iGo With My iPad

There was all kinds of news about new iPods and the new iTunes 10 on the 1st. We knew it was a bit soon to hear about a new iPad, but we all held our breath during the full talk anyways.

For the iPad, a new iOS is due out in November. Which will be bringing us the multitasking and folders like on the iPhone 4. The version will be 4.2.

Back to the new iTunes. For now, the change is the graphic at the bottom when syncing showing how you have your memory used on your iPad. In the future when we have 4.2, there will be a lot more action going on as we rent TV shows and movies and manage those across the desktop/iPad connection. So, for now, nothing that will change the way we do things around the office or at home with our iPads.

Click image for larger view to see the new ‘capacity’ area -

We all had a good chuckle at ourselves this last weekend. One of the team members got up to find a napkin to jot a note down on… once they found a pen in their bag. Why not use the iPad they had the napkin sitting on? “Because it is a simple note, not notes for a meeting” he said.

This brought about a conversation about over complicating things when simple is best. We have highly capable apps for typing notes on that share to our many desktop computers, we have handwritting notes apps that allow all kinds of edits.

What is needed is a place to jot a speedy note while sitting in a lobby or on a call. Or draw a sketch for things like table/chair placement at an event. Sharing? Yes, this is important too… but it has to be easy. No need to insert pictures, add our voice or correct our scribbles… just our handwriting as we did it.

Enter an old but forgotten friend, Penultimate.

The app has gotten a few more features since the last time we reviewed it here but it still hasn’t gotten over complicated. You can set up different notebooks for projects or type of scribbles. You can choose to use graph, lines or blank ‘paper’, as well pen thickness and colors. You have an eraser and you can erase the whole page in one button push.

And, you can share a single page or a whole notebook through email.

Here is what the sketch we needed to do when we went looking for a napkin (screenshot of Penultimate with pen options tab open):

Sending via email to share, you get this as an attachment:

A nice use of notes in Penultimate is sending them directly to our Evernote email so they appear in our Evernote app too. Simple sketches can stay simple and quick. An added feature, you have a record of your handwritten sketch so you know what was handed out, unlike the lobby napkin.

Everyone around the office reads quite a bit. Not so many novels, mostly news and industry articles. And, those are usually coming to them via their iPad automatically via any of a variety of ‘readers’. Sure, there is the ocational Web digging around to see what we can find but generally there is enough to get through via our favorite feeds.

A big part of enjoying an article is other people enjoying the same. So, to really be effective, we gravitate to apps that let us share as we need.

Recently Cool Hunting updated their app to allow more sharing options. This is an app that provides you just the things they find interesting so if your a fan of the same then they have it all sorted out for you. Share with others via eMail, Twitter and Facebook… then save for your own offline reading enjoyment on Instapaper.

Next up, Flipboard… a very popular app that allows you to share with friends, both local and distant via Twitter or eMails. As you know from our previous posts, Flipboard allows you to pull in and view twitter, facebook and news feeds so there is lots of ways to get news but only two ways to push it out to your coworkers.

Many folks around the office were very excited about Times coming to the iPad, an app we use on our Macs. You may notice from the screenshot below, there is no way to share with others what your reading. No eMail, twitter, facebook… nothing. A huge surprise is that an app with such a long history carries no way to tell others about the news and the app we read the news on.

Some folks have taken screen shots (hold down the Home button and tap the button on the top of the iPad – saves the image to the Camera Roll) to share out. A screen shot doesn’t carry with it links to read additional information.

Pulse, known for being a very visual News Reader with it’s mix of article image with teaser text so you know what you drilling into. Sharing out is the same list as Cool Hunting. Of course, Pulse let’s you control where your information and content is coming from so you end up with just the news your interested in. So, sharing that ‘important’ news is important. Reading later is supported later with Instapaper too so you can keep reading when in a Internet ‘dead’ zone.

Last is ‘Reeder‘. The ‘not so visual’ news reader… carries a very large list of getting the news out. Facebook has to be about the only option not on the list. The ‘read offline’ option is expanded with Read It Later. With Reeder, read the news, get excited, share with everyone so they are in the know too!

This weekend, we will step away from the ‘weekend games’ and go with something that is just (serious!) fun to play with. Midnight is an iPad app that allows you to tap, drag, rotate, move and steam a constant changing ‘midnight’ sky.

Beyond something cool sitting on your desk, this particles system simulation app doesn’t really have a place in the workplace. It reacts to where you tap with a finger, several fingers to two hands. The HD ‘stars’ are flowing and twisting about the screen. Unlike a couple other ‘interactive’ apps we have played with, this isn’t just a circling or stream of color dots. Instead, think of this Midnight HD more like a fireflies chasing each other with a creative leader… every now and then the fireflies go off on their own in every direction.

This is not a universal app, so 99 cents gets you a iPad or a iPhone app. Fun on the iPhone, Midnight is mesmerizing on the iPad.

Yes, you really can print to a HP printer from your iPad. The software, from HP, is a free universal app. If you have your iPad on a network that there is a HP printer on, you can print pictures, PDFs and text files. If that isn’t enough, the app also sees HP scanners on the network which you can control and accept scanned documents right on the iPad.

Enough of the sales pitch, it’s Free. We have seen many different printing solutions over the last couple years for the iPad and iPhone. Most require you push the print job out to a Web site or your desktop on the network which is hooked up to a printer. In the case of HP Print 3.0, you are connecting directly to the HP printer or scanner via your network. Since our iPads are on the WiFi networks at home and office, this means we have wireless printing from any room in the building!

In HP’s words:
• Wireless print directly to HP Inkjet printers connected to a local WiFi* network
• Print to a broad portfolio of HP Inkjet printers including the Photosmart, Deskjet, Business Inkjet, Color Inkjet, & Officejet line-up. See supported printers on HP’s site.
• Get high print quality from HP’s image scaling and de-noise technology and print photos in 3.5×5”, 4×6”, 5×7”. Print U.S. wallet size photos: 2.5×3.25” (2-up on 4×6” photo paper)
• Automatic printer set-up – discover and set-up your wireless printer without installation of drivers.
• HP iPrint Photo leverages Apple’s Bonjour technology to automatically identify HP wireless printers or other supported HP printers available on your network. HP iPrint Photo supports industry standard WiFi environments (including Apple Airport, Linksys, D-Link, Netgear)
• Crop & rotate pictures using two fingers with a pinch & drag motion
• If your printer has a separate photo tray, it will be automatically selected for photo printing, on photo or plain paper

New in 3.0:
• Print PDF and text documents
• Document Support – View and wirelessly print attachments (text and PDF files) from mail clients and apps compatible with iOS “Document Support” feature (requires iOS 4)
• WebDAV – Turns your device into a wireless flash drive. Copy documents directly from your PC or Mac to/from your device and take them with you
• File Sharing support – When connected via USB cable, transfer documents to iPad & iPhone (iOS 4) from PC or Mac
• Scan to device – Scan photos & documents wirelessly from HP e-All-in-One printers to iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad)

We were sitting around a desk discussing one of our fav iPad notes apps. How it had a major update and yet was missing important features… still! When it was pointed out that many notes that you need to get through the day really needs no super powers. Most day-to-day notes need to be quick entries that can be sorted, searched for and accessed from many locations. Meeting notes are long and detailed but call highlights and hallway reminders are simple and have to stay that way to be effect.

What was found to be getting used was a free universal app called SimpleNote. And, as luck would have it, it was top of mind because it was just updated.

SimpleNote is set up from day one to work via the developer’s cloud Web site offering. It too is free, you just have to sign up (either via the iPad app or through the Web site). Syncing between the iPad and app is done over the Internet so no need to connect to you computer via WiFi network or a USB cable.

As we said, the SimpleNote app is free… with ads appearing from time to time. You can ‘in app’ pay $4.99 to not see the ads anymore. Also, for $12 a year subscription, you can get rid of the ads and enjoy a bunch of additional features online. Including deeper backups of notes, pushing your notes out via RSS and adding notes via email. If your thinking about jumping into SimpleNote, you will want to look at all of the extra items that you can use to connect to other note apps, enhance the Web site interface and even automate downloads through a link in an note.

Like the Built-in notes app, SimpleNotes uses the top lines of the note as the text it shows in the list view.

All notes can have a Tag added to find quicker later. We use Project names and Departments to help group and find with just a couple taps. The ‘Todo’ Tag here does NOT carry with it check boxes or extra luggage, this is just a tag to use for your lists to find quicker later.

One negative we did find with Tags (a new feature) is that currently you are not able to change a tag name later. So, we are planning on using sub Tags to use till that feature appears. The new Tags feature really brings the ability to pull together documents around a conversation.

Even though the system is called SimpleNotes, you can share the text of your note in a email, publish the text to a Web site and also share a link to the text in an email.

Another pleasant surprise for a free notes app is Word and Character counts. The ‘Pin To Top’, although not a great name, works well to lock that note to the top of notes lists.

At the top of every note is a small clock. This is your roll back to an earlier version of that note. Wow, eh? For the free version, tapping the clock gives you a slider to go back 10 versions. For the Premium version, you can go back 30 versions!

The ‘settings’ area for SimpleNote is extensive and pretty self explanatory. Most important is enough features to access and share notes without getting in the way of using it for quick notes in the fast pace of the day.

uTalk showed up for us today as updated for the iPad… a universal app for the iPhone and iPad means we can now have the images full size. Does that help us learn Italian any faster? Well, some of us in the office picked it up in 2x low resolution mode so having it now in iPad full screen has removed the excuses the rest of us had!

The power behind uTalk is that they show you a variety of objects and words that match, then they jumble things for you to match the object to their spoken word. Then you progress to just the images and a single spoken word without the initial matching. Amazing enough, this method is proving to be much better than long dictionaries of words and trying to just memorize words and phrases.

The lessons come in many other languages, Italian just seems to be a hit around our office. It’s on the easier side for us beginners too than most of the other language titles.

As promised, the why we make such an effort to get images on our iPads and clean them up for work.

We do a lot of documents on our iPads. It is quick to use a finger to move things around, zoom in/out with two fingers, rotate, place and then type the text to go around it. The instant on of the iPad means that we can edit on the run. Elevator time is actual real work time. Ride a bus or train, no Internet needed to get a lot of work done quickly without taking our the notebook.

First off, Pages from Apple.

Many years ago, we all carried our Apple 2300 and 2400 mini notebooks around with Pagemaker on them. We could toss in a picture, types some text, flow the two together on a page and distribute out a document while completely being mobile. The next presentation or letter came along, it was simple enough to duplicate the document and type in the new text.

That is where we are at these days with Pages on a iPad, except even more mobile now and even easier to share out the final document. Pages has many templates available to build off of, customizing as you need. Or, you can create your own. Templates can be shared to other team members to you carry a common look and feel with all communications. Just tap the text on the page and type the message that document needs.

Using images – after tuning your images as we discussed in our previous posts this week, you will be ready to insert it into a document. Like the desktop version of Pages, you can grab the corners and make your images larger/smaller and move them around the page to fit your needs.

Selecting the image, you can add a boarder or shadow to create the desired effect you wish to carry with the document when you distribute it later.

Adding a shadow to the image carries with it the ability to fine tune. As you would expect with a page editor on your desktop, many features are found in Pages, all done with your fingertip.

When creating a piece of stationary in Pages for writing letters with, you can add a bit of uniqueness to your images by using one of the available boarders.

You can use the stationary over and over again, Customizing to the particular needs at that time through the built-in ability to add and edit more than text. You can also insert tables, charts and shapes (Apple’s FAQ on using Tables, Charts and Shapes).

The text editing in Pages works well, with many of the standard features you would expect to be able to use. For very long documents, rather than working with text flowing from page to page, we will use Documents To Go to type and edit the message. Then, paste that text into a Pages document, adding images throughout for maximum impact. Images wrapped in text will always carry more of an impression then pages of text.

Several times in the past, we have mentioned ArtStudio as an app we use on the iPad to draw, and also touch up photos. The photo touch up is along the line of what you would think of as ‘air brushing’. The drawings can be a simple line sketch to full color, high detail art pieces.

One of the favorite drawing tools in ArtStudio is the ‘brush’. With that ‘tip’ on your drawing pen, you are able to draw very nice bits to use in a variety of other places. Just a simple couple lines and you have outline of a little car to put in an email or a flower in a presentation. Many folks in the office can do wonderful drawings with a simple pen, for the rest of us the brush tip brings our works alive.

If you feel you don’t need all of the colors, pen types, photo touch up tools that come in ArtStudio and are just looking for a nice brush tip drawing app, take a look at Zen Brush. It does one thing and one thing very nicely… allows you to draw with several different black tip (adjustable) brushes. If you think about something as simple as a smiley face, it has a whole different life to it when done with a ‘brush’ instead of a thin constant line like a pen.

Zen Brush is a universal app so that means if you buy it once, you can install the same version on both your iPad and iPhone.

We’ll take a moment away from our scheduled posts on photo managment to read a book.

Since we are talking about the iPad, eBooks first come to us via Apple’s own iBooks. For those of use, many in our offices, that have a Kindle – we have the iPad Kindle app. The Kindle app allows us to read the eBooks we bought through Amazon on our iPads. We covered the number of technical books that have crept onto our iPad via this source.

The latest addition if from Barnes and Noble. As expected, called ‘Nook‘, after their eBook reader hardware.

Opening up the full eBook library Barnes and Noble has to offer. There is the usual large group of free books, like the other eBook readers. We were surprised to noticed how many are available on one service and not the other. The free iPad Nook app does have a long list of features, below. Does it do much more than the Kindle app? Not really, but how much do you want an eBook reader to do? Sometimes the desire to add functions pulls us away from what we launched the app to do.

The Nook app does offer the ability to look for a book, pay and download online. While most of us enjoy the quiet afternoon roaming about the brick stores, this app does bring to us the eBooks we were unable to find on Amazon or via Apple’s iBooks store. The feature to ‘share’ a book from one Nook to another is included across the Nook iPad app to/from the Barnes and Noble hardware ebook reader.

From Barnes and Noble on their free Nook for iPad app:

- Adjustable font size so you can make the text as big as you want for reading
- Multiple font types—so you pick the typeface you prefer
- Millions of background and text color options
- Brightness control for easy reading in any light
- Use our professionally designed themes or create your own
- Tap or swipe to turn pages
- Browse your library visually with big, beautiful color covers or in “list view”
- Synchronize your notes, highlights and current reading position with Barnes & Noble NOOK for PC, NOOK for iPhone or NOOK for other popular smart phones
- 24/7 shopping — no waiting
- Free Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary is built right in so you don’t leave the page when looking up a word