden of a phone. It did, of course take a while to do, and we had some worrying moments, when the device wasn’t working properly, post-replacement–but as they say, all’s well that ends well…

Bottom line: replacing your iphone 3Gs battery is not for the faint of heart.

1. About five weeks ago, I downloaded the Index Card App for my ipad, which interfaces with Scrivener in a different way than does Plain Text, allowing for an extension of a different facet of Scrivener’s functionality into the mobile context.
2. I notice that there have been a lot of referring searches to this site using the terms “Scrivener Index Cards”. Now, while this might be because people wanted to know about the index card function within the program, I suspect at least a few people who did the search might have been wondering how well Index Cards the *app* works with Scrivener.
3. This pertains to a significant set of functionalities associated with the program, and so in the interests of at least touching on some of the major facets of Scrivener’s usability, it seemed worthwhile to do the post.

A quick bottom line: the Index Card app export/import function is useful for those needing to do planning on the fly, but it isn’t as well integrated as the Plain Text functionality. This meant that I had to keep referring to the instructions the first several times I wanted to make the transition. Not fatal, but definitely clunky and cumbersome. Still, it’s worth noting that I did it all the same, because I didn’t want to have to retype or re-order the index cards on my ipad, having already done it Scrivener. That’s still a lot more work. Finally, I’m not convinced that pulling the Index Card App collection back into Scrivener has any functional advantage (aside from consolidation of the project) over just typing in your changes by referring to the ipad, as Scrivener keeps the index card imports and exports segregated, as a separate “collection” from the main draft file.
Click through for the full review.

General

My use of Scrivener falls into two large categories: planning and writing. PlainText addresses the writing side of things, on the go. Because Scrivener is scene-based, each scene has its own sub-document. The disadvantage with exporting the whole document into, say, Word, and editing it there is that you lose all the scene divisions and need to track which scenes you’ve changed, if you want to put the changes back into Scrivener. So the export is a last step, when you’ve decided you no longer need Scrivener for anything. It’s basically a one-way street. PlainText, on the other hand, maintains the scene-based sub-documents and inserts the changes, via Dropbox, back into those sub-documents, even if you’ve made them on the fly.

But the other part of the scene-based sub-documents that is key is the index card view. It’s the same little sub-docs that contain all the text, but the index cards just contain the initial scene summaries that you wrote, as place-holders of sorts, during your initial planning stage. Plain Text doesn’t touch those, and doesn’t give you access to them. So any structural changes and higher-level views of how the action is progressing over the course of all the scenes isn’t really feasable in PlainText on the go.

Enter: Index Cards. It’s a separate export of just the scene summaries side of the sub-documents. You have to follow a few steps–create a “collection” of the index card descriptors that you wish to use–it can be the whole project, or just a smaller sequence from the project. You then export that collection to Dropbox. From there, you go to the ipad, and open up the collection in the Dropbox interface, and use the drop down button on the top right of the screen to “Open in…” Index Cards.

It’s a cumbersome series of steps. Getting it back into Scrivener is similarly cumbersome–you have to save it to the right place in Index Cards, then pull it in from Scrivener. I haven’t had as much occasion to do this yet, but likely will soon. If there are any special nuances to this process, then I will post an update.

The Good

You can plan on the go, and make changes to the scenes at the higher, structural level–something I have a great deal of difficulty doing when I’m looking at the written out prose of the scenes themselves. Seeing the little descriptions on the index cards and re-ordering at that level is really helpful for me in planning and restructuring–a must, really. So far, it’s been worth it, in order to have access to the planning/structural level on the go, as well as a place to jot down structural/scene ideas on the go, and fit them right into the flow of sub-documents as you want them.

The Bad

“Cumbersome” pretty much sums it up. And it looks as though when you pull the index cards back into the Scrivener file, it keeps it as a separate collection. Which is great, and “safe” in case you don’t want to actually implement all the changes. But then it means that you have to do the manual input anyway to apply the changes to your actual WIP. I’m not sure how else they could really do that, though.

Bottom Line

This is a great add-on, but at this point, I think it’s a one-way street for all but very preliminary projects (where you can just grab the imported collection and dump it into an otherwise empty, Scrivener draft file). It gets your structure off your computer and into a mobile interface but doesn’t integrate the changes back into your main file, for the valid reasons mentioned above.

I’m fine with that, personally–but you may not be. Playing with the structure and using the mobile version as a forum for experimenting with changes works just fine for me and fits with the way I think. I probably wouldn’t bother, in those cases, with even importing the re-ordered index cards back into the Scrivener file–I’d just mark any changed cards with a star in the title, then keep the ipad open and re-enter those changes I wanted to implement, into the main “draft” folder of the Scrivener file.

Whether Index Cards, to be used in conjunction with Scrivener, will be worth it for you, then, depends on your workflow and approach. It’s not seamlessly integrated, and so having some idea of the functionality and limitations of the integration, will hopefully help you to decide whether or not it’s worth the purchase.

ScrivScriv Part I

ScrivScriv Part II

http://www.cnet.com/8301-30976_1-20068778-10348864.html

They are fabulous, dramatic readings of excerpts from one of Apple’s EULAs, by Richard Dreyfuss. Fabulously brilliant. Even more amazingly, he actually manages to make them sound interesting, and infuse them with some intriguing and gleefully ominous subtexts. Do give them a listen!

The excerpts begin with a gentle admonition, but then acquire a more sinister aspect… There are a couple of others as well. Click through above to hear the rest of them.

Please note: I have posted an update as of July 9, 2011, to this review, comparing Eternity with two other time tracking apps. Please click through at the bottom of this post for the full commentary. Thanks!

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons…”

So, working at a law firm this summer, I’ve needed to track my time. My husband did a quick lookabout and found this app–Eternity Time Log Lite–designed for some productivity tracking purpose or something.

I’ve looked at other time measuring softwares (or at the reviews, at least), but have been unable to summon up the wherewithal to actually test too many of them out. The reason? Because I really like Eternity. It does pretty much everything I need it to do.

You can create “tasks”–I’ve used file numbers in this blank, for tracking my time spent on each file. There’s also space for adding notes–that’s where I note the type of activity I’m doing on the file, for the sake of the docket. Finally, you can “continue” or “start” any given activity. The continue option retains the note, while the “start” option blanks the spot for notes, so you can put in a new description or notation for it.

It also generates logs for the different tasks, so you can see how much you spent on the activity, for your docket. I still have to convert the totals to 10ths of an hour, but that’s relatively minor.

So far, I’m really liking this software. It works well, but is also not overly complicated, so you need spend very little time noting the transition and fussing as you switch between tasks. Good interface, good functionality.

The catch: the full version is $10 which is a little pricey in my view. At the moment, I’m waffling over whether to upgrade or whether to look more closely at the other time tracking app options. The lite version maxes out at 8 tasks (though you can delete and add new ones–but just up to a maximum of 8), which is okay for work. But, I’m thinking of trying something similar while doing stuff on personal projects as well, in which case I’d want to invest in the fuller version…

Will post a follow up when I make my decision (or should I end up looking at other time tracking apps as well). But the lite version is definitely recommended for simple time tracking of a few tasks at a time. It also keeps running in the background and tabulating the time spent, so you can go to other apps (e.g. a white noise generator that I use sometimes to help me concentrate).

UPDATE: Right after writing this post, I looked for more timekeeping apps. There are a lot out there, and there is a useful series of posts on the subject by iphoneJD. He doesn’t review all of them (if he did, I suspect he probably wouldn’t have much time for actual lawyering!), but he does take the useful step of reading between the lines in his descriptions of them, often as not, rather than just regurgitating the developer’s descriptions. He also speculates on the usefulness of the different apps for different applications.

Based on that and a few other sources, I ended up downloading a couple of other free versions of apps. Eternity is nice, but the $10 price tag is definitely hard to swallow, especially when it doesn’t meet all of my needs precisely (it meets a lot of them, but in looking at the other apps, I found ones that have features that are more optimized for what I’d want). I also kind of had this odd desire to have separate methods for home and work–maybe to keep them separated from each other?

The two standouts for my needs ended up being iTimesheet and TimeLogger.

TimeLogger

The Good: TimeLogger has a nice system in which three tiers of categorizations are usable (category, client and job). I use “category” as “task”, but the nice thing about this setup is that categories are independent of the nested client/job (job is dependent on client, so the list of jobs is different under different clients, as one might expect). So I would only need to enter in my different task types once, and then use it for any client/job. This is good. I also like the export feature, which gives you a tidy list of your tasks etc. that you can send via email. These would probably make decent docket lists.

The Bad: not a very pretty interface (I really like pretty). Some clunky choices–I don’t like the little wheels for date and time, for instance and find them inefficient, relative to just allowing someone to type in the time or date, possibly with auto-complete for months. Though the feature set in Eternity is a little more limited, I do like the interface and I really like the little counter in Eternity. But ultimately, this timer does the job and so long as you punch in and punch out, your time spent on a given item is kept. A good thing. There is also a “notes” section, which might end up being better for docketable codes and tasks, as well as descriptions, such that “categories” would be more of a general rubric, while the notes would allow for detail. We’ll see what I find more usable. There is also a voice memo option, if typing those notes in is too much of a hassle on the stupid ipad/iphone keyboards. Nice touch.

Conclusions: solid, workhorse. The free version is very good, and probably would meet my needs, but if it is useful, I do believe in putting my money where my mouth is and paying for the thing that I’ve benefitted from, if there is such an option. I also like to pay for generosity in the try before you buy option, and this “lite” version is fully-featured, but just doesn’t keep records past 60 days and has a few other limitations that wouldn’t affect me (e.g. ads). I like that the developer was good enough to do this. I will try it next week at work and if it works well, I’ll pay for it. The cost at the time of writing is $4.99. Not bad.

iTimeSheet
This one also has its strengths and flaws. The variables are dependent on each other, with a hierarchy of client, project, task.

The Good: This app has analytics, which probably aren’t all that relevant for me at work (I don’t see how it could be useful to have a pie chart showing that I worked on one file more than another. And the dockets/time listings themselves tell the story of what is billable and what isn’t fairly clearly–as does the bottom line of only doing X amount of pocketable work in the day. So: no need for a pie chart). But at home, where I have a number of projects on the go, it would be useful for me to have a visual representation of how much time I’m putting into each of them. So this was a strong feature in this app’s favor (Eternity has that too, but as I say, it’s $$). It’s also a reasonably attractive interface and is decently customizable. Because it’s my own projects, I’m the main client (maybe I’ll do the occasional freelance thing, in which case there might be another client added). There is also a notes option for this one. This is a necessity–any time logger that didn’t have the notes option isn’t something I’d even look at for myself.

The Bad: I miss the little timer–this one is a punch in, punch out system, so it doesn’t actually tick away. I like the sense of urgency that the ticking gives me, but I guess I could set that up elsewhere (it’s just another step, though). I also don’t like that the tasks are dependent on the job. I would love a “category” type option, for general designations of tasks that exist for all clients–or to at least have an option of importing a list of tasks from one job to another. For instance, I have two blogs. The types of tasks involved are the same, generally. It would have been nice to be able to import the tasks from my first setup, and then just edit them for the second blog. I could see that becoming a hassle for some people who have many different jobs for clients, but with similar tasks within it. Still, it’s a one time setup thing for each client, so maybe it could just be seen as part of the “file setup” process.

Conclusions: because of the lack of independent categories, this app feels a little flawed, and I do miss the timer that Eternity has. But in general, it has all the features that I need for personal tracking. It is attractive and seems to work well. The cost, as of the time of writing, was $5.99, which means that if I buy TimeLogger as well, I will have paid more than if I just purchased Eternity. But, I really did want to keep my work and personal stuff separate and track them separately. Between that, and the fact that my work and personal time tracking needs are somewhat different, it makes sense to me to buy two separate, cheaper apps that will meet each of those needs without unnecessary features that try to do it all. I want simple apps for this, that i can just punch in and punch out of as quickly as possible–the time tracking should not actually take long enough to become a separate time entry, after setup, after all!

At any rate, that’s my take. Eternity time Logger is slick and pretty, but doesn’t quite meet either of my needs. I would probably have bought it anyway, before I did the further research, but for the price tag (take note, developer! Your price point is off–you would have had a sale if you asked for a little less money)–and may have later found that it wasn’t totally suited, but made do anyway. Alas for them. These two other apps are better suited to my needs ultimately, and so TimeLogger and iTimeSheet are the two winners for business and personal time tracking, respectively.

But, we’ve got to start somewhere. So, I’ve decided to try something. This idea is in part inspired by the old storyteller model. The storyteller would tell his tale and those who liked it would pay, based on what they could afford and based on how much they liked the stories told.

Basically, I want to see if we actually do value writers, and their creations. I will do this by offering one of my novels–a Regency Romance (think Jane Austen, but without the zombies) called An Immodest Proposal. It’s a drawing room comedy of manners.

I am fond of this novel–I like the characters, and ultimately decided that while the trend in the industry was towards sexier, saucier Regency Historical romances, in which intimacy between the characters happens relatively early, this just wouldn’t be true to these characters. And I liked them too much to try to change it to fit the market. So, I just took it off the market instead. Ultimately, I was more interested in exploring the dynamic between two people who knew they really shouldn’t be together for reasons of their own, but who just couldn’t seem to manage to stay away from each other. I also didn’t want it to be about conflict for the sake of it–I wanted it to arise out of their respective situations and values. Which is by way of saying, I’m not offering this book on a “try before you buy” basis because I think it’s not worth paying for.

Now, this is obviously not going to be determinative of whether we, as a culture, value our writers. Some people who value writers/creators will read the book and not care for it. Others will value it, and enjoy the book, but may forget to actually get around to making the payment. But, it will say something. If I end up having a lot of downloads from the site, and get not a dime, then that will be pretty definitive (i.e. either the book really sucks and no-one likes it, or our culture right now prefers the free thing, over supporting creators. In which case, alas for us creators. We’re screwed for revenue and have no hope of doing our creative work except as a hobby.).

The plan is to be transparent. I will offer the book as a digital download on a try before you buy basis. You can send the book to whomever you want (i.e. to all intents and purposes, I’m releasing the right to copy. Copy the digital book, send it around etc.). But, the release is a conditional one: I’m asking you to pay for the book if you end up reading it and feeling that you enjoyed it as much as your other recent reads (I’m suggesting somewhere in the range of $5-$10, though I won’t refuse more!) i.e. as much as the books that you paid for before reading them.

Basically, I’m just saying: take the novel. I trust you. And then pay me if you like it.

I have no way of enforcing this (that’s the nature of trust, after all). If you like it and feel that your desire for free stuff trumps any effort/creativity/time I put into writing the book, then I have no way of making you pay. If by some remote happenstance, we met one day, and I happened to ask you if you liked it, you could just lie–or lie by claiming that you paid for it. You might accrue a minor bit of bad karma (someone will deprive you of $5-$10 sometime), or feel a bit guilty, but otherwise, there’s no real consequence.

And ultimately, I’d rather put the book out, trust people, and lose some possible revenue, than assume people are inherently untrustworthy and I need to put digital locks and stuff on it.

I’m hoping to launch the book in the near future. There’s some back end stuff I need to do (set up paypal, format and generate the downloadable file, look into possible cover art, etc.). But it will be up soon, at the new blog I’ve created for the experiment. I will be reblogging many of the posts from there to here, generally, but that blog will be focussed on issues, experiments and ideas around copyright and IP stuff.

For more on the experiment, visit the “About/FAQ” page.

The way I see it, there are a lot of different ways that a work can be used:

• “consumed” (read, listened to, etc.)
• distributed
• sold
• adapted
• sampled
• etc.

With digitization, all these uses can be appropriated by anyone with a computer and the right programs installed.

By contrast, there are many benign reasons for copying a work and making multiple reproductions of it (e.g. so you have access to it from your various devices; printing off a fresh copy if you left your printout elsewhere and need to look at the work on the page etc.)–none of which are in any way cutting into the creator/rights holder’s ability to profit from their work, but which are illegal under a regime that emphasizes the right to copy.

So Why Is This Bad?

So fine, you can copy benignly, and you’re technically breaking the law, but unlikely to be caught (let’s face it, you’re unlikely to be caught even if you’re doing a bunch of the other, less-than-benign things under the “use” list as well). So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is right in the formulation of the issue, above: namely, that you’re breaking the law but don’t care. That kind of devaluation of a legal regime is deeply problematic because of what it means for the relevance of the law. If otherwise law-abiding citizens are breaking the law and don’t give a crap, then what kind of desensitization might that lead to?

I’m not crying anarchy or anything even close. But, within the context of copyright, if you’re breaking the law to even commit these harmless acts of copying, then that desensitization to the boundaries between legal and illegal in the context of copying is going to have an effect on the culture (and indeed, as is obvious to anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock, it already has) and how it views copyright in general. It will ultimately render much of it meaningless, except in cases where there’s some chance of being caught.

There’s a profound tension between the valuing of the creativity, craft and hard work of the artist (which we generally like to insist that we value deeply) and the desire to get something for nothing. The latter seems to prevail, making the former seem like so much lip service. Sure, we value artists, but if we can get their work for free, then let’s do it.

The Indie v. Studio Dynamic

There’s also another factor in the mix. Though many of us will, if we know there’s an indie artist involved, pay for the consumption of the work we’ve acquired, we also have an intuitive sense that the artist is a little more distanced from the revenue stream when there are large publishers/producers/film studios/etc. involved.

Though the artist ultimately suffers, at some level as a culture, I think we believe that they’re already being exploited and robbed by the savvy “money guys” in the big corporations, so we’re happy to steal from the money guys. It’s our small way of stickin’ it to the man. I am ambivalent about this.

Ultimately, the money guys are generally there when they are needed. The old structures and models may be losing relevance with the new technologies and the emergent, evolving culture that comes with them, but if there are gaps and needs within the new methods and models of distribution, the business people who love the arts and want to get them “out there” and make a living at it, if possible, find those gaps, and will make themselves necessary once again by facilitating the process.

Let’s face it–only a small subset of creative types are into the number crunching and marketing side of things. If possible, many of us will leave that stuff to someone else. And so, between that simple fact, and the fact that there is almost always a challenge associated with bridging the gap between creation and intended audience, the business people will have an essential place, filling an important gap, in facilitating the connection between creator and audience. And quite frankly, I’m all for them. They’re the ones who have brought my attention to many a great book, film and musical work, over the years.

*Again, I’m going with Drassinower’s conception of the use v. copying distinction, though I cannot promise that I am correctly representing his arguments. I find his distinctions between the two concepts key to understanding more than just fair dealing–they also speak to interesting potential directions to take in the area of (c) reform. That said, those ideas have now been processed through my particular set of interests and issues on the subject, and might not conform precisely with what he is arguing. But I still feel it’s important to point out that I didn’t come up with this use/copying distinction independently!