Category → iPad
Ferrari 250GT Short Wheel Base – iPad Panting
A painting of my favourite ever road car, the Ferrari 250GT SWB created using ‘Art Rage’ to create outline and ‘Brushes’ to paint. Both very good iPad Apps in my collection!
Interactive digital magazines: the future of print?
Adobe has announced that it will be selling it’s newly developed platform for creating interactive digital media, Adobe Digital Viewer.
The system works with similar tools to InDesign CS5, by which I assume they mean one can export the core content and layout from InDesign to add interactivity in the Digital Viewer software.
A fantastic example of what can be achieved when it comes to interactivity is the launch edition of ‘Wired’ magazine for the iPad. The Adobe software was actually developed FOR and in conjunction with Wired’s publishers for this very edition.
Wired Digital is a very rich experience, with touch gestures to navigate the ‘pages’ – including articles with dynamic areas of changing content, embedded movie clips, audio and interactive advertising.
For example there is music playing in the background of an article about a music artist so you can listen to his latest tune whilst reading the article.
Product review articles can behave more like a mini website so that instead of scrolling through many pages of text, you simply click the picture of the next product you want to read about and the text changes on the same page without needing to scroll or move your field of view.
Adverts can get more information across in the same amount of space without overwhelming the area with too much text at once by having interactive ‘layers’ of content, revealed by a tap.
Another example of a great advert in ‘Wired’ is one in which you can ‘build’ a Lego car by swiping your finger sideways slowly. The stop frame animation cycles through the stages of the Lego being constructed!
Products can have 360º spinable photos, so users can ‘look around’ the product… not exactly a replacement for seeing something in the flesh, but a lot more engaging than a fixed view photograph.
From Adobe’s Press Release:-
“Readers are able to experience the design fidelity of a print magazine, with the dynamic interactivity of digital media.”
See the full Adobe Press Release here: http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201006/060110AdobeDigitalViewer.html
Personally I really do see this taking off, with one huge caveat… development cost.
The Wired magazine took 1 year for the designers to create. Admittedly this was largely due to the fact that it was all new and software was being co-developed to support and enable this way of doing things but even so, with this rich level of content its not going to be quick to get the maximum quality possible.
I think for smaller publications if the sights are set to a reasonable level there is no reason why this couldn’t work well though, but to do a whole 100 page magazine would be an immense amount of time and work, so it would be hard to make all of the content current at time of publication.
The other downside are the filesizes of the finished articles. The Wired edition weighs in at around 500mb which took a while to download and certainly cannot be obtained through 3G. It’s not a massive problem because they will tend to be downloaded through a home internet connection (either directly on the device or via a desktop/laptop computer) and synched to the iPad, but it might put some people with limited storage space off, and becomes something you won’t ‘keep’ forever.
So, is this the future of media? It has pros and cons (doesn’t everything) but I think and hope that we are going to see more and more of this exciting content emerging. Save the trees!!
iPad for business
I’ve been setting up and experimenting with the iPad over the bank holiday weekend and wanted to write about my thoughts on how I see it can be used for business. I’ve found a number of apps already that look most useful, and have set up some systems which work really well… so here we go!
Email
Same setup as the iPhone but with a much more usable interface. Typing is extremely fast and easy, and navigating through lots of email much simpler with the larger screen. The iPhone is great but given the choice, things are going to be so much more usable with the iPad!
Calendar
This has worked out much better than I expected it to. Using Google Calendar to synch between my main Outlook calendar, the iPad and the iPhone works seamlessly. I now have full and instant 3 way synching between all three locations/devices and it works like a charm. For the desktop synch you need to install Google Active Synch, which is a free download for PC and a breeze to install and setup. You can then add a new ‘Exchange’ account on the iPad and iPhone which allows the link to Google’s online calendar. A side bonus of this setup is that my calendar is also now accessible online (privately) so I can even access my data if for whatever reason I’m without any of my devices… never going to happen but good to know it’s there!
Web browsing
I’ve been trying out a couple of the 3rd party web browsers available on the app store, and settled on iCab Browser, which has now taken the place of Safari on my main toolbar. It works just like a desktop browser with tabs and a really slick bookmark system. It really does blow Apple’s own browser out of the water in terms of functionality and I highly recommend it to any iPad (or iPhone for that matter) users. Makes the whole experience of browsing much more enjoyable and faster to work with. Seeing as that is what you will be doing most of the time on the iPad it’s pretty much an essential purchase!
Some advanced features in iCab are that it allows you to download files and then transfer them to the PC using iTunes. It has auto form completion, and it can emulate a desktop browser, so if some sites are not behaving when they detect you are on a mobile browser you can fool them into thinking you are on Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer. This is just scratching the surface of what it can do (there isn’t enough room to go through it all here) and is undoubtedly going to be the most used app I have purchased.
Photos
The photo gallery system is very polished. I have bought the iPad Camera Connection Kit so that I can transfer images directly from USB connections on cameras with the leads, or from an SDHC card, as well as importing from the PC via iTunes, giving lots of flexibility to show images, ideas, graphics and web mockups to clients. The zoom and pan is a lot smoother than on iPhone, and the gallery (read folders) can be navigated in a really intuitive, fun way with your fingers.
Typing
Typing on the iPad was the most pleasant surprise. I was expecting to have to get the Bluetooth keyboard from Apple to do any serious typing but it’s really not necessary. This is the largest article I have written on iPad so far and it’s just as fast, if not faster than writing on my PC! Really enjoying it!! The auto-completion of words works really well mostly and the size of the keys is perfect. There’s just something really nice and relaxing about tapping glass and not having to actually ‘press’ keys down.
Word processing
Apple’s ‘Pages’ app is very slick. You can tell that they have really fine tuned it for touch controls. It’s got some useful templates that can be used as starting points, and seems very flexible in terms of layout… better than Word anyway. I’ve not used it for anything serious yet so will post a separate article with more detail on Pages once I get more experience with it. The only downside is that files can only be exported in Pages for Mac format, or PDF files, so it’s not natively compatible with Word doc format. As nice as it is to use, this fact alone could unfortunately stop me from using it long-term. However we never know, they could update it in the future to handle .doc and .docx if they don’t want to lose out in the business market!
Spreadsheets
Another great app is Apple’s ‘Numbers’ spreadsheet. Beautiful interface and awesome functionality on the touch screen, I have already put this into use as my work log / client timesheet. The same problem exists when it comes to Microsoft compatibility. You can only export as Numbers or PDF format so it’s no good for collaborating on the same files between this and Office which is a massive shame.
GoodReader
A very nice file manager app that allows you to have a unified local and/or remote file system. It can pull in any file type for storage locally and viewing directly in the iPad, and then ‘send’ files to other apps you have installed for editing those files if they are editable. It also links directly to other cloud services, basically increasing the storage space of the iPad infinitely.
Dropbox.com
Super useful, and FREE cloud file storage service. Works seamlessly between iPad, iPhone and multiple PC’s (or Macs) to share files and folders between any locations you might need them in. You can get 2.3Gb space free, and upgrade for more space if you need it for reasonable monthly costs. For me 2.3Gb is more than enough at this stage and I’m really impressed with the user friendliness of Dropbox so this gets big thumbs up from me!
Whitenote
A virtual notepad, allowing freeform text entry, simple drawing, and insertion of audio clips, images and links over multiple pages. I think this is going to be ideal for note taking at meetings – especially in conjunction with a stylus (which I haven’t got YET).
Penultimate
I need to do some field testing between this and Whitenote to see which works best for my needs. Penultimate is purely a handwriting type of notepad, designed to work with a stylus, so I’m not getting the best out of it yet… but the presentation of the software seems nicer with a ‘project book’ entry page showing a thumbnail image of each created notepad and a much cleaner/simpler interface. Both work really well for different needs so I will probably end up using both.
Twitterific
There are a lot of Twitter clients out there but the best for my needs has been Twitterific. The main reason I like this one (as opposed to other apps like the official Twitter app which is free, or tweetdeck, or even using the actual website) is that it allows me to manage my 3 Twitter accounts easily through one interface. I found using any other system that I was constantly selecting to follow people in the wrong account which was really annoying!
1 Password
A secure repository for any sensitive information. I have all my website login details and FTP server settings stored safely and easily searchable within this app now. It also synchs up a copy to my iPhone and desktop if I want. Slick interface and an active developer should see more streamlining of this app occur in the near future.
Gusto
This app is very useful for me, allowing me to download my clients websites locally to show them at meetings offline if there is no WiFi or 3G access available. Also connects directly through FTP so I can make changes to the HTML and CSS and re-upload to make emergency fixes and updates ‘on the road’ if the need arises. It has a really nice user interface and seems to work very efficiently so far in the tests I have done.
Teamviewer & remote desktop access
Unfortunately Teamviewer haven’t yet released their iPad version but the iPhone version still works acceptably… Just has some overly large toolbars and mouse pointer! It’s still mighty useful to access your workstation via the iPad and works well for most tasks. You cannot click and drag, so can’t move emails to folders in that way, or transfer files from one panel to the other in FTP programs, but there are usually other ways of achieving this without dragging. I also have iTeleport, which is a universal app (buy once, works on all iDevices) but have not tried it yet as it’s a bit more of a fiddle to set up on the workstations.
Autodesk Sketchboook Pro
This is a fantastic app! Has a very powerful set of tools to create natural looking art and drawings… Some of the stuff people have created with this are truly incredible! I’m nowhere near that skill level but it’s great for painting on… really good fun… and I cannot wait to try it with a stylus.
Multitasking
As much as I thought it would be, I don’t actually see this as a big draw back because the apps all load so quickly anyway. Even so, it’s coming with OS 4, so we’ll see what difference it makes to usability then I guess!
In summary…
I’m exceptionally pleased with the potential of the iPad for DesignerMark! It has already changed my workflow for the better but as with all hardware, it’s only as good as the software written for it so I really can’t wait to see what all the clever developers around the world have up their sleeves!
One App I am keenly awaiting is QuickOffice for iPad. I have been happy using their iPhone version and think it is the best Microsoft Office option so far (best interface and connectivity), so I’m looking forward to what they can do with the iPad. There are currently a couple of apps on the store that can handle Office format documents (Office 2HD and Docs 2 Go) but I don’t want to commit to those until I see QuickOffice’s offering.
I will be adding further posts on this subject as I get some real hands-on experience and as other killer apps become available, but I must say for a launch device, the iPad has far exceeded my expectations so far.
The iPad is inbound
Finally the UK pre-orders for Apple’s new iPad opened today – and not one to miss out on a new gadget (for testing websites of course) I made my pre-order this morning!
I’ve been wrestling with the devil inside me as to whether I really should get one but the more I read about it the more I wanted one. I’m not really an Apple Fanboy (as you are probably suspecting at this point! I Use PC’s for main main work) but their kit is so nice and I love the user interfaces they create.
After careful deliberation with myself, I decided to go for the top of the range version, with 64Gb storage, WiFi and 3G networking. I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks that I woudn’t really need 3G. Orange were the first to release their pricing plans for 3G and it seemed way too much for a monthly amount that I would probably never use up. But today O2 released their costs and I think it is a fair price at £10 per month for 1Gb allowance. That’s only £120 per year so decided it was probably worth the £100 premium for the 3G version so as to get the most use out of the iPad, and to not regret not having 3G at some point in the near future! It will make looking at websites at clients premises much more flexible, as not everyone will have WiFi or want to give me their passwords.
So, what am I going to use it for you ask?
Some of the main things I think it will be ideal for are:-
- Writing these blogs (and Twitterings) from the comfort of ANYWHERE… will be a much more relaxed way of getting my thoughts out to the world and I will be encouraged to do it more frequently whenever I think of anything good to write about.
- Presenting website prototypes and browsing for information on-site at meetings with clients, even if they don’t have internet access (not as unlikely as it sounds with a client only last week wanting a website for their B&B but being an older couple they didn’t even have a computer, let alone WiFi!) – this will be much more usable and accessible than lugging a laptop and power supply around.
- A notepad for making notes at meetings… with the light form-factor and long battery life this will again be much more convenient than a laptop.
- File sharing with my Google Docs account… although I’m hoping some good Apps will come out that are even better for productivity.
- E-Mail on the go… I can actually reply and work from this, as the iPhone is not really suited to writing any sort of detailed replies.
- Remote Desktop Access to my workstation and server for grabbing files whilst on-site.
- A repository for my digital photos.
- A player for Podcasts and some music
- Maybe some games!
Sure, it’s a gimmick, don’t get me wrong. And it’s nothing I can’t do with other peripherals and hardware I already have, but I fell for it’s charms and really look forward to it’s arrival now!
I will post with my initial thoughts once I have got my head around it and had an exploration!
I’m sure other work tasks that you can’t do without will emerge!
