An app, Felt Cards, is now offering you the ability to write on your iPad inside of a card which they will print and mail for you. Keeping the handwriting looking like handwriting on the print card, adding a level of personality. The writing tools are a bit limited but several of the team are trying drawing instead of just writing, we are waiting for the cards to see how well the printing shows the creation.

Unlike many other options, Felt Cards doesn’t offer you to add one of your own photos to the card. The app includes a set of card covers to choose from, then a blank inside of the card and envelope. Card covers in the current version of Felt Cards includes 4 versions of Thank You, 6 Mother’s Day, 1 rain cloud and 1 ‘Hi’. Just swipe side to side through the cards, then sweep up to get to the blank inside. There is a ‘Gallery’ button but it just takes you to some images of completed card pictures.

Writing inside of the card is done with buttons for two types of pen tips, three ink colors and an eraser for those handwriting goofs.

Tap the upper right corner of Felt Card’s edit view to zoom out to see how the car will look when printed and sent. We found that most of us forgot to swipe the tools bar back to the left to write on the whole available area. So, we ended up with available white ‘paper’… worth going back and starting over? You may notice that this interface is very much like buying a card at the store and writing inside, but all on the iPad. We wonder how Ive’s ‘flattening’ of the iOS will effect these interfaces going forward.

Done writing… swipe to the side to access the envelope. Again, paper-like, thus needing you to write the From and To addresses. When done, tap the Cart button at the bottom. The printing/mailing service through Felt Cards will set you back $3.99 US.

Writing in the From and To boxes have the pen tools that the card interior has.

Felt Cards does try to help get the card writing right by allowing a wrist rest area used. Just drag it from the bottom of the screen up to just under where your writing.

Many times, even well taken written notes do not fully express what was said in a meeting. Facial and voice changes to emphasis what is important and what may be short term solutions. Also, even the best keyboard person can fall behind or miss a point.

One solution is to audio record the meeting. Audio files can be of manageable size, easily shared. And, a great way to go back and be sure there isn’t a difference between what someone thought they heard vs what was actually said.

Several times, video has been attempted. While being a great source of review, the can be a need to clean up and the files have to be hosted somewhere. Making a full meeting video a size to be passed around the office will become much too low of resolution to see anything on a whiteboard in the background.

Rather than shoot, clean, transfer, host, then share… there is a Free option ‘YouTube Capture‘. The universal app is handy on the iPhone and nice to have on an iPad. iPads are generally easier to have on a stand and seems to get less attention when used for recording than a person doing the same with an iPhone. Like the name implies, the app makes recording a video and pushing it up to YouTube very easy. If the videos are for company internal viewing only, be sure to set up the YouTube account for that in advance.

The user interface is simple… start/stop recording, settings and view previous recordings:

To help get the video right from the start, YouTube Capture offers the tuning in advance of recording rather than having to apply filters afterwards.

Settings start off with the option to share the YouTube Capture created video links out to many social services when those recordings are private to the company. Also, there are a variety of recording quality options for quality vs size decisions.

What? We just have a couple presentations, a few PDFs and a video or two. Most of the team don’t even have music on their iPad, instead streaming from services (in no particular order) like Pandora, Spotify or Rdio. Where could the memory have gone?

Visiting the iPad’s Setting app, choose the General option then Usage.

Initially, the screen will only show the memory being used on the device and on the iCloud account connected to the iPad. After a bit of working, the system will show a list of app and their memory footprint. The shown amount of memory is for both the app and data the app is using. You may notice that the document apps listed on our screen shots isn’t using a lot of memory, that is because we are heavy users of cloud storage, only downloading the documents we need and returning to the cloud after editing.

Choosing an app shows the break down the app vs app’s data memory. A button to delete both is provided (similar to tap/hold on an app’s icon in the launcher then using the ‘x’ to remove). We found that the team members that are users of social share services like Instagram and Pinterest where in for a surprise. While the Instagram app installs at 20 meg, we had multiple devices she the app/data taking up 1.4 gigs! It would appear a cache of all photos are kept on the iPad. Without a ‘clear cache’ option via iOS or the app, we chose to delete and reinstall the big memory hogs to get the gigs of memory returned.

Now… the scary part. BACK UP YOUR iOS DEVICE PRIOR TO DELETING APPs THAT TAKE A LOT OF MEMORY!! The three individuals that had the 1+ gig Instagram installs noticed slowness using the iPad’s Launcher following the app/data removal. During this slowness time, do not move other app icons around or do a device restart. Both actions resulted in the iPad going into a brick mode of just showing the start up Apple icon. The only way to recover was to plug in the sync cable and hold the ‘Home’ button causing the iPad to restore from backup.

Another place to watch for available memory:

If you read magazines on the iPad, we do a lot, don’t forget you can archive off magazines and redownload later to reference if needed. Newsstand Magazine apps generally have the option easy to find and use, as does Next Issue. Zinio hides the magazine cover from view when archived, to redownload choose the edit button which shows all magazines on the account.

The Scoop.it service allows you to pull together news feeds of content that is popular around the social network world. The system makes it easy to share out what you find to other people that might find the same interesting. The Web site and the iPhone app do this. But, the new Read.it! iPad Free app is positioned more towards building category groups of news so that you can get to what you find interesting, quickly!

The Read.it! app, viewable in landscape and portrait, has top stories on the right and a search/category grouping on the left.

Each of the categories of news can be selected to expand the view to social and Web site services so you can drill in tighter to what you are looking for. Each selection on the left narrows the news feed on the right.

Tapping any story takes you to the full view of the story. Which, true to Scoop.it, has a quick pulldown to share the article out via popular social networks to your friends and fans. Read.it! on the iPad is a nice tool to get to the news your interested in, without worrying about an app making decisions for you that just takes time when your in a hurry to stay up-to-date on the latest.

The missing app isn’t the end of the world, and in fact really opened up the world for developers to fill. A quick search on the iTunes store results in what seems like a never ending list of calculator options. Most of the geniuses around the office have their favorites, for the rest of us, we just need a super simple ‘FREE’ solution that lets us get an answer and move on. The folks in Finance and the Rocket Designers in the crowd all chuckle at us, but only need what we need!

We have played with many of the ‘for pay’ solutions that either go light or toss in cuteness that isn’t needed. Last week, someone discovered Calculator LCD and it spread like wild fire amongst those needing to keep it simple. The free app has the option of changing the display background from retro yellowish to white and back again. And… there is the addition of Tax, not sure where that came from but we are in a Tax charging state so it might be handy. Otherwise, we add, subtract and divide our way to the end of another meeting where we are asked if the quantities add up as our whiteboard quick math showed us. Not once did someone ask for the circumference of the table over the arch of the legs to find the size of a mat to go under it!

The process is simple, snap several photos (2 to 4) using Clone Camera, highlight the part of each image you wish to appear on the final image then let the app stitch the photos together. The app has been fun for us on the iPhone, and now we have the pleasure of being able to do better fine tuning on the larger iPad screen. There are two different versions of the app so you have to pay twice to have the use of Clone Camera on the iPhone and iPad.

From the developer:

1 Guide for shooting with afterimages
2 Self-timer function that can perform multi-shot with 4 times
3 The camera shake correction function
4 27 different high-quality photo filters
5 Support high-resolution image
6 Support Instagrams, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr

The added features on the page when photographing make it easier to get the final result closer to what you desired. Clone Camera offers a quick ‘Retake’ in the upper left corner, across the bottom is the settings, a group of thumbnails to jump between and a ‘next’ option when you have the photos as you like.

On each of the photos, highlight the area you want to appear on the final image. You can be rather sloppy with the line around the bits if you didn’t move at all between each of the photos being taken. If you didn’t have your iPad on a stand when snapping the photos, be more precise in your highlighting as the background around each part may be slightly different than the rest of the image. Zoom in/out is supported in Clone Camera to help with the shading precision.

When the photos are ready, Clone Camera will remove the background of all of the images (not shaded areas) and merge into one. The final result can be saved to the iPad photo library or shared out through social sharing services in a variety of sizes.

MPro is not a ‘after’ filter to apply to photos you took earlier and saved. Instead, adjust the levels, color gels, ending file type, film ratio and exposure, then shoot.

When framing the shot through the MPro screen viewfinder, drag the square/circles to set the points of focus and exposure for the shot.

Zagg is offering 50% off their keyboard cases – both the regular size keyboard and the mini.

Kensington: President’s Day Sale!  Save 25% off ALL Kensington products!!  Enter promo code pres2013 at check out.  Offer expires February 19, 2013

 A few examples of Kensington sale items: Keyboard Case, Pen/Stylus combo and Folio Cases -

Think Geek is offering up to 50% off on very long list of fun Geek items. We only found the iCade in the sale list that is directly for the iPad. Other things, like Star Trek uniforms and fun gadgets have a variety of discounts, not really iPad related though.

SkinIt has a nice discount  on skins for iPads and iPhone – 25% off using the PRESIDENT25 code:

We will post more as we find them! 

A new application… new to us, has done a nice job of bringing the two worlds together in their notepads app. Note Moka! launches with a clock and calendar, a shelf of notebooks (side scrollable), New Notebook, Trash/delete, and sharing. Creating a New notebook starts off with a cover color picker and adding a title. Note Moka! also lets you view/annotate PDFs and Power Points!! These are brought into the app via iTunes, a Safari page, and Open In when documents arrive via Cloud storage or attached to an email.

When viewing a page in a notebook, we are presented a view of paper and pen type writing instruments. Also, tools that are only possible in the digital world. Flipping pages and going to a notebook overview is via the arrows/dot at the top. In the view below, the circle in the right upper corner can be moved around as needed. The arrows on the circle are for undo/redo. Tapping the center show/hides the tools along the bottom of the page.

Those Note Moka! ‘tools’ are for pen types and ink color, typing with fonts picker, and clipart / photos access to add to notepad pages so there is more than just text.

A scrollable overview of all of the pages in a notebook can be accessed too. From this view, it is possible to jump to a page, print a page or share it. Also, Note Moka! presents a calendar that is nice to add handwritten notations on.

Notepad pages can be zoomed in for more detailed text. Tapping the icon at the top of the floating circle icon will result in a thumbnail view of the page with the screen area highlighted.

An added feature of the digital ink on the digital paper is how the line thickness responds to the speed of your stylus or finger. Much like how an ink pen acts on paper, Note Moka! varies the line width like the physical world. This create more natural looking handwritten notes on the iPad and it’s great for doodles n sketches.

An updated version of Foldify has come out with 6 new templates to color, print and fold. One of the new templates is a fun 3D heart. The little characters now have the option to have arms too! Not feeling creative, other sure have been and their are sharing. Don’t forget about the ‘online’ option to print other people’s creative work. Fun place to start to get ideas too.

The available shapes template page has grown. Now, Foldify has blocks and monolith like shapes, as well additional people and vehicles options are providing new possibilities.

The 3D heart is just right for the holiday coming up. Color in, add some personalized text for something they will never see anywhere else. Shading the whole shape is faster now too with the new version getting a paint bucket.

You can still use the standing characters like before. Below is the new Foldify option to add arms. Unlike the Gingerbread Men we mentioned in the previous post, these arms are not held in by tabs, instead they have to be glued on.