app | What I Learnt Today

Feb 08 2011

Last week Rupert Murdoch launched his new new venture, The Daily. It will be his only paper in his disparate stable that never actually makes it on to paper, as it only available through the iPad. He has spent $30 million in its development.

It is available free of charge for another week or so, and then will be available only by subscription at 99c week. It is only available in the US Itunes store, so you will need this workaround if you want to try the app while it is free.

The design and interface is slick, and I enjoy reading news on the iPad. While some of the international reporting is first class, the content is too American focused to maintain my subscription – but I’m not the target audience.

There is a web site for the Daily, so that readers can share stories with their friends who don’t have the app. However, the website is purposefully designed not to have a front page or index, and the pages have obscure addresses, so that without the app you can’t easily find the daily news. Never count on obfuscation on the web as a way of hiding stuff – independent programmer Andy Baio created his own ‘indexing’ engine and how publishes the missing front page for the Daily – so that’s another way you can check it out.

Fast Company has a comprehensive report on The Daily launch.

The best app for news available for us in Australia is the Australian iPad app, also from News Corp. It was launched without the fanfare or resources of the Daily at the time of the launch of the iPad in Australia in May last year. Initially $4.99 a month, it is now $8.99 a month. This includes the full daily content of the Australian newspaper.

Although this content is also available through the website, the app makes it much easier to flip through the paper quickly, and once downloaded does not rely on an ongoing Internet connection. Unfortunately, in the latest version of the app the advertisments have become more intrusive.

The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age are not in the game. They have an iPad app, which is simply a pdf version of the paper edition. And, somewhat bizarrely, you require a subscription to the real paper to receive it.

Tthe Australian ipad App remains in my top 10, and is part of my ‘daily office’.

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Feb 07 2011

AppSpin: TripIt

TripIt,com is a cool web service.

If you travel regularly, it can be hard to keep track of flight times, flight numbers and reservation codes.

TripIt makes it easy to collect all this information in the one place.

When you receive an email confirmation from the airline for a flight you have booked, you forward that email unchanged to ‘plans@tripit.com‘.

TripIt reads the information contained in the email and adds it to your itinerary.

(you can also add flights manually)

And here’s what I learnt today – TripIt can now monitor a gmail address, and will automatically add any trip information it finds.

You can access your travel plans through the website, or, more conveniently, through their iPhone app. You can also set up your iCal or google calendar so that the flight details are automatically added to your calendar.

Bon Voyage

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Jan 25 2011

AppSpin: Zinio

Taking the app Zinio for a spin

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New Scientist is an excellent magazine – but very demanding, as it arrives weekly. Despite all good intentions, eventually you are faced with a guilt-provoking pile still ‘wrapped in plastic’.

So now I subscribe through Zinio. It is still hard to keep up, but at least it is about a third as expensive – and less confronting when you have a backlog.

Zinio produces electronic versions of popular magazines. It has an enormous stable of both Australian and International titles, and they are generally available at significant discounts from the printed version. Periodic specials make the prices even more competitive – 12 months of Harpers Bazaar (US edition) for $10!

The magazines are available in your library on the day they are released. The Zinio App is available on Windows, Mac and iPhone, but comes into its own on the iPad.

The app is a free download. Purchases and subscriptions are made from within the app. Sample issues of some titles are available so you can ‘try before you buy’.

Some magazines are available ‘US only’ or ‘UK only’. However, the app includes a simple selection in Settings to determine which International Store you are shopping from, and by selecting appropriately you can still make the purchase. (see screenshot)

I consider Zinio a must-have iPad app

What I Learnt On 25th January in other years

25th January 2012

Train Travel in Japan

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Jan 21 2011

AppSpin: Kinetic – and the Noosa Coastal Walk

Taking the iPhone app Kinetic for a spin in Noosa.

The Coastal Walk in Noosa National Park is surely one of the world’s great casual walks.

Capped by a ‘Cap’ at Aroma’s at each end, it takes about one hour return to Dolphin Point. The track skirts along the coastline around a number of bays and through groves of eucalyptus and pockets of rainforest. When the surf is ‘working’ on the points there is the added attraction of muscular surfie dudes and bikini babes along the path, and you can watch them catching the famous right hand breaks.

It is our family philosophy that there is nothing in nature so beautiful that it can’t be improved by a good app. So we used the Noosa walk to test the iPhone app ‘Kinetic’.

Kinetic uses the acceriometer, compass and GPS system built in to the iPhone to keep track of where you go and what you are doing. It times your activity, tells you how fast you are going, and shows a map of where you are. It records all this information and at the end of your walk it shows you a map of where you have been (Hansel and Gretel, take note). It also records how fast you were going at each stage, and your altitude, so that you can see when you were going up hill.

It is mainly targeted at runners, and includes some training regimes to help you run your next marathon. We had very good success in using it to record our walks, and also to map our routes when we went kayaking.

The maps can be stored on the Kinetic website and shared via email, facebook or twitter.

The recording of the Noosa walk is here

and the map of our kayak through the canals is here.

The app can work in the background, which means you can play music or check the web and Kinetic will continue to record your activity. It does eat up battery power, so make sure you start fully charged. It also helps to preserve battery life by turning off Wifi and Bluetooth on the iPhone. The app does access google maps if it can, so if you are overseas (say, in Sri Lanka), make sure your data access is turned off, or you could run up some significant data charges. Also, remember to press the ‘Lock Screen’ button in the app before you put the phone in our pocket, or you may find it accidentally pushes the ‘stop’ button prematurely.

We found that Kinetic worked very well and added value to our activity regime. It is on special for $4.99. There is also a free ‘lite’ version that does nearly everything the full version does – so you can test it out without risk.

Screenshots of Kinetic below. Back to the track for us.

What I Learnt On 21st January in other years

21st January 2016

Have you seen this flyer?

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Jan 18 2011

AppSpin: Beachsafe

Taking Surf Life Saving Australia’s App ‘Beachsafe’ for a spin.

Tropical Cyclone Zelda brought some big waves to the Sunshine Coast last weekend.
All five points from Noosa (heading east) were ‘working’ with their famous right hand rolling waves.
Each point was packed with hundreds of surfers.

The hot weather, after weeks of rain (and floods), brought thousands to the beaches.
The water rolling in with the big waves had to get out somehow, and so there were rapids sweeps and strong rips.

Lifesavers expected a big weekend, and it was. However, I doubt they were expecting to have to pull a catfish out of a dumped surfer’s back.
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/story/2011/01/17/sunshine-coast-beaches-…

There are 12,000 beaches in Australia. Which gets us to the new app created by Surf Lifesaving Australia called Beachsaver.
It uses the nationwide database of all Australia’s surf clubs, and has detailed information on the beaches near where you are, when they are patrolled, the daily weather and surf conditions, and general information about each beach, how hazardous it is, and where to swim.

The app is easy to use, presents relevant information clearly, and is a excellent example of the power of networked databases.

The information in Beach Safety is also available from http://beachsafe.org.au
The app is a free download from the App Store