Good Will Blogging
How do you like them apples...

As much as I would love to live the independent developer lifestyle, unfortunately, I have a day job. I work for a big financial company as a software architect and I manage a large team of engineers. For those who don’t know what the finance industry is like, one of its defining traits is an obsession with information security. As such, there is no way in hell my company would ever let me connect my iPad to the company’s network. Actually, they don’t even have a wireless network.

Nevertheless, I wanted to start using my shiny new iPad (3) in anger at work, so over the past two weeks I have ditched my trusty paper notebook for an iPad. I’ve gone all-in. Mostly I take the iPad to meetings, where I use the gorgeous Meetings for iPad to take notes. The app includes a brilliant feature to email the notes to attendees, but of course sending from my iPad meant the email would come from my personal email address. Most people wouldn’t notice that, so when they reply all to comment on something, I get emails to my personal email address. Definitely not cool with the information security folks.

Luckily, it turns out there is a simple way to get around this, using Gmail’s “send mail as” feature. Now I can send emails from my iPad and they appear for all the world to have come from my work computer. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Sign up for a new Gmail account. Yes, you’ll want a new Gmail account for this, as we’ll see later.
2. Go to Settings (now hidden in one of the two gear-icon buttons… ugh).
3. Click the Accounts tab.
4. In the “Send mail as” section, click “Add another email address you own”.
5. Type in your company email address, and deselect “Treat as an alias”. Click “Next Step”.
6. On the next screen, leave the first option selected, to send via the Gmail mail server, and click “Next Step”.
7. Click the “Send Verification” button, and check your company email. You should get a confirmation code from Google, which you can enter on the next screen.
8. Back on the Accounts tab in Gmail Settings, click the “make default” link next to your company email address. This means that all emails send from this Gmail account will use your company address by default (which is why I advise setting up a new Gmail account for this).
9. Now, on your iPad (or iPhone), set up the Gmail account as you would normally.
10. Finally, go to Google Sync on your iPad, and select the option to allow “Send Mail As”.

Now when you send an email from iPad, just select your “work” Gmail account in the From field. That’s it!

The following is a note to myself to remember how to set up Gmail and Google Calendar properly on iOS.

1. Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account…
2. Don’t select Gmail. Instead, select Microsoft Exchange.
3. Enter the following details and tap Next.
   Email: your email address
   Domain: leave blank
   Username: your email address
   Password: your password
   Description: “Gmail”
4. A “Server” field will appear. In it, enter “m.google.com” and tap Next.
5. Choose the items to sync.
6. Open Safari, and go to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/chooseCalendars.
7. Sign in with the Gmail account address & password.
8. Select the calendars you want to be selectable on iPhone/iPad.

There are more detailed options in the Settings app, but the defaults you get with the above steps are pretty good.

The main benefits of setting them up this way are:

• Push email, contacts, and calendar.
• In my experience so far, this seems to help battery life, since there is no need to have a regular fetch every 15 minutes.
• Calendar editing is two-way, so you can create and edit appointments on the iPhone, and have them show up everywhere else.
• Invitations work.
• You can select subscribed calendars as well.

iTunes Sync 2 items could not be synced. See iTunes for more information.

…But iTunes appears not to show any information about this error. And it keeps happening. And it seems a lot of people are having the same problem:

Well I figured it out, so I’m posting it here in case I forget later. Hopefully it’s also useful to you as well.

There’s a little, almost invisible warning symbol that shows up in iTunes next to your iPhone:

Click that, and you get this pop-up window, which tells you which files couldn’t be synced, and why:

So to stop the error, you can either fix the problems it describes, or check the “Do not warn me again” checkbox. (If you do, and you want it back, right click your iPhone in the sidebar and select “Reset warnings”.)

You’re welcome.

I’m trying a variant of the 30/30 Work Cycle for days when I work by myself, without the distractions of meetings and random interruptions. So far, it seems to work fairly well, especially when motivation is a bit low and the work takes a lot of concentration.

My variant goes like this:

1. Set a timer (on iPhone, in my case) for 25 minutes.
2. Work on something hard until the timer goes off.
3. Take a minute to jot down notes on whatever thought you were in the middle of.
4. Stand up out of your seat, walk around, stretch, jump, whatever. Just get the blood flowing and the heart rate up.
5. Repeat from 1, choosing a very different task to the previous one.

I have noticed a few nice benefits to working like this.

First, getting up and moving my body about twice per hour seems to help a lot with the lethargy that usually comes from working at a desk all day.

Second, the context shifts keep everything feeling fresh. Motivation is a lot easier when I know I only have to concentrate on this task for 25 minutes, especially for tasks I’ve been avoiding. And, it’s amazing what can be achieved in only 25 minutes.

Third, it stops the opposite problem, where I get too engrossed in a task that is easy and/or fun, but ultimately not very important.

Fourth, when I have something I want to do, and something I know I should do, I don’t have to choose. I can do both! (Pro tip: always do the “should” task in the first 25-minute session.)

I’ve found that with this method, I can work for many hours (my record so far is 12!), without falling into lethargy or fatigue, with 50 out of every 60 minutes spent in concentrated, productive work.

1. Hide SMS Notification Popover Without Acknowledging

   It’s really annoying when you’re right in the middle of something and an SMS comes in, and you don’t want to tap “View”, but you don’t want to tap “Close” either (because that will remove the count badge and you might forget to go back to it later).

   There is a third option. Just lock your screen with the sleep/wake button at the top, then unlock it again. It will take you back to the app you were using without acknowledging the notification.

2. Universal Inverse Display (Night Mode)

   On the Mac, there’s a very useful feature to enable inverse colours by pressing Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-8 (⌘⌥⌃8) which inverts every colour on the screen, like an old colour film negative. This option is fantastic at night when you feel your way in the dark to your desk and want to use the computer without burning your retina so badly you’ll never find your way back to bed.

   There’s an equivalent function in the Accessibility settings in iPhone. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Triple-click Home > Toggle White on Black. Then wherever you are in the phone, triple-pressing the physical home button (note: über easy to find in the dark) switches the display.

   Because this is universal, you can switch back and forth depending on whether the app you’re using is predominantly dark or light. It’s also handy outside in bright sunlight for very dark apps. It even works on the lock screen!

Enjoy!

Update: I’ve noticed that this does add a tiny delay to the double-press used for fast app switching. Since this is iPhone’s answer to Cmd-Tab (Alt-Tab for Windows users), this little delay could cumulate stress imperceptibly over the day. You have been warned.