February 2012
15 posts
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The Super Sweet 1Password Trick →
I can’t believe I haven’t been using this trick until now!
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iTunes U Overview →
A nice overview of the updated iTunes U from an Apple Distinguished Educator.
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Apple’s iCloud Is No Dropbox Killer (It’s Much... →
With Google, however, the philosophy is that file creation itself can be migrated to the cloud. An online office suite is “good enough,” if not as good, as a native one. And “good enough” will win due to ease of use. With almost a completely opposing view, Apple’s iCloud is doing the reverse: bringing the capabilities of the cloud to the richer, more robust native apps. This includes not just...
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TidBITS Entertainment: Introducing Bookle, an EPUB... →
minimalmac:
Enter Bookle — a straightforward, elegant EPUB reader for Mac OS X that maintains your library of EPUBs, available now from the Mac App Store for $9.99. Bookle 1.0 is intentionally simple, since Peter and I wanted to get something out quickly and then react to requests from users, but it has all the core features needed to read DRM-free EPUBs.
As an author of books delivered in...
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Ten Things To Think About When Designing Your iPad... →
While this post is directed more towards native iPad app development, many of the suggestions are also applicable to any sort of app or web development. I especially liked the part on minimizing user input based on what you already know about the user. That’s a topic we covered at length in my mobile web design course.
No one wants to spend a lot of time setting up a $1.99 app. Leverage...
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A Writer's Reaction to iBook Author's EULA →
A lot of people seemed upset with iBooks Author’s EULA after Apple’s announcement of the program. Basically, it gives content creators the ability to distribute free books in just about any way they’d like, but specifies paid books are only available though the iBooks store. The author of this article brings up some good points:
Folks are calling the software “Author” but its...
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benjaminpaton: 5 things Tumblr can do that you... →
January 2012
9 posts
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Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally... →
This article suggests Apple is set to unveil a “Garage Band for e-books” on Thursday, which I would love to see happen. The article doesn’t mention it, but I’d also like to see a version of iBooks for the desktop.
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Apple's "education announcement"
Apple invites media for ‘education announcement’ in New York, next Thursday, Jan. 19
While an iBook/textbook announcement probably makes the most sense, how great would it be if Apple released a learning management system? They have some of the key components already in place with iTunes-U, iBooks, and their suite of media creation tools. As I spent the day battling D2L errors (my...
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Misconceptions About iOS Multitasking →
Let me be as clear as I can be: the iOS multitasking bar does not contain “a list of all running apps”. It contains “a list of recently used apps”. The user never has to manage background tasks on iOS.
One thing to note, however, is that removing apps from the multitasking bar is a very good way to close an app experiencing problems. I have to do this with the Netflix...
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Ketchup Bottles & The Physicality Of Design →
A great post on emulating physical objects in digital interface designs.
A current trend in the design of digital interfaces is to subtly hint that the objects on the screen have weight, volume and surface undulations like they would if they were manufactured and held up in front of you.
If you like the post, I recommend purchasing the author’s tutorial Interface Design Techniques...
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“Ironic that all of these “open” Android phones can’t even get...”
– @gdevore
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Learn to Code in 2012 →
If your New Year’s resolutions include learning to write code, you should check out Code Year, from Codeacademy. Provide an email address and the site promises to send a new programming lesson every week.
December 2011
17 posts
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Making the Most of iCloud
Mac App Storm published a short article on some of iCloud’s hidden features that’s definitely worth a read. One trick I’ve never heard of is the Mobile Documents folder:
Once you’ve signed in with an Apple ID on your Mac, inside your Library you’ll find a folder called “Mobile Documents”, simply right click it to create an alias and and drag it to wherever you like.
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LogMeIn - free iOS application
LogMeIn now has a free iOS application that allows you to access your Mac or PC from anywhere. Although the basic account is free, the site also offers a Pro version, which adds additional functionality such as file transfers and more.
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This New App Turns Your iPad Into Your Classroom -... →
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“According to the New York-based market research firm, the average adult consumer...”
– Adults Now Spend More Time With Mobile Devices Than With Print Media | PCWorld
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Skitch for iPad
Skitch, my favorite screenshot generator/editor, is now available on the iPad! You can quickly annotate images from your Camera Roll or use the built-in web browser or Google Map viewer to create new screenshots. Once complete, you can send your creation to an external display using AirPlay, or share via Twitter, Email, or Evernote.
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PugPig - Publishing Platform for iPad
PugPig is HTML5/CSS3 publishing platform. This one is not free, but it does look like it has some more professional features over similar, open-source projects such as Baker.
[Check out the framework here] (http://pugpig.com/).
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Magazine Grid
Magazine Grid is an 8 column magazine grid CSS framework designed to look great on the iPad. It is lightweight and appears to be easy to use. According to the project’s website,
It’s an ultramodern CSS-Framework which comes with common magazine design elements such as pagination, gutters and of course a basic grid.
Click here to download the framework.
Click here to view...
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Google ‘triples payment for Firefox traffic’ →
In related news, Mozilla plans to use the extra revenue to make Firefox even slower and more unreliable :-)
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Next generation Airplay through Bluetooth?
According to a rumor posted over at 9to5mac.com, future versions of Airplay may work over Bluetooth. Airplay screen mirroring is one of the best new features of the iPhone 4S (especially for educators and trainers), but it is often a pain to use in educational and corporate settings. I tried using my 4S and Apple TV in class several times this semester and was never able to connect because of my...
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WatchChoir Flash Mob 2011 (by Pellissippi State ETS)
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November 2011
10 posts
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“Another potential failure of “open” systems: when a system is open to someone...”
– A great quote from Marco Arment’s post on Carrier IQ, which is apparently installed on millions of Android, Blackbarry, and Nokia devices. The software tracks just about everything that the user does on the phone and is available to the carriers to enhance “quality control.”
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Mou Markdown Editor
If you haven’t heard of Markdown before, its creator describes it as,
a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Markdown, but have never really seen where such a tool would fit into my workflow....
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Stanford's iPhone and iPad Development Course...
Stanford’s iPhone and iPad Development course on iTunes-U has now been updated for iOS5. These videos and accompanying slideshows are a great way to get started with iOS development, and you can’t beat the price (free)!
Head over to the iTunes-U page to subscribe and download all of the existing lectures.
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HTML5 Audio and Video
With Adobe’s recent announcement that Flash will no longer be developed for mobile devices, now is a great time to take another look at what’s possible with HTML5 audio and video tags. Luckily, the folks over at NetTuts published a great tutorial last year on the subject. Here’s a link to their post.
In addition, A Book Apart’s HTML5 for Web Designers discusses audio...
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Library To Quickly Turn A Map Kit MapView Into A... →
I haven’t tried using the library mentioned in this tutorial, but it looks promising.
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New Site Design
If you’re a frequent visitor to this site, you’ve probably already noticed the new design. Although it’s not been that long since the previous redesign, I decided to move my blog to Tumblr so that I can focus more on writing and less on maintaining a site (it was a self-hosted Wordpress installation and used the ExpressionEngine CMS before that). I have used Tumblr for my...