Google Chrome

No change here and, in fact, I am more wedded to Chrome this year than I was last having used it for a full 12 months I still much prefer it to both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The addition of extensions has just made it all the more useful and a large part of my day is spent within the browser.

Google Mail/Calendar/Reader

Here’s the first casualty of 2010 – Google Reader. I can date the day that I stopped using Google Reader to the day that Pulse for iPad was released. All my mail is delivered to one of two Google Mail accounts – either Gmail for home or Google Apps for work, and then pushed out to my iPhone with no fuss. Love it because it simply works.

Remember the Milk

According to Remember the Milk I completed 3,523 tasks with the service in 2010. I think that speaks volumes of how valuable it has become to me. I am often to be seen sat with my iPhone in hand tapping out a quick thought task into RTM. Only gripes are that 1. there isn’t a dedicated iPad application, although one has been promised and 2. I cannot sync my tasks with any third party apps. Come on guys, no one likes a closed platform.

Evernote

Another absolutely essential application. Evernote now has literally everything fed into it as I have gone completely paperless. I scan all paper documentation into Evernote and then can quickly search for it when it is needed. Both the Mac and Windows applications have been updated this year to be faster and more usable.

iPhone/iPad

When I first heard about the iPad I dismissed it as just a large iPhone – how wrong could I be? My iPad has transformed how I consume information, particularly news feeds and magazines. My main way of accessing both RSS feeds and twitter is the iPad – I love the ease with which the information is made available.

This has meant that I have used my iPhone less as the screen is just too small for some things, such as accessing the web.

Unfuddle

Unfuddle continues to be my primary work application. Using the web based service to record all enhancements and bugs in our product. It hasn’t changed all that much in the last 12 months but does now have the obligatory iPhone app.

Zumodrive/Dropbox/iFolder

Zumodrive is one of those applications that could easily be forgotten about it is so tightly integrated into the operating system that you might be forgiven for thinking it was part of Windows/OSX. It has become something that I am using all day everyday and would be lost without it now which is why I read with trepidation recently that Zector had be acquired by Motorola. I hope that they remain true to their word and the service stays as it is.

While I still use Dropbox it is not as key as it once was, particularly as it now is being replaced at work with iFolder where we get more control for free.

Skype

When Skype went down earlier this year it was a big deal for our business as this is the primary means of communications between us and our developers who are off shore. It really hampered out progress while it was down which is a testimony to Skype’s importance and the need to ensure that you have a contingency in place for when something like this happens.

Sony Reader

I read more books in 2010 that I have in any other year of my adult life and the Sony Reader is the reason why. Its compact design, clear screen and ability to hod more books than I would likely read in a lifetime make it great. It’s not without its problems and the price of ebooks and availability is just shocking but nevertheless it means I can and do read more than I did before.

Why don’t I read ebooks on my iPad? Simple the size and brightness of the screen is just makes it a tiring experience.

MacBook Air

A couple of years ago you would have been hard pressed to find an Apple product in our house, these days it’s hard to find a Windows machine. Apple’s build quality is just stunning and justifies, in my opinion, the premium you pay – and the MacBook Air is a premium product. Its size and its weight make it the machine to slip into a case and carry with me everywhere and it is instant on, perfect for meetings and quick presentations.

I am less bought in to OSX and think that Windows 7 has the measure of it.

WunderRadio/Subsonic

Subsonic is just brilliant and is not pretty much the only way that I now listen to music. Whether it is on a computer or portable device I can have my whole music collection available and queued up. WunderRadio does the same for me only for listening to music.

DOA

So that’s the list. But what about those that have dropped off the radar? Well the move to Mac has made me rethink how I blog and having been a staunch follower of Windows Live Writer I have now ditched it in favour of either Wordpress itself or Blogpress on the the iPad. Also gone is the Netbook the MacBook Air has seen that off pretty effectively.

That’s my list for 2010 – what have you found to be invaluable?

Apparently the official recommended way is to:

^Hold down the power until you see the slide to power off screen. Release the power button and hold down the home button until the apps quits”

I have tried this and it takes ages but it does work.

So why don’t I dump iOS4? Well I am seriously considering it and am just trying to decide if the folders functionality and wallpapers are enough to warrant sticking with it.

Or perhaps Apple will issue a fix? Nah.

Maybe it’s me but I just don’t get iOS4’s “multi-tasking”. Multi-tasking is supposed to be a time saver not a confusing pain in the arse.

With the introduction of iOS4 you get (limited) support for apps running in the background. Correction! You get support for certain features running in the background, such as streaming music or uploading a file. For anything else the app is put into suspended animation. These apps are put into, well what can only be described as a system tray. Double clicking the home button now brings up a display of all your running apps.

After a while that tray runs to many apps and takes many swipes to see them all (see screenshot above) which seems to somewhat defeat the purpose of this being a quick way to move between “running” apps. It gets to such a stage that I have so many apps in the tray that it is just as quick for me to find it on the normal home screens. That can’t be right surely? It seems that it is and I am not the only one to complain. The following is Jared Newman in a post entitled Multitasking With iOS 4 is Horrible: Apple Blew It:

“What bothers me the most, however, is the sloppy implementation of iPhone multitasking. Every time you open an app, it gets added to the tray, and the only way to close it is by pressing and holding any app icon, then clicking the top-left corner of the apps you want to close. If you don’t micromanage, the tray quickly becomes overrun with clutter, making it hard to find the apps you really need.”

All this and battery life that is much worse than before (and it was pretty bad to start with). Let’s hope that Apple look into both these issues quickly. However, I am not hopeful as Apple have a poor record on this sort of thing – they have, no doubt, moved onto the iPhone5.

As you can see from the screenshot left one of the first things I did was to change the wallpaper. I then had a play with the folders and a general explore of the more obvious new features.

Next day I was out of the office for the day up in London. These days are always a challenge to the battery and it needed a boost during the day to ensure I got a full days usage out of it. Since then I have been back to my “normal” usage pattern and the most striking thing is the speed with which the battery is now being depleted. I used to comfortably get a days usage. Now I am noticing that I am getting low battery warnings before the day is out and I am not the only one.

There are a number of suggestions on the forums about what to turn off to help the situation (3G, wifi, notifications) but it seems to me that if I turn all those things off I won’t have a smartphone and I might as well go back to my trusty Nokia 6310i. The alternative is to carry a battery pack or maybe I should just keep it switched off – that’ll sort it, right?

Perfect Evernote bliss has finally been achieved!

Google Chrome

A lot of my life is spent in a browser and this year I changed over from Firefox to using Google’s Chrome. Why? Because it is fast. In fact it is the faster browser I have used and speed is important to me. I don’t want to be spending time waiting for a page to render before I can get on with my job.

The other thing that I like about Chrome is the independence of the tabs. If there is a crash in one it does not bring down the whole browser – another neat feature.

Google Mail/Calendar/Reader

In Google’s browser I run a number of Google’s services. Mail, Calendar and Reader are the three that I use the most and have them permanently open. In fact I have two Mail tabs, one for my personal emails and the other for my work emails, for which I use Google Apps. I have to admit that I struggled at first getting used to Google Mail having come over from Microsoft Outlook but I really appreciate the ability to access my mail anywhere and there have been some neat extension that have made it a really great service.

Remember the Milk

I am a very task oriented person and previously used the tasks section within Microsoft Outlook. RTM has been a great way for me to be able to manage my working life and ensuring that the things that need to get done, actually do get done. Again I appreciate the ability to be able to get at my tasks no matter where I am be it via browser or on the dedicated iPhone application.

Evernote

Hand in hand with Remember the Milk goes Evernote, the note taking application. Previously I used Microsoft OneNote but the ability to clip notes from Windows, Mac, iPhone and web is a killer for me. And, once again, the ability to access these notes anywhere is invaluable. My only gripe is that I wish there was some integration between RTM and Evernote.

iPhone

The first thing on the list that is not a browser based application and that is my iPhone 3GS.  I have worked my way through four iPhones this year though faults and upgrades but my current one has never left my side since I picked it up in the summer. The call handling is rubbish and those people who complain about at&t should note that the problems are the same on O2 in the UK. That said it is no longer just a phone. Mine is a complete, pocketable, computer allowing me to work on-the-go. In fact I am able to access all the applications mentioned here from my iPhone and so can be productive anywhere.

The other aspect of the iPhone that I like is the photo and video capability. Already the iPhone has replaced my Flip as the primary quick and dirty video device and the photos it produces are perfectly acceptable for most uses. It’s all about having to carry only one device.

Unfuddle

Another web-based application, Unfuddle, is a ticketing system for, in my case, managing software development projects. I like it so much that I wrote an iPhone web-based interface to it that I (and anyone else) can use to access my projects anywhere. The great thing about Unfuddle is, being based in the cloud, it can be easily accessed by all our disparate team members in several locations in the UK and India.

Zumodrive/Dropbox

Cloud based storage services Dropbox and my personal favourite Zumodrive have been a real boon this year. Zumodrive I particularly like as it looks and feels just like any other storage on whatever device I choose to access it from. I wrote about it earlier this year. Dropbox is similar but the files get also held on your machine as well as in the cloud. This has the advantage of being available when you are not connected to the internet (how often is that these days?). We use this extensively for file sharing with offshore developers.

Windows Live Writer

Late 2009 I moved from a Windows desktop to a MacBook Pro and found that I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about the two seemed pretty evenly matched to me. However, there was one area where Windows has Mac beaten hands down – and the is in the off-line blogging application space. Nothing, but nothing, can beat Windows Live Writer for shear functionality and ease of use and believe me I have looked. In the end I had to resort to a virtualised version of Windows XP to allow me to continue to use WLR and I haven’t regretted it once.

Skype

This year Skype has come into its own for me in both a personal and a professional capacity. I use it extensively to talk to other team members in the UK and India keeping our call costs down and also ensuring that we have been able to chat whenever is necessary which means that problems get fixed sooner. On a personal level it has meant that I have been able to keep in touch with our best friends who have moved to Australia for a couple of years. We also used it to keep in touch with family and friends while we were away on holiday a couple of times this year.

Zoho CRM

The last one on the list is Zoho CRM, yet another web based service which really does show how things are these days. Zoho have a large number of services, some of which compete with Google’s offerings but the only one I use on a regular basis is their CRM offering. I use it extensively for managing and recording my customers interactions. Of all the ones on the list this is the one that is probably the most precarious – while it is a good service it still doesn’t cover all that I want it to do. For example I cannot seem to integrate it easily with my Google Mail account which means that I have to go to two places to track correspondence. Therefore, I do wonder whether it will still be there next year.

Honourable Mentions

There are some items that haven’t made it to the list that are also worth mentioning the first of which is my Netbook. This has travelled with me extensively this year making it to four continents and has allowed me to blog and communicate for everywhere I have been. The problem is that it has all but been superseded by a more recent purchase in the form of my Macbook Pro. I have no doubt that it is going to be on the list next year.

The two other services that I should mention are Twitter and Facbook both of which I have used regularly but they didn’t make the list simply because I don’t consider them to be essential. They could both shut down tomorrow and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. That said without Facebook I wouldn’t have got back in touch with quite so many of my friends from university but I guess that we would have found other ways. I wonder if either of them may become more essential to me over the next 12 months.

Finally, what do I think are the things that are likely to make the list in 2010? Well I have already mentioned the Apple MacBook Pro and I will almost certainly be adding the Sony Reader too. As for software and services I have just started to tinker with Google Wave and it will be interesting to see how that progresses.

So that is my list – what tech could you not do without in 2009?

After almost 30 seconds of deliberation they both chose to develop an application for the iPhone, simply because this was the most mature of all and was likely to give them the widest possible audience. And with a couple of billion downloads under its belt who can blame them for going this route?

Suzy elected to create a game while Jason wanted to go for a utility. Obviously neither of them actually did the development – this was farmed out to a team of developers to put their ideas into action.

Not being a big gamer I haven’t downloaded “Biker Blast Off” but I have used Jason’s “Social Beacon” which allows you to post to Twitter through a simple interface and posts a pre determined response based on a series of inputs, such as location and mood. It also allows things such as posting by blowing on the device but since using it with your finger is so devilishly easy I am not sure of the point of that.

The posts it produces are pretty banal, such as this one “Sitting at my desk. Should I be working?” but it fun, quick and easy.

However, as you can see from the picture above, which shows the top free games in the App store at present, Suzy is winning but, ironically, Jason’s app has the higher rating.

Why am I interested in this? Well other than that I like the Gadget Show, love gadgets and the iPhone in general, I am also about to start a project to develop my own iPhone apps. I have already developed a web based app, an interface to the online service Unfuddle, but this would be a downloadable app available from Apple’s app store. It’s top secret at the moment but check back on Spoken Like a Geek for updates and progress.

However, now there is another way with WifiPhoto which, as the name suggests, allows you to get access to your photos over a wifi connection.

The app is very simple to use. You open it up, select the photos that you want to transfer to your machine and then on that machine open a browser and point it to the address shown on the bottom of the app. You will then see a screen similar to that above from where you can either download individual pictures (by clicking on them) or a zip file of all the selected pictures.

It is quick, easy, fast and much easier than having to muck about with a sync cable or iTunes.

WifiPhoto is a very reasonable 59p from the app store and you can read more info on it on the developers site.

Depending on your level of membership, which start at free, you get ticketing, time tracking, messages, subversion or git hosting, notebooks and milestone tracking. It is a slick, cost effective, solution that works well and is great for distributed teams, such as those I am working with.

However, there aren’t any mobile optimised screen, so I decided to try and put something together to enable me to get a simple view on my projects when I am away from the office.

Using the Unfuddle api, the excellent iUI iPhone user interface framework and a bit of PHP to hang it all together I have got a read only view on my projects. So far you can see basic account information and look and search tickets and messages.

If you have an Unfuddle account and want to try it out and give me some feedback you can log in here. One thing I haven’t been able to do so far is test it with large volumes of data and so if you have large numbers of tickets and messages I would be interested to know how well (or poorly) it performs.

Below are some screenshots of the various pages.