A short and glorious life, or a long and dull one?

Owners of the new 3G iPhone face the same dilemma put to the Greek hero Achilles by the gods of Olympus. In the end, he chose glory. But iPhone users might take a different view.

The new phone has a more power-hungry chipset. Walt Mossberg is not the only one who has found “the battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20% by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day”.

I take and make much fewer calls than he does, and I notice it too.

Apple has published a page of tips to help users manage this Achilles’ heel.

Much of the advice is common sense: reduce the brightness of the screen, minimise or turn off the phone’s “push” features, turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if you don’t need them, don’t play games on it, and so on.

But three of the suggestions were news to me.

First, you can turn off 3G and still receive calls and data via GPRS and EDGE. Makes sense, but it never occurred to me. You will find the option in the Network section of General Preferences.

Secondly, “applying an equalizer setting to song playback on your iPhone can decrease battery life.” You can switch that off, or set it to “flat” in the phone’s iPod settings.

Lastly, Location Services chews a lot of power. Switching it on only when you need it will prolong the life of your battery.

Finally, it surprised me with its advice on cycling the battery:

For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

I have always thought—following someone’s sage advice when I was a gullible new Switcher—that it was important never to let the battery level fall too low. Now I know.

Luckily, just like Achilles my iPhone thirsts for a short and glorious life, so there will be no problem getting the battery charge down.

[Via InformationWeek ]

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Since the announcement that Quicksilver was going open source (back last November), things have been moving slowly along.

Etienne Samson is now producing new alpha builds which he is posting on the Quicksilver Google Code page . The latest build is timestamped 25 June and another build is imminent.

These new builds are modestly described as “only a bug fix version”, a clean-up operation while the creator of Quicksilver, Alcor, is reportedly “working on a complete re-write of the frameworks of Quicksilver and should hopefully release it soon”.

Nonetheless, some users (including me) find that the new builds are slightly zippier and have a smaller memory footprint. However, they are not so good for people using Mouse triggers, which are apparently broken.

Although based on some of his changes, these builds are not the same as the tweaking that Ankur is doing independently. His work also promises a much slicker build, but progress seems to be stalled.

What is Quicksilver?

Quicksilver is act without doing, work without effort, do your work then step back; it is empty yet infinitely capable; the more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

More accessible information on this absolutely kick-ass productivity tool can be found in the Quicksilver User Guide in the Quicksilver Google Group and/or in a beginner’s tutorial post by Lifehacker’s Adam Pash, MacBreak’s Quicksilver screencast and the AppleBlog’s screencast on using Quicksilver to send quick-fire emails.

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The marking is all done, the students are spread to the four winds for semester break, school holidays are upon us.

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

(Then people long to go on pilgrimages
and pilgrims to seek strange shores
far-off shrines, known in sundry lands;)

In short, we are off to the beach house for the winter break, as Geoffrey Chaucer recommends.

Log fires, walks on the windy beach, books, Shiraz, S’mores, the complete boxed set of West Wing DVDs.

No broadband.

See you again in ten days or so.

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EasyTask 2.0 has been released, bringing a range of new features and bugfixes to this “mid-range” Getting Thing Done (GTD) app.

Hawk Wings has posted on EasyTask Manager before.

The changelog for the new version seems promising:

•    New 3-panel Preview. View and edit tasks faster.
•    Tasks can have system wide alarms (Leopard only).
•    Quick add system wide hot-key allows to add new tasks from any application (option+apple+right arrow key).
•    Improved Online Sync (fix various bugs with some tasks not syncing).
•    Automatic realtime sync with iCal / Calendar store in Leopard so tasks are visible in Apple Mail and emails can be converted to tasks. (Leopard only. Tiger syncs with iCal but users need to click Sync button).
•    Added option to sync using Projects instead of Contexts as Calendars (Leopard only).
•    New Outline look.
•    Fix problem with Online Sync and firewalls.

But what caught my eye was the claim on the developer’s web site that it can “Sync with the iPhone”.

This turns out to be only half-true (if that). It doesn’t sync with the iPhone at all. What happens is that app syncs up to an online interface accessible through an iPhone.

It’s not a beautiful interface, but will get the job done. However, when you mark a task as completed on the iPhone you are greeted with the screen on the right:

Hmmmm…. This is not the key to a seamless GTD workflow.

If you are looking for a solid GTD workflow that involves an iPhone, Remember the Milk remains a much better solution (although the launch of the 3G iPhone promises lots of new apps, like OmniFocus for the iPhone ).

(UPDATE: According to TUAW Remember the Milk has just won the 2008 Apple Design Award for best iPhone web app.)

With its much more polished iPhone interface (pictured), Dashboard widget , Quicksilver action and whatnot , it’s the best iPhone solution currently around.

The Republic of Geektopia (see all its RTM posts ) and David Chartier have both written fine posts on how they Get Things Done with Remember the Milk and its tools which I won’t repeat here.

I should point out, that in order to use the iPhone interface, you need to puchase a “pro” subscription (USD 25 a year) to Remember The Milk.

See too Bruce McKenzie’s fine post on Getting Things Done using an iPhone.

I’m torn about EasyTask Manager. On the one hand, it presents a fine mid-priced (USD 19.99), mid-featured GTD framework.

On the other, with Things and OmniFocus and others powering ahead, it’s simply falling too far behind the pack. Harsh but, I think, fair.

Check it out for yourself from the developer’s web site .

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Last night I updated Hawk Wings to WordPress 2.3.2.

It didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped.

Some text got munged up and some other bits and pieces are broken.

I will work it all out in the end, but apologies for the mess in the meantime.

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Gina Trapani has released an update to her excellent Better Gmail 2 extension for Firefox.

This is the Better Gmail extension that works with the new Gmail interface.

The new version adds four new features: One Click Conversations (quick access to previous emails from a particular sender), Hide Invites Box, Google Reader Integration (in the Sidebar) and Rollover Highlight Messages (which highlights message rows as you mouse over them).

It also marks the return of skins. Users can now choose between a Blue Skin and a Grays and Blue Skin (screenshot below):

The updated version is available from Lifehacker or from the Mozilla Extension Repository . Needless to say, it is freeware.

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