The Omni Group

Hello, esteemed Omni blog readers! We have two bits of news for you today, both OmniFocus-focused. 

BIT O' NEWS THE FIRST

OmniFocus 1.7 for iPhone is now available! The big changes are related to iOS 4: the app is now multi-tasking aware, so it's compatible with the fast app switching in iOS 4; database optimizations can now be completed in the background on iOS 4, and OmniFocus 1.7 now uses local notifications to display due alerts when running on iOS 4 (giving you the option to receive alerts for due tasks, even when you're not syncing with a server). 

Also, all the artwork has been refreshed in preparation for that fancy new high-resolution Retina display on iPhone 4. Plus, the app now periodically releases the magical and revolutionary scent of mango. (One of these statements is not true.)

If you're like me and haven't updated your phone yet because you like to wait until everyone else has already done it and you can confirm there are no reports of people saying things like "ARGH MY RINGTONE GOT REPLACED WITH A VUVUZELA", you should grab this latest version of OmniFocus anyway, because it also includes some handy fixes and overall improvements. 

OmniFocus 1.7 for iPhone can be found at your friendly neighborhood App Store.

BIT O' NEWS THE SECOND

Some of you have expressed interest in an update on the projected release date for OmniFocus for iPad. Interest has been communicated in a variety of ways: gentle email queries, polite forum discussions, and of course there was that brick that got tossed through our lobby window wrapped in a note reading YOU SAID JUNE YOU DILL-WEEDS WHAT GIVES.

Here's our current plan: we are hoping to submit OmniFocus for iPad to Apple next week, on June 30. I emphasize hoping because it's not a certainty and this date was extracted with great reluctance. Many Bothans died to bring you this information.

We wish you could get your hands on it right now, but as tempting as it is to rush it out the door for all the folks who are waiting for it, there's still work that needs to be done. I've been using the development builds and it's really exciting to see how things are coming together. It's very close to being ready, at this point it's all about fixing the rough edges and working on the UI.

When I say that, I don't want you to get a mental picture of engineers arguing over the pixel placement of one button. I mean, I'm sure that happens—ha ha ha, ENGINEERS—but I'm talking about a giant effort to influence how you feel when you use OmniFocus. This app needs to be more than a place to store your to-dos, you know? It needs to be a pleasure to interact with. It needs to be a place you want to go on a regular basis. It needs to be satisfying. 

I believe there are some features in OmniFocus for iPad that have the potential to change the way some of us feel about task management. Specifically, for people like me who are lazy about committing to a task manager and repeatedly fall off the wagon, I think this could be the perfect combination of app and device that keeps us engaged.

But we have to do it right. If I don't enjoy opening the app and interacting with it, I won't stick with it. Simple as that.

So, all that's to say: we're close. We're really, really close. This part is mission-critical, though, and we hope you're okay with waiting just a bit longer. We're pretty sure it's going to be worth it. 

Now that we have three products available from the App Store, certain things have changed about the way we do business. The access to our software has changed. The way we receive payment for our software has changed. The flexibility we've always had with regards to discounts has changed. 

We plan to continue developing for iPhone and iPad. As Ken wrote back in January, it's our intent to bring all five of our productivity applications to iPad. This means, obviously, that these aren't short-term business changes for us. 

It has always been Omni's policy to give you as much information as possible to help you make an informed purchasing decision, because we truly want you to be happy with what you buy. This is a core value of our company, which we prioritize in a number of ways. We try to make sure you have access to good resources and documentation. We provide free trials on all of our Mac software. We offer top-notch customer service, including phone support. We offer a 30-day guarantee on products sold from our online store, no questions asked.

Your satisfaction is every bit as important to us as the sale. 

We're not trying to say we don't need to make money, because we do. We need to pay our rent, pay our employees, help others when possible, save enough to make it through bad years, and in a good year, hopefully even have a little extra for profit sharing. Omni has limited resources to invest into our development work, and we do have to recoup those expenses or we can't continue offering the products that we do.

However, no one here wants you to buy something from us that you won't enjoy using. Our primary goals are to help you decide if our products are right for you before you buy, and to help make things right if you aren't happy after you buy.

To that end, we've made some decisions that are intended to help us continue to do business the way we want, even within this new distribution model. Starting today, we are offering the same 30-day money back guarantee on all of our iPhone and iPad apps as we do with our other software. This applies to OmniFocus for iPhone, OmniGraffle for iPad, and OmniGraphSketcher for iPad. If you find that you're unsatisfied with your purchase, email sales@omnigroup.com with a copy of your App Store receipt and the reason for return, and we'll refund your money.

Let's just be up front about the fact that this choice obviously opens us up to some risk. We pay 30% of our App Store sales to Apple whether or not we refund a purchase, for one thing. 

So why are we doing this? Because we want to give you the same confidence in buying our App Store software as you have when you buy our Mac software. Because it's important to us that we continue to provide the same support and service we always have. Because we believe the benefit outweighs the risk.

The 30-day guarantee isn't intended to take the place of a demo period. We do ask that you take the time to look at the product features, watch the videos, and ask questions before you make your purchase. If we haven't given you what you need to make a buying decision, please, tell us what would help. 

Finally, if one of our products doesn't seem right for you, we don't want to try and convince you otherwise. We'd love to hear why it isn't right for you, of course, because that's how we make improvements, but we don't want you to buy something you don't need. The ideal outcome for us is when you get amazing value from the applications we create. 

That is, after all, the real reason we do what we do. 

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us. We hope you know your comments and concerns are always welcome.

Hopefully you caught the news earlier today: OmniGraphSketcher is now final. Congratulations to the OGS team! And hey, if you've been wanting desperately to buy OmniGraphSketcher for all your graph sketching needs but couldn't do so because our store didn't support PayPal, you'd best be buying yourself a lottery ticket because THIS IS YOUR LUCKY DAY.

On a totally unrelated note, let's talk about iPhones! Specifically, what's the most useful/fun/cool thing you've done with your phone lately? I put this question to some of the Omni folk, and here are their answers:

Kris, Support Ninja: "I've settled many a "Where should we go?" hive-mind-cluster-fart by popping open the Yelp app and searching for nearby options. I've also bookmarked my own lil' Zagat Guide of the local places that I love, and places to check out when I travel. Being able to click a link to call for reservations, get a map with directions, or view real people's reviews make this app tremendously useful for me."

Aaron, Sysadmin: "When we were in a car wreck I felt like I was living in one of those silly Apple ads. First I took out the phone to call the police (everyone was OK, BTW) followed by my insurance company. Then I snapped some pictures of the scene and damage to email to the claims adjuster. Finally, after everything was all written up I used the Google maps app to find the closest tow truck company and call them to come pick up my busted rig."

Tim, VP Software Development: "I recently bought Jaadu VNC which lets you connect to your Mac's screen on the phone. So, my kids are in the office and I'm out sitting on the couch.  I connect to my machine and use Jaadu's keyboard to start using the "say" command in Terminal to freak them out.  I live in the future, where technology is good for evil."

Bill, User Experience Lead: "I recently ditched my real camera because the iPhone 3G S camera is quite adequate for any photo or video I care to take. When I'm listening to the Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! podcast, I like to switch over to YouTube and catch up on whatever current event they're talking about, because I usually have no idea. Uh, I have also used the Amazon app to photograph, research, and buy a book. While standing in the physical bookstore. *shame*"

My own example: last week I was parking in a totally unfamiliar part of Seattle, so I used Maps to drop a pin at my car's location. When I was ready to go home, instead of wandering the streets for hours on end weeping hysterically, I just pulled up walking directions to find my way back. Not only that, but since I'm so directionally challenged I find instructions like "walk south" to be completely meaningless, I used the compass to keep me heading the right way. OH IPHONE I LOVE YOU.

How about you guys? Have any how-my-phone-improved-my-life stories to share?

The OmniFocus team has been hard at work lately, and we're geeked to let you know that version 1.5 for iPhone and iPod touch is now available. OmniFocus 1.5 for iPhone and iPod touch leverages many of the new capabilities in the iPhone OS 3.0 software update, including cut, copy and paste, integrated Maps and more. If you read Brian's article on location-based contexts, you know how OmniFocus works with Location Services—OmniFocus 1.5 for iPhone and iPod touch now displays nearby context categories of possible tasks using a map. Just touch a pin to see all the tasks within the corresponding context category. 

NOW YOUR TASKS WILL HAUNT YOU WHEREVER YOU GO! Er, I mean, smell the unparalleled productivity!

The app also now features a new Search screen for easily searching through projects and actions, and a new Repeat screen enables the quick set-up of repeating actions and projects. Web links can render directly inside the application itself for quicker viewing. Other new features include "due date" display for each Action list, and direct feedback email to the Omni Group from within the application itself.

What are you waiting for? To the App Store with you, mister/missy, and grab the new version.

I wanted to do a blog post about what I regard as (in my humble opinion) the single most awesome feature in OmniFocus for iPhone. It's also a feature that I'm not sure everyone knows about. Time to change that!

OmniFocus for iPhone plugs into part of the iPhone OS called "Location Services"; this lets it figure out where in the world you're located. The location-finding is most accurate if you're using a device that has GPS (an iPhone 3g or the new 3gs, for example), but if you've got a first-generation iPhone or an iPod Touch, the device can also figure out your location by seeing which cellphone towers and/or WiFi networks it can find. (WiFi is actually more accurate than the cell-tower method, at least here in the US; overseas, the situation may be different.)

Okay, this is cool and all, but how is it useful in OmniFocus? Well, your contexts can also have location information associated with them. By combining the two, OmniFocus can do Google map searches to help you figure out what you can get done based on where you currently are. Tap the "Nearby Contexts" button - it looks like a crosshair on the toolbar - and OmniFocus will show you where you can go to accomplish actions in the contexts it has location info about.

To assign location info to one of your contexts, do the following:

Tap "Contexts" on OmniFocus for iPhone's home screen.

Tap the "Edit" button in the upper right of the screen.

Tap the context you want to edit.

Tap one of the location buttons described below and enter your information.

The various kinds of Location info supported are:

Current location - where you are right now, expressed as latitude/longitude.

Contact - The address assigned to the contact you choose is used.

Address - Enter an address. Anything that works in the iPhone Maps application works here; street address of your home, or even something as general as "Beijing, China".

Business Search - Specific business names and general categories are both supported; OmniFocus will return the closest result it can find. If you have a favorite drug store where you get prescriptions filled, you could enter the name; if you travel a lot, you could just enter "Pharmacy" and get results in multiple cities.

Always Available - This setting is good for contexts like "Phone" - ones that are generally available no matter where you are.

In any case, once your contexts are set up, you can tap the nearby button and get a handy list that looks like this:

(A tap the button on the right side of each header takes you to the Maps application so you can navigate to the location, by the way.)

I've added a list of location-based contexts that folks here at Omni use to get folks started. I've also created a thread over on our forums where folks can swap further ideas - we're doing a google map search behind the scenes, so using their search operators, you can do some neat tricks with this stuff!

Suggestions:

Home

Office

Phone (always available, if you're on an iPhone)

Grocery

Pharmacy

Post Office

Music Store

Book Store

Apple Store

Cities you visit frequently

Hi, all!

In case you missed it, we shipped OmniFocus 1.5 last November, adding synchronization between any number of OmniFocus for Mac and OmniFocus for iPhone databases, archiving, view presets, style preferences, and more. You'll definitely want to make sure you're using this latest version, which you can grab from the OmniFocus page.

We're also hard at work on OmniFocus 1.6, and if you're interested in trying out the latest ongoing (possibly unstable) builds, you can access the sneaky peeks at the sneaky peek page. It adds support for projects which automatically complete when all tasks within the project are complete, makes contexts completely optional (actions without contexts are no longer considered unavailable), lets you filter your inbox and no context lists, and lets you view all your due or flagged items in a single list.

In other news, we are working closely with the The David Allen Company to promote OmniFocus as a GTD enabled software solution. What does this mean for you? Well, hopefully our working relationship will help us better support those of you who are using the GTD methodology, by having an ongoing connection with the folks at David Allen & Co. and staying in touch with their latest thinking. As we look to future versions of OmniFocus, we want to help you get the most out of your GTD-specific workflows, and provide more GTD resources that supplement our software.

(Of course, you don't have to be a GTD fan to use OmniFocus: we think we provide a very useful set of features for other task management styles, and we're continuing to make improvements there as well.)

COME SEE US AT THE GTD SUMMIT

We also wanted you to know that Omni will be at the GTD Summit in San Francisco on March 11-13. If you're interested in attending, you can access a special discount of 35% (more than $800) off the Summit fee. To register, go to the registration page and enter the coupon code "Summit35".

You may wish to view a short invitation from David, and you can find more details about the event at www.gtdsummit.com. We hope to see you there!

Lastly, we're thrilled to announce that this past weekend we sold our 50,000th copy of OmniFocus for iPhone! Thank you so much to all the folks who have helped us immeasurably by sending in suggestions, reporting issues, and recommending OmniFocus to friends.

Why, hello again! Michaela here. I don't know if you noticed that fancy title, but there are two new OmniFocus videos available from our friends at ScreenCastsOnline.

The first, found here, is on the basics of OmniFocus. It has some new information not found in the Quick Start video and is a great starting point.

The second, found here, is on OmniFocus advanced usage and the iPhone. It's a special double-length show that covers topics such as Syncing, the Inspectors, Growl integration, Perspectives, Clippings, and integrating with other applications like Mail and iCal.

As always, the ScreenCastsOnline team does fantastic work. We thank them.

Do check it out!

It is true what many of you have heard: Our buddy, OmniFocus for iPhone, has an update. In this update, we corrected a few things including:

• A bug in which a blank screen could appear after creating a new item
• A bug in which OmniFocus could become unresponsive after converting an action to a project
• A new Settings icon to avoid potential confusion with Apple's Settings application
• Saved Zion from the machines

Okay, maybe we're still working on that last one, but you can find a full list of changes, or check out the application in iTunes, here. (This link opens in iTunes.)

Thanks to everyone for their help!

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