Technical Pro

Typing on the iPad is anything but analogous to that of a standard keyboard.  As a result, a number of after market products have seen success, or at least production – case in point Logitech’s Foldup Keyboard (which we loved).  Unfortunately, they add bulk and negate the iPad’s svelte form factor.  As a result Steve Isaac & Brad Melmon built the TouchFire.

It’s an ultra thin and light weight (less than one ounce) keyboard that fits over the iPad’s virtual keyboard and provides the much needed force feedback to enable touch typists and those with an aversion to onscreen keyboards to type as if they were using the real thing.  Course it won’t solve the issue of keyboard size, but by using micro-structures and some sort of special manufacturing process, it can not only produces force feedback, allow you to partially see the screen as well as swipe, but leave the TouchFire in place even with Apple’s smart cover is in place.

So at this point the two have designed and built a working prototype.  But they need your help to get the TouchFire into production.  Pledging (it’s another Kickstarter project) $45 will buy you your own TouchFire, though if you pledge $25 more you’ll get two and some additional goodies.  So far they’ve raised $14,000, which exceeds their $10,000 funding goal, so it’s not a question of if it will ship, but when.

P G Wodehouse would have never imagined that his prodigal butler would take technology too seriously. The Apple Store has been keeping the ball running when it comes to unveiling new and unique applications and the latest one to join the bandwagon is the St Regis New York. The posh hotel is making life very simple for its guests by introducing the E-Butler application allowing them to chat with their butlers in real time using their iPhone or iPad. The hotel has gone an extra mile in sponging information of New York’s most known celebrities and personalities, easing their stay, activities and preferences – ‘with the touch of a button’.
The application will also give a calendar of events happening around the city so that guests will be able to book an exciting stay during their visit. They can chat up with their butlers and tell them how precise their needs are. This application is extremely handy in circumstances where, owing to the market situations and competitiveness, one is married to one’s communication gadgets. Making an entire trip on the go is not something that is new but having direct access to the person in charge of your matters during a short halt or mini-trip is quite flattering. Wonder if these ‘butlers’ on the other side of the cable are given meditation classes prior to their appointment to keep their cool – the customer is always right after all.

[Luxist]

You’d think that being crowned Apple’s iPad App of the Year (not to mention one of TIME magazine’s top 50 innovations of 2010) might make the cats at Flipboard lazy, but that’s not the case — they’ve just rolled out a major 1.1 update which adds Google Reader, Flickr and a host of user-requested features.

Flipboard, Inc. snuck out an update to Flipboard late Wednesday, bringing the “social media in a magazine format” app to version 1.1. Among the new goodies are Google Reader sync, Flickr photo feeds and more full content from The Washington Post, Bon Appetit and more.

Perhaps the feature most anticipated by Flipboard lovers is syncing with Google Reader accounts, which has become the most popular way to read RSS feeds. Now the dream is a reality — simply tap Add a Section, select Google Reader, type in your username and password and you’re off and running. From a top menu bar in the Google Reader section, you can select any or all feeds to read, including starred and shared items (and you’ll be able to star, share or comment on additional stories right from within Flipboard).

Flickr is another Flipboard 1.1 addition that will make users flip with joy. Browse all Flickr has to offer, including photostream, favorites, groups, contacts’ photos and interesting photos of the day, all within Flipboard’s luxurious interface.

There’s also even more full content available to read right away, including new Flipboard Pages from The Washington Post, Bon Appetit and a special Sports Illustrated Swimsuit All-Access preview that goes behind the scenes during the making of the magazine’s popular Swimsuit Edition.

Flipboard hasn’t forgotten its roots, and now you can flip through Facebook groups, fan pages and photos right from your feed as well as browsing Twitter favorites, tweets, @mentions and lists. You can now post photos, status updates and Flipboard pages across Twitter, Facebook and even Google Reader, all with faster performance across the entire app.

Flipboard 1.1 is a 3MB free download from the App Store; it’s only compatible with the iPad and requires iOS 3.2 or later. Flip out and get downloading!

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

Not a day goes by at Xobni, without hearing “When will Xobni work on Gmail, Android or iPhone?”. This is truly the #1 request from Xobni users, and we’ve been listening.

Last week, we deployed a new service called Xobni Pro. This service includes the robust “Xobni Cloud” architecture, which enables us to develop new products faster. More importantly, it connects Xobni’s relationship management service across multiple platforms and devices.

Previously, Xobni users could only unite their Xobni Contacts and rich profiles across Outlook and BlackBerry. Now, with the Xobni Cloud, we can extend this further. The Xobni Cloud is the foundation that will enable us to support new products and platforms going forward.

Today we’re announcing that Xobni is coming to Gmail, Android and iPhone.

Xobni for Gmail BETA – The Xobni sidebar comes to Gmail! Sign up for the Gmail BETA.

* Put a face and a name to every email

* Lightning-fast contact search

* See relationship history and mutual contacts

* Enriched contact info from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

Xobni for Android & iPhone ALPHA – The Xobni app on your Android and iPhone providing quick access to your Xobni contacts and information. Sign up for the Android ALPHA or sign up for the iPhone ALPHA.

* Bring your Xobni automatic address book to your Smartphone

* Access Xobni Contacts from Gmail, Outlook, BlackBerry

* See recent emails and mutual contacts

* Lightning-fast contact search

Testers Wanted

Over the past few months, we have been in Private Alpha mode with Xobni for Gmail with some of the most amazing Alpha testers in the world! This loyal team of testers has been invaluable: diligently identifying bugs, suggesting new features, and providing lots of encouragement along the way during our ALPHA. Thanks so much to each of you for your emails and posts in the forums—your participation makes a difference!

So, if you’re one of those really early adopters, and like to get an early peek at these products, or if you’re one of the thousands that has written us asking for Xobni in Gmail, iPhone and Android—we’d love to have you on our Alpha (or Beta) tester team. Sign up on the respective pages for Gmail BETA, Android ALPHA and iPhone ALPHA products. We’ll be letting users in on a first come, first served basis. All feedback, thoughts and ideas are welcomed.

You might be wondering: will there be a Free and Pro version of these products? The answer is: Yes! We aren’t sharing all those details yet, but we will in time.

We hope you’re as excited as we are, and we are looking forward to developing these products with you by our side.

Thanks!

The Xobni Product Team

via Xobni for Gmail, Android & iPhone coming soon! – Testers wanted. « Xobni Blog.

Everyone wants to know what Apple’s Next Big Thing will be. So we gazed into our crystal ball to glimpse these four ripped-from-the-future prototypes of devices that Apple could make in the years ahead. Join us this week as we post a new prototype every day thought up by the Mac|Life staff, and feel free to share your own ideas in the comments.

Apple will refresh its tablet to be flatter than ever–except when it’s not flat at all.

The world has caught 3D fever. It’s in our TVs, game consoles, Blu-ray players, and movie theaters. In due time, 3D features will probably even appear in our shampoo and breakfast cereal (”No, Mommy–I want Cap’n Crunch 3D!”). Yet Apple seems conspicuously ambivalent about all the 3D hype. Are Steve’s engineers really treating 3D as a passing fad? Of course not. They’re just going to wait until 2013 in order to do it right.

The iPad 3D’s dimensions will approximate those of the current iPad we know and love. Height and width will be 9.5 inches and 7.5 inches respectively, but the thickness of the tablet will slim down from a half-inch to a shockingly thin one-fifth of an inch. It’s difficult to reach these svelte dimensions under any circumstances, yet Apple will also finagle a 3D display on top of the device’s dainty circuit-board sandwich. And you won’t need cumbersome glasses to enjoy the 3D magic.

1. We’e found that parallax barrier displays tend to excel at showing objects receding into the background, rather than objects jumping out of the screen. So the iPad 3D will come with desktop themes that “embed” unique spatial effects and animations beneath the screen’s surface. The theme you see here mimics a swimming pool. Tap the icon of an app you want to load, and animated 3D waves ripple forth.

2. Note the edge-to-edge display—the black border around the screen’s perimeter is gone! If you want the border back, just push in the same toggle switch that locks screen orientation in the current iPad. You’ll lose some screen real estate (and pixels), but you’ll gain a place to put your grubby mitts.

3. The iPad 3D will increase 2D screen resolution from a current spec of 1024×768 to roughly 1280×1024—and, yes, that 2D resolution will engage dynamically when non-3D content is displayed. Because it’ll have to split its horizontal pixel grind in half for 3D viewing, the 3D resolution will be an effective grid of roughly 640×768. We write “roughly” because the rounded edges decrease the display’s total pixel count. Never heard of an LCD grid that follows a gentle curve? Toshiba Matsushita announced this technology in October 2007.

Don’t scoff. In early 2011, Nintendo will release its 3DS, a handheld gaming system that uses “parallax barrier” technology to render surprisingly effective 3D imaging effects—all without the nerd glasses. We believe that Apple will be implementing an even more mature iteration of this technology, which, like all 3D display systems, uses stereoscopic imaging to create the illusion of depth.

In a typical 3D viewing scenario (say, watching Avatar in the theater), the screen projects two different images—each of the same object or scene but from a slightly different perspective. In the theater, your 3D glasses filter these projections in a way that guarantees one image hits your left eye and the other image hits your right eye. Your brain then synthesizes the two images into a 3D spatial representation. In a parallax barrier scheme—like what you’ll find in the Nintendo 3DS and the iPad 3D—the screen actually aims different sets of pixels to hit one eye or the other. In essence, one pixel set is angled toward your left eye, the other is angled toward your right eye, and a virtual barrier ensures each eye sees the correct set. When the system works, the technology is remarkably effective and no glasses are necessary.

Now, granted, in a parallax barrier system you have to hold the screen at just the right viewing angle and distance from your eyes. But we trust that by 2013, Apple will have a workaround for this dilemma (because, hey, it’s Apple). From gaming apps to HD video content, Apple’s most novel tablet will deliver 3D to your entire mobile entertainment experience.

Say Farewell to “Slide to Unlock”

The iPad 3D’s entire screen will serve as a biometric security reader. Just touch anywhere on the screen, and it’ll scan your fingerprint and wake the device from sleep. Depending on what level of security you define in Settings, the system can grant access to your hands and your hands only. Want your kids to have an open door to some apps but not others—or need a guest account for easier sharing? Simple. The tablet supports multiple user accounts for registered fingerprints with full parental controls, and you can turn on a guest mode that lets anyone access what you define as “safe territory.”

Type “Twitter” in the App Store search bar and you will find page after page of apps, apps with integration, apps that convert voice to tweets, apps for image posting and searching, apps that only update your status and don’t show you anything else at all, apps for this and apps for that. However, when you break it down, Twitter app users typically fall into one of two categories: users of the official Twitter app and users of popular third party solution, TweetDeck. Which one is the right one for you? Well, we guess that really depends.

Twitter (Free)

Humble beginnings are the story of this official app. Once upon a time, developer atebits put out what was far and away the best looking third-party Twitter app, Tweetie, complete with desktop version. What was so beautiful about Tweetie was that it looked like something Apple itself might have come up with if Apple had made Twitter apps.

Sleek, polished, Tweetie was too tempting, and when Twitter’s growth exploded, they bought atebits and turned the third-party legit. Some developers cried foul (fowl?), worrying that Twitter’s embrace of an official app would render them obsolete.

Side by Side User Tweet and Portrait Comparison

Not quite. While Twitter’s official app is incredibly dominating in the mobile sphere, there are still new apps every day that come along (think Flipboard) that harness Twitter and use it for entirely novel reading experiences. Showing up in iPad and iPhone flavors (with no plans for developing a desktop version — after all, they argue, there’s the web), Twitter is about as slick and as polished an app as you’re likely to see.

White Space Cropped To Show Tools

With your accounts to the left in a tool bar that includes your timeline, mentions of you, lists you’ve created, direct messages, and search, Twitter for iPad puts everything at your fingertips there on the page. In fact, the app was so well-designed that the web version mimics its wide and thin column style to put as much information at your disposal as is aesthetically pleasing to do so. Tap on a link and the web page referenced slides out from the right. Slide your finger across the screen to the right to push this “drawer” effect back.

Drawers slide out

On the iPhone, this sliding effect moves the whole screen, but it’s smooth and quick with navigation buttons up top and various option controls down below. Twitter for iPhone also pioneered the now ubiquitous “Pull down to refresh” feature used everywhere (including our own beloved iPhone app).

One of the features we grew to love with our Twitter for the iPhone was the use of the Instapaper Mobilizer. This rendered links posted on Twitter into their Instapaper equivalent, stripped of ads and everything else, making pages load super fast. While the iPad version doesn’t include that as a possibility, the large screen and speedy processor does make page rendering fast enough that it’s not terribly inconvenient. Plus, on every page that opens in Twitter there are buttons at the bottom and at the top. Top butons give you Twitter specific commands such as translate, email a tweet, etc., while the bottom button gives you more external options including sending the article to your Instapaper account or opening the link in Safari.

Instapaper Mobilized and Sending

Plus, by not using the Instapaper mobilizer, YouTube videos appear and play, links, in all their glory, show up, and Twitter just continues to look beautiful. Were we to make one minor change, we’d rather go back to seeing just posted photos and not the entirety of the Twitpic (or other) page. But that’s a tiny quibble.

TweetDeck (Free)

TweetDeck for iPad has the distinct honor of being one of the very few apps that is actually more feature rich in the iPhone version than in the iPad. The most surprising missing feature in TweetDeck for iPad is Facebook integration. While the iPhone version has had this for just about forever, it is nowhere to be found on the iPad. This is something of a puzzler, as we just said, because most iPad apps tend to take advantage of the power, speed, and bigger screen on the iPad to deliver far more than the iPhone allows. Yet users have been complaining of the lack for quite some time now with no resolution in sight.

Not That There Weren’t Problems

Another peculiarity of TweetDeck for iPad was how user profiles were only available in the portrait orientation. Turn your iPad to landscape and no matter what you do, user profiles are unobtainable. Even the button for searching profiles grays out and is unusable. The iPhone version, since it only allows reading in portrait orientation, of course has no such issues. Tap on a tweet and a dedicated page opens with snippets of information about the user. Tap the top bar and you are taken to another screen that allows you to see all sorts of information as well as reply, DM, or block the user.

Where’s My User Info?

What is the slickest part of TweetDeck is its column feature. On the iPhone, you pop out of one of your various columns and slide all of them across the screen to access another column. However, when doing this, the columns are not interactive. On the iPad, you slide columns side to side to move between certain pre-defined ones and ones you can create, and you can scroll each column up and down its specific timeline. Supposedly you should be able to sync these columns across devices if you have a TweetDeck account, though we were unable to get this to work.

Sliding Between Columns

Another nice feature offered by TweetDeck but not by Twitter was the ability to send messages simultaneously from multiple accounts. While the official Twitter app does allow for multiple accounts, as does nearly every app out there, power users and those in charge of corporate accounts as well as business related and personal ones, will find that TweetDeck offers a much easier way to share across accounts. One tap to start a message, another tap or two to add accounts, then type away, while in Twitter, you must write the message, tap and hold to get Select All, then copy, then open the other accounts one at a time, tap and paste in the New Tweet box.

For drafts of tweets, TweetDeck will save them, but only the most recent tweet, while Twitter allows you stash multiple drafts away for later use. A nice theoretical feature offered by the TweetDeck for iPhone version is a small toolbar right above your keyboard including a button to immediately switch into landscape mode if you’re something of a chubby-fingered typist. Switching back to portrait, however, made this toolbar disappear, leaving a blank white bar on our screen. We hope that’s something TweetDeck is aware of and is working out in a bug fix update. Also, should you switch apps in the middle of writing a tweet (in either version), expect it to be gone when you get back, while Twitter does manage to retain your compose screen.

White Space Where a Toolbar Was

TweetDeck did crash more often than Twitter’s official app did — which was never — and most often when we tried to manipulate the screen while it was loading all our tweets. However, it does come in more flavors than official Twitter including the iPhone, iPad, a new Chrome web app, and an Adobe Air version (as well as Android).

Finale in Three Tweets:

TweetDeck wins the customizability battle easily and columns (if they work) are a great idea. Syncing will be awesome when fixed. Great app.

Twitter is beautiful, easy to use, has nice integration with Instapaper for caching things for later, and offers the best stability of both.

Someone create a mashup of these two that brings the best of both together. Until that day we’ll award the prize to Twitter, just barely.

[Source Maclife]

Since we’re at that point in the year when we’re offering offering predictions and hopes regarding what’s to come, here’s a list of must-have features in iPad 2.

Some things we can be fairly certain of. Storage capacities will increase while prices (particularly for the entry-level model) will decrease. Battery life will probably improve, and the iPad chassis may well get even thinner (more on that later). A new talking-heads video will also be streamed from Apple’s website, featuring an ever-increasingly-earnest Jonny Ive declaring the iPad 2 is even more elegant and magical than its elegant, magical predecessor.

Magic is nice, but all users really care about are the feature and usability upgrades, and these are the ones that would most benefit the iPad 2.

Improved Display

I don’t mean a retina display, either. The resolution on the current iPad is just fine, thank you. Brighter, higher contrast, more colors and a wider viewing angle would be just swell.

Integrated SD Card Reader

MacBooks now have them, and the iPad seems a natural next candidate for a built-in SD card reader. The SD card reader Apple sells as part of its camera connection kit always seemed like an inelegant solution. (Its boxy white plastic lines look cheap next to the iPad’s aluminum shell.) Personally, I’d prefer to be able to beam photos from my DSLR to the iPad wirelessly, but a feature like that is even less likely to appear than an integrated reader.

A USB Port

I’m putting this here not because I genuinely want it, you understand, but because, apparently, everyone else does. Seriously, I’ve never wanted to connect anything to the iPad via USB. Nothing. Ever. I can see maybe wanting to plug a camera in directly instead of using its SD card, since it saves steps, but that’s about it. Feel free to illuminate me further on why a USB port on the iPad is a good idea in the comments.

Cameras and FaceTime

I’m not a fan of shaky-cam video calling, but I am a fan of devices that offer a complete audio/visual experience. FaceTime on iPhone 4 is stunning but a little gimmicky – on iPad it would be usable enough to make me want every chat to be a Facetime chat. More importantly, it would be like living in Star Trek, which would be cool.

iLife for iOS

Making iWork touch-friendly was an incredible achievement, and the quality and functionality of Pages, Numbers and Keynote on iPad just gets better and better with each update. Imagine, then, how toe-curlingly-awesome iLife could be on the iPad! Editing and sharing photos with a few swipes and finger-taps would be child’s play, while iMovie and Garage Band feel like they’ve been designed for touch since day one.

Thinner, Lighter, Stronger

I did promise I’d get to this one, and, if I’m really honest, I think this one is the most crucial upgrade Apple can make to iPad. Don’t get me wrong; the iPad is gorgeous. The iPad is practical. But the iPad is also heavy. If you don’t have a stand or empty lap available, cradling the thing in one arm soon starts to feel like hard work. I don’t doubt that Apple explored plastic versions of iPad (and perhaps, in keeping with the evolution of the iPhone, a plastic-bodied iPad is on the way) and I don’t deny that the current aluminum chassis provides for exceptional strength and rigidity. But so, too, could carbon fibre composite, without the arm-strain.

Side-Mounted Dock Connector

Speaks for itself, this one. A side-mounted dock connector won’t just make it possible to dock, sync and charge iPad in landscape orientation, but will also increase the range of design possibilities for third-party products. The problem, of course, is that it would mean yet another cavity in the otherwise unbroken lines of the device. I’m not sure Mr Jobs would tolerate that.

3G Radio As Standard

Since the second-generation iPhone, every iPhone has featured a 3G radio. That makes sense for a phone, but it also makes sense for a portable computer that relies heavily on cloud-based data to get things done. We don’t live in a Wi-Fi everywhere world (yet), so including a 3G chip as a standard feature of every model of iPad seems perfectly reasonable. Oh, and, I’d very much like it to be free 3G, too. Surely AT&T won’t have a problem with that, will they?

User Profiles

This is something that would never make sense on a device as small and personal as a cell phone. But despite what some people might say, the iPad is far more than an overgrown cell phone. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to buy an iPad for every member of my family. Until I can, password protected user profiles would make iPad sharing far less stressful; I wouldn’t have to worry about my five-year old godson accidentally mucking-up my calendar entries, or deleting emails… while my partner could play games without wiping out my top-scores. I’m sure Apple would prefer we all just buy an iPad each, but that’s not likely to happen any day soon, unless prices come way, way down.

So there you have a few humble suggestions for iPad 2. I honestly struggled to find areas needing improvement, and consider that an indicator of the attention to detail Apple paid the first time around. I’d love to know what you think needs to improve, but as you leave your suggestions in the comments, here’s a challenge to bear in mind; avoid suggesting changes to the iOS software unless they’re game-changers for the iPad alone.