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Creativity tools: The next wave of iOS apps?

Erica Ogg — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:00:05 +0000

When Snapguide debuted last week it received pretty good reviews in the press. But more importantly, it got a “very warm response,” as founder Daniel Raffel put it, from new users. He’s barely been sleeping, staying up to answer a constant stream of feedback emails about his very slick and good-looking iOS app that helps people easily make do-it-yourself guides to just about anything armed with just an iPhone and an idea.

During the same week the iPad got its own quickly embraced drawing and journaling app, Paper. Like Snapguide, the response was nearly immediate, and my Twitter stream filled up over the next few days with digital watercolors, drawing and paintings that were created by friends with just their fingertips on the iPad.

Snapguide and Paper have two things in common. Both appeal to the creative side of mobile users, and both are themselves beautifully made and deceptively simple to use.

I think it’s these qualities that are going to provide a roadmap for more iOS apps to come that will appeal to the artsy, creative side of people, rather than the traditional consumption-oriented theme of what have so far been the most popular types of apps on Apple’s platform.

At last count there are 585,000 apps available for download on Apple’s iOS App Store. And as has been true since the App Store debuted nearly four years ago, no category is more popular or important to the platform than games — they are half of the most popular free apps overall and half of the most popular paid apps. Angry Birds is the poster child for how to succeed as a gaming app on Apple’s mobile platform, but there are so many others: Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, Words with Friends, etc. In other words, people rightfully associate the iOS platform with games.

Other apps are on the rise too: News, weather and social networking apps are also big with iOS users. But like games, these are mostly consumption apps: reading news, following people on Twitter, checking the weather, or entertaining yourself.

The debuts of Snapguide and Paper are showing that not only are developers making apps that make the iPhone and iPad more of a creative tool, but that users are responding. We’ve written a lot about the iPad as a productivity tool, thanks to apps for annotation, creating presentations and reports, data visualization and more. These are mostly aimed at people using the iPad in a specialized business or education context. But I think we’re starting to see that developers and consumers see iOS devices as fun and casual ways to create things as well.

Even Snapguide’s Raffel wasn’t totally sure of the widespread appeal of his app until after it was released to the public and people started creating their own guides.

“What I didn’t realize is that we were building a platform for people to participate in a public talent show. They can share all these things they’re good at — it’s something that’s clearly been missing,” he said.

At least for DIY stuff. There are equivalents of these virtual talent shows all over the web and in plenty of fields, he points out.

“There’s Github to show off how you can code, Flickr to show off pictures you take, Dribbble for creativity and designers to show off,” Raffel says. “There hasn’t been a generic platform where people feel comfortable showing off … YouTube is the closest thing, but it’s a hard place to create and edit a video. The bar has been too high” to participate for most people.

He’s talking about his own Snapguide, but that willingness to embrace an app that helps users unlock or show off their creative expression can apply to other apps too.

June '09 edition of The New Yorker

Creative expression through apps is not new on iOS. Apple demonstrated the platform’s potential with a mobile version of GarageBand early on. And Brushes has been around for several years. It had its big break when the iPhone app was used to create the cover of the New Yorker in June 2009. But since then, though more specialized apps for artists, like Sketchbook Pro, have gotten great reviews, there haven’t been many big, instant hits in this category.

A similar idea can be found in a less traditionally “artsy” field, but one that still requires an enormous amount of creativity: building apps. Codea, which we’ve profiled in the past, takes the idea of creating apps or games for the iPad and flips it a bit: you use the iPad to create apps and games for the iPad, through a simple, touch-oriented programming language.

Codea’s creator, Simeon Nasilowski, also saw the potential of the iPad as a creation tool early on:

“I didn’t understand why people were saying it’s just for consumption. You can run any tools you like on it, you just have to think about it from a different interaction viewpoint — not mouse and keyboard, you just need tools optimized for touch. Then it becomes quite a good creation tool.”

As more developers look for “green pastures,” as Raffel put it — unexplored categories of mobile apps — I think we’ll see more people realizing how creative the iPhone and iPad — and even other mobile platforms some day — can be.

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3 occasions when the pen is still mightier than the gadget

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:05:53 +0000

On WebWorkerDaily there is no shortage of pieces highlighting the latest collaboration and productivity tools to help you get more done wherever you work, from idea management systems to newfangled communications channels. But just because so many cool new gadgets and apps are available doesn’t mean the old standbys are completely obsolete.

Pen and paper may be hovering somewhere between retro and extinct these days, but Kevin Purdy, for one, feels that there is still a place for ballpoints and notepads in our lives. Writing on Fast Company, Purdy highlights tasks he believes are better suited to exercising your (probably rapidly deteriorating) handwriting:

Lightning-strike ideas. “Carrying a notebook with you at all times is cheap and easy,” writes Purdy, and, according to Marina Martin, a business efficiency consultant quoted in the article, “even the most fluid, thoughtful electronics introduce too much friction into the process of thinking, writing down, then thinking further out.” Pen and paper is better for recall as well. “By committing your thought to paper, you’re also doing more to lock it into place,” writes Purdy. “Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, has the brain scans to prove it.”
Better to-do lists. “The role of paper is ‘changing from information recording and archiving, to a more temporary role of containing transient information,’ says Jenny Englert, senior cognitive engineer at Xerox,” writes Purdy, who continues, “In other words, paper still makes for a great to-do list.”
Jobs and events that seem overwhelming. “One thing that reliably helped very smart students with major test anxiety was writing about their anxieties to ‘off-load’ them. And that was very specifically noted as ‘writing,’” says Purdy, citing the work of psychologist Sian Beilock, an expert on choking under pressure.

Purdy’s article is lengthy and well worth a read, going into much more detail about why these situations are best handled with old-fashioned tools, but a rough outline of his argument is a great spark to get gadget lovers thinking about what situations, if any, still call for a pen.

Personally, my to-do lists have long ago gone electronic and I’m perfectly happy with that, but I agree that handwriting still channels emotions better, whether as a diary-like anxiety-control exercise or in that supremely old school gesture, the personal note or letter.

When, if ever, do you still reach for a pen?

At Net:Work 2011 this week we will discuss how the way we work is being transformed by breakthrough tools. The event will be held in San Francisco on Thursday, Dec. 8.

Image courtesy of Flickr user ElvertBarnes

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Sustainable Printing: The Environmental Impact of Your Printer

Imran Ali — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:46 +0000

Despite the friction-free transmission of documents that the web has brought us, and with the ubiquity of PDF files, the rise of e-book readers and perhaps an Apple iPad, we’re still a long way from the utopian vision of a paperless office.

Printing is still an important part of every web worker’s workflow, and though it’s quite arcane, much of our communication and documentation is still conducted via a paper trail. Not only does this leave piles of paper to manage, there’s the economic cost of all of that ink and paper and, importantly, there’s also an environmental cost involved with printing that we all bear as a society.

In a recent issue of Wired UK, Thomas Counsell from the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing speculated that up to two percent of greenhouse gases are a result of paper consumption, largely driven by the production and disposal of new and used printed paper.

Counsell’s research is focused on technologies that use a combination of ultrasound and chemical solvents to remove toner from printed documents, enabling paper to reused. Though Counsell’s research is still very much in the labs and somewhat fantastical, there are alternatives, available today, that can help us make environmental and financial judgments about the paper and ink that we use.

The Paper-Less Alliance‘s web site not only provides handy advice on how to reduce paper consumption, but also provides free software, in collaboration with PaperCut, to help individuals and companies visualize their paper consumption in terms of a carbon footprint, trees, energy use and financial impact.

GreenPrint offers an inexpensive software solution that adds a new printer profile to Macs and PCs. As documents are sent to the “virtual” GreenPrint printer, they’re analyzed, and attention is drawn to wasteful or unnecessary areas, which users can then choose to remove from the final printout.

For example, many documents often have a page with just a few words or lines on the last page; GreenPrint automates the discovery of such inefficiencies.

Adobe’s Tools for Sustainable Design are yet to be released, but were previewed by Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch last Spring at ETech 2009. Lynch demonstrated some great demos, including:

optimizing a box pattern to use less paper
tools that show the toxicity and chemical impact of various ink colors
embedded guidelines from organizations such as Greenpeace
calculating the number of trees or soy plants required for a print job
suggesting digital rather than hard copy outputs

More recently, designer Matthew Robinson conducted a somewhat unscientific project entitled “Measuring Type,” which explored how much ink commonly utilized typefaces tended to use. Robinson discovered that Garamond had the highest ink efficiency.

Though I tend not to print much anyway, preferring the flexibility of digital documents, these four initiatives have forced me to understand the true cost of printing and show that software can help us make value judgments about environmental issues.

A year ago we saw controversy and ridicule around one researcher’s carbon calculation of a Google search, yet our various applications and tools still aren’t doing a great job of reporting their environmental impact to users. As we see software emerge to help us understand the environmental impact of printing, I hope we’ll start to see other categories of software and hardware reveal their environmental impact and cost.

Coincidentally, the Daily Beast just published a great article on the advantages and disadvantages of going paper-free, entitled “My Paperless Life.”

Are you mindful of the environmental impact of your printing? Which strategies do you employ to reduce waste?

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What's the Handiest Tool in Your Home Office?

Georgina Laidlaw — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:00:09 +0000

I confess: I’m a terrible scatterbrain. It takes a lot for me to force my thoughts into a nice, orderly line and to keep them there — particularly in those busy times when I have a lot of competing priorities. In those times, I’ll often find myself working on one project while ideas for other tasks pop into my head at random.

Those thoughts can be as simple as “don’t forget to email Pete about that invoice” or as intricate as a new angle on an idea I’d been working on before. They’re basically the random things my brain spews out while I’m trying to focus on something else. I know I’m not alone — a lot of people experience the same thing.

Through a long process of trial and error, I’ve found that the best way to deal with these random thoughts — thoughts that are important and valuable, but unrelated to the task I’m working on — is to note them down. This way, I can be sure I won’t forget them, but I also reduce their interruption into my focus on other tasks.

For this reason, the handiest tool in my home office is a pen and paper. I’ve tried using online tools to note down my ideas, but I find that going online to add a task to my to-do list is like opening a door to the world: The temptation to check the news, weather, or my email is often too great to resist.

The problem with noting these random — but important — tasks in something as simple as my text editor is that, as a result of my scattered approach to work, I usually end up with so many apps open, and so many things going on, that I can forget I have my list hidden behind five other panes. Sometimes, I have trouble finding it at all.

My pen and paper are always at my elbow, so I don’t have any difficulty finding them. I like the fact that they’re physically separate from my computer: the place where I do my work. That physical separation helps me mentally divorce these thoughts from what I’m doing, which prevents them from distracting me from the task at hand.

My notepad is my “random thoughts” area, so I treat it as such; my tasks lists are online, well-planned and carefully formulated. But my notepad is a space that’s dedicated to shards of thoughts, germs of ideas that I know need more work and attention before I can do something with them.

And I do give them that attention — sooner or later. Usually, I try to take a look at my list when I get to a break point in what I’m doing. I can take the easy-to-do stuff, prioritize it, and add it to my task list immediately. And I can check my schedule to see when I can set aside half an hour for thinking more about the new angle for that previously concepted idea. Perhaps I’ll also take the opportunity to find my brainstorming notes for that idea and add the new thought to them, ensuring that I keep all the thoughts about that project together.

Once I’ve sorted through the items on my page, I turn it over and start a new page: a clean slate for new random thoughts that may occur in the next work period. So, my pen and notepad are the handiest tools in my home office.

What about you? What remote working tool do you value most?

Photo credit: stock.xchng user RAWKU5.

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iPhone 3GS Gaming Advantages Made Perfectly Clear

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:00:14 +0000

I’m not going to debate the merits of upgrading with you, since I’m sure you’ve already wrestled with that particular demon yourself, but I did want to take a look at the gaming side of Apple’s new 3GS, and the amazing potential it boasts for bringing cell phone gaming to even more lofty heights. I knew it was better at handling graphics, but just how much better only became really clear yesterday, thanks to a post at Gizmodo looking at how the 3GS handles hardware emulation.

In short, it handles it very well. Much more adeptly than its predecessor, the 3G, in fact. ZodTTD, homebrew coder extraordinaire and jailbreak enthusiast, recently managed to get his Playstation console emulator running on a new 3GS, and the performance gap between it, and the same program running on a 3G, provides a tantalizing hint at what could be coming in the near future for 3GS gaming enthusiasts.

The results are amazing. The 3GS runs PSX game Final Fantasy VII flawlessly, albeit in a tiny space, since the screen is mostly taken up by clunky controls. ZodTTD demos the game in action in the YouTube video included below, so you can see for yourself. Sadly, none of the game’s lavish cutscenes were included, which really would’ve provided an accurate measure of the hardware’s capabilities.

Even without cutscenes, this performance beats the same game running on the same emulator on the iPhone 3G by a wide margin. So far, developers seem reluctant to exclude 3G users by developing games specifically for the 3GS, and instead claim that some games will scale based on your hardware capability. I think it’s only a matter of time, though, before some companies start taking the lead in 3GS exclusive development, a move which Apple will likely want to encourage from a product differentiation standpoint.

Add to better first-party hardware in the 3GS the ability to connect with third-party devices via the dock connector interface and over Bluetooth, and you have a recipe for a great gaming machine that can match, or even exceed, the likes of the PSP and DSi in terms of both core and casual gaming. The oddly themed GameBone Pro appears to be the first such device on the horizon, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. It’s a controller with a built-in battery, microphone and speakers that uses new hardware device access APIs in the 3.0 SDK to control your phone.

It’s a nice start, but as Kotaku points out, companies will have to build support into their apps if they want players to be able to use the device. So before we see a truly useful iPhone controller, industry players will have to agree on a coding specification that third-party hardware makers can then use in all of their devices.

With third-party device access, and much improved graphics capability, Apple has opened the doors for an unrivaled gaming experience on the iPhone. Let’s just hope developers are up to the challenge.

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Build Your Own Planner

Mike Gunderloy — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:00:00 +0000

We’ve discussed the attraction of using paper planners in the past. Even though web workers have access to all sorts of cool to-do list and other planning applications on the web, there are times when getting everything down on paper is the best way to keep track of your day, especially when you’re mobile. Plus (might as well admit it) some of us still have a soft spot in our hearts for the classic Day-Timer and the like.

If you’re in the mood to try paper, one site well worth a visit is D*I*Y Planner. Started by Douglas Johnston and continued by a passionate community of paper-lovers, this is a great source for downloadable templates (in a variety of formats including PDF), all under a Creative Commons license that lets you use them as much as you want.

The D*I*Y Planner site contains a good variety of templates in various sizes, from “hipster PDA” on up to full-sheet. The v3.0 Core Package, for example, has 87 different templates you can print, from personal information to calendars to project brainstorming to trip diary to shopping list and beyond. And if the Core Package doesn’t satisfy you, there are dozens of other templates contributed by users of the site.

Couple these templates with some decent cardstock, a good paper cutter, and a binder (or a binder clip), and you’ve got your own perfect, customizable paper planner. The only drawback is that the site is currently quite slow to serve pages. Fortunately, once you get the downloads you want, this is a one-time cost.

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Making Nicer Printouts From the Web

Mike Gunderloy — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Even the most devoted of web workers sometimes resorts to printing things out on bits of dead trees, in my experience. Maybe it’s the setup information for a new account or the instructions for some software or even your favorite LOLcat – sooner or later you’ll probably want to print a web page.

Unfortunately, this can be an annoying process, thanks to the bad match between “attractive and ad-laden HTML layout” and “useful printed record.” That’s where PrintWhatYouLike comes in. This simple (and free) service has one purpose: to allow you to customize the contents of a web page before you print it.

Using PrintWhatYouLike is easy. Visit their home page (or use their bookmarklet) and put in the URL that you want to print. The page will open within a PrintWhatYouLike frame. Then use their selection tools to start trimming. You can easily get rid of backgrounds and images, but you can also select any other HTML element on the page and make it go away. When you’re satisfied, just click Print and you get your nice clean paper record.

I’d like to see them add “copy” as well as “print”, for times when I want a clean digital record. But even as is, the service is useful enough to warrant giving it a bit of bookmarklet space in my browser.

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Forum Activity: August 25, 2008

Josh Pigford — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:00:44 +0000

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Could UMA be the iPhone’s “one more thing”?

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:59:55 +0000

Just a random thought as the morning caffeine gets my brain jump-started this morning. Besides, you all know how much I like to try and predict things in the mobile tech space… as they say: "sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut."

I got to thinking about a few developments over the past few months and while it’s a stretch, I’m starting to wonder if we’ll see UMA capabilities in the iPhone… no, "UMA" isn’t an iPhone speed-dial setting to Ms. Thurman. For those not familiar with UMA, or Unlicensed Mobile Access, it’s a relatively new technology that seamlessly routes your cellular phone calls over a WiFi network when it can.

Right off the bat, UMA would have never been a consideration under the old iPhone plans. Apple was getting a piece of the voice and data revenues from AT&T on each iPhone, so it certainly wouldn’t have been in Apple’s interest to offer UMA. After all, that would mean less cellular voice minutes used and therefore the potential revenue for Apple could decline. But under the new agreement going forward with the iPhone 3G, AT&T is keeping all of the service plan revenues; Apple is getting an up-front sum from AT&T for the handsets. That removes one barrier for UMA.

Next we have the "on again, off again" free WiFi for iPhone users. Remember that switch-flipping last month? We haven’t heard much more about it since, and I’m wondering if that was all prep-work for something "bigger" than free WiFi at over 17,000 hotspots… could it be UMA access for your phone calls at those 17,000 hotspots? Might we see some sort of further arrangement with AT&T and Boingo Wireless or another hotspot network? It wouldn’t surprise me. Heck, AT&T home broadband customers already get free WiFi at a bunch of hotspots… which takes me into the next point.

I don’t know how many AT&T customers actually have the company’s DSL service, but I’d guess it to be in the millions. If those folks already have free hotspot access and have broadband at home, aren’t they a nice target audience for a UMA router in their house? While this could hurt AT&T from a landline customer perspective, they know that copper is dying a slow, painful death. Why not transition landline customers to UMA service so they can keep the DSL juices flowing?

As far as the device itself, I haven’t seen a better mobile device that seamlessly finds and connects to hotspots with such ease. Precisely what you’d want for a positive UMA customer experience. And remember, every time you use that UMA handset on a WiFi network, you’re effectively offloading that network traffic from the sometimes overburdened cellular network. AT&T would love to see that: a relatively free infrastrure upgrade so their network could focus more on 3G data and less on voice.

The missing piece to this puzzle is the question: how does this help Apple? On the surface, it might not but I don’t think they’ll care. They’re getting a chunky bit of cash for the hardware now, so services offered on the iPhone don’t matter as much. On the flipside, a celluar phone that works both on standard and WiFi networks might be more appealing to customers and further drive up demand for the iPhone, which plays in Apple’s favor.

Do I want to see this happen? I’m not sure. I’m trying to figure out if more people would be yapping away on their phones at Starbucks if this all plays out. They tend to yap away now, so it probably wouldn’t have a measureable aggrivation impact to me. I’d admit this is all a very long long-shot. Hey, some people read tea leaves… I read coffee grinds. Which reminds me… I need a refill.

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YouTube to Creators: Sell Your Own Ads

Chris Albrecht — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:32:02 +0000

YouTube has a new plan to make money — let the creators do the work. The company will start allowing professional content producers that have their own sales teams start selling their own ads on their YouTube channels, according to Advertising Age.

Creators will be able to sell spots including video overlays and the display ads on the pages surrounding videos. Producers sell the ads, and YouTube takes a cut.

Despite doing the heavy lifting, the good news for creators is that it gives them control over which ads appear with their content and expands the inventory they can offer to a potential sponsor. According to Advertising Age, Revision3 is selling its own ads on YouTube with GoDaddy already on board.

And YouTube gets more than money out of the deal, it gets exposure in the ad agency world, and offers high-profile content creators another reason to join the YouTube family.

YouTube has always had the “how will it make money?” question hanging over it’s head, but as the site continues to pull ahead of the competition the pressure is on to generate revenue on those 4 billion plays a month. Shashi Seth, YouTube’s ex-head of monetization quit earlier this month, and just prior to that Forbes reported that YouTube will pull in $200 million in revenue this year. We were skeptical, estimating it’s actually more around the $70 – 90 million range. But even if those higher figures are correct, that’s just 1 percent of Google’s total revenue.

Disclosure: Revision3 produces The GigaOM Show.

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