Bernskiold Learning » Review

Things – Super To-Do Management App for the Mac

Erik Bernskiold — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:05:12 +0000

Things is a to-do list application that in essence allows you to promptly save to-do’s and tasks and manage them. It’s currently in a beta phase in which you can download and try it out for free. From January 6 and on it is going to cost $49.95. I’m completely in love with Things.

It’s making my busy life quite a lot easier to manage so I don’t forget important stuff. You can organize your to-do’s into four views; Today, Next, Scheduled and Someday. This allows you to quickly see what you need to do sooner than other things that may just be a plan for the future.

Another feature in Things is being able to group to-do’s by either projects or areas. The difference between those is simply that one ends and one is ongoing forever. This way you can easily track what you need to do in certain projects.

The application has a very clean interface that is very intuitive and makes it simple to work with. The dock icon shows the number of to-do’s that has to be done as well.

If you are a Mac user and want a superb to-do list management application, then definitely check Things out. It’s really going to be worth the full price when it’s completely released in January.

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Review of Billings 3

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:00:18 +0000

When you are a web designer or graphics artist in need of tracking your time, there are several solutions available. I’ve been using this application for the Mac called Billings from Marketcircle for some time and I’ve taken a liking to it.

Billings 3 is an application that let’s you track the time you’ve been working on a project and then later bill the client for it. You’ve got a lot of functionality in there. You start by importing clients from your address book, which will make them show up in the main billings window. You can then add projects to the clients and in each project you can add both estimate slips (to make up an estimate) and then go on to working slips. It’s a really powerful system that’s still easy and fast to use.

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Calling and the iPhone

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:54:42 +0000

After ten gruesome days with my number in transition I can finally use the iPhone as a phone and it really does make it complete. Being able to surf whereever is really cool and of course being able to call and send SMSs the iPhone way is also really cool and something I’ve been waiting on for quite some time.

I’m realy pleased with how it behaves though and being able to call and do other things at the same time is cool, at least I think so. It’s a shame though that I can’t get visual voicemail here in Sweden yet because I bet that would be cooler than cool.

SMS

For me, sending text messages has never been simpler. Partly because I’ve never been fast on T9 writing and love a full keyboard – also partly because the way it is displayed which I quite like. It makes it much easier to follow up on the conversation you’ve had with someone without any hassle. It just works!

The Phone

The iPhone is a phone afterall and it does really do very good in the phone application as well. At a quick glance you get the favourite contacts and just a tap away are your recent calls, contacts the keypad and of course the voicemail (that for me is just a shortcut for calling the voicemail number). All of these lists are easy to navigate and they also look great (as does everything on the iPhone).

Final Verdict

The iPhone works as it should as a phone and I’ve had no problems with it after using it for a full day yet, it just works as I expect it to. I just wish the carrier here (TeliaSonera) would hurry up and develop Visual Voicemail with Apple.

My first thoughts on the iPhone 3G

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:25:47 +0000

Finally I did get to get the iPhone 3G after a long wait. We didn’t have it here in Sweden before and now it finally is. This first look is really at everything except the phone part. That’s because my number is in transition from my old service provider (Telenor) to the new (Telia). It’s going to take a week more and until then I can’t test the 3G speed nor how the phone works.

This review will obviously so far be based on everything else but the phone part with another second review coming of the phone features when I get to try it out next week, and then a mixed after that!

My Personal Buying Experience

I can really say that my buying experience was good. Being before both the UK and US in time the Apple activation servers were working properly and the queue time wasn’t that bad. I got in the queue at 9a.m (with the stores opening at 10a.m) and I got out with my phone at 11a.m. It took about 20 minutes to get it activated and all, mainly because of Telia’s servers being slow. Store staff were great, friendly and it all worked out super for me. Activation time through iTunes worked perfectly as well, meaning I don’t have any complaints here.

My First Impressions

Cool! It’s a really cool device that compared to the old phone I was using, blows everything away. There are a few things I really like and a few things I wish were there, but really none that I don’t like. My first impressions of the phone is that it is really cool however.

My Pet-peeves

My main pet peeve is that you can’t copy and paste information in the phone. From webpages to notes etc. This is something which is really neeed and should be able to be fixed with a software update. Wake up and do it Apple! It has been a top request since the release of the original iPhone.

I would also like to see the ability to turn the iPhone around in any application that uses the keyboard. I find the wider keyboard so much easier to type on and I would like to be able to use it, especially for notes.

The App Store

It’s great that Apple has opened up for third-party developers and it is something which should have been available all along. It works pretty good and there are already some applications which I really like (listing them below). I have one big pet-peeve here as well. I don’t like that they are limiting some applications per country. For example in Terry White’s review of the iPhone 3G, he listed some of his favourite applications and I found some I’d love to have, which I cannot get because I’m in the Swedish app store. It sucks and shouldn’t matter!

Some of my favourite applications that I love already are: Twitterific, NetNewsWire, VoiceNotes, SpeechCloud Voice Dialling, AIM and Enigmo (a very addictive game).

The GPS

It works moderately well it works good when it can get contact. Forget it getting contact inside a building or house but outside it does work really good actually. Although no turn by turn instructions (which should be possible) I like it so far. I had it on when going form home to family who lives a further bit down south from us in Sweden and it worked really well and showed everything that it should, including where I was very accurately.

My current opinion

Without having tried the actual phone (which I believe to be great) I don’t think in any way that the iPhone is perfect but it is the best phone out there that I know of. I will sum up the entire phone after I’ve used the phone features as well for a while so expect my full review up next week! Meanwhile, enjoy your iPhone if you have it and if you don’t, check out the features in action on the Apple Guided Tour.

Oh and by the way, a hidden tip. To take screenshots on the iPhone, hold down the home screen and click the sleep/wake button up top

For the best and and best covered review of the iPhone 3G, check out Terry White’s!

I got my iPhone 3G!

Erik Bernskiold — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:15:41 +0000

Okay, I’m all happy, I got my iPhone today after a long time waiting for it. Queue time here wasn’t to bad, I got in the relatively short line at 9a.m and got out with my iPhone and all at 11a.m. It took perhaps 15-20 minutes to set up the contract and all with my number transitioning. Unfortunately it is going to take a full ten days for my number to transition so I cannot use the phone for calling or anything other than WIFI use. So my review is going to be once I’ve gotten to use it more. So it’s going to be split, in a little while I’ll talk about all other than the phone part, and then once I’ve gotten to use it, I’ll cover that as well to finally write a full one.

Hope all of you who were after one got it! More tomorrow.

Late Thursday News

Erik Bernskiold — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:10:11 +0000

I’m pretty tired after working a full day in the camera store and I’m going to be early because the day is repeating itself tomorrow. Fun but tiresome. Here are at least a few late Thursday news.

From screenshots of the new Apple App Store we can see that they are imposing restrictions in both price and application size. The maximum size is 2gb and the prices range between $0.99 to $999, where the latter probably is for more enterprise styled applications.
A new build of the Parallels Desktop shows support for both Linux as well as 3D graphics inside of Windows. To get the free update, just go under the help menu and chose Check for Updates.
One of the site visitors sent me a comment yesterday noting me on a tutorial error which is indeed a realism miss. In the Pixelmator tutorial about Creating a realistic sunlight effect I missed to at the end, flip the copied image vertically so that the small piece of the window comes at the top. So for anyone being affected by this miss in the recording, now you know how to fix it.
Over at his blog, Scott Kelby has posted a review of the Ray Flash. The Ray Flash is essentially a ring flash that attaches to a normal hotshoe flash to make it a ring flash. It sounds like a cool product so go and check that out.

That’s that for the news today, tomorrow I’ll be back with the Friday goodies, so stay tuned. Oh and until then, don’t have too much trouble, it is Friday 13th.

Thoughts about the Nikon D3!

Erik Bernskiold — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:28:30 +0000

I just got to play a little with the Nikon D3 today, just a quick look but I was pretty impressed by it, especially with the performance on the 6400 ISO level, images which are useable! The white balance preview when in Live View is pretty cool as well although I find the focusing in live view mode pretty clunky and overall the camera sounds quite loud when taking photos (there is of course the wonderful shutter sound though). Also the portrait grip is pretty uncomfortable and oddly balanced. It feels like I’m going to drop the camera any second because of overload in weight. In the end though I think it is a wonderful camera, given the quick look I had on it!

Monday News Tidbits

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:25:32 +0000

Today seems to be gadget day with most news being about some of the coolest gadgets available right now!

D3 and D300 Stuff, site + review

Starting off in the camera news, brought to you by the amazing wildlife photographer, Moose Peterson is an entire little (or not so little after all) site about the D that has just been released with more stuff being added along the way according to Moose. So go and have a look at the D3 Site!
Following the news of the cameras in Nikon’s latest release we have a great review by Terry White on the Nikon D300 camera posted today over at his blog! It’s based on his first impressions with using the camera for about a week now and he really seems to be liking it a lot. So if you are in the market for a D300 or just want to read up on it, go and read Terry’s review right here!

New Web Design tutorials coming!

So I’ve begun to write a couple of highly requested web design tutorials for the site here and the first one to be released is a tutorial on how to make a stylish portfolio header right in Photoshop that we’ll use to build an entire portfolio site, right in Photoshop! So go to the tutorial section and check it out!

Learn to polish up your vector art in Photoshop!

The amazing illustration guru, Nick La has posted up a very cool tutorial or article on how he uses Adobe Photoshop to polish up his vector art made in Illustrator. I found it very interesting and cool to read so if you are interested you should definitely take a look at it here!

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Review

Erik Bernskiold — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:00:31 +0000

So after using the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for about one week now I feel I’ve gotten into most of the features that is new and that you may use everyday which I’ll start off by saying, is not near all the 300 new features, examples include the fact that there is a lot of features that are to do with improved functioning or networking such things I do not use more in-depth in my day to day work on my computer.

I’m basing this review on the functionality of the 10.5.0 release of Leopard since that is what I have running under a MacBook 2.0 GHz 80gb HDD, 1gb RAM with a LaCie 250gb external drive and it is from that I base on how smooth things are running.

My Favorite New Features

There are a lot of the new features that I absolutely just love and adore many of them are small but some of them are large as well. I’m really happy that the iCal dock icon is now showing the correct date even when turned off which I found absolutely great, since I don’t have my iCal on all the time (memory consuming) but only when I need it.
Of course I cannot skip the larger features, which I’ve fallen in love with!

QuickLook
I love QuickLook it is just one of these amazing new features that makes your file browsing inside of finder so much easier! It works on almost all file types I have, including .psd files from Adobe Photoshop. Of course normal image files like jpeg files are supported as well as PDF, word and excel document and more. It is just one of those features I’m now using all the time and makes a real difference for me when previewing files, especially pdf’s.

Spaces
Yes, spaces are really awesome and it makes a real difference when you are on a smaller laptop screen like on my MacBook without my external one. It is very useful being able to group your windows into different spaces and it really makes you feel that you have a much larger desktop. Now I have a feature request regarding spaces and that is mainly that you can choose to only activate spaces on one monitor if you have two plugged in. So that you can have a permanent window on one screen like a browser and then have spaces activated on the other screen. That’s no big loss but it would be handy although as I said in the beginning, I find spaces the most awesome when I’m on a small screen and need to have a cleaner work area to use or be more organized (which I am, an organized person).

Mail
I really like the new mail as well especially the idea of the built in RSS reader. I am subscribed to a fair bit of RSS feeds and I’ve previously needed to use an external application for reading them and of course that means more memory usage. That means I’m very much in love with the fact that Mail can now read RSS feeds. The notes and to-dos are also great and I’m going to really like Stationery and the ability to create my own mail templates as well. Another mail feature that I haven’t had much use for yet is the date and time auto detector so you can put in a meeting or event directly from a mail into iCal!

Stacks
I’m fully and totally in love with stacks. They just make putting files in the dock easier. Okay, I will admit that I miss the hierarchical browsing that you could do with a right click before but I really like the way stacks work. However it would be great to be able to control how big the grid mode stack would be, because when I open my applications stack, I’d rather it take up as much screen space as it could so I can see all my applications. Alternatively I could get a setting to choose how large my thumbnails should be. Of course as many others are wishing, the ability to control the preview icon that appears in the dock because it may be great in picture stacks, but when I have my applications in a stack, I’d rather not need to have the Address Book icon (which is my first application in the list) to be my preview icon for that stack nor do I like to put an empty folder at the top of my applications folder just to get it to show a normal icon in the dock (which is what I’m doing now). Stacks are a great and I like them, but those little things would make it more perfect!

My Not So Favorite Features

Of course I have a list of new features and changes that I don’t like as much at all and they all could mostly be controlled and fixed by a setting or two actually.

Translucent Menu Bar

My main concern is the translucent menu bar in the top. Sure it may look quite nice but it is absolutely a pain to read and you quickly notice why they decided to change their default desktop background in the videos etc. to the dark “aurora” instead of the grass. It is very hard to read text on a colorful background and the current hack to solve it is to open the background image in Photoshop (or similar) and then make a white or black bar up in the top where the menu bar is, to either get a white or grey solid menu bar. This could have easily been made to our preferences by a simple setting in the System Preferences panel under Appearance although it has not been made which is not as nice, so at the moment, it is into Photoshop with the backgrounds or just pick general dark backgrounds…

Open Application in Dock
I’m very bugged by the open application icon in the dock. In Tiger you had a little back arrow under the program icons that were opened and it was a clear way of seeing what programs you had open. Now in Leopard, Apple has replaced the black arrow with a blue, glowing dot. While I like the new dock, this is hard to see, especially if you have a window edge close to the dock and it is reflecting into it and especially with colorful backgrounds. I’m hoping that a third party application (or better yet official fix) comes out in near future that will allow you to change the color on that little dot.

What do not work under Leopard? How was the upgrade?

Out of all my programs, drivers and devices, I’m quite surprised that there are more things that do not work. Since I come from the background of upgrading the windows OS’s q few times, the policy for me have always been, a) wait until the first service pack, and b) wait until all programs come out with an upgrade for the new OS, which in the latter case usually takes about the time for Microsoft to come out with service pack one.

Now in this case the upgrade went very smooth using the Archive and Install option as well as having a complete hard drive backup on my external drive to rely on I am experiencing no problems with Leopard itself or any of my programs really. That is of course except the confirmed bugs in Lightroom and the other Creative Suite Applications that is announced by Adobe as needing upgrades to work properly (Acrobat 8 Professional, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Soundbooth, Encore). I’m also surprised to see that many of the applications I use were upgraded even before Leopard was released and that has made me really happy! As far as devices and drivers go, I have had to reinstall most of the drivers but that is not a major concern since I had expected that and besides, after the re-install of the drivers, all of my devices work like a charm (Mouse, Tablet, Printer etc.).

Time Machine

Time Machine is also one of my favorite new features, but since it is so big I thought it deserved a completely dedicated section! I have a partition on my external drive just for Time Machine where it backs my internal hard drive up according to the update scheme. Now I’m not the one that usually looses files and need to go back and find them, but I feel much better knowing that my computer has a backup and is backed up so that I don’t loose any important client files if something would happen.

You might want to know however, that if you are thinking about backing up to a network disk, connected through a router, that this is not supported by Time Machine simply because it hogs up your entire network connection leaving you unable to do much other things, as well as eats up your bandwidth. This means that you’ll need to have an external drive connected to your computer (or partition an internal drive which is not that recommended since it quite looses the point on a backup outside your computer) the whole time which could be troublesome on laptops.

So for my own example, as long as my external drive is hooked up to my computer, it is taking backups but as soon as I disconnect or go and work someplace other than on my main workspace where I don’t have the external drive connected, Time Machine will not back up my files that I have on the computer which can be a bit troublesome indeed but for me, it works pretty well, since I don’t usually work much away from my external drive due to the size of my internal hard drive.

So in the end, Time Machine is an awesome new feature in Leopard that would be worth the price of the upgrade alone!

Some Final Thoughts

So as you may have realized by now, I’m digging Leopard a lot and I like most of the new features and I can live with the ones I dislike a bit since we are not talking about a real hate.
Overall, my experience these two weeks have been very smooth and nice without any hiccoughs at all, programs playing up, data loss or anything. It runs like a charm even on my 1gig RAM laptop if not a bit faster than Tiger even.

I can only recommend this upgrade and I don’t see any speed bumps either even on low RAM memory as long as you take the correct preparations before you upgrade it can’t go that wrong when you do upgrade. Having a complete hard drive backup (using a program like SuperDuper!) is very recommended and I wouldn’t be doing an upgrade without it. Also checking that the programs you need every day is working under Leopard is a good thing!