David Jack Wange Olrik

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 [↩]

This 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. [↩]

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. [↩]

This 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:

So based on my old notifier program, I quickly whipped up an Irssi Prowl Notifier program 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. [↩]

This weeks pick is late, so late that it is actually a pick for both this week and last week. As you might have guessed from the picture it’s my iPhone.

While on vacation in northern Jylland my MacBook Pro died . So for the past 2 weeks my iPhone has been my primary “computer” for Instant Messaging, Twitter, Email, Web browsing and all that stuff that I usually do when I am online. I have previously written about using the iPhone as a laptop replacement when going to conferences, but this is different – this is everyday and for everything.

The iPhone actually did quite well when you think of its relative small size and small keyboard¹. For most tasks I can say “There is an app for that”, I even upgraded this website using nothing but my iPhone. The only task I really missed my MacBook Pro was for programming, so my secret project is a bit behind schedule. Oh, and I did miss out² on the online launch sale for the iPhone 3GS, but I think this was mostly due to the fact that 3.dk didn’t scale under the pressure of the danish iPhone fans desperate to get a proper carrier with a 3G network that actually works.

One thing you have to remember though, is to always bring your charger and your USB cable as there will be some days where you’ll drain the battery and that little extra juice³ you can get from a quick charge here and there is a lifesaver.

If you thought that I was attached to my iPhone before the “Jylland incident”, think again – that attachment has been taken to a whole new level…

My precious…

1. I find that the keyboard on the iPhone is no better or worse than any physical keyboard of the same size. You just need to get used to it. – Actually I find it a little better [↩]
2. I have ordered a 32 GiB iPhone 3GS – Now I’m just waiting… [↩]
3. A couple of months ago I ordered a Juice Pack Air from juicepack.co.uk but I have still haven’t received anything from them – quite frustrating… [↩]