Now that WWDC has wrapped up, we’re back at Second Gear HQ recovering from a long week of sessions on the iPhone, Leopard and the upcoming Snow Leopard. WWDC is a great way to get up to speed on new technologies, get help from Apple engineers on those lingering bugs and issue you run into and to just meet with fellow developers. I’m sure it is no surprise that there aren’t too many Cocoa developers in southern Indiana!
The focus now shifts back to working on getting Today 1.2 released. 1.2 is the biggest update since Today shipped back in April and will offer a lot of great features that people have been clamoring for. I don’t want to announce too much just yet, but it is coming very soon.
Oh and we’re working on an iPhone application. More details soon.
photo courtesy of chakote
A lot of people have posted their tips on how to get the most out of WWDC over the week. The Knapsack offer great advice on how to get the most out of the conference itself. Joe Goh, on the other hand, offers some advice on how to survive the amenities and social aspects of WWDC. The Mac Developer Roundtable also recently did an episode which offered other tips for new WWDC attendees.
Having been to two WWDCs in the past, I thought I would offer a different set of advice: how to be healthy at WWDC. Conferences like WWDC are great ways to brush up your development skills, meet with friends and colleagues and just take a break from sitting in front of the computer. Conferences like WWDC are also physically draining. Here’s my tips on how to lessen that drain.
If you have any other tips you’d like to share, feel free to do so in the comments.
In a few weeks, the most hardcore of the Apple faithful, the developers, will be descending upon San Francisco for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple recently released the full schedule of sessions that will be taking place during the session. Using a mix of Today and Adrian Kosmaczewski’s WWDC iCal creator you can have a quick way to see what sessions you plan to be at each day.
Here’s how.
If you’re going to be at WWDC, be sure to come up and say hello. I’ll be the guy wearing the Second Gear t-shirt.
We’re big fans of the Mac software site iusethis. iusethis takes the software update listing site idea to the next level by allowing users to mark each application they use in a Digg-like update.
Presently Today’s iusethis number is pretty small, and certainly not indicative of the number of users that are actively using the application. If you’re using Today, please consider going over to iusethis and adding our application to your profile.
I’d love to get the number of users above 75 by the end of the week. Let’s do it!
Today users around the world are starting to share how they are using the application to make their daily lives easier. Michael R. Grossman, a lawyer in Evanston, IL, is using Today as a way of managing his law practice. He writes:
For now I’ll rely upon Today, a Mac desktop application that displays appointments and tasks on one convenient window, linked with iCal. And since I use iCal and other Mac applications within my practice management workflow, Today will become a regular and useful tool within my daily grind.
If you’re using Today in a fun or unique way, let us know.
One of the best ways to help solidify a new application is to get a review published in one of the major Mac magazines. In the US, Macworld is on top of the heap. Because of this, you couldn’t imagine the joy I experienced when I refreshed my RSS reader and saw that Macworld had published a review of Today 1.1 for their MacGems section.
Dan Frakes writing for Macworld:
On the Mac on which I use iCal, I find Today to be very useful for quickly viewing my commitments for the day… Since I donâ€(tm)t like to keep iCal open when I’m not actively using it, I’ve long wished Apple would offer an easy way to create new events and tasks without having to open iCal each time.
The article is only online presently, but I’m sure it will appear in a future edition of the magazine. If you haven’t tried Today, hopefully Dan’s review will entice you to give it a shot.
If you would like to review Today in your magazine, blog or podcast, be sure to contact us
I have a feeling a lot of new software is going to be coming out today. Why is that? The Apple Design Awards deadline is today!
Second Gear is no different. We have been working hard on an update to address some of the biggest customer requests we’ve received since we released version 1.0 last month. With that in mind, may I present Today 1.1!
Rumor has it people wanted to be able to filter out what calendars show up in Today. Who knew? As of Today 1.1, you can now show as many, or as few calendars as you so desire in Today thanks to our new calendar filtering support. Inside Today’s preferences window you can select what calendars you want to appear in Today’s event and task sections.
Today 1.1 also introduces some other small changes that people have been clamoring for. All-day events now show up as All Day rather than 12:00AM - 12:00PM. You can also set the location of where your events are going to take place. If you want to see everything that has changed, be sure to checkout the changelog.
Download Today 1.1 and give it a shot. We hope you enjoy the update.
Periodically, I am going to use Downshift to highlight some of the third-party hardware and software used at Second Gear HQ. The Mac is chock full of excellent independent and small Mac developers. It’s one of the most redeeming qualities of being a Mac user in my opinion.
During the development of Today, I became a big fan of site-specific browsers (SSBs) and this is completely thanks to Todd Ditchendorf’s Fluid. Fluid allows you to create an dedicated Web browser for any Web site you happen to visit. We host our Subversion repositories at Beanstalk and use Porchlight to keep track of our bugs and milestones so having an SSB for each of these in my Dock is great. Being able to command-tab or invoke my bug repository via Quicksilver is awesome.
Fluid is a free download and requires Mac OS X Leopard. If you use Web applications like Gmail or Backpack extensively, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Twitter is definitely a favorite of the Mac community and Second Gear is no different. We did create the most popular Twitter client for the iPhone after all.
I’ve personally been using Twitter for almost two years to chirp about what I’m up to or thinking about, so it seemed obvious to create an official Second Gear account to discuss company-related stuff. Periodically I’ll update the account with product updates, contests and maybe some coupon codes.
We also have a separate Twitter account for PocketTweets that we have been using to keep users up-to-date on updates to our favorite iPhone client. And just for fun, if you’re interested in following me personally, you can too.