Tag: iphone

Online sketching & painting

I'm no artist, but since the iPad announcement, I have gotten excited by the creative image-manipulation possibilities opened by touch-on-a-tablet. What a cool portable canvas! 

I addition to mobile apps, some very impressive browser-based applications have come online, so to speak. All of these options give us the chance to express ideas digitally without necessarily having a computer around, or an expensive program whose myriad features we might barely tap.      

So I just wanted to name some of the good ones I know and see if anyone wants to add to the list:

Brushes has been on the iPhone for a little while, and was made famous by the artist who created a cover for the New Yorker on his phone. 

Sketchpad – Online Paint/Drawing application: My browser couldn't do this before. And it ain't Flash. 

Aviary.com: Just heard about this on This Week in Google. Aviary used to cost, but they just slashed the price clean off. Image editing, video effects editing, vector drawing, image markup, sound editing… None of the individual components of this incredible suite of tools would, by themselves, replace their desktop-installed competitors. They're kind of sluggish, and lack ergonomics like shortcuts. But it's a boon to have them available whenever, wherever. And they have a plug-in for Google Apps. 

SketchBook Mobile [iTunes] by Autodesk: Looks like the best sketching tool for the iPhone. I like the layers feature a lot. Autodesk is the developer most entrenched among architects, and SketchBook comes in way handy for marking up drawings in the field.

There are tons of photo-manipulation apps for the iPhone, like Photoshop Mobile and TiltShift Generator (both of which, by the way, also have web apps here and here), but I'll just leave off here or I'll be hunting and testing all night.

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Up close and personal with the iPad

Photo by Karl Mondon / Bay Area News Group

Link to slideshow at the Contra Costa Times

My pal Karl, a Bay Area photojournalist, took this about 10 minutes into Steve Jobs presentation yesterday. We texted afterwards:

Karl: So…what’s the verdict? I tried to rub one on my thigh to see if I’d hear violins, but it was too loud in there, and security was starting to eye me.

Me: Heehee! I’m sure there’ll be an app for that. Jobs knows, the porn industry is thrilled by this thing. Well, I’m psyched, of course. Wish it had a camera, and I wanna hear if heavy reading brings eye fatigue, but, shoot, it’s clearly a game-changer.


Karl: Sweet. Hope it’s a bonanza for the J2 MacWhisperer.

Me: Thing is, these devices are so bloody easy, people just do what they want with ’em, and they just work. Once we set someone’s iPhone up, we get very few calls afterwards asking us how to use it. It’s ridiculous. That’s why they design them without the fancy stuff. You want a tablet with two cameras, front and back? (c.f: Jason Calacanis’ predictions at http://twitter.com/jason/.) Somebody’ll make one, probably with Android, and it’ll be good. It may not be as baby-butt smooth as the iPad, and it will owe an elephantine debt of gratitude to Apple’s Platonic ideal of “tablet,” but it will do things the iPad won’t. So goeth evolution, which I guess means they won’t get to use iPads in Kansas.
Other friends wrote in:

Not a problem if they would just make Bluetooth tethering actually do something. GD AT&T. I’m glad it doesn’t have 3G. Love the Kindle Whispernet!

>Jobs certainly did not deign to mention that one can run Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone on this thing, adding tons of purchasable material to whatever deals Apple has made with publishers.

Very happy with iWork and Camera Connection Kit. Those were deal breakers for me. I’m gonna be looking real hard at some of these replacing laptops for some of my folks. Put a server-managed iMac on their desk and one of these ZERO support beauties in their hands and I’m a happy IT guy.

There’s little question to me that the iPad and its ilk will be replacing laptops and desktops for many people. So many of our clients don’t do anything beyond email, web surfing, and document processing with their computers, and while they love their Macs, the Mac OS is clearly too much and too confusing for many folks, who wish their computer would “just work.”

I’m very pleased, not just because it was one of my predictions, that they highlighted the creative possibilities the iPad presents. It’s a great canvas, and I am going to be happily doing presentations and proposals and spreadsheets on it. Yet I still don’t have a sense of how you save files on it, or whether you can open, say, a Word doc attachment from an email into the Pages app. Google Docs support, pleeeeeeeeeeease?
Also, I was very amused and beaming that, last night, my 9-year-old daughter said, “It would be cool if it could be a keyboard and a painting pad for your computer.” Woah, I hadn’t even thought of that! I’m already using Touchpad Elite [iTunes link] to control my Macs over VNC. The iPad might very well take the place of a Wacom tablet, sans the pressure sensitivity.

Prices seem great without 3G, pricey with. I’m sure most of that addition $130 has nothing to do with hardware. Probably $4 hardware, $126 profit for Apple, AT&T, etc.

I was thinking the same thing. It’s really a jerky gouge, especially considering how much he was touting their pricing. And I’m gonna have to buy the 3G version; I probably won’t pay for the service every month, but I it could be handy, and I think it will be more attractive in resale.

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Password change

I changed my password in Google Mail yesterday.  This morning, Mail.app was not able to access nor was my iCal.
So obviously there is another step that I did not know to take.

You just need to plug the new password into a few places:

  • Apple Mail (Mail menu > Preferences > Accounts > Incoming Mail Server settings, and also click “Edit SMTP Server List” in the Outgoing Mail Server drop-down)
  • iCal (iCal > Preferences > Accounts)
  • iPhone (Settings > Mail, Contacts, and Calendar > tap on your account, change the password in Account Information and also in Outgoing Mail Server > Primary Server).

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New cheaper AT&T unlimited plan

I was in Chicago last week, and noticed a sign in an AT&T store window advertising $70 unlimited talk and text plan. Having been on their previously-really-pricey unlimited deal for a a couple of years, I was very pleased to learn that the new pricing is extended to iPhone users.

We still have to pay the thieving bastards an additional $20 for unlimited text messaging, and as always, $30/month for data. So that’s $120 + tax for everything, while Sprint still does unlimited everything for $100/month. Perhaps this was a reaction to Verizon’s price cut, or perhaps Apple nudged their mobile partner to adopt the new pricing to encourage people to roll a 3G subscription for their iPad into their budget. Either way it does help a bit. That texting price, however, makes no freakin’ sense.

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Universal Home Entertainment Remote for the iPhone

New Kinetix Rē IR based Universal Home Entertainment Remote for the iPhone
http://www.newkinetix.com/

My family is so sick of me praying out loud for a real, good, easy, cheap(ish) programmable universal remote for the iPhone. I knew the wait couldn’t be that long, and in fact, I told my friend Tom that 2010 would be the year that the Logitech Harmony and its ilk become dinosaurs.

Well, hey hey, here it is! Due for 1st quarter ‘010. I’m psyched!

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Mac becomes more like dog

I used to use Salling Clicker with my Treo and my Sony Ericsson for remote control over Bluetooth. It was really cool that my Mac would recognize when my phone was nearby, and would start syncing or do other stuff that I thought handy. The iPhone doesn't do very much with Bluetooth, but this developer has figured out something pretty useful. Not bad for $8. 

http://themha.com/airlock/

Airlock allows your Mac to lock itself, plain and simple. Using your iPhone or iPod Touch, Bluetooth, and a smidgen of pixie dust, Airlock determines whether you're near your computer. When you leave the room – poof! – your Mac locks itself. “And when I come back?” You guessed it: your Mac unlocks. You can also customize Airlock to perform specific actions as you come and go – have your computer talk to you, log-in or out of iChat, walk the dog, and such.
 
(By the way, this is yet another tip I got from the picks by the guys on the MacBreak Weekly podcast (iTunes link). They're always mentioning useful stuff, and they maintain a nicely rounded perspective on the Mac, while still being obvious fans.) 

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Free transcription app for iPhone

Hey everybody this is pretty amazing. I am talking right now into Dragon Dictation software for the iPhone, made by the developers of the awesome Dragon NaturallySpeaking. it’s free right now and probably for a very limited time. If it continues to work I intend to use it for e-mail text messaging everything. Check it out!

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@joggernut BPM-based playlist creator for iTunes

Check out the second-to-last pick in this week's MacBreak Weekly

http://www.mbwpicks.com/. 

I know you've assessed a bunch of these tools (feel free to post a list!). If you've used Tangerine, what do you think?

P.S. The RedLaser app for iPhone is sweet!

Picks from MBW 164: Pinch Pull and Tug

October 28th, 2009 · No Comments

fusion3Hardware & software:

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Remote control apps for iPhone/touch

I was planning on installing Touchpad on a client's iPhone this morning. They have a Mac mini media center, and with these apps they can start the music from anywhere in the house.  Glad I saw this rundown. 

I'm still waiting for a cheap solution to control a stereo over wifi. My A/V friend Tom is keeping an eye out, too. It's ridiculous that people have to pay $500 for a "universal" remote — the Logitech Harmony — that doesn't totally suck.     

"iPhone and iPod touch remote controls
Posted on Wednesday Oct 28, 2009 3:15 AM
by Christopher Breen , Macworld.com

Getting up from your couch to “change the channel” on your Mac-based media center is so 1970s. If you’re going to the trouble to mutate a Mac into something that delivers music and video via your AV gear—or even enjoy a movie on a 27-inch iMac across the room—you’ll also want to replicate the experience of watching real TV as much as possible. That means having a remote control that lets you manage the works without a lot of fuss and bother."

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Look what I just did to a picture on my iPhone!

Adobe just released… Wait for it… Photoshop for the iPhone, and
it’s freakin’ free! It ties into their sharing site Photoshop.com.
Fairly basic tools, but some that I’ve really needed to spruce up my
mobile photos. (Yes, I know the photo below is cheesy, but I needed a
quick, obvious example.)

Here’s the App Store link. Go get it before they change their mind! 😉
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=331975235&mt=8

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