App of the Week: Reeder 5

The Reeder widget can serve up articles from blogs I subscribe to or that I have set aside to read later (or both using a stack of widgets).

On episode 18 of Music Ed Tech Talk, Reeder 5 was my App of the Week.

It's a really good app and I thought it was worth linking to the review from MacStories if you want to learn more.

Reeder 5 Review: Read Later Tagging, iCloud Sync, and Design Refinements - MacStories:

Last year we named RSS client Reeder 4 the Best App Update as part of the MacStories Selects awards for a good reason. Reeder has been one of the best-designed RSS apps available for a very long time. With the release of version 4, developer Silvio Rizzi rebuilt the app on a modern foundation from the ground up. Roughly one year later, version 5 is out as a brand new app that takes what Rizzi began last year and extends it further with a host of excellent new features and design refinements.

I don't trust social media to show me what I want. If I like a blog, a Twitter account, or an email newsletter, I subscribe to it through Feedbin, and then read my Feedbin articles through Reeder 5. I also log into my Instapaper account through Reeder 5 and clip articles I want to read later to it with a speedy swipe-left.

On page two of my home screen, I have this medium sized widget at the bottom that rotates between different news sources: Apple News, Apollo, Feedbin, and Instapaper, the later of the two using the Reeder 5 widget. It's a great way to stay on top of the news that's important to me.

Brainstorming ways teachers might be more productive with Microsoft’s New Fluid Framework

Microsoft kicked off a developer conference earlier this week. The Verge writes about a very cool set of forthcoming productivity features.

Microsoft’s new Fluid Office document is Google Docs on steroids - The Verge

Microsoft is creating a new kind of Office document. Instead of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the company has created Lego blocks of Office content that live on the web. The tables, graphs, and lists that you typically find in Office documents are transforming into living, collaborative modules that exist outside of traditional documents.

Microsoft calls its Lego blocks Fluid components, and they can be edited in real time by anyone in any app. The idea is that you could create things like a table without having to switch to multiple apps to get it done, and the table will persist on the web like a Lego block, free for anyone to use and edit.

This is obviously very cool, but it’s the next part that gets me excited.

Fluid is designed to make those tables, charts, and lists always feel alive and editable, no matter where you create them and regardless of how you share and copy them into other apps. Instead of getting a static and dull chart you copied from Excel, you’ll get a chart that can be edited anywhere you paste it, and you’ll see everyone making edits as they happen. That might be in the middle of an email chain, in a chat app like Microsoft Teams, or even third-party apps eventually.

So certain parts of Office documents can be shared between multiple spaces, or with multiple users, across multiple apps. If I am understanding this correctly, I can instantly think of 25 ways this could make my job easier. Here are a few...

1. Copy tasks from a Microsoft To Do project called Field Trip into an email to my music team and have everyone check off tasks in the email as they do them. Status of those completed tasks syncs back to my project in To Do.
2. Say I am logging a spreadsheet of student concert attire orders and I need some data for a few choir kids. I can copy and paste just those cells, email them to the choir teacher, he can fill out the data right in the email, and I watch as it syncs back to my spreadsheet.
3. Similar to that last one. My school district sends me an updated list of recommended private teachers. I email just the flute teachers to my flute students and it stays up to date when the data is edited by those who maintain the list.
4. No more putting the same student names in multiple different documents. I can have one Word document that acts as a primary roster. All concert programs, student lists, sectional roster documents, etc. are just snippets of text from my primary roster document, that automatically update when I update the primary roster. No more misspelled names, inconsistency, or duplicated work.
5. Various data from documents can be clipped into media rich notes in OneNote where I can access them alongside one another without thinking about document management. For example, a short list of Concert Attire tasks could coexist in the same note as a portion of a payment spreadsheet, and both could update in real time when I edit their respective documents in To Do and Excel.

For the reccord, I don't use any of Microsoft's apps as my default tools, but I can certainly see myself using them more often if I can leverage this kind of power out of them.

Some questions I have:

• Will this be web only or will it eventually roll out to Microsoft apps on all platforms?
• Will Microsoft stand alone apps like Excel continue to exist or will they be replaced with one app (like the iPhone which now has an "Office" app that combines features of the whole suite)
• Will this actually catch on with people who are used to saving files to places on their hard drive? It seems ahead of its time.
• Will it compete with Google Docs? Someone needs to. Google Docs gets a only a few things right, but they get them really right, and that's why I think it has been so pervasive. Personally, I would far prefer that my work and personal circles relied on great native apps like Office.
• Will third party apps be able to embed the modular Microsoft elements inside of them, create modular elements to be able to insert in Microsoft docs, or both?
• Would Apple ever consider participating in this framework with their iWorks apps? Would they recreate their own version?

🔀 Guest post: 10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music

This month I wrote a guest post for Midnight Music, an awesome blog and website designed to equip music teachers with technology knowledge and resources.

The post includes about 10 of the productivity apps I use to create, organize, and collaborate on lesson plans in the music classroom. The list covers some of the web tools and native iOS/Mac apps that are most indispensable to my work as a teacher.

Click the link below to head on over to Midnight Music and read the whole thing.

10 Productivity Apps to Help You Organize Your Lesson Plans | Midnight Music:

Everyone likes to organize themselves differently. Teachers prefer different tools, organization methods, and preference over how much of their workflow is digital. Whatever your approach, there are a handful of great apps that can help you create your plans, search them, group them, and collaborate on them. The following apps are some of my favorite tools for managing lesson ideas, plans and resources.

Many of them have similar features as one another, but all of them have unique strengths. My philosophy is that there is always a better and more specific tool for the job.

App of the Week: Anylist —> Grocery Shopping and travel preparation has never been easier

This week’s App of the Week is AnyList.

AnyList is an app for making lists. Why use this? I already have Reminders for basic lists, Due for persistent tasks, OmniFocus for project management, and ToDoist for team collaboration. AnyList solves a grab bag of miscellaneous use cases for me, and offers a handful of other compelling features.

I started out needing a fuss-free list app that could allow me to manage reoccurring lists where I need to uncheck the entire list at the end of a process and start over, without recreating the list. This is useful for repeat grocery list items and a travel packing lists. AnyList was amongst the top recommended apps in this category, so I gave it a download.

On the surface, AnyList offers exactly what I wished for. The user-interface is not bad, but it at least looks like it belongs on iOS. A point in its favor. It works well for grocery lists, but also travel lists. As I continue to promote my book at state level music conferences numerous times a year, I am somehow still a really stressful traveler. Having a stock travel list that I can depend on has been instrumental in my ability to manage these trips and be a sane music educator at the same time. The simple feature of unchecking every item on my list and starting from scratch every time I am preparing for a trip is a game changer for me.

Next, I began to investigate the premium features ---> AnyList is also able to import from the Apple Reminders app, integrate with Amazon Echo, share lists with other users, manage grocery shopping, and manage meal planning. I decided to give the premium subscription a go. 

The Apple Reminders import is great. This allows me to keep my “Grocery” list in the Reminders app. I can say “add eggs to my grocery list” and Siri will add it to Apple Reminders. When I open AnyList, it imports items from that exact list into its own database. AnyList also supports Siri natively so I could say “add eggs to my grocery list with AnyList” and it would do the same thing more directly (though with a fussier syntax). Adding items from the Echo is very convenient as I am often in the kitchen when I realize I need something and can now just speak into the thin air, even if my hands are full while cooking.

Syncing a shared grocery list with my wife is a rock solid experience with AnyList. It happens very fast, and I have never had any duplicate copies. AnyList can also automatically organize your shopping list by which aisle of the grocery store certain items are grouped within. This orders them in a way that all allows me to check them off in store order rather than skipping around constantly. Bonus point! —> The Apple Watch version of the app is actually good, and allows me to interact with my lists smoothly and reliably without fiddling with my phone in the store. (Yes, I realize that describing an Apple Watch app as smooth and reliable is setting a low bar for watch apps).

AnyList is also a meal planner app that can parse recipes from websites, automatically add the required items to your shopping list, and walk you through the recipes step by step. (Though I still prefer the superior app, Paprika, for doing that kind of thing.)

Another bonus point! —> AnyList can be programmed to be location aware. You can tag certain shopping items by grocery store and have AnyList remind you when you are near that store. For example, some items I can only buy at Whole Foods. Therefore, I have tagged my precious Hex Ferments kimchi as such in AnyList and have set it to ping my phone when I am within distance. 

Needless to say, I am now subscribed.

Negative point! —> The AnyList Mac app is terrible and is somehow considered a “premium” feature.

None the less, try this app! 

Control your computer's data usage on the go with TripMode 2

If you tether your PC to the cellular connection of your phone or tablet while traveling, you might want to check out this app.

From David Sparks at Macsparky.com...

TripMode 2:

There’s a new version of TripMode out. I’ve written about TripMode before. It’s a Mac app that will monitor your internet traffic and selectively turn off apps. This can be a lifesaver when tethering. As a quick war story, I once had a very large podcast file come in over Dropbox while I was tethering my Mac and burned through a month’s wireless data in about an hour. With TripMode, when I tether, I turn off Dropbox so that doesn’t happen.

I have been looking for an app like this for a while. The idea of tethering my Mac to my iPad’s data connection while I am away from a reliable wireless network is appealing. I always worry about the data that my computer is hogging throughout the various processes that run in the background (things like Dropbox and photo app syncing). With TripMode, that is no longer a concern. You can download TripMode 2 here.