The Omni Group

Behold!

That's right: OMNI SHIRTS. Woo!

Man, the only thing that could possibly make this blog post more awesome is if I told you that a brand sparkling new Omni product is due to become available in, like, mere weeks.

Oh hey, look at that. I guess it just got EVEN MORE AWESOME IN HERE.

Hello, and thank you for visiting the Omni Blog. It's come to our attention that there is some confusion about us and our products, and we wanted to take the opportunity to provide clarification.

Item the first:

When you write us and tell us your “Omni” won't work, it makes us cry like little girls who just finished “Bridge to Terabithia” for the first time.

It is true that all of our product names do involve the word Omni. You know, it's kind of our “thing”. We also greatly enjoy InterCapping words together. It gets AnnoyingSometimes, but that's just the way WeRoll.

However, without the product name that follows the “Omni” part, for all we know, you're talking about O.M.N.I, the Opportunities for Micronutrient Interventions. And we totally can't help you with that.

Item the second:

No, we don't make that OCR scanning thing. Some of you don't believe us, and you get a little irritated, especially during Macworld when it's 4 PM on the last day of the show and you could swear we make that OCR software, but I promise: we don't.

Item the third:

We can neither confirm nor deny dressing this dog in a shirt and taking his photo. It doesn't seem like something we would do, especially during business hours.

THING THE FOURTH

It's OmniGraffle. Graffle. OmniGraffle. Not OmniGraph. Not OmniGraffi. Not OmniGraffo. And under no circumstances whatsoever is it OmniGIRAFFE.

Giraffe:

Graffle:

Yes, it's a weird name, but if you can say “Shrimp chips” three times fast, then by golly you can say “OmniGraffle”.

(Heh. Made you try. Now do “Toy boat”!)

I think that's all for now. Once again, thank you for joining us, and tune in next time when we address the burning question: What does Omni do when the network goes down? (Hint: some people write dorky blog posts!)

We're looking for a couple of good ninjas; support ninjas, specifically.

The jobs section of our website warns that “we have two warm-blooded animals (plus a lot of fish) in the building”, which confuses me greatly. Apparently all this time I've been working with iguanas, or possibly skinks. Also, we have one office cat, but maybe we also have a guinea pig, or something? WHY HAS NO ONE TOLD ME OF THE GUINEA PIG.

Anyway. We're hiring! You must be able to tolerate iguanas, fish, cats, guinea pigs, and probably wallabies in order to work here. Here's all the relevant info.

(Update: I've been informed that birds are warm-blooded. Hmmmm, so that's what all the squawking from upstairs is…I thought it was an ongoing WoW game that occasionally got out of hand.)

Are you a productivity geek?

No, it's okay. You're among friends. This is a safe place. We're….we're all geeks here.

Well, some of us are geeks for American Idol, and frankly, that's far more embarrassing than being a productivity geek. I mean, not that I'm talking about myself. At all.

(CHRIS “BALD ROCKER GUY” DAUGHTRY RULEZ! WOO!)

(Ahem.)

Productivity geeks are into efficiency, and effectiveness, and other words that begin with “E”. (Like embolism, which is what happens to them if you start rambling about cheesy television shows and using long, tortured parentheticals!) If you're a productivity geek, you probably greatly enjoy colorful charts, to-do lists, and Quicksilver.

And maybe also cellphone/PDA gadgets. OH ADMIT IT.

Anyway, we just released an update to OmniOutliner which should be of interest to geeks and non-geeks alike. Version 3.6 has gone public and we recommend downloading it so you get all the fixes and improvements and general grooviness. It's free, of course, if you own OmniOutliner 3.x or OmniOutliner Professional 3.x, and that includes all you hardware people who got Outliner as a big old fat freebie on your spanky new machine.

OmniOutliner 3.6 Professional provides a little something extra, though, which all productivity geeks should check out: the new version works even better with Kinkless kGTD.

What is Kinkless kGTD, you ask (or for the purposes of this smooth-as-silk segue, I will pretend you ask)? Well, kGTD is a free set of AppleScripts produced by Ethan Schoonover that works with OmniOutliner Professional to create a framework for implementing David Allen's Getting Things Done® task-management methodology.

Whew. That was a mouthful. I hate using words like “methodology”, it makes me feel itchy.

Productivity Geek Extraordinaire Merlin Mann of 43Folders wrote this about kGTD and OmniOutliner: “By combining the stupendous OmniOutliner Pro with a bit of Applescript and pixie dust, KGTD provides a sensible way to manage Projects and Next Actions in one very clever little document. For those of you not already using and loving OO, this is a beautiful chance to see it in action.”

Makes you want to check it out, doesn't it? Hmmmm? *elbow nudge*

Well, you certainly can. You can read more about Kinkless kGTD here. You can grab the new version of OmniOutliner here. You can review the release notes here. You can even read our official press release about 3.6 here (130% less hyperbole!). And you can see an adorable hedgehog here.

Thanks for checking in at the Omni blog, where the news is always…um…presented in a serif typeface.

You know, after something like 22 years of working on Macintoshes, I have found that I care little about the actual “look” of an application's interface, instead focusing on the “feel”.

This in no way makes me a “touchy-feely” sort of person.

Take, for instance, the current controversy (I like the way some British-English speakers pronounce that word, con-TRAHV-er-sy) surrounding the “under construction” title bar for the latest OmniWeb 5.5 Sneaky Peeks. Quite polarizing, it turns out. Kind of like a Quentin Tarentino movie. Yep, that's it—The OmniWeb 5.5 SP title bar is EXACTLY like a Tarentino movie. Jackie Brown, as a matter of fact.

Anyway, myself, I don't even notice the SP title bar. I, unlike some folks, am able to peer INSIDE the window of pretty much any application,be it an Omni one or no, and direct my focus on the content of said window instead of its framing. I don't know why or how I can do this, perhaps it's due to being from another planet altogether, or that can of spinach I just consumed, but I can do it just the same.

And while I can easily dismiss a series of diagonal stripes from my visual acumen (not to mention red, yellow, and green buttons therein), I would be horribly upset if that for some reason the addition of said stripes were to disable the dragging of a window around on my display, or if it broke double-clicking to minimize to the Dock, or simply displayed the wrong window title completely.

I'm like that. Pretty easygoing so far as the colors/styling quotient lies. Wasn't always this way, I distinctly recall working on the inspector icons for OmniGraffle 4 and getting pretty worked up on getting a good consensus as to what they should look like, what colors to use, etc. Debates such as that one have led to the UI team taking a much more proactive role in application development.

I'm not on that team for good reason: I'm at that point where an application icon is something I poke to switch to an application, nothing more. Of course I'd like it to look all sorts of swell, but in the end I don't even notice it anymore. It's a click target for me to get something done. A title bar is a thingy that has a title in it. A toolbar button has to advertise its function, and little more.

Now, on the other hand, those folks ON the UI team? They have to think about this stuff. Rather constantly, to boot. Not only due to the Omni Group as a whole being pretty vociferous about personal preferences concerning user interface and experience (yours truly excepted only a little bit), but because our users are pretty darn discerning as well.

If they weren't, they wouldn't be using our software, I should think.

Oh, I try to add my feedback, however obliquely, to the UI effort, but in the end it's only a couple of pennies at a time. But really, I'm glad that I'm not on the UI team here at Omni—Not only is it work cut out for them that's horribly involved, we also have the good sense not to include content (as in the opposite of discontent) users of OS X such as myself on such teams, which is what helps considerably in pushing open the envelope of overall user experience with our applications.

Let me tell you, it's not always easy being a non-technical person in an office of engineers. It's like bumbling your way through a foreign country where everyone knows the native tongue except you.

Engineer: “You'll need to use an ssh tunnel to access that.”

Me: “Okay. So are we talking an actual, physical tunnel here, or…?”

Engineer: “....”

I'm a n00b, what can I say. I'm intimidated by the Terminal (gah, the name alone: terminal!), acronyms befuddle me (TCP? VPN? what?), and AppleScript may as well be that African click language for all of my (in)ability to grasp its vernacular.

On the plus side, I like to think I can provide the lowest-denominator usability cases for our software. Sure, most of our applications can do complex operations and have all kinds of advanced settings, but hey–*I* can use them. Me, the mouthbreather who once clicked an emailed document screenshot…not once, not twice, but three times in a row, each time cursing the software's inability to perform.

The point of this post is actually not to convince you of the amount of oxygen whistling merrily through my skull, but to share some everyday, real life uses of our software in the hopes you'll do the same.

I use OmniOutliner to keep a running tally of household items I need to buy (on my list right now: “Spot Magic” carpet cleaner. Stupid cat), to draft writing projects, to keep track of who got what over the holidays (thus reducing the chance of gifting Relative So-and-So with yet another singing bass fish) (not that I would ever purchase such a corny novelty item), to plan vacation-related to-do items, and to store random bits of research I want to follow up on later.

I use OmniWeb's Workspaces feature to rattle through the giant list of blogs I visit daily; Shortcuts to quickly jump to IMDB, All Recipes, and Weather.com; and site-specific preferences to de-lamify sites with great content but obnoxious presentation.

Now with OmniGraffle, I don't typically spend a lot of time making complicated charts with all kinds of links and Bezier-drawn shapes and tables and whatnot (although I would be remiss in my Marketing Weasel duty if I did not point out that Graffle can obviously do all of those things), but I did make some downright spiffy holiday cards with OmniGraffle, and I'm currently using it to lay out a tile design for a bathroom remodel. And I made a process document for dealing with my eight-month-old son if he wakes up at night. Oh, you think I'm kidding?

Okay, quid pro quo time. If you're inclined, we'd love to see how you're using our apps in your day to day life, be they geeky tech examples that I'll have to have someone explain to me in monosyllabic terms, or otherwise. Hit the Say It! (Don't Spray It!) button and let us know.

On the eve of Earth Day, I thought I'd mention that The Omni Group is powered with 100% renewable energy, thanks to Seattle City Light's “Green Up” program.  If you're not fortunate enough to live in a city which provides its customers with the option to purchase green power, you can still buy Green Tags to replace whatever amount of power you currently consume with power generated from renewable sources.

Have you gone green yet?  Tell us about it!

Advertising is always a difficult activity for a company to justify. It's not cheap, for one thing, and it's not an instantaneous return-on-investment expenditure–not too many people see one ad and break their legs rushing to a store in order to buy the promoted product.

Well, unless we're talking about the complete second season of Deadwood, because speaking personally I just can't get enough of Calamity Jane. I'd share my favorite Jane quote with you, but this is a family-friendly blog.

Anyway: advertising. We don't typically do web advertising, in part because we have this browser we develop that helps you avoid web ads, but we did decide to buy some space in a couple Mac magazines and see how that went. 

We've been advertising in Macworld and MacAddict for a while now, and I thought I'd share the upcoming June artwork for those who are interested (and even those who aren't, I guess, in which case I apologize for today's ho-hum content and direct you to this fine link instead).

(This is the same ad we ran last month, but we've had a number of different ones. Maybe I'll post an Omni “ad gallery” so you can see them all.)

I can't really tell you how definitively successful (or not) the print campaign has been–there's that elusive ROI thing again–but we have heard from a few folks who may not have known about Omni otherwise. That seems good.

We chose to try advertising because we're a small software company with a limited number of resources trying to get our name out there. It doesn't seem like it would be such a challenge in a fairly finite Mac OS X world; after all, a couple of our applications are bundled on a LOT of Apple hardware these days. And yet a not-uncommon description of Omni is “the best software you've never heard of”. 

So, talk to us, folks. How do you typically find out about software? Magazines, news sites, blogs, the shelf of a retail store, word of mouth–what's most useful to you?

Our resident moviemaking experts, Grayson and Terry, shot Omni's very first commercial recently. I believe the idea was originally floated as a joke, and then suddenly there was a storyboard and cameras and someone actually Riverdancing and now…

I give you:

“Yes!”

Note: no Omni employees were harmed during the filming of this video. Well, except for Brian's dignity, but he's a fast healer.

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