James Andrews

Today I was browsing through my tweeps when I saw that @liza had an announcement. A project she’s been working on for some time has come to life, and is viewable for all too see. This project is Ibis Reader, and HTML5 based ePub reader, which allows you to read ePub applications on any mobile devices who’s browser supports HTML5.

I decided to take it for a test drive. I grabbed my iPhone was went to Ibis Reader where I was redirected to the mobile version, and to where I was given instructions on how to setup Ibis Reader on the iPhone. One of the things it asked me was if it could use 50MB of storage on my phone. I agreed, and next I found myself in an area where I could browse books. I scrolled through a couple pages until I got to one called “Japanese Fairy Tales”. I’m a big Nipponophile (Japanese nut), so I decided to grab that, and start to read.

The interface is very simple. touch the right side of the screen and you advance a page, touch the left side of the page and you go back a page. Very easy from the get go. The text displays at a nice readable font size, with a font that’s easy on the eyes. Flipping the iPhone on it’s side, Ibis Reader knows to change the size of my page. The only thing that doesn’t seem to work here is the cover, which is a graphic, and not a huge concern in my opinion.

Since Ibis Reader takes advantage of local storage space the book reads fast. Page loads take only rendering time, and since it’s text, that’s no time at all.

I am very happy with how simple and easy this application runs. If I didn’t know better I would think it was a native app that ran locally on my iPhone. Bravo @liza, this is work to be very proud of.

Photography is one of my hobbies. Sometimes I’ll do a wedding for a little extra money, sometimes I’ll shoot models. Trying to keep track of everything is a pain. Last night I was organizing apps on my iPhone and decided to look for some new ones while I was at it. I came across one called “Photographer’s Workflow”. From the images in iTunes App Store it looked like it did pretty much everything, and it was $3.99. Cheap enough for me to want to give it a try.

I downloaded and synced the app to my first generation iPhone. The first thing I noticed was that it requires use of Google Calendar. I give it my gmail account and password and it connected. Fulfilling that requirement, I attempted to add a project.

I add my project and the app crashes. I go back to the app, and enter the project. None of the information is there, and there’s no way I can see to delete the project and start again. I add another project, and wouldn’t you know it happens again. App == FAIL.

This app looked so very promising. I was really upset about the requirement for Google Calendar. I don’t want all my business information on the cloud, I’d rather have it sync to iCal through iTunes, or at least have the option for it not to use Google, and just keep it on my Phone. I couldn’t get a project to work at all which means that the application was totally useless to me.

I have contacted Apple for a refund.

Don’t waste your time, the app needs a lot of work.

I am in Toronto International Airport. In the wing that contains flights heading to the US. My flight is at 6:40PM EST, and I am departing for Boston. I am writing this blog entry in Textmate a simple text editor for the Macintosh operating system OS X. Why am I mentioning this? Well you would think that with access to Wireless internet, I’d be able to just up and connect to the internet open my blogging software and go go go go go… That however is not the case.

I sit down at my gate, and find the wireless access point I need to connect too. Boingo uses special software; for unknown reasons, the allow you to log into they system. My computer is new, and this is my first trip to an airport with it so I go ahead and download the software. I don’t travel enough to warrant hthe $12/month charge, so I use Boingo’s as-you-go which is $10CAN. The problem, there doesn’t seem to be a way to charge me for the service. I’m logged in. AIM is working, but the web browser isn’t. Was I charged for the access or not? I have internet yet I don’t have internet, and I am really confused. I think maybe I am charged for internet, but something is wrong with DNS so I manually change my DNS IP to GTE’s public server. No change, so I change it back. I log out of Boingo’s application and log back in. Still nothing. I am frustrated. Maybe my account hasn’t charged a credit card, so I create a new account. Finally a connection. I send a Facebook message, browse a couple quick websites, and then suddenly. Nothing. Gone. WTF. I go through the sequence again, even going as far as rebooting my computer. Nothing.

It ends in futility, and me calling Boingo for a refund. Where does Boingo go wrong. First is this “application”. Why do I need to run their stupid little app in order to connect wirelessly. I go to coffee shop after coffee shop, just create an account, and pay for the service. When I return, I log into the account, and pay for the service. I fly Airtran, and I create an account and have internet as I fly, using the same kind of interface that the coffee shop uses. Boingo tries to make things easier with a little application, but instead they fail.

I give Boingo 0 of 5 wifi bars.

Please fix the problems so I can not be bored during a 3-4hr lay over…..

The other day I went over to a friend’s house who I hadn’t seen for a while. During my visit he went to show me some video. He grabbed a keyboard and start media player application on the PC attached to his TV. The application was XMBC an open source media player. I am a mac user, and a while back XMBC forked and Plex was created for OS X. Yesterday I downloaded Plex and started looking at it’s potential to be my multimedia app, instead of buying an AppleTV.

If you have used XMBC you will be happy to hear that the interface is identical. You can add your movies, music, photos, pretty much whatever media you have you can play, and it does it well. One of the things about XMBC and Plex is the ability to add plugin bundles. These bundles allow you to play videos from Comedy Central, Hulu, BBC and a slew of other online video resources. There are even some questionable un-supported bundles for “mature materials”. I tried a few of the different bundles and they worked pretty good. I did have issue with Comedy Central’s pluggin. Some videos listed didn’t play at all, and I am not sure if it was my internet connection or something wrong with the content, but I was slightly disappointed with that.

Plex also allows you to change the skin of the media player, but most of them are piss poor at best. The Best of the bunch is called Mediastream and is the default one that loads with it. You can change the background images to be what ever you want. Images from your favorite TV show, pictures you took on your vacation, or video. It’s all very cool and customizable. Though there seems to be no way to fas tforward through video, It always seems rewind. If you get to the beginning it will go to the end and rewind. I’ll have to investigate more.

I have an XBox360 and some time ago I bought the Harmony Remote for it. It so happens to support Plex, so I also programmed Plex into the remote. I took a little figuring out, but you can easily navigate through the menu items. Though there is still a lot they could do better. For example the VCR controls could actually control the video properly. play, stop pause etc. They don’t act correctly with the remote. Same problem exists with fast forwarding. You click on the right arrow expecting it to fast forward, and it rewinds instead.

I also think it would be real neat if it played mp3+g media (mp3 based karaoke). I need to get a mac mini so I can create a dedicated machine, but that’ll have to wait until later this year. early next year. I would have used an old iBook G4 I have, but Plex only works on Intel based macs.

For more information you can check out http://www.plexapp.com/

I give Plex 4 out of 5 remotes.

Today I was reading twitter when @mongey91 mentioned his father being impressed with an application called Airmouse on the iPhone.  I had not heard of Airmouse, so I poked around the Apple Application store, and found the application.  First off it’s not a free application.  It’s US$5.99.  What Airmouse does, is it allows your iPhone to act as a remote mouse and keyboard for your Mac or PC.   At first glance I can see a lot of uses for the application.  First would be presentation at conferences.  According to the video on the website it can be used just like a mouse pointer move up it moves up, down and it moves down.  Multimedia PCs need keyboards and mice so you can access your files.  Why not just sit down, turn on Airmouse turn the tuner to the PC and let it go.  Of even as an alternative to a TV in the bedroom.  Control your computer to watch a movie from your bed, no extra remote needed.

I downloaded the server and installed it on my 1st gen Macbook.  Server installs easily, and did not require administrative privileges which was nice surprise.  Next I went to iTMS and payed my $5.99 downloaded, and synchronized it onto 1st gen iPhone.  I am all set and ready to go.

First of is the ability to type which i am doing right now from the iPhone. It is neat if you need to rename a video file on your media PC.  The iPhone application has 2 interfaces.

The default is pointer style, with the ability turn it into trackpad style.  I’m going to talk about trackpad style first.  When you start the application you will be in pointer style mode.  Clicking on the icon in the upper right hand corner put you into trackpad mode.  The trackpad on top and they keyboard on the bottom of the iPhone screen.  As you might expect it is designed to act like the trackpad on your computer.   If you click anywhere on the trackpad part of the screen and hold your mouse moves, and the application is designed so that if you track over the keyboard it will stay in mouse mode until you release.  Which is pretty handy.   It has 3 mouse buttons between the keyboard and trackpad.  One for left one for center, and one for right.  They will act just like if you were using the same buttons on your computer.   The center also has up and down arrows, so you can use it like a scroll wheel.  Don’t want to use the button as a scroll wheel?  That’s fine, you don’t have too, 2 finger drags on the track pad also work.  Airmouse definitely has the trackpad working well, and would be hard to improve on.

Pointer mode has 4 buttons.  left, right center bottom and center top.  The left and right act just like the left and right buttons of a normal mouse.  The center bottom is like the center on your normal mouse.  The difference is because there is no “tracking” with your fingers on the track pad, holding the buttons and waving the iPhone up and down and left and right acts as you moving the mouse.  The top center button is what you use when you just want to move the mouse without the effects of clicking on a mouse button.  Overall with my 1st gen iPhone the tracking doesn’t seem to work well, but maybe I just need to fidget with the settings some more.

Airmouse also has 3 unique displays.  Media, Web, and “hot keys”.  The media page gives you access to iTunes.   Web connects me to Safari, but it may as well work with your default browser.  The “hot keys” allows you access to your “function keys” and also some missing keys.  All very well implemented and useful.

Still I think it’s a great little application, and once I get my Mac mini for my living room next year I’ll be using it quite often.  I give it 4 out of 5 mice.  If you would like to learn more visit their website.