That being said, not everything is hearts and flowers, but the negatives are third-party incompatibilities and not deal-breakers.

• Line 6′s most awesome Pod Farm AudioUnit plug-in isn’t yet compatible. I’m back to using real mics and amps for now, but as most of my work is mixing/sequencing right now I’ve got some time to spare for this to resolve.
• Xmarks bookmark sync (reasonably indispensible, but I know it’ll get ported quickly).
• When creating a new event in iCal using the Exchange integration, it doesn’t always invite the room I’ve specified unless I drag the event to a new time, and then back to the correct one. Weird!

All things told- still two thumbs up!

So it’s not unexpected that when I saw the recent news about the new super-bundle Logic Studio I wasn’t immediately interested- until I read a bit more about what was in it, and had a chance to peek at it first-hand on a friend’s machine. It took about 30 minutes of hands-on to change my mind entirely. Consider me officially turned.

The Logic Pro 8 interface

First and foremost, the ReWire implementation is so slick it almost feels like it’s TOO easy to use. You can actually fire up a ReWire slave like Reason or Ableton Live directly from within Logic, and then choose from any of their instruments. For once, ReWire just works without thinking about it too much. Awesome.

The other thing that’s impressed me with Logic Pro 8 is that it really feels as if the UI has gotten a good once-over across the board, becoming far more intuitive and natural-feeling. The app as a whole is rock-solid and has not crashed on me once through my weaning-in period, which is a good sign (cause I can pile on the CPU/hard drive load like a monster). Oh, and it can bounce directly to MP3 – incredibly handy for taking working mixes with you quickly on an iPod/iPhone – something that took a bounce and then a conversion in Live.

In relation, ProTools has seemed to stagnate recently- getting little-to-no love and feeling largely like a port of the app I started using some 10-12 years ago. It feels like Digidesign has been lost in their new Avid home, and the app is just on cruise control enjoying it’s status as the reigning king of user base. Digital Performer is not much better, with MOTU’s energy and attention appearing to largely go towards their software instruments these days, and the DP 5.x interface being largely an OS X makeover with no real improvements or changes to the core app itself. Perhaps I was just ready for a fresh start- who knows. Either way, Logic has definitely learned from it’s history and really made a huge leap in usability and reliability. Live may still be my favorite songwriting app – and definitely my favorite performance app – but Logic is going to give it a run for it’s money now for the hardcore gigs.

The other apps in Logic Studio are, quite frankly, just interesting to have and not really essential. I already owned Soundtrack Pro from Final Cut Studio 2, and MainStage, their new ‘performance’ application, is hard-pressed to take on my proven Ableton Live + Reason + Novation REmoteSL 61 combo. The 3D graphics are swanky, but not anything I couldn’t live without. The loop libraries and JamPacks are quite welcome, and although the software instruments are nice, Reason still remains my software instrument swiss army knife of choice.

That being said, I still feel that even without the hefty discount I got on Logic Studio (a professional courtesy, for the record) it was worth every penny. I’m using it on my first real session this weekend, and haven’t looked forward to a session this much in a while. My fingers are crossed that the software gremlins don’t come out to bite me, though. Wouldn’t that be ironically predictable?

CSS Sculptor is an elegant Dreamweaver extension that helps you quickly build a customized CSS layout, starting with 30 of the most popular variants- elastic, liquid and fixed layouts, 1-3 column configurations, and much more. The interface doesn’t just help you choose from a completely ‘pre-canned’ design, but gives you a clear starting point to help expose the CSS and attributes required to customize a layout for your specific project and design- helping educate users on CSS best practices as well as expedite their development. Win/win.

The community is taking notice, too- you can read Jeffrey Zeldman’s aforementioned take on CSS Sculptor (great comment thread, too), articles from InfoWorld and Website Magazine, and of course Eric’s own take on CSS Sculptor at his personal weblog. Don’t forget to digg the news, as well.

Great product from two heavyweights in their respective spheres of influence, and yet another reason why Dreamweaver’s such a rich product to work with- the extensibility/third-party developer community around Dreamweaver just plain rocks! Awesome job, guys.

(Side note: I feel compelled to put a little plug in here for the standards-compliant CSS Layouts that ship with Dreamweaver CS3 for the record – which are also great sources of education on CSS design/layout best practices – heavily commented, and coded for Dreamweaver by The Web Standards Project‘s Stephanie Sullivan.)

First, Aaron West’s sweet TwitterAIR app gets the strong nod-and-wink for being the first AIR Twitter app I’d seen (and damn nicely done, too). Respect.

Secondly – but not least – Spaz.AIR uses both the AIR runtime as well as the free Spry framework from Adobe (along with some JQuery) to do it’s magic. A double shot of Adobe technology in that little package, that’s cool in and of itself.

Now to be perfectly honest- I primarily use the Iconfactory’s Twitteriffic as it both integrates with my menu bar well, and Growl for system notification (mainly, I’ve been using it for so long it’s just become part of my workflow), but were I to rethink it all – which I might – either Spaz or TwitterAIR would be my successors of choice. Boo ya!

The comments in the Ajaxian article’s thread are interesting- I was pleased to see there’s certainly a contingent of folks within giving a thumbs-up to recent release(s) of DW, along with the expected ‘WYSIWYG editing is for dolts’ responses, the latter of which Dion’s question may actually be a valid one for. My answer is simple- I’m a designer who likes code. I spend most of my time in DW’s code view exclusively, and occasionally do quick mockups/proof-of-concept work with the WYSIWYG tools. DW CS3 is speedy and nimble for me (particularly when compared to the glacial performance of MX 2004 and perhaps DW 8), and I have no problems using it regularly as a code editor – again, with the occasional drift into the GUI-driven features if I’m doing quick tests/proofs.

Now I can’t (and won’t) argue with those who simply prefer completely stripped-down tools like Notepad or TextMate/BBEdit – I occasionally do as well (have been a BBEdit user longer than a Dreamweaver user), and understand the minimalist approach – but the extended features of DW (along with it’s recent updates for code-centric folks) are way too much to discount wholesale just for percieved street cred on my part, or the spectre of old (and now- largely resolved) code trust issues in the visual editing features.

Anyway, I’d be interested in your comments, suggestions and opinions on this, too- as Dreamweaver is a app very near and dear to my own workflow I’ve also got strong (and yes- potentially biased) opinions upon it myself. Sound off below, why dontcha?

After reaching a frustration point with Kinkless GTD’s synch process, I switched to the freeware (donations welcomed) iGTD. iGTD added some new twists to my task management workflow, specifically it’s sweet microsyntax for adding a task with metadata via Quicksilver. It’s been rumored for quite some time that Mac developers OmniGroup was working with Kinkless GTD script wizard Ethan Schoonover to build the Kinkless heir apparent, OmniFocus, but with iGTD getting solid marks on most all fronts (and not being a fully commercial product) I wasn’t about to hold out and wait.

Now I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve been using beta versions of OmniFocus for about a month straight now, and it seems very polished for a beta application. It’s outline view is refined and familiar as a former Kinkless user, and I’ve found myself using OmniFocus’ Focus mode often (lets you drill down on a particular list or context easily and remove distractions), as well as the nice nested project structure that can run tasks either parallel or in series.

I’ve a few nitpicks, albeit minor, of course. Printing functionality came late in the beta cycle, but is still very basic. I’d like to have access to custom print views/templates for the occasion I want to get a hard-copy of a specific list/next actions/etc and format it for a specific binder/organizer/size/etc.

Sync with iCal has been mostly solid, with a few occasional dropped items or the like (update- this is much tighter in recent beta versions). I can chalk this up to beta status, and not a public beta at that.

An interesting feature in OmniFocus is the ability to turn on a small server of sorts on your local machine to syndicate your tasklist via a web interface. It seems this is geared towards getting OmniFocus lists onto your swanky new iPhone, but I’ve yet to find a solid use for it (as my home network dynamically assigns IP addresses, which means I regularly have to update the URL’s IP address in my iPhone browser, which is a bit annoying). I want to have the list on my iPhone live, but alas with Apple’s stance on third-party development the rather disappointing ‘build a web app’ statement being what it is, I’m not sure I have a better suggestion right now.

Aside from the sweet Quicksilver/CLI syntax in iGTD, I haven’t found myself seriously lacking features in OmniFocus. As OmniFocus has it’s own Quick Entry interface/hotkey that’s not a deal-breaker, but given my Quicksilver jones I’d like to see the same functionality in iGTD extended to OmniFocus (but won’t hold my breath, it’s a bit arcane for most users). Performance is also better in OmniFocus than iGTD (in my opinion)- it starts up quickly whereas iGTD started to lag with larger lists and take a while to boot.

It’s hard to say which of the two applications will end up getting my full-time support, but in my opinion OmniFocus just entered the race at the front of the pack. If someone can crack the web sync problem, and give me an *easy* way to synch and access my GTD lists from my iPhone, that may just be the deciding point. Neither app does it well right now, but I’m holding out hope.

All told, OmniFocus rocks- as it’s fast, uncluttered and very focused (no pun intended). I’ll be using it for quite some time.

• Hit the Quicksilver key combo (I use ctrl-space)
• Hit the . (period) key to go into text-entry mode
• Type your message… for example, “Stand up and stretch”.
• Hit tab, then ctrl-return to ‘freeze’ the message.
• Start typing ‘Run after Delay…’ (after the first 4-5 letters it should show up in the lower QS pane).
• Once Run after Delay is shown, hit tab (a third ‘lower pane’ in QS should now appear).
• Type the time interval. (10m = 10 minutes, 2h = 2 hours, 30s = 30 seconds, you get the picture)

Now, after the time interval has elapsed, you’ll get a big full-screen message reminding yourself of whatever it was you needed to do. It may seem like a lot of keystrokes, but it’s actually VERY fast once you get used to, and incredibly handy for setting a regular stretch/exercise if you spend a lot of time at the keyboard, or just reminding yourself of random daily tasks lest you lose track of time. I regularly use this trick as a ‘surf timer’, to limit my random web surfing to a specific timespan, but the more you get used to it the more uses you’ll find for it. I’ve been using it a lot lately for ‘check on the baby’ reminders, for what it’s worth.

Enjoy, and happy Quicksilvering!

Things have really moved forward for GTD advocates on the Mac, methinks. I’m pleased as punch right now with iGTD (and don’t like to switch software often, if at all) but will be hard-pressed to not check out OmniFocus with a little hands-on love when a beta version is finally available. These are great times to be a slightly over-organized Mac-head.

So from there, I checked out a bunch of online backup solutions – iBackup, xDrive and Mozy- but Mac support was minimal if even present. In the 5-6 months afterwards, I’ve basically been flying blind. I switched my video/image asset management backup to redundant hard drives (one of which goes with me to work each week, swapping for the other – so that I can keep one away from my house in event of fire), but really still ached for something lightweight to backup the key day-to-day workfiles and config settings.

Thank god Mozy finally released a Mac OSX client to beta. I decided to pony up and try a year (at ~$5 a month), and the setup/kickoff process was pretty painless. Just a small menubar app that runs to give you status and allow you to view the log and kick off new backups. A 448-bit encryption scheme allows some peace of mind that my files will stay my files, too. And although it took a couple days of ‘trickle transfers’ to upload all my initial backup data, now it transfers perhaps a few megs a day at worst when I’m not active on the computer (hence not sucking up bandwidth when I want it the most). Very painless and unobtrusive system, and despite being a beta release, I’ve had nary a crash or hitch so far.

Read more about the Mozy service (Mac and Windows) here.

Now I know 2 weeks isn’t a long time to test and gain confidence in a new backup solution, but last night I encountered my first filesystem emergency that required restoring some files from the online Mozy backup. I choked and mistakenly deleted a directory in my Documents area – bonehead error in retrospect but one that does occasionally happen. Restoration was a breeze- just went online, clicked the files I wanted to restore, kicked off the process – and there they were. Like I never brainfarted and deleted the files at all.

Mozy- you’ve officially done me right.
This is exactly what I’ve been looking for in a lightweight backup solution!

First iTunes itself started automatically downloading album cover art, and then I discovered the wonders of Quicksilver and it’s wonderful iTunes triggers. Sure, you always did both for me, but it was increasingly obvious that software was growing around us. And past our limitations. Heck, I tried to look forward to your big makeover and relaunch, but with all those ‘limited feature’ betas and no real facts as to what that makeover was going to entail, I couldn’t get on board. I wish I could have been more unconditionally supportive of your quest for personal growth- and for that I truly apologize. But I honestly wasn’t sure where we were headed.

To be fair- you really put your best foot forward with our relationship. I was ecstatic when you started to support Last.fm scrobbling – even though I couldn’t tag/love/suggest my songs on Last.fm through your sexy interface, getting my recent tracks updated was enough to keep me around for a while. God knows that horrid Last.fm application kept trying to flirt with me incessantly, but we both know it could never be what you were to me and my iTunes library.

But were I to choose exactly what was the final straw for me, it would have to be our conflicting real estate interests. It’s always a shame when such a rich relationship breaks down over property, isn’t it? But you just expected too much of my menubar for buttons I was rapidly growing out of. At the end, your faithful hotkeys were the primary way we interacted, and with Quicksilver’s triggers handy and capable of shouldering the load, I had to do some long and hard soul-searching as to whether or not we were still right for one another. And given that Last.fm integration was the only need that Quicksilver couldn’t cover, I decided to leave you in favor of Quicksilver and Audioscrobbler alone, and re-embrace the social features of Last.fm that you never really seemed interested in implementing.

I’ll always remember our relationship fondly, and speak highly of you, but as of today- it’s over. I’m sure you’ll find new loves in the future, but for now we’re just going to have to go our separate ways. This really is the best move for both of us, and I sincerely hope we can stay friends.

Best of luck… I’ll always remember the good times.