The Other Drummer

There you have it folks. The winners of the Day One apps (see my review here) are listed above. Winners were drawn by my co-worker, much to the dismay of our other co-worker who watched the whole process but didn’t win. Sorry Autumn.

I’ll attempt to contact the winners via the contact info provided. If they don’t respond by next Monday I’ll draw another name in their place.

Thanks to everyone who participated. For your reading pleasure, I have some good news about the apps:

• Featured by Apple in New and Noteworthy (#1 for OS X)
• Featured by Apple in What’s Hot (#2 for OS X)
• Broke into the Top 10 Paid Apps (OS X)

Not too shabby for being on the market for less than two weeks. If you were holding out to buy it until the drawing (and didn’t win), jump on over to buy them now (OS X and iOS).

And congrats to Paul!

Managed to find time to swing into the Apple Store on Saturday. While we didn’t get the birthday present we went in for (sorry Bobby – we still love you) I did get my hands on an iPad 2, seen above demonstrating its new hover feature.

It’s beautiful.

And thin.

Like slice gouda and tomatoes on a cutting board, thin.

The smaller form factor and lighter weight actually makes a huge difference in, what I like to refer to as, holdability.

Yes, I think I just made up a word.

One of the complaints of my hands-on with the original iPad was that it was too heavy to hold comfortably with one hand. Not the case with the iPad 2.

Think I may need to pick up one of these fine devices once they become available again – word on the webs is they’re sold out pretty much everywhere and there’s up to a month-long wait if you order online.

Anybody else groped this beautiful hardware? Actually purchased one? Taunt me in the comments.

Note: the back of the iPad 2 doesn’t say “iPad 2″. I just says “iPad.”

Just a friendly reminder that today is the last day to enter the drawing for Day One app bundle.

Here’s what you need to know

My review of the Day One apps.

Here’s what you win

The Grand Prize Winner gets The Ultimate Day One Bundle Pack: the desktop app and the iPhone app, both autographed by Paul himself.

Second- and third-place winners each get the app for their iDevice.

Here’s how you enter

• Give a shout-out to @theotherdrummer and @dayoneapp on Twitter
• Link to this post on Facebook (and me, so I can see you did it) on Facebook
• Leave a comment here with an inspirational thought about writing/journaling

You get your name put in the hat for each thing you do.

I’ll draw the names this weekend and announce the winners on Monday here on The Other Drummer.

Leave a comment or email me if you have any questions.

Friend and all-around brilliant guy, Paul Mayne, has developed a simple, beautiful journaling app for OS X and iPhone/iPod Touch called Day One.

The premise of the app is to be a dead-simple (and beautiful) way to capture thoughts throughout the day – and keep them to yourself.

In a world of tweets and status updates, it was refreshing to hear that there aren’t any publication tools built-in. Nothing pushes out to Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr – what you enter into Day One stays in Day One.

If Day One app becomes as popular as I think it’s going to be (Apple featured it in the Mac OS App Store the day it launched) maybe there will be fewer banal and obnoxious tweets and status updates out there. One can hope.

Features

Aside from functioning as a journal, Day One also has:

• Reminders – Set how often you’d like to make an entry for unobtrusive reminders which you can easily snooze or skip.
• Quick Entry – An applet in the menu bar allows for quick entries.
• Backup & sync – Entries are synced (and therefore, backed up) across your desktop and iDevice using a free Dropbox account. If you don’t have Dropbox yet, 1. How do you function? 2. Get a free account here.
• Prompts – Inspiring little notes to help you figure out what to write. Much appreciated.
• Coming soon – Export, password protection and search.

In addition to the “coming soon” features, I do wish it had a universal shortcut to bring up the menu bar applet since I hate taking my hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. Nitpicky? Sure. But speed counts when you’re trying to get a thought down.

Conclusion

I’ve been beta testing Day One for some time now and while Paul is a friend, I can honestly say these apps are wonderful. Day One is a great way to capture those thoughts you’d otherwise forget. I’ve quickly entered stuff my kids have said that’s cracked me up, vented into it when I didn’t want to broadcast it to the world, and recorded some of the little things that seem mundane but offer insight into how I live my life. It’s a great tool everyone should have at their fingertips.

Giveaway Contest

Paul has been kind enough to provide free download codes for you, dear readers. I have one desktop code (worth $9.99) and three iPhone/iPod Touch codes ($.99 each). So here’s what I’m going to do:

The Grand Prize Winner gets The Ultimate Day One Bundle Pack: the desktop app and the iPhone app, both autographed by Paul himself.

Second- and third-place winners each get the app for their iDevice.

You can enter to win in three ways:

1. Give a shout-out to @theotherdrummer and @dayoneapp on Twitter
2. Link to this post on Facebook (and me, so I can see you did it) on Facebook
3. Leave a comment here with an inspirational thought about writing/journaling

You get your name put in a hat for each thing you do. Leave a comment or email me if you have any questions. I’ll draw the names at the end of the week.

Note: I haven’t received any compensation for this review – I paid for the app myself.

Ever wonder how much extra MobileMe storage costs? Apple tells you that you can upgrade your storage on MobileMe accounts, but doesn’t tell you how much you get or how much it costs. After doing a lot of digging I found the above chart (under “international pricing guide“).

So you can get a total of 60 GB of MobileMe online storage for about $200 per year. Dropbox gives you 50 GB for $120 per year (but you don’t get any of the other MobileMe features with it).

Just in case you were wondering.