SimpleNote

SimpleNote is probably my favorite app on the iPad. Sure, it's free, but that's not why I love it. It only allows you to make, and store, simple notes without any formatting (bold, italics, and the like). So why all the likey? It has always been a good app, but last week they released version 2 which adds important new and powerful features.

Syncronicity

The ultimate in smooth automatic syncing is the key to SimpleNote's beauty. If you are a Mac or Windows user you can find free (or low cost) software that "talks" to SimpleNote. So what? Currently I have all my notes automatically synced in 5 places: iPad, iPhone, Mac at office, Mac at home, and on the SimpleNote website. This automatic syncing, in and of itself, makes SimpleNote a thing of beauty. Visit the SimpleNote downloads page to learn more about other software programs that "play nice" with SimpleNote on a Mac, Windows, Palm, or Android systems.

Tags

Version 1 had no tags or folder system. Simply a long list of note titles. It wasn't impossible to find notes if you had a lot of them, but it was a bit of a struggle. With their new tag system it is super easy to categorize notes and subsequently find them for later viewing. Right now the tags only sync to SimpleNote on the web, iPad and iPhone. I imagine some of the outside developers will rework their software for Mac/Windows so that those software programs also recognize the SimpleNote tags. In the screenshot (above) it shows what it looks like when I've chosen the tag "multimedia": the result is I see only the 5 notes having that tag plus a small advert at the top.

Live Sharing

For educators this feature has mucho potential. If you activate sharing for a specific note then SimpleNote provides you with a web address where the sharing takes place. Email this web address with whomever you like. In real time multiple people can make changes to the "note" and the results, once again, are automatically synced across all your devices! When done with the "sharing session" then turn off the share option for that note. Why is this potentially important? There are likely many benefits including live online discussions between students, collaborative editing of text documents by a group, live updated class notes where the notetaking responsibility is distributed across several students in a class session, and many more options. Sharing may be the most important new feature in SimpleNote.

Create Web Pages

An alternative to sharing is to create a web page. This is somewhat akin to the sharing option in that SimpleNote will automatically give you a web page location where others can see a specific note. However, using this option others can not make changes to the text. On the other hand, you can continue to make changes to the note and the webpage will be automatically updated. Very nice.

Full Screen

This is a very nice option. In the lower right corner of your iPad/iPhone screen is a grey icon for viewing an individual note full screen. Tapping this icon hides the ad, the list of other notes using the same tag, and the top toolbar. Very nice for reading longer notes.

Summing Up

I'm sure there are other features of SimpleNote that I'm ignoring at the moment—but this app is certainly worth exploring on your own. You'll need to open a free SimpleNote account at their website. You'll also need to download the free SimpleNote apps for iPad and iPhone using the relevant App Store. The regular free version comes with some limitations: including ads which are shown on part of the SimpleNote screen.

For $5 you can remove ads. For $12 per year you can upgrade to their premium package which removes ads, offers 30 backup versions of notes, allows you to create notes by email, and allows you to create an RSS feed for your notes. I'm still on the fence about whether I'll upgrade to premium. My guess is I will, but I want to give the new free version 2 a month or so of usage before I make a final decision.

ScreenFlow 2

There are two main multimedia creation tools I use on my Mac: FotoMagico Pro and ScreenFlow. There are some overlaps between these two great programs. FotoMagico Pro is better at handling multimedia created out of lots of still images. You can also add audio and video, but the focus with FotoMagico is using still images. On the other hand, ScreenFlow is primarily a screen video recording program that has powerful editing abilities. If you are primarily shooting video of what's on your computer screen, or want to bring in video from other sources (such as Flip cameras and the such), then ScreenFlow is likely the best choice of these two applications.

You can download a screencast (i.e. a movie that shows what's on my computer screen as I go through various tasks) to see a practical example of a ScreenFlow production. In this case I shot a Keynote presentation combined with live audio. Later I edited the audio and video as warranted. The movie is 11 minutes long, is a 24 Mb download, and works beautifully on an iPad (as well as a computer).

ipad reflections movie download

ScreenFlow version 1 was a solid release, but with version 2 they have added important features that make editing and finishing your movie easier and better. The software will record what's on your screen, plus record your audio input, plus record the video from your iSight camera (if you have one) into one integrated recording. Once done recording you are taken to the ScreenFlow editing area where you do the regular stuff (delete, copy, and so forth). However the editing environment also allows you to do many additional procedures very easily. This includes swapping the computer cursor for a custom cursor (I like a big red arrow), adding text titles or descriptions where you want, creating chapters, easily adding transitions between movie clips, creating focus effects through features like magnifying towards one part of the screen, plus many other special editing options.

Years ago SnapzPro was the best screen recording program on the Mac. But the company that makes SnapzPro has not updated their software in a long time. Camtasia Studio on Windows is a wonderful program, but their sister app—Camtasia for the Mac—is not nearly as powerful or reliable as the Windows counterpart. That leaves ScreenFlow as the best application for creating cleanly edited movies on your Mac—especially when the main focus of the movie is on capturing what's happening on the computer screen. ScreenFlow is powerful enough to be a great multimedia glue application that combines video, still images, and audio even if you don't record any video of your screen! An über-powerful program like Final Cut Pro might be better, but ScreenFlow is much cheaper ($99, $90 for academics) and much easier to master relative to Final Cut Pro.

A search via the web will bring up many good reviews of ScreenFlow 2. However, some of these reviews have been collated on one page:

screenflow reviews link

If you are considering making multimedia movies that play well on Windows, Macs, and iPads then you'll want to strongly consider ScreenFlow if you're a Mac-user.

ScreenFlow 2

There are two main multimedia creation tools I use on my Mac: FotoMagico Pro and ScreenFlow. There are some overlaps between these two great programs. FotoMagico Pro is better at handling multimedia created out of lots of still images. You can also add audio and video, but the focus with FotoMagico is using still images. On the other hand, ScreenFlow is primarily a screen video recording program that has powerful editing abilities. If you are primarily shooting video of what's on your computer screen, or want to bring in video from other sources (such as Flip cameras and the such), then ScreenFlow is likely the best choice of these two applications.

You can download a screencast (i.e. a movie that shows what's on my computer screen as I go through various tasks) to see a practical example of a ScreenFlow production. In this case I shot a Keynote presentation combined with live audio. Later I edited the audio and video as warranted. The movie is 11 minutes long, is a 24 Mb download, and works beautifully on an iPad (as well as a computer).

ipad reflections movie download

ScreenFlow version 1 was a solid release, but with version 2 they have added important features that make editing and finishing your movie easier and better. The software will record what's on your screen, plus record your audio input, plus record the video from your iSight camera (if you have one) into one integrated recording. Once done recording you are taken to the ScreenFlow editing area where you do the regular stuff (delete, copy, and so forth). However the editing environment also allows you to do many additional procedures very easily. This includes swapping the computer cursor for a custom cursor (I like a big red arrow), adding text titles or descriptions where you want, creating chapters, easily adding transitions between movie clips, creating focus effects through features like magnifying towards one part of the screen, plus many other special editing options.

Years ago SnapzPro was the best screen recording program on the Mac. But the company that makes SnapzPro has not updated their software in a long time. Camtasia Studio on Windows is a wonderful program, but their sister app—Camtasia for the Mac—is not nearly as powerful or reliable as the Windows counterpart. That leaves ScreenFlow as the best application for creating cleanly edited movies on your Mac—especially when the main focus of the movie is on capturing what's happening on the computer screen. ScreenFlow is powerful enough to be a great multimedia glue application that combines video, still images, and audio even if you don't record any video of your screen! An über-powerful program like Final Cut Pro might be better, but ScreenFlow is much cheaper ($99, $90 for academics) and much easier to master relative to Final Cut Pro.

A search via the web will bring up many good reviews of ScreenFlow 2. However, some of these reviews have been collated on one page:

screenflow reviews link

If you are considering making multimedia movies that play well on Windows, Macs, and iPads then you'll want to strongly consider ScreenFlow if you're a Mac-user.

Compass Stand

The iPad is so sleek and mobile that I wanted to find a stand that was equally sleek and mobile. Not easy. Some great stands out there, but the ones I initially saw either weren't sturdy or weren't very mobile. Then I discovered the compass stand made by TwelveSouth. The perfect stand as it works as both a display stand (vertical) or as a typing stand (slightly elevated). It's very small, solid, and comes with a convenient small sized holder to protect it. Check it out:

compass iPad stand information

Reeder for iPad

I've never really taken advantage of RSS feeds before. The software options I found for collating these feeds I didn't like very much. And Google Reader, though very functional, is also über-ugly. All that changed with my new iPad.

Reeder is a very simple application that works seamlessly with Google Reader. Now I have the great functionality of the web-based Google product combined with an ultra-portable and relaxing RSS reader on my iPad.

What's the advantage of using RSS (or Really Simple Syndication)? It means the news comes to you, instead of you going to the news. Imagine you visit 20 different websites for news about various things. Imagine you visit another 20 once in a long while since they don't update their blogs very often. You now have 40 sites to visit. If they all offer RSS feeds (and they probably do) then all 40 of them can be collated into one viewing experience on Reeder.



Reeder plays well with Google Reader and its use of folders. So, you may have a folder for "World News" and another for "iPad News" as an example. You can then organize your various RSS feeds into these folders—and in turn this makes it easier to find and view blog posts in a specific category.



I'm providing a link to a review of Reeder for iPad. If you decide to buy, keep in mind that there are two separate apps made by the same developer: Reeder and Reeder for iPad. Be very sure to get the iPad version.

Scrivener Updates

The wonderful (and inexpensive) writing software Scrivener will soon be moving into version 2. This will be a paid upgrade and the best estimate is that it will be released sometime in October. In addition there seems to be an imminent announcement about Scrivener for Windows (currently it's a Mac-only product). So, perhaps sometime in 2011 this product will be cross-platform.

Recently the developer (Keith) wrote a long-ish essay on what Scrivener 2.0 won't do. Check it out here:

What You Won’t Find in Scrivener 2.0

Finally, I ran across a review of Scrivener at ProfHacker written in March 2010. It's a very thorough review and covers a lot of details relevant to those who work in academia:

Scrivener, Scrivening, Scriverastic review link

Brent's Personal VisiCalc moment

Brent Simmons (a Mac software developer) recently wrote a short post about the iPad:

Every successful computing platform has to have a “VisiCalc moment” — the moment it goes from fun toy and technology demo to “holy crap this thing is useful.”

For the Apple II Plus that moment came the first time people saw VisiCalc. Imagine never having seen a spreadsheet on a computer — imagine always having done that stuff by hand. Then, for the first time, you enter some numbers and formulas into a computer and watch it calculate. Then edit some numbers and watch it recalculate. Pure magic. PFM.

I don’t think there’s a single VisiCalc moment that everyone will have for the iPad — but, for me personally, it was OmniFocus. That’s when my iPad went from toy to indispensable tool (oh, but still a fun toy, too).

Before OmniFocus, my iPad wandered around my desks without a real place. Now it has a place right next to my dev machine’s keyboard.

Scrivener Updates

The wonderful (and inexpensive) writing software Scrivener will soon be moving into version 2. This will be a paid upgrade and the best estimate is that it will be released sometime in October. In addition there seems to be an imminent announcement about Scrivener for Windows (currently it's a Mac-only product). So, perhaps sometime in 2011 this product will be cross-platform.

Recently the developer (Keith) wrote a long-ish essay on what Scrivener 2.0 won't do. Check it out here:

What You Won’t Find in Scrivener 2.0

Finally, I ran across a review of Scrivener at ProfHacker written in March 2010. It's a very thorough review and covers a lot of details relevant to those who work in academia:

Scrivener, Scrivening, Scriverastic review link

OmniFocus for Getting Things Done

Over the past two years there has been a great influx of Getting Things Done applications—some software based, some web based. While all of these options are dressed up "to do lists, they typically offer many more features than a simple checklist. If you're a Mac-user the most complete solution is called OmniFocus and is made by OmniGroup (makers of OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle).

OmniFocus comes in a Mac form, iPhone form, and just lately an iPad form. The good folks at appstorm just published a very good review of OmniFocus for the iPad. If you're interested at all in being more productive, it's certainly worth your time to read their very complete review.

omnifocus for the ipad: the ultimate GTD tool