Need to grab something from you Mac, TextSnipe it

Mac's have come with a screenshot utility for quite a while (surprisingly called Screenshot), it's pretty useful and allows capturing the complete screen, a window or a (selectable) area. It can do this as an image or even a video.

While active it takes screen focus so you are unable to interact with the screen, so there's a nice feature allowing a grab in 5 or 10 seconds so setup the grab area, interact with whatever's needed and then screenshot will grab an image (this works well for grabbing drop down menus and other such things).

 The above image is a screen grab of the dropdown menu of TextSniper.app, While Screenshot grabs an image or video, TextSniper grabs the content of the highlighted area and saves it to the clipboard.

Grab the screen around some text (that text can be on an image, PDF document or anything) and whatever is there will be text in the clipboard. Just open your favourite editor and paste and it's all there. It will also do the same for a QRcode, again just bound the QRcode on screen and the contents are saved in the clipboard (useful for reading things like the UK NHS Covid QRcode - your phone will just say it's unidentified content), this will also decode barcodes as well as QRcodes.

TextSniper will also grab stuff from a connected iPhone or iPad (needs to be connected by USB or WiFi) and then you can take a photo, scan documents or add a sketch.

If Text to Speech is clicked, then when text is captured as well as being copied to the clipboard it will be read (playback speed is selected in Preferences).

This may be one of the most useful utilities out there, it can be purchased directly from the TextSniper.app for $6.99 or from the Apple Mac Store though the price goes up to $9.99 (and may vary with local pricing). Highly recommended.

Apple announces Carplay, but what's underneath the hood?

Apple wants to own the entertainment space, it first created the iPod with its companion iTunes which soon completely disrupted the music industry. With the advent of iPods and iPhones which could play video, Apple then went into the film distribution and rental business too.

Now it's the car industry that is getting the Apple makeover with a play (Carplay to be exact) to integrate your iPhone into your car experience which when you plug your iPhone in, will now support Apple services such as Maps (maybe you'll get to where you want, though Apple is improving Maps all the time), iTunes, messaging and other services. Everything can be voice controlled through Siri or the car's own voice recognition system.

Though Apple is meant to be announcing embedded iOS 7 for exactly these types of applications, it seems that Carplay actually uses Blackberry's QNX (Blackberry purchased QNX a while back and it's now the basis of BB10). QNX is a "micro" kernel realtime operating system and has been around for a long time and powers many ATMs and devices such as that. QNX also pushes their OS to auto manufacture to power their "infotainment" systems (formally known as ICE or In Car Entertainment) and it's exactly this use that powers Carplay.

The first cars to support Carplay will be Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, followed by BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover.

If Carplay gets widely deployed, it could be Blackberry's saving grace, though maybe Apple will just buy them.

Artrage 4 hits the streets

Artrage has released version 4 of its painting program, available for both Apple's MacOS X and Microsoft's Windows 8.

If it's run on on a Surface Pro tablet it makes full use of the touch capabilities and of course it fully uses pen systems on non-touch systems.

The package is easy to use (even for a non artist) and it doesn't take much time to get used to the various controls and painting techniques such as smearing and blending of oil paints and watercolours that flow into each other.

There's also nice features such as stencils (which can be painted on, but the paint only applies to the empty spaces on the stencil) and stickers that are just stuck onto a painting.

A nice feature is tracing where an image is loaded as the background - but not as part of the image being painted - and then it can be traced. When it's saved, it's only the tracing and not the original image, though the same process could be achieved using layers.

Artrage also fully supports Wacom features available with some of their stylus' such as Pressure, Tilt, Barrel Rotation, and the Airbrush Wheel.

It's available for $49.90 from the Artrage Store. There is also a version available for Apple's iPhone/iPad.

Opensignal launches iPhone app

Opensignal the company behind Opensignal Coverage Maps has released an iPhone app available on the iTunes store.

The Android app (available in Google Play) has been around for some time and the iPhone app is unfortunately a poor cousin in terms of functionality due to the limitations of Apple's restrictions in iOS.

The iPhone app is more of a WiFi locator app, though it does have access to Opensignal's coverage data as a map overlay. This is pulled from Opensignal rather than being able to read any information (apart from signal strength and connected network) from iOS itself.

In order to better coverage data, users will still have to download the Android app and use that to map WiFi and cellular signals which are directly exposed in the underlying operating system.

Opensignal could release a Blackberry app as much of the underlying network is also exposed, though whether they will do this is as yet unknown.

Apple to drop Samsung for CPUs

Apple's latest iPhone 5 has hit the streets, but what many people don't know is that most of the phone is actually made by Samsung. Samsung fabricate the CPU and make the display and also many of the wireless chips (they used to be made by Cambridge Silicon Radio/CSR, but Samsung acquired their chip division). Apple are moving chip fabrication away from Samsung and their A7 chip will be fabricated by TSMC (or other fab plant), though they may not completely remove themselves from Samsung as they have a production line set-up for the A6. Samsung contributed both design and technology expertise to Apple's earlier CPUs but now much of this expertise has been taken in-house and Apple just require a silicon fab to actually manufacture their new CPUs. The A6 was almost entirely engineered in-house by Apple. This will be a blow to Samsung as they struggle to fill the production lines at their fabs.

Mind Candy release iOS app

Mind Candy have developed its first in-house iOS app called Moshi Monsters: Moshlings. It's available on iTunes and costs £0.69 and works on both iPhone and iPad devices. It features; -

• Over 60 Moshlings
• Essential Moshling info – read about their personalities, habitats and much more
• Moshling secret codes – so you can catch ‘em at MoshiMonsters.com
• 100 stickers to customise your Moshlings
• Bring out your inner artist by scaling and rotating stickers
• Save your artwork at the touch of a button
• Create fangtastic wallpapers for your mobile gizmo
• More Moshlings on the way

Mindy Candy are on a roll

Worksnug goes live on Ovi

Last week (28/07/11) Worksnug announced their new iPhone app which includes all of HP's ePrint locations. The app offers an augmented reality display showing locations of workspaces and now also free HP ePrint solutions. The locations can also be viewed using a traditional map view. The app also providers addition tools for the mobile worker such as an integrated decibel meter in the mobile app, allowing users to assess and share noise levels inside working locations, and a unique ‘VoIP Checker’ tool, which assesses the ability of public WiFi networks to support VoIP calls.

Today (01/08/11) Worksnug have announced the availability of their Symbian app which has gone live in the Ovi store.

Worksnug also have a Blackberry client.

Worksnug was founded by Richard Leyland in 2009 to solve the problem of where to work when on the move and has now a growing database of public and public workspaces. The company has relationships with Plantronics, Cisco, Skype and HP.

Mobile Stats, Symbian wins hands down

There have been some interesting talks recently with various statistics about phone sales thrown in.

Though everyone wants to develop for the sexy iPhone, in global terms it's actually a small player in terms of sales and also as there's such a wealth of applications getting yours' noticed in the 140,000 or so iPhone apps that are out there is very difficult. Of course if you can get it noticed then Apple definitely have the nicest app store out there and it's easy to bill and even charge for in app content.

Ewan Macleod did a presentation at Devnest on Wednesday and here are some stats from his presentation.

There are 4.6bn mobile subscribers (compared to 1.6bn TVs and 1.7bn credit cards - begs the question why don't mobile phone companies do mobile payments). In 2009 there are 1.2bn mobile phones sold (300m TVs and 280m PCs).

Comparing global handset sales Nokia 36% (441m), Other 25% (300m), Samsung 19% (236m), LG 10% (122m), Motorola 5% (58m) and SonyEricsson 5% (55m). So Nokia shipped 1.4m phones per day.

However the North American market is different, Nokia don't even make a dent (which may sway developers are they look at US developers who have no experience with Nokia). Here's it all RIM with 43%, iPhone 25.1%, Windows Mobile 15.7%, Android 7.1% and Palm 5.7%. Interestingly Android is expected to increase to 20% of the smartphone market there.

Ask a developer what platforms they're developing for and it's 92% iPhone and 8% Android, but if you look at mobile phone OS penetrations it's: -

* Symbian 47%
* RIM 20%
* iPhone 14%
* Windows Phone 9%
* Linux 5%
* Android 4%
* Palm WebOS 1%

In the UK there are about 3m iPhones out in the market, that means there are 50 - 60m handsets that iPhone developers are missing (OK not all of them are smartphones).

Many people have written-off Symbian, but it's still the most popular phone OS and now that it's been open sourced with a sensible abstraction layer (Qt) it's easier to write for. Though Nokia's Ovi store isn't the best out there (some people may say it's particularly poor), Nokia are constantly improving it and there are now over 1.5m downloads per day.

Phone companies have developer programs, even Apple has one, but you have to play by their rules and particularly their approval process it can takes weeks to get approved, Android takes under 1 second.

Various operators runs competitions to stimulate apps for their platforms (Vodafone 360, Blackberry, Nokia) - some of these may be 'under utilised' so the chances of winning are highly elevated, it's worth having a look to see who's doing what.

So it looks like developers (globally) are swayed by the US market, but they should be taking a more global view and no one should be writing Symbian off yet.

Android now Rummbles

Rummble has just been released for Android phones. Rummble is an application that allows people to rate and locate venues etc. It also has 'check-in' functionality so that friends can be notified that you've arrived at a venue.

Rummble has been available on the iPhone for sometime, but version 1.5 with check-in and social sharing functions was released last week. Now the Android version has these features and the ability to view where friends are on a map and better twitter integration.

The press release included a QRcode which when decoded had a URL to the Rummble blog which also has a QRcode to the Android download. There are of course some sensible free QRcode decoders for Android already out there.

Rummble is a company to watch.

Adobe CS5 support for iPhone

It seems Adobe's CS5 will support developing Flash programs using Actionscript for iPhone.

Though Apple are still refusing to allow the Flash player to run on the iPhone allowing Flash programs to be downloaded from the web, the CS5 version seems to combine the Flash player and the program into a standalone executable so it operates as a program suitable for use on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The system will also allow existing Flash programs to be packaged into an executable.

Adobe are releasing beta versions of CS5 shortly.

Spotify goes iPhone and US (soon)

Spotify the Swedish music streaming company (which has players for Mac and Windows) has now launched an iPhone version.

It's been in the queue with Apple for about a month, but was finally given approval yesterday. Many feared it wouldn't make the app store as it competes with Apple's own iTunes service.

Spotify on iPhone will only be available to users who subscribe to their £9.99 per month service, though the application is a free download. Spotify expect the iPhone app to drive new customers to their premium services.

The app allows sync'ed playlists with the desktop version and other features.

US customers still have to wait until Spotify complete licensing deals with the stakeholders in the US, but a launch there is expected next year, though some lucky US people have had pre-launch invites.

Spotify is also rumored to be in talks with Facebook who have been lacking a music service so far, a FB/Spotify tie-up would seriously impinge MySpace's youth music market.

Whichever way you look at it, Spotify are a company to watch, hopefully they'll not get bought out by Facebook or other US giant and can be a genuine European success story.

Apple sells iPhones

Apple have shipped 5.2m iPhones during the last quarter which helped them achieve net profits of $1.23bn which is up 15% on last year.

Apple are still seen to be innovating in the phone market and there are still rumours of a 10" netbook (or large iPod touch) type device. They still have the opportunity to grab a new chunk of the market if they can release a truly innovative device.

Android gets ready to take on iPhone

Google showed off it's new Android mobile operating system at their developers do in San Fran.

They showed it running on two phones, one a basic version and one with a touch screen that supported 3G.

It seems to operate in a similar fashion to the iPhone with its "home' button and applications accessible via icons. It can utilise systems like accelerometers to measure the devices position, GPS, etc.

Google demo'ed Google Maps which panes in sections as the users moves from location to location.

Though Android is similar to MacOS X on the iPhone, it's different as Apple does not release any of the iPhone's core OS and applications can only be officially distributed through iTunes. Android in theory is completely open and based on Linux (the OS is officially distributed through the Open Handset Alliance) and the development environment is available to anyone (though winners of the Google applications prize are gaining early access to pre-release betas of the new dev systems).

Android could be a real threat to traditional mobile operating systems (WindowsMobile, Symbian, etc) as there are no license fees to pay. Google will leverage Android to move into the hosted app market (which they want to own) as the mobile apps generally are front-ends on to hosted systems.

There are other threats such as LIMO and OpenMoko but currently these are niche players.

iPhone unleashed

An iPhone (8GB) arrived a week or so ago from the US, it's very pretty. Unfortunately a US iPhone is the UK is as useful as a slim shiny brick.

A friend unbricked it (using the commercial AnySIM package - not recommended for beginners, even though it's commercial, it's far from easy getting an iPhone into an unlocked state) and then installed the AppInstaller.

AppInstaller is a nice piece of software that manages 3rd party iPhone packages, it checks back with a repository and then pulls in whatever's required. It can also check for updated packages. At the moment any dependency checking is manual, but they're bound to fix it.

Then put all the settings in for the UK network, and it all worked. Seems there's quite a few E.D.G.E. cells around, though speeds are no where near 3G which is a shame.

The user interface is fantastic, especially the two fingered zoom and the rotating screen depending on the orientation of the phone.

It even works as a phone pretty well.

As an iPod it syncs with iTunes, but can sync all your contacts (from Address Book on Macs or Outlook on PCs), these are then all available through the phone itself. Though you can add address book entries, it doesn't seem to allow downloading vCards into the phone - which is a real shame.

Calendar entries are also synced.

Though it's a nice piece or ergnomic engineering, the total cost of ownership on an O2 contract is going to be off-putting.

Apple to unlock iPhone

Steve Jobs has announced that the iPhone will eventually allow 3rd party apps to be installed, but not just yet.

Apple are hoping to release an iPhone SDK in February 2008 but are still wary about exposing the phone to viruses, malware etc.

This seems an about turn and it looks like they're giving in to consumer pressure, though running MacOS X (though an embedded variant) means it's likely anyone who can program for MacOS X should can do so for the iPhone.

UK Apple iPhone deal announced

Steve Jobs was in Apple's UK Regent Street store to announce the deal with O2 for the iPhone which is going to be available on November 9th.

Suprisingly it's not a 3G phone, it will still only support E.D.G.E. as does the US variant. This will mean O2 have a lot of work to do to upgrade all their basestations to support E.D.G.E, though customers have reported that some cells are already showing E.D.G.E capability.

Pricing plans start at £35 per month for 200 minutes and 200 texts with unlimited data, this also gives unlimited WiFi access (via the Cloud). Higher rates give more voice minutes and texts.

Maybe the 16GB version will support 3G, which must be due soon ... giving Apple the ability to sell to the next generation of iPhone users and getting everyone who'se going to buy one at launch the opportunity to upgrade.

Apple special event Sept 18th

Apple are inviting journalists to a special event on September the 18th.

Speculation is the announcement of the new European 3G iPhone and the EU partners (O2 in UK?).

Apple releases new iPods

As expected Apple announced updated and new iPods.

The Shuffle gains new colours.

The Nano's are now fully metal and support video as well as things like CoverFlow.

iPod Classic is now all metal in 80GB and 160GB (and thinner than current models and with longer battery life), also with CoverFlow.

The new iPod Touch comes in 8GB and 16GB models and includes WiFi (basically an iPhone without the phone).

The 4GB iPhone has been dropped and the 8GB version reduced by $200 to $399.

Apple have also done a deal with Starbucks which allows buying of the last 10 played songs via in-store WiFi. It's not clear whether the iPod/Phone will be able to use WiFi for anything else though (without paying for it).

As the iPod Touch comes in a 16GB version, it's likely the iPhone will too at some point.

iPhone hacked

It looks like the iPhone can now work on non-ATandT SIMs.

However it also looks like Apple/ATandT may be getting their legal guns aimed and ready to fire on anyone offering software that will completely unlock the iPhone.

A UK company was going to sell software to unlock the iPhone, but a now rethinking after a call from ATandT lawayers at 3am UK time.

Though it would be fun to use an iPhone with a UK SIM, unless data rates drop considerably (though do-able on T-Mobile and 3) using an iPhone in the UK could prove a very costly business.

Better wait until O2 officially announce their deal with Apple for the UK and see what their pricing is.

Quicktime 7.2

It seems Apple have added 2 new features to Quicktime 7.2, export to iPhone and export to iPhone (cellular) as well as fixing various security vulnerabilities.

The iPhone export supports .m4v (an MPEG 4 variant), while iPhone (cellular) supports the standardised .3gp format which produces smaller files.

Though the features are there, they're not mentioned in the release notes.

Quicktime 7.2 is available as a standalone download or part of the iTunes 7.3.1 download (which is a minor upgrade from iTunes 7.3 to 7.3.1 and fixes some iTunes library issues).