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Tag: iOS

  • Multiple email addresses with one Apple ID

    Apple IDs, the center of identification in the Apple universe, have the capability to attach multiple email addresses. By signing into appleid.apple.com you can verify additional email addresses. Once added you can use them with several Apple services, most notably, iMessages. Others can iMessage you with any of the verified email addresses.

  • How to record touches and gestures for iOS screencasts

    Tonight I was playing around with Assistive Touch on my iPhone. In the Accessibility Settings, Assistive Touch places a “button” on the screen. This button gives the user access to certain capabilities, such as the ability to push a virtual home button. Playing around tonight I went into the Favorites area. This lets you record a gesture, with which you can play by pressing a button in this Favorites area.

    So in my playing around, I created my first gesture, which was just a tap. Once I added this saved gesture as a favorite I turned it on. Lo and behold, I had a blue circle on screen, which I could move around and when I released it showed tap. I then realized that one could turn this on when recording iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch screencasts and the taps would show up.

    To get started:

    Open up Settings, tap General and on the left, select Accessibility.

    Accessibility

    Under Physical and Motor, tab Assistive Touch.

    Assistive Touch

    Turn on Assistive Touch and then tab Create a new Gesture…. To create the touch gesture, just tap. To save the gesture, tap Save in the upper right corner. Name it Touch.

    Create New Gesture

    Save Gesture

    Now launch the app you want to record, tap the assistive touch button, select favorites and your newly created gesture, Touch. A blue circle will follow your figure around the screen, showing a tap when you release your finger.

    Unfortunately, no other gestures work other than the current one selected. You also probably will want to create some sliding gestures, which would allow you to show a slide in the screencast. If you are switching gestures, you will probably want to cut out the selection of the gesture in your favorite movie editing application.

  • Take control of your notifications

    Interruptions are deadly. Well, maybe that’s a little bit of exaggeration. But even three second interruptions can cause problems. I’ve decided to take back the notifications on my phone.

    First stop was the phone ringer. Apple doesn’t have a silent ringtone on the iPhone, so I had to search. In my searching I came across the article iPhone tip: Use a Silent Ringtone to Screen Calls in Your Sleep. It not only contained the silent ringtone but also directions on using it. My default ringtone is silence, and a different ringtone is set for those people for which my phone should always right.

    Next up was text alerts. The iPhone has a silent text alert, so that part was easier than the ringtone. Then I also went in and added a tone for just a few people.

    Finally, I went into Settings -> Notifications and turned off the sound notifications for most of my applications.

    Now I have a nice, mostly silent phone which doesn’t interrupt me.

  • Pythonista, programming on your iPhone and iPad

    Let me show you something that will make you feel young as when the world was new. — Dr. Carol Marcus

    I feel like a teenager again while playing around with Pythonista (Universal, $6.99), an app for iOS allows you to program in python directly on the device. It reminds me a lot about when I was learning to program in BASIC on my Atari 800XL (my favorite computer ever, although my iPod Touch is a close second). With Pythonista, I can finally write little apps to make my day easier. A lot nicer than going to the App store, downloading a bunch of free apps, all which have obnoxious ads and don’t do quite what I want.

    My first script was written to automate my 365 project. A project that I am terrible at keeping up, but now my DOY script will make it easier when I post once a month. I always struggle with the text I add at the end of my description for the picture, where I calculate the day of the year:

    #365 (218/365)
    

    I’d end up having to go to a website to find out what the day of the year it was. Well, at least that’s what I did in the past. Now I have written the following script and created a shortcut to it:

    # We're going to need work with dates, access to the clipboard,
    # and to launch an app (you use the webbrowser to do that).
    import datetime
    import clipboard
    import webbrowser
    
    # Figure out the day of the year
    day_of_year = datetime.datetime.now().timetuple().tm_yday
    
    # Create out tag line
    clip = " #365 (" + str(day_of_year) + "/365)"
    
    # Put it in the clipboard
    clipboard.set(clip)
    
    # Open Camera+
    webbrowser.open('cameraplus://')
    

    Camera+ has a shoot and share mode, which is what I have set as the default. So now I click on the DOY icon, Pythonista does its thing and Camera+ opens up. I take the picture, type my witty caption, and paste the tagline. Very, very cool.

    Pythonista can also export your script as an XCode project, one that you can load into XCode and create an actual iOS app. I haven’t had the chance to try that out yet. A couple of negatives. Getting scripts into Pythonista can be a lesson in patience. Due to Apple’s limitations on loading code, you cannot simply load code from your Dropbox or other sources, you have to copy and paste. This also means that scripts on your iPhone are automatically synced to your iPad. There is a Dropbox workaround, but I haven’t had the chance to try it out yet. The other negative that I’ve found so far is that there isn’t a built in user interface library, so you’re limited to text or creating your own graphics for things like buttons.

    All in all, it’s well worth the price (especially since it’s universal!).

  • Drafts for iPhone and iPad is the app you never knew you needed

    On its surface, Drafts appears to be yet another note taking app for iOS. Once you dig into it, you begin to realize the power that it yields. After your start it (which is relatively quick even on my aging iPhone 4) you are greeted with a new note or your previous note.

    http://dl.ryancollins.org/blog/draftsnew-m.jpg

    Once you’ve finished typing your note is when the magic begins.

    Drafts has a bunch of built in actions, which allow you to process your note in various ways. The simplest actions do things like save your note to Evernote, or use your note as an email. You can also Tweet your note. I’ve found the Dropbox actions to be very powerful. You can apply templates to your note. For example, my blog posts while I’m working on them have a distinct format:

    Title: This is the title of the post
    Date: 2013-08-01 08:00:00
    Author: mr.rcollins
    Category: Software
    Tags: some,great,tags
    
    This is the body of the blog post
    

    To create a new post in Drafts, I start a new note:

    This is the title of the post
    Category: Software
    Tags: some,great,tags
    
    This is the body of the blog post
    

    When I am finished with the note, I use a Drafts Action to save to my drafts folder in Dropbox. The action names the file by the first line in the note, appending a .markdown extension. It then creates the rest of the formatting through the following template before saving it to Dropbox:

    Title: [[title]]
    Date: [[date|%F %T]]
    Author: mr.rcollins
    [[body]]
    

    http://dl.ryancollins.org/blog/draftssavedraft-m.jpg

    And now I have the blog post formatted correctly. I do have two complaints with the program. The first is that it uses it’s own sync service instead of Dropbox or iCloud. The second is more of a pet peeve, the app isn’t universal, so I ended up paying for the iPad and iPhone version.

    It’s now such an integral part of how I work that I put it in my dock, alone, not in a folder of apps. I use it to send tweets, create emails, start blog posts, and append to notes in Dropbox. The price ($2.99 for iPhone, $3.99 for iPad) was worth it to me.

  • Checking out Android

    As I prepare for my eTech 2011 presentation, An iPad, Kindle, and iPod
    Touch walked into a classroom…
    , I decided that it would be
    beneficial to plan on questions about Android, Android Tablets, and how
    they may work in schools. The Consumer Electronics Show was held this
    past week, and during it a bevy of manufacturers announced tablets, with
    almost all of them running Android.

    Android is an open source operating system created at Google based on
    Linux. Google allows distributes this OS free of charge to be used by
    manufacturers and cellular providers on mobile devices. It competes
    against other mobile operating systems such as Apple’s iOS (used on the
    iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch), Microsoft Windows Phone 7, RIM Blackberry
    OS, and HP’s WebOS.

    I purchased a Motorola Droid off of eBay and received it this past week.
    I’ve been playing around with it for the last couple of days, so this
    isn’t so much as a review as it is my first impressions.

    (more…)

  • Goodreader app now supports annotating PDFs

    The latest update to the best \$.99 I’ve ever spent on an all for my
    iPad just made the application even better. Goodreader now allows you to
    mark up PDFs, adding notes, highlighting text, or drawing. It can save
    the markup in the same file or make a copy for you, preserving the
    original.

    If you have \$1 and an iPad, this app is well worth it.