A Useful iPhone App

For a change I'm going to talk about an iPhone app that should be part of the teachers iOS toolkit. In fact I also think it should also be on any students iPhone as well.




So the app I want to talk about is Genius Scan+. I was first put on to this app (well the free version) by my friend Jamie (@raegar).

Genius Scan+ is described as turning your iPhone into a portable scanner. It boasts page detection, does correction and enhancement of images. And also turns multiple scans into single PDF documents.

It's very simple to use. To take a scan you can either use the camera in app or load in an image from your photo library.

So how would you use it? Well it does have a wide usage, basically any situation you need a scanner you could use this. However in the following example it proves how much more flexible it is.

For example last night at my evening class we did mini presentations using flip charts. So at the start of the break I went round the tables photographing the flip charts used with the iPhone camera. Then today using Genius Scan+ I cropped the photos, and combined them into a single document. I then exported the document into iBooks as a PDF. But I could have easily have put it into DropBox, Evernote, Google Docs or even email it (free version is just email and iBooks iirc).

In class often I use the wipe board to make lists, notes during a class discussion with the students. I allow the students to take photos with their phones of the finished board. This is the perfect scenario for this app. Which is not too dissimilar to my example above.

This is a great little app that makes a great addition to the classroom toolkit.

Genius Scan+ costs £1.79, and is a bargain at that price.

- Posted using BlogPress from my ZX81

My top 3 iPad apps

This morning on twitter I was asked what my 3 favourite iPad apps where. Phew I thought that's a hard one. But I did answer after a little thought.
So here for the rest of you, in no particular order my top 3 iPad apps at this point in time.




So first up is Flipboard. When this first came out everyone was singing the praise of this app. After having now used it I can see why. This app has made reading rss feeds, twitter feeds a joy. It takes them and turns them into what can only be described as a "magazine reading" experience. This is one of those apps that definitely lived up to the hype.




Next up is Air Video. I like this app a lot. Even with the sharing of media between iOS devices and iTunes on your Mac (or PC) that was introduced in iOS 4.3 Air Video is still relevant and useful. The main reason I say that is because don't want to convert all those movies/tv programs sitting on my hard disk into an iTunes friendly format to be streamed from iTunes to the iPad.
What Air Video can do with it's little server that sits running on your Mac (or PC) is convert the video on the fly. So I don't have to convert it before watching it. But it can also if I wanted it to convert it to an iTunes friendly format.



Finally but definitely not the least is Keynote from Apple. Preparing presentations on the iPad with this app is a joy. And the fact that I prefer to create them on the iPad with Keynote is a testament to how good I think this apps is. Ok it is not as feature rich as it's desktop equivalent and it does have one or two "niggles" (I've discussed them in previous posts), however the functionality here is more than I need for what I want to do. And who would of thought that preparing slides would work so well with a touch interface? It seems so naturally.

So there you have it that was my current top 3 iPad apps. What would make your list?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Additions To My iPad Productivity Folder

The little cropped screen shot from my iPad should tell you what the subject matter of this post is.
Before I start I know that the posts I write about the iPad and the apps I use on it are sometimes placed in an education context. The main reason for that is this is the area that I work in. However a lot of the points I make are generic and apply to iPads and the apps in any sector.
Ok back to Read It Later and SimpleMind+.
I use Evernote as a notebook when browsing for saving using info for lessons. And I'm really happy with the iPhone/iPad apps and also with the Mac app.
However some of the apps on the iPhone and iPad, particularly those that are glorified RSS readers allow you to save articles of interest for reading later. Sadly they don't let you save to Evernote but give you options to save the articles to read later in services like Instapaper or Read It Later (being the two most popular services of this type).
Now I don't have a problem with these services (I did try instapaper a couple of years ago on the iPhone). Last night on one of my visits to the app store I saw that Read It Later Pro for the iPad was on sale at 59p (iirc). What swung it for me apart from the 80% price reduction was the integration with Evernote. So any article I have saved in Read It Later I can pass on for keeping in Evernote if I find it that useful.
It is also very simple to add bookmarklets for Read It Later to mobile safari so that when surfing on the iPad you can send stuff to for reading later. I also have a bookmarklet for Evernote, so I have a choice that can be made on time. If I'm in a hurry send to Read It Later, if I have time and think the article will be useful I can save to Evernote. I like systems like this.

Simplemind+ is a mind map app for the iPhone and iPad, and I love creating mind maps on the iPhone. I've been using the free iPhone version for a couple of years and like it a lot. So the natural thing for me to do was look at the iPad version when I got the iPad. However the reviews haven't been very good recently, mainly because the developer has removed the ability to save your mind maps to the camera roll from the free version on the iPhone. At first I too was angry at this. But when I looked at the description on the latest update I saw that the app was now a universal app, the price at £1.79 wasn't bad really. And the final thing that got me parting with my money was the thought "well I like this app a lot, it's useful, and really I should upgrade to the paid app and support the developer." So that is how I made my peace with the developer and paid for the app I like.
And I have to say I really do like using Simplemind+ on the iPad. Having the extra real estate does make a big difference. Mind you I did find it usable on the iPhone. For me the touch interface of the iPhone/iPad is a natural for this type of app.

Having apps like Read It Later and Evernote has really made a big difference in the way I work (more Evernote at the moment as I have only just got Read It Later). These services are so much more powerful than just collecting bookmarks for later reference. Especially if you are just using the browsers bookmarks, and for me they are far better than such services as delicious.
I never used mind maps before the iPhone. Pen and paper ones never really worked for me. But I have found them a revelation on the iPhone, and very useful.
These are two great apps to add to your iPad productivity suite, and dare I say it also for the iPhone.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad iworks a couple of niggles

It's three weeks in or so now with the iPad and the Apple iworks apps for it.
As you all know I am using the iPad as my main device at work now. When I work on slides for class I use Keynote, worksheets I use Pages, and I haven't started using Numbers yet.
In previous posts I have mentioned that I now have the wifi hotspot feature (new in 4.3) enabled on my iphone4. This allows me to transfer any slides or worksheets via iworks.com for printing or displaying on the smart boards as PowerPoint presentations.
What I like about iworks.com is that I can get my keynote or pages documents as PDF, or PowerPoint/Word files.
I'm not sure which is generating these other versions of the documents, whether it's the iPad apps or iworks. But I suspect it's the iPad version of the apps. But which ever is generating them they need to do a little bug fix.
If I transfer the keynote file to my MacBook via iDisk and then use keynote there to generate my PDF, I can get my slides with notes printed out. Which means I have them to refer to while giving my lesson, and they can also go up on the virtual learning environment for the course for the students to download and refer to after the lesson.
However between the iPad version and iworks I don't get this option. I can get the PDF version of the slides but minus the presenter notes. For me and I think for others the PDF exporting needs improving to match the desktop version.
There is also a "bug" in the exporting to PowerPoint as well. It seems all the slides that look ok on the iPad, and if transferred to the MacBook and viewed there in keynote look fine. If they are exported to PowerPoint on the MacBook they are ok. But export on the iPad and via iworks and the text boxes on the slides shift to the right so they are out of place and off the edge of the slide in some cases.
Which means before I can use the slides in class I have to go into PowerPoint and re-edit the slides before I can use them. Hardly the best situation.
These are niggles that mean I have to be really well organised (not a bad thing) but as we know things happen. Which means last minute changes sometimes have to be made. It's this area for me that Apple need to do a little bit better. I love working in Keynote and Pages on the iPad. On a whole they are great, on tablet devices there is nothing to touch them, but as I have said in this post and the last there are something's Apple could improve.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad Week 1 and a bit

So how after a week is the iPad working out?
Well there has been a little bit of a learning curve with the iPad versions of Pages and Keynote (I've not used Numbers yet). The learning curve has been about learning the menus and how things transfer to a touch world.
There are limitations to these apps, which is to be expected. But considering that these are running on a tablet device with limited resources compared to a PC/laptop the functionality that they have and usability is amazing.
What I would like to see from Apple in future versions are the following
Allow the setting of the default font to use in a document. For work I use Verdana (readability etc reasons), and it would be nice to be able to set this as the default.
It would also be helpful if I was able to add my own templates to the list of templates available. There is a way round this by copying an existing document. But from a user experience point of view it makes more sense allowing users to add their own templates and using them when creating a new document.
It would also be nice go have folders in the apps so that I can organise my documents. Or if Apple don't want to add folders I need some way to organise my documents so could they add that.
The above wish list apply to both Pages and Keynote, however the following is Keynote specific.
During the week I bought the cheap official Apple Keynote remote app for the iPhone. Which acts as a wireless remote for Keynote running on a Mac. What would be great and allow me to do presentations from the iPad using Keynote is if the Keynote remote app would work with the iPad version of Keynote. As soon as that functionality is added and working, an order for the VGA adaptor cable will be placed.
For educational use this would be a killer app. At the moment I print out my slides with notes to use in class. The Keynote remote app allows you to control the presentation and also see your notes for the current slide. Having the iPad and this app working together will cut down on paper used, and mean I am not tied down to one spot controlling the slides.

However even with these minor criticisms, the apps are very capable and allow me to prepare notes, worksheets and presentations for class very easily.

I now have GarageBand and another app called WavePad for recording student podcasts. I haven't had chance to play with either yet, it's just been one of those busy weeks at work.
But as the following screen shot shows WavePad looks to offer some of the Audacity functionality that I was looking for.



I am also looking at getting a decent USB microphone to use at work for recording podcasts. The Rock Band one has been ok, but it will be nice to use something more professional and allow the students to get better quality recordings.

One thing I will be looking at getting in the next couple of weeks is a mind map app for the iPad. I use one on the iPhone (which I am going to drop because of the developer removing the ability to save mind maps to the camera roll on the free version I've been using for over 2 years!). I like mind map software on the iOS platform, the touch interface seems made for it.

I have a lot of books and information in PDF format, and this was one of the driving factors in me finally getting an iPad. Now currently I use iBooks to read my PDF's. Sadly there is a major drawback in using iBooks for PDF reading. That drawback is that I can't highlight or add notes. Which is critical for me, not only for my own studies, but also in lesson prep. Otherwise I really like iBooks as a reader, and the ability to organise documents into categories is really useful.

So it's been a week of learning and discovering limitations. As a tool for a teacher/lecturer in the classroom I'm still in the early days of discovering what or how it can be used. But it sure is going to be fun learning ^__^


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

renaissance of the bedroom programmer

When I woke up this morning I didn't think I would be writing a blog post so soon after yesterday's and on this subject. But then a conversation with my friend Jim Connolly (@jimconnolly on twitter) this morning almost wrote this post for me!
And yet that conversation started with a tweet I made last night about looking for a couple of old copies of Byte magazine.
From me telling Jim which issues I was trying to get a hold of, we quickly moved on to me making a statement about how the home computer scene of the 80's had a pioneering feel to them, a fun element, that until recently had been missing.
What had changed? Well back in the late 80's early 90's it was the death of the "bedroom programmer" and the standardisation on the PC. And although there have been "bedroom programmers" during this period. That feeling of pioneering, of fun and exploration went away as the industry grew up and went professional.
So what changed recently? Well by recently I am talking the last three or four years. The explosion of the smartphone for starters, and the courting of the "bedroom programmer".
The smartphone market reminds me of the early 80's home computer boom. Each month seems to bring a new phone, with new features.
The other thing I mention the courting of the "bedroom programmer" has also been a development of the recent years.
Once our home computers came with the ability for people to write their own software. But slowly with the move from MS-Dos to windows even on the PC we lost the ability to develop our own software when we lost even the ability to write programs in BASIC. If you wanted to write software you had to buy the expensive software tools to do it.
And then things changed, Microsoft started giving away a "student version" of their programming languages. Apple included the tools free with Mac OS, and so the " bedroom programmer" could once more start to flourish.
Now I can't remember the exact point in time but Microsoft then released xna, a framework that allowed the "bedroom programmer" to write programs for their games console. Then a year after the iPhone came out their was a development kit released for that to on the Mac which was also free. With both Microsoft and Apple for a nominal fee developers could get access to releasing their programs through the various app stores. It's a bit more detailed than that but I want to keep this at a level everyone can follow. And of course the development kit for Android is also free, allowing anyone to write software for the many Android phones.
And it is these reasons that I say that the fun is back in the industry. Once more the "bedroom programmer" is able to compete with the "big boys".
But for me it is the "bedroom programmer" or indie developers that are doing the interesting stuff, especially when it comes to video games.
They have the freedom to try new things and to explore the medium. Something that the "big boys" are less inclined to do as they have to make money and can't afford to take risks, so have to rely on "proven" formula to make games.
Some of my favourite games are Limbo for it's distinctive visual style and platform/puzzle game play. Braid with it's rewind game mechanic. Or such "games" as "today I die" based around a poem, and has a very non traditional game play, although very short. And that is just name the first three that come to mind.
It's also nice to see one of my heroes from the 80's gaming scene Jeff Minter still around and producing iOS games (he has two out at the moment).
So with all the above happening, it doesn't stop there. Things are getting more exciting as we see the explosion of tablet computing devices. We also have Microsoft in the spring releasing a new sdk this time for their Kinect, so that "bedroom programmers" can start to write their own stuff using it. Already have an openKinect project that is already showing what potential this device has.
It's nice to have the excitement back, and I'm glad I'm old enough to have lived through the early days and now to see the current one as well.

Exciting times indeed, and I look forward to see how the "bedroom programmer" and indie developers push the envelope.

Twitter don't want competition for their revenue

This was posted yesterday but for some reason disappeared! So I'm reposting this morning.

Yesterday Twitter told developers not to write any more twitter clients. Twitter want people to have a consistent experience across platform, and to avoid confusion in terminology used. To support this they they threw stats at us saying that 90% of users use official twitter apps to use the service, and that they are constantly withdrawing api keys from developers that have apps that break their terms of service in some way, such as breaking the user privacy rules. Which sounds right on and yah twitter for standing up for the little guy in all this.
But then I remember the current fiasco this week of the dickbar on the official twitter iPhone app. Which let's face it was basically twitter trying to exploit their app to bring in revenue from sponsored tweets being disguised as current trends. Initially this un-asked for feature obscured tweets in your timeline, now twitter in a recent update have changed that but exposed new/existing bugs.
But the dickbar tells us why twitter don't want new twitter apps and if they could do it I feel they would get rid of existing competition. Twitter want to sell ads, that's their business plan. To make that pay they need your eyeballs looking at them. Now if you are using some-one else's app to access twitter then you can't be looking at the ads they are getting revenue from.
So it is in twitters interest to try and discourage developers from competing with them and taking away their revenue.
And this move does make me mad. At the moment there does not seem to be much of a fuss being made. Which makes me madder because if this had been Apple everyone would have been bitching. This stinks of double standards and makes me even angrier but hey ho that's a story for a another post someday.
Now I like having a choice of twitter apps. As a recent iPad owner I'm looking for an app that has an interface I like and the functionality I want.
On my iPhone I have found that app and I am happy. But even the iPad version of that app doesn't cut it.
Twitter have managed to take what was a pretty good twitter app and ruin it (and that was long before the dicker fiasco), and in my opinion the iPad version is even worse.
But if twitter had their way there wouldn't be any choice for me, I would be stuck with their vision and nothing else.
Oh well I've ranted enough about this and provided no evidence to back my conspiracy theories up. All I've done is call it as I see it. Maybe you agree with what I have said, maybe you think I am talking total bollocks. If you are thinking this is bollocks next time twitter or anyone else come to think of it make their "we are doing it for the users" argument to justify a shady practice just apply those same standards of scrutiny and scepticism that you apply to Apple.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad