It’s not easy finding holiday presents for geek friends when you’re a cybernetic teenager. Thomas should know. In his first adventure trying to fit in to his school’s computer club (other than being the computer’s confidant), he’s decided to get all his human friends presents for the holidays, and asked me what my favorite tools are, hoping for some good ideas.
He was so earnest, how could I refuse? Today I’m going to share the tools I use on a daily basis, sometimes dozens of times a day. I reached into my SCOTTeVEST and…and…
(Before we begin, to be clear, these are actually the tools I use on a day-to-day basis. I haven't been asked to promote them. I do have affiliate relationships with some of them, but I entered into those because I loved the product, not the other way around.)
SCOTTeVEST. Pockets galore.
My top item is a bunch of items: my clothes from SCOTTeVEST.com. These are extremely well-made clothes that are wired for everything. They have pockets galore—my travel vest has 23 pockets—engineered so from the outside, no one can tell you’re carrying your cell phone, MP3 player, earbuds, power pack, eBook reader, glasses, notebook, four pens, camera, camera SD card, full-size water bottle, paperback book, and keychain. Especially if you travel, SCOTTeVEST is the best. nerd. ware. ever!1Password. Password manager.
1Password is a password manager that is designed from the ground up for security. It generates secure passwords when signing up for websites, and then will auto-fill those passwords when visiting the sites again later. The passwords stay sync’d between your smartphone and your desktop. There are versions of 1Password for every device in existence.
It has a travel mode, which will automatically remove designated keyrings from your mobile device if you’d rather not have your passwords on the phone when crossing a border. It also has family plans, which can be configured to give your loved ones access to your keyring if the worst happens and your cape gets caught in a jet turbine while you’re flying by, waving to the passengers.
ScheduleOnce.com. Easy calendar scheduling.
ScheduleOnce.com is a must for anyone who schedules a lot of meetings. It connects directly to one or more online calendars. You give people a simple scheduling link. They can then book themselves directly onto your calendar at a time that works for you both. No more endless back-and-forth. You just give them the scheduling link, they visit it once, and you’re done. I don’t know how anyone can live without it.ScannerPro app by Readdle. Document scanning.
ScannerPro is an iPhone app that lets you take pictures of documents, correct for perspective or distortion, turn them into black and white, and then save them as images or PDFs. It can password-protect the PDF and has a very attractive interface for organizing your documents. Scanner programs in general have revolutionized receipt handling, and Scanner Pro is one of the best I’ve tried. And I’ve tried a lot of them.Signal communicator.
Signal provides secure, end-to-end encrypted conversations that can be set to disappear after a designated amount of time. I’m not saying we’re living in a creepy, post-apocalyptic dystopian surveillance state, but just in case we are and don’t know it, Signal gives you the kind of privacy you used to have in the good old days in your living room. Before the Amazon Echo and Google Home started broadcasting every word you say to central servers where they can be subpoena’d and used to lock you up without a trial or other form of due process. Signal exists for all smartphones and desktops.6. Yoink! Drag and drop savior.
Oh, Yoink! How I love thee! Yoink is an app for Mac desktop computers and for iPads that helps streamline drag and drop. When you start dragging something, a little drawer appears near your mouse. You drag the item onto the drawer and it then docks against the side of the screen. Then you go to your destination and drag the items out of Yoink into their final destination. I use Yoink about a million times a day. When someone sends a mail attachment, just drag it to Yoink. Collect all your attachments, and then later you can go to your project folders and drag each attachment to the folder where it belongs. The developer, Matthias at Eternal Storms software, is very responsive and will be donating some free Yoink licenses which I’ll be sending out over the @GetItDoneGuy twitter account.Affinity Photo. Photoshop-killing image editor.
Affinity Photo is photo editing software that’s available for Mac, Windows, and iPad. It’s as advanced as Photoshop, but written from the ground up in 21st-century technology. It’s much easier to use than Photoshop, though still has a learning curve. They provide hundreds of free tutorial videos online teaching you how to use it. It can do sophisticated toning, blending, and RAW file processing for a tiny fraction of the cost of Photoshop. Plus, it’s a one-time purchase, so once you have it, they can’t jack up the price and hold your business hostage. Whether I have a sophisticated or simple photo editing task, Affinity Photo is my go-to app.SpiderOak. Backup software.
SpiderOak One backup software is my main backup software. SpiderOak was designed from the ground up with “zero knowledge” encryption. That means that the good folks at SpiderOak might be evil fascist dictators, and it won’t matter, because your backup is encrypted before it ever leaves your computer, in a way that makes it impossible for it to be decrypted by anyone but you. It runs in the background and uploads files when you change them.
I do all my writing using iA writer.
iA Writer. A distractionless Markdown editor.
iA Writer is a simply, distraction-free editor for your favorite writer who uses Mac OS. It lets you compose a text document using plain text and including Markdown formatting if you wish. Markdown is a way to notate headers, bold, italics, and tables when typing text. You can click here for my episode on using markdown. iA Writer allows you to concentrate solely on your writing, and has a preview mode that shows you what the markdown will look like if you’re choosing to use markdown formatting. It runs on the Mac and iOS, and is fully iCloud compatible, so you can edit your files on Mac or your iDevice and changes automagically appear on the other one. I do all my writing using iA writer.Serial Box. Books!
And last, but not least, Serial Box! Serial Box is an app. And it’s a book. Or rather, it’s a lot of books.
Groups of writers get together and plot out a season’s worth of novellas all set in the same fictional universe. You purchase a season of a book, and you get monthly installments. In an astonishingly wonderful twist, the app lets you read or listen to extremely well-produced and voice-acted audiobook versions of each book. It’s all synchronized, so you can switch back and forth between the text and audio versions. Because the books are serialized novels, they have story arcs that span each chapter, and also the entire book. So far I’ve purchased and read the entire first season of Tremontaine, and am halfway through season two of BookBurners. Serial Box is my platform for leisure reading, reading at the gym, and on public transportation. It’s a fantastic idea for both the listeners and the writers!
Thomas looked up after I finished my list. “These will make really good gifts for my geek friends!” he happily exclaimed. And of course he’s right. I can only humbly assume that my Top 10 List of must-have tools is probably, well, astonishingly fitting for anyone who’s…just like me. And hopefully, they’ll be just good enough to help Thomas span that gap between awkward adolescent cyborg and real live teenager. However, we have a ways to go. Right now he’s happily explaining Yoink! to his best friend. The toaster.