Interact: A Powerful Contact Group Manager

With the rise of iOS devices, there’s been an increase of on-the-go collaboration and the need for tools that can manage teams and contact information. iPhones and iPads can hold thousands of contacts, but when it comes to arranging those into groups, Apple’s Contacts app offers no help.

I’ve been testing Interact by Agile Tortoise for the past week, an app that offers a variety of features that allow you to create contacts and organize them. Interact also works with group texting and email, so you can do more meaningful work in groups. Although it has its hiccups, Interact’s capabilities far outweigh its negatives.

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Drag & Drop Demo for iOS 9’s Split View→

CoreDragon is a new open source library for iOS developers created by Nevyn Bengsston designed to bring multitouch drag & drop to iOS 9:

The eighties solved this with another piece of direct manipulation: drag and drop. Today, I bring the eighties right back into 2016 with my new open source library CoreDragon. CoreDragon lets you get rid of context menus, modal interactions and even copy paste, by allowing you to mark some areas of your application as things that can be dragged; and other areas as places where you can drop things.

The key feature of CoreDragon is support for dragging and dropping content between apps in Split View on iPad:

CoreDragon uses similar concepts as the drag’n’ drop APIs on MacOS, and modifies them to work better in a world with view controllers. It works within a single application, and on modern iPads, between applications that are running in split screen mode.

Take a look at the video Nevyn put together to demonstrate drag & drop in Split View. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across this idea, and it’s extremely close to what I imagine Apple will eventually add to the iPad platform.

As I mentioned in my iOS 9 review, drag & drop is an interaction paradigm ripe for being reimagined by multitouch. Using the clipboard and extensions to transfer content between two apps running simultaneously is feeling outdated at this point, and I want to believe something similar to CoreDragon is in the works for the future of iOS. Nevyn has some interesting ideas on how to augment traditional drag & drop with multitouch, too.

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Outlook for iOS Gets Skype Integration→

Clever addition to Outlook for iOS just rolled out by Microsoft:

Innovation is happening in the calendar this week with our latest Skype integration. Make any meeting a Skype call simply by flicking a switch, then access the call when you need to with just a tap. Now when you say “I’m joining the call now”, you’ll actually mean it. To give it a try, simply turn on the “Skype Meeting” switch when creating or editing an event.

The integration generates a link to a Skype call that can be launched from the calendar event in Outlook. This works best for shared calendar events, so every participant can easily join the call and start talking.

I’m a big fan of Outlook for iOS, and this is exactly what Microsoft should be doing – leveraging their services to go beyond the traditional features of email and calendar. I like what they’ve been doing with Outlook.

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AgileCloudKit and 1Password 6 for Mac→

Nice (and free) update to 1Password for Mac released today:

It’s a new year and we’re starting things off on a strong note with a great new update to 1Password for Mac: Version 6.0! This latest version of everyone’s favorite password manager is looking better than ever, and we couldn’t have done it without you. Your awesome feature requests, suggestions, bug reports, and usage scenarios really helped us decide what to include in this release.

If you use multiple vaults, you may want to check out the new functionalities in 1Password 6.0 (release notes here). I don’t, but I may reconsider this to set up vaults for my family and MacStories.

Also of note: AgileBits built a framework to use CloudKit JS for the version of the app sold outside of the Mac App Store. Apps that aren’t available on the App Store can’t implement iCloud support natively, but AgileBits figured out a way to use CloudKit technologies for web apps in their Mac client:

From our customers’ point of view, iCloud Sync in the AgileBits Store version of 1Password will look a little bit different during the initial setup. CloudKit JS does not use the iCloud settings from OS X, so to authenticate with Apple, 1Password will prompt you to log in to your iCloud account by displaying the iCloud login page in your default web browser. Once you have logged in to your iCloud account, CloudKit web services sends an authentication token back to 1Password, which it then stores (securely, of course). This enables 1Password to sync with iCloud without having to reauthenticate each time. Since the iCloud login for CloudKit JS is completely separate from the iCloud settings in OS X System Preferences, you can even use a completely different iCloud account if you like!

I don’t know whether I should be impressed that AgileBits created this workaround or sad about Apple’s decision to restrict iCloud to the semi-abandoned Mac App Store (maybe a bit of both). AgileBits plans to make AgileCloudKit open source, too.

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What Today’s Popular Websites Look Like on the Original iPhone→

Fun experiment by Luc Luxton:

I received a 1st generation iPhone as birthday gift last year from a good friend of mine and I really haven’t done much with it. I started wondering if the phone could be used day to do if needed and if so, what the experience would be like today.

So, I thought it might be fun to have a look at what the most popular websites today look like on that incredibly revolutionary device.

If you think about it, the “winner” among websites that work well on an original iPhone today isn’t a surprise. I wish more websites adopted that strategy as well.

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VLC Now Available for Apple TV: Our First Impressions

VLC is now available for the Apple TV. Just like every other version of VLC, the Apple TV version aims to play video files and streams in “their native formats without conversions”. Felix Kühne, lead iOS developer for VLC, writes on his blog:

Today, we are proud to announce VLC on the Apple TV. It’s a full port of VLC media player combined with platform specific features.

VLC for Apple TV integrates with a plethora of devices and services on your local network and includes a custom way of casting files directly to the TV from your other computers using a web browser!

I was able to test the VLC Apple TV app for a few hours earlier today, and whilst it is early days yet, I am pretty impressed at what the VLC team has been able to accomplish. Jump the break for all the details and screenshots.

You can get VLC by searching for it on the Apple TV App Store.

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Twitter for iOS Gets Native Periscope Stream Playback→

This morning, Twitter announced a new Periscope integration with the official Twitter app on iOS: starting today, users will be able to start watching Periscope live streams directly from the Twitter app without having to jump to Periscope.

From the Periscope blog:

Since launch, there have been over 100 million broadcasts created on Periscope. Whenever a broadcast is shared on Twitter, you tap the link to open the Periscope app. Today, we’re replacing those links with the broadcast itself, autoplaying right within the Tweet. And when you tap the video, it goes full-screen and shows Periscope comments and hearts from other viewers. You don’t need the Periscope app or even a Periscope account.

And here’s Casey Newton, writing about the new integration at The Verge:

In-line Periscopes are designed to look like a hybrid between the two platforms. “This brings the Periscope format to people who have never experienced Periscope, or don’t know what Periscope is,” says Aaron Wasserman, a Periscope engineer. Tap a video in the stream and it will expand and begin to play sound. You can view the comments and hearts inside a broadcast on Twitter, but if you want to comment or send hearts yourself you’ll have to tap a button to open it inside Periscope.

At the same time, you can interact with the broadcasts the same way you can with other tweets: liking them, retweeting them, or replying to them. That last one is important: Periscope broadcasts are limited to 100 commenters; Twitter replies mean that big broadcasters are likely to hear directly from more viewers.

According to Periscope, they’re also considering an option to store some streams permanently for preservation purposes. The Twitter timeline keeps gaining media previews and integrations that aren’t available in other clients – I think native Periscope playback for streams makes a lot of sense.

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