If you’re looking for an easier way to transfer photos from your mobile device to a desktop computer, you might want to try one of the many apps available that do this over a Wifi or Bluetooth connection.
I downloaded one from the App Store called Photo Transfer Pro, and was able to easily send a photo from an iPhone to a MacBook in a few taps. It was a bit awkward typing in a URL (provided by the app) in a web browser to access the photo, but otherwise everything went smoothly.
Photo Transfer Pro also allows you to transfer photos from the desktop to mobile.
I tried this app because it was being offered free for a limited time. There are plenty of others with similar names available — just do a search on “photo transfer” at your local app store. One called Photo Transfer App offers a free app for your desktop computer and a paid app for your mobile device. It’s available for all major platforms.
In the past I’ve always used email, which feels more like a workaround than a proper workflow. So I’ll be giving this app a go.
Apps like Zite and Prismatic are great because they help you discover stories about topics you’re interested in, but that you might never have found otherwise.
But they tend to be lacking in news focus. And that’s fine, because not all subjects lend themselves to a news angle. If you’re interested in web design, for example, you hardly expect that there will be breaking news on developments in HTML.
Still, there are plenty of areas that are a good fit for news updates. If you’re interested in Ukraine, unemployment rates, the NFL draft, or even Brad Pitt, there can be plenty to keep tabs on.
Enter Reverb.
This new app for iPhone and iPad takes the discovery feature found in other apps and narrows the focus to the big news of the day. So in the Top News list (as I write this) are topics such as the Ukraine crisis, the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the death of Maya Angelou and a drop in jobless claims in the U.S. But that’s just the beginning.
In addition to these curated topics, you can swipe to the left and find a section called My News, which is based on stories that you have viewed in the past or on interests that you can add manually. For me, the list changed to the Apple App Store, Apple Inc., Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. The App Store was something I added myself with the idea that it would help me keep up with new apps. The others are based on stories I have explored in previous days.
If there is a weakness in this system, it’s that the stories you view initially are likely to be ones near the top in the curated Top News list. We humans have been trained over the decades to understand that things at the top are more important than things further down on a list. Keep this in mind as you choose what to read, and you’ll get a better reflection of your interests in My News.
In addition, there is yet another screen for Social News based on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The idea is to view these feeds by topic. Unfortunately, I was not able to get this section to work. For Twitter, I received “an unexpected error.” I was able to connect with Facebook and received a prompt asking me to wait a few minutes, but after many minutes I finally gave up.
It is indeed unfortunate that it didn’t work because it might have made a good supplement to Flipboard, which also bases it’s articles on your social feeds. On the other hand, it did set up a profile for me based on Facebook. If you tap a star icon at the bottom of a story, it becomes a favourite and will show up in the My Profile screen — handy as a read-it-later feature.
Another feature I should mention is the ability to go deep. If you tap on the Ukraine topic, for example, you’ll get several stories, including analysis and background. And if you keep scrolling, you’ll find other topics such as (in this case) Romania. I have to admit, though, that I didn’t find the stories on Romania all that relevant even if it is a neighbouring country.
On a final note, I have mixed feelings about the interface. The bold multi-coloured headlines look kinda cool but will probably seem gimmicky a few months down the road. An icon at the top left allows you to change to a view used in many other apps — a headline on top of a picture. It’s not original but at least it could be considered more of a standard for those with design sensibilities.
The bottom line for this app is that I find myself using it fairly regularly. It hasn’t quite become part of my news routine but it has the potential.
We humans just can’t help ourselves — we have a fascination for secrets.
An article that promises to reveal the secrets of highly productive people draws us in because we always suspected those productive types were holding back something that the rest of us should know, preventing us from emulating their success.
Or how about secret societies? We see seemingly mediocre people get ahead in their careers while we (who of course are very smart!) languish in the lower ranks. Could it be this state of affairs has been created by a powerful, behind-the-scenes group that controls the economy?
Then there are the personal secrets. They can range from the mundane to the scandalous, but if they’re whispered to us in confidence they seem so much more intriguing.
That’s where an app like Whisper (for iOS and Android) comes in. People from all over the world share an unending stream of things about themselves that you would never know otherwise. And even though you have no idea who these people are, it takes real will power to take a break from reading about them.
The latest update to Whisper brings these secrets closer to home with the ability to sort them by location. How much juicier is it to find out a secret in your home town? Very much.
My home town of Kamloops, with a population of close to 90,000, is large enough to offer some anonymity, but still small enough that you feel like you can get to know the whole place and meet people you know when you go out.
One of the first Kamloops secrets I found was of a surgeon admitting to leaving a sponge in a patient. Sponges can fester and spread infections, so if this really did happen then a patient’s life could be in danger — never mind the lawsuit.
Some secrets are down right charming, although I fear the baby chipmunks may not survive being raised by humans without expertise in this area.
Other secrets can be disturbing. In addition to photo replies such as the one below, you can also reach out with a chat mode. Let’s hope this person receives some support.
And there are some that are so poignant you just don’t know how to respond emotionally.
Of course, Kamloops is no different from any other city in the world. People want to get hooked up.
For anyone with a product to sell, one of the most valuable things you can possibly receive is customer feedback. You can use this information to tweak your offering with the goal of selling more of it.
But getting people to fill out surveys is not always easy. Whenever I take my car in for service, for example, I find an email in my inbox the next day asking me to fill out a survey on how well they did. Unless they’re offering a free oil change, I’m not likely to go through with it.
Now, giving out free stuff to persuade clients to fill in a survey is not, of course, always cost effective. So is there a way around this conundrum? Well, what if you made it fun?
There’s a new iPhone app called Three Cents that does just that.
Fire it up and you’re presented with a stream of surveys created by users covering all manner of topics. And they’re just the type of questions you would expect from ordinary folks: What’s your favourite song? Which era had the best music?
Wait a minute — what’s this? Someone has asked which is the best medicine for your headache. And the five options are all brands. Could a marketing department be on the loose?
In any case, it’s one of the most-answered questions in the Three Cents stream as of this writing. So if the Tylenol people are looking for feedback they may have met with some success. Or maybe it was the Panadol people looking to make people more aware of their product.
I tried my own survey question, and received more responses than I expected. As you can see from the accompanying picture, over 50 people voted in the space of three hours — and more will likely chime in later.
So what makes it fun? For one thing, most of the questions are asked by users who are genuinely curious. So if you’re going to join in, keep your surveys in that spirit.
For another, the surveys are typically accompanied by pictures that the app can track down for you using the Bing search engine. Or you can use photos you’ve taken yourself. And there are plenty of other options: Places from Yelp, destinations from Trip Advisor, movies from Rotten Tomatoes, music from iTunes, apps from the App Store and books from iBooks.
The developers of Three Cents have wisely allowed users to post their questions on Twitter and Facebook. This ensures that you’ll get a better response rate because, let’s face it, not a lot of people have heard of Three Cents — at least not yet.
This is certainly not what you’d call a scientific way of getting customer feedback, but it looks like a good way to bring in some quick hits.
Yahoo News Digest has arrived in Canada, and this app for iPhone and Android just might be the easiest way to keep up with general news for the country and around the world.
Nine stories in the morning and nine in the evening await your perusal, along with notifications to remind you to read them. Coverage includes the big events of the day in politics, business and sports. But it can just as easily include a story about a 70-year-old man graduating from high school. The focus is on Canada, although not exclusively.
The good news is that you’ll never miss out on anything important — the selection of stories appears to be reliable in this way. The bad news is that nine stories will do little to quench your thirst if you’re a news junkie or have specialized tastes.
The articles themselves are competently written, although perhaps a bit dry and lacking in personality. Still, they cover they main points, and you can consider yourself well-informed after reading them.
The stories are “summarized by Yahoo,” which means that the original information came from sources such as The Canadian Press, CBC, Reuters and others that are not always specified. These are trustworthy sources, to be sure, but you might wonder why you’re reading the summary when you could be reading the original. CBC and Reuters both have apps available.
Yahoo seems to have anticipated this sentiment with links at the bottom of each story to related write-ups around the Internet. It’s a nice touch that allows you to go deep with subjects that catch your attention.
News Digest adds an element of gaming with a circle of dots at the bottom of the main page. As you read the stories, the dots are filled — providing an incentive of sorts to read them all and complete the circle.
You can also switch to a monthly view to see how many stories you have read in recent weeks. This could be handy for people working to improve themselves by forming a habit of keeping up with the news.
One problem with this approach is that for a story to count as read, all you have to do is tap on its headline. I did this by mistake, and got credit I didn’t deserve. Also, you might wind up reading only a couple of lines before deciding you’re not interested after all. Should this count as “read?”
Beyond this quibble, the design is pleasing to the eye, with a restrained use of colour that gives the an app overall feeling of credibility.
I would recommend this Yahoo News Digest for anyone who feels they aren’t keeping up with the news as much as they should be. There are many business and social situations where you might feel left out if the conversation turns to the major news of the day. News Digest will ensure that you can at least join in with a knowledge of the essentials.
Journalists have long relied on anonymous tips, so it’s not surprising that an app that allows people to anonymously reveal secrets would catch their attention.
An app called Secret, for iOS and Android devices, allows people to chat among friends without using a name, profile or any other information about themselves. One such faceless person tipped the world that Google+ chief Vic Gundotra was leaving the company. You can see the message here: “Vic Gundotra is interviewing.”
It turned out to be true and led to all kinds of speculation about whether Google+ — a social media competitor for Facebook — was in trouble or possibly being shut down.
On the other hand, another Secret message that caused a stir in the tech world was uncovered as a hoax — but not before days of speculation about the veracity of it. Here’s the message: “Apple’s new EarPods will have sensors in them, for heart rate and blood pressure. Also iBeacons so they don’t get lost. They will require the lightning port, it’s why the audio jack was moved to the bottom.”
(By the way, you can find these messages by searching Google with keywords such as “Apple EarPods secret” — it’s not necessary to use the app.)
MacRumors went so far as to dig up an old patent that appeared to support the message, complete with an illustration.
The anonymous poster now admits on tumblr that he made the whole thing up: “I was blurry eyed, I had a headache, I was using the toilet and worrying about my blood pressure.” (Of course, this post is also anonymous so, even though it appears heartfelt and real, it could also be fake — taking us further down the rabbit hole.)
Any legitimate journalist knows that anonymous tips — even those from trendy new apps — should be verified before they are reported. But the way things stand these days, it seems anyone can say anything on Secret and have it widely disseminated.
The status of Google+ and Apple EarPods are not really that important in the larger scheme of things, so spreading rumours about them could be passed off as harmless.
Still, it wouldn’t take much for someone to post a so-called secret that truly is hurtful to someone’s life. In that case, who would take responsibility? Would the developers of Secret get a pass even though, it could be argued, they are the publishers?
Also: How anonymous are Secret users? Do you really want to trust your identity with a startup called Secret, Inc? For one thing, they need your phone number and email address to connect you with friends.
David Byttow, co-founder of Secret, tells us in a piece he wrote for Medium that phone numbers are “hashed” before they go out to the servers.
But then he adds: “Important note: Although we salt the data, it is possible to match a phone number to a hash, especially if the salt is known to an attacker. We’re looking at ways to make this even more secure (e.g., by joining client-specific data pre-hash or Diffie-Hellman key exchange). If you have a suggestion, please let us know at security@secret.ly as this is an active area of research for us.”
Sounds reassuring if you have any idea what he’s talking about.
One other thing to consider is that the company is located in the United States, as we are reminded in their privacy statement.
“Secret is based in the United States and the information we collect is governed by U.S. law. By accessing or using the Service or otherwise providing information to us, you consent to the processing and transfer of information in and to the U.S. and other countries.”
With recent revelations about U.S. government snooping, and companies powerless to do anything about it, that alone should put a chill down the spine of anyone thinking of putting out a secret that actually counts for something.
In the end, it’s best to think of Secret as an app for idle gossip. Trusting it for anything more will get you into nothing but trouble.
With no shortage of note-taking apps available for mobile devices, many of them loaded with features, your choice may ultimately come down to personal preference.
I have long favoured Simplenote because of its ability to do the one thing I want most with no fuss or muss — take notes and make them available from any device.
But of course there can be much more to notes than simply typing text. Evernote has built a successful business by offering notes that can be formatted text, a webpage, a photograph, a voice memo or handwriting — all for free. A paid version has even more.
And then there’s Notability.
At version 5, this app for iPhone and iPad is not exactly a newcomer (it was launched in April 2010), but it will seem new to many people who have yet to give it a try.
The first thing you should know is that the focus is on doing a good job of taking notes. That means the ability to format text, make drawings or words with your fingertips, use a highlighter, create recordings and add photographs.
You can, in fact, create some spiffy layouts as shown in this gallery at the Made In Notability tumbler.
In my own testing of the iPhone app, I was quickly able to learn how to use all the features, including the creation of categories.
But what if I wanted to have a look at my Notability notes on my Mac or show them to someone with a PC? It’s possible. It just means sharing via email, Dropbox, Google Drive, Twitter or a number of other services. I tried Dropbox, and sure enough it produced a fine a fine PDF for my MacBook.
Sharing is not the same as syncing, though. If you need to be able to work on a single note from multiple iOS devices, you can do this via iCloud — a feature that was added in August 2013.
Perhaps the nicest thing about Notability is that it offers many of the features found in a full-fledged service like Evernote without getting into a confusing array of overkill that most people will likely never need.
On the other hand, it would be nice if syncing were as handy as it is with Simplenote, which requires only a web browser on any computer to view and edit notes.
So depending on your point of view, Notability can be either a good middle ground or too much of a compromise.
As of this writing, Notability was free in the App Store, but I have a feeling that will not always be the case.
If you’re at an event and you want to record it, what’s the best way? Photos? Or video?
I prefer to capture the moment with a perfectly timed photo. That’s easy if you’re hanging out and there isn’t much action. But what if, for example, you’re at a children’s birthday party with lots of running around and no one really paying attention to your photographical needs.
In situations like these, I have on occasion gone with video and taken a still shot from it later. Going through a video frame by frame, you’re bound to find something good. The problem with this method is that the quality isn’t all that great, and finding the right shot can be time consuming.
That’s why I was intrigued by a new iPhone app called Vhoto, which scans your video and produces a selection of photos to choose from. I woke up our cat Lucy to try it out. I figured a pet would make a good test subject because they generally do whatever they please.
As I shot the video with Vhoto, I did a lot of finger-snapping, prodding and whistling to get Lucy’s attention. Normally, I wouldn’t do this because it would ruin the video. After about 30 seconds, I turned Vhoto loose on finding some good shots.
Most of them showed Lucy with her eyes closed or head turned, but the app did manage to get one of her alert and looking at the camera. After choosing this picture, I was able to apply a filter, do some basic editing and share it on Twitter.
Of course, there is also the option of sharing it on Vhoto’s own service.
I’m quite happy with the quality of the photo but I wish it was bigger. To get a picture of Lucy for this post, I opened it in the Photos app and emailed it to myself. I wasn’t prompted with the usual options for size, and this is what I wound up with.
I’m wondering if there are limitations due to the fact that the picture was taken from video. Maintaining good quality in a video frame has always been a challenge, and it could be that Vhoto has not found a way of doing this with larger photos.
This quibble aside, I heartily recommend Vhoto as a solution for those situations where it’s tricky to get just the right shot.
I’ve been exploring a number of iOS apps lately that allow you to put pictures, video, text and music together to create a story. These are aimed at consumers looking to tell stories about their vacations or their children’s birthdays, but there is nothing stopping an enterprising journalist from using them to tell a news story.
The latest to come to my attention is from Disney, and aptly named Story. Of all the apps I’ve tried, this one was the easiest and most intuitive. I had only a couple of false starts before I was able to create and share a story with all the elements, including a theme.
You gather up pictures and videos, as usual, and have the option of placing captions on them. You can also use text on separate pages to keep the narrative moving.
There is a choice of several tunes to play in the background. There are also several themes, but unfortunately for journalists most of them are based on Disney movies. Luckily, there are some plainer themes to choose from. Also, the music tends to be upbeat, which might not be appropriate if your story is about something serious.
You can share your stories in the usual social-media ways, but if you want to embed it on your website it’s best to use email. That way you get a link to it on the Story website. And if you sign in, there is an option to share by using an embed code.
There are pros and cons with Story: it’s really simple to use, but, well, it’s Disney.
In addition, there is yet another screen for Social News based on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The idea is to view these feeds by topic. Unfortunately, I was not able to get this section to work. For Twitter, I received “an unexpected error.” I was able to connect with Facebook and received a prompt asking me to wait a few minutes, but after many minutes I finally gave up.
