andrew meyers

This post is an ode to Apple customer service. I had a problem with my iPhone, they fixed it fast, and the whole experience was so easy. Here’s the story.

On Saturday my wife and I ventured down to the beautiful city of Chicago for a great weekend with friends. Most of our time was spent up in the trendy Lakeview neighborhood (close to Wrigleyville), but on Saturday afternoon we decided to take the ‘L’ down to Grant Park for the annual Taste of Chicago. It was crazy-hot, but a ton of fun, and we got to see the beautiful art and concert venue in Millennium Park as well.

After that we decided to walk up Michigan Avenue (also known as “The Magnificent Mile”) and look at all the amazing shops and stores. To me, a stop at the uber-Apple Store on North Michigan Avenue is always a must, and thankfully, my group obliged.

As we walked around my wife reminded me that I had made a Genius Bar appointment at the Woodland Apple Store in Grand Rapids for later this week. My iPhone 4′s home button had been really non-responsive for the last couple months, and I was hoping an Apple Genius could tell me if it was a software issue, confirming what I had read about online. We had some time, so the group suggested I make a Genius Bar appointment at this store, and they let me know it would be just a 20-minute wait.

I only waited about 15 minutes or so, and a Genius came up to me and let me know she was available to help me out. I explained about my iPhone’s home button, and she took a look at a few things on the phone, including my multitasking bar. She remarked that I had a lot of apps “running” (who doesn’t?), and asked how long I’d had the problem. I said it had been a couple months and that recently I had tried a backup-and-restore through iTunes to see if that would help the problem. She said that would most likely just preserve the problem if it truly was a software issue.

She then proceeded to look up my serial number and see if I was still under the 1-year warranty. I bought the iPhone at launch in June 2010, so I knew the warranty was expired, but I just had a hunch that she might be able to do something, anyway. She confirmed that, yes, my warranty was no longer valid, and after hesitating only briefly, remarked, “but I’ll go ahead and swap you for a new phone, anyway.”

I had a hunch that they might do something like this at the Genius Bar, but I couldn’t believe how stress-free the process was. No questions, no haggling, no conversation… really. I explained the problem, the Apple Genius thought about it for less than a minute, made a decision, and that was it. The whole exchange was perfect.

From there, she asked when I had most recently backed up my phone (it was just the day before) and reminded me to email myself any pictures/videos from the old phone so I wouldn’t lose them. I decided to upload them all (about 40 or so) to Dropbox, and they uploaded swimmingly over the super-fast Apple Store WIFI. She then took me through the approval process on her special modded iPhone (complete with battery pack and credit card reader). I signed for the work on the iPhone screen, of course, and then I was off and running on the new phone.

I’d have to restore the new iPhone from my backup when I get home, but the Genius asked if I’d like her to transfer my contacts over for use in the meantime. She also took me through the process of removing all data from my old phone, which made me feel a lot better about the safety of my personal information during the exchange.

That was it. Impressive customer service from start to finish. I walked out with a brand new iPhone 4 in less than a half hour. This is why people like this company so much. Apple understands that by serving their customer well, by going beyond what’s necessary, they win.

As a follow up to my rundown of native Mac apps I use every day, here’s a look at the menubar Mac apps that live on my MacBook Pro. I have some of the system apps you’d expect to see (Spotlight, Battery, Clock, Volume, Network, Bluetooth, and Time Machine), but I get the most out of these third-party apps.

Dropbox »

You might be saying, “well, duh!”, but I think nerds take Dropbox for granted. A quick survey of my office, for example, would find most of my colleagues without Dropbox installed on their machine, with the exception of those people who I’ve gotten to install it for one reason or another. Between Dropbox and Evernote, I have pretty much every document, graphics file, ebook, and more backed up to the cloud.

The thing I love about Dropbox is the ability to access 30 days’ worth of previous versions of each file. This has saved me on more than one occasion as I’ve accidentally written over a graphic design file of some kind or another. It’s also seamless — unlike Time Machine, which runs at certain intervals or when I instruct it to run, Dropbox kicks into gear as soon as changes are made to its folder on my machine.

It’s unclear what will happen to Dropbox’s utility as Apple’s iCloud service comes online this fall, but I believe the overlap between the services will be small. Power users will continue to love the flexibility and granular control that Dropbox provides. I think the service is safe… for now. Of course, who knows what Apple will announce in the next iteration of iCloud?

MenuWeather »

MenuWeather is a great little utility which simply presents the current temperature in your menubar. Clicking on the temperature provides you with more detailed information about the current conditions, a 5-day forecast, and links to hour-by-hour listings, a 10-day forecast, and the radar map. You can provide MenuWeather with a primary location (city, state or zip) to track, or it can find your location based on your IP address. The location finder is only fairly accurate (based on where I live), but I’ve had more success with it when I’m out on the road.

CalendarBar »

I use CalendarBar to preview a listing of all of my Google Calendar, iCal, and Facebook events. It supports Growl for notifications, which is really handy when I’m at work and prefer not to have my Google Calendar open in the browser or notifications running on my iPhone. Unlike Fantastical, another great calendar app for the menubar, CalendarBar offers read-only functionality. You’ll need to open base versions of these apps to add new items to your calendar. Still, it’s the perfect option for having a quick glance at what’s coming up next.

CloudApp »

CloudApp is the service I use to quickly share links and files with colleagues, family, and friends. To be fair, Dropbox does offer some similar functionality, but it’s the elegance of the CloudApp service that’s so cool to me. You simply drag a link or file to the icon in the menubar, and the upload begins. The free account allows you 10 uploads each day on files up to 25 MB in size. Upgrading to a paid account allows you to use a custom domain (instead of cl.ly) and unlimited uploads up to 250 MB in size. I haven’t used CloudApp enough to justify upgrading, but I could see graphic designers, in particular, having great use for the service and liking the unlimited plan for that reason.

Radium »

Radium is a nice little app for streaming internet radio from your menubar. I paid just $4.99 for it ¹, and it was well-worth the cost. Most of my local stations are available and it’s also fun to listen to stations from back in New York where I grew up. If you’re a Live 365 or Sirius/XM online subscriber, you’ll probably love the app even more for its presentation of those services. Radium is a lightweight way to listen to internet radio; way better than opening iTunes or launching a web player from your station’s website.

Pyrcast »

Pyrcast is was², simply put, Pandora for the Mac. Call me snobby, but I refuse to use Pandora in the web browser because of its Flash-based design. It just doesn’t work the same or equally well in all browsers. Pyrcast solves this problem really well by syncing to your Pandora account and providing your entire list of saved stations. It also offers Growl support for notifications and global shortcuts for play/pause, skip to next song, and even thumbs up/thumbs down.

Earlier this week I wrote about my plan to remove major distractions from my workday. I’m happy to report back and let you know that my plan was wildly successful. Shutting down my email client (when appropriate), Twitter, Facebook, and RSS feed-reading was a great decision. I didn’t know exactly how it was going to go, but I was left feeling more productive and way less anxious by each day’s end. Now, I’m sure each change I made factored in in its own way, but the big surprise for me was Twitter.

I got serious about using Twitter back in 2008 when the service was starting to really hit its stride. It seemed like everyone was on it, particularly in my field of higher education. It wasn’t a huge distraction back then, but quickly I found it to have become almost an addiction for me.

Free moment while my wife is looking at clothes? I think I’ll check Twitter. Standing in line at the bank? I wonder what people are saying on Twitter. At the meeting, but it hasn’t started yet? Somebody must have said something interesting in the last five minutes. Finished responding to an email? Let’s have a look at the tweetstream.

You get the idea.

So, for the last two days, I decided that, between the hours of 8 AM and 5 PM, I would turn the firehose off. Okay, if I’m being honest, there were two exceptions: lunchtime on Wednesday, and briefly during some downtime on Thursday morning. I looked at Twitter, but it wasn’t enough to be a true distraction. For the rest of the day it was smooth sailing with the plan of looking at my stream when I got home in the evening.

It’s been wonderful.

Now, I have to offer this disclaimer: I do care what you have to say. I’ve gotten to know great people, learn a ton about my profession, and stay in tune with new technology since I started using Twitter. I want to know what’s important to the people I follow, I really do. It’s just that, like everything else, Twitter has to fit in to my workflow and my life in a way that doesn’t keep me from doing real work. Recently it had become that for me, and I had to make a change.

I still read all of the tweets that came through during the past two days. I don’t feel like I missed anything, either. I just took those many times of checking during the day and squashed them into the 10 or 15 minutes it’s taken to look through them, add links to Instapaper, and respond. It’s been a great plan for me.

I challenge you to give it a shot — turn Twitter off during your workday for just a day. Or two days. Or a whole week. The change may not affect you the way it has for me this week, but if you’re anything like me, I guarantee you’ll notice a difference in the way you feel at the end of the day.

Then you’ll be able to hop on Twitter and let us know how it went.

I spend most of my workdays on a computer, and I’ve become accustomed to trying to function amidst tons of self-inflicted interruptions. Checking my email every 5 minutes to see if something new came in. Notifications of new tweets, or @replies, or direct messages from my Twitter client. That Facebook bookmark (say that 5 times fast) shouting at me from the web browser, just beckoning me to come and see if anything new has happened (it hasn’t).

I can’t imagine that I’m the only having this experience. So how are we supposed to get anything done? Is a distraction-free workday even possible?

Well, we could cancel all meetings (kidding). Nope, meetings aren’t the problem. (We might be able to do meetings better, though.) No, the real problem is what happens between the meetings, when we’re trying to get things done.

So many inputs are vying for my attention. And I know if I don’t put them to rest in my work environment, it’ll keep getting harder to get anything done. So, here’s what I’m thinking:

• Make a plan (in advance). Either the night before or first thing in my workday, I’m going to decide what action items must get done by the end of the day. Those to-dos are what I will allow to live in the “Today” area of Things. I might not get to them all, and I might need to add some items to the list mid-stream, but if I’ve got 25 or 30 items in a list, I’m not going to know what to work on. A prioritized list of 5 or less items will guarantee some amount of success, even if other uncontrollable interruptions come my way.
• Clean that desk. Before I clear away the digital distractions, I have to get rid of the physical clutter that’s threatening to clutter my mind (kudos to my man Dave Ramsey on that one). Stacks of crap? Yup, I’ve got ‘em.
• Control my email (not the other way around). I may not be able to keep email from entering my inbox, but I can decide when to look at it. Checking for new mail and responding to it throughout the day is an inefficient plan. I’m going to have to limit myself to 1 or 2 scheduled times per day when I allow for email processing to take place. When it’s not those times, Sparrow will be shut down and I’ll get on to the business of real work.
  
• Adios, Twitter. No I’m not going to stop tweeting, but if I continue to leave Twitterific running in the dock of my MacBook Pro, I’m not going to stop checking it. Out of sight, out of mind. Will I miss something incredible happening in the world? Maybe, but I’m sure one of my coworkers will let me know if something major happens. I can check Twitter at lunch and when I get home in the evening.
• Facebook is gone. If I need to post to Hope’s Facebook page, that’s fine. But there’s no reason why I should be looking at my personal news feed during the workday. What could I possibly have missed that I won’t be able to catch up later on at home?

I must also give an honorary mention to Reeder, my RSS reader of choice. I’ve already had a victory here, as Reeder is relegated to my Applications folder and not my dock.

Is my system fool-proof? Probably not. No, the phone is still going to ring. Meeting invites will continue to populate my Google Calendar. Opportunities to stop what I’m doing and serve a colleague will continue to present themselves. However, I will have controlled that which is under my control. Sounds like a plan to me.

I’m always interested to know what apps people rely on for their daily work. It seems our computers can do just about anything we want them to, and I know there are a number of apps that I use every day which I would not want to live without. Here’s a look at the native Mac apps I’m using these days…

Sparrow »

I’m not a Mail.app fan. When the beta of Sparrow came out last fall, I downloaded it immediately. People were saying it was to be “Tweetie for Gmail”, and I was pumped. It’s only gotten better since its original beta and subsequent 1.0 release. Originally Sparrow only supported Gmail and Google Apps accounts, but it can now handle pretty much any mail account that supports IMAP.

Now, I will concede that the revamped version of Mail that will ship with Lion does look pretty good, and I’ll probably give it a try, but it will have to do all that Sparrow does and more to take its spot.

Things »

Confession: I’ve tried pretty much every to-do list application that’s out there, including Remember The Milk, Google Tasks, Nirvana, and more. They all do some things great and are missing some key features as well. I chose Things for two reasons: (1) cost is a concern for me, and they offer an educational discount off the sticker price of $49.99; and (2) I didn’t want to try and learn Omnifocus.¹

I have a couple of beefs with Things, however. Cloud sync has been “on-the-way”, well… forever. They’re in a limited Mac-to-Mac beta right now, but that won’t cut it for me completely because I want to sync with the iPhone and iPad apps as well. Speaking of the iOS versions, why couldn’t they be a universal application? I want to support the developers at Cultured Code, but triple-dipping (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) is too rich for my blood at the moment. However, when cloud sync ships, I’ll most likely shell out the $20 for the iPad version; it’s darn pretty, after all.

Evernote »

Admittedly, I’m an Evernote novice.² I’ve been a member since 2009, but only recently have I focused in to try and learn the app. Evernote is capable of so much in the way of storing files, images, and so forth. It’s premiere feature may be its ability to OCR every image you upload, making the text in images searchable. Very cool.

With the purchase of our Doxie scanner, I went ahead and purchased the premium Evernote account, which allows me to upload up to 1 GB per month. Without a premium account, the maximum is 60 MB. It’s a great freemium option, but if you end up using Evernote for any amount of time, you’ll probably want to go for the additional storage and features.

Twitterific »

You name the Twitter app for Mac, and I’ve tried it. To be honest, I was excited when Twitter for Mac was released with the Mac App Store earlier this year (after waiting for Tweetie 2 for Mac forever), and it’s okay, but I don’t love it.³

I decided to try out Twitterific when it went 4.0, and it’s a nicely-designed Twitter app with some nice features, like Instapaper integration, CloudApp support for posting links and images, and more. It’s also ad-supported, which I don’t mind.

Reeder for Mac »

Finally, Reeder for Mac is my RSS-reading app of choice. They started with apps for iOS devices and then launched a Mac beta, which I’ve been using for a long time. Then, just recently, Reeder went 1.0 on the Mac App Store.

Not only was Reeder designed beautifully, it’s the only Google Reader-syncing app I’ve found that integrates every service I use on a daily basis: Instapaper, Pinboard, and Twitter. Try it, you’ll like it.

So, there you have it, a look at some of the native Mac apps I find so useful in my daily work and play. I plan to share about my favorite menubar, web, and iOS apps in a future post.

I’ve known about the Doxie scanner from Apparent for some time, but I couldn’t think of a real reason for buying it until I read this post from Michael Hyatt. I’m a big Evernote fan, and the idea of taking our file folders filled with paper and sending all of that information to the cloud got me really excited.

In his post, Michael recommends the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300, a fully-functional scanner that can scan both sides of the page at once and a total of 8 pages in a minute. However, it’s slightly out of our price range at $254.99 (current price on Amazon). At $149 (I picked up ours for slightly less on eBay), the Doxie is an affordable option among personal scanners, and it makes it really easy for anyone to get their documents and photos into Evernote and other cloud services. Here are the reasons why I like it so much:

• Doxie is small and simple. The unit weighs under 11 ounces, and measures less than a foot long. Since Doxie is powered by USB, it’s completely portable, and it even comes with a nice carrying sleeve. Also included were a quick start guide, USB cable (thanks for not going cheap and skipping this, Apparent), and calibration sheets.

• The free Doxie software is well-designed and easy-to-use. Apparent has written Doxie apps for both Mac and Windows, and although I can’t speak to the quality of the Windows app, I appreciate that the Mac version feels very Mac-ish. They didn’t go for the lowest common denominator with an Adobe AIR app or a cheap port; it’s Mac through and through.

So, scanning a document with Doxie happens in just a few short steps:

1. Run the calibration sheet through Doxie (first-time use only).
2. Line up your document with the guides on the edge of the unit.
3. Doxie pre-feeds your document to keep it straight while going through.
4. Press the one and only button on the scanner to start the scan.
5. Doxie processes the image and allows you the opportunity to scan additional pages.
6. Select the service where you’d like your scan to be sent. Native apps supported by Doxie include Evernote, Dropbox, iPhoto, Preview, and the Adobe Creative Suite. Or, you can scan right to the cloud: Google Docs, Flickr, Tumblr, or the free Doxie Cloud service.

Here’s a look at how fast Doxie scans a sheet of paper:

In short, I’m really happy with our purchase of the Doxie scanner. It does exactly what I wanted it to do — quick and easy scans of all of our documents into Evernote. I have just one complaint: what’s with the pink hearts and bubbly typography?

We Be Big [affiliate link] is the story of how Rick Burgess & Bill “Bubba” Bussey came together to create The Rick & Bubba Show, a talk radio morning show that grew first in popularity in the south, and which is now syndicated as far north as Manistique, Michigan. Through great stories from their childhood until now, the authors show how their unlikely combination became such a fresh option among morning radio programs. Both Rick & Bubba came from somewhat humble beginnings, and this book shows no pretense, either. It’s straight from the heart, easy to read and take in, and thoughtful at the same time.

What I found most refreshing about the book is that, although Rick & Bubba have grown to significant popularity at this point, they’ve remained true to their values as Christians. They operate in an industry where it would have been easy for them to sell out to fit in with the status quo, but instead they’ve chosen to share honestly with their listening audience about their views on religion, politics, and the like.

Having heard a taste of The Rick & Bubba Show back when I had XM Radio, I confess that I expected the book to be just light and funny from start to finish, with nothing else of substance along the way. However, the story is, in fact, serious at times; including a narrative that may shed the truest light on both Rick and Bill’s character.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s inspiring to read about the success of others, and I think Rick and Bubba have a great message to share!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I completed my second half-marathon just over a week ago, and I improved my personal record by almost 12 minutes! My 2010 time was 2:09:12 (9:52/mile), and this year’s time was 1:58:46 (9:04/mile). The speed increase I achieved is my greatest accomplishment for the run. So, how did I do it?

1. New technology. This year I trained with a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS-enabled watch [affiliate link], and it made all difference for my training runs. I was able to know both my exact pace and average pace per mile while I was running. This enabled me to make adjustments and push myself, which led to better workouts overall.
2. The right fuel. Last year I trained with jelly beans as a quick source of energy for long runs. They were somewhat effective, but didn’t benefit me like the Chocolate Outrage Gu Energy Gel [affiliate link] I trained with this year. It tastes kind of like chocolate frosting, and it’s easy to eat while running. I used it every 3-4 miles during this year’s race.
   
3. I didn’t walk. This had been a major temptation for me during my training runs, but I committed to not walking any step during the half-marathon race itself. I was forced to walk for two steps at the end of the race when I got caught behind some other runners at an aid station, but other than that, I held to my commitment. When you stop and walk, it’s that much harder to get going again.

More than anything, I just felt grateful for the ability to run this race. Running has become a real outlet and release for me, and it’s a blessing that I am able to make one foot go in front of the other for such a long distance. On to the next race!

Recently, our team in the Admissions Office at Hope College has started using 37signals’ Basecamp to manage internal projects. I’ve been wanting to get our team on this for a while, and I finally got some buy-in when our outside branding/design agency asked us to use it for that large-scale effort.

Using Basecamp comes pretty naturally to me, but I have to remind myself that other people on my team don’t necessarily have the same level of interest or background with web apps that I do. I like trying out new sites and services, particularly if they are as well-designed as Basecamp, but I also recognize that I’m an early adopter of technology. This helps me to set reasonable expectations for others.

So, it’s been somewhat of an uphill climb to get everyone on board, but we’re starting to get some traction, and I think our team is benefiting from being on Basecamp. Yesterday I had the opportunity to give an hour-long training session on the tool, and I must confess, it felt really good to get up there in front of my colleagues and share my experience with them. I also got to hear from them — how they’ve used the system, what they wish it did better or differently, and what their fears and concerns are going forward.

The biggest issue for them: Basecamp can generate a ton of email, and I think it’s pretty common for all of us to have “inbox anxiety” at times. As we got talking about this, I realized I was being offered a very appropriate window to share my system for dealing with email, and I decided to go for it.

My email plan is based loosely on this post from Daniel Tardy, promotions manager for Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership live events, and this post from Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson and prolific blogger. I’ve boiled it down to the idea that there are 3 things that can happen to an email when it’s in my inbox. I can:

In Your Money God’s Way author Amie Streater suggests that there are “7 money myths “, a series of misinformed beliefs that incorrectly shape the way Christians behave with money. By overcoming what Streater calls “counterfeit convictions”, we can find greater freedom and peace with our money. Topics addressed include: giving, consumer debt, entitlement, budgeting, and more. The final chapter of the book gives some great advice for structuring your budget and overcoming these wrongly held convictions.

The most powerful attribute of Your Money God’s Way is the real-life stories that are woven throughout the book. There’s comfort in reading about circumstances that others have gone through and relating them back to your own life. Streater’s position as Associate Pastor of Financial Stewardship at New Life Church in Colorado Springs has endowed her with a wealth of anecdotes on which she draws in the book. You’ll also learn about the financial struggles she’s had in her own life and how they’ve impacted her ministry.

This book comes along at a time when our country is facing significant unemployment, mistrust of financial institutions, and a greater focus on how we spend, save, borrow, and give. Dave Ramsey (author of The Total Money Makeover, one of the foremost books on personal finance) has about 5 million listeners for his weekday radio show. People seem to be more interested in the topic of money and how it affects their daily lives. Streater consequently gives us a text that allows us to think about issues of personal finance in the context of the Christian faith. It’s well-written, funny, and worth your time.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”