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Directional: Shahid Ahmad Of PlayStation→

This week, Myke and Federico are joined by Shahid Ahmad, senior business development manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. They talk about Shahid’s role at PlayStation, indie games and PS Vita, passion for game development and video games, and the importance of human curation.

Shahid Ahmad is widely regarded as the man behind Sony’s indie revolution, and we had a fantastic chat on Directional about his career and the work he does to bring great indie games to PlayStation. You can get the episode here.

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Deep Belief Image Recognition on iOS→

Pete Warden:

I am totally convinced that deep learning approaches to hard AI are going to change our world, especially when they’re running on cheap networked devices scattered everywhere. I’m a believer because I’ve seen how good the results can be on image recognition, but I understand why so many experienced engineers are skeptical. It sounds too good to be true, and we’ve all been let down by AI promises in the past.

That’s why I’ve decided to release DeepBeliefSDK, an iOS version of the deep learning approach that has taken the computer vision world by storm.

A fascinating demo, especially in how the prototype app Pete built starts recognizing his cat in real-time – through the camera – towards the end of the video. Developers can check out DeepBeliefSDK here.

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Drafts 3.6 Brings New Google Drive and Clipboard Actions, Auto-Backup

Drafts, Agile Tortoise’s note-taking app for iOS with support for customizable actions and workflows, has been updated to version 3.6 today, adding Google Drive integration, new clipboard actions, and a handy option to automatically back up a user’s action library to Dropbox every few days.

Google Drive joins Drafts’ existing Dropbox and Evernote actions as it’s based on the same concept: the app can now create text files in your Google Drive account, append/prepend text to existing files, or replace text; every tag that is normally supported by Drafts (such as placeholders for timestamps, date, draft line, or clipboard) will work with Google Drive actions that you can create in the Settings. In my tests, I was able to quickly send text from Drafts to Google Drive by adapting some of my old Dropbox actions, which created a new .txt file in Google Drive and inside a specific folder (Drafts has preference to specify a parent folder for Google Drive actions); overall, if you’ve ever wished you could easily send plain text to notes stored in Google Drive, the addition is welcome.

Append and prepend actions have also been added to Drafts’ iOS clipboard integration: just like with built-in third-party services, Drafts can now append or prepend text to the contents of the clipboard – a feature that may not seem immediately useful, but that could open some interesting possibilities when using the clipboard as a workaround for the lack of automation features in iOS apps.

Aside from adding background refresh support for iOS 7 (for notes stored in the app across the iPhone and iPad versions), Drafts 3.6 also adds a setting for auto-backup: if activated, the app will save actions every few days to Dropbox without having to remember to export an action’s library manually.

Drafts continues to be a must-have utility for text automation on iOS, and version 3.6 is available now on the App Store for the iPhone and iPad.

Hiding and Encrypting Files On OS X with Hider 2

Hider 2

Hider 2

I try not to be too paranoid about the security of files I keep on my Mac, but I do enjoy the peace of mind provided by encrypting some work documents when necessary, hoping that there will be an extra layer of security for those files in case of disaster or device loss. For the past week, I’ve been trying MacPaw’s Hider 2, a new app that wants to unify and streamline the process of hiding and encrypting files in a single, intuitive interface. Read more

Adobe Lightroom Mobile for iPad Now Available→

Behind the scenes, Lightroom desktop creates Smart Previews of photos marked for sync and uploads them to the Creative Cloud servers. Smart Previews retain much of the editability and detail of the source images (even raw files) but occupy much less storage space. In Lightroom mobile, the app downloads low-resolution previews for display in its Grid layout, and when an image is opened it pulls down the higher-resolution Smart Preview file (enabling you to zoom in to check details if needed).

Make a change to a photo on the iPad, and that change should appear in Lightroom desktop within seconds, removing the need to export or import images. Edits you make to the photo synchronize back to Creative Cloud and Lightroom desktop when you close the image—in fact, only a small XML file describing the edits is transmitted, which is why updates appear in the desktop and mobile applications quickly.

Adobe’s Lightroom application made its way to iOS overnight with the launch of Lightroom mobile for iPad and Macworld’s Jeff Carlson has a detailed preview of the app. Adobe looks like they have done a really nice job with bringing the app to the iPad thanks to their implementation of a clever sync system (as explained above) and extensive compatibility between this mobile version and the desktop version of Lightroom.

As with most of Adobe’s offerings in recent years, Lightroom mobile is bundled as a part of their Creative Cloud subscription service, so whilst the app is free to download, you will need to sign up for one of their subscription plans to use Lightroom mobile.

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Learning To Love Evernote 2.0→

I’ve re-recorded every video with new tips, tricks, and workflows. The Evernote iOS apps have changed drastically since the original version was released, so I hope you enjoy the free update.

My friend Bradley Chambers has released version 2.0 of his Evernote eBook (which I first mentioned last year) with updates for the new Evernote apps (the iOS one has changed a lot).

I like Bradley’s book because it gives practical examples – for instance, the screencast on scanning receipts into Evernote shows a real receipt being scanned and uploaded with Scanner Pro – and it’s only $4.99 on the iBooks Store.

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Sparkle Public Beta: Create Websites With No Coding Knowledge

Launched as a public beta just over a week ago, Sparkle is a new Mac app designed to let you build fully functional websites with no coding knowledge necessary. At its core it is a modern WYSIWYG editor that is super simple to use and more than powerful enough for building a static webpage such as a product promotional page or a personal landing page.

Design in full freedom, finely control positioning, use layout grids and smart snapping. Stay neat and tidy or break all the rules. Your web page is your canvas.

No HTML expected!

I’ve been playing around with Sparkle for a little while over the weekend and one of the features that stood out most for me is the easy ability to modify your layout design for different devices. It really is a breeze to dive in and change how the website displays on a smartphone so that it is as easy to read and view as it is on the desktop. Something that makes designing a website so very easy with Sparkle is its Live Preview function. Open a preview in your browser and it will be automatically updated whenever you make any change from Sparkle.

Sparkle includes over 600 fonts, and over 300 background patterns, as well as support for YouTube and Vimeo embeds. It’s a great start but I would like to see Sparkle add support for embedding Tweets; it would also be useful to be able to embed HTML code – a feature that’s not available at the moment. The other aspect to Sparkle that I think is missing at its current stage is HTML5 animations. I think some support for basic animations would be a really solid addition to really set this app apart from its competitors.

You can download and test drive the public beta of Sparkle for Mac here. Remember that if you do try Sparkle, the developers want to make it a better app, so give them some helpful feedback. Read more

The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain→

This is not one of those “Turn off every useful feature of iOS” posts that grinds my gears. My goal is to deliver practical steps to truly solve your iOS battery woes.

One quick thing before we start — 99.9% of the time it is not actually iOS that is causing your battery to drain quickly. I guarantee you that if you erased your phone and there were no apps or email on it, it would last for ages. But, no one uses their device like that, nor should they. Hopefully with these steps you will be living in iOS battery bliss while still using all the apps and features you love.

If you’ve ever had iPhone battery life issues, or constantly get pestered by friends and family with poor iPhone battery life, this article by Scotty Loveless is a must-read. Unlike many rather sensational articles that suggest a myriad of ‘solutions’ that may or may not actually work, Loveless offers just a handful of rational and practical solutions and explains why he is suggesting them.

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