Comments on: Omni apps: Home Edition

By: Eric Barger

Eric Barger — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:30:08 +0000

I am using OOP to write my book. A very nice way to keep tabs on completed sections while actually writing the book in the column to the left.

I use OGP for process diagrams and the such.

By: Miraz Jordan

Miraz Jordan — Mon, 15 May 2006 20:21:43 +0000

I often have a dozen outliner documents open at a time. I use OO extensively for record-keeping for various client projects, and in particular for timesheets. I love its ability to tally numbers of items, hours of work and dollars of income. Checkboxes let me see which items are completed.

By: John Laudun

John Laudun — Fri, 05 May 2006 21:55:23 +0000

The real question is what do I *not* use OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner for?

OOP is, in all honesty, the first app I fire up whenever I start anything. I may ultimately turn to another app — DevonThink, Word, whatever — but I’m going to start in OOP. Note-taking for an essay. Setting up a schedule for a project.

I’ve used OGP to make everything from really cool and graphically obvious organization charts and workflow diagrams to CD and DVD covers (for home and family) to various holiday cards and posters and and and…

I’ll try to post some of the things and drop back in with a URL.

By: Abhi Beckert

Abhi Beckert — Mon, 01 May 2006 03:01:54 +0000

“OmniStuff is cool. I like it.”

Oh man, that’s a wicked term. Guys, you have to figure out a way to get “OmniStuff” into use! Maybe a bundle with a license to all the Omni products?

By: Chad

Chad — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:51:16 +0000

I see I’m not the only one who uses OO for a glorified grocery list generator. Ever since I bought OO, I’ve been using it for quite a few different things, if anything, just to use it!

Lately, I’ve been using it as a good check list for things To Do when creating software, so I can easily check off and monitor the bugs and features that need to be completed with my software.

Keeping a Workspace in OW for blogs and such…that’s a good idea, I’ll need to set that up so I can quickly glance at a bunch of different sites at once.

By: vafarmboy

vafarmboy — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:48:20 +0000

Shopping or job hunting on craigslist is nigh impossible for me if I’m not using OW. First, perform your search. As you’re going through the results, when you find one you want just drag the URL to the tab bar to create a new tab. Then hit “Back” and repeat the process ad nauseam. When you’re done, you have a bunch of tabs denoting which items you found interest in, often too many to go through at once. (At least, if you live in a city with an active craigslist.) Fortunately, each one has the handy-dandy green “new” checkmark which I use to keep track of if I’ve responded to that ad or not. Craigslist is literally worthless to me without Omniweb.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 06:02:49 +0000

I prepare all my teaching notes in OOPro;
create necessary diagrams in OGPro;
export the outline to Keynote for presentation–using copy-paste from OGPro to place the diagrams (rousing cheer for linkback!)–and to RTFD;
open the RTFD in Nisus Writer Express to tweak it and add footnotes/endnotes as necessary;
save that as RTF to import into InDesign;
use InDesign to make a printer-friendly, not too large PDF of notes to upload to space for students to download.

If I need to make any lists, I use OOPro.
If I need to write something, I plan it in OOPro …
I’m thinking of setting OOPro to open on start-up to save me time!

For anything Web-like–apart from accessing the British Embassy site, which only works with Opera!–I use OW.

I’d like to see closer links between OO and Nisus, so an OO outline could be opened straight in NWE–which uses linkback too for OG diagrams–and I would love to have OmniGroup develop a spreadsheet–provided it supported Chinese!–’cos that too would really rock, I’m sure!

By: Tommy Weir

Tommy Weir — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 20:02:54 +0000

OW is browser of choice. And Firefox hasn’t had an outing since I downloaded SP6…

OOP is the tool I reach for when:
i do my GTD workflow (Kinkless)
I make notes in meetings/reading books/etc/.
I do lists of any form.

OG is my tool of choice for drawing.
MY classnotes for students are all done in OG.
My new house in OG…
- layer for original architects plans.
- my copy of his plans
- layer of electrical requirements
- layer of fixtures and fittings
- layer of furniture
- layer of bathroom and kitchen

Argh… just noticed no expansion option for this text input area. SP7… must report.

By: Matthew Barker

Matthew Barker — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:05:59 +0000

Aside from geeky diagrams, I’ve used OmniGraffle
Pro to make one of those bulletin board ads for an
item I’m selling. For the tear-off tags with name and phone number on the bottom, I rotated the
open-sided graphic by 90 degrees and used the table
tool to make the tags. Then, when I needed to change
the price on the tags, I used the handy find/replace
text feature.

I use OW (especially workspaces) for keeping track of research for work or personal life.
I’ve turned off the thumbnail tabs
exactly twice just to see that it could be done,
but otherwise rely on the thumbnails for navigation.

OmniOutliner Pro gets used for GTD (Kinkless) and
quick todo lists. Occasionally for expense/income
tracking. Whatever I can think of to use it for.
I sometimes would like to use it for things for
which I rely on a notebook, because I need aggregation
of disparate lists and items. But as I write this,
I realized there may be a way to do what I want.
I think if you add section-specific columns, I’ll
be 100% there.

By: Jerrod Hansen

Jerrod Hansen — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:59:21 +0000

I use OOutliner as a to do list, to keep track of expenses, for organizing class/ lecture notes (I teach), and for organizing research ideas. Of course, I also use it for writing and wrote close to 30%, at least, of my dissertation in OW before switching to a word processor.

OmniGraffle is used for creating figures for use in publications, for use in class handouts, and for organizing information and ideas when brainstorming and organizing papers. I am giving a poster presentation at a major international conference next month and the components of that poster will be made in OG.

Omniweb’s workspaces make it really easy to keep many tasks active at once. Sometimes OW’s memory features (persistent tabs and workspaces) make it too easy to open up too many pages though and I find my self overwhelmed with stuff that I want to read. I also really love being able to navigate web pages with the keyboard via Type-ahead-find. Very useful for reading threaded messages on sites that don’t have flat views.