I’m stuck in a love triangle with two popular RSS readers, and I just can’t figure it out. I love them both but for very different reasons (and at very different times).

On the desktop, I prefer NetNewsWire for a variety of reasons:

• Keyboard shortcuts for blog posting, Delicious posting, Twitter posting, etc.
• Easier keyboard navigation
• Sorting by date either ascending or descending
• Natively selecting NetNewsWire as default RSS reader

Of course, I can mimic much of NNW’s keyboard shortcuts using bookmarklets in Safari’s Bookmarks Bar and activating them by using Command plus the number of the correlating bookmarklet. (i.e. Cmd-5 takes my selection and sends it to MarsEdit for blogging.)

But the problem with that is that I have three extra bookmarks in the bar, which starts to clutter it. Too, if I ever add or change a bookmark before the bookmarklets, I’ll have to learn new numbers for my shortcuts. (That may not seem like much, but if you are a power keyboard user and have repetitive actions you use daily, then the change takes a while to learn.)

So there it is, my love for NNW on the desktop is deep and true.

But then there’s the iPhone… I like the NNW iPhone app. I like Newsgator as a syncing system. But I love Google Reader on the iPhone.

Here’s why I prefer Google Reader to NetNewsWire on the iPhone:

• Better syncing. Since you are using a web app versus a syncing service, everything is always in sync.
• Faster. NNW’s iPhone app takes a while to open and sync before you can start using it.
• Mark as unread. You can easily mark items as unread on iPhone. Not so much with the NNW app for iPhone
• Nicer interface. I’m one of those people who loves the Google Reader’s native iPhone interface. I’ve not tried Byline or any other app for Google Reader on the iPhone because Google’s web app is so superb. (OK, no badge telling me how many unread items I have, but I have so many feeds I know I always have something to read. It’s not like email.)

And, so, my love for Google Reader on the desktop is deep and true.

Over the past few days, I’ve tried to use Google Reader on the desktop. And I’ll admit to a couple of pluses for Google Reader:

• It is always “synced” across my multiple laptops, desktops and iPhone (but save for the iPhone, syncing works perfect for NNW)
• I enjoy using the speed of Safari versus NNW’s integrated browser (which is also built on Webkit, like Safari)

I’ve also found a couple of major annoyances.

The main one: There is no way to view the original item in a tab opened in the background.

That’s counter to how I do some of my blogging. For a political news blog I run, I open all the feeds to which I want to link for that day and then I go through them. That kind of work flow is next to impossible with Google Reader.

So what am I to do? If the two products synced together, I’d use NNW on the desktop and Google Reader on my iPhone.

I’ve thought of splitting my feeds between the two, but I can find no logical way of doing so. (Besides, the thought of two RSS readers is absurd to me.)

For now, I’ll continue to test Google Reader on the desktop, but considering I spend way more time in a desktop environment versus my iPhone, I’m betting on NetNewsWire carrying the day.

(But breaking up with Google Reader on the iPhone is going to hurt…)

I’m a big fan of Hulu, love my AppleTV and often rent from the iTunes store. I’ve got a Netflix account whose Watch Instantly queue is filled with old movies and television shows (currently working my way through Quantum Leap). And, yes, I run Boxee on my MacBook, MacBook Pro and on my AppleTV.

Over the past few months, I’ve considered cutting my satellite provider and going with online content and basic cable from the local cable company. I’ve not made the leap, yet.

Now I’ve got another obstacle, which is news that content providers have forced Hulu to require that Boxee drop their service. You can read blog posts about it from both Boxee and Hulu. (If you are a fan of Hulu on Boxee, please comment on both blogs.)

That aside, the idea of cutting the cord and saving the money is still appealing. For a while I was using a MacMini and EyeTV as a media hub to capture news reports for a client. Using a modified set-up would give me most of what I want.

On that note, here’s a great blog post from J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly. He details how he cut his cable bill in half and still gets his favorite shows.

I’ve had several requests lately to update my two-year quest to find cheap alternatives to cable television. In March of 2007, Kris and I were paying $65.82 for a deluxe digital cable package that we rarely used. “$65.82 a month isn’t a fortune,” I wrote at the time, “but it’s a lot of money to pay for something that doesn’t get used. If we were big TV watchers maybe the cost could be justified. But we aren’t. And it can’t.”

To save money, we cut our cable to just the basic channels, which reduced our bill to $11.30/month. We also began to use the iTunes Music Store to subscribe to the shows that we wanted to watch. And over the past year, I’ve become a fan of Hulu, an online service that allows users to watch many past and current shows for free.

He goes on to detail how he did it. It’s worth the read.

For my part, I have to be able to record The View for my wife. With two kids — and a third on the way — she has to work in her viewing of The View. The EyeTV will accomplish that for me.

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts that compares Journler, Together and Evernote in a PIM faceoff for Macs. The first post can be found here.

Evernote is one of the few cross-platform, web-based apps that I both use and enjoy. Add to it an iPhone app that is nearly as powerful as the web and desktop clients, and you get a clear winner of an application for a personal information manager.

Where Evernote shines

Here’s some of Evernote’s more powerful features:

1. Developer and community. Like Journler and Together, Evernote has a strong support forum of users. Given the relatively newness of Evernote, you can imagine that there are a lot of users who are sharing the way they use Evernote and overcome perceived functionality shortcomings.
2. Cross-platform. Evernote works on Macs and Windows, so having to use one OS at home and a different OS at work should not be a problem.
3. Web-based system. You can get to all of your information from any Internet connection. No need to have your own computer or even a desktop client.
4. iPhone app. This is what did it for me. I can add notes, review notes and even edit (some) notes from my iPhone. Being able to add photo notes is killer with the iPhone.
5. Image recognition. Besides being cool, I didn’t see the use for text recognition in images before I started using it. Now, I do. Receipts, labels, signs. I search their content constantly now.
6. Free or premium.
The free version of Evernote has most all of the power of the paid version, plus plenty of room to store what you need. The premium version gives you more storage and the ability to attach documents to notes. I use the premium version.
7. Desktop app.
The desktop app gives you systemwide shortcuts that make posting to Evernote easy and quick. It’s not as nice as Together or Journler and their quick entry systems, but it works well. As far as look, the app is quite similar to Together, which is nice.
8. Syncing. You can’t get better syncing across multiple machines. Just can’t do it.

Shortcomings of Evernote

For all of Evernote’s power, it has a few shortcomings, especially if you are picky about workflow or functionality. (If you use a Mac, I assume you are…)

Here’s where I think Evernote needs to improve:

1. Quick entry functionality. Evernote suffers from not having a quick entry functionality akin to Together or Journler. The only way to change metadata in an Evernote note is through the desktop app’s full window.
2. Smart folders. This is the most atrocious part of Evernote. While you can use Saved Searches, selecting the saved search (which operates just like a Smart Folder) triggers your tag list to open completely. It’s hard to explain, but use it one time and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Hopefully this functionality will change soon.

Recapping the review

Evernote is my choice. It’s got some functionality flaws that drive me crazy, but it’s far more powerful than either of the other two apps I’ve reviewed. Plus, I can carry it with me anywhere — via the Web or via my iPhone.

Plus, Evernote recently received more funding with the promise of several improvements — including upgrades to the desktop apps. I’m hoping the minor annoyances are soon to be gone!

Evernote offers a free version. The Premium version costs $5/month or $45/year. To see the difference in the versions, visit their comparison page.

Note: You can find the review of Journler here.

Political consulting being my day job, I find myself from time to time needing to set up a “server system” for a campaign.

Needs are basic: Email, file storage and sharing and calendaring. Since spending money on a business-level system is not usually an option, I take advantage of Google Apps for Your Domain.

It works better than well, and I recommend it for even small businesses. In fact, my own consulting firm uses it for our email, calendaring and file sharing.

But the problem I had was getting Google, iCal and my iPhone to play nicely. Some of that functionality has since been added via Google, but not near enough.

So my answer was BusySync. For the majority of the campaign, all worked well. I loved the setup. It was so transparent that I never knew I was using a work-around.

But then that all changed. Some events started disappearing. Others started multiplying. It was weird and virtually inexplicable.

I toyed with it for a while, double-checked settings and visited the support forums. Unfortunately, I never solved the issue.

With the campaign I was managing via Google now over, I’ve switched calendaring back to MobileMe. My consulting partner and I share a calendar, then I have my personal calendars. Now, nothing disappears or multiplies.

We still use Gmail as an email server, though I use Mail.app. I’ll admit, however, that we’re not collaborating as much with Google Docs. Instead, we use DropBox to share what we need.

Before long, I may move drop Google Apps for Your Domain all together, but I just can’t bring myself to get rid of Gmail’s great archiving and spam fighting abilities.

So, goodbye BusySync. Hello MobileMe. And, well, we’ll see about Google Docs.

For me, the upgrades for iWork 09 are where the money’s at.

I love Numbers as an alternative to Excel, and I’m growing fonder and fonder of Pages. Both get updates that could prove useful.

Pages

Pages finally gets mail-merge, which is a God-send in my work. Having full-screen mode will be nice as well. And while I don’t generally use their templates, every now and then one catches my eye. So I’ll peruse the 40-plus new ones.

For the word-processing power users out there, Pages also offers two new functionalities that are most welcome, but I’m not sure how well implemented. (Seeing as how I don’t use them, I doubt I’ll find out…)

They are:

1. Dynamic outlines. Changes made in an outline view are automatically made to the document.

2. MathType and EndNote compatibility. You can now write formulas in MathType and use EndNote for your bibliographic citations.

Numbers

Numbers is where the big improvements are for me. They include:

1. Table categories. This will greatly improve my abilities to use Numbers on several projects, from budgeting to analysis projects. And having the ability to find automatic sums based on categories is excellent.

2. Linked charts. I do a lot of data crunching in spreadsheets and then write a lot of summaries in word processing programs. Now in iWork, I can link the data in Numbers charts to the charts I place in Pages. That makes me happier than you know.

3. New charts. So this doesn’t really excite me that much, outside of an aesthetics point of view. But aesthetics are important, especially in proposals. So, I like it. (Plus, I wanted three examples instead of two.)

Keynote

Keynote also adds some new features, including the Keynote Remote, which allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to control a presentation from their phone or iPod. This is similar to what users can do with the same devices to control their Apple TV.

Apple also upgraded their templates and charts, and have added some new moves and transitions.

As you can tell, I’m not a big Keynote user. I enjoy it when I use it, but I have few demands for presentations of this sort.

iWork.com

Users of Google Docs and power users of Microsoft Office’s collaboration features will scoff at iWork.com. They are really comparable only in the ability to share a document and make comments on them.

In iWork.com, you cannot edit a document online. You can only view it, comment on it, leave general notes and download it.

But I like the idea for two reasons:

1. Sharing features. iWork.com offers an easy way to share documents between people and do basic collaboration via notes with anyone — regardless of whether or not they have a Google account. For providing proofs and sharing ideas among several people, it’s not a bad idea.

2. What the future holds. I’m one of the admitted minority who believes Apple will continue to develop iWork and iWork.com for the business community, though probably just smaller businesses. And though iWork was basic when it first launched, it has grown more and more robust. I believe that what we see in iWork.com is just the beginning, and as they develop it we’ll see even more functionality added.

Apple has a history of developing their newer software at their own pace. Generally, they do not allow the public to dictate their timelines (as Microsoft and Sony often do). They want to get it right, and when they offer a final product, it includes what they feel comfortable offering.

In that respect, I’m optimistic about what iWork.com becomes over the next few years.

Of course, there is one glaring exception to my above description of the way Apple develops their offerings, and that is Mobile Me. Considering Mobile Me was designed to offer cloud computing that was capable of being used in the business world, I would hope they have learned from their mistakes and that iWork.com will not be a repeat disaster.

That they offer iWork.com as beta only right now is encouraging.

Final analysis

I’m downloading the trial of iWork 09 today and will begin testing it as soon as I have a few minutes.

My first impression is that it the improvements are a solid set of new functionality, and I’ll happily pay the $79 for the upgrade.

As for iWork.com, I’ll start using it for collaboration projects too. And depending on where the monthly price point comes in, I might jump on that bandwagon as well.

So some think this year’s Macworld keynote was lack-luster, that Apple disappointed with their announcements and that iWork 09 is nothing to get excited about.

Don’t count me in that group.

The releases in this keynote — save the announcement about updating the 17″ MacBook Pro — were aimed at everyday consumer users. And even power-users or professionals who live on their Macs, as I do, are also consumer users who love their iLife 09 offerings. (OK, at least like iTunes.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of what I like the most:

1. iWork upgrades. The new offerings for Numbers and Pages excite me the most, as I use them in my business work. Two key features — mail merge and table categories — have me excited.

2. iWork.com Yep. I said it. I know it’s no Google Docs, but I have my reasons. I’ll explain in my next post.

3. DRM-free music. Finally. This has been a long-time coming, and I’m glad that it is now here. Apple is also offering “an easy, one-touch” method of upgrading your existing music to DRM-free. Of course, it costs 30 cents per song, so I’ll be discriminatory in doing so.

4. iPhoto online sharing. I’ve been using a plug-in for flickr, so it’s nice to have native support now. And I like having Facebook uploading capability as well. Now people will stop harassing me about uploading photos.

5. iMovie travel maps. Now I can take my childhood dream of being Indiana Jones one step further with these cool new maps.

6. iMovie precision editing. This looks to be a nice step up from the current editor in iMovie. I use this a lot in campaigns for web videos, so I’m jazzed.

I’m expounding my thoughts in longer posts on iWork and iLife. They’ll be posted later.

You can also head on over to MacWorld and read their articles on iLife 09, iWork 09, DRM-free iTunes and the 17″ MacBook Pro.

No sooner do I post about Google Apps and mention the shortfall of not having Gears for Safari than does Google announces they are introducing Gears for Safari.

I have no real intention of testing this for a few reasons, but the main two are:

1. I don’t have a real need with my current workflow configuration.
2. Everything I’ve read thus far says this is fairly unstable beta release.

If you are interested in reading about it, here are several places to check out:

• MacUser: Safari is getting some Google Gears
• TUAW: Google Gears beta for Safari
• MacNN: Google releases Gears beta for Safari

If you give it a try, let me know what you think.

Note: This is the final part of a three-part series on Google Apps, its advantages and how it fits into my workflow.

Like I said in Part 2 of this series:

Not everyone’s workflow is the same, and thus not everyone will use Google Apps the same. As I said, it has its limitations, and I’ve accommodated those in my workflow.

To say that I’ve fully let go of Microsoft Office or iWork would be a gross over-exageration. Both office suites are still an integral part of my workflow. Ditto for iCal, mainly because of having an iPhone and wanting to have the push capabilities of my schedule. And, for the same reasons, ditto to Address Book. I can’t live with my contacts online and my iPhone 3G empty.

At first, the fear of using online apps kept me away. But I decided I liked the power of Google Apps and the advantages. So I set out to find work arounds to my concerns.

Here’s how my workflow is set up with Google Apps:

1. Email server. I’ve replaced BlueHost email servers with Google email servers. The spam filters are great, and I have user-level control over forwards, rules, etc. Never looked back.
2. Email. I use the Gmail interface. I was using Mail with IMAP-enabled Gmail. However, you get a lot of duplicated messages in smart folders and threads because of the way Mail interacts with Gmail’s archiving structure. (This is really more of Gmail’s fault because of the way they use tags instead of folders. While in Gmail one message can have multiple tags, Mail sees each tag as a separate folder. Thus, you get multiple copies of the message.)
3. Email on iPhone 3G. For the same reason as above — multiple messages — I’ve stopped using the Mail program on my iPhone. Instead, I use Google’s mobile site. And I’ve found that I like it more. There is very little you cannot do in the mobile version that you can do on the full version.
4. Calendar. I keep my calendars on iCal and use that as my interface. To make it work properly with Google Calendars, I sprung for BusySync. This app allows you to sync iCal with Google Calendars. In my setup, I actually subscribe to my Google Calendars through BusySync. I have only one native calendar in iCal, and that is for personal use. (Note: BusySync costs $25.)
5. Contacts. I had to have my contacts in Address Book so they would sync with my iPhone. Having them in Google would do me no good. Now that Address Book in Leopard will sync with Google Contacts, this is not a worry. If you are using Tiger, I would recommend AtoG. I used it, and it worked pretty well.
6. Documents. For documents that require collaboration, I use Google Docs. For documents that I want to have access to for viewing anywhere, I upload them to Google Docs. But for all other documents, I generally keep them native. I prefer to work in iWork, but I use Office quite a bit as well. (With Back To My Mac, it’s much easier for me to fetch documents from my home iMac when I’m using my MBP, so that covers me as well.)

Here are a couple of other notes about how my workflow incorporates Google Apps:

1. iPhone email. While I use the Google mobile interface, I still have my dotmac address set up on my iPhone for times when I need to simply hit a link to email something or to post photos to Flickr. I would recommend setting up your email on the phone, but I would turn off the push capability.
2. Fluid. If you’ve not tried Fluid, you should. This is the easiest way to set up site specific browsers (SSB). Plus, it’s free. I use it for two email accounts with the Gmail web interface, Google Reader and Pandora.

So that’s it. That’s how I use Google Apps in my workflow. Google Apps is a great system, especially for small enterprises who need good collaboration tools. It even works well for individuals who are on the go and don’t work in the “normal” office environment.

I’d love to hear how others use Google Apps, especially from the Google Docs point of view.

In Part 1 of this series on Google Apps, I discussed what is included in Google Apps and why I chose to use it. In Part 2, I discussed reasons I chose to use Google Apps and some hesitations that might lead others to not use Google Apps.

Note: This is the second part of a three-part series on Google Apps, its advantages and how it fits into my workflow.

I discussed in this post what Google Apps includes and why I chose to use it. Google Apps provides a lot of advantages and a few disadvantages. First, let’s take a look at the hesitations I had with Google Apps.

Reasons not to use Google Apps

1. Privacy is a major concern. This is probably the number one hesitation of 90 percent of people who consider switching to Google Apps. Certainly, there is reason for concern. You are putting your information in the hands of someone else, in this case a company who generates ad revenue by scanning email and documents of their users. If you have sensitive information of a proprietary nature, you should give serious consideration to Google’s privacy policies.
2. You have limited ability to work offline. Google Apps is primarily an online service. While Gears will allow Firefox users to work offline, Safari users are not so lucky. The easy workaround is to download Firefox and have it available if needed, which is what I do. Furthermore, I’m rarely in a situation where I do not have access to the Internet.
3. Do you feel comfortable working in an online environment? Some people do not. And for those people, this may not be for you. But what you’ll find in my setup (in Part 3) is that I do very little online work. Most of what I do is integrated into my offline life.

That said, let’s look on the bright side of things.

Reasons to use Google Apps:

1. Gmail is the most powerful email system out there. OK. So that may be a subjective statement, but in my experience it is the truth. While spam filters, rules, forwarding, etc. are not unique to Gmail, nothing I’ve come across — not Mail, not Thunderbird, not Entourage — does them quite as well.
2. Gmail mobile interface rocks. As you’ll see in Part 3, I don’t use the Mail application on my iPhone 3G. I use Gmail’s mobile interface. It’s that good.
3. Collaboration is easy and extensive. By using Google Docs, you can collaborate with other users in your domain. If you have multiple users, you can designate with whom you want to share so that not everyone has access to everything.
4. Easy access to documents from virtually anywhere. If you have an Internet connection, you should be able to get to your documents, email, calendar, etc. No having to dial in to a work server or any of the like. Just log on, and voila.
5. Google Calendar makes scheduling easy. Just like Google Calendar, you have options for multiple calendars, sharing abilities (full schedule, free/busy, etc.) and the nifty daily itinerary feature, which I absolutely love. Every morning by 6 a.m., there it is in my inbox.
6. It’s cost effective for individuals and small businesses. At $50/user/year, you can’t very well beat this option for small operations. Plus, depending on your needs, you can save all that cash you would spend on Microsoft Office.
7. Technical support is a cinch. If you are using the premium edition and want Google to serve as your domain’s email server, then you have to change a few technical specs. Don’t be concerned, though. If you can’t do it, your site host can. Past that, the most complicated part of Google Apps is adding users, and that’s as easy as signing up for a website. No need to worry about network problems (unless you can’t get online…).

Not everyone’s workflow is the same, and thus not everyone will use Google Apps the same. As I said, it has its limitations, and I’ve accommodated those in my workflow. I’ll share a bit about those in my next post of this series.

In Part 1 of this series on Google Apps, I discussed what is included in Google Apps and why I chose to use it. In Part 3, I’ll explain how Google Apps fits into my workflow, including how I utilize Microsoft Office and iWork.

Note: This is the first of a three-part series on Google Apps, its advantages and how it fits into my workflow.

I was not an early adopter to Gmail or Google Docs. My reasons were not from fear of “big brother”, though those are valid concerns.

My reasons were much simpler:

1. I had an email address and liked Mail.app just fine.
2. I was accustomed to using Microsoft Word and iWork.

It was not until necessity — or at least a minor annoyance — came along that I seriously considered joining Google’s ever-expanding empire of users.

This site is hosted by BlueHost, with whom I am extremely satisfied in most ways. The only way in which I was not satisfied was with email. First, the email was often buggy or slow. I had connection issues both through Mail and through the web portals.

So I began looking for new ways to host my email. Enter Google Apps.

What’s in Google Apps? You get:

1. Gmail. If you don’t know what Gmail is, then stop reading and move on. Nothing to see here.
2. Google Docs. Powerful online office tools to create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. (Think stripped down versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint or Pages, Numbers and Keynote.)
3. Google Calendar. Online calendaring system that offers multiple calendars and sharing options.
4. Google Sites. You can build simple webpages with this tool, but I’ve never tried it.
5. Google Start Page. Some people love start pages, and this is a good one if you do. It’s iGoogle for your site or business. I don’t use it, though.

Google Apps provides two editions for users. The standard edition is quite powerful and is free. The Premier Edition is extremely powerful and costs $50 per user per year.

At the same time I was looking for a replacement for my email needs, I was doing the same for a client. My client’s needs included multiple user accounts and document sharing, the latter of which we were looking at an expensive server solution.

Thus, I elected to give the premium edition a try for both setups. So far, I’ve been most satisfied with both my personal set up and the one for my client.

In Part 2 of this series on Google Apps, I’ll talk about reasons to use Google Apps and some reasons why some people are hesitant to make the jump. In Part 3, I’ll explain how Google Apps fits into my workflow, including how I utilize Microsoft Office and iWork.