Posts in news

Journler Now Open Source, “Per Se” To Be Successor

Philip Dow, unhappy with the current offerings of journaling applications (including his own Journler) for OS X, has opened up the popular diary app over at Sprouted as a complete Xcode project. Journler was closed over a year ago, leaving many dissatisfied customers in its wake. Looking to finally put Journler to a good end, Philip has reluctantly opened up the source code to the public in an effort to rekindle development company Sprouted.

With this rekindling comes a new and improved journaling application dubbed Per Se, which looks stunning if not bold from this first sneak peek. The end goal is to create a realistic journaling experience on the desktop, literally recreating the page metaphor as you write in an open book. Shown in the screen grab above, Per Se includes super fast calendaring, bookmarking, searching, and a tags feature so your records are never lost. We like the developer’s approach in creating an untraditional experience for desktop users, but we have to ask our readers: would you trade a text editor or alternative journaling application for Per Se’s beautiful paper interface?

[via Journler Blog]

OmniOutliner for iPad Sneak Peek

We’ve already covered the plans of the Omni Group for 2011: a huge update to OmniFocus and OmniPlan, deeper cloud integration with the deployment of the Omni Sync Server in multiple applications and the arrival of outlining and text editing app OmniOutliner on the iPad. A few minutes ago, the Omni Group updated its official Vimeo channel to give a sneak peek of the work-in-progress build of OmniOutliner for iOS, which was demoed at Macworld a few weeks ago.

OmniOutliner for iPad, just like the Mac version, will make it easy to capture ideas and structure them hierarchically with drag & drop, multitouch integration and the possibility to nest as many levels as you need with gestures. Users will be able to apply custom styles to text through a popover menu, or styles to entire rows and multiple rows at the once. It sounds very intriguing. OmniOutliner for iPad, according to the Omni Group, will bridge the gap between a word processor and a spreadsheet app.

Frankly, we can’t wait to try out the app and see if the Omni Group manages to pull out a complete reinvention of OmniOutliner like they did with OmniFocus on the iPad. Check out the video below in its HD glory. Read more

BBC iPlayer For iPad Now Available In UK Store

As previously reported, the official BBC iPlayer app for the iPad has launched today in the App Store. Sadly, iPlayer is only out in the UK for now, and it looks like it will stay there for a while until BBC figures out a subscription method for users outside the United Kingdom.

iPlayer for iPad puts BBC’s TV and Radio programs directly on your iPad for easy access and consumption. The app has been entirely written with Apple’s API and Cocoa Touch technology – it’s a native port of the iPlayer experience for the iPad. You can watch TV and listen to radio, manage your favorite shows and episodes through a Favorite list, browse upcoming programs from BBC. The design is really clean and elegant.

BBC iPlayer is available here, for free. [iTunes via 9to5mac]

2011: The Year Of Two iPads?

The next-generation iPad, dubbed “iPad 2” so far, is likely to be released between March and April. According to recent speculation, it will include a faster processor, more RAM, a thinner and lighter design and a front-facing camera for FaceTime. At this point, with even the Wall Street Journal weighing in to confirm the iPad 2 existence and release in the next few months, it seems pretty much obvious that we’ll see an iPad 2 within 10 weeks from today.

Still, two posts published by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber today open up to a new possibility: that Apple will release two new iPads in 2011, with a second one – let’s call it iPad 3 – due for a September release. Read more

iPad Vs. Other Tablets Comparison

With today’s announcement of the HP TouchPad, we have a new tablet on the horizon. Even though HP says the device has “planned availability this summer”, the un-announced release date and pricing info don’t make the TouchPad any less interesting than it is. Personally, I think webOS was meant for tablets: beautiful and elegant multitasking interface, attention to details, sweet notification system, great photos app with full Facebook integration. And we’ve only seen a demo today. Overall, the TouchPad is promising and - this is the best part in my opinion - it could be the device not from Apple the Apple geeks will love.

In the comparison chart above, Engadget takes a look at the various tablets coming our way soon and the current generation iPad. The original iPad (which at this point should be refreshed very soon) still holds up pretty well, although the Motorola Xoom will sport a higher resolution screen (with 0.3 inches more, though) and the BlackBerry Playbook will have a dual core Cortex A9 processor. The iPad doesn’t have cameras, lacks a gyroscope and has only 256 MB of RAM.

The problem most of these tablets will have to face is the upcoming iPad 2 which is rumored to be faster, lighter, thinner and camera equipped. With iOS 5 also on the horizon for a June release, HP will have to consider both the new Apple hardware and software if they’re really pushing for a mid-summer release of the TouchPad.

Death or Refresh? The iPod Classic Was the 5th Most Popular Player in 2010

This week was filled with rumors that Apple may finally be pulling the plug on its traditional-spinning-hard-drive MP3 player. Well, the NPD Group revealed to AppleInsider the overall portable media player sales rankings for 2010 in the US. Guess what placed fifth in the rankings?

Apple’s black 160GB iPod classic was the fifth best selling media player in the U.S. for all of 2010, suggesting that the hard drive-based device won’t be exiting the company’s product lineup in the near future.

Read more

iBooks 1.2.1 Now Available

A few minutes ago Apple released an update to iBooks for iPhone and iPad. The new iBooks 1.2.1 doesn’t come with new features over the previous 1.2 version but adds a number of stability and performance improvements. The usual Apple magic recipe for minor updates, we guess.

Go grab it here. [Thanks, Roberto!]

What Happens When Twitter for iPad Meets Youtube? YouPad

Call it a ripoff or “design inspiration”, an iPad app called YouPad, available in the App Store at $1.99, takes the experience and design elements seen in Twitter’s official iPad client and mixes them with Youtube. The result, as you can see from the screenshots, is quite…curious.

The FalconsApp developers claim that the app has been featured in Apple’s “New & Awesome” category, and while we still have to see such a section show up in the App Store, we do believe them when they say YouPad provides a revolutionary way to browse Youtube. Twitter for iPad was very innovative, too. The app seems to feature the same stacking panels navigation, the same background, the same sidebar with icons to browse different sections of Loren Brichter’s application. We can’t judge on stability and animations, but these developers sure have a thing for this kind of interface.

But hey – perhaps it really is a revolutionary app. If you dare to go ahead and purchase YouPad, it’s only $1.99 in the App Store. If you, however, don’t like Twitter for iPad at all, then you should stay away from this one.

Penultimate for iPad Adds AirPrint Support, Multi-Page Actions

Penultimate is one of the most popular productivity apps for the iPad that was featured by Apple several times in the past (it still holds the #3 position in the Top Paid chart) and we covered as well during its update cycle. When the iPad was released last year, Penultimate was one of the first apps to become really, really popular among early adopters and grant the developers thousands of dollars in revenue.

The latest update to Penultimate, version 2.3, adds full support for AirPrint (iOS 4.2 or later required) and multiple page actions that allow users to email, print or delete different sets of pages within a single notebook. Together with other stability and performance improvements, Penultimate really stands out in the handwriting / sketching panorama of apps for iPad.

Penultimate is available at $0.99 in the App Store.