Don't read me wrong here: I'm all for helping good causes in any way you can. When a CEO serves up food at a soup kitchen and there's no media around to catch it, that's a noble thing. It's dharma and humanitarianism at it's finest. But it's also an underuse of skillset.
CEO in the soup kitchen.
Everybody can serve soup. But the CEO has a skillset that can be better used by the charity. Donating his business and management skills could help the soup kitchen be more efficient and serve more people. Instead of this honcho doling out a few dinners, they could be the catalyst for serving thousands more. That's doing gooder.
And doing gooder is not about donating money. Not at all. Skills and ideas are so much more valuable than a few dollars. Here's an example of this and how my family wound up taking in a Bosnian war refugee for a year.
100 kids the snipers missed.
Robert Azzi is an award-winning photojournalist who often finds himself working in the middle of gunfire. While covering the war in Bosnia, he saw kids killed daily by snipers in ski masks. At a time when war seemed its most senseless, the idea struck him that if he could get the brightest young minds in Bosnia out to finish high school in peace, he could save the lives of 100 future leaders.
He called Continental Airlines and told them he didn't want a donation. He wanted a jet to make one flight from Zagreb Croatia to the US. He got a chuckle. Three days later he got an apology from the head of Continental. A tank of jet fuel would be a small donation to make for a gooder cause.
Azzi got a call from Rick Deerwester in Florence, Kentucky. Rick's church was going to take a up a collection for the kids. No, Azzi said. Don't give me money. Give me homes for 35 kids. The painless act of shoving a few bucks in a the plate turned into beds for three dozen strangers who where from a different religion, a different world and didn't speak our language.
We wound up with Senad. His house was hit by a grenade the day before he left. I also met Nadja, whose legs were almost blown off by a bomb months before and whose war diary I helped translate into English. (That's a example of gooder use of skills.)
Today Senad is personal translator for the Bosnian Minister of Defense. And Nadja Halilgegovich is known in Europe as the Bosnian Anne Frank and is an international speaker. She's stood on the same stage with Desmond Tutu and is featured in the book Architects of Peace alongside the Dalai Llama and Mother Teresa.
Azzi's act of doing gooder started with an idea. In our world where we think money is a prerequisite for making anything happen, not a cent changed hands. People played their part instead of payed their part.
May I take your photo while you're down and out?
And going gooder doesn't need to be on such a grand scale. Steve Ziegelmeyer is a freelance Art Director and Photographer. He walks Downtown every day at lunchtime and instead of avoiding eye contact with the indigent who ask for money, Zieg stops and talks. Those just looking for beer money scamper away. (Sometimes he chases them away.) But he's become close enough to the truly needy that he can pull his camera out of his bag and ask to snap a photo. For anyone else, catching a person at such a low point in their life would be taboo.
Eventually this turned into the Street Portraits project that Zieg created with Gina Weathersby. It's become very popular at local galleries and proceeds go to the City Gospel Mission, the city's oldest supporter for the indigent. Again, a simple idea and the right skills doing gooder.
What's your skill?
After almost a year in the making, I recently launched a doing gooder project called Audible Ambles. But this tale is not really about that. It's also not about starting an international Doing Gooder™ movement with a big infrastructure and soirées for wealthy benefactors. It's just a simple seed that it'd be nice for people to keep in the back of their minds. Maybe it will bloom into some good someday.
OT: Doing Gooder
Adding Words to the Spellchecker
The iPad has a built in spellchecker that used by Notes, Pages and most text editing apps. But the dictionary won't allow you to add words, so some words forever show up underlined in red. Where this really becomes inconvenient is if you misspell this word, you really can't tell.
Adding words should be available in the fall with iOS4 for iPad. In the meantime, add an entry called "Spellcheck Words" to your Contacts. In the company field, add words you want the spellchecker to ignore. Since the iPad uses names in Contacts as part of the spellcheck database, the red underline will go away.
Writing Sites for MobileMe
Seems a simple enough app: a basic html/text editor that flips to a Safari preview of the document and allows you to upload to your MobileMe account. First off, ALL the web writing apps I have tried for the iPad are unstable. Most are so buggy, Apple should not have approved them for sale in the App Store. And NONE upload to a WebDAV server like MobileMe. Everybody is trying to get fancy and ignoring the fact that users expect these apps to functions from day one.
The good news is that you CAN code HTML and upload the file to MobileMe from your iPad through a workaround. Not as easy as pushing an Upload button, but you can do it in thirty seconds. I highly recommend you get eWeb Editor. This was one of the first HTML editors for iPad and by far the most stable. It's one of the cheapest too. It has some nice features, but the beauty is that the core functions work: HTML editing with an instant preview and these reliably save.
You will also need to download the amazing GoodReader app. But it's 99 cents, so your total financial layout is small. GoodReader's structure is a little convoluted, but it does so many things you'll quickly find out that it's pretty hard to contain all that function in a menu structure. it's like a Swiss Army Knife for documents on your iPad.
The workflow for editing and uploading your code is simple: Edit and preview in eWeb Editor. Then save your code in GoodReader as an HTML doc and upload it.
• Edit in eWebEditor
• Press the Gear icon and the Copy Code to Clipboard button.
• Open GoodReader.
• Tap on the Manage Files list on the right.
• Press the New File button.
• Under My Documents on the left, tap the file called "New Text.txt".
• In the right column tap the Rename button and rename the file "index.html" or whatever the document is called you're updating on MobileMe.
• Press the Okay button.
• Press the Connect to Servers header on the right.
• Choose your iDisk from the list.
• Navigate to the folder where you want the file to go and open it.
• Slide right on the file you're replacing and press the Delete button.
• Press the Upload button and choose your file from the list.
• Press the Upload 1 File button.
Takes a lot less time than it sounds. For those who like to hand code or need to tweak code from your iDisk on an iPad, at least it works.
The iPad Studio
Though the iOS doesn't make the iPad a computer, it's been obvious since its introduction that the iPad is a game changer. The advanced touch screen allows a new control element that takes us from mouse and clunky keyboard to tactile physical control. A prime example is MultiTrack DAW from Harmonic Dog. This is almost GarageBand for the iPad. Though limited in many respects (no effects) MT is a powerful recording app that can be used for professional results in 8-24 tracks, even producing and posting results from the field directly from your iPad.
The iPad Camera Connector kit allows you to connect pro audio peripherals, taking this app into the realm of GarageBand and beyond. I have been using it with Roland's Cakewalk audio interface and Blue's Yeti microphone much to my delight. Cakewalk allows you to plug in line audio, instruments with pickups, board feeds and external mics.
I couldn't be more impressed with Blue's Yeti. Review's don't do the sound quality justice. At $149 this USB mic is one of the nicest sounding mics I have ever worked with, even competing with the legendary Rode and Neumann. The Yeti has three elements in a triangular array that gives you an amazing amount of versatility in stereo and mono recording. Admittedly the straight mono cardioid pattern sounds so sweet I will probably use it for most recording. Since it requires no preamp, the Yeti, at 100 db signal-to-noise ratio is the quietest mic I've ever heard.
The Yeti is a solid choice for use with MT since it has it's own headphone jack to monitor both the mic and your tracks. This is a necessity since the iPad can be extremely uncooperative when a mics like the Blue Mikey and the Belkin TuneTalk plugged into the connector slot. It needs to be noted that the Yeti is just about the end of its power limitations in the iPad. Some headphones cause it to drain enough power to crash the mic. My little Senneheiser earbuds killed the mic, but my big Sennheiser HD280 studio monitor cans worked fine.
The MT offers no effects and can't allow plugins, so it's vital to have a clean, crafted signal going in if you plan on mixing on the iPad. That being said you can create a multitude of delay effects in multiple tracks and then bounce the delays and original back down to one track. Though not easy as turning an effect knob, staggering tracks and adjusting volume levels is easy in MT, so you may find yourself creating more complex delay effects than you've ever imagined.
With MT you'll probably need to change your recording workflow. Often we depend on the "fix it when we mix it" philosophy when working with GarageBand. With MT you can't do that if you're planning to do the final mix right on iPad. You need to get every sound as sweet as possible coming in. But with the Yeti there's no need for EQ tweaking and with the Cakewalk you just get all you effects sounding right in the chain before they go through the interface.
There's a short learning curve to working with the MT. What's not done in an Apple-like fashion is easier. Having the controls on screen takes a lot of frustration out of recording. What used to require a lot of mouse clicks and keypresses now can be done with a few intuitive finger moves.
You can easily move tracks over to GarageBand, Logic, Audacity or ProTools by wifi for tweaking and mixing. But since you can get the same CD quality tracks right in your iPad and post them directly to Sound Cloud from within MT, you may find yourself working directly with iPad more than you think. I can see a lot of musicians doing a quick demo in the hotel of a new song or posting a live version of a song from last night's show on a fan site without ever involving a computer in the process.
Having done most of my recording on an iPhone with a TuneTalk mic and mixing in GarageBand, I'm delighted to centralize the process onto my iPad and be able to edit now with simple finger moves. Previously I depended on post tweaking, but now will switch workflow to gets stuff right going in. The lack of effects will change the sound of my final mix, but who's to say that didn't need changing? I expect my first few projects to sound substantially cleaner, but more vintage (from the days before reverb as taken for granted.)
My singles can be found here: http://wolfewithane.com
To USB or not USB.
The iPad Camera Connector kit was designed to copy images and videos from your camera, iPhone, Nano or SD card to your iPad. But it's fun plugging everything USB in just to see if it works with the iPad. I've stated specific devices here since your mileage may vary and there are no guarantees.
Serendipity
- Jump Drives Xporter Magnum 64G is a 64 Gig jump drive on steroids. (It also comes in 128 Gig.) These have enough memory to fall into the category of external hard drive. Mine connected and downloaded images and movies fine. I'm overjoyed with this, since it gives me a way to import video for Real Director and the forthcoming iMovie for iPad. Unlike external hard drives, these require no additional power. The connector supports both FAT32 and HFS+ drive formats.
- USB Microphone This one was a shocker. I figured for sure there wouldn't be enough power, but my massive G Track USB mic worked fine with RecordStudio Pro. Excellent news for those looking to use their iPads for serious audio recording. I should also note that Belkin's TuneTalk works fine. This is a great little stereo mic designed for the iPhone and plugs into the iPad's socket with no connector required. The Blue Snowflake on the other hand did not work.
The Expected
- Memory Card Reader The Camera Connector kit comes with a SD reader, but some are reporting they can plug in their compact flash reader and download images. Note that your card should be formatted in the camera, not in a computer. Video must be H.264 720p or smaller with AAC audio.
I don't use anything but the SD family. I plugged in the freebie SD reader that came with an Eye-Fi card and this worked fine for JPGs and video. I appear to have imported a WAV file too, but can't find it anywhere. - USB headset. My Logitech A0356A headset worked fine with both Skype and RecordStudio Pro.
- Keyboard The Apple standard USB keyboard draws too much power. Others have reported that some USB keys with no external USB ports built in are working.
- iPhone Plug in your iPhone or video Nano by USB and you can copy photos and video from your camera roll. IPhone 3G is not supported.
Failures
- External Hard Drive Neither my Lacie Little Disk 80G or 300G worked. There is not enough power to drive these, even though the 300G had a power cord driving it from my Air USB port. Some are reporting other external drives work when they are plugged into a power source. To me this defeats portability but might be useful for speed sake in getting files off a hard disk when at your desktop. The connector supports both FAT32 and HFS+ drive formats.
- iPod Shuffle Not supported warning. But then, I didn't expect this to work.
- USB Hub I got a "uses too much power" warning when I plugged in a GearHead 4-port portable.
I'll post updates as I plug more stuff in.
Tips.
• If the camera connector doesn't work at first, try restarting your iPad by holding Home and Sleep. Then turn off your iPad, plug in the connector, then turn it on.
• On any external media card or drive, the iPad will be looking for a folder called DCIM. Add it to the drive on your desktop and put any video or image files you want to transfer in it.
• Blue check means a file is selected for import. Green check means it's already been imported.
Review: WeatherStation
Unlike the iPhone, the iPad doesn't come with a weather app. There are many out there and some have advanced radar, hourly forecasts, etc. The problem with most of these is that they're not very viewer friendly. Adding your city is not a problem. It's that the apps are gaudy, there's too much information and the presentation visually is very confusing.
WeatherStation is pretty much what you have on the iPhone: current conditions, daily forecasts for the next five days, time, date, sunrise and sunset all on one screen. In landscape mode, switching cities is a matter of one tap and it's easy to tell which city you're looking at.
Nothing extraneous here. So unless the Weather Channel is your reality TV, this app gets you to the weather basics fast.
The search for what Search actually searches.
Search is a little frustrating on iPad. It seldom finds what you're looking for. What? You didn't know your iPad had a search? Tap your Home button. Then tap it again. Search is similar to Spotlight on Mac and finds things instantly, without even having to type a return. However...
Built in apps only.
Sadly, search only works with the built-in apps. It doesn't access the dedicated file areas of added software. So it's very useful for finding a word within a thousand Notes, but not useful for finding a word within a Pages document. Many apps have their own search. Pages can search within a document only. You'll find it in the Tool menu.
No web content.
Search will not find anything within Safari's cache. For those who feel Safari's lack of search within a document is frustrating, this can be quickly fixed with the find-in-this-page bookmarklet. This is a little JavaScript that gets stored in a Safari bookmark. When you launch this bookmark it doesn't take you to a new web page, it searches the current document and highlights the search words. Follow the instructions on the site to install.
I don't got mail?
Search can only find what's in the mail that's on your iPad. And the way iPad works is that it only stores the most current messages locally. Most are still on your server. Once Mail has searched what's on your iPad it gives you the option to continue to search your server. Note that this can take a while.
These limitations are all frustrating, but once you know them and the workarounds, you'll find yourself finding things a little easier.
Review: Adobe Ideas for vector sketching.
I have never been an Adobe fan. But I'm stooping to say they got one right.
The lousy interface company.
Adobe creates some great file formats. But for as long as they have been associated with Apple, you'd think would have learned about user-friendly interfaces. Acrobat is the worst thing to create PDF files with. Buried somewhere in their menu maze is a clunky way to do everything, but it's so frustrating to get there.
Ideas is different.
Ideas is the simplest app Abode has ever written. The menu structure isn't intuitive, but simple enough to get by. Draw a line and you'll immediately fall in love. The moment you release your finger the line is vectored to create a smooth, beautiful stroke. You have complete control over width, opacity and color of your pen, even if getting to these controls takes more steps than necessary.
The photo layer.
Ideas has a few nice photo tricks. You can add a photo layer underneath and draw overtop of it. You can also remove it later, making sketches a great choice if you want to do tracings. Another cool feature is the color picker that allows you to create a palette from colors within a photo.
Vector export.
Your drawing can be mailed as a vector art PDF with a clear alpha background. These are great for pasting over top of backgrounds in Pages or Keynote. Provided you haven't added an image, these drawings are tiny and can be scale up to any size.
Adobe finally frees creativity.
Ideas is free. That's surprising coming from a company that usually charges outrageous rates for their software. Well worth keeping a copy on your iPad.
Tips
- To paste a drawing into Pages or Keynote, email it to yourself. In the email, hold your finger on the drawing and choose Copy. Open Pages and paste.
HMTL 5/Flash Part 2
So what's so good about HTML 5? Is it better than Flash? Not really. It will just allow you to do similar things with standard methods. To the average web user, you're not going to notice a lot of difference. Currently many sites use JavaScript for many of the multimedia and graphic tricks. Many of these will work with standard code in HTML 5 and CSS 3.
JavaScript is a compact programming language that most browsers can work with, but JavaScript can be insecure, bog down browsers and function erratically. Using HTML 5 these functions will work faster, smoother and more predictably.
These new tags are supported by many browsers and some are already supported by Safari for iPad. If you're using one of the other browsers for iPad, most of these actually work off the same core as Safari, so the new tags will probably work as well.
Remy Sharp has put up a nice little demo site where you can test these. Currently the following at least partially function:
- Interactive Canvas Gradients
- Content Editable
- Video
- Geolocation
- Post Message
- Online Connectivity Monitoring
- Offline Application Using Manifest
- Storage
- Web Database
- Web Database Rollback
Most of this can already be done with JavaScript and other methods, but HTML 5 will do it more efficiently and make media-rich web pages easier to write and implement. Switching from JavaScript will make many of these functions—like animation, video and audio—look more Flash-like.
HTML 5/Flash Part 1
There's a huge amount of noise about Flash and HTML 5. Apple says one of the reasons that iPad will not support Flash that HTML 5, will do most of those tricks and do them within Web standards.
So what's wrong with these beautiful flash sites and videos?
- Flash is not stable on all browsers. You'll commonly hear about browser crashes that occur when viewing a Flash site or video. Flash isn't viewable on many browsers, even when you don't count iPhone and iPad. Some browsers block flash, since it so often used in ads. And when it actually is viewable, users often get an upgrade message, delaying getting to the site or content.
- Flash content is not searchable. Most sites depend on search to attract viewers and many depend on it for income. Flash is in essence a movie. Just like you can't search a YouTube video for a word that someone says in the video, you can't practically search Flash. And regular HTML sites with Flash content rank low in searches.
- Flash, like any movie, is slow loading. Yet a further inconvenience.
- Flash is an extra expense. You have to build an HTML companion site to make search work. And those who find it through search won't see your Flash version anyway. HTML can be modified in a text editor. The entire Flash site need to be redone just to change one letter.
- Flash is designed for a mouse. One of Steve Jobs contentions against implementing Flash on the iPad is that a mobile device doesn't have a mouse. As this is something Adobe has never addressed as the device market has become more mobile, this is the deal stopper.
In short, it's not just that Flash isn't a web standard, it's that Flash was set up to never be a web standard. As another Adobe file format designed to protect content, it's also designed to protect itself, as a read-only format. The average user can't afford to create Flash files due to Adobe's extravagant software costs.
Everything is stacked against Flash's success as anything more than a specialty video format for the desktop. Adobe took a gamble with PDF and won. They took a gamble with Flash and appear to be losing. Ironically, with Adobe taking out anti-Apple ads, a large part of PDF's success is that OSX adopting it as standard export and printing format.
And another interesting fact: Apple's QuickTime format is actually capable of creating movies that work like websites, but Apple must have decided somewhere along the way that since QuickTime was unlikely to be a web standard, it wasn't worth the gamble.
Next: Demo HTML 5 on your iPad.
iPad User Guide for iBooks
Apple has made the iPad manual available for free through the iBooks Store. This freebie is literally a nice addition to your library.
iPad keyboard secrets.
The iPad keyboard is a clever little thing. It can make typing on your iPad a surprisingly smooth experience once you get the hang.
Turn to Landscape.
Once you get used to the fact that turning your iPad is part of its function, it ceases to become an annoyance. Most apps are designed so that you edit in Portrait mode and enter text in Landscape mode. When you turn to Landscape both the text and keyboard get bigger making typing allot easier. The keys are actually just a hair smaller than on a real Mac keyboard.
Have faith.
The keyboard corrects itself. Just type and don't worry about your mistakes. When you're finished, go back and you'll be surprised at how many have already been corrected for you.
What would you autosuggest?
With many words you'll get an Autosuggest popup with an x beside it. Tapping the spacebar accepts the suggestion. Tapping the x gets rid of it.
Autopunctuate.
Typing a double space after a word will insert a period, add a space and cap the first letter of the next sentence. You can turn off Auto Cap in Settings>General>Keyboard. Also, for most words that require an apostrophe, just type without it and iPad inserts it. We're doesn't work. If you want its, you'll have to tap the x on the popup.
A key of many characters.
When you hold down certain keys you'll get more options. If you want an é, just hold down the e key and tap it in the pop up. You'll find extras logically hiding under these keys: e y u i o a s l z x c n ! , . 0 - $ & @ ? ! % ' "
Note that the " key hides smart quotes and the - key hides an emdash.
Slide into numbers.
To quickly add a digit, hold the Shift key and slide up. The numbers keyboard appears and disappears when you release from your choice.
Unlocking Caps Lock.
In Settings>Keyboard>General you can enable Caps Lock. Once enabled, double tap the Shift key to turn it on and single tap to turn it off.
Scratch that.
The Delete key will backspace through single characters if you hold it. Keep holding and it will start deleting whole words. Careful, it get vicious. To quickly delete a single word, double tap on it and hit the delete key. To delete a whole paragraph, triple or quadruple tap on a word in the paragraph and hit the delete key. There are Undo and Redo keys on the second and third keyboards.
Netcuts.
In Safari and Mail holding the period key will give you .com and other options. Safari doesn't need a whole address in the URL bar. apple.com gets you there. apple will get you there too, since safari tries dot com as the first option.
It learns your style.
The keyboard actually learns how you type. After you've typed a word that's not in the Autosuggest list three times, it's added. When you've dismissed a word three times, it's removed. The more you use a word, the more likely it becomes an Autosuggest choice.You can seed your Autosuggest list by adding the words to the note field of any contact since Autosuggest uses Contacts as one of its databases. If you really screwed up the database the first few days you had your iPad you can reset it at Home>Settings>General>Reset>Reset Keyboard Dictionary.
Spellcheck.
Most apps have Spellcheck enabled. Red dots under a word means iPad questions it. Tap the word and you get suggestions. Even if the word is spelled correctly but not what you meant, it can change the word for you. Double tap a word and choose Replacement. You'll get a popup with suggestions.
Give your writing some definition.
iPad has the same sensible built-in dictionary that Mac does. Currently Pages is the only app that uses it. In Pages, double tap on a word, choose More, and choose Dictionary.
Go international. Or go crazy.
In Setttings>General>Keyboard you can enable the international keyboards. The Chinese keyboard even allows you to handwrite ideograms. One of nice features of a virtual keyboard is that iPad can easily do alternative keyboards, like Dvorak.
The option of no options.
Autocap, autosentence, autocorrect are all able to be disabled in Settings>General>Keyboard
These are the tricks I have discovered. If I find more I'll update this post.
Review: Brenthaven Switch Satchel
This appears to be the first satchel custom made for the iPad. The Switch is a little larger than you'd expect. It's seriously padded with a stiff foam for the best protection I've seen in a carrying case for iPad. The main compartment is oversized and zips shut. Since many of us have our iPad in a bumper shell, this makes slipping it in and out of the satchel easy.
There's plenty of storage space. The front has a zippered accessory pocket and a large open pocket with two pen slots, an iPhone slot and a key hook. There's also a velcro-sealed back pocket that makes a good newspaper, magazine or paperback holder. This bag can hold almost as many extras as a standard laptop bag.
The Switch gets its name from patented flap that's switchable to make it look like you can afford two cases. The flap closes with magnets, but they're nowhere as secure as Velcro, snaps or latches. The strap isn't padded, but is wide and comfortable. There's also an unobtrusive handle.
If you're looking for a bag to protect your iPad through the daily grid, this is rugged and well-built. Brenthaven gives their bags a lifetime guarantee, so your satchel will last for many iPads to come.
iPhone/iPad app confusion.
There are three types of apps that work on the iPad: iPad apps, iPhone apps and iPhone/iPad apps. They're all available exclusively at the App Store. So what's the difference? For the most part all these apps run fine. It's in the graphic interface where things get confusing.
iPad apps.
These are apps that have been written or modified exclusively for the iPad and won't run on an iPhone. They take full advantage of the iPad's larger screen interface. Almost all switch orientation when you turn the screen. Many apps for iPhone now have iPad versions that often offer new features. If you already own the iPhone version you'll still have to buy the iPad version. They will not install on the iPhone.
iPhone apps.
These are standard iPhone apps that run on your iPad. They can't really take advantage of the more precise iPad screen control. You have the choice of running them at native resolution or 2x, where every pixel is magnified by 4.
If you already own these apps, you don't have to buy them again. Just install them through the App Store or iTunes. When you download them through the app store it will appear you're buying them, but later you get a box telling you they're free. Note that the apps maintain separate data on the different devices, so can't usually sync the same data to both and iPad and an iPhone.
iPhone/iPad apps.
These have two interfaces, one for the iPhone and one for the iPad. You can run them on both your iPhone and iPad at the same time. Note that the apps maintain separate data on the different devices. If you have already paid for the iPhone version and it's updated to an iPhone/iPad version, mostly likely you won't have to buy it again. Just install it on your iPad.
These apps are noted by a plus sign in the corner of the price tag.
Caveat empty.
Unfortunately iPhone apps don't all work with iPad. They're supposed to, but that's not the case. I have noticed this with Tanzaku, Hindenberg and iPodcastudio. They have some severe issues with graphics. Tanzaku is an app that captures images of your written words and assembles them into a note. The function is fine, but the images are illegible. Both Hindenberg and iPodcastudio have issues displaying the visual audio timeline, making their core functions of audio editing difficult. iPodcastudio even loses some buttons making function impossible.
Most apps do work fine. It's just worth noting that there might be some frustration when you add some of your current iPhone apps to your iPad.
Review: LiteNotes is as simple as it gets.
While the native Notes app on your iPad is simple, there are a lot of complaints about the annoying yellow paper background and the Felt Marker Font. They were tolerable for the iPhone where they were readable on the small screen. But the bigger screen of the iPad reveals their true cheesiness.
Hello Helvetica.
LiteNotes uses Helvetica, the most popular print font in the world. Just watch the movie Helvetica and you'll realize its the font we live by and probably the most readable sans serif font. Arial, the most common web font, is a bastardization of Helvetica. LiteNotes also uses a plain white background that's easy on the eyes.
Zoom makes room.
LiteNotes offers you infinite font sizes for viewing. Just pinch the screen and you can shrink or enlarge as big as you want. But the cool feature is that the text is reformatted to fit the width of the screen so there's no annoying sideways scrolling. I find it nice to enlarge for writing and to shrink it for faster navigation.
Flip your notes.
In addition to the standard list and search functions for your notes, LitesNotes can flip through them. Swipe right right to go back a note. Swipe left to create a new one. This is especially handy in landscape more where the menu doesn't show.
It's okay it's only text.
Blessing or curse, there's no formatting. Notes can't change fonts or add colors on the iPhone either, but can in Mac Mail. Occasionally this formatting seems to get in the way when pasting to Pages and certainly can wind up confusing to look at. With LiteNotes, what you see is what you paste. LiteNotes at the moment offers no sync, but you can email your notes.
I find LiteNotes a nice little repository for text with full screen editing. The zoom feature makes it easy to highlight tiny or massive amounts of text. This one is a nice addition to your dock.
To protect and serve.
So. Do you protect your iPad or not? Here are some thoughts to consider:
- You're more likely to drop it than you are a laptop. We seem to hold laptops firmly when transporting. The iPad we don't. And we're more likely to be using an iPad as we walk. If a laptop falls, there's usually a plastic shell to protect the innards and screen. With the iPad there's a good chance you'll crack the glass or dent the aluminum. The iPad also is thin enough and slick enough (with the aluminum back) that it can slide out of your hands easier.
- it's heavier than an iPhone. The lighter weight of an iPhone allows it to be dropped and not seriously damaged. Were more likely to treat an iPad with the carelessness of an iPhone than we are a laptop. But the extra heft of the iPad almost guarantees damage if it falls.
- A silicone back is worth it. A screen protector is not. Even a thin silicone back offers protection from dents and scratches in a fall. Screen protectors are needed when you keep an iPhone bare in your pocket. You'll never find a pocket that big for your iPad. You'll probably carry it is a padded case intended for a laptop.
But if you're really paranoid you might go for the Otter Defender pictured above.
Review: Penultimate, jot this one down
For anyone who communicates visually, there's an app for that. By communicating visually, I mean sketching out a simple illustration to get an idea across. Penultimate is a no-nonsense app that does that elegantly well.
Ink with emphasis.
It's surprising that so few drawing apps take advantage of the ipad screen to control emphasis. Most offer a primitive, consistent-width line that gets very clunky when you move fast. Penultimate has no width setting. And doesn't need one. Just like a real marker on paper, draw slowly and the ink absorbs. Draw more quickly and the line gets thinner. There are no jagged curves, just a nice smooth stroke. It mimics ink so well that there are nice round blots at the beginning and end of each stroke. There are no colors. And that's fine. They'd just get in the way of quick expression.
Penultimate gets you to a blank page fast. If you've every tried to jot down a phone number with a painting app, you find you have to wait for the app to open, wait for a file to open, choose a pen and...you get the point. It's not quick or very convenient. In Penultimate you're quickly taken to your last entry. Tap the page number and start jotting.
Org and export.
You get an infinite number of notebooks with an infinite number of pages to help you organize your scrawls. This is how you'd organize real paper notebooks, so it feels natural. Tap the page number to go to the next page or the opposite corner to go back. In the Notebooks screen you can tap the cover of the notebook to close it for less distraction.
When you export a page, it's popped into an email as a PNG file. This allows you to quickly jot down an idea and send it off. When you export a whole notebook, it's saved as a PDF. The paper background is there for drawing reference and is not exported so you get clean black on white.
There's nothing fancy here. I see people whining on the App Store, wanting to make this a complex paint app. They don't get it. It's a pen and a notebook. And that's all it needs to be.
Don't buy an iPad.
"Do I need an iPad?" is not a good conversation starter. It's someone itching to buy one and use you as the excuse for spending up to $1,000
What it isn't.
Let's get it straight that an iPad is not a computer. In essence it's an iPod Touch with with a bigger screen. That's all. So really it's an extension of your computer. True, it can do most of the daily functions that you use your computer for: browsing, email, basic word processing, watching videos, listening to music, etc. The large screen just makes it a lot less pocketable and a lot more functional that the Touch. But the iPad can't function alone. Periodically you need to link up with your desktop and iTunes.
Can you justify buying one?
So could an iPad be considered at all practical? Sure and even more so I think the iPad will actually change the way we use computers. Here's what I mean: In a household of 4 people, you probably have 3-5 computers currently. Give everybody a $500 iPad to use as a pseudo laptop and you really only need 1-2 computers with multiple accounts. The iPad is more portable than, lighter than and longer running than a laptop. And as an portable entertainment device, nothing compares to the iPad.
I'm going overboard on using my iPad to try and do as much of what I used to need a laptop for. For instance, this blog entry is being made on my iPad. I have been using Pages and the on-screen keyboard for almost all of my work documents. The touch screen is great. I don't miss the keyboard or mouse at all. This is where computing is headed. But you still don't need an iPad.
So go ahead and get one.