This week’s home screen features Kourosh Dini (website)(Twitter). Kourosh is the classic triple threat: psychiatrist, musician, geek. Most recently Kourosh released a second edition of his fantastic book, Creating Flow with OmniFocus. To me, a trip to Chicago is not complete until I’ve broken bread with my pal Kourosh. So Kourosh, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

OmniFocus remains my main application and has the easiest reach at the bottom right corner. 

The Phone and Drafts apps are also on the lower bar. Other communications apps are embedded in a folder on the lower bar. The default Mail app and Tweetbot are actually on the second page of that folder to minimize my propensity to check either reflexively.

Timers

Across the top are Settings and three timers.

Wind-up is useful for simple timing. I use it for meditation and making tea. I like the windup action.

Due is good for setting up a time to begin closing a session of work. I love how it can ding every minute. 

When an alert or reminder just rings once, it can be disruptive as I must either: 

• Stop present work abruptly and move on to the next thing,
• Turn off the ringer and hope I remember to move on soon, or
• Leave the ringer on and irritate me while work.

Each of these options leaves something to be desired.

Due’s minute reminder is not so intrusive that I can’t work but is present just enough to tell me it’s time to wrap up my present work. If I would like to continue with present work, then I can purposely make that decision and deliberately reset the clock.

Alarm Clock is useful as a regular alarm and as a time display. Combined with a kickstand (using an Aduro case), I might set it near my computer while I work with some OS X application in full screen mode. (The kickstand is also nice for Face Time sessions or watching a show on the fly.)

Listening

For music, I use the default Music app as well as Spotify. 

Instacast is great for podcasts as I do not need to store the sound files on the phone and can, instead, stream them. 

I still have the Shazam and SoundHound apps, even though I know Siri can do this automatically. Siri, unfortunately, does not understand me. I believe she is too polite to tell me that I mumble.

Travel

Google Maps is great for getting around town on public transportation. Most of my travel is by foot, train, and bus.

Transit stop is useful for knowing when the next bus is arriving. 

Art Institute Membership – I love having membership cards in my phone. It’s one less thing to carry. 

Business:

Square register for credit card transactions. It used to be a magical thing to be able to process a credit card transaction, an action left to the major retailers. That we can do this as small business entities highlights a neat societal shift. 

Epocrates is useful for medication information. 

I also have a Date Wheel date calculator, which is useful for calculating something like when 90 days from now lands on the calendar.

PDFPen Scan + and JotNot Pro are useful as scanners. I haven’t settled with one or the other yet. Combining either with an online faxing service, I can scan a piece of paper and fax it quickly. (Yes, I still fax.)

Reading

Kindle and iBooks for books.

Newsify for RSS feeds.

Pocket for individual articles.

Dark Horse Comics for awesomeness.

Study

Mindnode is an elegant mind mapping application that strikes a nice compromise of mapping features and simplicity. I use this more on OS X than on iOS due to the screen real estate, but it’s nice to have on iOS, too.

inShort stays at the front page beckoning to me to learn it. It seems to have a complexity that requires a certain threshold of knowledge to work through before finding a stride. However, I have yet to make that effort. Maybe if I get the OS X version, I’ll get into it. 

Duolingo is a neat language learning experience. While it does not replace actual practiced conversation, it is always nice to have around for a quick lesson.

Remotes

Remote and Roku remotes are useful for my Apple TV and Roku devices, respectively.

I’ve also been experimenting with the new Alfred remote. I like being able to quickly jump around the system settings using the app. I’m not sure how else I’ll use it yet, but it looks like there are some interesting possibilities.

Guitar:

Clear tune for tuning the guitar and Tabs to taunt the kids with poorly practiced renditions of “Let it Go”. 

Multi-Measures is a nice measuring kit. Though for me it is more for silly fun. I like to use it to measure the
ambient noise level when walking around town. Watching the ambient noise level shift and change as I move from one environment to another gives the whole walk a story-like feel. Visiting the L train , I’ve seen it range into the 90 dBs. Quieter places are in the low 30s. 

Apps like this also just go to show how much the smart phone has become a present day swiss army knife.

Writing:

Byword is connected to a single folder in Dropbox where I store the majority of my text files.

Drafts is very useful, too, to just get some thoughts down, especially if I don’t know what I’m doing with them yet. 

DayOne is good for journaling. 

Which apps is your guilty pleasure?

Alien Blue is an application that interfaces with Reddit. The community there is at once endearing and enraging. It also helps me keep up to date with what is interesting in the community at large.

Dark Horse comics is another guilty pleasure. I’ve been reading the Leaf Upon the Wind Firefly comics. 

What is the app you are still missing?

OmniOutliner for iPhone. I like to use OmniOutliner for templates of tasks – morning routines and the like. While I don’t always consult them, they are nice to have handy. I store these in an OmniPresence linked folder so I can get to them from iPad or OSX. However, I have the iPhone handy much more frequently. (Stay tuned on this one Kourosh. -D)

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Still too many, but I am better. I read of someone deliberately hobbling their phone, turning it into a “distraction free” phone. I’ve yet to take that plunge, but I am considering it.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I’ve got the weather up top. 

OmniFocus is listed next. I do hope that The Omni Group allows for customizing which perspective appears up top. Presently, it is only for Due tasks. I would love to be able to use one of my Dashboard settings (a combination of “Filter by Status: Due or Flagged” with “Filter by Availability: Available” and “Sort actions by: Due”). That way I could see all the tasks I’ve set for today.

Next up is the Calendar. As much of my work is based on sessions with individual clients, my calendar is extremely important. 

Then I’ve got the Kindle. I really like how I can open directly to any of the last three read books from this view. 

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Its portability. For instance, I use OmniFocus on the iPhone much more than with the iPad despite the greater feature count of the iPad version. Its direct accessibility and ease of typing both contribute to its use.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I can’t wait for internal links to work when exporting from Pages again. With my last book, I had to manually create all the internal links using Adobe Acrobat for the PDF. 

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I like the default watery wallpaper. Setting the icons above the water line makes me happy for unknown reasons. 

Anything else you’d like to share?

I’m learning Android: Netrunner. Board and card games are awesome.