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iBook Lessons: Book Creator for iPad
iBook Lessons is a continuing series about e-book writing and publishing. You wouldn't think that the iPad makes a natural match to e-book content creation, would you? Red Jumper Studio thinks otherwise. Its US$4.99 app, Book Creator for iPad, enables you to build EPUB works directly from iOS. Aimed at light projects such as photo collections and kid-created stories, Book Creator provides a simple layout system to integrate text, pictures and sounds. I found the app relatively straightforward to use, although it would greatly benefit from presets. Libraries of header and body styles would make the tools so much easier to use, especially since this is more an expressive tool for kids and hobbyists than a tightly controlled design environment. I wish I had a Siri-ready iPad around to test with, as this app feels like a perfect match to dictation. Using a built-in iPad camera to snap pictures and then describing what I see using words feels naturally synchronous. As it was, Book Creator worked fine on my iPad 2. My favorite feature was e-book export. I was able to build my book and place it into my Dropbox folder, ready to share by email or read back on my Mac. The app also exported directly to iBooks. Although dedicated self-publishers are not the right target audience for this app, I'm sure it would be a great match for schools, crafters, photographers and others. Not every book needs to live on the iBookstore or Amazon. Here's another way to use e-publishing technology, but just for fun.
The Daily Roundup for 02.04.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Weekly Roundup for 01.28.2013
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 7 days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Daily Roundup for 02.01.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Daily Roundup for 01.31.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Daily Roundup for 01.30.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Watermarker offers image branding on OS X
Watermarker (OS X 10.7 and later, US$7.99) offers a functional way to apply image watermarks. For small batches of images without a lot of customization demands, this app probably does what you need it to. The features are basic: you add text, you add a logo, you save the new image. The app offers standard options like transparency control and color selection. There's also a button that inserts the © character for you. Importantly, you can save your choices as presets, so you're ready to re-use already designed watermarks for future projects. Anyone looking for advanced tweakage such as, for example, putting the text at the top or bottom centers may be disappointed (there are some placement options, however). Watermarker boils its task down to the bare bones. It does 90 percent of what most people need it to do and it does it in an interface that's easy to understand.
The Daily Roundup for 01.29.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
iBook Lessons: Advanced page flipping demo
iBook Lessons is a continuing series about ebook writing and publishing. Much as I love iBooks' beautiful page scrolling, there's always room for improvement. By studying the way people interact with real books -- browsing for information and adjusting pages while reading -- the developers of the "Smart E-Book Interface Prototype" have added a lot of clever into the ebook. A video demonstrating the interface follows. It presents some intriguing directions. The KAIST Institute of Information Technology Convergence, who produced this video, has an English-language summary page about their ongoing research. It's a really impressive video for R&D work. Hopefully this kind of advance will soon make its way into consumer e-readers. And, no matter what wiseacre YouTube commenters say, you probably shouldn't roll up your iPad and use it to swat any flies. Hat tip, Jeremy Tregunna
The Daily Roundup for 01.28.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
iOS 6.1 ready for download, improves iTunes Match, adds movie ticket purchsing via Siri and Fandango
iOS 6.1 has been a curious update. It offers a minor handful of API upgrades for developers but otherwise has been a way for Apple to tweak internals. First appearing November 1st, the beta has had occasional updates, most recently moving to the fifth beta last night before its final release to the public. Interestingly, the few API upgrades centered around Apple's troubled Maps API. In any case, it's been a heck of a long time coming, and it's good to see the release finally make it out to the public. Especially since a lot of devs were worried that the beta would expire before going gold. Other new features that are new to iOS 6.1: LTE support for more carriers, with a complete list of supported carriers at www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/. Purchase movie tickets through Fandango with Siri (US only). iTunes Match subscribers can now download individual songs from iCloud. New button to reset the Advertising Identifier. Full information is available at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 Check your iOS Settings app for over-the-air updates or request the upgrade from iTunes. (Many thanks to Erica Sadun for providing information about the API upgrades) Show full PR text CUPERTINO, California-January 28, 2013-Apple® today updated iOS to version 6.1, adding LTE capabilities to 36 additional iPhone® carriers and 23 additional iPad® carriers around the world, so even more iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad* with Retina® display users can experience ultrafast wireless performance** to browse, download and stream content at blazing fast speeds. To date, iOS users have uploaded over nine billion photos to Photo Stream, sent over 450 billion iMessages and received over four trillion notifications. "iOS 6 is the world's most advanced mobile operating system, and with nearly 300 million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices on iOS 6 in just five months, it may be the most popular new version of an OS in history," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "iOS 6.1 brings LTE support to more markets around the world, so even more users can enjoy ultrafast Safari browsing, FaceTime video calls, iCloud services, and iTunes and App Store downloads." iOS 6 features include Siri®, which supports more languages, easy access to sports scores, restaurant recommendations and movie listings; Maps with Apple-designed cartography, turn-by-turn navigation and Flyover view; Facebook integration for Contacts and Calendar, with the ability to post directly from Notification Center, Siri and Facebook-enabled apps; Shared Photo Streams via iCloud®; and Passbook®, the simplest way to get all your passes in one place. Additional updates in iOS 6.1 include the ability to use Siri to purchase movie tickets in the US through Fandango, and iTunes Match℠ subscribers can download individual songs to their iOS devices from iCloud. The revolutionary App Store℠ offers more than 800,000 apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch® users, with more than 300,000 native iPad apps. App Store customers have downloaded over 40 billion apps, and Apple has paid over seven billion dollars to its incredible developer community. Customers can choose from apps in 23 categories, including newspapers and magazines offered in Newsstand, games, business, news, sports, health & fitness and travel. Availability iOS 6.1 is available as a free software update today. iOS 6.1 is compatible with iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad (third and fourth generation), iPad mini, iPad 2 and iPod touch (fourth and fifth generation). Some features may not be available on all products. For more information please visit www.apple.com. *LTE is available on iPhone 5, iPad mini and fourth generation iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular models through select carriers. Network speeds are dependent on carrier networks, check with your carrier for details. **Information about LTE carriers can be found at www.apple.com/iphone/LTE andwww.apple.com/ipad/LTE.
The Weekly Roundup for 01.21.2013
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 7 days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Daily Roundup for 01.25.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Weekend poll: Why the long OS upgrade delays?
iOS 6.1. OS X 10.8.3. What do they have in common? They are Apple operating system updates that many expected to debut way earlier than now. So why the delay? Is Apple fixing engineering issues from previous teams? As Craig Federighi (at right) takes control over a joint OS X/iOS team, are new directions being explored? Is this extra time allowing code review and bug fixes? Or is something else at play? Could someone have exposed the engineers to water and/or bright lights? You tell us. Jump into this poll and then add your comments about the latest OS delays. %Poll-80327%
The Daily Roundup for 01.24.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Daily Roundup for 01.23.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
DevJuice: Preview your icons
Sharing icons by email and Dropbox never really captures the way each image will appear on-screen. That's why developer Michael Burford and his brother created a web page mock-up solution that automatically adds an iPhone background and styles the icons to match the way they display on-device. He built a PHP/CSS toolset that you can place on a web host to serve icon previews. The script detects your browsing platform, so the previews look right on both iPhones and iPads. You can download the tools from his web page. Make sure to stop by and read his full write-up for details about installing and using these.
The Daily Roundup for 01.22.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
EazyDraw: A hidden OS X gem of an app
We last covered EazyDraw back in 2006. Flash forward to 2013, and the age of Mountain Lion -- and this can-do app is still roaring. Selling for US$140 for a full license from the developer's website or $95 from the Mac App Store, EazyDraw is now shipping in version 5. In a world where customers complain about $2.99 apps being "overpriced," does this app have a place on your Mac? I'm happy to report that yes, it may indeed. You can think of EazyDraw as MacDraw on steroids. It offers a wide range of vector drawing tools, it supports layers, offers calibrated colors, supports SVG and PDF and more. For an interface that at first glance appears quite simple, it hides an enormous feature set. When I sat down to test the app, I kept finding hidden gem after hidden gem. Each tool I needed was there, was easy to use and offered fine detail tweaking. Each inspector appeared in conjunction with the task I was performing and fit the job. If you're looking for a highly featured drawing app, you should certainly consider EazyDraw. It's perfect for anyone building logos, creating web graphics and designing illustrations for books. In terms of flow charts, I think I'd still give the nod to Omnigraffle, but for any other kind of free-form geometry-based drawing, I feel comfortable recommending EazyDraw.
Heart Beat Rate Pro measures pulse with iPhone camera
Heart Beat Rate Pro (US$1.99) represents one of a new breed of iOS apps that measures your pulse using the iPhone's built-in camera. It works by holding your finger over the camera. With the built-in flash illuminated, the app counts your heart beats, automatically detecting your pulse. I tested the app on several subjects, simultaneously using a pulse oximeter reading for comparison. What I found was that for casual use, the app did a pretty good job, all things considered. There were, however, drawbacks compared to the pulseox. First, it took a lot longer to sync the signal. The fingertip unit could pick up a pulse in just a few seconds. The app took nearly a minute of synchronization and measurement. And, there were times when the app failed to sync, so couldn't measure the pulse at all. Second, the app was a lot less accurate moment-to-moment. Although the results were pretty good on average, the immediate measurements were sometimes off by a bit. The results improved over time, as the sync grew steadier. The values towards the end of each minute's trial were better than the ones at the start. For example, on one trial, I got a reading of the low 50s on a pulse that was actually in the 90s. It caught up by the end of the trial. Finally, I found that there's a bit of a trick on using the app. You need to have the subject hold the phone with one hand, placing his or her finger over the camera hole. Reversing this position provided insufficient coverage over the camera. In the end, this is a nice little app for runners and anyone else who does exercise. If you don't like standing with your finger over your wrist, counting while watching a second hand, it offers a workable alternative. For those who are really serious about self-monitoring, you might want to pick up a normal athlete's monitoring system or buy a pocket pulseox unit instead.
