SmileOnMyMac

PDFpen ist seit mittlerweile einem Jahr meine bevorzugte Mac-App (44.99 €; MAS-Link) im Umgang mit dem Adobe-Dokumentenformat. Nun bekommt die Software, die ich zum (OCR-)Scannen, Bearbeiten und papierlosen Unterschreiben nutze, einen iPad-Bruder (7.99 €; App Store-Link). Die Floskel über das ‘Verwandtschaftsverhältnis’ kommt nicht von ungefähr: PDFpen tauscht Dateien, ähnlich wie iWriter, über iCloud aus. Am iPad notierte ich so die finalen Anmerkungen und Hervorhebungen der Uni-Abschlussarbeit meiner Schwester, die anschließend ohne Export-Mühen zurück auf den Mac wanderten. Ebenfalls kinderleicht gestaltet sich über diese Software-Kombination das Ausfüllen und Signieren von Verträgen. Längere (Adress-)Daten lassen sich am Mac über die Tastatur eingeben. Für das eigene Autogramm öffnet man die iPad-App und setzt sein geschwungenes Kürzel – kein ‘Speichern unter’, kein ‘Exportieren’, kein ‘Ordner auswählen’ und kein ‘Importieren’ sind mehr notwendig. Entwickler SmileOnMyMac ließ sich einen cleveren Kniff einfallen, wie Software-Käufer, die über deren Webseite das Mac-Programm bezogen, zum iCloud-Zugang gelangen. Zur Erklärung: Das iCloud-Portal bleibt Software vorbehalten, die über den Mac App Store vertrieben wird. (0.79 €; MAS-Link) öffnet für diese Kunden kostengünstig die iCloud-Pforte. Wer PDFpen auf dem Mac bereits im Einsatz hat, freut sich über die dazugehörige iPad-Ausführung. Das Tablet-Programm in Version 1.0.1 ist nach meinen ersten Tests allerdings noch nicht so stabil, wie man es sich wünscht. Das Team, das sich auch für TextExpander verantwortlich zeigt, ist jedoch bekannt für seine langjährige Softwarepflege. Read More

By Leanna Lofte, Saturday, Aug 20, 2011 | Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game. To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break! As much as I love productivity apps, if you spend all your time playing with them, well, you’re not being very productive, are you? That’s the main reason I try to keep things as simple and streamlined as possible. And since my email inbox is very often a makeshift to-do list by necessity, there’s a handful of apps out there that extend that metaphor. One that I’m currently using and liking is Captio. Captio does one thing and it does it really nicely. Open the app, type something you want to remember, and hit send. A few seconds later, an email shows up in your inbox, from Captio, subject line: exactly what you wrote. It’s lightning fast, and as I’ve said before – for me, capturing information quickly and in a way in which it can be easily accessed in the future is of primary importance. The app’s design is pretty simple, which adds to its convenience. There aren’t a million settings and switches to configure. In fact, the only thing you have to do is add an email address to send to. The app also archives sent tasks for one month, so if you need to look back a few days and see something, it’s there, at least for a while. There’s an option to bypass the Gmail server it uses by default with IMAP, which allows you to enter your own outgoing server information for extra security, if that’s important to you. I didn’t even bother, since my messages are never anything that sensitive. Certainly there are bigger prizes for nefarious packet sniffers than “place amazon order”. And if you really want to get fancy, Captio allows you to attach an image to the message, which is very cool, and very handy in case you want to add just one more piece of memory to your quick note. Overall, there’s not much to it, and that’s exactly why I like it as much Read More

By Leanna Lofte, Tuesday, Aug 16, 2011 | SmileOnMyMac, has updated their popular iPhone and iPad app, TextExpander, with Dropbox support. TextExpander allows you to create abbreviations for frequently used chunks of text. Many other apps, such as Twitter apps and notes and to-do apps, support TextExpander so that it’s able to be used natively in those apps. Details and screenshots after the break. With TextExpander touch, you create a library of abbreviation shortcuts for snippets of text that you use frequently, such as addresses, URLs, and standard replies. Tap that abbreviation, and it automatically expands to the full snippet. (You can even insert today’s date automatically with the default abbreviation “ddate”!) You can use your TextExpander touch snippets directly in over 100 apps that support it, including Twittelator, TwitBird Pro, Elements, Simplenote, WriteRoom, Circus Ponies NoteBook, DEVONthink To Go, BusyToDo, Things, and Zendesk. See www.smilesoftware.com/applist for a complete list. Update includes: TextExpander is available on the iPhone and iPad for $4.99. Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look. Read More

I just discovered Paragraft, a text editor for iPad and iPhone that boasts some ingenious Markdown features (if I've lost you already, check out the TUAW Markdown Primer for a crash course). The good parts of Paragraft blew me away enough that I'm able to overlook an ugly icon and some bad interface decisions to deliver a fairly glowing endorsement: this is the first app I've found that has really allowed Markdown on iOS to make sense. There's no shortage of Markdown-enabled apps on any Apple platform right now, and I love that. I love Markdown, and while it's far superior to writing HTML or dealing with Rich Text in an iOS environment, I always miss the Markdown speed I can achieve in TextMate and other text editors on the Mac. Nebulous Notes has the flexibility to start getting there, but you have to build all the macros yourself. Other apps handle auto-continuing lists, maybe adding bold and italics, but still leave you digging through multiple levels of iOS keyboards to get to some symbols. TextExpander Touch can help quite a bit, too, but none of these really tap the capabilities of the iPhone and iPad. Paragraft has made me begin to rethink the possibilities. First, Paragraft treats each line of text as a separate object. This means that you can quickly drag paragraphs and list items around to reorder them. It's the app's most prominent feature, but not nearly the coolest. Paragraft also slightly modifies the syntax of Markdown in areas where it's less than convenient on an iOS keyboard. Ordered lists don't require a delimiter after the number. Three consecutive hyphens on their own line make a horizontal rule (normally you'd need spaces between them, or more of them). It's the little things. It might be slightly non-standard in these areas, and be less compatible with other apps, but if you're writing an email or a quick post and converting to HTML within the app, these are big time-savers. You don't have to use them; it works as well with stricter syntax. Here's my favorite thing -- the part that really has me thinking: swiping right and left on a line turns it into a headline (adds hash marks on both sides) and modifies its level with each swipe. Gesture-based editing opens up a lot of possibilities. The export options are pretty complete. Send a rich text email, send Read More

Als ich im August 2009 an dieser Stelle ‘TextExpander‘ vorstellte, waren die vorprogrammierten Textschnipsel noch reichlich überflüssig. ‘Überflüssig’ ist vielleicht das falsche Wort. Durch die fehlende (globale) System-Integration musste zum ‘Kopieren und Einfügen’ der Textbausteine konstant in die TextExpander-App gewechselt werden. Mittlerweile existieren über 100 Programme, die nach Eingabe der hinterlegten Abkürzung den vollen Text ausrollt – so wie vom Desktop gewohnt. Apples (Standard-)Apps interessiert das natürlich wenig. Nichtsdestotrotz ist die offizielle Support-Shortcut-Aufstellung prominent bestückt (Elements, Simplenote, WriteRoom, Circus Ponies NoteBook, DEVONthink To Go, BusyToDo, Things, etc.). Das Entwickler-Team von Smile feiert daher die dreistellige Anzahl der Third-Party-Unterstützung mit einem 60-prozentigen Preisnachlass (1.59 €; Universal; App Store-Link). Das Angebot läuft noch bis zum 09. Juni. Wer TextExpander oder vergleichbare Produkte noch gar nicht nutzt, muss sich ein wenig schneller entscheiden. Die Desktop-Anwendung ist derzeit Teil eines geldsparenden ‘Productive-Macs’-Bundle, das noch gute 17 Stunden für $30 US-Dollar zu erstehen ist. (Affiliate-Link) Read More

Text expansion is a wonderful thing—especially on a mobile device. Typing a shortcut that expands into a larger amount of text can save a ton of time and effort. While TextExpander exists for iOS, it only works in applications that support it and is of limited use. If you've jailbroken, however, you can use Xpandr which works system-wide and costs significantly less. Xpandr is remarkably simple. You open the app, tap Edit, and then tap plus to add a new snippet. A snippet consists of two things: a shortcut and what that shortcut expands to. You enter both, save it, and then you can type that shortcut in virtually any text field and it will expand. Text expansion is certainly not a new concept, but to have it work system-wide on an iDevice is pretty great. Xpander will cost you $2 in the Cydia Store (that's $3 less than Text Expander). To find it, just search Cydia for Xpandr and go through the usual motions to purchase and install it. You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter and Facebook.  If you'd like to contact him, Twitter is the most effective means of doing so. Read More

I’ve talked about Xpandr before, the jailbreak app that allows you to create shortcuts, a la TextExpander. When iOS 4 came up, it seems that Xpandr didn’t support it right away, which led me to remove it from my iPhone, or rather not install it when a jailbreak for iOS 4 came out. Up until now, I was using TextExpander which is great but is supported by very few apps in iOS. Yesterday, while I was calling for a dev to create a jailbreak tweak to integrate TextExpander to any iOS application, I was quickly reminded by several of you of the existence of Xpandr, so I installed it again, and to my great surprise, I realized it was working with iOS 4. The love story started all over again… For those of you who don’t know Xpandr, it is an app very similar to TextExpander, which is my most used application on my Macs right now ($35 in the Mac App Store). Xpandr lets you create a library of abbreviation shortcuts for snippets of text that you use frequently, such as addresses, URLs, and standard replies. As someone who is asked at least 20 times a day how to unlock or jailbreak the iPhone, this is a life saver. Instead of typing the long URL to our unlock page, I simply enter the shortcut I created, which automatically transforms into the full URL. For example, instead of typing in “http://www.idownloadblog.com/unlock/”, I simply enter my shortcut “uunlock”, and it is instantly changed into the full URL http://www.idownloadblog.com/unlock/. Brilliant! I also use Xpandr to create shortcuts for my name, email signatures, phone number, address, and full email replies to the questions I most frequently get asked. I can’t imagine how much time Xpandr will save me in the long run. You can get Xpandr from Cydia for $1.99. If you find yourself typing the same information over and over again, then these will be the best two dollars you will ever spend. Read More

Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications  Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks.  Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own.  Check out this week’s picks after the break Picked by: Jay My pick this week isn’t a new app, but it has a shiny new place for me in my iPhone/iPad life. Why you may ask? Well, yes I read the Lifehacker review comparing Shazam vs. SoundHound (also making its way on to our own site here) where they gave a slight nod to SoundHound for its overall accuracy. However, the hidden gem in my opinion is how this universal app can integrate with your iPod (through the icon at bottom right corner). You might think it odd to consider using a song-identifying appwith your own library. At first I did too. Then I noticed the “lyrics” portion of SoundHound seemed to be more frequently available than Shazam’s. So one time I fired up SoundHound while my iPod was playing and to my delight, the lyrics appeared overlaying the album art! Now you might think of this as no big deal, but for someone who is notoriously inaccurate with lyrics (think Jessie Eisenberg on SNL… “I love rock ‘n roll! So come and kiss a lime you dance machine!” – more transcripts here), this is an exciting way to sing along without the karaoke machine. On a side note, unlike Shazam, did you know you could sing or hum into your iPhone’s mic (or type a title) and have SoundHound search? Hearing that my wife successfully searched for a song by testing that feature shows that the algorithm SoundHound uses is far superior than even the human ear. (Good thing my wife never reads what I write.) My pick of the week, TextExpander ($4.99), can take a little while to get a hang of, but it’s a great little tool for setting up text macros on your iOS device. The macros can range from basic text replacement (typing “iS” to write “iSource”) to more dynamic text (“%’dd” to write today’s date out instantly). The only real catch Read More

Most iPhone text editors support only plain text (an iOS limitation, I believe), which makes it a real pain in the app to create useful little formatting tools, such as the bullet points above. However, many of the iPhone’s plain text editors do support a nifty little app called TextExpander ($4.99), which is a utility for setting up quick text macros. TextExpander can’t run in the background like Pastebot does, but it is integrated into many apps (Notesy, Simplenote, etc.) so that it feels like a background process. This means you can type out “tyvm” and have the TextExpander instantly replace it with “thank you very much”. I don’t tend to use many of these little shortcuts because I’m still getting used to how to use the app , but one great little use case is the one I’ve shown in the screenshot above. Here’s what the case-sensitive “Qq” macro I’m using boils down to: All of that is accomplished with just two quick taps of the iPhone keyboard, thanks to TextExpander. I chose the “Qq” macro specifically because it’s right beside where the Tab key would be on a normal computer keyboard. The end result looks a lot like the bullet points you’d get in a rich text application, although the second line of a long bullet point won’t be indented like the first (there’s nothing to be done about that until the iPhone is updated to support rich text). It’s also worth mentioning that these bullet points look exactly the same in apps like Notational Velocity or TextEdit (since I copied the formatting from there), so that they sync perfectly from Mac to iPhone, and vice versa. Read More

Going forward, the artists formerly known as SmileOnMyMac will now just be known as Smile. The name change reflects the company's more diversified software offerings outside of the Mac, which now include an iOS version of its popular app TextExpander on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. In addition to TextExpander, Smile's (wow, it takes a while to get used to the name) portfolio of Mac OS X apps includes PDF editor PDFpen, CD/DVD label designer DiscLabel, and its fax app PageSender. Smile's name change is similar to a move that Apple made. Citing its changing product portfolio, which included products outside of the traditional computing paradigm, Steve Jobs announced at Macworld 2007 (where the iPhone debuted) that the company would be changing its name from Apple Computer to Apple, Inc. Accompanying the company's name change is a new logo (sans the "on my Mac") and a new URL (it has changed from smileonmymac.com to smilesoftware.com), though both URLs will direct you to the company's site. Read More