Review: OmniFocus for iPhone | iPhone Central | Macworld

Filed under: omnifocus — Tags: — sync @ 10:18 pm February 1, 2009

For those unfamiliar with OmniFocus, it works like this: You create actions (To-Do items) within the Inbox—found on the Home screen—by tapping a Plus button, entering the name of the action (Wash the Car, for example), and, if you choose, assigning it to a Context (a location or state in which you’re likely to take on the task) and a Project. If you like, also assign start and due times to it, and either flag it or not. You can also append a note to the action.

Additionally, with the iPhone version you can add a picture to the action by tapping the Take Photo button and using the iPhone’s camera to grab an appropriate picture. (Unfortunately you can’t append a picture from the iPhone’s Photos area.) And you can record a bit of audio and attach it to the action. (Although OmniFocus works on the iPod touch as well, these two specific features are not supported, as the touch lacks a camera and microphone.)

Using contexts and projects you might create something like this: Create Build Sandcastle and Go Surfing actions and file them in a Beach context you’ve created. Create another Mountains context and file your Go Skiing and Resole Hiking Boots actions there. Then create a broader Relax project where you file all your leisure to-dos. (These would include those activities and tasks associated with the beach and the mountains.) Once you’ve created these actions and assigned context and project categories to them, you can then view all of them by tapping the Relax project or choose the subset Beach or Mountains actions by tapping their respective contexts.

This comes in particularly handy with a mobile device like the iPhone as you can create contexts for when you’re on the move. For example, you can use a context for all the things you want to do when you’re downtown, or another for the market, or yet another for when you’re traveling to visit your sister.

OmniFocus for the iPhone attempts to leverage the iPhone’s advantages by adding a Location feature that gathers together contexts based on their location and then grouping together those contexts. You do this by assigning locations to contexts. So, for example, you might assign a central street name downtown‚ Main Street, for instance‚ as your Errands location. Tap the Locations icon and you’re taken to a nearby screen where you see your contexts and associated actions sorted by location. Tap the location next to a particular context, and the Maps application launches and shows you that location. From there you can search within Maps for business types—grocery or hardware stores, for instance. Or you can assign a particular business type‚ say, the market‚ as a location and when you choose the context associated with that business, OmniFocus will locate the businesses of that type to you.

via Review: OmniFocus for iPhone | iPhone Central | Macworld.

OmniFocus for iPhone | iPhone | Mac|Life | Mac|Life

Filed under: omnifocus — Tags: — sync @ 10:16 pm

Computers have never been a threat to the popularity of the pad-and-pencil method of organizing your life. When a thought strikes, immediate access is more important than computing power. But the $19.99 OmniFocus for iPhone gives both.

Like OmniFocus for Mac OS X, the iPhone version forces you to stick to methods in David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done” (GTD). “Actions” (such as “Buy milk”) are matched with a single “context” (“Supermarket”). Want to assign multiple contexts or a priority rating to an action? Tough–that's not The GTD Way, so OmniFocus doesn't permit it. GTD supporters say that this inflexibility keeps the system simple.

GTD encourages you to write down tasks as you think of them, which suits the carry-it-everywhere iPhone well. Just as importantly, OmniFocus for iPhone is well-matched to the optional $79.95 Mac version. It supports wireless syncing between the two using Bonjour, WebDAV, or MobileMe. We mostly relied on Bonjour, making an easy connection.

But while OmniFocus for Mac and iPhone play together nicely, some handy, expected features from the Mac version were missing on the iPhone. For example, OmniFocus syncs with iCal on the Mac, which shows OmniFocus items as To Do items; there's no such integration with iPhone's Calendar. We didn't mind the loss of some other Mac app features, such as the Perspectives task-organization system, especially when they were replaced by simpler, iPhone-like substitutes (in this case, “Smart Groups”).

On the plus side, the iPhone version lets you illustrate an action with the device's built-in camera, or leave voice notes via the microphone. Finally, OmniFocus uses the iPhone's location-sensing abilities to help you group errands. In other words, it reminds you that the library's right near the bakery, so why not do both tasks at once?

via OmniFocus for iPhone | iPhone | Mac|Life | Mac|Life.