apps

Android users

Android users, meanwhile, are the least likely to pay for software, at just 6 cents per download — less than a third of what iPhone owners pay, and more than eight times less than the average spent by iPad users. Flurry’s data is collected from more than 350,000 applications available on iOS and Android.

I am not surprised of these numbers. iOS and Android users perceive the concept of free in different ways. It starts from the choice of mobile phone to the apps one use. Nothing new, but it’s interesting to see some stats.

Pinner app review

Pinboard is defined by its creator as social bookmarking for introverts. Better put, Pinboard is a web service to store, catalogue, tag, annotate and search URLs you’ve found either useful or interesting during your web searches.

What’s Pinner app?

Pinner is your gateway to get to those bookmarks. You can search your list, tags, retrieve URLs and set any of your bookmarks for later reading. In the end, Pinner allows you to find the information you need from any of your iOS devices.

Pinboard has a powerful backend but when it comes to the UI it falls short. It’s not a criticism, it’s just right that the developer has decided to concentrate on the stability of the service and let 3rd party developers create apps to access it through a set of powerful APIs.

On the Mac you can easily access Pinboard through Safari. On the other hand, on iOS devices web services are better consumed via a native app rather than from mobile Safari. That’s where Pinner becomes an essential app of your iOS device.

As a blogger, Pinner has become an important app for me. I’ve setup Pinboard to automatically import all URL that I save in either Pocket or Instapaper so that I can find them effortlessly whenever I launch the app. In this Pinner app review I’ll tell you about three points that make Pinner an essential app of any serious surfer.

Graphical interface

It’s neat and tidy, exactly what you need in an iOS app. On top of that, the colours are reassuring, with blues, whites and blacks used all over the place.

After authenticating to Pinboard with your username/password you are presented with a simple interface to explore your URLs:

  • New
  • Private
  • Public
  • Unread
  • Untagged
  • Recent
  • Popular

That’s exactly what you need. Underneath you also have the option to browse your URLs by tag, which is one of Pinboard’s strengths.

Actions

After you’ve found the URL you were looking for with the excellent search function, you can:

  • View its content
  • Carry out specific operations

To view an URL, you obviously just need to tap on its title. What’s great about Pinner is that you can switch from a browser view to an instapaper-ized version of it. In this case the content of the article if freed from ads and other web artifacts that make reading difficult.

When in view mode you can also edit the bookmark, in case you want to make it public or add/delete tags etc.

If you decide to swipe on an article you get a standard palette of actions:

  • Edit
  • Trash
  • Share
  • Read/unread

Changing a URL from private to public or add some tags is done in a very intuitive interface that will take you minutes to get familiar with.

What I like about Pinner

In a word its simplicity. It took me 3 minutes to set it up and figure out how to use the app.

Every single function is perfectly integrated with Pinboard. The functionalities that stands out are

  • URL editing
  • Search.

Search is so important in a mobile app like Pinner, without it the software would become unusable. In this case the search functionality is perfectly integrated with the server back-end. Search results are displayed accurately and quickly.

Links and cost

Pinner is store at $1.99. For this price you get a universal app that will work both on your iPad and iPhone.

If you are a Pinboard user, I would strongly recommend it.

iOS app for WordPress updated to version 3.6

Just as I am testing Squarespace, that the iOS app for WordPress has been updated.

WordPress for iOS version 3.6 sports:

  • A completely redesigned new user experience
  • A faster way to post: added shortcut on sidebar
  • Fixed a problem with Tumblr imported blogs
  • Emoticons now appear correctly on notifications
  • Performance improvements for notifications

 

 

Byword app updated to version 1.1

Byword app for iOS has been updated to version 1.1. with some important new features:

  • iCloud, Dropbox and device storage can now be all enabled at the same time
  • Support for folders in iCloud, Dropbox and device storage
  • Full text search within documents
  • Improved UI
  • Export to PDF
  • Bug fixes

I’ve been waiting for the iCloud folder implementation for a while and I’m so glad to see it added to the app. A nice surprise to this update is also the addition of an Export to PDF functionality.

Byword has been my default text editor on both iOS and Mac for months now thanks to its complete Markdown implementation, flawless sync between devices, and just the right amount of settings.

It’s a fantastic app that I invite you to try if you are into writing on a Mac/iPhone/iPad.

If you head to the App Store now, you will be able to get the apps at 50% off.

Scanner Pro for iOS review

Today I am going to review Scanner Pro by Readdle, arguably one of the most famous software houses for iOS. Readdle is famous for developing apps such as PDF Expert, Readdle Docs and PDF Converter. These are all apps that I purchased a long time ago and that any serious iPad user should own.

Just last week Readdle celebrated its fifth anniversary with a massive sale on the iTunes and Mac App Store. Scanner Pro was an app that I had been eyeing for a while so when I saw the discount I bought it. It’s not that I needed a scanning app but I always look forward to testing new ones.

On this blog I’ve already reviewed two other document scanning applications, TurboScan and CamScanner Pro. Those two apps are the direct competitors of Scanner Pro but this is not going to be a comparison of any sort with the other two apps. I am going to show you the functionalities, highlight the pros and cons and as usual I’ll let you make the final decision on whether to buy the app or not.

I’ve split this review in four parts:

  1. Capturing documents
  2. Processing
  3. Post-processing and uploading
  4. Settings

These four parts are also the steps all iOS scanning applications follow to create the final PDF document. Scanner Pro is no exception to this.

Capturing documents

Scanner Pro is not any different than other scanning applications in what you see after launching the app. The first screen gives you the option to either:

  • Take a picture.
  • Use an image from Camera Roll.

I like the way Readdle’s developers implemented the image acquisition through the camera. For this functionality they have added:

  • A useful grid that overlays the image seen in the camera display to help you align the document. You can easily disable this grid if you wish.
  • A two second delay between the moment you click the camera shutter and the moment the picture is taken. This is the right amount of time to grab and steady the device using two hands.

In my tests these two small improvements help a lot with the quality of the images taken and I have not experienced any bad shooting.

When you acquire your image by using the camera function, you can decide whether the scanned document is going to be composed of one or more pages by tapping on the top-right hand corner of the screen. If you choose the multi-page document, you return to the camera function straight after taking the previous shot.

Processing

Once you’ve imported your image in the app, it’s time to process it.

The options available to the user are limited but I see this as an advantage rather than a limitation. Quite often in fact, developers add too many options in their iOS apps, only to make them more complicated to use when you’re out and about.

The typical usage of a document scanning app for iOS is when you are away from your computer. In these cases you don’t want to fiddle with too many controls. What you want is a reliable application that allows you to create a PDF file just with a few taps. Scanner Pro deserves five stars when it comes to a solid workflow and choice of options.

Image processing in Scanner Pro is a two step process:

  1. Find the document borders.
  2. Select the page size.

The first step is made easier by the fact that the app automatically tries to determine the borders of your document. You can also drag the corners of the area found by the app to adjust the edges of what will become the final document. As is common in all document scanning apps for iOS, the portion of the screen just under your finger is magnified and displayed just off the touching point.

The second step of processing the image allows you to select the page size but this is really just an optional step as you will see in the fourth part of this review. The settings in fact let you select a default document size. Chances are that once you’ve done that the first time you use the app, you will never have to change it again.

Post-processing and uploading

As I said before the developers have made the sensible choice to keep the options at a minimum. What you can do in post-processing is to:

  1. Change the brightness and contrast of the image.
  2. Rotate it.
  3. Process it as a Photo (i.e. as a colour document), Document (i.e. a black and white PDF file) or Grayscale.

After clicking on Save you are pretty much done. In the following screen you can:

  • Rename the file by tapping on its name.
  • Sort the pages in case of multi-page scan.
  • Email the PDF.
  • Print, fax, open the document in a different application and upload it to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs or a in generic WebDav server.
  • Password protect the document.

This last option will make many security conscious users happy. Of the three document scanning apps that I’ve tested, ScanPro is the only one that includes this functionality. This is a handy feature if you need to send the document to someone securely.

When you attempt to open the document on your Mac, Preview.app will ask you for a password. Great stuff.

I wish Scanner Pro had TextExpander support. I have a bunch of shortcuts that I use constantly and it’d be handy to be able to type ymd to insert the date in YYYY-MM-DD format in the filename.

Settings

You will find the expected authentication buttons to integrate Scanner Pro with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and a generic WebDAV service. After entering your credentials for any of these services you won’t be prompted to enter them again.

If you use either Dropbox or Evernote you can also enable an auto-upload feature. With this option enabled, the final scanned document is automatically uploaded to the service of your choice. This happens behind the scenes so if you are busy scanning multiple documents, you can continue working on them while the ones already processed are queued and automatically uploaded to the cloud. This increases efficiency. I have found this option so useful that I’ve used it over and over in real case scenarios.

The only annoying thing is that Scanner Pro – like too many other applications that integrate with Dropbox – by default stores the uploaded documents in a predefined folder named ScannerPro, which is located at root level. I wish the developers had added an option to choose an existing folder to avoid overcrowding the Dropbox root folder.

Other options available to the user include a WiFi access point that allows you to retrieve the files stored on the app from any computer located in the same Local Area Network. You just need to open Safari on your Mac, type in the IP address of the device and you will be prompted with a list of files stored.

A welcome feature is that Scanner Pro introduces iCloud sync in the world of document scanning applications. If you are a multi-iOS user, you can install Scanner Pro on the other devices and have the docs automatically synced across devices. I think I am going to use it in combination with my iPad. The Apple tablet is in fact becoming the repository of my PDF files thanks to the fantastic reading experience you get with it.

The list of options include the aforementioned Default Page Size, the option to enable or disable grayscale scanning and to add a password lock to access the app. This is particularly useful if you plan to use Scanner Pro not only as a scanner application but also as a PDF document archive.

To complete this well-made app, you also have the choice of compressing your documents. In my tests the compression reduces the file size by two thirds without an appreciable decay in the quality of the PDF files created.

Conclusions

This is the third document scanning app that I own and the question that I’ve kept asking myself in the past week is whether I will delete TurboScan and CamScanner Pro from my iPhone.

I’ll likely delete TurboScan . It is still a good app but after using Scanner Pro for a week, it feels old. The UI feels old and it doesn’t automatically upload documents to Dropbox, which is something that I love in Scanner Pro.

How about CamScanner Pro? This app almost belongs to a different category because it tries to answer the question of how to edit your PDF files when away from your computer. If you need an app that is able to do OCR, add notes to your scanned files (note for the readers: The notes are only visible in the app Edited: This is incorrect, please see the comments.) and with a more complete feature set then this app is the way to go.

For whoever needs a simple but complete and well-designed scanning app then Scanner Pro is probably the way to go. Its ease of use and the well-thought out UI will help you in all those situations in which you need to scan a document with your iPhone.

as a universal app for iPhone/iPad at $6.99.

Moneydance for iOS with Dropbox sync now available

Moneydance for iOS has been updated to version 1.5 to include the welcome Dropbox sync integration. The new version has been in beta for the past three months and finally it is now available from the iTunes Store.

This new version of is not that much different from the old one that I reviewed last year on this blog. The big change is in the setup screen that now shows a new option to sync your .md data file across your devices using Dropbox.

You can find detailed instructions on how to setup Dropbox sync by following the steps in this knowledge base article.

Up to now Moneydance users were able to sync the data on their iOS device with their Mac/PC via WiFi. That worked quite well but in order to make it work you had to be on the same LAN as your main computer. That meant that the iOS version of Moneydance was meant to be more of a companion to the real desktop version rather than an independent app.

The fact that now you can sync your accounts via Dropbox, means you free your iOS device from your laptop and finally update your finances across your devices from anywhere in the world.

A typical scenario is the way my wife and I use Moneydance:

  • The Moneydance data file is stored on a shared Dropbox folder.
  • Each of us has a copy of Moneydance installed on our respective Macs pointing to the data file on the shared Dropbox folder.
  • I also have a third copy of Moneydance for PC installed on my work laptop that points to the same file.
  • Whenever each of us updates Moneydance, the other person will be able to see the change.

With the old version of Moneydance if I updated Moneydance on my iPhone or iPad I had to wait to go home – and sync the iOS device with one of my laptops – before the new transactions became available to my wife’s computer.

With Dropbox integration this last step is not needed anymore. Every time I update Moneydance from my mobile device, the change is automatically applied to all Mac/PC thanks to Dropbox synchronisation.

The . I cannot recommend enough Moneydance. It’s the only software that I use in my private life that would somehow affect me if it disappeared tomorrow morning. My wife and I have been using it since 2006 adding a dozen accounts (current, savings, credit cards, pensions, etc.) with three different currencies and in six years it has never failed. Fantastic software.

The developers have pledged that this is only the beginning and that we should see more coming from them. Looking forward to it.

CamScanner Pro for iPhone review

A few days ago I was made aware of a scanning app for iPhone that I didn’t know. I like apps that let you create a PDF file from a picture you can take with your iPhone.

I believe that the iPhone is a great productivity tool and being able to digitise paper documents into PDF files on the fly is something that I’ve always dreamt of doing since I started using computers (well maybe a bit later, PDF files didn’t exist when I started).

On this blog, I’ve already reviewed two other scan apps TurboScan and Genius Scan+. I thought of working for a few days with and report my impressions.

Versions

The app comes in three different versions: Free, Plus and Pro. Generally speaking there aren’t major differences between the Plus and Pro versions. The former exists due to legacy reasons. You should go for the Pro to find all the goodies. The main differences with the free version are:

  • In the Free Version the PDF files generated are embedded with a watermark saying “Generated by CamScanner”.
  • In the Free Version, OCR and Airprint are not available. In the full version, there are not any limits.
  • The Free Version has ads.

I tend to stay away from free apps, but in general free versions are useful to test the app and check if they fit your workflow. I like the fact that the developers have released a free version so that users can test the app before committing to the purchase.

Scanning

As its common in this type of apps, the scanning process starts by choosing whether you want to use an image already stored on your Photo Roll or take a new picture.

In case you want to take a new picture you can choose to whether take a single image or multiple ones in succession, very useful if you plan to create a multi-page document in one sweep.

There aren’t particular options in this first phase beside the possibility to enable an anti-shake algorithm.

Editing

Once your image is in the app, it’s time to manipulate it so as to get the best results. The process follows these steps:

  • Determine the margins of the page. CamScanner is quite good at it but it also allows you to select the edges of the document using your fingers and a clever positioning of the zoom.
  • Other options allow you to scan the whole screen or an automatic selection of the document edges. You can of course also rotate the image by 90 degrees clock or anti-clockwise.
  • Image processing. You can choose whether to keep the colour document, make it black & white or use the proprietary Magic Color technology that optimises the colours of the image you took. Other options include a gray scale mode, economy (to create small docs) and lightening of the colours.

After you tap ok you are presented with a second editing screen that allows you to fine tune the brightness, contrast and what I believe is the colour temperature.

From this screen you can also start the character recognition. More on this later.

After you use the app for a few days you realise that it aims at being a repository for all your scans files. You can in fact sort them in different ways, add notes and tag to them. You can also sort pages in a multi-page document and the process is very straightforward.

Settings

The app is very complete when it comes to the options available. There are options to:

  • Work with faxes. You can use the app to fax your docs. In order to do so you can buy, as an in-app purchase, a faxing service for one, two or ten pages documents. The prices range from 79 euro-cents for a one page document to € 6.99 for a ten page PDF file. I haven’t faxed a document in years but knowing that the option is there in case you need it can be useful.
  • You can edit the tags used to catalog your scanned documents and even assign different colors to them.
  • Choose the default enhance colour mode.
  • Setup your cloud accounts.
  • Auto-save your scanned images to albums.
  • Set a default auto-process mode in case you want to process your documents always in the same way.
  • Set the OCR language.
  • Set the page size of your PDF files. Options include the common, in Europe at least, A4, A5, and so forth and North American customers can choose between Legal and a multitude of other sizes more common across the pond. If you are not satisfied with the ones included – and you should be as there are so many of them – you can set a custom size as well. Great stuff.
  • You can choose whether to export your PDF to iTunes Sharing.
  • Decide whether to include the notes you add when editing a PDF in the file itself.
  • Because this app aims at becoming the central hub for your scanned files, you can even setup a backup/restore with your Mac. The way to retrieve your backups use a native Mac app downloadable from the company website.
  • A comprehensive help.
  • Last but not least you can set a passcode.

The range of options is very complete. You can even submit bugs from within the app itself. I am amazed at the amount of attention that the developers put in adding all these options. I am sure you will be able to configure the app to your liking.

Cloud options

You can export your PDF files to:

  • Google Docs
  • Evernote
  • iDisk (smile)
  • Box.net
  • Dropbox

At this point I wish the iDisk option were replaced with iCloud. It’d be nice if I could export my PDF files to OS X Mountain Lion Preview.app.

This is a call to Intsig developers, consider this an enhancement request if it is technically possible.

OCR

The character recognition technology is quite good. In my tests I rarely encountered problems. This is a good achievement for an iOS app that performs the OCR on the device itself.

The guys at Intsig did a really good job. The speed is impressive too. While I was testing the app I got suspicious of the speed and contacted their developers to check if the character recognition was done on their servers. The answer is negative, everything is done locally. This is good to know in case you’re worried about your privacy and your scans being uploaded to some remote location. This is not the case for CamScan.

Additional notes

In my tests the UI is well thought and fairly intuitive. There are also some well thoughts solutions to solve seemingly complex problems. For example, in the app’s main menu one of the buttons change its meaning depending on whether you select a single or multiple docs. In the former it means copy file, in the latter merge the documents.

I wish the developers added more common iOS gestures to their app though. I am not sure if this is not being done because the app also exists for other platforms.

For example in iOS if I want to delete an item in a list, my muscle memory tells me to swipe on that item. In CamScanner, you need to tap and hold on the file to get a menu that contains the delete file option. Again, this is not a criticism but just something that I’ve noticed. Your productivity won’t be affected by these things.

The app must be quite popular with Evernote users as it is also featured in the Evernote Trunk list of apps that integrates and belong to the Evernote ecosystem. If you are an Evernote user this is probably a good addition.

Last but not least, the company behind CamScanner Intsig is a young startup whose employees are always ready to help if you have any questions. To write this review I’ve sent them many emails at different times of the day and always received replies in a matter of hours. This is always a nice touch, it means that they care.

After using this app for a few days it has already become one of my favourites. As you know in this period I am working exclusively with iOS devices. This means that I cannot access my scanner. CamScanner helps me to scan the bills I am receiving and continue in my quest to go paperless.

for $4.99.

Update to Skydrive for iOS brings new features

SkyDrive for iPad

A couple of days ago Microsoft updated app for iOS. This new version of the app contains some important improvements that could make you reconsider this solution if you have never used it before.

Among the many improvements you will find in this new version is the possibility to share a file or folder by sending a link to the person you want to share the file with and new commands to copy, move and rename files within the Skydrive space.

Unfortunately it’s still not possible to cache files for offline use. This could be a deal breaker for the many users that need to be able to work with files when an Internet connection is not available. Dropbox – which represents the gold standard for this kind of apps – has had this feature for many years.

Microsoft has gone a good length to ensure that the app is easy to use and very intuitive. On top of that I have noticed a great stability and speed.

What I found really interesting about testing this app is that it contains a full range of commands to work with files. It also has a great way to display folders and it appears as an option in the Open In… dialog box in all iOS apps I normally use.

When you combine these things you realise pretty soon that Skydrive can become, with some limitations, a valid Finder app in the cloud from where you can manage all your files. What I find it funny is that it is Microsoft that is giving us a product to manage files on our iOS devices. I really hope that Apple solves the problem to give apps a common access to all files in iOS 6 so that we can rely solely on an in-house solution for all our cloud needs.

I have been using Dropbox for many years but the fact that you cannot rename, copy and move files between folders in the iOS app is a limiting factor in my workflow. You can solve the problem by using apps like but the fact that you need to switch app just to copy a file is a pain that I would gladly avoid.

On the other hand, Skydrive does not have any search functionalities so take this into account if you rely on it to find your files. If Microsoft added to Skydrive this feature and offline files , the app could become a huge success. Let’s also not forget that Microsoft sells storage space at very competitive prices.

Skydrive for iOS already integrates quite well with and if the rumours about Office for iPad are real then this app could become a central hub for many of the tasks that require working with Microsoft files.

For all the missteps that Microsoft have taken throughout the years we must give credit to Redmond that they seem to have returned to making products that don’t completely sap your energy the moment you start using them.

WordPress for iOS updated to version 3.0

Good news for bloggers with a WordPress installation and using iOS. WordPress iOS app has been updated to versions 3.0. This version introduces push notifications for WordPress.com blogs, swipe to moderate a comment as well as performance improvements on the iPad.

You can find the release notes here.

Mr Reader updated to version 1.9

If you’re serious about making the iPad your only device, being independent in all situations is very important. This applies to RSS feeds as well.

As much as I love Reeder user interface and speed, I always find it annoying that you cannot add new feeds through it. I usually end up logging into my Google account and add the feed from there.

Mr Reader is a less known RSS reader that has a ton of functionalities useful to any power user. The primary reason I bought it is because it allows me to search and add feeds directly from interface.

Today Mr Reader has been updated to version 1.9 that brings improvements and new functionalities such as the possibility to manage more than one Google account.

You can find the list of new features, improvements and fixes at this page.

Mr Reader is available on the .