Today, Robyn and Jon were joined by the newest member of the ReadWriteWeb team, Taylor Hatmaker! The topic was games, specifically vast, immersive, whole-world adventures like Minecraft and the new Diablo III. Both Robyn and Taylor are accomplished gamers, and Jon is not, but he pretended to know what he was talking about. Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about: We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you! Read More
When the first iPad launched in 2010, critics were quick to lampoon the device for being geared too heavily toward content consumption. The criticisms weren't entirely without merit, especially considering that the first-generation iPad didn't even have a camera, and external media slots are still nowhere to be found. Over time, the iPad has evolved into something that's much more creation-friendly. It still doesn't compare to a desktop or laptop computer for many things, but it's great for quite a few others. Writing is one of them. I happen to write things for a living, but the practice is far from limited to those who earn a paycheck by doing it. Some of us just enjoy emptying the thoughts from our heads, while many others have a professional obligation to be good at communicating with words. Whatever one's purpose - journaling, drafting stories or composing work-related documents - the iPad is a pretty good place to put words together. One of the aforementioned early criticisms actually turns out to be part of what makes the iPad ideal for writing. Unlike a desktop computer, the device is designed to allow the user to focus on only one thing at a time. When one needs to focus on stringing together words without the distractions that so easily flood a desktop computer, the one-task-at-a-time nature of the iPad is a blessing. To be sure, there are distraction-free writing apps for Windows and Mac desktops, and it's not exactly rocket science to simply close one's IM, email and Twitter clients for an hour or two. Still, fine-tuning the desktop for optimal focus requires effort, while tablets just sort of work that way by default. It's a great alternative to the desktop, especially with the right tools. When you unbox an iPad, it's not necessarily ready Read More
One of the iPad's more intriguing business uses is making presentations before a live audience. The device is portable and fun to use, and the swipe and pinch gestures can make for some dramatic presentations. Sadly, iPad presentations haven't lived up to their potential - especially for users of Microsoft PowerPoint. But the lastest version of Brainshark's free SlideShark app could help change that. Normally, the latest version of a mobile app wouldn't merit coverate on ReadWriteWeb, but this is a game changer, especially for experienced speakers who are used to running their PowerPoint presentations with "presenter" mode. This is the ability to see your speaker notes and adjoining slides on the computer monitor at the podium, while the audience sees only a separate screen with the slide content. It is how I usually like to give my own speeches. There are several issues with giving a speech using an iPad. First is the actual connection to a digital projector. There are two methods you can use: either a wired connection with a special VGA or DVI dongle that fits to the bottom of the iPad, or with a wireless AirPlay connection to an Apple TV device. If you go wired, you better make sure your iPad is fully charged iPad, because you can't connect it to a power source while you have the dongle in place. Using an Apple TV means you have to cart around yet another device and get it set up properly. Neither is very satisfying. A second issue is that Microsoft doesn't yet make an iPad version of PowerPoint, although Apple has an iOS version of Keynote. If you're a PowerPoint power user, there are a number of products that can display iPad presentations. VMware's Sliderocket is another free iPad presentation app. Or you could use the offline iPad Read More
With a smartphone and the right app, you can find any spot on Earth. But the best navigation apps do a lot more. Look out for that speed trap! Here are six outstanding mobile navigation tools. To make the list, an app needs to be different than your standard, run-of-the-mill route finder. You won't see Nokia or Google Maps. Or apps from navigation leaders like Garmin, TomTom or Telenav. These are seven true alternatives. Each one offers something special to help you get wherever you need to go in record time. No fuss, no muss. When we first wrote about Waze (for Android) in our Apps of the Month for December 2011, we wondered whether the app was useful, never mind safe. Interacting with your phone while driving is frowned upon these days. Waze's safety may be debatable, but its GPS features and ability to passively aggregate traffic data while you're driving may be useful. It's a social driving app that alerts you to traffic incidents, congestion and other roadblocks so you can "outsmart traffic and save on gas." Really, the last thing you need is to be scanning Twitter in traffic. It's especially worthwhile if you live in a city where the afternoon commute tends to be a nightmare (looking at you, Washington, D.C.). Just type in an address, and Waze passively sends traffic data to its servers and lets you know where the trouble spots are. I went to Fiji as a teenager. On the way home, I had a long layover at LAX before flying back to Logan Airport in Boston. A couple of people I had met in Fiji were also stuck at the airport, so we decided to take a cab to Manhattan Beach, where Baywatch was filmed. They ended up leaving earlier while I sat Read More
It's been nearly two months since the latest iteration of Apple's tablet started shipping. In that time, those of us who rushed out to buy a new iPad have been peering into a display with an incredibly high resolution. The intial response to the iPad's retina display was mostly one of awe, with some concerns about things like app size and battery life. Several weeks later, it's safe to say the upgrade was worth it. The high-resolution screen is the most noticeable visual enhancement for anybody who upgraded from a previous verison of the iPad. I was replacing a first-generation iPad, so I had a number of newfound advantages. The screen was probably the biggest one, though. For people who spend lots of time with their iPad, the sharper text and crisper images are a welcome improvement, even if the older-generation models didn't necessarily look bad. Personally, I do about 90% of all my reading on my iPad - from e-books in the Kindle app to articles in Flipboard and my overflowing Instapaper queue. Then there's digital magazines like Wired and Fast Company, as well as other newsreading apps from individual publishers. Across the board, the experience of reading on the iPad is easier on the eyes. I've started writing more on my iPad, which is a breeze using an iCloud-compatible app like iA Writer and an external keyboard. Writing on the device was never a problem before, but the high-resolution screen makes the experience that much nicer. Not only is the resolution higher, but images also appear more vibrant. It makes the screen a tad more enjoyable to look at in general, with photos and graphics-heavy layouts being especially inviting. Around the time that the new iPad launched, the tech press jumped on the issue of whether or not retina-friendly Read More
No one has figured out the right formula for the weather app yet. Phones come stocked with basic forecast apps with cartoony icons, but today's mobile devices have more potential than that. One ambitious effort called Dark Sky recently hit the App Store, and I teamed up with weather guru and former RWW webmaster Jared Smith to test it out. Dark Sky is a Kickstarter-launched app for iPhone and iPad that zeroes in on the basic use case for a weather app on a mobile device. It uses your current location by default, but you can view the weather anywhere (U.S. only for now). Dark Sky does away with the complex modeling (and guesswork) involved in forecasting the weather and focuses on the question you ask of your phone as you're walking out the door: Is it raining right now, and will it rain soon? Its UI is totally novel. On the phone, it shows a timeline with a graph of the precipitation over the next hour. Below, in huge text, it says what's happening now and what will happen this hour. A tab at the top reveals a cool, animated radar view that gives a general sense of the precipitation, and you can scroll back and forth in time to see what it predicts for the short term. It's a pretty powerful interface for a quick little phone app. On the iPad, the radar is visible from the main screen. "For our initial release, we're just focusing on precipitation and getting that right," says Jay LaPorte, one of the creators of Dark Sky. "Most meteorologists use complicated mathematical models of the weather, which works fairly well over medium intervals, but don't tell you what's going to happen in the short-term." Dark Sky leaves the far-out forecasting to the geeks. "We take a Read More
After closing a $70 million deal last week, Evernote announced today that it has acquired the handwriting app Penultimate, the fourth-best-selling iPad app of all time. Penultimate fans don't have to worry; when Evernote buys apps, they stick around. Evernote lovers should be excited to add this one to the family. Here's why. Penultimate creator Ben Zotto will lead a team implementing digital handwriting into other Evernote products. As for Penultimate itself, Zotto says that we'll "also start seeing Penultimate (finally!) on other devices." From both sides of the table, this sounds like a mutually beneficial arrangement. It Is Written The most powerful features of Evernote are its abilities to help you retrieve your stuff, no matter what format you stored it in. If you take a photo of a piece of paper, Evernote will scan the characters on it and let you find the image in search. It transcribes your audio recordings so you can do the same thing. With Penultimate on board, now you'll be able to write directly on your iPad screen and get full-text search of your notes via Evernote. Some of Evernote's core team members have been working on digital handwriting since they were on the Apple Newton team. They wrote the CalliGrapher handwriting recognition engine. And now that Apple has gotten the tablet right with the iPad, this same team gets to integrate the most popular handwriting app on the platform into Evernote's already powerful digital desk. It Went Well For Skitch If you need an example of what happens when Evernote buys a beloved app, just look at last year's acquisition of Skitch. Skitch was a Mac app for taking and annotating screenshots. On the day Evernote bought it, it announced iPhone, iPad and Android versions that totally retain the character of Skitch today. They just also happen to Read More
Do you ever wonder why food at restaurants is so much better than what you make at home? Honest chefs will tell you that, outside of skill and knowledge, they just have better tools at their disposal. In lieu of spending a fortune on buying your own mandolin, beurre mixer and a really expensive set of chef knives, check out some of the top apps for chefs and foodies. You will be on your way to creating culinary masterpieces in no time. ($4.99 -- iPad) Raw food is terrific for you. Raw food is also very difficult to make right if you want to do more than just gnaw on carrot sticks all the time. Chef Matthew Kenney has a new iPad app that takes you through the basics of raw food preperation. There are 12 full-length videos (like, how to crack a coconut, which is a lot harder than you might think), 45 recipes, nutritional information and shopping list integration. Raw-food diets are tough to maintain and even harder to keep creative. Pick this one up if you are interested in a raw-food diet or if you are just trying to impress that special someone with your knowledge of raw-food preperation. Hey, everybody loves a cook with a little bit of an esoteric repetoire. ($2.99 -- iPad) If you keep up with the hottest culinary trends, you know that cupcakes are all the rage these days (along with gourmet food trucks). This app has more than 100 cupcake and frosting recipes for those of us with a wicked sweet tooth. There is a frosting guide, a decorating guide, an ingredients guide and more. This one could be serious trouble for those of us trying to watch our weight. If you are a foodie and watch the Food Network and do not like Read More
Moments after Facebook bought Instagram, the next race began - which mobile social video app would become the "Instagram for video"? Presenting a social video experience that is enjoyable not only from a smartphone but across existing social platforms is no easy task. Socialcam, Viddy and Klip are three apps that have emerged as leaders of the pack. We tested each one by recording videos, applying filters and paying close attention to the sharing mechanisms therein. What we discovered may surprise you. The Socialcam video itself resembles a clean, clear Vimeo video. There is no time limit on the videos shot with this app. And with each video, the user can decide if they want to make it public to the Socialcam community (and anyone else who picks up the link), viewable for the user's followers only or completely private. In terms of sharing functionality, Socialcam allows users to share the video on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, email, SMS, Posterous, Tumblr or Dropbox. One thing to watch out for - which is true of most apps these days - is the Facebook social sharing feature. Sharing to Facebook is a pretty common move, especially since this app integrates with Facebook directly. On Timeline, the app's video cover image appears on my Timeline along with a link to watch the video on Socialcam.com. You can tag friends in the video itself, but not on Facebook directly. This quietly keeps users connected to Socialcam itself. Sharing the same link out to Twitter is much simpler, and the result is to lead users back to the video on Socialcam. It's possible to use Socialcam on the Web, but it feels most useful on mobile - after all, these are not videos that you should think much about or edit. The SocialCam popular section presents everything Read More
As a foreign correspondent in London 10 years ago, my job was to unearth innovative new startups for my business magazine's readers. I traveled across the Continent, from Helsinki to Milan, meeting entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and big company researchers to write about the next big thing. In the summer of 2002, I attended a launch party for a startup demonstrating their nascent service at a swanky Haymarket bar. Upon walking in, there were printed instructions to visit one of the tables playing music and then navigate through a maze of confusing WAP mobile phone menus. What resulted was my phone magically telling me the name of the song playing in the room. The event was Shazam's coming out party. It took almost 10 years for the music recognition app to truly gain widespread recognition but, for me, it was the first time I saw firsthand what was only possible with a mobile phone. Ten years later, publishers are still plotting the best ways to engage readers on mobile devices. The stakes are high. As technology continuously improves, the percent of content consumed from mobile devices increases. On average, 20% of sites’ content is now being consumed in mobile browsers. But, evolving technology platforms and consumption patterns makes it far more difficult to succeed on mobile than it is on desktop. And the challenge of building a great mobile experience isn't solved by simply ensuring the content displays in the right way in the right environment. The bigger challenge is to figure out how best to match the content and mission of that publisher with the unique properties associated with varied operating systems, devices, browser and app environments. Different technology translates into different consumption patterns. For example, users are consuming content in very different ways in apps than they are on the Read More
