Category: iOS (page 25 of 35)

June 29, 2011

App of the Week: Noteshelf Handwriting App for iPad

App of the Week: Noteshelf Handwriting App for iPad | 40Tech

When I got my iPad back in December, I mostly used it as a means to surf the web, watch Netflix, read, and play the occasional game. Oh, I blogged on it a bit, too, and I figured it would be great for taking notes and the like, but I quickly found that extended typing on the glass surface led to aching fingertips. Besides, when trying to work things out and get creative, there is something very powerful about the old fashioned pen and paper approach. Determined to see if I could get the same power out of my iPad, I started researching handwriting apps.

After going through several, I was largely disappointed by what was out there — until I discovered Noteshelf.

Now, to be fair, I originally went with Penultimate, which has an excellent natural feel when you write — and gets extra awesome points for it’s freeness. However, I still felt like I was missing something. So, when my friend and colleague Daniel Gold recommended Noteshelf to me, I grudgingly gave it a shot, despite it’s $4.99 price tag. I’m cheap when it comes to app purchases, but I figured I could hold him responsible if it sucked.

It didn’t.

In fact, it rocked so much that I use it all the time, even though my handwriting is absolutely atrocious. Noteshelf has all of the features I could want or need:

Excellent natural feel when writing
Different pen sizes and colours
Wrist protection that works
Zoom writing
Just as functional in landscape mode as portrait mode
Unlimited undo and redo (until you leave the page, anyway)
Notebook templates for writing, drawing, task and day planning, meeting notes, shopping lists, journal writing, graphing, and music
A bookshelf view to easily organize notebooks
Dynamic line-sizing for easy and clean jumps to the next line on a page
Photo embedding and annotation
Backup and restore functionality

The kicker, though, is Noteshelf’s sharing capabilities. You can print and export notes as .jpegs and .pdfs, configuring by page or as an entire notebook — by email, iTunes, your iPad photo album, and (Yay!!) Dropbox and Evernote! That’s all kinds of awesome, right there! Nothing quite like being able to quickly scrawl down several pages worth of ideas, and then send them to your out-of-brain-brain for easy searching with Evernote’s OCR. Even writing as bad as mine gets picked up. Mostly…

I can’t say enough that’s good about Noteshelf. If you have an iPad, and have a want or need to use it as a notebook that will get you on the path to being well and truly paperless, you need to go and get it. Right now.

What’s your favourite handwriting app for tablets?

June 15, 2011

App of the Week: Atomic Web Browser [iOS]

App of the Week : Atomic Web Browser | 40Tech

Mobile Safari has it’s good points, but there are several places where it leaves a lot to be desired. There are speed issues when loading, the lack of any real multitasking (resulting in windows constantly reloading when you exit the app and return), no background tab or window loading, etc., etc., etc. To compound these issues, the last few iPad versions of Safari (including the current one) are unstable at the best of times, their regular crashes making browsing a chore.

There are several Safari alternatives for iOS, all if them trying to overcome the shortcomings of the stock iPhone and iPad browser. The best of the lot, however, considering features, usability, and price, is Atomic Web Browser.

Atomic Web Browser has been around since December of 2009 and while it has floated back and forth between $0.99 and $1.99, it has held steady at $0.99 for nearly a year. It also has a Lite version which has nearly all of the same features, but for $0.99, getting niceties like the ability to set a homepage isn’t a bad deal. Anyone who’s read my work on 40Tech before knows that’s high praise, too. It takes a lot to get me to shell out money if I don’t have to, and I’ve found it to be completely worth my while so far.

Features

It used to be that Atomic and other mobile Safari alternatives were sought after for real tabbed browsing and the ability to switch User Agents and view mobile pages as if they were served on a full-sized computer. Those are minor features these days, and Atomic has become useful for so much more. Here are the highlights (go here for the full list):

Load tabs in background
True multitasking
Add JavaScript as bookmarks
Share links on Facebook and Twitter
Configurable swipe and tap gestures
Save pages for offline viewing
Download manager with Dropbox, iTunes and email support
Import/Export bookmarks
Jump to top/bottom of web pages
Change and lock font-size for specific sites
Full-screen browsing with configurable buttons
Launch homepage, last session, or last viewed
Bookmarklet that sends pages to Atomic Web Browser from Safari

There are a ton of other features as well, such as setting the colour of the browser, ad block, private mode, air print, web compression (for faster browsing), search engine plugins, on-page search, view page source code, and more.

There are a few other browsers that compare with Atomic, the closest in both price and features being Mercury Browser, which I have been using on my iPhone for the past while. Mercury Browser is almost identical in features and has a few interesting possibilities like a library of common bookmarklets that can be installed (which is a bit buggy), a bookmarks springboard, and speed-dial-like dashboard for your favourite sites.

Mercury Browser’s extra features are great, and combine well with an interesting and pretty interface to make for fantastic browser, but I find that Atomic is easier to navigate. The Atomic Web Browser’s look and feel is more minimalist and straightforward in its approach, and for me — and more importantly, my wife — that translates into a better overall experience. Both have free and very functional Lite versions, though, so you should give them a try to see what suits you better.

Your turn:

What’s your favourite browser for iOS?

June 8, 2011

Want the Best Instagram Web App? Get Extragram!

For some of our posts, we do like Lifehacker and other sites, finding articles about tech that interests us and then creating a summary post that links to the original article — replete with our own opinions, of course. :) One of my favourite sites is Web.AppStorm.net, which is part of the Envato network, and a great resource for web app reviews and articles. For this particular Web AppStorm-related summary post, I’m going to talk about Extragram, a fantastic web app interface for social photo-sharing service Instagram.

So why did I bother with that odd intro? Well, this time around, I have the pleasure of linking to none other than… well… me! My first article went live on Web AppStorm on Monday, and I didn’t want you guys to miss out. Read on for a summary of the sweetness that is Extragram!

If you’ve had the chance to use Instagram at all, you will have noticed that it is more than just another photo-app that has a few fancy filters. It not only makes your pictures look cool, it also has its own very Twitter-like social network. You can follow users’ photo-streams, they can follow yours, there’s commenting, conversation, @mentions, the whole deal. You can even share your photos on the big social networks and microblog sites. What you can’t do with Instagram is view or interact with your social account — or even your own photos — outside of your mobile device. That changed rather quickly once Instagram released its API in February.

Since then, there have been several web apps that have popped up with the sole purpose of creating a comparable, or even better user experience on a screen that doesn’t fit into the palm of your hand. Some other notables are Gramfeed, Instgre.at, and Webstagram, but for a slick and fully-featured user experience, the web app you want is Extragram.

Extragram stands out from the other web apps by doing two things: getting out of its own way, and adding extra features that compliment the Instagram experience.

Here are the highlights:

Content-focused, consistent user experience
Easy commenting and photo liking
Navigation with mouse or keyboard
Grid and Filmstrip views
Map View to discover great photos and users near to you or anywhere in the world
Tag-based and “what’s hot” discovery
Sharing your own photos on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Tumblr
Allowing other users to share your photos (opt-in, configurable)

The keyboard navigation is a nice touch, and works reasonably well — though it could be a bit tighter, overall. Other than that, Extragram is a great all ’round experience and the perfect compliment to Instagram. I highly recommend giving it a shot.

Check out my in-depth review here.

Some of my own Instagram Photos are here.

Get Extragram.

Get Instagram.

I’ll be writing for Web AppStorm fairly regularly over the next while, and am considering doing more summary posts here on 40Tech to make sure the readers here don’t miss out on the cool web apps I’ll be talking about. Before I commit to that, though, I would love some opinions from you about it. Let me know in the comments or send me a message via my contact form, Twitter, LinkedIn, or my personal site.

May 20, 2011

Review of GTD in Springpad & Which GTD Solution Nina Chose [Reader Workflow]

Review of GTD in Springpad & Which GTD Solution Nina Chose [Reader Workflow] | 40Tech

Reading about how our readers approach their tech/workflow combinations has been both enlightening and a pleasure. You guys are smart — and we appreciate you taking the time to articulate your personal systems with us. Nina Kefer has already shown us two GTD setups in applications she has experimented with. Her Beauty and Brains: Getting Things Done™ In Style series has put an emphasis on mobility (from the iPhone), a beautiful user interface, and above all, functionality. She wraps up her series today with her own take on and review of GTD in Springpad (Bobby put together a slightly different approach here), and a final conclusion as to which GTD setup ultimately works the best for her – and might for you, too.

May 18, 2011

App of the Week: Planets, Free Stargazing App for iPhone, iPad [iOS]

40Tech App of the Week: Stargazing App Planets for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch

When I was a kid, I was an astronomy nut. I was in love with the planets, the stars, nebulae, constellations, you name it. I read everything I could get my hands on. I even did a science project presentation in grade five (I think) on black holes. Somehow or other, though, as I grew older and the whirlwind of life, family and general stuff caught me up, I lost a lot of what I knew and never found the time to pick it up again. What bothered me especially was that I couldn’t identify more than four or five constellations any more — and that’s the sort of fun star gazing that I really wanted to share with my little girl.

Belatedly, it hit me: I own a GPS-capable, compass-packing smartphone. Somebody must have created a stargazing app for the iPhone and/or iPad. There’s an app for everything, or some other such marketing phrase, right? Of course, it turned out that there were several apps of varying costs and degrees of complexity — and the one that struck the balance with me was simple, free app (with over 5 million downloads) called Planets.

Planets doesn’t compare to the feature-sets of some of the paid apps like Starwalk for iPad, but it isn’t bogged down by complications either. It’s a straightforward 2D or 3D view of the heavens, augmented by some location-based gyroscope action. This is especially useful in the 3D view, as it allows you to get a look at the constellations and planets as you turn and point your iPhone or iPad. The 2D view provides a some useful information at a touch, such as rising and setting times of planets, the sun, and the like, but it’s the 3D virtual planetarium that gets me.

While Planets for iPhone and iPad could benefit from providing more information about specific stars and planets, and I wouldn’t mind a bit of interactivity and a photo of a nebula or two, I love the fact that me and my kid can quickly identify artwork in the sky and can even see where things should be if there wasn’t so much light pollution or the sometimes perpetual cloud cover we get on the Northwest coast – or if pesky things like daylight hours or the plane of the Earth get in the way. I also like that the Planets app actually tells you where the planets of our solar system happen to be hanging out, and at what times they might be visible to the naked eye. I found Saturn outside my door the other day. I’ve always loved Saturn. It’s pretty.

If the regular planetarium view doesn’t cut it for you, Planets also has several other views that make the sky look impressively colourful, including X-ray, Radio, Infrared, Microwave and Hydrogen-a. There are also some twirling shots of the planets in the globe section, but that part of the Planets app definitely needs more information and other bells and whistles to be interesting. Still, for a free app, it’s a great little stargazing assistant, and one that I get regular use out of.

You can pick up Planets for free at the iTunes App Store.

What’s your favourite stargazing app for your mobile device?