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Share Anytime is a clever collaborative whiteboard app for iPad
There are a lot of whiteboard- and document-sharing solutions on both the Mac and iOS platforms. MetaMoji Corporation is debuting Share Anytime, a free app that allows teams to see documents, drawings and photos in real time and mark them up interactively. MetaMoji also offers Note Anytime, which has been a popular and highly rated PDF-markup tool. A user can start, or in Share Anytime lingo, be chairman of a meeting, and invite others to watch or participate. There are annotation tools, and you can add symbols from a large library of icons or draw in freehand using several pen options. Photos can be imported from your iPad, then scaled and moved. All this activity is seen in real time by other participants. I tried the app with a friend about 600 miles away. He was on a first-generation iPad; I was on an iPad 3. Everything worked fine, and neither of us had to consult the help files. When he imported an image, it popped up on my iPad. I could underline it, add a text comment or move it, and he would see the changes almost instantly. There is also a chat function so people can type comments in real time. I also tried a sample session that was running in Barcelona. Again, updates were very quick, so the technology in the app is up to the task of real-time collaboration. The app also allows you to import documents from services like Google Drive, Dropbox and Evernote. It should be noted that imported documents become PDFs, so they can't be edited. They can be marked up, and blank pages can be added with text or diagrams as if the PDF was a graphic -- which, in reality, it is. There are some negatives. One, there are two signups required to get the app working. The first is with Share Anytime, while the second is with a service called Digital Cabinet that activates the real-time editing. While using the basic features is easy, there are some rather arcane icons that aren't really clear until you check the help file. Also, there is no voice-over-IP support. Everyone will need to be on the phone to speak, which is pretty much the best way to interact. I don't think the chat window would be truly effective. Only the iPad is supported now, but other platforms are on the way. While the app is free and quite full-featured, there is a paid US$1.99 a month version that adds handwriting recognition in 13 languages and converts handwritten text to typed text. It also extends the number of meetings you can create. The free version allows you to attend an unlimited number of meetings and host up to ten meetings, or 1GB of data transfer, whichever comes first. Share Anytime is clever, and works as advertised. The free version should be great for lightweight collaboration with smaller document sizes. The paid version is very reasonably priced compared to a lot of the better-known collaboration options. I think the app can be useful in project management, distance learning and even by photographers who want to share and comment on their work. Share Anytime works on any iPad running iOS 5 or greater.
Daily iPhone App: PhotoPresenter gets your iOS photos on the big screen
PhotoPresenter from Boinx Software is a new US$0.99 app that lets you display your photos from an iOS device to a big screen via a cable or using AirPlay to an AppleTV. At first glance, this seems a silly expenditure, since you can use a cable or AirPlay to do that now, but PhotoPresenter has one very compelling feature in that you can display the photos in any order, rather than having to create a slideshow in advance. When you tap on any photo on your iPhone or iPad, it's displayed until you tap on another one. They can be in the order you choose. While your display device shows your photo full screen, you see all your photo libraries and can move between them while your last photo stays on display for your audience. I can see this being very handy for on-the-fly presentations. If you are using AirPlay you want to be in the mirroring mode. Even if you don't do presentations, the app is great for impromptu photo sharing. You probably won't want everything on your camera roll on the big screen, so you can pick and choose without anxiety. I tried the app on both an iPad and my iPhone. The app ran fine under iOS 6 and iOS 7 beta. One thing to note: The instructions tell you how to invoke AirPlay on iOS 6, but iOS 7 does it differently using the new control center. If you don't know that, and if the instructions aren't updated, you may be stuck waiting for your photos to appear. Other than that, PhotoPresenter is a very good idea at a very low price. I'm going to find a lot of uses for it, and you may too. Boinx has a lot of experience at dealing with photo apps such as FotoMagico 4 and TV production software like BoinxTV. PhotoPresenter requires iOS 6 or later, is universal and is optimized for the iPhone 5.
Lenovo outs Enterprise App Shop for business-oriented Android folks
We'd previously seen Lenovo work its app game by handing out dev classes to high schoolers, and now it's got some application bits for the grown-ups. Earlier today, the Chinese manufacturer introduced its Enterprise App Shop, which is said to run on Android slates that are sporting Honeycomb or any later version of the OS. Lenovo's also stuffed an "App Shop Manager" feature in the biz-oriented market, allowing companies to build a mini app store where they can add and control their own applications. The ThinkPad maker says the Enterprise App Store Shop's simplicity will help by "eliminating factory resets and streamlining app installation," while being "very intuitive and easy to use." We'll have to wait and see if that's indeed the case.
3LM resurfaces, still wants to make Android secure enough for the IT guys
Remember when Motorola bought 3LM, a startup dedicated to offering enterprise-class device management to Android users? After eight months of silence, there's finally some news about the company and its handset-agnostic solutions. It's called, erm, 3LM and you (yes, you) can begin the scintillating process of installing it on your servers and company-issued smartphones later this week. Administrators will get the power to encrypt data and removable storage on Android devices like the Motorola ET1, remotely install / uninstall / blacklist applications, connect to the devices over VPN and behave like the killjoys we all know and love admins to be. There's no word on how much this shebang will cost, but you'll find most of the other important facts in the press release, tucked after the break.
What's on your iPhone, Steve Sande?
What's on your iPhone? is a new TUAW series that we'll run occasionally so you can see what the bloggers at your favorite Apple site are running on their pocket devices. This was suggested by one of our readers, who wanted to know just what kind of stuff we had on our iPhones. Since we're a group of individuals who all think a bit differently, it makes a lot of sense to have each of the bloggers in turn write up a short blurb on their favorite apps. In this post I'll list those apps that deserve special attention, but to see all of the apps that I currently have on my iPhone 3GS, you'll need to take a look at the gallery at the end of the post. To start with, you'll find that I have a lot of camera apps. In nearly three years, I've used my iPhones to take literally thousands of pictures. I love the look of most of the photos, and it's even more fun to run them through a filter or two to add some pizazz to the pics. I currently have the default iPhone Camera and Photos apps, but have added Best Camera, Zoom Lens, Pano, Color Splash, Project 365, Lo-Mob, Self Image, ReelDirector (for video), FocalLab, CinemaFX, iTimeLapse, iCamcorder (for video), and CameraForiPad to my 3GS.
