David Jack Wange Olrik » Apps

Pick of the week: DocScanner™

davidolrik — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:08:23 +0000

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!

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

Pick of the week: Tweetie 2

davidolrik — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:00:59 +0000

I 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!

And who isn’t these days?
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…
Some might say too polished, as in eye candy for the sake of eye candy
The ugly button has been hidden, and only comes into view when you need it – nice!
Pretty please!

Pick of the week: Pixelmator

davidolrik — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:44:52 +0000

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”.

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

Pick of the week: Autodesk SketchBook Mobile

davidolrik — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:25:06 +0000

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

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!
This is the effort part, the more you do it the better you get.
A much needed feature that my analog drawing tools is sadly missing.

Pick of the week: Prowl

davidolrik — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:00:51 +0000

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:

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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 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.

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

Irssi, Jabber & Adium

Pick of the week: xScope

davidolrik — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:19:09 +0000

This weeks pick is cute little utillity app from the Iconfactory¹ called xScope. If you do any kind of design work xScope will most certainly help you in your day to day work. xScope is really a compilation of seven small tools combined in a great looking package. For only $26.95 you get the following tools:

Dimensions Measure anything on the screen instantly. E.g. the distance between two elements.
Rulers How much is 200 pixels again? – Use the rulers to quickly align stuff on your screen.
Screens Ever wondered how big the viewable area of IE 6 is² with a resolution of 1024×768? Screens gives you an overlay that you can configure with the measurements of every major player on the browser marked³.
Loupe Zoom in on anything and copy the pixel color to the pasteboard or use it for precision editing in programs that do not have a loupe.
Guides Just like guides in Photoshop but here they fill the whole screen.
Frames Square guides for when you need to contain stuff.
Crosshair A mouse cursor that fills the whole screen.

I mostly use Dimensions, Rulers and the Loupe and that easily justifies the $26.95 price tag.

You know, the ones with the Twitter bird icon that everybody copies
Its 1004×568 in case you were wondering
And you can configure your own if that is not enough

Spaces just got a whole lot better!

davidolrik — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:20:33 +0000

I use Spaces a lot and today it just got a whole lot better! Back in the olden days I used VirtueDesktops which in my opinion was way better than Spaces, but the project died and we were left with Spaces.

In the beginning Spaces sucked a lot and it would move you to another desktop in a seemingly random way. This behavior is still the default for new installs of Leopard! Well… Apple finally fixed it¹ and gave us an option called:

When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application

This option is checked by default and should have been named “mess up spaces”, believe me you do not want this option to be checked².

Spaces is also rather limited in how you can configure the hotkey that switches from space to space, and it is in this area that Spaces just got way better. Will Henderson recently released a little tool called MultiClutch that will let you bind a three finger swipe to a keystroke. Download it, install it and follow this little guide and soon you will be swiping from space to space!

Disable whatever hotkey you currently have configured for Spaces³
Open the MultiClutch PreferencePane and select the “Global” application.
Add a new gesture by clicking Add⁴ in the bottom right corner. “Swipe Left” is the default, double click in the “Key Command” column and press your preferred “go left” hotkey⁵
Add a new gesture by clicking Add in the bottom right corner, change “Swipe Left” to “Swipe Right” and then click in the “Key Command” column and press your preferred “go right” hotkey⁶
Repeat for Up and Down
Open the Spaces PreferencePane and re-enable your preferred hotkey
Swipe away!

MultiClutch will also let you configure other multi-touch gestures such as pinch open and close. If you find it useful please consider giving a small donation to the developer.

There are lots of other hidden options that improve the way Spaces work and you can find some of them in the article on MacOS X Hints
Well maybe you do… then by all means go ahead and click it – I just don’t know anyone that think the default behavior is sane
If you don’t, you will switch away from the MultiClutch PreferencePane each time you try to bind your current hotkey to the three finger swipe
It’s the small + sign
I use control + left
I use control + right

Pick of the week: PTHPasteboard

davidolrik — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:55:04 +0000

This weeks pick is an oldie, but a goodie. It is a Mac app that I can’t live without. I work with computers all day long developing software for various $clients. When developing software I spend a great deal of time in a text editor¹, mocking around with code i.e. moving text from one file to another.

PTHPasteboard gives me a pasteboard with a configurable number of slots² for storing clippings³. So instead of jumping back and forth between windows and applications copying and pasting, I can copy every block I need from one file, switch window and then paste each block where it needs to be.

PTHPasteboard is also useful for people writing lots of email as you can define any number of pasteboards with commonly used phrases and sentences. I even have a pasteboard with ssh-keys, that I use when ever I login to a new Unix server. It lets me add my ssh-key to the authorized_keys file quickly and easily simply by hitting a customized hotkey and selecting the proper entry from the pasteboard⁴.

PTHPasteboard also exists in a Pro version that’ll let you sync pasteboards across computers or even share pasteboards between users on different machines. The Pro version will also let you paste through filters, and comes with a whole slew of predefined filters that will you remove formatting, convert line endings, encode as hex, convert camel case to underscores and much more.

I use 1Password for all of my passwords and PTHPasteboard has the ability to ignore specific applications. That means that my top secret passwords will never end up in plaintext on one of the pasteboards – clever eh?!

Best of all the basic version of PTHPasteboard is free! – But I suggest you buy the Pro version and support the developer⁵, even if you’ll never⁶ use the advanced features of the Pro version.

In writing this blog post I used PTHPasteboard extensively, moving text around and finding and inserting links through the entire post.

Update 2009-08-30: Please note that PTHPasteboard is not compatible with Snow Leopard

Update 2009-09-04: PTHPasteboard is back and compatible with Snow Leopard! Unfortunately for those using the free version, only the Pro version will be supported under Snow Leopard.

Preferably Emacs, TextMate or Xcode
I currently have 100 slots in my main pasteboard.
This can be both text and images with and without formatting
And best of all It can be done without ever touching the mouse
The Pro version only costs $24.95, which is quite cheap considering the usefulness of this app.
Most of the time I only use the basic features of PTHPasteboard

Pick of the week: 1Password

davidolrik — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:28:23 +0000

This weeks pick is an tool that is usualy the first thing I install on a new computer¹. It’s an app that keeps my personal information safe. It’s an app called 1Password that totally replaces MacOSX’ build in Keychain.

So why would I want to replace the build in Keychain? While the build in Keychain is pretty sweet, 1Password just that much sweeter! You only need to remember one password, and this one password will let you access all your stored passwords.

You can choose to use the build in Keychain as storage backend, but I recommend that you use 1Passwords own Agile Keychain format.

These are the features² you’ll gain when using 1Password instead of the build in Keychain:

Store and provide easy access to more than one account for any website.
Correctly handle financial websites which often disable storing passwords in Safari’s AutoFill.
Integrate with multiple browsers, including Safari, Fluid, Firefox, DEVONagent, OmniWeb, NetNewsWire, Flock, Netscape Navigator, and Camino.
Eliminate the need to synchronize your data between browsers.
Support multiple identities, such as personal and business identities. You can even create fake identities for websites you do not trust.
Fill credit card information with one click.
Import information from a multitude of sources.
Integrate a strong password generator directly into the browser for quick and painless generation of super strong passwords.
Sync your information to the iPhone/iPod touch, as well as Palm³ devices.

The killer feature of 1Password is the ability to bring all of your passwords and credentials with you in a safe and secure way on your iPhone⁴. And with the recent 2.0 upgrade of 1Password touch the syncing part just got a major overhaul, and it is now incredibly easy and hassel free that you’ll want to sync it all the time.

Later this year Agile will release 1Password 3.0, which is a completely rewritten version of 1Password based on the new Agile Keychain – I can’t wait for it to be released!

And by computer I mean Mac
I totally ripped the feature list from this page in the 1Password online documentation
But why would you want to do that?
or other mobile device, but why would you want a mobile device that is not an iPhone?

Pick of the week: Flight Control

davidolrik — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:30:04 +0000

Inspired by Leo and his gang on TWiT, I am starting a weekly post series about apps and technology I find particular cool.

This weeks pick is a small game called Flight Control from Firemint. Flight Control is a very simple game with exceptionally beautiful graphics and it’s very addicting¹.

The aim of the game is to land airplanes on an airstrip. You act as a flight controller and simply trace the path you wish the plane to follow – very simple, at least at first. As the game progresses you will have to keep more and more planes and helicopters in the air – at the same time – and keep them from crashing into each other.

The graphics and sound set moves you back in time, back to the childhood of air travel and gives the game a really nice look and feel. Highly recommended!²

Download it on the iTunes App Store!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you
But then again it wouldn’t be a pick of the week if it wasn’t