The Omni Group

Can't Wait!

James:

Would you please expound on your comment about the OmniFocus web interface?  Does that mean it will run on the iPhone even when it is in Airplane Mode and somehow store the data locally?

It would be awesome if we could deploy that onto a server instead of running it on one particular Mac. Each omnifocus app we use connects to it, or at least syncs with it.

Or maybe you guys would like to take care of that for us? :) All those who'd pay a subscription fee to have ubiquitous access say aye!

Is it possible to write a sync services client that simply is a relay for a remote server? Not ideal, I admit.

I've been thinking that that would be a great way to sync calendars/mail/to-do lists, etc between the Mac and gmail/yahoo/etc. Write the various plugins, and let iSync sync them all!

Nice to see how this has come along in just a day or two from when I first noticed .rhtml files being copied from the disk image.

“Wait, what? Rails?”

Ha. You guys just rock. Living in Europe, I can't get an iPhone yet, but you just added a feature I really depend on with my current phone. You very well may have just sealed the deal for 1 more iPhone sale when it becomes available in Euro-land. You should get commission. :-)

This looks awesome!  I was having severe GTD withdrawal issues with the iphone as my system was down without my task list.  Please do hurry!!

The idea of the web interface is totally and completely awesome.  Optimizing it for an iPhone's tiny screen?  Not so much.  The majority of people who access this will not be using an iPhone.  Why cater to the minority?

This looks great and I think is a great example of embracing the constraints that the iPhone offers.

I question why you've created yet another iPhone mailing list, however, when there are already at two that might serve your interests just as well. The first is iPhoneWebDev and is rather active and well managed; the second was set up by Brent Simmons of Ranchero. Of course it's totally possible that you missed those, but as these conversations are already happen (and have been happening with captive audiences) it seems like it might be worth joining the existing groups rather than creating redundant conversations? Just a thought! ;)

I'm in total agreement with Robert above. This could very well make OmniFocus my GTD tool of choice. Can you provide some basic info on setting up the port-forwarding so my iPhone can access my Mac? BTW, the web UI seems to work fine in Firefox too.

Sorry if I seem utterly daft but is this up and running on the latest Alpha? Ive downloaded it set up my password etc and tried to open it in Safari and Omniweb and Im getting

Cannot Load Address

Stopped loading : lost network connection

I must be doing something wrong I know it but what?

“Why cater to the minority?”

You aren't seriously asking this of a Mac Developer, are you? lol. Omni is successful PRECISELY because they have dedicated their talents to “catering to the minority.” And thank god for it.

[...] Update: Or, as just reported by TUAW, you can plan on using OmniFocus which will, according to their report, include its own embedded webs server to generate an iPhone-friendly display with no syncing required. I’ve ben holding off jumping into the beta of OmniFocus but this may tip me over the edge.  Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

iPhone great!  But what about my prerelease of OmniFocus itself.  My whole life is on hold w/o OmniFocus - I can't shop so I can't eat.  I can't buy gas so I can't go any where.  I even can't think so I can't finish a sent…

Please, send it.  I'm hungry and I need to get out a bit more!

[Note, I likely used a different email address when I signed up; so if this 'comment' prompts you to send me OmniFocus, you'll need to search for my name!]

I found this in the latest sneaky peak, and was mightily impressed - a clever use of Rails. It also keeps running even if you quit OF.

However, please add an option to set the port that it runs on - as a Rails developer I was flummoxed for a while when my own Rails apps failed to run. The OmniFocus server was still running on the default port 3000

Sweet. If Apple got their act together and this “back to my mac” worked also as a DynDNS service it would be fantastic.

You'd have one-button push to having services available to the phone and you'd have yourname.mac.com as an address to get to them.

I see a real possibility here. Full programs offering online, simpler versions for the iPhone.

(And if you don't have .mac you can always use no-ip or dyndns)

Take it from someone who lived in 'Nawlins for nearly 40 years; it's spelled y'all. (It's a contraction of “you all”; I don't know what “ya'll” is a contraction of.)

Don't trust a spell check program from the west coast for regional colloquialisms.

2 questions and 1 comment:

Q1: Will the web/iPhone interface allow data input?  (Meaning, will this just be a one-way communication, or two-way?)

Q2: This would require me to have my Mac running at all times, acting as a server, correct?  If so, maybe as a hack I could have my Mac referencing OmniFocus documents that actually live on a remote server (say, some Rails-enabled web space I already have), so whether I am “focusing” via my Mac or iPhone, it's accessing the same data.

Comment: If this execution is as great as I expect from OmniGroup, I will finally buy an iPhone and switch to AT&T (yech!), as this will be the iPhone's killer app.  Being able to maintain my tasks, projects, and contexts all through a mobile device when I'm out and about—no more having to use post-its and scrap paper when I'm out in the world, and then key it in when I'm back at my Mac!

You arenâ??t seriously asking this of a Mac Developer, are you? lol. Omni is successful PRECISELY because they have dedicated their talents to â??catering to the minority.â??

Within reason.  They don't want to cater to an extreme minority of their customers.  That is, of the people who already know they'll be lining up to buy OmniFocus, how many are iPhone users?  And of those, how many know how to set up port-forwarding rules in their router?  And of those, how many have a static IP or a dynamic dns service?  And of those, how many would actually use the feature?  We've chopped that pie so many times that we're down to a crumb.

OmniFocus still needs a lot of work.  iPhone-specific features are just a distraction.

I don't leave my computer running all the time either. Now if there was a way to host this on my .Mac account, then we got something there.

[...] As you may have heard there is currently no ToDo app on the iPhone for some reason even though it exists in iCal today and in Mail in the upcoming Leopard release of OSX. Omni Group has heeded the call by enabling their pending GTD app OmniFocus serve itself up through the browser. Seems to work very well - though I noticed it takes a few moments to update back on the desktop. Regardless, this is a great solution if you’ve already organized yourself or are planning to use Omnifocus. [...]

Hmm… this begs to be made into a dashboard widget me thinks…

Is it possible to get this web interface to open on my Blackberry?

Haven't been able to get it to work.

[...] I remember watching Merlin Mann talking with OmniGroup back in January about enabling apps for the iPhone. I knew they’d do something web-based, but I didn’t expect a fractional horse power http server to get embedded in their latest app. [...]