I lived in simpler times then. My Mac was my primary work and home machine. The App Store was in its infancy. Cloud computing was barely on the radar, and our cars were large metal beasts with fins on the back and double-barreled carburetors (that’s a joke, folks).  As the years went on, the cloud has become more than something that just causes rain delays at baseball games. The number of devices I own has grown and Things’ lack of cloud syncing became a major hassle. So, I switched to OmniFocus. It was not, as they say, a match made in heaven. OmniFocus is a fantastic app. It wasn’t the app for me, though, and I used it sparingly. My chief complaint was that I felt like I was bending to OmniFocus’s will instead of the other way around. I don’t have complicated task management needs. I just needed a way to track things I’m afraid I will forget.

When Cultured Code announced recently that, finally, after four [censored] years that stinking syncing was finally here, I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait to try it out. Here’s my take on the new software.

Your tasks, flinging through the air

Things 2 (available via the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store) allows you to sync your tasks using Cultured Code’s free Sync Server; it does not use iCloud. When I think about syncing, I equate it to watching a routine double play with one out in baseball. Shortstop grabs the ball, flips it to the second baseman for the force out, who tosses it to first for the final out. End of the inning. In syncing with Things now, when I make a change on one device, all the other devices get the change. End of the process.

Double plays and syncing are supposed to be so routine that most of the time you never take notice of them. So far in my testing and usage, Things has made the routine double plays. It hasn’t launched the ball into the stands or let the grounder dribble through its legs. The syncing has been fast with no lag. I check off a task on my iPhone and a split second later it’s checked off my iPad and Mac. While Things Cloud is clearly designed for syncing data, the benefit to single device users is easy data recovery in the event of a hard drive failure. Just reinstall Things and turn Things Cloud back on. Boom, your tasks are back.

Yeah, it took them four years. I have no idea why it took so long and at this point I don’t care why. I’m just glad it’s here.

The Today view

Responding to customer feedback, Cultured Code has improved the Today view to give you the flexibility to easily flag a task as one you will complete today or move the end date. Previously, it would automatically place tasks due today in the view, but there was no way to tell if you had placed in your task in the Today view, or if Things placed it there. It was also a little cumbersome moving the tasks around if your priorities changed.

The new and improved Today view gives you a list of tasks due today (or overdue tasks). From there you can either tell Things you’re planning on working on that task today, or you can tap “Later” and quickly assign a new date for it. I really like this view. It’s pretty easy for me to look at my day and quickly prioritize my tasks.

Things also has a Someday view where you can put tasks you don’t want to commit to a completion date. That’s where a lot of my article ideas that I haven’t pitched yet go, for instance.

The final checkbox

I like Things 2 enough to be a replacement for my daily driver for task management. I love the clean layout and for my relatively modest needs it doesn’t feel like overkill. If you need a task management system that has more features than Apple’s Reminders app, Things is a good suite that I’m glad to add back to my toolbox.

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After iPad announcement day, I provoked a lot of controversy by writing that I felt that the iPad could serve as a travel computer for me. After handling it and trying out its features, I’m now even more convinced that is true.

I’m a writer, more specifically a professional blogger. I’m not doing heavyweight computer tasks when I travel. In fact, I’m usually not even writing when I’m on the road except for brief updates to my web sites. I’m answering email, conducting text-based research on the web, taking notes, and doing other lightweight tasks.

I’m not the only writer or blogger who thinks the iPad can help in their work. After a week with an iPad in hand, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko raved about how useful the gadget is for his workflow on TWIT last week. Mashable’s Ben Parr wrote one of his recent posts completely on the iPad, although he admitted that a few things were a pain, like working with images.

The only real processor- or software-heavy task that I did during my last extended business trip was edit photos in Adobe Lightroom on my return flight, which could easily have waited till I got home. It certainly wasn’t worth hauling around a computer that weighs three times as much as an iPad for almost a week just to get a two-hour head start on my photo processing.

The first thing I noticed when getting my hands on an iPad was how big it was. The size was surprising. I had expected the screen to feel smaller than it does. This was good news for its usability for many of the tasks that I do. Many of these tasks, such as web browsing, can also be done on my iPhone but the small screen makes them awkward. The iPad provides the screen real estate to take notes, browse and read without getting a headache from it.

Besides being large, the screen is also gorgeous. The resolution is wonderful and it is just a joy to look at. As spoiled as I am by using my iPhone screen on a daily basis, the iPad screen is even more beautiful, although it obviously gets streaky easily.

Another thing I noticed almost immediately was the speed of the device. It responds to commands lightning-fast compared to my iPhone. This kind of processor power raises interesting possibilities for what the iPad may be able to do in apps that the iPhone can’t, such as in the area of photo editing. There is already at least one photo editor out for the iPad, PhotoGene, that looks to be very robust.

A lot of commenters on my previous iPad article suggested that instead of an iPad I get a netbook for my travel needs. While there is a price penalty for buying the iPad over a netbook, I see the iPad as a better option for me for several reasons:

• Weight: The iPad is half the weight of most netbooks — an important carrying consideration for someone with arthritis in their back.
• Compatibility: Since I’m already heavily embedded in the Mac OS ecosystem (I use an iPhone and MacBook with iCal, Contacts and Mobile Me, for instance), all my data will sync natively very easily with another Apple device. I use the iWork suite, so having a device that can use those files is definitely a plus. I can design presentations at home in Keynote and then take them on the road using the iPad. I can take transfer text notes back and forth in Pages.
• Speed: The tablet format and quick-boot OS will make it much easier to do quickie tasks (such as making a short note in an application like Evernote) than a netbook. Juggling a netbook for such tasks while standing would be awkward at best, and I could be done and have the iPad put away again before the netbook would probably even be booted up.
• Connectivity: For me, the 3G iPad, with its no contract pay-as-you-go connectivity, is the one to have. To have cellular system access with a netbook, I’d have to pay for a connection device like a MiFi or wireless card, which means paying every month for an expensive service whether I really need it that month or not. With the iPad 3G plan, I can have (and pay for) connectivity only when I need it.
• Battery Life: Both the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Andy Ihnatko are on record as saying the iPad can get 11 hours or more of battery life using power saving settings. This far exceeds the average netbook and is just one more reason the iPad is a superior travel device.

So, how do I imagine utilizing the iPad on my next business trip?

First, I have to gear up. I’ll have an iPad with 3G. I’ll install the following apps: Evernote, iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote), Things and WordPress (please see disclosure at the bottom). I’ll take the camera connectivity kit and an external keyboard with me, but the keyboard can stay at the hotel during the day which means I save the weight of hauling it.

Some preparation at home will make my life easier on the road. I’ll add to the iPad’s onboard photo library any photos I think I may want to use from my archives while at the event. I can export my Notebooks from Circus Ponies’ Notebook program to view as web sites in Safari if I think I’ll need them. I’ll also prepare in advance blank draft blog posts that are pre-completed with thumbnail photos (for instance, the event logo) and any advertising banners I intend to use. This will save cutting & pasting and photo editing on the road, and will make posting faster in general. All I’ll have to do is write content and use the camera connection kit or my iPhone camera to add pictures to my posts.

Once on the road, I’ll use Evernote and Pages for taking notes, WordPress or Safari for doing my web posting, Things for editorial planning and Keynote for any presentations. Any contact or calendar changes that I make will be synced to Mobile Me for backup. I can store and pull files that I need from Mobile Me or Dropbox.

I am really looking forward to the day that I can leave my laptop at home when I pack my suitcase.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Gear

I accumulated a lot of new gear in 2009, but that doesn’t stop me from still having some gear goals for 2010. One of those goals I already fulfilled by purchasing a Canon 270ex flash for my Canon XS last week. I can now avoid the recurring expense of renting a 430ex ii when I attend trade shows, and the 270 will do the job with less weight to carry.

Like Simon, I’m looking forward to an upgrade to my iPhone 3G when I’m eligible this summer, right after the traditional new model rollout time. I’ve also been shopping for EVDO card options after our Christmas week Internet outage (and another one caused by our cold snap this week in Florida) made me realize I needed a better Internet access back-up plan. So far, I’m leaning toward a MiFi from Verizon.

I’d also like a 15” MacBook Pro to upgrade the MacBook I bought as a refurb last April. I didn’t anticipate that machine becoming my primary computer (it waved goodbye to my Vista desktop once I got my hands on that MacBook) and the 13” screen gets a little cramped. But that may have to wait until 2011.

Work

My business and career were expanded greatly in 2009. I aim to continue to carry that momentum into 2010 in several ways.

The first goal was already met, with the successful relaunch a few days ago of the scrapbook audio show that I co-host online called Paperclipping Roundtable. I also am working on constructing a brand web site for my media company, and plan on rolling out some additional web properties for the company during 2010. Unlike previous properties the company has experimented with, these properties will offer content somewhat related to the main Scrapbook Update topic, part of a move toward a more cohesive vision for the company.

My goals also include making progress toward becoming an established speaker in the areas that I work in. I also hope to have the opportunity to travel more so that I can do more in-person professional networking.

Personal

Like several other WebWorkerDaily folk, one of my 2010 goals is to get a lot of reading done. I also wish to spend more time on my scrapbook hobby, instead of just on my scrapbook job. Another goal is to simplify our home to more easily accommodate our busy schedules. And perhaps most important of all is my goal for my autistic six-year-old daughter, which is to finish the process of toilet training her. We’ve made major progress on that in the past six weeks and fully achieving that would be a major milestone in her development.

If a few of these sound suspiciously like the resolutions I’ve said I abhor, then I’ll tell you that I think of them as projects. And my Things is loaded down with projects for 2010. It’s going to be a busy year, but I think it’s going to be a really good one.

Does using the term “project” make a goal seem less intimidating to you?

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To be blunt, it sounds like Baranovsky doesn’t get out much. If he did, he’d be in touch with the new generation of web series creators, who are playing with their cameras, trying new things and making new deals. There is so much happening here that, frankly, we can’t cover it all. But heaven help us, we’re trying. Because we are watching the new stuff. And each new great show is another reason not to give up.

Baranovksy looks to us at NewTeeVee, as well as the fine folk at Tubefilter and Tilzy as part of the solution:

As journalists, it’s their job to find the little nuggets of gold — shows that perhaps no one is watching — and not only review them, but champion them… Tim Goodman of the SF Chronicle was a huge supporter of Arrested Development and one of the reasons that helped them continue production. Yes, it’s the SF Chronicle — but I know the guys at Tilzy, Tubefilter and NewTeeVee — all are extremely talented journalists and I think if they tried hard, they could really help propel shows forward.

Championship happens, it’s just that there are so many shows to champion that the praise gets spread thin. The reason why we at NewTeeVee don’t really push shows to “the mass public” is that we’re an industry publication, not a major market newspaper. Even so, shows and creators we’ve written about have found distribution, achieved sponsorships and won awards — and I’ve received emails directly attributing our coverage for those developments. Plus, we don’t give low-quality no-budget series a pat on the head and a pass, instead talking more honestly about the lesser achievers in the hopes that the medium may grow and evolve.

Baranovsky’s complaint seems more to be that he hasn’t HEARD of any new and exciting web series, not that they don’t exist. Yuri, you want 10 quality indie shows, made in the last year, to watch? Here you go: Bumps in the Night, Grass Roots, Coma, Period, Ignite, In the Moment, Love Pop Trash, My Roommate the Cylon, Project Rant, Real Life With Married People, Sandwich of Terror, Scotty Got an Office Job, Speedie Date, The Book of Jer3miah, Zerks’ Log… Oh, I guess that’s more than 10. Whoops.

To be honest, a lot of the series mentioned above will not find a huge audience. That’s because more niche shows have popped up that appeal to specific communities — In the Moment is targeted towards gay audiences, for example, while The Book of Jer3miah was made for Mormons, by Mormons. And that’s one of the brilliant things about the current state of the medium — under-served audiences are finally getting content, and reasonably well-made content, that appeals to them. Added bonus: The hardcore web series community gets to learn more about a subculture that maybe it wouldn’t have otherwise. We don’t feel like this is a bad thing.

And in regards to his hope that new media might become a “farm league” for old media, it’s already happening. Dan Harmon created an NBC sitcom, College Humor got another MTV series, Bo Burnham got scooped up by Judd Apatow…the list goes on and on. Not to mention the fact that there are also a lot of creators working in new media, like the cited Big Fantastic, who seem pretty damn happy to be creating original web content. For creators excited not by the idea of getting a call from Steven Spielberg, but by being able to tell their own stories on their own terms, the idea of web content being a farm league is even a little insulting.

This would all be much easier if there was a more coherent central web series ratings system. But for the moment much of the potential viewing data remains private and disaggregated, which is a shame as it keeps us from having a community-wide awareness of what everyone really is watching, not just talking about.

Because it honestly sounds like Baranovsky’s fallen into the trap that I’ve heard no shortage of web professionals complain about recently: Many of those working in the space simply aren’t watching a lot of web content anymore, because they’re too busy making it. Thus, they’re not discovering anything new, and forgetting how fast-evolving and frankly awesome this medium can be.

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I’m a huge fan of Cultured Code’s Things (both on the desktop and iPhone). A few weeks ago, I sent them what I thought to be a simple question: “Can I sync Things on the iPhone with two different desktops?” I’m giving some thought to getting a netbook and hackintoshing it and was curious if I could sync Things with it and my MacBook. I got back a response along these lines: “Not yet, but we’re working on it.”

In a recent blog post titled “This is not a roadmap,” Cultured Code, um, laid out a roadmap — kinda, sorta, maybe. Its “a roadmap by any other name” hints at the following upcoming features:

• Things 1.2 for the desktop (due out in about two weeks) will improve keyboard support, especially shortcuts and tabbing behavior. Why the focus on keyboard shortcuts, you might ask? “Well, you’ll see when we release 1.2,” they said.
• After 1.2, they will have more gerbils to feed the wheel, err, developers to code Things, and the feature set for the following release hints at fun things: Over-the-air sync, performance, bug fixes, easier collaboration,mixed projects, and better communication of how dates work.

They claim they’ve been working on over-the-air syncing for a while, especially a method not requiring MobileMe (or any WebDAV). One of the issues I have with how Things on the iPhone currently works is there’s no push notification of tasks due today; while there is a badge count, I must open the app to have it refresh. In the blog post, Cultured Code promises version 1.5 of Things for the iPhone and Touch will have push notifications — they are currently at version 1.3, so this could take some time. An over-the-air sync that will allow me to keep my iPhone and multiple Macs up to date would thrill me.

Collaboration I’m less interested in. While I do use Things to manage projects at work, I’m the only user of Things, so this is of limited value to me. Mixed projects it claims are “the ability for active projects to also contain inactive and scheduled items.” I’m not 100 percent sure what it means by that, but if it helps me remember the status report I keep forgetting to do every week, I won’t complain.

You can read more about the changes in this blog post. According to a follow-up comment by the developers, all 1.x updates will be free updates. As a gigantic Things user, I’m looking forward to upcoming releases.

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I’ve struggled for years to try to find the right solution for me. I’ve used a Franklin Planner, a Palm T/X, Microsoft Outlook , Remember The Milk, and a few other options. Nothing ever seemed quite right for me, though, and at times I found myself scribbling on paper pads still.

That was the case until I bought my first Mac and started looking for a task list for OS X. One of my friends recommended Things from Cultured Code. I almost didn’t try it because of the price ($49.95 desktop, $9.95 iPhone app). Thankfully, there is a free trial of the desktop application, so I was able to check it out without committing to the hefty price tag. It’s good that there’s a free trial, because I would otherwise have passed it by.

Put simply, Things has been the solution I’ve been searching for. It has revolutionized my productivity. It works with my natural flow, instead of against it.

I like to make long lists of tasks. There are urgent tasks that I have to get done immediately, the ones I need to get around to soon, and my projects and long-term items. Things gives me ways to track all of those items, without them having to be in my face all the time making me feel overwhelmed.

The desktop version of Things is very Leopard in its look and feel. It is simple, uncluttered and intuitive to use. It syncs with both iCal and the company’s iPhone app (via Wi-Fi).

I can easily drag-and-drop my tasks between the Today, Next and Someday lists to prioritize them. I can use tags or areas of responsibility to filter the list to show only certain types of tasks.

It isn’t quite as easy to move tasks around on the iPhone app. Since drag-and-drop isn’t an option there, it takes a few more steps. But the iPhone app is excellent for adding items on the go, or reviewing your current list and marking tasks complete.

One of my favorite functions in Things is the ability to make project lists. For a large project with multiple tasks or steps, I can create a project list of all those tasks and then drag individual tasks to my Today or Next lists while still also viewing them as part of the project as a whole. If a time comes when I am focusing almost solely on a project (such as the trade show I have in a few days) I can use the project list as my main working list.

Scheduled tasks are probably my other favorite feature of Things. For a future task, either a one-time or a recurring one, it is easy to create a scheduled item that will not appear on my main lists until I need to see it. This avoids distracting clutter and keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by tasks that don’t actually need to be seen at the moment.

Task management that fits well with how I think and work is worth the price of Things to me.  I am getting more things done, and feeling less stressed about it. That is priceless.

Do you love your task manager? Or are you still looking?

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Apple announced the winners of the 2009 Apple Design Awards last night at a special ceremony hosted by John Geleynse, director of Software Technology Evangelism, and Shann Pruden, senior director for Developer Relations. These awards are an annual affair to recognize “technical excellence, innovation, and outstanding achievement in iPhone and Mac software development.”

The depth and breadth of submissions has been accelerating, as interest in the Mac and iPhone has picked up over the last few years. As a point of comparison, the iPhone awards last year were handed out to early pre-release apps because the App Store had not even launched yet. There were about 1,700 web apps in Apple’s online directory, and this year there are over 4,000 web apps and more than 50,000 native apps available in the iTunes App Store.

Rather than being split out into categories for best game, best user experience, best application, and so on as has been the practice in past years, this year’s awards were simply organized into Mac and iPhone showcases. Here are the 2009 winners.

iPhone Developer Showcase

MLB.com At Bat 2009 from MLB.com

Postage from Rogue Sheep

Topple 2 from ngmoco:)

Tweetie from atebits

Mac OS X Leopard Developer Showcase

Billings from Marketcircle Inc.

BoinxTV from Boinx Software

Things from Cultured Code

Versions from Sofa

Student Awards

Wooden Labyrinth 3D from Elias Pietil

Fontcase from Pieter Omvlee

iPhone OS 3.0

AccuTerra Beta from AccuTerra

This last entry is pretty interesting. We saw lots of exciting and innovative apps in the WWDC Keynote on Monday that take advantage of the new features of iPhone OS 3.0, but AccuTerra was not presented there. The technologies utilized in this new hike tracking app are pretty extensive, though. I’m definitely looking forward to checking this out when it becomes available.

For more information about this year’s winners, here are some articles from TheAppleBlog that mention a few of them…

Weekly App Store Picks: March 14, 2009 (Topple 2)

Tweetie for Mac Update: Now With Video Tweeting

Billings 3 Brings Welcome Updates, Fresh Design

BoinxTV: Broadcasting for the rest of us

BoinxTV Now Shipping

Task Management With Things

12 Subversion Apps for OS X

Keep Your Fonts Together With Fontcase

Fonts 201: Font Management Apps for the Mac

Task Management With Things

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Intrigued, I rushed off to download it, and having played with it for a few days, I can say that it’s very close to what I’m looking for – perhaps as close as I will get without buying a Mac.

Tudumo is a tiny 2 MB download, although it does require the not-so-tiny Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, so if you don’t have that on your machine already you’ll be prompted to download it during the install.

After installing Tudumo, the first thing you notice is that it has a very clean, minimal interface. The functionality is straightforward too: add actions, filter your view, group actions under headings.

Tudumo showing all actions

Each action can be assigned a state (Next Action, Action, On Hold, Done, Waiting For and Someday/Maybe), given start and due dates (good for deferred actions), tagged and have notes added to it.

Tudumo keeps its clean look as you add more actions to your to-do lists. You can filter your view by heading, tag, date or action state. So when you’re working, you can set Tudumo to only show you Next Actions, and that way you won’t be distracted by actions that don’t need your attention yet.

Filtered view showing only Next Actions

Tudumo is pretty flexible as a to-do list manager: it doesn’t constrain you to the GTD model. Indeed, in the documentation you’ll see that Tudumo’s goal “is not to exhaustively represent all areas of GTD, but rather to create an enjoyable and effective day-to-day experience that includes some GTD concepts.” This suits me perfectly as my own system is based around GTD, but doesn’t follow it too religiously. I have Tudumo set up to use tags for contexts (“@Work”, “@Home”, etc.,  although as I noted in my review of uTodo, I only tend to use GTD for “work stuff” so contexts aren’t so important to me), with Projects under their own headings.

It’s nice to see that the menus at the top of the app are pretty minimal, and most of the action takes place in the app’s main pane. It’s easy to work with Tudumo using the mouse: drag-and-drop works exactly as you’d expect, you can edit fields by double-clicking on them. There are handy tool-tips to help you navigate when you’re starting out.

However, to get super-productive with Tudumo, you’ll want to learn the keyboard shortcuts. Happily, there are shortcuts for nearly everything you can do with the app. Even if you just learn the basics (add new action, add new heading, change state), you’ll be flying.

There are a couple of features that I really liked in Things that you won’t find in Tudumo. Firstly, Tudumo is missing a global hotkey for adding actions. However, it sits in the system tray when closed, like uTodo, so it’s never too far away. Secondly, the ability to state that actions should recur would be really handy. Richard tells me that he’s working on this capability, but you’ll have to make do without for now. I’d also like to see tag auto-completion, and it’s worth noting that Tudumo can’t handle task hierarchy and subheadings (so you can’t have projects-within-projects).

Due to its tiny size, Tudumo can easily fit on a USB stick. It’s also pleasing to see that you can export your data to a CSV file – if you decide to stop using the app, your data is not locked away inside it. It also features auto-saving.

If you’re looking for a simple, intuitive and uncluttered GTD app for Windows, you should check Tudumo out.  There’s a 60-day free trial available so you can whether it suits your working style; after that a license costs $29.95 (including free updates for a year). Upcoming features include the aforementioned recurring actions and web sync.

Have you tried Tudumo? What did you think?

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Many Mac users are fortunate enough to have more than one machine. Whether it’s a home desktop and laptop, or a home and office machine, it can be very useful to keep some form of continuity between the two systems. This is easy enough to do with individual files — simply using an online service such as Dropbox or Syncplicity to keep everything synchronized between two machines. But what about applications?

This article will explain how easy it is to keep many popular applications in sync between more than one computer. It doesn’t involve putting all your data on ‘the cloud’ — you still have a local copy if a service closes down for any reason. The steps outlined work for the applications noted here, and may well be applicable to a different piece of software you’d like to keep synchronized. We’ve previously written how to achieve something similar for your iTunes library, but will now take the idea a little further, extending it to other apps.

How Does It Work?

Every application on your Mac has some form of preference or library file — this is where all your application data is stored. What this solution proposes is to store this file on the Dropbox server, rather than simply as a local file. It means that whenever the file changes on one computer, the change is automatically copied across to another machine. When you open the app on another Mac, everything should look the same as you left it previously on the other computer.

Is It Secure?

Dropbox is an extremely secure service, encrypting your information before transmitting it across the Internet. In addition, it supports file ‘versioning’ — this means that if you find that your application preferences are accidentally corrupted or overwritten, it’s simple to revert to an older version through Dropbox. If anything, placing your application library or preferences in more than one location is safer that relying on one sole computer.

Existing Solutions

Many of the applications which are bundled with your Mac are able to sync through Apple’s MobileMe service — iCal, Address Book, Mail, Dashboard and Safari Bookmarks for instance. This works great, and you might not need to use the Dropbox strategy for those applications. I’d recommend sticking to MobileMe for these, as it ensures syncing works well with your iPhone or iPod as well as between Macs.

Getting Started

The first step is to create a Dropbox account if you haven’t already. You receive 2GB of storage for free — probably enough for most simple applications — but you can upgrade to more if you’d like to keep a more data-heavy app in sync. The next step is to locate the library file for that application. For the purposes of this walkthrough, I’ll be using Things, a popular task manager.

The location of the library for Things is at:

User > Library > Preferences > Application Support > Cultured Code > Things

The path is likely to be similar for other applications, and a few examples are shown later on.

Moving Files and Syncing with Dropbox

The next step is a little more complicated. Essentially we need to do two things:

1. Move the library into your Dropbox folder
2. Create an ‘alias’ to tell Things where to find the new library location

First, close the application in question — ensure that it is completely shut down. Before you do anything, back up the library or preferences file — I can’t stress enough that you should make a copy of the file(s) you’re planning to move, to ensure that if you make a mistake at any point you’re able to simply put them back as before.

The next step is to move the library to your Dropbox folder, usually User > Dropbox. It should sync as normal.

At the moment, when you open Things it will still look for the library in the original location. This is no good, and we need to create an ‘alias’ in place of the library to point Things to your Dropbox folder. This takes three steps:

1. Right click the ‘Things’ folder in your Dropbox area, and click ‘Make Alias’
2. Move the alias which is created (represented by a folder with an arrow) to the original location: User > Library > Preferences > Application Support > Cultured Code
3. Rename the alias to whatever the original folder or file was called, in this case simply ‘Things’

Here are a couple of screenshots showing a ‘before and after’ view of our library folder:

Showing the original Things folder, before we moved it to Dropbox

After moving the original folder and replacing it with an 'alias', this is what you should see

Opening Things should now work as normal, with the application automatically being redirected to the new location of your library.

Setting Up Your Second Computer

You then need to follow the same process on your other computer. Providing you don’t have any information in the application, delete the library file and create an alias from your Dropbox folder in the exact same way.

I wouldn’t recommend using both computers at the same time as you’re likely to lose data, but moving from one to the other (and closing Things each time) should ensure that your data is kept in sync wonderfully!

Other Applications

Things is simply used as an example here. A few other applications, along with the location of their library/preferences data are:

• Camino: User/Library/Application Support/Camino
• LittleSnapper: Simply alter the library location in the app preferences
• 1Password: Change the library location in the app preferences (more info
• iTunes: See our walkthrough
• Bento: User/Library/Application Support/Bento

Conclusion

I hope you’ve found the walkthrough easy to follow and feel confident to experiment with syncing application preferences and data between your Macs. Providing you always back up your information first, there’s no harm in trying the process out with any of your favorite apps.

I’d be interested to hear how you get on, and do let me know which applications you end up syncing on a regular basis!

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Wednesday at Macworld Expo marked a distinct change from the hectic activity around the keynote and the open of the show floor. The big news today was the announcement of the Best of Show awards from Macworld. The products recognized this year are…

Best of Macworld 2009

• iPhoto ’09
• Cisco WebEx Meeting Center
• Things
• Ecamm Network BT-1 Bluetooth Web Cam
• Filemaker Pro 10
• HP MediaSmart Server
• Livescribe Pulse Smartpen
• Daylite Touch
• Sling Media SlingPlayer for iPhone

Our Impressions

iPhoto ’09 is a great upgrade and worthy of the attention, despite the appearance of Google’s Picassa for Mac as a possible competitor. We love Things around here, and quite a few of us actually use it to try and stay on top of, well, things. We introduced you to the Ecamm Bluetooth Web Cam on Monday. Filemaker Pro 10 is a nice update. I talked to a few developers today that are looking forward to the new scripting features, but the UI overhaul is just something that’s long overdue. Daylite Touch really redefines what an iPhone app is capable of doing. We had a chance to talk with Marketcircle yesterday and will share our impressions of using the app soon. One thing I can let slip now, this is definitely not going to be a $.99 app store purchase. Daylite Touch is a full-featured app that rivals what you can do with a desktop app and you should expect it to be priced accordingly.

The Rest of the Best

The HP MediaSmart Server is a really interesting solution for home users that want to store and share media. SlingPlayer is very cool and something to keep an eye on as soon as it gets released to the app store this quarter. We’ll bring you more info on that announcement soon, along with some details on the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, and Cisco WebEx Meeting Center.

Other Announcements

If you’ve been wondering what happened to the Xserve RAID team after that product was discontinued, several of them have resurfaced at startup Active Storage. I had a chance to talk with Alex Grossman on Wednesday and I am very impressed with the attention to detail, and the particular attention to the needs of Mac users, that Active Storage has put into their products. If you are looking for high-density storage solutions that you can easily manage from the Mac, you may not need to look any further than Active Storage.

Intelliscanner has a new update to their SoHo and Mini scanners. If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to get organized and catalog stuff around your house, you’ll love this little scanners and the accompanying software.

Axiotron recruited Steve Wozniak to demo their new Modbook Pro this week. The Modbook Pro, as the name suggest, is based on the MacBook Pro system just as the Modbook is based on the Apple MacBook.

Ambrosia, one of my favorite developers, is announcing iToner 2 and WireTap Studio 1.0.7 this week. iToner 2 adds three new features: ClearTone to help get the audio levels right so your ringtones always sound great on the iPhone, cropping tools to edit snippets right in iToner, and 40+ professionally mastered ringtones that you can use right out of the box. WireTap Studio has been updated to improve performance and add some new control schemes .

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