Cleaning Mona Lisa: Showcasing the Potential for iBooks

Cleaning Mona Lisa Book Cover

Cleaning Mona Lisa Book Cover

Behind a beautiful portrait of Mona Lisa and a blue ribbon denoting its newness to my iBooks shelf, I discovered a world of rich and vivacious color drowned out by the ill effects of aging varnish, dust, and improper lighting. Restoring the world’s most famous paintings requires not only an understanding of the fine arts, but an even deeper understanding of the tools artists used to create the wildly vivid and awe-inspiring paintings we often observe in museums and art galleries. As you’ll come to learn in Lee Sandstead’s interactive iBook, preserving a painting is an art itself.

Sandstead’s 30-page digital iBook is nothing short of an exemplary example of what iBooks Author can produce when great minds meet great developers. The concise text, coupled with interactive images, galleries, and interviews, provides a much more personal platform for learning and engagement than my history textbooks ever could. That’s not to say “Cleaning Mona Lisa” was written for study — it’s an intriguing, personalized story from a passionate and talented art historian.

Cleaning Mona Lisa Lighting Page

Cleaning Mona Lisa Lighting Page

Covering the history of painting techniques from tempera to oil painting, Sandstead has to first recreate the methods artists used to create their paintings. As you’ll learn, the tools artists used and our neglect about how these paintings were intended to be preserved has been detrimental to the quality of the paintings themselves. Sandstead made it his mission to understand both what affects the quality of a painting and how to do undo the toll of time itself to reveal what are truly beautiful masterpieces.

iBooks Author has enabled the creation of an interactive e-book, that as Apple intended, flows perfectly no matter what orientation you decide to read it in. Videos guide you through the author’s investigative process, while interactive word bubbles clue you in on the observations made on a particular painting. Tapity’s iteration of engagement immerses you with the content — it doesn’t detract you from the author’s message. The author’s prose, combined with the layout of images and interactive content, make for an ebook that’s accessible and clever.

“Cleaning Mona Lisa” is an iBook for all ages that can be read in an evening. It didn’t take me long to read through, but the material was genuinely interesting, and I have nothing but good things to say about the book’s presentation and content. Only $2.99 on the iBookstore, “Cleaning Mona Lisa” sets the example for what an iBook should aspire to be.

Apple Confirms WWDC Keynote on June 11

Following the release of the WWDC 12 app and official event schedule, Apple just confirmed that an opening keynote will be held on Monday, June 11, in San Francisco.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop was first to report about invitations being sent to the press for the keynote, which will be held at 10 am. Speakers haven’t been revealed yet, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see CEO Tim Cook kick off the keynote, with other executives following up on news and announcements during the event.

Apple’s upcoming conference will see the company unveil “the latest news about iOS and OS X Mountain Lion with developers”. Apple is widely expected to unveil the next major version of iOS, as well as provide new information on OS X Mountain Lion, set to ship in “late summer”, at the event.

Apple Posts Initial WWDC 2012 Schedule, Releases Official App

With less than two weeks to go until WWDC 2012 kicks off, Apple has this morning released the conference schedule as well as the official iOS app and some guides for the conference goers. Developers who were lucky enough to snag tickets to WWDC ‘12 can access the schedule here. There are over 100 sessions and labs that have been categorised into six technical tracks covering:

  • Essentials
  • App Services
  • Developer Tools
  • Graphics, Media and Games
  • Safari and Web
  • Core OS

One interesting change is that the Apple Design Awards will this year be held on Monday at 3:45 PM - usually the event was held later in the event and during the evening.

The official WWDC app is also live now, featuring a detailed schedule, daily news and photos, a map of Moscone West and the ability to plan your week by favoriting sessions and detecting session conflicts. For those who might be new to the WWDC experience, Apple has also created a handy ‘Attendee Guide’ for WWDC that you can access here - it’s nothing huge but does have handy links to other resources that will likely be useful to new attendees. Lastly, there is guide to the WWDC labs including what they will cover, when and where they run and which require a reservation.

Espionage 3: Effortless Encryption for your Mac

Tao Effect’s Espionage has always taken a novel approach to encrypting data on OS X. In contrast to applications like TrueCrypt or Knox that protect data in individually encrypted virtual disks or vaults, Espionage does its best to mask encrypted disks from the end user. Rather than interfacing with virtual disks that are individually encrypted, Espionage uses the folders you want to protect as a reference point and applies a 1Password approach to the protected folders on your system. Espionage solves two problems: it centralizes all of your protected data and makes that data easy to access through a single master password. Espionage’s approach to securing your data means that you can interface with folders on OS X as if they were regular folders — tasks like mounting and unmounting encrypted volumes are taken care of for you in the background through a streamlined interface. Protecting your data shouldn’t have to come at the cost of convenience.

Read more

Quickly Share iOS Photos With Your Mac (And iOS Devices)→

Quickly Share iOS Photos With Your Mac (And iOS Devices)

Kirk McElhearn at Macworld shares an interesting method to automatically import iOS photos on OS X, originally via The Iconmaster:

I gave up on Image Capture and used Dropbox. But if you’ve used Dropbox for this purpose, you know it involves several steps: launch the app, tap the Uploads tab, tap the add button, tap the photo, etc. etc. It works, but it wasn’t convenient enough.

I wanted something instantaneous. Fortunately, Ryan McCuaig was able to point me in the right direction.

Photo Stream is great, but it’s not 100% reliable. While I can typically wait a couple of minutes for iOS screenshots to show up in iPhoto (or Finder, based on the tip above), sometimes I don’t have that kind of flexibility, as I need access to those images right away. For those times, I use Scotty.

Developed by Galarina, Scotty (my review) is a $1.99 universal app that can send images to computers (on OS X, it uses File Sharing) and other iOS devices. Scotty is fast, well designed, and remarkably intuitive – it is even integrated with the Camera+ lightbox. I also use Scotty as Photo Stream doesn’t work on 3G, and I couldn’t find a better way to send iPhone screenshots to my iPad over Bluetooth.

The screenshots above were imported with Scotty, and processed with Keyboard Maestro.

Permalink

Using an iPad to Report from Pit Row→

Using an iPad to Report from Pit Row

I upgraded to the iPad 2 over the winter for the weight break and camera, and all has gone smoothly in 2012. I no longer bring my MacBook Air on the road, and am thrilled that the TSA doesn’t require that the iPad be removed from my carry on! Using the iPad for what I do has proven to be efficient and entertaining. And, as usual for an Apple product, IT JUST WORKS. I’ve had to put a baggie over it a time or two in a rain situation, but other than that it absolutely does the job.

Jordan Golson of MacRumors has written a fantastic report on Dave Burns, a Pit Reporter for ESPN who covers NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup series races with his iPad. Burns’ use of the iPad is the focus of the story here, and he does an excellent job explaining how he ended up choosing the gear and accessories that best suited his needs on the track. Not wanting to deal with the bulk of paper, but then having to compensate for sun glare, heat, and occasional rain showers, Burns had to devise a system that helped him stay mobile yet offered the greatest potential benefit. Equally as important as the process that Burns’ shares, the report gives insight into just how adaptable the iPad is. Proven to be much more than a generic business tool, the iPad is being used in unexpected places for unique applications: in this case it’s being used to bring you coverage from pit road in America’s most exciting motorsport.

Permalink

Mailsum Enhances Your Mail Account Surveillance

When it comes to email clients, most Mac users still stick to Apple Mail as their client of choice, although there are plenty good alternatives available. The reasons for that are clear: over years of constant development, improvement and changes, Apple managed to create a powerful, but still clearly laid out program, which fits the needs of both private and professional business users. Diversified labelling options, multiple mail signatures, folders, and diversified reply and creation features are just some examples. Nevertheless, there are still some people out there demanding one specific feature Apple mail lacks: statistics. But, as you know, there’s always an app for that. In this case, it’s Mailsum by Appmasters. Read more

Inkflow Has One Great Idea

When we talk about hotly contested app markets for the iPad, we’re either talking about iOS text editors or sketching apps — today we’re focusing on the latter. Between Adobe, Autodesk, Paper, and Penultimate, something needs to be dramatically imaginative and different to make it stand out in a section of the App Store that is well contested and already populated with great apps. Sometimes an app like SyncPad stands out by providing new and interesting features (in this case it’s immensely useful for presentations), but very rarely does an app come along that can compete with these established tools on the iPad. Similar to how Instapaper and Pocket (once Read It Later) have captured the “read later” space, the aforementioned apps broadly cover everything you’d likely need or want when it comes to writing, drawing, and sketching.

Read more

A Web Developer’s look at Diet Coda→

A Web Developer’s look at Diet Coda

Diet Coda is great. Seriously. This app might not be your first choice to do serious work on (yet). However, if the only reason you’re taking your huge, heavy laptop with you on that otherwise relaxing vacation is just in case you get the 5-alarm-fire call from your boss because of a major bug that needs to get fixed RIGHT NOW (don’t they all?), Diet Coda and an iPad with an LTE/3G connection could be all you need.

Joesph Schmitt gives an honest perspective of the good, the bad, and what he’d like to see come down the pipeline for Diet Coda in the future. Diet Coda isn’t and shouldn’t be your replacement for a desktop app like Coda 2 or Espresso, but it is a fantastic companion touchscreen editor that it makes it relatively easy to dart around your projects and apply changes as needed. I’m trying not to take for granted having an always on-hand iPad app that lets me seamlessly implement changes as they come to mind — I think people forget that even having a tool like Diet Coda on the iPad is something special (especially when it has that quality Panic user interface behind it). If you’re looking for a reasonable review that weighs the pros and cons of Diet Coda, I’d say Schmitt does a good job of summarizing the praises and complaints — you’ll be well prepared as to what to expect concerning a mobile editor. As of now, Diet Coda is still $9.99 on the App Store, half-off during its initial launch period.

Permalink