TouchFire is a lightweight keyboard addition for your iPad

Earlier this year, I heard about a Kickstarter project for an iPad add-on called "TouchFire."  The idea sounded intriguing:  A flexible silicone-ish keyboard that magnetically attached to your iPad screen, providing tactile keys that worked with the iPad's soft keyboard.

I investigated, and decided to get in on the project, which entailed "investing" some money in the project for an opportunity to reserve one of the units when they began shipping.  I put my money down.  About a month ago, I received my keyboard and it is pretty cool.  But it isn't perfect and it probably won't be a hit for everyone so I decided to write a brief review of my experiences here.

What you get

For $50, you get a TouchFire keyboard, a carrying case (it folds up pretty small and fits nicely in the case), and some adhesive magnets that attach to your smart cover, if you have one - more on why you need those magnets in a second.

How the TouchFire works

The TouchFire keyboard has strong magnets built into it, and it "snaps" on to your iPad, and aligns itself much like Apple's smart covers do - this makes it easy to get the keyboard into the right position over the on-screen keyboard.  

This also makes it easy to flip the TouchFire down (toward you) if you want to temporarily gain access to your full iPad screen such as when you want to draw on the screen or use your fingers to perform operations.  Then you can simply flip it back up over the screen when you want to type.

Another cool aspect of the TouchFire's flexibility and ease of removing the keyboard is that it can fold up inside your smart cover to completely get the TouchFire out of the way without risking that you'll leave it behind.  This is where the adhesive magnets I mentioned come into play.  

• When you first get your TouchFire, you go through a short process to position and mount a couple of magenta to the underside of your smart cover.
• After that, if you don't want to use the TouchFire, you simply lift it with the smart cover the next time you open it up, and the magnets will hold the keyboard against the smart cover, as shown in the picture at right (you can see larger versions of these pictures at the TouchFire site).

Typing on the TouchFire is pretty nice - you get exactly the same layout as the iPad keyboard, but how you have tactile keys that can help you type more quickly, especially if you are a touch typist.  You will need to experiment a bit to see if you like to type flat or if you like to type at an angle, which you can achieve by propping it up with the smart cover.

The TouchFire seems pretty durable so far, and you can easily wash it if it gets dirty (I've washed mine once after I got a bunch of dust on it).

There is one complaint I have about the TouchFire.  Apparently, I "drag" my fingers over the top of the keys ever-so-slightly when I type and it took a while to get used to raising my fingers up higher - the jelly-like feel of the TouchFire's keys grabbed my fingers enough to slow my typing down and annoy me.  I don't have that issue with "normal" physical keys.

On a related note, you may find the TouchFire to be very sticky at first.  Give it a few days and that stickiness calms down, in my experience.

By the way - if you're interested in seeing it in action, I encourage you to watch the video that got me excited about this:

Pros and Cons

Here are the pros and cons from my perspective.

Pros:

• Very lightweight
• Easy to "install" and remove (clear instructions are provided with the TouchFire)
• Nice carrying case, and extra magnets are provided
• Enables touch typing using Apple's touch keyboard, which means spellcheck / autocorrect work the same as with Apple's keyboard
• Integrates with Apple's smart cover
• No batteries or other moving parts

Cons:

• Jelly-like feel of keys may not work for your typing style (see my notes above).
• When you switch to alternate symbols on the keyboard, sometimes it's hard to see which key is which since they soft keys are now covered by the TouchFire.  You can kind of see through the TouchFire, but it's not completely clear.

For me, the bottom line is that I am happy I bought a TouchFire, because I regularly use it when I'm trying to travel very  light.  However, for productivity and typing speed, I still find myself gravitating back to my Logitech keyboard case - even if it weighs more and has to be recharged once a month.  

Another aspect I like about the Logitech - when I'm taking notes with it, the iPad screen is upright kind of like a laptop screen, which means I can take notes without allowing others to read what I'm typing.  Obviously, typing on a near-vertical surface just isn't practical using the onscreen keyboard.

If you end up getting a TouchFire, let me know how you like it - I have two friends that absolutely love the TouchFire, and would like to hear more from other people.

Counter-productivity tips?

I was just reading an article called, "8 Surprisingly Counterproductive Productivity Apps," which has some interesting items on it.  My favorite is one called iNap@Work, which took the #1 spot:

No. 1 with a bullet? iNap@Work. It’s the productivity app gone so wrong that it could help you lose your job. With counterproductivity as its aim, the app will make you seem busy while — you guessed it — napping at work. To fool the waking dead (read: your cubemates), the app will play a series of sound effects at varying frequencies, including typing, stapling, and mouse clicks.

I played around with this (not for napping, but out of curiosity) and it's pretty entertaining to say the least.  The rest of the list is interesting, as well.

What are your "time sink" apps?

That post reminded me of a tool I've been using called "RescueTime" which automatically tracks your time on Windows and OS X.  I really like it because it not only tracks which apps you are using, but it asks you what you were doing when you return to your desk after a meeting or other reason for being away (sample dialog is below - and you can customize the categories if you want):

WIth RescueTime, you get a very nice breakdown of your productivity through the RescueTime dashboard, along with a categorization of which were the most and least productive categories of time.  The scale ranges from -2 (very unproductive) to +2 (very productive), and you can adjust the categorization to better fit your real view of the world in case you disagree with their classification of an activity.  For example, RescueTime considered LinkedIn to be a -2 (very unproductive) on their scale. I adjusted LinkedIn to be a +1 (productive) since I use LinkedIn to help me in my work and save time.

Once you've been using RescueTime for a while, you can use various reports to see how productive you are and find places where you waste time (your 'counter-productive apps' in a sense).  Here is a sample category breakdown for the month of September so far, based on my utilization:

I don't obsess over these reports, but I do check in a couple of times a month to see how much time I've been spending on distractions.  You can monitor as much or as little of your week as you want, so you can audit all of your time or just your work hours, for example.  I didn't have too many surprises other than realizing how much time I spent playing Diablo 3 last month.

If you're looking for a quick and easy way to track where you spend your time and identify when you are at your most productive, check out RescueTime.  And if you want to take naps at work or engage in other unproductive activities, go read up on 8 Surprisingly Counterproductive Productivity Apps!

I fell off the path and am getting back on...

I recently wrote about Beeminder here, and talked about how much I liked it to help keep me on track.  That is all still true. 

Unfortunately, technology can't always overcome human flaws.  You see, in spite of Beeminder, I missed my commitment to post here at least 4 times per month and wandered off my yellow brick road.

What happened?  

I could make any number of excuses - I got busy, I didn't have a good idea for a post, I was tired, I was on vacation, etc. (all of which are true, but irrelevant).

Basically, I decided to procrastinate when I could've taken a few minutes do write something, or I couldn't planned ahead and written posts early & scheduled them, etc.  In other words, I didn't take proper responsibility for my commitment and didn't hold myself accountable.  It happens.

What am I going to do about it?  

I have paid my pledge of $5 to Beeminder, reset my graph, and am back on the horse trying to meet my commitment of at least 4 posts per month through the end of the year.  And this time, it will cost me $10 if I miss my commitment again.

You know, this made me realize another benefit of Beeminder:  consequences are making me get back to my commitment sooner.  Prior to Beeminder, I could've been a slacker for any length of time and nobody would have known - there is some benefit in a public scoreboard.  If you want to watch my progress, check out my current graph to see how I'm doing.

Presenting with a pocket full of cobras

I was just reading an article on Harvard Business Review's blog, written by Kare Anderson - it is called "Make Your Message (Almost) as Vital as AIR." It is a great set of guidelines to help make your message more impactful.  She uses the acronym "AIR" to represent three aspects of effective messages - here is a brief recap:

1. Actionable:  "To secure connection with your intended audience or market, aspire to offer the equivalent ease of Amazon Prime's one-click buying."
2. Interestingness:  "Make your message so unexpected, novel, provocative or otherwise odd that they are compelled to pay attention even if they are supposed to be doing something else."
3. Relevance:  "You can increase relevance by getting specific sooner. That may mean you capture fewer people overall — but you will capture more of the right people, the people you need to reach."

In addition to resonating with the advice in this article, I absolutely agree with Kare's conclusion: 

Crafting a memorable message will make you more quotable, will keep you at the top of people's minds, and will ultimately inject your life with more opportunity and adventure.

Is your message lost in the noise?

I commented on Kare's article on the HBR site, but wanted to elaborate a bit here about just how vital the "Interestingness" part of this formula can be.  

As you may know from my writing on this blog, I spend a lot of time doing presentations and leading discussions as part of my job in a software company.  In addition to trying to create Actionable, Interesting, and Relevant messages, one of the big challenges I have is delivering my message in a way that allows me to not only compete with the "ambient noise" of daily life but to get people to stop what they are doing and engage with me.

Often, especially when I'm presenting to large groups at conferences, I can see people with their heads buried in their email, Facebook, or some other online activity.  I try not to take it personally and, in fact, I try to frame it as a challenge:  How can I pull them away from other activities enough that they begin to engage in my topic?

Got a cobra in your pocket?

As I mentioned in my comments to Kare, I used to work with a guy that I described as having a "pocket full of cobras."  Why?  

Any time he started to get attacked in meetings, or feel uneasy with the topic at hand, he had a knack for coming up with some tangent that sucked everyone in and got everyone focused on something new.  Kind of like if he'd pulled a cobra out of his pocket and thrown it on the conference room table - if that happened, no matter what you were doing a moment before you'd instantly turn your attention to the cobra. 

My coworker used his cobras as a way to deflect and distract, but I believe you can create your own collection of cobras that you can use to compel and focus your audience.  After all, when presenting, or writing, or even trying to lead a discussion in a room full of coworkers, sometimes it can be good to "shock the system" with a dramatic, controversial, or unexpected injection of provocative content.

Be prepared.

Some of my favorite communicators are great at grabbing your attention, and have developed their own "pockets full of cobras" to help keep you focused on the right things.  Some of the things I've seen work well include:

• Stories:  Telling an interesting or personal story to illustrate one of your main points can be very effective.  People tend to remember stories, so you'll increase the likelihood that they'll retain your key points if you wrap them in good stories.
• Pictures:  I've seen a (welcome) trend away from bullet points toward evocative images.  These work most effectively when combined with good stories, as described in the previous bullet.
• Polls:  Want to engage the audience?  Be ready with some questions that require them to answer, vote, or otherwise respond.  If you do this early in the presentation, you'll keep them on their toes - after all, if there is going to be another quiz, they're going to pay more attention.
• Small group discussion with a report back:  This doesn't work for all topics, but it can be effective to get the audience engaged, take the 'burden of content' off your shoulders, and inject new ideas into the group.  Get each table to go off and work on a problem (could be the same problem for everyone, or a collection of relevant problems), the get each group to report back about their group's ideas or proposed solutions.
• Videos:  Videos or film clips can often switch things up and get people to pay attention to what's going on in the room.  
• For example, I once did a presentation that used an excerpt from the movie "The Blind Side" to frame a discussion about the need to make a radical change in companies' approaches to their information security strategy.  I then told a story to connect my concepts to what we saw in the video clip.  I got lots of feedback from the audience for months afterward, talking about how much they remembered that presentation and used it as a reminder to think differently about their security strategies.
• Step into the crowd:  Move into the crowd, or take a step into the crowd.  That little bit of "hey, what's this guy up to" can shift people's attention.  And, they'll be less likely to do email or Facebook with you walking around behind them!
• Contrast:  What do I mean by contrast?  Contrast could be silence.  It could be a loud noise.  It could be a goofy exercise.  Just find a way to break the flow of the discussion in a noticeable way, and you'll increase the chances that people will shift their attention to where you want it to be.
• One cool trick I've learned is the "blank screen" technique.  In PowerPoint, you can just hit the "B" key on the keyboard and your screen turns black.  Do that, and people stop reading your slides and look at you.
• Another cool trick if a lot of people are having side conversations is to just stand there and look at them without saying a word (or, if you don't want to stare at them just look out into the room).  After about 5-10 seconds, they'll probably stop what they are doing and look at you.  Boom.  You have them back.

These are just a few of the productive cobras I've developed.  Do you have any other ideas or techniques that sound anything like this?  How about sharing them?  I'd love to put some more cobras in my pocket.

Free lesson on getting your inbox to zero

As many of you know, I'm quite "into" following trends in personal productivity.  Today, during my news crawl, I noticed that Lifehack.org has a limited-time offer to get a free "LifeHack Lesson" on how to get your inbox to zero.  Of course, I couldn't resist so I clicked on the link in the article to check out the advice they're giving.

Well, I must say the advice looks pretty good. It's a short, prescriptive guide for getting your inbox to empty - just as advertised.  If you're looking for a good little program to get "in" to "empty" head over to LifeHack and grab a copy before the free offer expires.

Still "Managing my Now"

As for me, I'm still using Michael Linenberger's "Managing Your Now" system, with ToodleDo as my task repository - just as I described a few months ago.  It is still working very well for me, though it still isn't always automatic.

The challenge I have is that I've switched from Outlook (where Tasks were in the same pane of glass as my email & calendar) to a hybrid solution comprised of a few different apps.  I find that that small amount of friction still gets the better of me sometimes, and I forget to check my lists as often as I should.  If you've found a good solution to this kind of problem I would love to hear it.

I'm tempted to put a goal in Beeminder to coax myself to develop a more disciplined set of habits around this, but haven't quite been able to pull the trigger on that one yet.  We'll see...