John M. Ryan

iOS 5 Tips and Tricks

iMessage will allow you to send unlimited free picture or text messages to another iPhone, iPad or iPod touch user, assuming they have activated the service and are using iOS 5. Remember these messages count towards your data allowance, so make sure you have a price plan before using it.

The most interesting thing about iMessage, is you don’t need to know how to use it, you just need to make sure it’s turned on. Once it’s enabled, use the Messaging app as normal, if the other person has iMessage enabled on their iOS device, your device should know this automatically and use it to deliver your message.

iMessage or SMS?

iMessage will tell you if the other person has iMessage enabled

• By changing the text in the message field from “Message” to “iMessage”. Type in the address first and tap into the message filed, and see if it changes.
• The send button will be blue for iMessage and Green for normal SMS. Again you need to type in the address and tap into the message field to see if it changes colour.

How to make sure iMessage is enabled

• Make sure you are running iOS 5.
• Open the settings app and select ‘Messages’. The first option is iMessage – ‘on’ or ‘off’. Select ‘on’. Scroll down to “Receive at”. This will allow you to add e-mail an address at which iOS can recognise you as an iMessage user, in addition to your phone number. Add your apple ID email address here too, if you wish.
• The ‘send as SMS’ option is set to ‘on’ – this means, if for any reason iMessage cannot send the message, it will use SMS (or possibly MMS) meaning you will be charged the network rate. This button seems confusing, when I tested it, it made no difference and sent the message anyway!
• On a iPad, the settings are more or less the same, but there is no SMS option. This is the first time the iPad has a messaging app, so it does open up functionality. Even if it is limited to iOS.

iBooks

You know that iBooks app, that you downloaded only to discover that you cannot buy anything in the store, unless you live in US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, or Canada?

Well this is no longer the case! The app might not be completely ready for show time, as there are references to GBP in addition to euro on the pricing in the Irish store. But we wont complain, it took us this long to get the app working! And just in time for the iPhone 5.

MacTrast reports that iBooks are also now for sale in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland in addition to Ireland.

You can get samples, as per Kindle which is a nice, if not expected feature. Does it work where you are? Let us know in the comments

Stripe Bag for iPad

Chillicase.ie, an Irish online retailer of iPhone and iPad cases and accessories, have added a new iPad bag to their catalog, and were kind enough to send me one to check out. I’m going on holidays in two weeks and this bag will get the real test then.

I can see this bag being very handy for those who move about a lot and don’t like having their iPad wrapped in  a case, and prefer to have a purpose-built stylish, yet simple bag for their iPad. When I first opened up this Stripe Bag for iPad and looked at it, I thought “my iPad will never fit in this bag, too small, it must be for the iPad 2 (not sure if it holds the iPad 2 by the way).” But in actual fact it fits my iPad 1 very snugly indeed.

The bag itself is not leather, but made of some sort of reflective plastic. Not being a huge fan of leather myself this does not affect me all. Because of this material it does leave the odd finger mark, particularly if you have sweaty fingers. The bag I got is black with a stylish green stripe and green interior, but I understand it also comes with an orange or white stripe.  The top enclosure has two magnets which snap shut securely with your iPad safely  inside.

This is a great buy and offers a stylish way to carry around your iPad on the go while  also offering protection from the outside elements and at €24.99 with free shipping (for August) on chillicase.ie this bag wont break the bank!

This Stripe Bag gives a great shelter for your iPad to keep it safe and away from scratches, dust, and bumps without losing any stylish points. It is made of premium soft PU material, extremely comfortable to carry. Moreover, it is lined with soft synthetic leather, which provides 100% protection for your beloved iPad.

Pros

• Simple, yet stylish design.
• Perfect fit, iPad does not move about in the bag.
• Magnetic closure.
• Three colours.

Cons

• Cannot charge in bag.

WIN

Chillicase.ie have also sent us on some very fancy and colorful iPhone covers for us to share with you. So keep an eye out for a post later this week with details on how you can win these!

Gallery: Stripe Bag for iPad – chillicase.ie

The result of various FX effects

There is a whopping amount of Photo apps, both free and paid available in the app store. Few offer all of the functions available in FX Studio. I’ve counted 194 effects you can apply to photos, in addition to changing colour, brightness, and rotation. This well designed application, has yet to crash, and seems to be able to handle anything I have thrown at it.

You can even apply multiple FX effects to one photo for your own creation. Cropping, rotating, undo, redo, not a problem for this app. Once you have finished editing your application you can share with all these social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr AND Instragram sharing are all built-in to this app, in addition to AirPrint.

Masking is probably the most anticipated feature of FX Photo Studio 4.0. This tool allows users pick an area of the image to which they want to apply filter. Masking studio lets users choose a brush type and supports maximum iPhone 4 image resolution. With close to 200 FX and filters, which can be customized and mixed, masking tool grants iOS photo enthusiasts with almost unlimited creative possibilities.

At less than 2 euro in the app store, this is photo editing app that must be kept in the first page of your iOS apps.

Video

FX Photo Studio gives you so much more than other apps:

•194 photo effects and filters
•20 Categories
•Intuitive, easy to use interface
•Masking tool (High resolution supported)
•Possibility to mix different effects
•Adjustable parameters for all effects
•Square auto crop option

•Possibility to add effects to favorites or hide unused effects
•Presets – save sequences of effects and apply them on others pictures with just one tap
•Import and Export presets via preset codes

•Multistep Undo and Redo
•Useful editing tools: crop, rotate, adjust gamma, brightness, saturation, etc
•Random filter option
•Take Instant Photo with random effect feature
•High resolution support up to 2592*2592 pixels (for iPhones 4)

•Import images from Facebook, Computer via iTunes (documents), Camera roll
•Integration with Instagram
•Built-in sharing via Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or E-mail
•Built-in printing

Star Trek PADD

As a Star Trek fan, when I first saw the Apple iPad, I immediately thought of the PADD (Personal Access Display Device) which was used by Starfleet as a tablet computer.  So I was delighted when I saw CBS had brought this to life with PADD for iPad. The iPad app emulates the Star Trek PADD interface has various Star Trek sound effects and computer voices that react to your touch.

How here’s the thing, while the app does have a built-in database of various Star Trek characters, ships and so on, it is not a complete collection. Rather than linking to data from a resource like Memory Alpha, the designers have used the StarTrek.com database for its information. This means, this PADD is more of a “nice to have” app than a reference tool. The designers try to make up for the  problem by linking into Twitter and Facebook, which is ok, but not what I would imagine Trek fans would prefer.

It’s not possible to filter down characters  by series, which surprised me, in fact there is almost no filters aside from the main sections. The designers note “The official Star Trek PADD app database does not include all information within the Star Trek Universe. We will continue to update the database as information becomes available.” Again a little surprising as all Star Trek Moves and series have long since ended, aside from the new movie, which we could forgive.

Despite all the above, it is worth having this app if you are a Star Trek fan. It looks very like the displays in Star Trek The Next Generation  and you are bound to have some fun playing around with it, and while it has plenty of potential – don’t expect it to be your ‘go to’ Star Trek reference tool, because it’s nowhere near that.

Video

Gallery

iOS 4.3

If you love your iOS device, then this might be the perfect job for you, particularly if you live in Cork and are a people person. The job is a call center style job.

  As an iOS Advisor, you will provide technical support and customer service to consumer customers on their iPad, iPhone or iPod. You will have the opportunity to help our valued Mac and Windows customers with questions and troubleshooting, to help them get the most out of their Apple products.”

It’s a full time contract and the job was posted in the last few days on jobs.ie website.

Great Backyard Grilling

It’s summer and hopefully unlike me, you’ve have had a chance to fire up the Backyard Grill. I like Grilling, and it’s not always easy so if your are looking for a companion app to help you perfect your grilling technique take a look at Great Backyard Grilling.

There is something for everyone in the recipes menu from beef, pork and lamb to vegetables and fruit.  Each menu comes with a selection of buttons  making preparation a cinch! You can add a recipe to a menu which you can mail to everyone to let them know the good food they can look forward to!

The feature I love is the ability to create a shopping list for each recipe! Of course your unlikely to bring your iPad to the store, so you can mail the entire list to your iPhone to bring with you!

The layout is straightforward and easy to follow. Each instance a time is referenced you can click on it  and start the built in timer! It’s things like this that make you say wow, the developer spent some time on the design of this app!

The On The House Great Backyard Grilling app will include nearly 50 great grilling recipes with impressive features such as outstanding photography throughout, the ability to add recipes to a “favorites” list, a special menu creation utility, e-mail functions for recipes, shopping lists and menus and menus with dinner invitations. Also included is a timer function for all recipes and powerful flexible shopping list functions that include key ingredient definitions with stunning photographs.

Sadly the video section is empty, the developers are really missing out by leaving this section blank at launch and it seems to be the only thing missing for this useful app. I’ve not fired up my barbecue yet this year, so if anyone feels like giving this app a try please comment on this post and let us know how you got on!

The app costs 2.99 Euro in the Irish app store and 3.99 USD.

Features | Functions 
•All recipes are illustrated
•Ingredient calculator
•Built-in timer for each recipe
•Flexible shopping list functions
•E-mail functions for recipes, shopping list and menu
•Key ingredient definitions and photographs
•State of the art photography

All – inclusive Shopping Tool 
•Shopping list for each recipe
•Quantity calculator
•Customized to add own ingredients or leave out ingredients already at home
•Sorting by grocery store product groups

If I was a suspicious sort of person, i’d say something like a video for  Skype for iPad was accidentally on purpose leaked to the internet. Never the less this looks amazing.

SKY GO

Some exciting news for SKY television customers in Ireland and the UK from July 6 ^th . Sky announced that they will be scrapping their old SKY Mobile TV app and Sky Player service in favour of a service called SKY Go, which will consolidate the two services and mirror  SKY customers’ subscription. This means no more paying extra for SKY Sports if you already have the channels. Sadly iOS devices will be limited to five Sky Sports channels, ESPN and Sky News, but SKY say further channels to be added over time.

It’s better news for your Mac or PC  “customers will be able to access more than 30 live channels, including all five Sky Sports channels, Sky Movies, Sky News, Sky 1, Sky Atlantic, Sky Arts, MTV, Disney, G.O.LD, Nickelodeon, NatGeo, History, Eden and ESPN, supported by an extensive library of on-demand content.”

You must already have a subscription to the above channels in order to watch them of course, but if you don’t. Sky Go will be available from August to non-Sky TV customers, with monthly subscriptions priced from £15-£40.

Still waiting on RTE Player here!

Stephen van Rooyen, Deputy MD of Sky’s Customer Group, comments :

“The explosion of smartphones and tablets demonstrates the increasing consumer demand for accessing entertainment and communicating on the move. We have already responded to this by offering a range of services, including live TV, across many new innovative platforms and devices, like laptops and iPhones.

“Clearly the consumer appetite is there, and it’s growing. In responding to that, and to create even more value, choice and flexibility for our customers, we are now going to offer online and mobile access to Sky content at no extra charge. The future support of a nationwide Wi-Fi network will help us supercharge that experience further still.”

Press release

iOS 5 First look

Thanks to a really great contact on Twitter I managed to grab the first beta of iOS 5. While much of the great and wonderful updates have been reported on already, I have been through the settings and jotted down some notes on what I found. Here are a few observations on iOS 5.

• As promised by Steve Jobs, you no longer need a PC or Mac to activate or set up your iPhone. It’s now an independent device in its own right!
• iCloud: You can use your iPhone while syncing it with iTunes and I assume the iCloud. An icon appears on the status bar indicating a sync is in progress. There is an option for “Storage Plan” which is currently grayed out, which indicates Apple may have various storage plans in addition to the Free 5GB. Steve Jobs made this sound like a lot, but when I ran my first iCLoud backup, I realised how little this is if you plan on backing up your camera roll!

Alert Style

• Home Screen Notifications: You can slide notifications by swiping down at the top of the screen. You can delete all text and phone message notifications but not individual messages. The notifications screen also shows two widgets: stocks and weather. Weather uses GPS to display weather in your area. You can change from banner notifications to the usual pop up windows.
• Lock Screen: Messages now appear on lock screen as banner notifications opposed to a single pop up message. The lock screen will only show notifications since you last locked it. You can access the camera from the lock screen. New e-mail messages do not seem to appear on the lock screen (disappointed in this).
• Settings: There is some interesting things happening in the settings . Now an option to update software over the air! A new iTunes Sync option. iCloud options with the following On/Off toggle options: Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Notes, Photo Stream, Find my iPhone. They were all disabled by default on my test device.
• Sending an e-mail without a subject? You now get a warning!
• iPod app has gone! I’m surprised Apple are removing this one, now there is an app for music and one called video, the same as an iPod Touch.
• LED Flash for ALerts.  The camera flash will go off for alerts. Makes me suspect that Apple will have Blackberry like LED in the next iPhone device.

Twitter

• Twitter: Twitter is tightly integrated, you can authorise more than one account, if you use Twitter this is very handy.
• Camera: Pinch to zoom, seems a bit buggy to me, but it is a first beta, there is also a grid, and best of all you can use the volume button to take  a snap.
• Photos app: You can now edit photos, it’s pretty basic, but functional none the less. The ability to correct ‘red eye’, crop images and rotate images!

To summarise, lot’s of goodies in this iOS release, which we can expect in Autumn sometime, with possibly more that is available in the current beta. I have noticed throughout the iOS that much of the functionality comes from what was popular apps and jailbreak functions, Apple seems to be listening to its users.