mbjones

• Interested in creating a better internet experience, and don’t mind getting your hands “dirty” (coding!) then check out this hosts file that auto blocks tons of adware, spyware and otherwise malicious stuff.

• Many years ago Calvin & Hobbes explained the Occupy Wall Street movement to us. Surprisingly prescient? Perhaps…

• Speaking of OWS, Andrew Sullivan links to a talk on what inequality does to a society.

• There are some odd tumblr’s out there, but few are as odd and funny, as this one: Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses.

• J Lee Grady, an editor of Charisma Magazine writes on the importance of a charismatic reformation. This is an important read, and should be deeply considered. Highlights:

1. Let’s reform our theology. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. He is God and He is holy. He is not an “it.” He is not a blob, a force, or an innate power. We must stop manipulating Him, commanding Him and throwing Him around.

2. Let’s return to the Bible. The Word of God is the foundation for the Christian experience. Any dramatic experience, no matter how spiritual it seems, must be tested by the Word and the Holy Spirit’s discernment.

7. No more Lone Rangers. Those who claim to be ministers of God—whether they are traveling evangelists, local pastors or heads of ministries—must be accountable to other leaders.

9. Stop faking the anointing. God is God, and He does not need our “help” to manifest Himself. That means we don’t sprinkle glitter on ourselves to suggest God’s glory is with us, hide fake jewels on the floor to prove we are anointed or pull chicken feathers out of our sleeves to pretend angels are in the room.

15. Let’s make the main thing the main thing. The purpose of the Holy Spirit’s anointing is to empower us to reach others. We are at a crossroads today: Either we continue off-course, entertained by our charismatic sideshows, or we throw ourselves into evangelism, church planting, missions, discipleship, and compassionate ministry that helps the poor and fights injustice. Churches that embrace this New Reformation will focus on God’s priorities.

The whole thing is worth a read, especially as its written by an insider. Many within protestant circles have been either (a) severely hurt by the things Grady speaks to or (b) severely disillusioned by the show; in these cases, rather than walking firmly in the power of God it’s something denied or rationalized away.

• Matt Wiebe on The God Shaped Hole and consumerist culture. Also worth some thought…

I can’t spend a ton of time on every app review. It’d just frustrate me. So, I’m going to start doing some “shorts”: a series of 3 quick (no more than a few paragraphs) app reviews. Today I’ll do some “reading” apps.

Kindle

I’m just doing a short review of the Kindle app because most everyone knows about and has likely used it. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a book reader for reading primarily books bought through the Amazon kindle store (but it can read other formats too, like pdfs). It works brilliantly. You can highlight passage, bookmark pages, share bits and pieces from what you are reading, all within the app itself. Further, for books you buy on the kindle store, it keeps everything synced between devices, and you can even view your highlights and such online. It’s my preferred e-reader on the iPad. 5 of 5 stars.

Logos Bible

The Logos Bible app is a an app built for Bible study. And it’s quite a nice app. It beautifully presents the text, and has a plethora of study options (I particularly like the passage guides). It’s big issue, though, is that it is designed to be paired with the desktop app. If you have it (version 4 in either the Mac or Windows variety), this will likely be your iOS bible app of choice. If you DON’T, well, it probably won’t be. The cost barrier will make it difficult to justify when there are free apps that do similar things. Because of this, it loses “stars” in my rating, and it’s not an app I use day to day; I don’t have the desktop version and don’t ever see myself having the money to splurge on it. 3 of 5 stars (likely more if you have the desktop version)

YouVersion Bible

I mentioned free, and fully featured, Bible software in the Logos review. The YouVersion Bible app is the one that most people will want to check out. It beautifully presents the Bible, has built in reading plans and the ability to take notes linked to references, bookmark verses as well as share them through a variety of means. Most of the translations can be downloaded for offline viewing as well. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. It’s definitely worth a look (and will plug you into a large community of folks interested in studying the Bible). 4 of 5 stars

introduction

So. My past few app reviews have been for calendaring solutions. The first couple were all inclusive, containing both event management and project management (if in a clunky way) and the third had some basic task management capabilities built in as well (although was not nearly as robust a solution). It was that third, Calvetica, that I landed on as my calendaring app of choice. It was easy to use, easy to input data into, and did just what I needed done, excepting project management. It’s this that I’ll turn to now. And I’ll review the first great program of the category that I have run across. It’s called Voodo (try and let the name not turn you away; perhaps a poor choice, but still a good app, and it might be perfect for your needs).

So what is Voodo? Voodo is a robust task management solution, that allows you to input the tasks that you have, along with their relevant details, and then get to work on them. It does a couple of clever things on top of this, as well, that might interest you.

the likes

As I previously said, this was the first good solution that I came across. Not perfect, mind you, but quite good.

The stand out feature, to me, was its google calendar integration. It’s not something I saw done in other task/project management apps, and was quite unique. It’s not a google tasks integration either. Rather, it creates a new calendar called “Voodo”, and tasks are uploaded as all day events onto it. If the task has a due date, it’s put on that date. If it doesn’t, well, they are made timeless and synced somewhere as well. This implementation is nice for a couple of reasons:

1. It gives you quick access to your tasks from anywhere, regardless of whether you have the app with you. All you need is access to your google calendar (which is easy to get on any phone with data or computer connected to the ‘net).

2. It also provides a backup in case anything happens. Hopefully the importance of this speaks for itself.

When tasks are completed, rather than removing them from the calendar, they are marked with a “+” at the beginning of the task name, creating a historical record on the calendar as well. All in all, the google calendar integration is quite a compelling feature.

It doesn’t all the creation of projects, so to speak, but allows the addition of tags to the task, so you are able to group them in this manner. Tags are a great means of categorization, and provide the ability to drill down into our tasks pretty quickly.

Speaking of the tasks, you can add location and people contexts to each, and add notes, set dates, and prioritize (4 levels). And everything can be sorted by these things (excepting notes).

the dislikes

My biggest dislike is probably the lack of projects. Like I said, tags are quite nice, and helpful, but it’d be nice to be able to group tasks together in a more coherent way. For example, I will often have a project where things need to be done in succession, and it’d be nice to be able to more specifically set this (rather than doing it generically with the due dates and tags).

It also makes google calendar “clunky”. If you have a lot of tasks, it adds a lot of info onto your calendar. This isn’t a dealbreaker by any means, but it does add some unnecessary clutter. I wish there was a way to create the tasks as time specific events, rather than all day events.

The interface also works quite nicely, but isn’t the prettiest to look at. Again, not a dealbreaker by any means, but something keeping it in the good not great category.

conclusion

As I started by saying, Voodo is a great app. If you need a simple, straightforward task management application with pretty sweet google calendar integration, look no further. It’s inexpensive too. My final verdict is 4 out of 5 stars.

(download)

Click here to download:

ReviewVoodo_tagsreview_app_tas.zip (838 KB)

• Found this to be a helpful post on eating well in the midst of poverty. There are simple things to do that go miles.

• eBible.com is under new ownership, and launched a new version. It would seem they are looking to compete with YouVersion.

• Neoliberal economic theory, and it’s grip on American Politics is something I’ve found disturbing over the past few years. This is a pretty good article on it (and some of the reasons why I’m not much of a fan).

• In the web-startup-world, Lanbito appears to be an interesting competitor to Wufoo. Like the pricing, but don’t yet like the feature list. Add some things, and I’d consider migrating over.

• If you are on facebook, then you’ve at least heard tell of a the forthcoming changes. Here’s a good round up of what to expect. It doesn’t appear that they are changing pages much yet, just profiles (this is important if you are managing several).

Well this seems like a good enough roundup for now. Hopefully you can find some good reading material there!

introduction

As I’ve mentioned in the past couple of reviews, I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect calendaring solution for the iPad. It just seems like the iPad was made for personal organization style apps, with its ability to richly input and process data. Unfortunately those last couple of apps didn’t meet my admittedly lofty expectations; perhaps though perfection is too high of a goal, and not something within our grasp if we aren’t willing to develop it ourselves. But then there is today’s review: Calvetica. It’s as close to my idea of “perfect” as I’ve found and has (mostly) stopped my search for anything else.

I first heard about Calvetica when it was released for the iPhone. I saw it then and, not having an iPhone, thought it looked interesting but not worth picking up. Then when I found myself with an iPad, I revisited it, only to find it was iPhone only (unless you wanted to use the ugly scaling capabilities). And then not too long ago, I discovered they made an universal version, thereby enabling it on the iPad. You probably care less about it’s history (and my history with it) and more about how it works though. Look no further then.

likes

I love that Calvetica has gestures! I can easily scroll between months, select days and pinch for different views. Long taps bring up options like “add an event”. Everything I need to do can be done within a few taps, pinches or strokes.

I love that event input by and large is quick and easy. Tapping and holding brings up an entry form, and the basics can be done there. Another tap will get you into more advanced options as well. It’s all quite natural and easy.

I love that it integrates my Google Calendar (through the built-in app). I can be in sync on my computer, ipad and blackberry all at the same time with little hassle. There is some hassle though; why won’t these apps sync directly rather than using the built in calendar as a proxy?

I love the Agenda View & Week View from the main calendar screen. I love seeing about 6 weeks, alongside having the option of zooming to a day (particularly Agenda View as a list of events) or Week View, a list of all of my events for the week.

I love the ability to make a quick reminder. With a tap I can set a generic reminder for 15 minutes. This is great if I want to focus on something, zone out of the rest of the world, and then come back to things after the given time period.

Finally, i’ll mention that i love its built in Search ability (and how it isn’t cumbersome). It actually works quite well, and is self contained in a popover.

dislikes

I mentioned Google Calendar integration as a like; it’s one of those two-sided coin features though as its also a detriment in that it syncs through the built-in Calendar and not on its own. The one problem I’ve had with Calvetica has been Google Calendar sync issues. They’ve been rare though, and are in no ways a dealbreaker. It seems like it’d function much more smoothly if it directly synced.

Slow load times is my other major dislike. I think because it loads so much data from the get go, loading can be rough. I’ve seen a full calendar make it crawl (on my friend’s iPhone), and on my iPad it still takes a few seconds to load. It seems that things aren’t as optimized as they could be (but perhaps this is caused by sync issues that aren’t that easily fixed?). It’s also not a dealbreaker for me, but is definitely something that could be looked at by the developer.

what I’d like to see

The only thing that comes to mind is natural language input, as in a quick entry bar always on-screen, in which I could type something like, “Lunch with Jim Tomorrow” and have it automatically add that event to my calendar. That’d be a killer feature.

conclusion

Overall, Calvetica is an incredible app. It suits my needs perfectly. It’s quick and easy to use and feels natural, particularly when you get the gestures down. Outside of some load time and sync issues, I haven’t had any issues, and really, can’t recommend it strongly enough. And it actually does more than I’ve gone into. Also built in is task management (separated from the calendar) that syncs with Mysterious Trousers own cloud solution. Personally, I’m not using this feature; as a task management solution it didn’t suit my needs, but it might suit yours. And Calvetica seems to be actively developed which hopefully means more great features and support in the pipeline. 5 out of 5 stars

(download)

Click here to download:

ReviewCalvetica_tagsappreview5.zip (370 KB)