The Omni Group

Happy Halloween, Omni blog readers! Troy is wearing a purple wig today, James is sporting some bright orange socks with bats on them (although for James that's a fairly typical fashion choice), Ken is wearing a lab coat, and Greg's son Miles has been transformed into…well, Darth Toddler:

Hee. I love the thumbs up gesture, there.

Okay! On to more questions, before all our pumpkins turn into…uh…chariots, or something.

Dan asks, Is there any sort of official list of ideas and feature requests for future releases?  Have you ever thought of doing something like an “OmniProduct Focus Group,” or is this something that would be completely unnecessary?

We definitely have an internal system for tracking ideas, feature requests, and bugs, and assigning things to specific target releases for all of our products. I'm guessing you're wondering more about a publicly available list, so you can see what's already been suggested? We don't have such a thing, exactly, but you can see what other people are talking about on our forums, and add your input there. Otherwise, we always welcome feedback via email, so please feel free to send us your requests.

As for a focus group, we've never hosted a formal type of group (the kind where you get free soda and people with clipboards peer at you from behind one-way mirrors), although we have asked people to join an “Alpha Brute Squad” where they get a really early look at our software (sometimes when it's in a mildly terrifying, devouring-its-own-tail state of bugdom!) and have a chance to provide feedback on features and UI before it goes into public beta.

I don't yet know what we'll be doing for OmniFocus, but I'd recommend signing up on this mailing list if you're interested in potentially being tapped for Brute Squad duty.

Kirk wonders, Any chance of transferring an Outliner license to Focus when it comes out?

Sort of. We will be offering discounted OmniFocus licenses for OmniOutliner customers, so while you won't be able to transfer one app license to another, you won't be charged full price either. We haven't made any final pricing decisions, but we definitely recognize that we need cross-product discounting.

David asks, How do I enter curved text in OmniGraffle?  That is, if I want a line of text to follow a curved path (like a squiggle or around a circle/arc), can it be done [...]?

Sorry, you can't created curved text in OmniGraffle (although you should be able to copy and paste it in from a graphic created elsewhere). If you don't have Illustrator, as you mentioned, maybe something like LineForm or EazyDraw would work?

Dan asked another question: is there a story for the change in the status of Omni's apps that come bundled with most Macs, with the switch to Intel?  (Specifically, the addition of OmniOutliner to all consumer Macs and the loss of OmniGraffle.)

If there's a story, only Apple knows it. We don't really have any influence over what Apple decides to include, or not include, in their hardware – we just review what they ultimately propose and decide if we want to say yea or nay. The expanded bundle deal for Outliner has been great, although in general I wish our software were easier to discover. You know, instead of being all tidily tucked away in the Applications folder, maybe it could be…sitting in the Dock? (Apple? I'm just sayin'.)

Nik asked several questions, most of which I've sent on to tech support,  but here's one for the blog: Is it possible to save an OmniOutliner document so that it's JUST the XML file and doesn't have the bundle “wrapper” around it? (Then I could check it into source control and stuff.)

You can check it into source control, I'm told. OmniOutliner supports CVS and SVN, so you can check it in as is, folders and all.

All righty then! This concludes today's Q&A With Omni. I may follow up with a third and final post on Thursday, so if you have any more questions, leave them in the fancy comment box.

And now, I'm off to help my son trample large metropolitan areas. RAARRRRR!

Oh crap, you mean you're actually going to ask, like, real questions? Well FINE. Make me work, why don't you.

(Note: if you need technical support on any of our apps, it's best to send it to our support team using Send Feedback.. under the Help menu in your software. I may not get to *everyone's* question this week.)

Richard asks, How can I get OmniWeb to open up RSS links in Vienna, my preferred RSS reader?

We have a current OmniWeb bug described as:

“Request: Allow news icon to send RSS feed subscriptions to outside program/external viewer [newsfeed default]” 

This should be implemented in 5.5.2, an update that should be available soon (I'm not sure exactly when, but not too long from now).

Matthew has some Omni software on his laptop, and now that his employer has provided him with a PowerMac, he wants to know how to use those same apps via network licensing.

There is a lengthy explanation of our different licensing types here, but in a nutshell, you'll just need to install your Omni application of choice on your Power Mac (grab the download from our website), then use the same license you've been using on your laptop. You cannot, however, run two copies of the licensed software using one license at the same time – otherwise, both of your computers will explode.

(Okay, they won't technically “explode”, but it would violate our licensing policy and that would mean that somewhere, a kitten would cry. Won't you please, please think of the kittens?)

Edward would like to know, Are there any “secret” ways to get OmniWeb to run quicker?

Down at the lower righthand corner of the screen, there is a very, very small button that's labeled “TURBO”. Click it, and –

Okay, I'm making that up. I wish I had some kind of cool answer like that, but unfortunately there's no simple response to that question. There are too many variables to consider, like when you're experiencing the issue (I assume you mean that the browser is running too slow at times?), what else you have going on, etc. You are running 5.5, right? If so, I suggest using the Send Feedback…option to tell us more about this so we can look into it, or email us.

BZ asked a LOT of questions, JEEZ. I'll answer two of them for now: When is OmniFocus coming out and who do I have to kill to be on the beta?

To be 100% honest, we don't know when OmniFocus is coming out. There is a team working full time on developing this product, but it's just too early to make predictions. We all really want to get it in your hands as soon as possible, though. As for the beta, when the time comes we'll be asking for volunteers. If you want to get your name in the hat now, subscribe to this list and we'll get in touch with you as soon as it's Beta Time (like Hammer Time, except with slimmer pants).

Stack said, Tell us a little bit about OmniFocus.  [...] The GTD system gives you breathing room to be implemented in a few different ways, but aside from interface stuff I don't really see how your product can distinguish itself from its competitors in the market.  How will OmniFocus be different?

I can't make any commitments yet on specific features that will be included in OmniFocus (I know, I'm all “ask us anything!” and then I give you, “errr…except that”). We're still defining how features will work; figuring out implementation and UI, and creating crazy mockups using OmniGraffle (oh, OmniGraffle, is there anything you can't do?).

I will say that the “interface stuff” – how the software looks, the way that it works, the experience you have when using it – is exactly what can distinguish one app from another and make all the difference in its value. If OmniFocus ends up being a joy to use, if it seamlessly integrates into your workflow, if it stays out of your way but provides you with what you need, then we'll have accomplished some of our biggest goals.

Our friend Corentin (who has done countless French localizations for us, merci!) asks, in part, What's planned for OmniWeb 5.6? When will a beta be out the door?

We are planning for 5.6 to be a WebKit update. As for timing, we have to get through 5.5.1 (currently in beta), then 5.5.2, then revisit the WebKit situation so…in short, we're not sure when 5.6 will be available, but it shouldn't be too long of a wait. *knock wood*

Daniel says, I'm playing through Oni at the moment, and I've found a few bugs. If I report them, do they have a chance of ever being fixed?

Well…probably not. That's what I'm told, anyway. We did the game port many, many moons ago and no longer have anything to do with Oni, which is now owned by Take 2 Interactive. You could contact them with your bug info and request an update, but it doesn't sound very likely that it will happen. Sorry, I wish I had a more helpful answer.

WHEW. That's all for now, folks, I'll try and answer more tomorrow. Oh, and for the record, we have one cat. Her name is Lotus. She's kind of mangy and makes horrible yowling sounds, but she is loved nonetheless.

I was trying to think of some exciting Omni news to share with you, and I found myself writing up a post that told you all about how our snack room fridge magnets currently spell out “FAMOUS LIPIDS” and what could that mean, and then I had to look up “lipids” because I wasn't sure what they were, and then I got distracted by wikipedia when I learned the daily requirement of lipids is 382 grams per day, which made me wonder if I am getting enough lipids, whatever they are, and then I decided that if those Halloween-sized “100 Grand” bars contain any lipids at all, I'm probably doing JIM FLIPPING DANDY in the lipid department.

Also, maybe I should cut back on the sugar for a while.

Anyway! Obviously it would be totally unprofessional and lame to post some kind of crazy blog entry about lipids, so instead I thought I'd offer up the chance for you to ask us questions – from “how do I get OmniWeb to do X” to “jeez, just how many cats do you people have” – and I'll do my best to get them answered and posted here throughout the week.

Ready? Go ahead, ask away. I'll just be, um, making absolutely sure that I've got all my lipids for the day week month year.

It's getting to be that time of the year…the trees are flaming with color, the nights are shivery, the air smells of wood and apples and mini-sized Snickers bars. Ah, fall. How I love you.

Except for the fact that October always means Macworld planning must begin in earnest. There are things I really like about Macworld, but planning the booth is NOT one of them. Probably because I am spatially, uh, “challenged” and trying to visualize how our booth should be laid out, even if I use a spectacularly helpful tool like, plugplugplug, OmniGraffle, is sort of like playing Tetris in the dark. With a bag over my head. And that new Justin Timberlake song, you know, the one with something that sounds like chipmunks squealing in the background? – playing on a loop. It's hard, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, as a distraction from all the logistical nightmare stuff, I was thinking about what sorts of things we might give away at our booth. Booth swag is always fun, right? Here are some ideas I had:

• MacBook Pros pre-loaded with all of our applications, even that OmniObjectMeter whatsit

• Collectible Swarovski crystal tableaus depicting Steve Jobs and Bill Gates engaged in a fierce lightsaber battle

• Live pygmy marmosets with tiny little OMNI logos branded into their fur

Of course I've encountered nothing but opposition, since these giveaways apparently are “too expensive” and “really nerdy” and “morally despicable”.

Instead I imagine we'll do buttons, or stickers, or maybe demo CDs, yawn – but I was also thinking of some Omni Index Cards. Index cards seem appropriate (although, let's admit, not nearly as cool as marmosets) since we've been working on OmniFocus and all. So if you could have a pack of index cards that was custom-printed just for you, what would you want on there? Checkboxes? Leave them blank? Make them lemon-scented? Print origami folds on them?

Gosh, I just can't tell if there's enough interest in OmniFocus...maybe we should scuttle it in favor of OmniCrashDoubler 1.0, the app that crashes when you try and enter descriptive text about why your original app crashed in the first place! But only after you hit the only button available, which is helpfully labeled “crash”.

OmniCrashDoubler will retail for $249.95. No volume discounts. OmniCrashDoubler Pro includes a second button labeled “manifest odor of startled skunk”.

In all seriousness, thank you so much for all of your comments and emails regarding OmniFocus. We really, truly appreciate it. A couple folks asked when we might have an early beta to share; while I wish I had a timeline to give you, that's just not something we can even guess at yet. I mean, we could guess, but we'd probably be wrong. Then you'd be all ticked off, and if there's one group of people we don't want to anger, it's the extremely productive folks who are both 1) poised to spring into Next Action and 2) armed with index cards that can be folded into little throwing stars at a moment's notice.

We're going to be as open as possible about our development progress with OmniFocus, so I expect that we'll be asking you more questions in the future (and maybe sharing some screenshots at some point). Thanks for all your participation, and stay tuned.

We just got an email from our esteemed pal Wrong Size Glass, who wrote:

Hey Gals & Guys,

I was just wondering what ever happened to the search for a good 'code name' for the Omni â??GTD appâ???

Well, WSG, therein lies a tale! Yes indeed, a long and convoluted tale with mighty dragons and heroic journeys and a scrappy little dog and â??

You know what, never mind all that. I'll just cut to the chase and tell you the name we've decided on, for now at least, is OmniFocus. I see that commenter Cameron suggested that very same name just two days ago in response to this entry, so I will take that as a Positive Sign that “OmniFocus” is an okay name.

(Especially since no one liked my idea: OmniFu. What? It's a perfectly cromulent word.)

OmniQuest was a big contender, although some of us felt it was a little too gamey. Not in the sense that it smelled weird, but…oh, you know, the dragons and heroic journeys and so on.

So: OmniFocus. It has a name. It has a team of engineers working on it, a user interface guru mocking up modes and widgets for it, and a product manager whose Herculean job it is to herd this whole mess towards an elusive ship date.

Now for your participation! Many of you have already sent us some really, really useful feedback on what you're looking for in this type of personal organization application. What we wanted to ask this time is, what are you currently using for this purpose? Index cards? Kinkless and OmniOutliner? Other apps/other analog methods?

If you wouldn't mind sharing, we'd love to know. Hit us up in the comments section or by email.

I have to say, I sort of hate it when one of our apps is in public beta for more than a few weeks. It starts to lose that new-car smell, you know? People ask when the release date is scheduled for, and we have to give elaborate shrugs in response. As Omni's official marketing weasel, the Elaborate Shrug is my least favorite reply to draw on. I much prefer the Sarcastic Eye Roll (as in, “When are you going to offer a PC version?” *eye roll*).

We had hoped to be announcing the final release of OmniPlan by now, but, well, people are still helping us find things to be fixed. Sometimes a hearty beta period just can't be avoided, because you guys don't just find bugs, you provide the kind of feedback that's necessary for us to come up with the best UI solutions and feature compromise.

The Omni Group is made up of a lot of perfectionists, honestly. The process of putting the metaphorical fork in the app because like it or not, at some point we've got to declare it D-U-N isn't easy.

So, I think your mission is clear: stop reporting bugs with OmniPlan.

Oh, I'm just kidding. Please, put down the stones.

Actually, we really need your input, so please keep sending it our way. Especially if you encounter problems using MS Project with OmniPlan, either by opening Project files into Plan or vice versa – let us know about those. The Project stuff is definitely one of our current bugaboos, and more examples are a good thing.

Speaking of examples! (Ah, yet another seamless, buttery segue.) I have a sample OmniPlan document for you, based on a few requests we've had. This one provides an example of dependencies, which are tasks that depend on other tasks. For instance, you might use a dependency for calling out that “Design UI” is a prerequisite of “Freeze UI”, or that “Eat Delicious Chocolate Cupcake” is dependent on both “Bake Delicious Chocolate Cupcake” and “Buy Massive Bag of Flour”. And so on.

Mmmmm. Cupcakes.

Anyway, the document covers the basic concepts of dependencies and different types you can have (and how to create them). If you have some thoughts on other sample documents you'd like to see for OmniPlan, talk to us!

Click for a link to the .zip file:

It seems like a very, very long time ago that we were mired in planning sessions for OmniWeb 5. By “we” I mean “people much smarter than myself”, of course, although I do take credit for the never-implemented Wholesome History Populator feature (replace your day of youtube surfing and WoW geekfests with the browsing history of your choice! Pre-loaded contents include “Honey I Was Thinking Of You”, several hours worth of Amazon-combing for that perfect birthday gift; “Just Doing Some Market Research”, a trail of crumbs leading through a variety of industry topics to impress your boss; and, in worse-case scenarios, “What's This Funny Rash”, a thorough search of WebMD that virtually guarantees the subject of how much time you spend online will never be questioned).

But anyway, back then we put a lot of effort into building new features for OmniWeb. It was an exciting time for the OmniWeb development process as things like workspaces and graphical tabs and shortcuts started emerging from the alpha-soup and we all started using them. A huge amount of work later, OmniWeb 5 shipped: ta da!

Then, after a while, we had to catch up with WebKit. We had to get OmniWeb's compatibility and performance back up to par, we needed a Universal release, we needed some fixes. And so for many months now, the OmniWeb dev team has been chipping away at the non-fun stuff; not cool features or eye-popping UI, but the complicated headachey stuff under the hood that makes a web browser, you know, work.

(“Stuff”. Niiice. Once again my less-than-viselike grip on the technical aspects of our work has failed us all.)

We realize that in order for OmniWeb to stay in your Dock, we have to continue innovating. We need to do what we're best at: developing useful, fun features that work the way you want them to. Upcoming versions of OmniWeb need to kick ass and take names, basically. And that's what we want to do.

However, in the meantime, I don't want to lose sight of a huge accomplishment by our Web team: OmniWeb 5.5 is out. The final release, after months of hard work and persistent beta testers (for whom we are insanely grateful) and an espresso machine that has broken about fifty-three times from overuse.

If you haven't used OmniWeb in a while, I recommend trying 5.5 out. This version doesn't provide you with many citrus-scented whistles and bells, but it's faster. It's better. It's performance is vastly improved, and hey, it still has all the unique stuff that 5.0 was touted for.

A big congratulations to the OmniWeb team, and now we can start turning our attention to the next versions of OmniWeb. Yes, there will be some small fixer-upper 5.5x releases, but then? Features, by god. Honestly, I don't know if the coffee machine can handle it.

I thought it would be interesting to find out what non-Omni software our employees enjoy using, and share that information with the rest of you. You know, paying it forward, just like that endearing movie with Kevin Spacey. Get out the hankies!

Or…not. Anyway, via an email tangent that came about during the polling process, I learned that out of 24 employees, NINE of us are left-handed. Isn't that amazing? Aren't you totally freaking out right now?

I mean, considering 13-30% of the population is left-handed, that practically makes Omni a team of mutants. Like the X-Men. Personally, I hope my thus-undiscovered superpower has to do with setting things on fire…with my mind. I'll start with Paris Hilton. You're welcome.

Onward to the software recommendations! Note that I asked for “lesser-known” apps, because you've probably already heard of a little thing called iTunes.

Aaron: iSquint. “It's pretty awesome.”

Joel: “I used to play Tranquility a lot, nice pleasant game.”

Ryan: “My vote is for TextWrangler and SuperDuper! (sic) - I use both everyday.”

Terry: “Final Draft - script writing; Ableton Live -  audio/loops; Waves - Audio Plugins; ARTURIA minimoog V - soft synthesizer.”

Liz: “Snapz Pro X—that screenshot-grabbing app plus a little mark-up in Graffle makes it really easy for me to communicate with our engineers about bugs and UI improvements.”

James: “TextMate, Quicksilver, and Adium are 3 that I really like.”

Troy: “Here's something that I've been using a lot lately…Art Collector: a small app that makes adding artwork to your itunes library a breeze.”

Brian: Endicia, “'cause getting your face on postage is cool, especially when it's written by Pat and Aaron of buyolympia fame.”

Tim:  “The 3rd party things I use most often are pretty common and well known :/ (TextMate, Quicksilver, SuperDuper!)

Ken: “I have just one app in my dock that isn't from Omni or Apple: Quicksilver.”

Bill: “I have a lot of happy apps I love to use: Transmit, SubEthaEdit, Tensai, Chax, ChronoSync, Delicious Library, iScrobbler, LaunchBar, NetNewsWire, Teleport.” (Damn, Bill. Rock on with your software-loving self.)

As for me, the most exciting software I've used lately is Barcode Producer. It generates barcodes, like for retail packaging. Handy if you need to, say, produce a whole new size of retail box required by the Apple Stores that renders your entire line of inventory obsolete. You know. For example.

So there you are. If you're of a mind, let us know what cool apps you're using, too.

Page 10 of 13 pages ‹ First  < 8 9 10 11 12 >  Last ›