I've been pleased to see some nice third party tools for extended the iOS AirPlay technology. AirParrot streams a Mac display to an AppleTV and Reflection streams iOS displays to a Mac. These are good starts but are not feature complete. AirParrot, for example, does not stream the audio to the AppleTV.
This technology is a small step towards the iOS computer. Forget docks. Forget adapters and USB cables. The ideal way to use an iPad as a computer, is to walk up to my desk, sit down and have the iPad display mirrored to my main screen and the Bluetooth keyboard auto-pair.
This is going to sound more creepy than it is, so bear with me.
When Apple introduced Find My iPhone, I thought it was great for finding lost technology investments. I used it several times to confirm that, yes, the iPhone was indeed lost. When Apple first introduced Find My Friends for iOS 5, I thought it was cute. It seemed like it would be very useful to people with active social lives and lots of friends.
The latest update for iThoughts adds a URL import mechanism and a shortcut script for Safari on iOS. The shortcut sends the current page URL to iThoughts HD as a map element.
They have also tuned the selection and movement of map elements. Manipulating items feels very fluid and natural. Oh, and support for Emoji if that's your thing.
Is there any mind-mapping application on any platform as good as iThoughts HD on the iPad?
Brett Terpstra has posted a number of very cool things that can be done with the OS X and iOS application DayOne. They were so compelling that I gave in and bought the suite. They are all solid and attractive applications but it doesn’t fit my workflow as well as plain text files.
Logging If I am actively working on a problem, I record notes in Simplenote (big surprise). On Windows, I either use ResophNotes or the Simplenote Web site.
This might seem obvious or dumb, depending on your sensibilities, but the new Messages app makes a decent universal clipboard. Copy a link, photo or text and paste into iMessage on Mac, iPhone or iPad.1 Send a message to myself. Boom. Yeah, it's a little kludgy and ugly but it works. Since when is a clipboard pretty?
Sending a file from the Mac version works too. On iOS I get an option to "
GoodReader is the all purpose file manager on iOS. It's a great PDF reader too. It also integrates well with OmniFocus.
From GoodReader, I select the file (in this case, a PDF I want to finish reading) and copy the link to the iOS pasteboard.
I then paste the link into the notes section of a new OmniFocus inbox action.
Now I can directly open the PDF in GoodReader and pickup from where I left off.
BoingBoing has an interesting link about the problems with using voice recognition to write fiction.
"And when I’m typing the sentence it always has a resemblance to its platonic ideal."
I think that's true for most of my writing. By the time I add a period to the end of the sentence, it's structure closely resembles my thought. When I write with Siri, I regularly abandon sentences or stop dictation and finish by typing.
I've been using Tweet Library as a supplemental Twitter client since it was first released. It has matured with every release and 2.0 makes it a universal app. If you want a good review, visit Macstories.net.
I wrote a review of Tweet Library about 6 months ago but never posted it. The take home point was that TweetLibrary is a capable app that could be my only Twitter app but it's a bit too slow.
Some of the most wonderful people in Mac and iOS made something beautiful and unique.1 It's a measly $0.99 to own. If I made something this interesting, I would charge you $0.99 just to look at it, let alone own it.
Impending has a little introduction up at Impending.com. Take a look at that page. Go do it. Now.
Ok, did you scroll down to the bottom? See the attention to detail?
IP Scanner Lite 1 is one of those little utilities that gathers dust in a corner until I really need it. The app scans the network and reports back on all machines it finds. Well, the Lite version only reports back 5 machines but that's sufficient on a small network.
What's striking about the app is the commitment to development. This little utility is updated almost weekly. The updates aren't just to game ratings and reviews.
