The Omni Group

Our good friend Ethan Schoonover—the mastermind behind Kinkless GTD—has not only been helping Omni for the last several months with our ongoing OmniFocus development efforts, he's also created a very, very nice OmniFocus overview video for us to share. If Ethan glowed in the dark and also had a giant pair of leathery wings, there's a chance he could be even cooler than he already is, but I'm saying it would be a stretch.

The video is about 26 minutes long (25 MB), and does a great job of covering a bunch of the features and functionality in OmniFocus. Click to behold Ethan's work:

One small note: although Ethan uses the term “enter key” on multiple occasions in the video, it's the return key that he's referring to. I myself use a PC keyboard so I didn't even notice the discrepancy, but I suspect a few of you might be a little more vigilant.

We want to extend a huge thank you to Ethan for taking the time to put this together, and we hope you enjoy getting a closer look at OmniFocus!

Currently our biggest engineering priority with OmniFocus is working on forward compatibility—developing a file format that will work with future versions of OmniFocus. We want to have this in place before a beta, so nobody's information gets hosed in the process of updating to a new release. The plan is to have this finalized and an early beta (likely feature incomplete) available in the next couple of weeks.

The last time I posted about OmniFocus, I mentioned we were thinking about potential early betas and the like—ways to share what we've built so far, without hosing your data or giving you a terrible first impression of our newest app.

Some of us feel pretty strongly that it's time for you to have more information about OmniFocus, so you have a clearer picture of its features. We want you to be able to make informed decisions about whether OmniFocus has some of the capabilities you're looking for, because none of us want you to wait in limbo for our software when another solution may potentially fit your needs right now.

There are other productivity systems out there, and while I would surely lose my Marketing Weasel badge if I encouraged you to evaluate them, I definitely don't want you to avoid doing so out of inaccurate expectations about OmniFocus—expectations we may have unwittingly helped create by talking openly about OmniFocus's development process over these last months.

Today's blog post is meant to show you what OmniFocus looks like and tell you in general terms how it works. We are really hoping to have a beta (possibly a non-feature-complete version) available soon, but until then, here is a screenshot for your viewing pleasure:

(Click for embiggened, annotated version)

Before I say ANYTHING ELSE, I have to explain that this is a work in progress, and what you see is not necessarily going to be in the final product. Omni's engineers, who are known for their perfectionist attention to UI, are absolutely horrified that this is being shown to the public, I can only imagine that it's similar to how I would feel if a bunch of people suddenly dropped by my house without warning. I'd be running around fluttering my hands and making panicked apologies for all the dog hair, and the clutter, and the—what is that, a banana peel? Oh my god—so let me re-emphasize a very important caveat on their behalf: this is a work in progress.

Some things that will change:

• You'll be able to add columns to the outline for due and start dates

• More styles will be added, to indicate things like completed/on-hold projects

• The Under Construction style bars at the top will be a preference, but included in the default view. (Just kidding.)

Now for the functionality! OmniFocus's main features include:

• Quick entry panel, accessible via keyboard shortcut from any application

• Import for kGTD documents

• Focus feature for opening a specific folder or project in its own window

• Project or context work views, both with extensive filtering and sorting options

• iCal synchronization (enabling you to get to Palm and other devices)

• Printing support that will include printing to index cards

• Project outlines include hierarchical tasks and task groups

• Pop-up calendars for assigning start, due and completion dates

• Project and task filtering by project state, dates, next actions, available actions and more

• Rich text support for project and task notes

• Ability to attach files to any task or project

That's not a comprehensive list, but it covers the big stuff.

We should also tell you a few things we aren't doing in this 1.0 release:

• Automatic synchronization between computers

• Complex (non-sequential) dependencies

• Web interface

• Integration with OmniPlan (part of our long-term road map includes integration with OmniPlan, we just want to get the basics right first)

I know this post doesn't answer the important question of how you'll feel while using OmniFocus—will it integrate with your workflow? will it stay out of your way until you need it, then provide you with the right features in an intuitive way? (we hope so)—but hopefully this information is useful for you. Although posting an early screenshot isn't an ideal way to communicate a product's scope, it seemed important to share what we could at this point.

As for the question of beta timing, basically we are trying to come to some decisions internally about how much beta-ness we can expect you to put up with. There's still a lot of work to be done before OmniFocus is feature-complete, unfortunately, and limited resources to do it. Once again, I encourage you to sign up for the beta mailing list, so you hear from us as soon as we have news.

We're all truly grateful for the feedback and encouragement from everyone who has been following our work on OmniFocus. Thank you so much for your interest, and your patience.

We were having a discussion this morning about OmniFocus and the work that remains to be done before we can post a beta. The opinion was put forth that a personal productivity app that is even so much as 90% completed might as well not work at all, since it would inevitably disrupt your workflow and ultimately reduce your productivity rather than improve it.

I can see how this might be so, but I'm interested in what you guys think. Would you rather start using an early, incomplete beta version of OmniFocus with—potentially—some missing features, or would you prefer to wait until the app is feature-complete and (mostly) guaranteed not to suck?

(DISCLAIMER: no such guarantee actually implied.)

At the moment, the question is sort of moot because the app is definitely not ready for beta, or sneaky peek, or even for posting screenshots. We've got a few big features to wrestle into place, and a lot of bug-crushing and UI-polishing, and only a small team of engineers to get it all done.

As we look ahead to the steps towards final release, though, it would be nice to get your opinion on the process. We know a lot of you have been waiting and WAITING to start using Focus, and I promise we are working really hard to get it in your hands.

Here's the question I've been asking myself this week: am I too old to understand the appeal of Twitter, or not cool enough?

I'm not sure I like the answer either way.

Anyway, since I don't have any exciting product news at the moment, I thought I'd ask you folks to share some entertaining website distractions. Because it's, um, Omni Mouth Link Day! Oh, you didn't know about Omni Mouth Link Day? It's like Thursday, only with more links.

I'll go first:

• The ColorJack Sphere; handy for all kinds of design projects

• Giant microbes! Aw, who's a little Borrelia burgdorferi?

• Fantastic video of someone's entire wedding party doing the Thriller dance

• Kent Rogowski's Bears: gosh, it looks like the perfect baby shower gift (“Hm, he doesn't normally cry like that . . .”)

Okay, blog readers—your turn. Spill your latest web finds, in the name of Omni Mouth Link Day!

Say, have you ever found yourself thinking that you'd like to learn more about OmniOutliner, preferably by watching a video narrated by a fellow with a charming accent? Let's say for the sake of this blog post that you have spent literally hours pining for such a thing, one hand draped dramatically across your forehead as you heave the occasional deep sigh, a single tear glistening in the corner of your left eyeball, because in that case have I ever got some good news for you, Mopey McWhimperton.

ScreenCastsOnline has worked with us to create a number of helpful OmniOutliner videos that cover everything from levels and styles to exporting to Pro-specific features. Check them out when you get a chance, and let us know what you think!

By the way, I recommend turning up your speakers and doing the robot to the catchy electronic music at the beginning of each video. If you are unable to adequately perform the robot, the cabbage patch will be acceptable.

You know, it's tough to be a marketing weasel in a company like Omni. I'm forbidden from telling outright lies, or padding product copy with too much rich, delicious, creamery hyperbole. I can't email all of our customers with Enticing Limited Time Offers because Omni has this totally RESTRICTIVE belief that spam is evil and only people who deliberately join mailing lists should hear from us and even then, I'm forbidden from using the phrases “reverses aging” or “consolidate debt”, and the word “enlarges”.  (Which is too bad, because I had this great campaign idea about OmniPlan Enlarging Your Productivity 2 To 5 Inches, but apparently that's a NO GO.)

Omni actually cares about being as genuine as possible, and not dripping sales-slime all over the place as we conduct our business. Then again, we are a business, and even though we don't want to trick people, even though we want you to make your purchase because you're happy with what we're offering, we do sort of have to, you know, ask for the sale.

So I'm hoping you can give us some feedback on an issue we've been struggling with lately. As you may know, we offer demo versions of all our software. Currently, we've got a few different unlicensed-mode strategies going on: OmniWeb lets you try everything for 30 days; OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniPlan limit you to 20 items or less, and OmniDiskSweeper disables the “delete” button. You can download one-day trial licenses for any product on our website, too.

Here's our challenge:

• We'd like to have a consistent approach to these demos

• We'd like to allow a potential customer to adequately try the features of a given app

• We don't want to be too annoying

• We do want to encourage people to make the purchase if they like it

• We can't let people use our software for free (well, except for OmniDictionary)

What are your thoughts? When you use demo software, what system works best for you—that is, doesn't drive you nuts, helps you determine whether you like it, and ultimately makes it easy for you to buy it?

Some nice people from Macworld magazine came by last week to visit the Omni offices, including the formidable Mr. Jim Dalrymple, who challenged us with the same question I'm sure some of you would like the answer to.

Jim: “So when is this OmniFocus going to be released, anyway?”

Me: *chokes on a slurp of coffee, narrowly avoiding spraying the entire table Gallagher-style*

Jim: “Wow, you must really suck at poker.”

I like to think my near-asphyxiation was just coincidence, but then again, maybe I was a little overly excited to hear what our official answer would be. Every time I ask, I get one of the following Engineer Brushoffs:

“The bug graph is holding steady this week.”

“(Something incomprehensibly technical).”

“Look, something shiny!” (runs away)

And my favorite,

“It will be done when it's done.”

(Do you feel my pain? DO YOU?)

I actually can't remember exactly what we told Jim (he was probably too busy snickering at my Coffee Inhalation of Doom, anyway), but here's our most recent best guess at a date for an OmniFocus beta: late April or early May.

It's been really difficult to make accurate estimates for this product's timeline, and I hope the April/May timeframe is on target. My apologies in advance if it's not, but I thought it would be better to give you what information we can, rather than none at all.

As a reminder, you can sign up to be on the beta tester list here, and we've posted some FAQs here.

Oh, and one last thing, here's a work-in-progress draft of the OmniFocus icon. What do you think?

I have to admit, I've never been a particularly rabid fan of individual/organizational be-the-best-YOU-you-can-be methodologies.  Maybe because on the surface they kind of remind me of diet books, where people can take some fairly basic concepts—“Don't eat fistfuls of lard!”—and wrap an entire industry around them.

Also, they always seem to involve so many Productized Buzzwords™, after a while they all start sounding the same. Fish: Who Moved My 7 Habits of Mythical One-Minute Management?, or something.

I did like Getting Things Done, although I'm not religious (at all) about adhering to its principles. I like the ideas, and I like the relatively non-annoying language it contains (exceptions: “uh-oh bell”, “interruptitis”). I was stupidly dumbstruck by the simplicity and SHEER GENIUS of the Next Action concept, which has saved my butt on numerous occasions when I've struggled with how to make headway on a project (Me, talking to myself: “Pick up the phone and get a quote on the printing! Also, don't eat lard!”).

Still, I'm kind of lazy about getting organized and the idea of using specialized software to do so seemed a little daunting. I worried I'd find myself thinking, “Oh, I should really send that email but first I should write down that I need to send the mail so I'm reminded to send the email.” Which seems kind of . . . needlessly complicated?

As I learn more about what OmniFocus will be able to do for me, though, I'm starting to see a lot more benefits than getting reminded about email to-dos. There's the Quick Entry feature, for one: from within any app, you'll be able to use a key command to bring up a window (like Quicksilver), in which you can jot down text and file it in the appropriate context and project. So you could build a whole project, or quickly capture ten unrelated things and have them all land where they belong—then move on with whatever you were doing.

Having something that stays out of my way until I need it, then provides me with an easy, superfast capture? Okay, I'm officially on board. I'm both easily distracted (that dog has a puffy tail!) and living with many distractions (I have a 17-month-old toddler, it's a wonder I'm even upright and typing right now instead of singing the Blue's Clues theme to myself, over and over and OVER), so I really could use a method of gathering together my scattered, feeble neural flickerings and making some sense of them.

I should note that since OmniFocus isn't tied to a specific productivity methodology, it's flexible, and doesn't require you to adopt a particular way of thinking in order to use it. It's designed to work for the GTD crowd as well as the rest of us.

I'm most excited about the loftier goals of OmniFocus, I think. At its most basic, it will be easy to use OmniFocus to keep track of things you need to do, but I can imagine that its combination of information capture and processing might yield all kinds of amazing results. How much more headway could it help you make into a tough project? How many great ideas might you be able to save?  How much more could you accomplish, if you had the right tool to help you?

Why, it's enough to make me want to be the best me I can be, and I never thought I'd type that sentence without including the word “BAAAAARF”. Or possibly “HOOOORK”. 

So as we collectively, impatiently wait for OmniFocus to reach a coveted State Of Beta-Dom*, tell me, if you tend to use tools to help you be more productive, do you have any success stories to share? Things you were able to get done that you might not have otherwise? I'm interested to hear from you, and maybe get some tips.

* I have no update yet on this timeframe, I'm sorry to tell you—I can say that there's currently a lot of work being done on the UI. There are lots of challenging issues over how to present information in the best possible stay-out-of-your-face-but-be-intuitively-accessible style, but if anyone's up for the task, it's Omni's team of UI brainiacs.

Recently I was reading about the ad agency that came up with the original AFLAC duck campaign. It's one of those amazing marketing success stories: AFLAC went ten years struggling to figure out a way for people to remember their name, and with Kaplan Thaler's commercials their brand awareness went from 12% to 90%. 

The duck was the perfect solution to their problem—who doesn't know the word AFLAC now?—and since the commercials were so memorable and entertaining, they also did a great job of drilling home the secondary message (Hey, we sell health insurance! Ask for it at work!).

Companies usually put so much effort into having their branding campaign tell a story, sometimes with huge budgets and fantastic success (Target's commercials, for example: We sell all kinds of crap! It's sparkly! We're fresh and hip and appealing to a young affluent demographic, unlike that grody old Wal-Mart!), sometimes by creating a revolting animated hunk of snot to act as company mascot (I'm looking at you, Mucinex)—it's kind of refreshing to see an ad whose main goal is simply to sear the company's name into your head. AFLAC!

Of course, that concept can be taken too far. You know, that certain product...the one that you apply…directly to your forehead?

Anyway, I was thinking about Omni's overall brand and what we're known for. We do try and create continuity in our marketing communications, but I wouldn't say we adhere to a particularly rigid brand strategy. Which is nice, in a way, because you never hear anyone in Omni's building utter the words, “Well, I don't know, that's not really on message.”

But I do think we could use a lovable, curmudgeonly talking animal of some kind. Perhaps a star-nosed mole!

Or…not.

So what do you think of, when you think of Omni? Do you think of one particular application? A style of interface design, maybe? A group of old-school Mac nerds who still have a pile of NeXT machines in the basement? Why do you like (or dislike) Omni?

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