I have always been fascinated by how to work more efficiently and get the most from my work time and leisure time. I have tried keeping time logs manually in the past but only managed to keep this up for a few days before losing interest.

Until… I came across an app called Eternity Time Log for the iPad and iPhone written by Marcin Komorek at Komorian Software.

So what do people use Eternity for? I emailed Marcin, the app’s developer, and he kindly replied as follows…

Some are just employees wondering where their 8 hours of day job goes and would like to have some fun showing their bosses a very detailed report

I have been using this app for 3 months and I am in seventh heaven. This app – for me – is so well designed that I am still using it every day, and loving it!

What makes Eternity Time Log so wonderful is that it is simply so elegant and easy to use.

I bought the paid version once I gave the free Lite version a brief try out.

My 12-year-old son, Toby, still uses the Lite version to log when he starts and stops doing his homework every day so I can check that he’s doing a minimum of 5 hours a week of concentrated work.

Here are some photos I grabbed from the Komorian Software website…

What I love so much about this app is the ease with which I can start and stop the timers, and edit the data.

For example, if I start writing a new ebook for my Triumph Over Challenges website, I might realise after 10 minutes that I haven’t started Eternity’s timer. So I launch the app, click Start on “write content” and dial back the start of the timer by 10 minutes.

If I stop writing, and 5 minutes later I realise that I forgot to to stop the timer, I can go to the app, tap Stop, and dial back the end time by 5 minutes.

This may sound simple, but this facility is missing from SO many apps.

Case in point: Read More, an excellent app for logging the books I’m reading. I love it because, when I enter the number of pages in a book and then read for, say, an hour, when I stop reading and tap in the page number I got up to, Read More tells more than I am x% through the book and it’ll take me 4 hours and 15 minutes to complete it. Boy, I love that! It motivates me to ‘read more’ as soon as I can! However, if I forget to start Read More’s timer as I start reading, I can’t dial back the start time to x minutes earlier.

The consequence of Eternity Time Log being so elegantly programmed is that I use it a lot during the day: it takes seconds to select an activity and set a timer going.

I asked Marcin how he has his app set up. This is how he responded. (Ignore the bullets (•) — they’re just to tidy up the formatting of this list). The ‘>’ sign means that there’s a ‘>’ on the screen on the right-hand side, so tap this word to see a sublist…

• work >
• -komorian >
• –development
• chores >
• - shopping >
• – meal
• washing >
• - morning
• sport >
• - bicycle
• - basketball
• - weights
• self-dev
• commuting
• play >
• - reading
• rest
• health >
• - walk

Here’s how I’ve set up Eternity for now. The ‘>’ sign means that there’s a ‘>’ on the screen on the right-hand side, so tap this wordto see a sublist. Text in italics and square brackets are my notes for you…

• car >
• - school run
• - swimming run
• - shopping
• - other
• exercise >
• - stepping
• - swimming
• - weights
• - walking
• phone
• diary
• email
• work >
• - site work [working on my sites and clients' sites]
• - creating content
• - client preparation
• - client call
• - admin
• - mentor call
• - Dragon dictating [dictating text into Dragon Dictate]
• - keyword research
• - writing ideas
• - study
• - surfing
• read
• play >
• - Guardian surfing [online version of UK newspaper]
• - app surfing
• my fun sites >
• – AAE site
• – Mac/iPad site
• – PaynesBlog [working on my family blog]
• - info surfing
• - book surfing [surfing Amazon etc for books and reading reviews]
• - laptop leisure
• - read the papers
• - Apple surfing [Apple-related news and rumour sites]
• - socialising
• - videos [watching training videos / webinar replays]
• - movies
• cleaning [household chores]
• family time >
• - with Catherine [my wife]
• - with Toby
• - with Felix
• - with boys [together]
• - Skype mum
• - Skype Mike
• sleep

Marcin commented further: “For Skype, email and other repeating cross-hierarchy things you can define and use tags. They can be later used in report filters. There are no tag-centered reports yet (as there are activity-centered ones), but I think of adding them, which would make the reporting more flexible.The rule of thumb is: activities for general structure, tags for cross-hierarchy things.”

Sometimes in the evening I will add entries to Eternity for activities I may not have logged at the time. This is very easy to do.

What’s more, it’s so easy to add text against an activity that I add sufficient details sometimes that Eternity has become a kind of diary: I’m already logging the date and time. It’s trivial to add a few words to explain what I was up to in more detail.

I can then export all the data to my MacBook Pro and review it in Numbers or Excel.

Eternity exports 2 .csv (comma separated variables) files at once: a log of every activity between 2 dates, and a summary report.

The log should be easy for you to get your head around as it displays a line of data for each event you log: date, time, activity, place in the hierarchy, notes, etc.

The summary report looks like this (I’ve put dummy data in it)…

If you look carefully at that report above you’ll see how you get percentages for each area of responsibility in your life both in relation to the whole of the data and to the subsection. (I hope that makes sense!) With this information you can really analyse your time and make decisions to change the way you spend the hours and minutes in your day.

I did find a problem with importing the data into Numbers, where Numbers would sometimes put the date and duration in one cell at the same time which affected what was displayed in the report.

I emailed Marcin about this and he replied as follows…

How’s that for a very clear reply? For me, Marcin couldn’t have been clearer. A simple solution with an image.

One final point…

I do not log every minute of every day! I log maybe 60% of each day. I don’t log supervision of our boys’  homework, meal times, what I do between getting up and leaving with the boys to take them to school etc. Instead I record what I want to log. Eternity doesn’t nag me.

Eternity Time Log works on my iPad and iPhone. I use it on my iPhone as I always have it with me.

Marcin was very prompt in replying to my emails, and his responses were very helpful and clear.

Downsides? Yes.

1. I have been surprised that I have started using other productivity-type and information logging apps in the past, and abandoned them soon afterwards. I now realise that they weren’t very well thought out. Eternity Time Log puts other apps to shame. Really. And that’s rather annoying, as I now look at other apps and think, “Why couldn’t it work like Eternity? Then it would be great!”

2. I don’t like the visual view of the day much. It looks rather unattractive to me as I’m not a big fan of Helvetica. It looks like this on my iPhone…

3. Eternity Time Log is not cheap. $9.99 is a higher price than most other info logging apps on the App Store. For me it’s worth every penny/cent: I am more efficient in my work, and I’m more aware of how my days and weeks break down. That’s worth far more to me than $9.99. Eternity Time Log has paid for itself many times over.

4. Like many apps, the instructions on how to use the device are not very elaborate. When I first installed the app, I didn’t know what events to input so I could get started logging. I emailed the programmer and he was very helpful, but the site could do with a video going through the app slowly, showing exactly how to get going and how to make the most of it.

I don’t think I can convey just how brilliant this app is in a written review. Eternity Time Log is a universal app for iPad and iPhone (which means that, you pay $9.99 and get an app for your iPhone and another one that’s optimised for the iPad).

If you’re interested in tracking your time, get the free Lite version to try it out: I’m sure you’ll soon be upgrading to the paid version.

In summary: Eternity Time Log is a real joy to use. I have tracked my activities every day for the last 3 months and loved doing so. It really has helped me be more productive: and that’s more money in my pocket, and better use of my leisure time. 5 out of 5 stars. Thank you Komorian Software!

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

Or are you debating whether to get an 11-inch, 13-inch, 15-inch or 17-inch MacBook?

You may want to consider getting an iPad 2, if you haven’t already got one, and the low-cost Air Display app.

This app enables you to site the iPad 1 or 2 to the right or left of your MacBook (or PC laptop for that matter) – and drag windows or palettes across to it.

In other words, if you’re buying a new MacBook, instead of getting a 15-inch model, you may consider getting an 11-inch MacBook Air and an iPad 2 and using them together – at a combined price that could be less than a 15-inch model.

In my setup below, I have my iPad to the right of my 17-inch MacBook Pro, where I’m editing a post on one of my site, and I’ve dragged a Safari window to the iPad so I can see what the post looks like in a browser…

Equally you could put a Twitter feed on the iPad screen, your Mail app Message Viewer, palettes for a painting application, or whatever you want.

To get the Air Display app working you need to download a free application for your Mac, install it, and run it…

Enjoy!

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

I’ve come across a great series of apps which enable you to create spoof movie trailers.

It’s called InAWorld…

As of now you can buy InAWorld…Drama and InAWorld…Comedy, with InAWorld…Romance and InAWorld…Horror/SciFi coming soon.

I own InAWorld…Drama and my son Toby was so impressed when I showed him this app that he downloaded InAWorld…Drama and InAWorld…Comedy!

The app consists of dozens of segments of speech recorded by a professional voiceover artist which you stitch together with photos from your gallery to create an approx 30-second spoof trailer.

The app uses the voice of Jonathan Cook, who has been used in countless movie trailers for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, FX, CW, WB, Bravo, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.  Check out www.jonathancook.net.

Here are 3 videos to show what I created, then I’ll show you how I created them later on…

This next one was created by my son Toby. It’s called BFFs which, you may not know, means Best Friends Forever. We shot the photos with my iPhone 4′s camera there and then, sitting by the pool yesterday…

What’s not clear in the app descriptions…

The difference between each app is less than you may think: the scripts stay the same, but the tone of the voiceover artist’s voice is different (more upbeat and lighter) for Comedy, and all the background tunes are different.

What’s great…

• Fab voiceover
• Very clever idea

What’s not so great…

• InAWorld…Comedy crashed once when I was trying it out on Toby’s iPod Touch
• The trailer/showreel graphics look a bit amateurish
• Navigating the app is a bit confusing

What would be great…

• If, after choosing a photo from the Gallery, I could use the common 1 and 2-finger gestures to select the part of the photo to show in the trailer

Having said all this, I highly recommend you get one or more of these apps. They are great fun to play about with, especially if you want to encourage children to be creative.

This is a universal app which works on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Price: $1.99 / £1.19.

iPad Enthusiast rating: 5 out of 5 stars!

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

I found a great app for the iPhone called Create A Comic – though I use it on my iPad. (If you click on that link you’ll find a video of the app in action there which programmer Aamir produced.)

I used this app to create simple comics to show some of the ‘unusual’ dialogues that can go on between people, and then talk about these dialogues in an article on my Triumph site.

The app allows me to create 1- to -3-pane stories, and place characters on the left and/or right of each frame, then add speech bubbles.

Here’s one example of what I created on my iPad for an article about challenges people have in relationships based on work I have done with struggling couples…

You’ll find 2 other ones I created here and here.

Aamir has updated the app now so the characters are now in full colour, and you can import backgrounds too. To be honest I’ve not downloaded this yet as I much prefer the greyscale images above.

(I emailed Aamir a link to my comics, and looking at his new version, he has added an apple and an orange to the objects you can drop into your comic creations! Very thoughtful!)

Create A Comic costs 59p / 99 cents.

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

He’s using an app called Sound Fields for the iPhone, so we tapped the 2x button on the iPad screen to fill the screen, which is just fine.

The app has 3 background tracks to choose from, and 4 different lead synthesiser sounds. You move your finger over the screen to create the lead line, but what makes this app so much fun is that, wherever you move your finger, the music sounds in tune!

Felix seems to have a good sense of rhythm, and what ‘works’ in music.

Anyway here’s Felix on his second ‘go’ with the app. His first go lasted 5 minutes…

Sound Fields was created by a guy called Alex Zolotov, who I’m very grateful to as we are having so much fun making music with it. A bargain at £1.19 / US$1.99.

I’ll add some screengrabs soon.

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

• so I could prop the iPad up and place it in front of my Apple Bluetooth keyboard
• so I could prop the iPad next to my MacBook Pro and use the iPad as an extra screen
• so I could run a photo slideshow or clock/timer

Here’s my youngest son, Felix, typing an email to a relative in the UK, giving them an update on our new life here in Abu Dhabi!…

The price of the BookArc is US$39.99 with free shipping within the US. It’s quite heavy, made of gauge steel, with 4 grey rubber feet, and a notch cut in on side so you can just about press the Home button while the iPad is on the stand.

It comes with 2 rubber inserts which I found to be a b-gger to fit! One is wider than the other to accommodate an iPad in a rubber sleeve, but it’s still too narrow to fit my rubber-enclosed iPad.

The inserts allow you to have the iPad stand vertically or tilt backwards a little.

I love it though!

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

Even the official case from Apple doesn’t have a bright white Apple logo like this one has! This case is excellent, and I highly recommend it.

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

This one cost me £2.99 + 99p p&p from ebay.co.uk — about $6 in total. It was posted direct from Hong Kong so it took about a week to arrive…

Here’s another photo from the side…

…and you may notice that the volume controls are covered in rubber, but still easy to adjust.

The case is easy to put on and take off: I need to take it off to put in my BookArc stand (see separate post).

Overall: a great skin I have on my iPad all the time it’s not in the BookArc stand.

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

Grab any photo from your library. Here’s one of my wife and son, Felix, before he was one year old…

..and bring it into ColorSplash. It converts it into greyscale, then as you rub the screen with your finger, the original colour under your finger is revealed again…

It can sometimes be easier to get the edges right by zooming in and pressing the red button at the top of the screen to see the image this way…

…so in the picture above you can see that I ran over Felix’s back a bit, so I could undo that by tapping the Gray button and rubbing that area out.

Next is a photo of Felix when he’s about 5 with some presents he got for his birthday.

…and here it that image again in Red Mode…

…and using 2 fingers, pushing them apart, I can zoom in for finer editing…

…and you can see that I could tidy up the right side of the car.

I used the resulting image for the Home screen of my iPad.

The app is as cheap as chips, as we say in the UK.

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.

I have a whole series of ebooks I’ve written which I store on my iPad to show clients and also to browse through so I can come up with ideas to improve them.

The iBooks app adds the black ringbinding to the left side of the cover which looks okay, but I’d prefer to be able to switch this off if I could!

I’ll add more info soon about how to get your pdfs on your iPad.

Chris Payne helps people triumph over the challenges in their lives: one-on-one, by phone, and via video calls. He also creates websites like this one for people, and teaches them how to earn a part- or full-time income from their website. See this page for more about him.