A Dynamic Cheat Sheet
Yesterday I posted about how I hope the iPad (and the many other devices like it that will follow from other manufactures) could be a great personal dashboard. The personal dashboard is something I would want at home in the mornings and evenings (and maybe midday at lunch). As I am sitting here in my office I am realizing how I would want to use the iPad at my desk.
Almost 4 years ago Cory posted about wanting an auxiliary display for his desk. He wanted to use it for monitoring, and since then there have been several similar products released. My desire for an auxiliary display is for reference. I could see myself referencing a jQuery documentation browser, a Wikipedia article or spreadsheet that I am using while working on another doc, of even something sent from my clipboard on my laptop (like the nasty multipart error message I just got from Python while testing some code).
More and more I find myself wanting a focused computing experience. I want fewer windows, tabs, and dialogs. I don’t want unread message counts staring at me from the dock. I don’t want continuous partial attention, I want full productive attention. Having an extra screen on my desk that I can use when I need to look at two things at once lets me focus, especially when that screen won’t even let me have a bunch of windows open at once.
Unfortunately I don’t have high hopes for this function being available out of the box. I think Apple has done a really poor job of integrating the iPhone with their computers (send and read SMS from my computer? Browse call logs and voicemails from my computer, etc).
What I really want is just a “send to iPad” feature. That would also let me grab the iPad and take it down the hall to show someone else. It might be pretty easy to hack something like this together with Evernote and/or TinyGrab.
Sure, I could use something like the Lilliput Mini USB Monitor for some of my auxiliary monitor needs (and only 20% of the cost). I could buy a digital picture frame too, it just wouldn’t be this awesome.