Pick of the week: DocScanner™

Dec 29

davidolrikPick of the week, Productivity, Technology , , , 3 Comments

I seem to have fallen behind on my weekly picks, Christmas, $work and life in general have kept me very busy lately, but I’ll try to get back to my weekly1 schedule again.

This weeks pick is DocScanner, an iPhone app that allows you to have a flatbed scanner2 in your pocket. While DocScanner isn’t the most pretty or well designed iPhone app, it certainly doesn’t lack in the feature department.

Notable features include both really good edge detection, OCR and WiFi sharing. There exists quite a few scanner apps on the App Store but this one is definitely the one to get.

On a recent business trip I used DocScanner to keep track of all the receipts I accumulated during the trip. Back home I exported them all to one huge PDF file and emailed it to our accounting department. No need to fiddle with those old school analogue receipts anymore.

My wish list for future versions3 of DocScanner are: A cleaner4 user interface, PDF files with the OCR’ed text included and direct upload to Dropbox.

Update: As of version 3.0.35 DocScanner will embed the ORC’ed text into the pdf files!

  1. Please don’t kill me if it isn’t precisely weekly. [↩]
  2. and a whiteboard scanner and just about any other kind of scanner you can think of. [↩]
  3. and they release new versions quite frequently – About once a month. [↩]
  4. and by cleaner, I mean more iPhone-ish [↩]
  5. Released on January 30th 2010 [↩]

Pick of the week: Tweetie 2

Oct 11

davidolrikPick of the week, Technology , , , , No Comments

Tweetie 2I have blogged about this weeks pick before but I never made it a pick of the week before. The recent update to Tweetie rocks, so if you are into Twitter1 I suggest you head over to the App Store and pick up a copy.

The first version of Tweetie for the iPhone was cool, and even won an Apple design award. It was easy to use, looked nice and was very polished.2

Tweetie 2 raises the bar for all iPhone applications, not just Twitter clients. It has been stuffed with all kinds of new and useful features – but in a way that doesn’t make it feel cramped at all! The user interface is very polished3 and it quickly grows on you.

The feature list is too long to repeat here, so I’ll just mention a couple of my favorites:  Nearby tweets superimposed on a Google map, Pull to refresh4, Multiple drafts, offline mode and full persistence i.e the user interface is restored to the same state after a relaunch or a phone call.

Tweetie 2 also takes advantage of some of Twitters new features that haven’t been launched yet – I’m so looking forward to the new Geolocation stuff. @Twitter: You may release now!5

Oh… and Tweetie 2.0 for Mac will soon be released, and will feature sync with the iPhone version and other goodies!

  1. And who isn’t these days? [↩]
  2. Except for the refresh button that looked like it had been placed with a shovel. It had to be there and this was the only place it would fit, well kinda… [↩]
  3. Some might say too polished, as in eye candy for the sake of eye candy [↩]
  4. The ugly button has been hidden, and only comes into view when you need it – nice! [↩]
  5. Pretty please! [↩]

Pick of the week: Pixelmator

Oct 04

davidolrikCreativity, Photography, Pick of the week, Productivity, Technology , , , 1 Comment

PixelmatorThis weeks pick is a mac app called Pixelmator. Pixelmator is a lightning fast image editor for the mac – kinda like a Photoshop lite but unlike Photoshop1, Pixelmator really feels like it was build for the mac. Pixelmators feature set is some what smaller than its big brother but most2 of the time it will get the job done.

I have been using Pixelmator for a litter over a year now3, and Pixelmator just keeps getting better and better with each new release. The latest release brought the long waited slice tool which is of great use when creating graphics for the web.

Another great thing about Pixelmator is their tutorial section on their website. There the creators of Pixelmator shows you how to use it to create all kinds cool effects.

Pixelmator costs just $594 and is truly “Image editing for the rest of us”.

  1. With each new version of Photoshop it seems to move further away from being a true mac app. [↩]
  2. Unless you are need an image editor for professional reasons, it will get the job done every time! [↩]
  3. I got it as part of the second MacHeist bundle. [↩]
  4. Which is approximately 43.19 EUR, and is way less than any version of Photoshop costs. [↩]

Pick of the week: Autodesk SketchBook Mobile

Sep 20

davidolrikCreativity, Pick of the week, Productivity, Technology , , No Comments

Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile
A recent tweet by @drwave from Pixar prompted me to check out SketchBook Mobile from Autodesk, and boy am I glad I did!

I have always wanted to get better at drawing, but I have never set aside the time it takes to master this creative skill. As with all creative disciplines the winning formula for getting better is 10% talent and 90% effort1 and with this little app I always have my drawing tools with me, so I can doodle away anytime2 I’m in the mood for it.

SketchBook Mobile is loaded with features, and still manages to have a very non intrusive user interface, it just stays out of your way so you can concentrate on sketching.

SketchBook Mobile makes really good use of Apples Multi-touch technology both for drawing and for zooming and panning around your sketch – Oh, and it has undo too!3

SketchBook Mobile is available in the App Store for just $2.99

  1. Anyone who tells you different should go listen to a couple of talks from Merlin Mann: Toward Patterns for Creativity and Doing Creative Work – Seriously, go! now! – And then go make stuff! [↩]
  2. This is the effort part, the more you do it the better you get. [↩]
  3. A much needed feature that my analog drawing tools is sadly missing. [↩]

Pick of the week: Prowl

Sep 03

davidolrikPick of the week, Productivity , , , , No Comments

ProwlThis weeks pick is another iPhone app by the name of Prowl. Prowl promises to bring Growl from your desktop to your iPhone. When I first heard about Prowl I thought that this was surely the stupidest app ever! – Why on earth would you want your Growl notifications on your iPhone?1 The answer is you won’t2 – Prowl has an extensive API that will let you write scripts in numerous languages, including my all time favorite Perl, and this is where Prowl gets really interesting. This means you can get push-notifications from practically anything you can think of.

I once wrote an IRC notifier for Irssi that will message you via XMPP whenever someone highlights you or sends you a private message while you are disconnected from Irssi3.

It worked ok, but what I really wanted was a way where Irssi could connect directly to Growl and notify me whenever something interesting happens.

With Prowl all I need to send a push notification to my iPhone, is a small piece of code that looks something like this:

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#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use WebService::Prowl;

my $ws = WebService::Prowl->new(apikey => 'your personal apikey');
$ws->verify || die $ws->error();
$ws->add(
application => "Irssi",
event       => "Query",
description => "Joe: I like coffee",
priority    => 0,
);

So based on my old notifier program, I quickly whipped up an Irssi Prowl Notifier program 8-) So now I get notified with a push message whenever something interesting happens on IRC. There is even a WordPress plugin that will notify you whenever someone posts a comment on your blog.

Anything you can think of, Prowl can notify you about.

  1. Don’t get me wrong I love Growl and use it extensively. [↩]
  2. Well at least I won’t – I feel the Growl desktop notifications belong on the desktop. [↩]
  3. I run Irssi inside Screen so it will persist even when I logout of my account. [↩]

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