THE BRIDGE

tag drafts

5 great mobile writing apps for iOS, and how to use them [Video]

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This is part of our series of articles (RSS) where we share some of our favorite technology tools. Like you, we’re pretty enthusiastic about new ways to geek out, and we hope to share some of that here. Let us know what you think. If you live here in Japan, you probably know what it’s like to be standing on a crowded train. Most of us spend that time with some mobile games, or messaging with friends. But you can get a lot of work done too if you try, and I’m finding lately that there are more apps available than ever before that can enable you to write on a mobile with ease. Since my work is primarily writing and editing, this is a wonderful thing! Many of these apps use a text format called Markdown. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry. It is just a plain text markup language that is easily converted to HTML. But trust me when I say that if you write for the web (i.e. if your final output is HTML), you should be writing in Markdown. It’s far more readable, and from an editor’s point of view that’s invaluable. It’s also…

This is part of our series of articles (RSS) where we share some of our favorite technology tools. Like you, we’re pretty enthusiastic about new ways to geek out, and we hope to share some of that here. Let us know what you think.


If you live here in Japan, you probably know what it’s like to be standing on a crowded train. Most of us spend that time with some mobile games, or messaging with friends. But you can get a lot of work done too if you try, and I’m finding lately that there are more apps available than ever before that can enable you to write on a mobile with ease. Since my work is primarily writing and editing, this is a wonderful thing!

Many of these apps use a text format called Markdown. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry. It is just a plain text markup language that is easily converted to HTML. But trust me when I say that if you write for the web (i.e. if your final output is HTML), you should be writing in Markdown. It’s far more readable, and from an editor’s point of view that’s invaluable. It’s also really great if you happen to be writing on a mobile device. Have a look at the two documents below. HTML is on the right and the Markdown equivalent is on the left. Which is easier to read/write/edit? Which would be easier to read/write/edit on a mobile device?

markdown-vs-html
Markdown vs HTML

I’m going to give an overview of some of my favorite mobile writing tools here. They all cost a couple of dollars each, but when I consider the benefits they have for work, they’re well worth it. Plus, it’s always fun to learn new tools!

1. TextExpander Touch 2.0

textexpander-touch

As you can see in the picture above, even though Markdown is far simpler to type than HTML, it could still be made a little easier. In iOS for example, getting at the “[“ and ”]” keys can be awkward. TextExpander Touch (as well as TextExpander for Mac allows you to get around this in many ways. The app can be used for any kind of text expansion, but here are just a few of the ways in which I use it [1]:

  • Create tag links for common keyword on our blog
  • Create a regular Markdown links from a URL on the clipboard
  • Make a blockquote with an ID and permalink
  • Add an abbreviation tag with help/hover text for things like Japanese words

Check my video demo below to see how these work. If you want the snippet bundle used here, you can download it and mod it for your own purposes. But there are lots freely available out on the interwebs, and you can always whip up your own too!

2. Drafts

drafts-app

I actually used Drafts to write this post, so naturally it is going to make my list (and it’s also the editor you see in the demo video above). Drafts is a useful text editor when you need to write something quick. Just open it up and there’s a blank page just waiting for input.

Once you’re finished writing, you can send your note to just about any destination you wish: Facebook, Twitter, Email, Evernote, Dropbox, or a different text editor. I often use this last option, but there is a wide range of Draft Actions that you can perform on your text. You can even write your own, as I did for my recent ‘data diet’ hack. This app might be my favorite on this entire list because it is so versatile.

3. Nebulous Notes

nebulous-notes

Another powerful text editing tool is Nebulous Notes. I first discovered the power of what Nebulous could do be watching what Federico Viticci has done with it. Among my favorite features is the app’s ability to create a custom macros, which can be added as new keys on your software keyboard. Want a single button that will type you name? Can do. But there are functions far better than that of course, such as undo and redo, find text, and select text assist functions. Naturally, I use the macros functions to assist with Markdown input, but really you can use it however you wish.

Check out my video demo below for a quick and dirty overview.

4. Byword

byword-iphone

While Text Expander, Drafts, and Nebulous are your workhorse text editors, sometimes you just want to feel pretty. Byword is for just those times. This app is available for both iOS and Mac, and syncs them both up using iCloud or Dropbox – so if you are the type who spends time on both desktop and mobile, Byword is a great way to make sure you have the same work everywhere.

The beauty if Byword for Mac lies in its Markdown syntax highlighting, which darkens elements like your headings or bold text, and lightens/hides things like URLs in Markdown links (see below). And while that syntax highlighting doesn’t display on an iPhone or iPod Touch, Byword is still an essential mobile tool for me, since I use the Mac version so frequently. If you haven’t written on Byword in full screen yet, you simply haven’t lived. Ok perhaps I’m exaggerating a little, but it’s pretty damn nice.

byword-fullscreen-mode
Fullscreen writing bliss on Byword for Mac

5. Poster

poster-iphone

For anyone who publishes with WordPress, as we do here on SD, you’re probably aware that it’s not the friendliest system to work with on a mobile device. But invariably I’ll need to access our site from mobile, sometimes to edit a post when I’m on the train or maybe just to make a late night edit when my MacBook isn’t nearby.

Poster is a great interface to WordPress, and it accepts Markdown input too which is pretty great. But I really just like it mostly because of its clean layout and design. Of course having access to custom fields is a big help too, as is the ability to add tags, categories, edit the permalink, and save as draft rather than publish live.

I think this is a must if you use WordPress, but there’s a made-in-Japan alternative called PressSync Pro that does much the same thing. It’s also a quality app, in my view.

Update: Poster has been acquired by Automatic, and is no longer available in the App Store.

poster poster-2


  1. You can also use it for things as simple as canned email templates, which is especially helpful on mobile. I even use it for live blogging events to automatically insert linked time stamps. Note that Text Expander Touch 2.0’s fill in feature is not yet supported by all text editors. But Drafts supports it, which is a good reason to get it.  ↩

Using Drafts for iPhone to take the Data Diet mobile

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This is part of our series of articles (RSS) where we share some of our favorite technology tools. Like you, we’re pretty enthusiastic about new ways to geek out, and we hope to share some of that here. Let us know what you think. A few days ago I was reading Paul Smalera’s Medium essay entitled ‘The Data Diet: How I lost 60 pounds using a Google Spreadsheet’. This interested me not only because of Paul’s astounding progress in his health habits, but also because I had tried this before. Tried and failed. In addition to requiring you to add your weight to a spreadsheet each day, Paul’s sheet template has a ten day rolling average, and I really liked that idea. But I still think it’s a friction point to manually type your weight into a Google Spreadsheet. Google Docs is atrocious on mobile, so that’s not really an attractive option for me. Yucky, yucky, yuck. [1] My plan of attack? After briefly considering an Ifttt recipe, I settled instead on the very handy Drafts app because of its ease of use. This uber-trendy text editor (which costs $2.99/¥250 in the App Store) could be used to input my…

This is part of our series of articles (RSS) where we share some of our favorite technology tools. Like you, we’re pretty enthusiastic about new ways to geek out, and we hope to share some of that here. Let us know what you think.


Sending weight to Dropbox file

A few days ago I was reading Paul Smalera’s Medium essay entitled ‘The Data Diet: How I lost 60 pounds using a Google Spreadsheet’. This interested me not only because of Paul’s astounding progress in his health habits, but also because I had tried this before. Tried and failed. In addition to requiring you to add your weight to a spreadsheet each day, Paul’s sheet template has a ten day rolling average, and I really liked that idea. But I still think it’s a friction point to manually type your weight into a Google Spreadsheet. Google Docs is atrocious on mobile, so that’s not really an attractive option for me. Yucky, yucky, yuck. [1]

My plan of attack? After briefly considering an Ifttt recipe, I settled instead on the very handy Drafts app because of its ease of use. This uber-trendy text editor (which costs $2.99/¥250 in the App Store) could be used to input my weight in a snap on my iPod Touch and send it directly to a file in Dropbox, using the ‘Append to Dropbox’ action [2] — or something similar anyway. But why Dropbox? We want our weight to go into our Google Spreadsheet, right? Yes, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Under SETTINGS > CUSTOM ACTIONS > DROPBOX ACTIONS. I decided to make an entirely new action based on ‘Append to Dropbox’. I called it ‘Weight to Dropbox’ and I defined the path for this file to be saved under /Public/Weight/. I made the file extension CSV, so that file can be easily imported later on from Google Docs. It’s a bit of a hack, but trust me, it works like a charm.

Dropbox Action Setup in Drafts

But the ‘Template’ section was a little tricky. I needed to add the date, plus a comma to complete the our daily line of input (because we’re creating a comma separated values file). Paul’s spreadsheet has a date field, so I want it to match up with his formal. To do that, we just need to enter the following:

[[date|%m/%d/%y]],[[draft]]

The first part represents the date, and the second ‘draft’ portion will represent whatever we type in our Drafts entry, in this case our weight. If you’d like to get the action, it’s here. Clicking on it once you have Drafts installed should do the trick.

So now, inputting my weight on a daily basis creates a simple CSV file that looks a little like this (after three entries, anyway).

Date, Weight
05/20/13,81.1
05/21/13,81.3
05/22/13,80.3

But by putting the file in my Dropbox public folder, that means my data is published to the web. And in turn, that means that by copying my Dropbox public link for that file [3], I can use Google Spreadsheet’s import function to connect it to Google Docs directly, and have the spreadsheet update whenever I add a new daily weigh-in.

To do that, I added a new sheet to Paul’s template called CSV. And in cell A1 I added the following data import formula [4]:

=ImportData("https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1234567/Weight/weight.csv")

Importing your CSV file to Google Spreadsheets

…and BOOM! There’s your data. Now to get those entries into Paul’s spreadsheet template, you merely need to do use your ‘=’ sign in Paul’s sheet, and point it towards the corresponding cell data in your CSV sheet for that date (see below) [5]. And then apply that formula to all cells for the entire year.

Getting data from your sheet into Paul's

And now once you have that, you get do lots of fun stuff. I added a couple of charts and published the entire sheet to the web. Now I can add that to my iPod homescreen for example, and easily access my chart anytime I wish (pictured below). It doesn’t look entirely awful in landscape [6].

So far this system is working pretty well for me. I even bought a digital scales for better readings than my old analog scales. I’m only a few entries into my data recording, and I look forward to seeing if it makes an impact on my behavior and/or diet. I’ve been putting in more time on my desk-cycle after meals (did I not tell you about the desk-cycle?), so I hope I can myself keep in decent shape as a result. I’m considering another Dropbox action to log bike time, but that’s another discussion!

google-docs-chart

Update May 30th – I thought perhaps there might be a way to get my weight chart to display on my desktop. And indeed there is! Geektool for Mac does the trick, with its image display function. Just publish your Google Chart as an image, and grab the image URL for use in Geektool. I also used a fun Doctor Who backdrop, and threw in the DateLine app as a fancier X-axis. I still need to adjust my graph’s grid lines though. But I like how its coming along! (See below)

data diet desktop


  1. Some of you readers are probably yelling at your screens right now that the Withings wifi scales is the logical solution here. But really, where’s the fun in that? Plus, I’m a writer. Writers are poor.  ↩

  2. As you may know, there’s a collection of useful Drafts actions over on the Drafts website.  ↩

  3. For those of you with relatively new Dropbox accounts, you may have to enable your Dropbox public folder for proper web sharing.  ↩

  4. Note that this is not actually my link. I subbed in some random digits. But you get the idea.  ↩

  5. I realize that since Paul has a date field, it’s not entirely necessary for me to add my own. But it’s better to store my own date field in the CSV file, and keep the data a little bit more complete.  ↩

  6. You’ll notice that I have a ‘Chart2’ in my picture here. That’s Google’s Time line chart, which just doesn’t fly in Mobile Safari. Hence the regular Google Chart.  ↩