Archive for the 'iPad' Category

iPad: My Listening Apps

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

I wrote an article about How We Use The iPad.

As I mentioned in the article, I have taken advantage of the folders concept to store my apps. Today I’ll talk about some of my favorite apps in my LISTENING folder.

My LISTENING folder contains the following apps:
* Major League Baseball’s At Bat 2011
* ESPN Radio
* NPR
* Pandora
* iPod and Remote from Apple

Note: I have an AppleTV, which makes the Airplay feature one of my favorite Apple features. I am able to broadcast songs and more via my MacBook Pro, iPhone, or iPad to my TV.

MLB At Bat 2011

Every time I think about cutting the cord on cable TV, sports gets in the way. But, I can see a day where this will not be the impediment it is today. MLB At Bat is a fantastic app that offers scores, standings, and pitch by pitch narratives of every game.

What’s more, for additional fees, audio and video of every game are available. The video can be purchased for the entire season or month-to-month. (For the record, I have MLB in my listening folder because listening to baseball is one of my favorite background audio choices.)

Gameday Screen

The Gameday screen offers a scoreboard across the top. At the right are icons for switching to other views such as standings, news, or scoreboard, as well as moving to audio and video. At the bottom of the screen, you can expand boxes to see information about the game.

Audio Option

Video Option

One call-out on the audio and video screens is the Airplay option that Apple introduced in a limited view a while ago, and now is becoming more ubiquitous. This of course means that I can now watch or listen to any game (there are some video blackouts based on location) on my hi-def TV. Alternatively, I can use the Apple Digital AV Adapter to mirror on my HDTV.

ESPN Radio

As a sports fan, this is a must-have app. This was a frustrating app for quite a while, as, unlike many other apps, the app did not take advantage of multitasking, so you could not play the audio in the background. Now, with background playing, it’s like a whole new app. The myFavorites section allows you to put radio programs and podcasts into that tab.

NPR

I love this app. It’s original and innovative but in a way that is not difficult to figure out.

Home Screen

The three rows are scrollable individually to view the programs available. You can listen or view the transcript. You can also add a program to a playlist for later. At the bottom of the screen, you can listen to hourly news, find programs, or find radio stations.

Playlist

With the playlist, you can listen to a series of programs you have selected from the home screen.

Pandora

So many people know and use Pandora, I haven’t even captured a screen shot. The app is dead simple, just like the iPhone app and website. You can create radio stations based on artists or songs, like or dislike songs, read about artists, and more.

iPod and Remote

As noted above, I have an AppleTV so using the Remote and Airplay to broadcast on my HDTV, where my best speakers are, is fantastic.

2d31

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How we use the iPad

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

This week we are starting a series on iPad apps that we find both incredibly useful and well designed.

I’ll get it started today, not with the apps, but with my folders. Now that the iPad ios has merged back with the iPhone ios, the device has inherited the multi-tasking and folder features that the iPhone has had since the summer. I played around with the folders a bit, trying to be aware of when something didn’t make sense, or when I only had a single app in a folder.

Folders on the iPad

Listening - Any audio based app such as iPod, MLB, Pandora, NPR, or ESPN Radio.

Reading - Reeder, Instapaper, iBooks, Kindle, Stanza.

Writing - Several apps here, though over time I will pare down as I see which I am using versus others that will stagnate. As of now I have Simplenote, Notebooks, Edito, Express, Wordpress, Markdown, SoundNote, Pages, TextExpander, Pingle and Pastebot.

Learning - The Elements, Solar System, Observatory, Virtuoso, Inkling.

Cooking - Hope to add more here, right now I just have Pocket Cocktails and Epicurious.

Playing 1 and 2 - Two folders worth of games.

Design - Sketchy, Omnigraffle, iBrainstorm, SketchBook, UI Sketcher, like the writing folder, there is some duplication of apps here, at some point I will cut some apps out.

Productivity - A bit of a catch-all but centered around work. Dropbox, Zosh, AirDispaly, LogMeIn, Meeting MNGR, Keynote, Contacts, Fuze Meeting.

Shopping - App Store, Amazon, Apple Store, iTunes.

Tools - Like productivity, another catch-all including UConvertPro, Notes, Find iPhone, some of my account apps like banking, 1Password, First Aid, and Night Stand.

Travel - Tripit, FlightTrack Pro, Maps, Boingo, OpenTable, and WeatherBug.

Viewing - YouTube, Videos, Photos, Netflix, TED, IMDB, ScoreCenterXL.

Home screen, no folders - OmniFocus, Remote

TaskBar - Settings, Calendar, Mail, Twitter (to be replaced by Osfoora HD), Friendly, Safari.

As we develop this series, I’ll pick a handful apps from each folder and how/why I use the app, as well as what makes it good design. I hope you’ll enjoy

Oh, the background is a picture of The Cloisters in New York, one of my favorite places from a family vacation in the spring of 2010.



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				Oh my ZOSH!
				Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

				
					 

question of the day: why are there still so many processes that require a fax machine?Tue Jun 01 17:00:39  via Twitter for iPhoneJennifer Bohmbach
evoljennifer

 
One answer to this question is that companies require a signed copy of a form and therefore require a fax. If there is a contact name on the form, I will often contact the person to see if I can scan and email. But this is an arduous process requiring me to print the document, sign the form, scan back into my computer, and email. And, most often the company requires the entire document to be scanned and sent, not just the signature page.
Until now.
I discovered Zosh. It is an iphone app that allows you to sign pdf documents with your finger on your iphone and email back. I tried it on my iphone and really struggled signing with my finger as the form factor was just too small for me. But, with an iPad, this becomes a must-have app for anyone who has to sign and send documents. 
How does it work? You download Zosh and create an account using your email address. From this email address you can send a pdf document to mydocs@zosh.com. You receive a reply when the document is ready. Open the document within Zosh, find the signature area and insert your signature. You can insert other text as well, including dates. With the 2x zoom on an iPad the size is no longer an issue and is quite easy to write a signature. I’ve done this three times in the last week and it’s been terrific. 
The UI for this is quite simple. The list of documents is the home page. Select the document and click on the Insert button. You can insert a signature, text, date, or image. After that, click Transmit (they should have called it email) and send the document. 
That’s it. It’s brilliant in its simplicity and purpose. 
View the Zosh website.


				

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