My favourite iPad applications

Posted on 2010-12-03 by Jon Leirdal

I would not consider myself as a fan boy, but I happen to have several Apple devices, among them this little thing called an iPad. I’ve discovered several sites that present a list of their favourite iPad apps, so I wanted to give my point of view on this. I have grouped my suggestions based on different categories.

(Updated 20101205: Photography/FlickrStackr)

Games

Angry Birds HD
This is probably one of the most mentioned games out there, and it is for a reason. Addictive and fun.
Civilization Revolutions
I’m a fan of the old Civilization games, so this is something I can relax with on those long airplane flights.
Monkey Island 2 (Special Edition)
This is a new release of an oldie. The game in itself is mostly just funny though, but this is more or less a must have for those of us that played the original game when graphics still was chunky, and most commands where given using a keyboard.

Social software

Friendly
I have tested several Facebook applications on my iPad. Using Safari works okay, but the best app so far seems to be Friendly. Another contender is Social, and even though this app has more features, Social does not feel like an app, but more like a skin for Safari.
Twitter
Tweetdeck and Twitterific are both OK, but I find myself using the original for reading and replying on twitter. For twittering interesting news check out Flipboard, Feedler and Pulse News.
WordPress
If you have one or more WordPress based blogs, this little app makes it wonderfully easy to publish post and manage comments and content on your sites.

News/Magazines

These are the applications I find I use most together with Friendly and Twitter.

Flipboard
Flipboard gives you an auto created newspaper way of navigating your Facebook, Twitter and other newsfeeds. It is very easy to comment, twitter and share items on your own Facebook or Twitter feed.
Pulse News
Pulse is another way of navigating the same content, it also has easy features for sharing your findings with other people. I am not sure what I prefer of these two, but I use both and have divided my mostly read news-sites between them. Some is listed in Flipboard others in Pulse
Feeddler Pro
This is probably my most used reader. It utilizes my Google Reader RSS feeds, and gives me an easy to use GUI for reading, marking, sharing and managing my RSS-feeds. The free version is equally good, but since I use it so much I found that I should give some money back to the author.
The New York Times
I do not read the NY Times each day, but during most weekends I have a look at this application.
StumbleUpon
During an evening with relaxation I find that I often uses a few minutes on StumbleUpon to see what other people find interesting.
Maybe
- Wired
  I might buy magazines online and have bought a few Wired issues. It is an interesting concept and I find myself enjoying this way of reading Wired.
- Nettavisen
  This is a Norwegian application for one of the many internet news publishers in Norway. I find that the app is a quick way to discover news, but I am not sure about the app yet. I am looking forward for Aftenposten’s alternative to this application.

eBook-readers

Stanza
iBook, Kindle and other eBook readers are excellent, but I find myself going back to Stanza and using Calibre for uploading books to Stanza.

Entertainment

IMDB
I like to look up actors and directors when I watch a film. This app (and site) is excellent for doing just that.
VG TVGuide
I have tried several of the different TV-program apps for Norway, but this is the fastest one, and easiest to use.
CineXPlayer & VLC
Both CineXPlayer and VLC are quick and easy to use for viewing films on an iPad. They support slightly different formats though.

Photography

EyeWitness
The British newspaper “The Guardian” have created a nice little photo browsing application called EyeWitness. It shows great images, and also includes small tips on how to take similar pictures.
SimpleDOF
If you are a photographer like me, this little application is available both on iPhone and iPad and makes it easy to find the optimum settings for your camera when you want to plan your shot.
Fotopedia Heritage
This is a collection of images from all the different UN World Heritage sites all over the world. A lot of great images.
FlickrStackr
This application makes it really easy to view your own images, your contacts images and other images on flickr. Nice slideshows, easy uploading, it even displays videos.

Science

StarWalk
Have you ever wondered what star or planet you are looking at in the sky? Wonder no more. This little app can tell you. Just hold it up towards the planet or star and it will show the part of the sky that you are looking at.
Nasa App HD
All news, videos and images that you ever can think of regarding space exploration and science.

Music

SoundHound
I often wonder what artist or song I hear on a radio or on TV. By starting SoundHound and holding it up so it can capture what I am listening too it can often tell very fast. There is an alternative app for this, called Shazam, that also works great, but I have found that SoundHound works faster.

Navigation

MotionX GPS HD
There are several great applications for navigation on you iPad. The reason i like MotionX is that it can download maps you probably are going to use for offline usage. That is you do not need to download maps using your 3G connection while travelling. In addition to this it can save tracks that you can share with Google Earth on your PC and Mac.

Other utilities

1Password
A great application for remembering your passwords. It stores your passwords and other secret information in an encrypted and secure format on your iPad or iPhone.
Pages
It is part of the iWorks suite on iPad, but so far I have only used Pages. It can even work with Microsoft Word documents.
Citrix
This is an early version of the software yet, but it shows great promise. Here you can open up the full version of your software directly on your company’s Citrix server.
iFiles
If you ever need to share documents or use your iPad as a disk. iFiles is one of the better alternatives.
Dropbox
This is a client app for accessing your Dropbox account and downloading files to your iPad and iPhone. This is a great application for sharing documents, images and other files with friends and family.

Other pages with tips

NRK-Beta (In Norwegian)
etherpad – ipad apps (In Norwegian and does not work in iPad)
Gizmodo
DigitalTrends

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

The illusion of productivity

Posted on 2010-10-27 by Jon Leirdal

Have you ever considered how easy it is to manipulate people with technology? How we, without reflecting upon the issue, regard everything like “this is the way it is”. Consider this article on Placebo buttons. The author describes how a lot of buttons we have around us do not have any functionality. Typical examples is the door closing button in an elevator, or the wait button to get a green light while waiting to cross the road. The buttons lights up, but often do not have any other functionality. All it does is to give us an illusion that something is happening.
You have got almost the same thing using software. While opening a program we get the spinning wheel or time glass. It tells us that something is happening, and we are relaxed. But is something really happening? And how productive are we while we wait?

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

Blogging everywhere

Posted on 2010-06-15 by Jon Leirdal

I work at a company called Computas AS, located at Lysaker, outside of Oslo, Norway. Computas recently updated their web-pages and among else included blogging as one of their new features. Thus you may now find some of my blog-entries at the blogging area of www.computas.com.

Computas AS is a medium sized (in Norway) IT-consultancy. They deliver services and develop solutions within areas like business processes (BPM), complex software systems, and collaboration.

The site is in Norwegian, but there is one English information page, and there will be an English version available soon. (If you want to check out the site before then, you can always try Google Translate, but the results may vary).

The visibility of tools

Posted on 2010-05-28 by Jon Leirdal

I recently discovered a link to this little gem on fundamental laws of software from David S. Platt who writes for MSDN Magazine. (I want to give a shout-out to Alf Kåre Lefdal on twitter for finding the article in the first place.)

David lists his three laws like this.

1. Your software has zero value in and of itself. Nothing. Nada. Zero point zero zero. The only value it ever has or ever will have is the degree to which it enhances the happiness of your user in some way.

2. Software can increase users’ happiness in one of two ways. It can help a user accomplish a task that she wants done, such as paying her bills or writing this column. Microsoft Word is an example of this type of application. Or, it can place the user into a state he finds pleasurable. Games fall into this category, as does Skype, with which my daughters make video calls to their grandparents.

3. In neither of these cases do users want to think about your computer program. At all. Ever. In the former case, she wants to think about the problem she’s solving: the wording of the document she’s writing; or whether she has enough money to pay all her bills, and which unpaid creditor would hurt her the most if she doesn’t. Her only goal is to finish the task quickly and successfully, so she can get on with her life, or at least with her next task. In the latter case, the user wants to enter that pleasurable state as quickly as possible and stay there as long as possible. Anything that delays the start of his pleasure, or distracts him from it while he’s enjoying it, is even less welcome than the interruption of a work task. My parents want to see and talk with and gush over their grandchildren. Any attention that the program diverts to itself is a negative in either case.

I guess that gives an excellent description of how most of us handle tools, and in the generic form he is right, but not always.

I do agree with him on his fundamental laws, but there are cases where I think his “laws” does not fully comply with the world. Welcome to Jon’s corollary.

There is always an exception.

I do believe there are tools that also give the users a feeling of brand, exclusivity or just excellence to know that they are among a select group that uses exactly this tool.

I am a happy user of iPhone, but I am aware that this little device is not without faults, but there are user-groups out there that are quite vocal in their defense of everything Apple.

In this case there is obviously a link between the usability/functionality and the love of a brand, Apple probably would not have gotten their large number of fans without delivering reasonably well designed tools.

But as a main rule I think David has it spot on. We as developers need to open our eyes to focusing on the users and their needs even more than we have been doing so far.

I think that Apple, Google, WordPress and other market leading companies have understood this and are using this to their benefit.

Any user can start using an Apple iPhone with a little or no training. Apple software and devices is often simpler to use than their Microsoft counterpart. (But Microsoft is getting there)
Google has become the de-facto search-engine worldwide because of their speed and simplicity. They are continuing this tradition into their other tools, devices and services.
WordPress have become one of the leading blogging tools because they make it easy to maintain a web publishing site.

Please tell me what you think.

Posted from Bærum, Akershus, Norway.

Geotagged blog entries

Posted on 2010-05-09 by Jon Leirdal

There are several new opportunities included in my new blogging platform. One of them is the opportunity to include geotags when blogging from my iPhone.

This is a feature the nerd in me likes, but the practical man in me kind of feel is more a feature they have added because they can and not because they need to. In a travel blog this might be a good thing, but for me?

It is kind of like this picture from our corporate shredder. A shredder is of course a bit dangerous, so you don’t need to tell it like this.

You know, too much information?

Time will show

Update 2010-05-09: The theme I am using does not support geotags out of the box. I am probably going to create my own theme sometime in the future though.

Update 2010-05-10: I found a wordpress plugin that fixes it for me!