iPad apps - page 28

A more efficient, less costly government sounds like a pretty good idea no matter where you sit on the political spectrum.

Whether devices like iPads – small, portable devices that allow lawmakers to read lengthy documents without printing them out – are a good way to do that has been open to debate.

Cult of Mac talked to a city council member in Ridgecrest, California who has been bringing his own device to work to speed things up.

The Catholic Church has formally blessed a new iOS app called Confession, which lets followers keep track of their sins. No, I’m not making this up!

The $1.99 app was created by an outfit called Little iApps and has been approved by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana. It guides Catholics through an examination of their sins, so when they visit a real priest for the Rite of Penance in a real church they’re ready for the ordeal.

The app guides users through each of the 10 commandments, where they can tap a check box if they’ve, say, coveted their neighbor’s ox or murdered someone.

The app also serves as a cheat-sheet for what sinners are supposed to say in the confessional. For example, when the priest says “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,” the app cues the user to say: “For his mercy endures forever.”

It even has a database listing acts of contrition and prayers.

Confession works on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Landing in the iOS App Store tomorrow is Index Card v2 for iPad, a multi-touch version of the corkboard-and-index-cards system popular with screenwriters and others who need to arrange multiple ideas within a project.

Inspired by the Corkboard feature of Scrivener for Mac (the Scrivener people know), Index Card allows users to move cards around, label by color, and even write on the back of cards (the ‘flip’ arrow changes color if there’s something written on the back).

This latest version adds a trio of new features: Stacks, customizable label names, and the option to export notes with the rest of your project to RTF for Word or Final Draft.

Testing the app last week, I found it to be responsive and easy to use. It does exactly what it it promises.

That said, at least on the surface, Index Card is very much about the needs of screenwriters. Developer DenVog would do well to add options in its next release to make the app more appealing to general productivity users. More backgrounds than just cork and solid black would also be welcome.

I can’t say I use index cards in my daily life, but for those that do, Index Card should prove practical. The app already counts a couple of Emmy-nominated producers as users.

William N. Fordes, a Co-Executive Producer/Writer on Law & Order, tells me that he finds Index Card “superb” and “well thought out”.

“The ease with which the individual cards can be moved around is terrific, and makes rethinking the shuffle of scenes so much easier,” he says.

If you’re like me, you probably can’t watch TV without a computer in your lap. And if you’re be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, there’s a pretty cool iPad app that will enhance the game — and the commercials.

The free Vualla Social TV Companion is a one-stop shop for all the online goodies surrounding the game.

Wanna talk smack on Twitter? It includes a Twitter client, as well as FaceBook and chat. There are news feeds from ESPN and other sources, Twitter updates from the locker room, Flickr photos from fans at the game, and instant replays (both plays and commercials) – plus a bunch more.

The idea is to have an easy way to do all the things we now do while watching TV (Twittering, checking the news). The company plans to roll out more apps for upcoming sports events as well as popular shows like American Idol and Glee. I think it looks pretty cool. Here’s a quick video tour I just got from Kevin Brown of Stage Two:

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With the launch of The Daily yesterday, Apple revealed a new subscription model for iPad publications.

You can currently check out The Daily for free for two weeks, then subscriptions run $0.99 per week or $40 a year. This model is currently only available for that publication, but is expected to be expanded soon.

The next time you download on iTunes, you’ll be asked to agree with the updated terms of service about in-app subscriptions.

The 347-word TOS specifies that subs are non-refundable, automatically renew and may hand over your personal details to publishers – which, to me at least, sounds like the same kind of hassle faced with analog magazine subscriptions.

Are you pleased that Apple has created a new, uniform model for subscriptions or are you going to stick to paper?

Let us know in the comments.

A dad whose daughter ran up his credit card while playing the Smurfs’ Village app has launched a Facebook group to convince Apple to ban in-app purchases in kids games.

The fledgling group – as of this writing, it has 20 members – started after Tobias Feldt’s daughter bought a load of Smurf extras by accident.

Feldt says Apple refunded the purchase immediately, with no questions asked – as it often does in these cases – but he decided the incident shouldn’t end there.

Feldt has tried to teach his two children to play games responsibly. His oldest daughter, age nine, was “devastated” when she found out that she had run up a bill playing the game.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — If there’s one thing we’re hearing over and over at Macworld this year, it’s the word “enterprise.” There’s a lot of companies getting ready for a huge wave of iOS deployments by enterprise in 2011.

One company ready to jump on the enterprise bandwagon is FileMaker, whose FileMaker Go iOS app allows FileMaker databases to run on the iPad or iPhone. That means businesses can make custom database apps — everything from email clients to iTunes clones — without going through Apple.

“A lot of people think they have to develop their own app to do something but its not necessarily necessary to do an app,” said FileMaker spokesman Kevin Mallon. “If you’ve got FileMaker Pro, you’ve got an app.”

According to FileMaker, its database software is currently the only way enterprise can get custom apps on the iPhone or iPad without coding a custom solution and submitting it through the App Store.

The pharmaceutical company Merck, for example, created an iOS app to share the company lexicon of drug names, special acronyms and competing drug companies’ names and terms.

“You don’t have to be a serious programmer to do an app,” said Mallon. “It’s dead easy.”

When President Obama gave his annual State of the Union speech Tuesday night, he dedicated a significant portion of it to the dismal state of America’s education system.

Some educational experts responded by noting that that mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad could potentially improve the American education system’s “productivity.”

I wonder whether this is a valid point, or yet another manifestation of Americans’ infatuation with technology.

Boom boom, pow — the Black Eyed Peas, already one of the most cutting-edge bands to rock an iPod, may just have made music videos so two-thousand-and-late. That’s because they released an app today that includes a stunning, immersive 360-degree, augmented-reality enabled music video that sticks you in the middle of the action with the ability to pan around and become part of the action. And guess what — it’s only available on the iPhone, with no plans announced yet to make it available for any other platform.

Perhaps it’s another case of putting your tweet in your mouth, but Playboy founder and patriarch of the sexy mansion of the same name has announced, yet again, that his centerfolds will be available as mamma made them come March.

It’s not yet clear whether Playboy would be sold via iTunes — another bone of contention this week as one Euro-crat called the anti-trust on Apple for these subscriptions making the claim that Apple is abusing its position.

If Hef manages to get the goods past the Steve Jobs no-porn-on-my-device diktat, would you pay $8 for it?

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Small, sleek and fast: this video shows what a great cash register an iPad can make for a high-traffic small business. Here it is getting the java going for the crowds at Joe in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

ShopKeep.com is behind the point-of-sale app designed for small businesses that can also print out receipts and even makes a satisfying ka-ching when the sale rings up. The iPad register also transmits sales to its web-based BackOffice so that managers using ShopKeep’s BackOffice can track sales in real time and can manage inventory, run reports and export the data.

We’ve been seeing a lot of iPads in small businesses like restaurants, but this may be the first cash register to face a similar commuter onslaught.

The folks at ShopKeep tell us that they’re also ringing up tabs in New York with iPad cash registers at Steve’s Ice Cream on 42nd Street and 5th ave. and at Joe in the Northwest Corner of the Columbia University building.

Sure, iPad tills aren’t quite taking over Manhattan, but soon they may be a common sight in small businesses.

What’s worse: someone steals your car – or they steal your car with an iPad in it?

A man in Paterson, New Jersey managed to track down his stolen car thanks to the Find My iPhone app installed on his iPad.

The man reportedly left his 003 BMW X5 in a Costco parking lot at 11:30 a.m. and returned about 40 minutes later to find the car missing.

Hugh Hefner, founder of the Grandaddy of all girlie mags, Playboy, tweeted Tuesday evening that an “uncensored” Playboy is coming to iPad.

Given that the Playboy website’s metadata “description” reads: “Nude girls, hot girls, naked women and sexy pics with nude girls as well as videos of hot girls posing nude or in sexy positions celebrating girls and women …” — Hef’s tweet would appear to be in direct contradiction of Apple’s prohibition against sexually provocative material in apps designed to run on iOS devices.

Maybe Hef knows something we don’t know; perhaps he’s just hoping to take advantage of Steve Jobs being on medical leave. Or maybe Hef is just a little more hip to the buzz generating capabilities of Twitter than an 84 year-old guy ought to be.

IK Multimedia, makers of the highly-acclaimed tone-modeling app AmpliTube, have released new iOS software bringing legendary Fender sound to musicians playing and recording with Apple mobile devices.

Available as a standalone tone solution or as in-app add-ons to current AmpliTube users, AmpliTube Fender lets iOS mobile rockers dial up tones modeled on a roster of classic pre-CBS amplifiers including the ’59 Bassman LTD and the 1965 Deluxe Reverb and Twin Reverb, as well as the Super-Sonic, and the Pro Junior.

Players can practice using the built-in SpeedTrainer, which allows up to 50 backing tracks — importable directly from the iPod library on the iOS device or from a computer — to be slowed down to half-time or speeded up to double-time with no loss in pitch fidelity. 36 tone presets can be named, saved and called up on the fly, and each step in the tone chain — from stompbox to amp head to cabinet to mic — is individually selectable, with fully operational controls making for a tweaker’s paradise.

Some of the crowds passing through Grand Central Terminal in New York will be carrying coffee drinks purchased from an iPad cash register at Joe.

ShopKeep.com is behind the point-of-sale app designed for small businesses that can also print out receipts and even makes a satisfying ka-ching when the sale rings up. The iPad register also transmits sales to its web-based BackOffice so that managers using ShopKeep’s BackOffice can track sales in real time and can manage inventory, run reports and export the data.

We’ve been seeing a lot of iPads in small businesses like restaurants, but this may be the first cash register to debut in such a high-traffic area.

Most tech companies go out of their way to publish product roadmaps, so their customers know what’s coming next. But Apple is not most tech companies. Ask anyone from Steve Jobs to the guy at your local Apple Store, and you’ll hear the same refrain, “we don’t comment on unannounced products.”

It’s this dearth of hard facts on what’s coming next from Cupertino that makes speculation so irresistible. And with the new year now upon us, it’s the perfect time to ponder what Apple may have in store for us in 2011.

Blogger Deon Devine, from Houston, Texas, has sent Cult of Mac some very interesting predictions.

Smurfs’ Village, the iPhone/iPad game a lot of parents point the finger at for accidental in-app purchases, has now added a few warnings.

The first sentence of the game description now reads:

“Smurf Village is free to play, but charges real money for additional in-app content. You may lock out the ability to purchase in-app content by adjusting your device’s settings.”

OBiON, a free mobile communications app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch now available for download from the iTunes App store, is an exciting — if still evolving — tool that offers more power and flexibility than any similar app available today.

The app is the mobile centerpiece in a new communication paradigm being charted by Obihai Technology, a Cupertino, CA start-up founded by the developers of the first Analog Telephone Adapter, which made “Internet calling” possible without the use of a computer and spawned the growth of Vonage and dozens of other Internet Telephony Service Providers.

Now, in conjunction with the OBiTALK web portal and the company’s Obi110 Voice Services Bridge, OBiON users can leverage the ability to make and receive calls from local or remote landlines, as well as to and from multiple VoIP services on Apple mobile devices.

We’re pretty big on Dropbox here at the Cult, and it’s handiness as a transfer/storage utility for Macs and iDevices alike hasn’t really been challenged. That is, till now.

Spot Documents works with the same basic idea: Its free OS X or iOS apps can be used to upload a user’s e-junk to Spot Document’s cloud — in this case, hosted on Amazon’s S3 servers — where it’ll be stored and made available for download/viewing. The difference is that where Dropbox is pretty slim on options, Spot Documents seems to be substantially more powerful: Spotlight-like search, full previews even on iDevices, and the ability to play around with access options for multiple users. And more.

What it is: MediaPad Pro is fantastically well designed software for the iPad that allows creative people of all types to easily place multiple portfolios of work — including audio, video, still images and websites — onto Apple’s tablet device and present them in professional, fully customized, brand-able fashion to potential clients, agents or patrons, to virtually anyone they’d like to view their work.

A private pilot is using an iPad to help stay on course, in addition to the standard navigation system.

Jeff Curl has loaded up his iPad with worldwide charts and says it helps him make better decisions in the air.

“I can see the route structure and see what kind of rate I want to file, I can also pull up my radar and see I don’t want to go straight, I’ve got a huge line of thunderstorms,” he said.

Thanks to the inclusion of WebSocket support for the iPad’s Safari browser in iOS 4.2, the doorway for collaboration through the web between the iPad and assorted devices has been flung open.

One of the first apps to take advantage of the iPad’s new trick is $10 SyncPad, which presents users with a faux whiteboard to scrawl notes on, then lets other users of the app scribble on that same whiteboard over the Internet, with the results showing up in realtime (well, almost — the developer, Davide Di Cillo of development company 39 Inc., told us it updates a little slowly, but that the problem’s been fixed in the latest update, which is waiting for Apple’s approval).

There’s no limit to the amount of collaborators, although each has to have (of course) the app and an Internet connection; the iPad-less can view the whiteboard through a web browser for free, but have to make do without being able to add input for the time being — although Di Cillo says they’re working on a fee-based version that’ll allow collaboration via a browser as well. There’s also a view-only free version of the app for the iPad.

There’s been a great hullabaloo very recently here in the United States over the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s implementation of its so-called “Advanced Imaging Technology,” aka naked full body scans, and its equally unnerving intimate pat-down procedure.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a hands-on kind of guy, but usually, that hands-on approach tends to pop up as dashed-off emails from his iPhone in response to customer queries than telephonic reach-outs.

That’s not to say the latter can’t happen, though: A Seattle-based iPad developer was recently called by His Steveness himself after his app was rejected for using private APIs.