OmniFocus 2 for Mac from a Reminders User’s Perspective

There was a time when I thought that I needed a powerful GTD app to be productive. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that all I need, really, is just a list of things to remember and some calendar events. I’ve been using Apple’s Reminders and Calendar with iCloud as my primary todo systems for over a year now, and my schedule hasn’t been disrupted by a cataclysm of missed appointments and overflowing todo lists.

It’s with this mindset that I approached OmniFocus 2 for Mac, released today as a new version of The Omni Group’s popular GTD software: fundamentally, I don’t need the app. But as an old OmniFocus user who switched over to Apple’s less flexible Reminders and stayed with it in spite of its (sometimes disarming) simplicity, I thought it’d be interesting to evaluate OmniFocus 2 with a fresh pair of eyes and a genuine curiosity for the work put into this new version.

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Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone Update Brings New Repair Tool, 16-Bits per Channel Support, and More

The Apple Design Award winning image editor Pixelmator today received a notable update with a new repair tool, 16-bits per channel support, and a lock layers feature amongst other more minor tweaks and bug fixes. The update, dubbed Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone, is now available for download on the Mac App Store, where it is a free update for existing customers and US$29.99 for new customers.

“Packed with incredible features, Pixelmator 3.2 Sandstone delivers the most empowering image editing experience Pixelmator fans have ever had,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Redeveloped from the ground up Repair Tool, 16-bits per channel support and Lock Layers feature make Pixelmator an excellent image editor that is just as fun and easy-to-use as it is powerful.”

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Facebook Adding Audio Recognition Feature→

Ellis Hamburger, writing for The Verge about Facebook’s “audio recognition”, an upcoming feature to tag music and TV shows when posting to the service with the Facebook app:

Facebook’s implementation, in fact, only works in the US for now, can recognize only 160 TV channels, struggles to recognize music in commercials (which are a big part of Shazam’s business), and only recognizes a few million songs so far. In most cases Shazam works seamlessly, an important part of the company’s secret sauce, but Facebook isn’t exactly competing with Shazam here. Facebook’s audio recognition is designed not to help you figure out what’s playing, but to make it as easy as possible to update your friends about what you’re listening to or watching.

An interesting experiment to drive traffic to Facebook pages for artists and TV shows, but far from a Shazam or SoundHound competitor. Much of the appeal of those apps is that you don’t need to post your discoveries anywhere, whereas Facebook is simply building a feature for the Post interface.

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Bounden, A Dancing Game for Two Players→

Developed by Game Oven in collaboration with the Dutch National Ballet, Bounden is a new iPhone dancing game for two players. The game uses the iPhone’s gyroscope and lets you “twist and twirl elegantly, or get entangled with a friend” in an experience that seems reminiscent of Game Oven’s previous work with Fingle and Bam fu for iOS, both games aimed at blurring the line between multitouch and physical interactions in iOS games.

Bounden looks like a unique concept, best explained by the promo video above and the developers’ description:

Holding either end of a device, you tilt the device around a virtual sphere following a path of rings. You swing your arms and twist your body, and before you know it, you are already dancing.

Bounden is $3.99 on the App Store, and Game Oven published a series of Making Of videos in a Vimeo album showing the game’s evolution and first demos with professional dancers and game journalists. Also worth reading: Kill Screen’s preview of the game from a couple of months ago.

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Netflix Expanding to Six European Countries Later This Year

Reuters is reporting today, with confirmation from the Netflix Twitter account, that Netflix will expand its international availability to six European countries later this year. Whilst Netflix is already available in a number of European countries including the United Kingdom, Norway and Finland, this latest international push is significant as it includes the major markets of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Netflix previously said it planned a substantial expansion in Europe this year but had not said specifically where. The costs of launching in the new markets will keep the company’s international unit at a loss, Netflix said in an April 21 letter to shareholders.

The pricing and programming that will be offered in these new regions will be announced by Netflix at a later date. But it is reasonable to expect that the new regions will launch with all of Netflix’s original content such as ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Orange is the New Black’ as well as a limited mix of licensed movies and television shows, including those from the respective local markets.

In our recent feature on Mapping The International Availability of Entertainment Services we compared the availability of Netflix to other digital movie and TV stores and streaming services such as iTunes, Hulu and Xbox Video. Included below is an updated version of our map and graph which demonstrates how this expansion will impact on Netflix’s global availability. (Please note these interactive elements are only viewable in a browser and will not render in RSS or read it later services).
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Apple Releases WWDC 2014 App

As with previous years, Apple today updated its official WWDC app for the upcoming developer conference, which will kick off in San Francisco on June 2.

The WWDC 2014 app is available for free on the App Store, and it can be used by attendees to browse times, locations, and descriptions for sessions, labs, and special events, but, for developers who weren’t selected for a ticket by Apple’s lottery system, the app will also provide a handy way to view session videos (which will be uploaded throughout the week) and sync video playback across devices using iCloud. The app, redesigned since last year’s version, will include Passbook support to speed up on-site registration for attendees, combining inline maps with favorites to find a specific location inside Moscone West and mark a session or lab as important so it won’t be missed.

You can download Apple’s WWDC 2014 app here. WWDC 2014 kicks off on Monday, June 2.

iWork for iCloud Updated with Improved Collaboration, New Exports→

Dan Moren has an overview of the changes Apple brought to iWork for iCloud today:

Several of the most prominent updates apply to all three of the apps in the suite: You can now have up to 100 collaborators in a single document at the same time—which hopefully won’t be too confusing—and you can choose from almost 200 new fonts. There are also additional options in the color panel, and you can finally create and format both 2D and interactive charts.

Apple has been making frequent and useful improvements to its iWork apps over the past few months. After reading about today’s update for the web apps, I decided to check out the collaborative editing again, and it’s now much better than what it used to be.

Once invited to collaborate on a document in iWork for iCloud, other users can edit their display name in a sharing menu; the name will be assigned a color, which will be shown as a cursor in the document while edits are being made in real-time. The experience is highly reminiscent of Google Drive for the web, and it worked well in my tests with a couple of other users. I could see edits in real-time in the browser, and I didn’t end up with duplicates or dialogs asking me to “take action”.

I don’t know if the collaborative changes were rolled out today or in the past few months, but I’m impressed by the progress that’s been made so far and it’s worth pointing it out. The native iWork apps for OS X and iOS still don’t support the same real-time editing of the iCloud versions, which is why we can’t switch to Pages full-time yet. I really like Apple’s implementation of collaborative editing on the web (you can “jump” to a user’s cursor by clicking their name), and I can’t wait to have the same features on iOS.

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