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Projectbook is the iPad productivity app for the disorganized

Erica Ogg — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 10:30:02 +0000

Keeping your personal and professional documents in the cloud so you have access to them everywhere is on it’s way to becoming standard practice: it’s why Google and Apple now have their own cloud storage solution for users. But what if you’re on the fence about committing to the cloud but want an all-in-one mobile app to organize your stuff? Then a small midwestern app company called Theory.io has an iPad app for you.

The app is called Projectbook, and it’s available in the iOS App Store starting Wednesday for $6.99 (the promotional price will be $1.99 for a limited time). It’s a productivity app for keeping notes, appointments, presentations and anything related to project management in one place. The inspiration for Projectbook came to founder and CEO Peter Tamte — who started MacSoft software and later worked as as consumer marketing director at Apple in the ’90s — when he found himself increasingly relying on his iPad and cloud storage while traveling. He didn’t like getting penalized for keeping his documents in the cloud only to find himself somewhere without a Wi-Fi or cell connection — like an airplane.

Tapping on a word, automatically searches for any other document containing a related term.

“I counted the places I wanted to access my notes that I didn’t have internet. It was as a third of the times,” he said when we sat down for an interview last week. “I shouldn’t have to pay extra when traveling abroad or in a plane.” By extra, he means for pricey international data plans to get online or a subscription for offline access to documents. “We’re being told right now, to keep data in the cloud. That’s great for syncing, sharing and backing up. But data should still be on my device,” said Tamte.

His insistence on locally storing his important documents doesn’t mean Tamte is anti-cloud. He just doesn’t want users to feel like they have to choose between local and cloud storage.

Building on what’s out there

Projectbook’s obvious comparison is Evernote. And that’s a tough one for Projectbook, since Evernote has a well-established reputation. It also has its own development platform, and is available for users of iOS, Mac, Windows, Windows Phone, Android and BlackBerry.

To stand out to iOS and Mac users, Theory.io’s pitch with Projectbook is mobile organization done simpler, cheaper and locally. With Projectbook, there’s no premium version to access your notes offline. You will have to pay to add more devices: the Mac and iPhone versions are coming this fall. The prices of those aren’t final, but like the iPad app at $6.99, they won’t be much, said Tamte.

To keep things simple, Projectbook doesn’t rely on an app ecosystem to add features. Instead, Projectbook tries to do everything someone planning a project could want: keep all your notes, reminders, calendar appointments, web clips, recordings, images, videos, outlines, meeting minutes and much more, in one place. It does plays well with other popular services too: you can import PDFs, links saved to Instapaper and Pocket, and anything from Microsoft Word or Dropbox. You can also forward any documents from other devices to your Projectbook notebook via email. The coming Mac version will also use Apple’s iCloud API, so documents can be created, edited and saved across iOS devices and Macs and be synced in the background. All documents opened in Projectbook can be read and indexed for searching within the app.

To use the app, most actions are initiated just by tapping or typing within a document. You can sketch on any item with a finger. If you’re taking meeting notes and you’re given a deadline, typing the time and date within the doc automatically makes an appointment. Taking notes in class and recording the lecture? Projectbook will keep track of how your notes sync with the recording so you can find your place later. You can also take photos, web clips or videos and embed them in a report or outline with just a few taps.

Creating organization out of chaos

Projectbook is intended to appeal to the disorganized among us: you don’t have to take time to set up folders or extensively tag your notes (though you can if you want). With the company’s own proprietary natural language processing technology — that Theory.io considers its secret sauce — Projectbook will create keywords based on your documents’ content for you.

When searching for a particular term, similar docs related to that term will appear in the results. The same is true if you tap on a particular folder or tag — the app will automatically suggest things that are similar. You can also turn a search term into a smart folder, then everything ever created that’s related to that keyword will always get saved there.

The idea of having an “active” notebook that learns about its contents just by simply adding stuff to it is very appealing. The less work an app or any technology requires on behalf of the user, the better it will be received, which is why I think Theory.io is onto something here. Plenty of people are already using Dropbox, Box, Evernote and other cloud-based services to store and access their notes and documents. But there’s so much more room for innovation in how we work on our mobile devices, and Projectbook is thinking from a user’s perspective: keeping things simple.

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Cupcakes! Food Network builds an interactive cookbook

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:27:48 +0000

Food Network’s digital strategy has always been fairly straightforward: to supplement its cable TV content and promote its on-air talent. Consequently its website, social media efforts and mobile apps are all linked to its programming — aggregating recipes, blogs and video from its shows and celebrity chefs. But this week Food Network deviated from that strategy.

It launched what can only be described as digital interactive coffee table recipe book centered on the theme of today’s hippest dessert: cupcakes. The iPad app (available for $2.99 in the iTunes App Store) is stocked with lush interactive photographs and video, designed to entice the food fetishist in us all, and while it’s full of recipes and instructive lessons, it’s an easy app to flip through, letting you swipe between one tantalizing cupcake image to the next – just like the bound food-porn tomes that grace end tables and bookstore cookbook displays around the world.

The app is slick, which immediately raises my suspicions. In general, pretty cookbooks are a waste of money – the quantity and quality of photographs in cookbooks are usually in inverse proportion to the usefulness of the recipes they illustrate. But Bob Madden, GM and SVP of online brands for Food Network and The Cooking Channel, said his team designed the app to be a useful kitchen aid as well as eye candy. FN filled the app with instructional videos demonstrating baking and frosting techniques and it tested every recipe in FN’s ~~San Francisco~~ New York City test kitchens.

In addition, FN isn’t just repurposing recipes and videos from its TV shows and website for the app. It contains some cupcake ideas from Alton Brown and other network personalities, and it features a section of recipes from its FN program “Cupcake Wars,” but most of its content is original. The photos and videos were shot and the recipes collected, refined and compiled specifically for the app, Madden said.

So is Food Network, which is jointly owned by Scripps Networks Interactive and the Tribune Company, building up a side business in digital cookbook publishing? Not exactly, Madden said. The app isn’t free and it does contain advertising from Food Network sponsors, but ultimately apps like “Cupcakes” — and even FN’s print cookbook business — are designed to promote the Food Network and Cooking Channel brands. You’ll probably see more efforts like “Cupcakes” to create content that exists apart from its TV programming, Madden said, but FN looks at digital content as way to expand the content available to its core TV fan base as well as create niche or segmented content it can’t offer over its cable channels.

I’ll admit, I’m not much of a baker and my tolerance for cutesy cupcakes is low, but this app is impressive. It utilizes the new capabilities of the tablet format well. For instance there’s a frosting section that let’s you scroll through a palette of different icing colors. You tap on a frosting color and a screen pops up detailing the exact proportion of colored gels necessary to reproduce it. We’re starting to see more and more interactive cookbooks designed specifically for the tablet format. Inkling’s digital version of The Professional Chef, Food52′s Holiday Recipe and Survival Guide, and Open Air Publishing’s Mixology are all good examples.

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Who knew: Mechanical engineers have their own iPad app

Erica Ogg — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:41 +0000

You’d have to forgive me for not thinking of the iOS App Store as a place to find software specifically devoted to those who specialize in heat transfer or fluid dynamics. But I just recently became aware of an app called simply Mechanical Engineer, which, to me, is one of the most surprising utilizations of the iPad in the workplace yet.

Sure, we’ve seen doctors, restaurant servers, clergy, commercial pilots and salesmen of all stripes incorporating Apple’s tablet into their daily workflow. But it turns out the iPad is a cool and useful way to store and use hundreds upon hundreds of conversions and formulas that mechanical engineers (or those studying to be one) need to use on a day-to-day basis too, when they’re designing brakes or fans or bridges or elevators.

The app’s overall design is very similar to something Apple might make, in that it uses literal interpretations of what you might use in the real world. Like Apple’s own Notes app or Calendar app, the app’s “scientific calculator” is actually made to look just like a yellow notepad you might use to jot down a quick formula or scribble a quick calculation.

You can pick from dozens of formula categories, from actuator and bearing on down to spring and vehicle drive. Clicking on each topic — which look like textured leather book spines — gives way to hundreds of pre-stored forumlas, with an explanation of what it does.

Once you’ve done a calculation, you can save it to your favorites, email it or print it out if you’re connected to a networked printer.

Mechanical Engineer ($5.99) was developed by Marc Schulman, co-founder of Multieducator, Inc., which builds education-oriented software. The company started out making software for history students that was distributed by CD-ROM back in the mid-90s. But since the iPhone arrived, they’ve (wisely) moved into making mobile apps for a wider variety of educational specialties, now counting 35 apps for both the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in the App Store.

Mechanical Engineer has been available for a year and has tallied about 20,000 downloads to date, according to Schulman. But it just recently received an upgrade that included a new series of formulas for hydraulic engineering, an upgraded graphic interface and the ability to print from the app.

I admit I would never need to use this in any capacity and there is a relatively small group of you readers that will find a need for this app, but it illustrates well how the iPad as a platform is changing the way that we work — toward touchscreen, always-on mobile devices — and inversely, how Apple has managed to work its way into highly scientific niches, decades after the very first time the Mac was deemed ” a toy.”

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Butt Art iPad app teaches children how to draw

Ryan Kim — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:00:42 +0000

What’s the best way to get kids to draw? Well, you can start by having them draw butts. Yep, that’s the premise behind a new iPad app from New York start-up Madbrook that is launching its Butt Art – Kids Learn to Draw Zoo Animals Step-by-Step app today, joining two Everything Butt Art physical children’s books the company already has in bookstores.

The hook behind the free app might sound a little gimmicky but the company has some interesting ideas about how to make drawing more interactive and engaging not only for kids but their parents. The app starts with the idea that kids can learn by drawing the shape of a butt, which can become the basis for a lot of pictures and objects. The app is equipped with a lot of the simple arts tools you would expect in a drawing app, like paintbrushes, pencils, erasers, colors and stickers. But it also has some nice touches like a smart centering feature when zooming out and multiple layers.

The idea is that kids ages 4-11 will pick different animals and learn to draw them using animations and step-by-step lessons, which can be turned off. And all of the finished products can be saved to a gallery.

What’s interesting about Butt Art is that it’s connected to a backend (Get it? backend) so parents can get notification emails every time their children finishes a new piece. So that means they can check out the new work online and they can also share it via Twitter and Facebook. The artwork can also be posted to an online activity feed that notes the child’s profile, date, and the colors used in the image. Children also earn badges for achievements while drawing. That’s helpful because it means parents are able to encourage their children on their progress and feel like they’re involved in what their children are doing. There isn’t a real-time feedback system so parents can comment from the web on their kid’s work but that’s coming soon, founder Brian Snyder tells me.

“If your kids are drawing on a device and the parents are not engaged, that’s not a sustainable approach. There’s no substitution for an engaged parent,” Snyder told me. “We’re trying to bring in parents in a way that’s low friction.”

The fact that Snyder has already put out two books is interesting as well. The company started out with the idea of making an iPad app but decided to first publish children’s books last year to help draw people into the concept and appeal to children who may not have an iPad. The first two books, Everything Butt Art at the Zoo and Everything Butt Art on the Farm, published by Independent Publishers Group, have been picked up by Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. The books also provide more content for the iPad app, which includes a full ebook inside with audio and animated page turning.

Madbrook founder Brian Snyder

There’s also a Butt Hunt game inside the app, similar to a Where’s Waldo game. Snyder said he plans on putting out two more physical books in May and doesn’t expect to stop anytime soon because children’s books will be the last books to go under, he believes. Butt Art monetizes by offering three characters for free and selling packs of six additional characters to draw for 99 cents.

Snyder came up with the idea after teaching his daughter how to draw using the butt technique, something he learned as a kid himself. Since he didn’t see anyone else pursuing the concept, he decided to push ahead with his own start-up, recruiting a couple people to help him. Ultimately, he left his job at IBM, where he was handling sales for the UBS account.

I think the Everything Butt Art franchise has a good chance to succeed. Parents love being able to keep up with their children’s artwork and show it off. This is a simple way to get kids to be creative while keeping parents in the loop. And it doesn’t hurt to have a, ahem, cheeky way to market the app.

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Netflix expands international support for iOS, Apple TV

Ryan Lawler — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:19:14 +0000

Netflix is giving its subscribers in Latin America new ways to access its library of streaming video titles, by expanding availability of its app on iOS products in that region. Starting Wednesday, Netflix subscribers in its newest international markets can download apps and stream video to the iPad, iPhone and even the Apple TV.

Users in the U.S. and Canada have long been able to stream to those devices, but availability on mobile and connected devices in newer markets should help Netflix gain traction in Latin America. After all, the service is most useful and engaging when it’s watched on a TV or tablet, as opposed to a desktop or laptop PC.

In addition, Netflix issued an update to its iPad app in all regions, giving users the ability to better navigate content. In a blog post on the update, mobile product manager Zal Bilimoria wrote that the new app is “much more immersive and provides greater focus on our growing catalogue by displaying twice as many titles than the previous interface.” The update is available with a free download from the Apple App Store.

Finally, Netflix is making its Just for Kids user interface available on Apple TV, which should improve discoverability and interactivity for the streaming company’s youngest users. With easy, character-driven navigation, Just for Kids aims to help children find the content they would most like to watch without having to search through non-relevant titles.

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OnLive brings cloud-based gaming to phones & tablets

Ryan Lawler — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:00:35 +0000

Cloud-based gaming company OnLive is taking another big step in its evolution, with the launch of apps for mobile phones and handsets that will turn them into gaming devices. By introducing apps for iOS and Android devices, users will now be able to play even high-quality games on devices that have a fraction of the processing power included in most high-end gaming PCs.

OnLive let users watch streams of others gaming through tablet apps in the past, but the newest apps take the experience a step further: OnLive users will now be able to natively play games on devices like the iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Amazon Kindle Fire through a new generation of apps.

The gaming service will have more than 20 games specifically adapted for tablet-based touch control, including Rockstar’s hit L.A. Noire, with virtual game pads built in. It will have an additional 150 games that users can play if they have an OnLive Universal Wireless Controller, which sells for $49.99.

OnLive’s latest release makes gaming more accessible to users — even those who don’t have gaming consoles or high-powered computing equipment. Because gameplay is processed in the cloud and streamed over the Internet, devices need just a limited amount of power to enable engaging gaming experiences.

Those streams are also relatively low-bandwidth, with the average bandwidth required for TV or PC gaming about 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps, which isn’t much different from watching an HD movie on Netflix. Streams sent to mobile devices are even lower bandwidth, at about 0.5 to 2 Mbps. As a result, it works on Wi-Fi, 4G LTE and even 3G networks.

With the launch of its new mobile apps, OnLive is now available on TVs, PCs and Macs, and a wide range of mobile devices. The company launched its services about a year ago in the U.S. Since then, the company has expanded to the U.K. and added more than 200 video game titles for users to choose from.

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Cox is latest to bring live TV to the iPad

Ryan Lawler — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:14:03 +0000

Cox Communications is making live TV available on the iPad, with the release of a new app that lets subscribers watch shows and movies while in their homes. The Cox TV Connect app makes it the latest in a series of pay TV operators to extend their services to new devices.

Previously, operators like Cablevision and Time Warner Cable have launched iPad apps that bring live TV to the tablet, as long as users are logged in and are connecting from their home networks. Other apps — like one from Comcast — let users authenticate an watch on demand content. Cox is taking the former approach with its app, bringing live TV to the app in user homes.

For cable operators like Cox, the end goal is to make as much content available on as many places as possible. Thanks to the availability of streaming video on new mobile and connected devices, consumers are increasingly demanding access to their favorite TV shows and networks regardless of the devices. “A screen is a screen is a screen,” Cox VP of Video Strategy Steve Necessary told us in a phone interview.

While the Cox app is a step in the right direction, the selection of live channels in somewhat limited today: The app has about 35 channels available for live viewing, out of hundreds of channels available to subscribers. Compare that, for instance, with Cablevision, which introduced its iPad app with all of its channels available at launch.

Necessary said that’s because the company needs to negotiate rights with TV networks before putting them online. Cox also needs to ensure that local broadcast content, or content that is subject to certain blackouts, doesn’t appear in the app. Cox has operations in 18 different states throughout the country, so local content can vary by market.

This isn’t the first app for Cox; it previously launched an application that lets users browse content and program their DVR from mobile devices. Necessary said that at some point the functionality from both apps will likely be blended together into a single application that handles both sets of functionality.

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MeFeedia rolls out iPad app to help videos find you

Ryan Lawler — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:00:37 +0000

Video search provider MeFeedia has introduced a new iPad app that seeks to make it easier to find and share interesting videos online. Unlike other apps, MeFeedia hopes to surface popular and interesting videos based on user ratings and interests without hooking into social networks or graphs.

The app seeks to introduce viewers to new videos, which they can choose to watch, bookmark to watch later, “Like” or “Dislike.” Users can also share videos with friends and followers on Facebook or Twitter. Navigation is super-simple, as all one has to do to choose videos is swipe through them on a preview pane in the bottom third portion of the app.

Users can also specify which categories of videos will be shown to them through the settings tab, allowing them to choose between categories like news, comedy, tech, business and of course the most popular clips. And they can check out their own viewing stats in the stats tab. (I, for instance, have watched a total of 14 videos within the app, spending 33 minutes and 43 seconds doing so.)

The goal, according to MeFeedia CEO Frank Sinton, the app is meant to easily introduce users to snackable content — which is one reason that there’s no real search functionality. Instead, MeFeedia’s app encourage users not to find long-form content they know they want to watch, but to discover new short videos they might not have known about in the spare moments of the day.

Of course, there are plenty of apps out there for checking out new videos — but most of them are centered on surfacing videos that your friends have liked or shared from social networks. MeFeedia hopes to introduce viewers to new videos not by connecting them with things others have shared, but by learning what they like and trying to guess which videos they might enjoy. As a result, most videos first displayed are in the “popular” category and recommendations improve as you tell it what you like (or don’t like).

This is the first iteration of the app, so it’s a little rough around the edges. But MeFeedia hopes to update with more personalization in the future (as well as less purple). And, most importantly, it hopes to use the implicit viewing data that comes from the app — as well as the explicit likes and dislikes — to make more intelligent recommendations as it learns how to identify user affinities and viewing patterns.

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Facebook’s future is mobile

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:12:48 +0000

While many of us still access Facebook through our web browsers, the social network is increasingly becoming a mobile powerhouse. At GigaOM Mobilize conference Tuesday, Erick Tseng, Head of Mobile Products for Facebook, said that the company may soon be more of a mobile company than one which develops for the web.

Tseng noted that of the 800 million Facebook users on the social network today, approximately 350 million access the service through a mobile device. “We will soon become a company where more than half of all our users will be mobile users,” he said.

In part, that’s due to Facebook increasingly seeing adoption in countries like India and China, where broadband connectivity isn’t as pervasive but almost everyone gets Internet through mobile. “We’re getting to the point now where the countries we’re going into … don’t have many computers at all,” Tseng said.

To reach those users, Facebook will also need to build mobile experiences that are available on more than just smartphones like the iPhone or Android devices. Earlier this year, Facebook acquired Israeli startup Snaptu, which has technology that helps translate the Facebook experience to feature phones. Tseng said that would allow Facebook to show really advanced features on low-end phones, helping it to reach more new users around the world.

Facebook also could move beyond mobile apps and become even more embedded on the next generation of phones, something that the social network is working toward with a number of OEMs, Tseng said. “Every phone is… much more useful when it’s informed about what you know,” Tseng said. “Where we want to evolve to is a place where you don’t have to go into [a Facebook app] to make it social… it should be pervasive throughout.”

Watch live streaming video from mobilize2011 at livestream.com

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Fotopedia graduates from iPad app to Flipboard magazine

Erica Ogg — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:00:29 +0000

Fotopedia’s visual storytelling iPad app has won praise in the past, for the quality of the photos, the presentation in app form on Apple’s tablet, and for its ability to visually transport you to a faraway place via detailed photosets. Now the startup founded by former Apple scientists is turning its magazine-like photography app into, you guessed it, an actual digital magazine. And they’re doing it via another popular iPad app. Starting Tuesday, Fotopedia Magazine will be available via Flipboard, the iPad magazine platform that is aiming to be the “newsstand of the future.”

Fotopedia Magazine debuts Tuesday on Flipboard and will be updated multiple times per day. The presentation of detailed photosets will be Flipboard-style swiping through pages. The content will be familiar to anyone who’s used Fotopedia’s iPhone or iPad app before: extensive sets of photos of far-flung people and places with detailed captions. The photos are a mix of snaps from professionals and amateurs that have been curated by Fotopedia’s staff. The main rule for being included, besides taking eye-popping photos? Be able to tell a visual story with context. Submissions have to be “well documented enough” to make the cut, said Jean Marie Hullot, founder and CEO of Fotopedia, in an interview last week.

But Fotopedia Magazine won’t just be photos of popular monuments and landmarks. It is “focused on travel culture, but also street art, street festivals and other things that show you world culture,” said Hullot.

Right now, Fotopedia says it has about 1.8 million visitors collectively each month among its properties. It’s very intentional that a company obsessed with navigating the world via images is taking magazine form. Fotopedia wants to be more about inspiration and learning about new places than other travel apps that are photo-centric and a more utilitarian in their purpose. Hullot and Senior Vice President Christophe Daligault say they wish their product to stand out from that crowd.

“I kind of think we pioneered [photo-centric travel apps],” said Daligault. “Jean Marie has always been clear that this is what we’re good at: Showing you things and letting your interact with it. We’re not going to try to help you book a hotel or flight or find a restaurant. Other people do that very well…this magazine is to help you discover things you may not know existed.”

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