The GroovBoard

I get a lot of work done on my iPad. In addition to using it to manage my life, I also find it a great place to get serious writing done. One trouble I do have, however, is getting comfortable with it while sitting on the couch or in bed. I had pretty much given up on being able to use my Apple Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad in these situations until I received my GroovBoard ($119). The GroovBoard is a piece of milled lumber with grooves cut in it for holding the iPad, Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and a stylus. It is manufactured so you can hold in a variety of positions.

For example, while sitting on a couch, you can set a Apple Bluetooth keyboard on it and have it prop up the iPad and go to town.

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If you work with your knees bent, you can lay the iPad against your knees and set the GroovBoard underneath it, where the GroovBoard will hold a Bluetooth keyboard so you can start typing.

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The device also has a series of holes in it to hold a stylus. I don’t use those very often since I’m not a big stylus user. I find it just as easy to tap screen commands with my finger and that’s one less thing for me to lose. However, if you’re an artist, I can see how this would be handy.

The GroovBoard actually comes in two pieces. They are connected with a series of strong magnets and pins to keep everything in line. I generally use the whole thing put together. However, if you’re not using the keyboard and simply want to use it as an iPad holder, remove the extender.

The GroovBoard is manufactured in a small shop in Germany. They come in a variety of woods including alder, apple (Yes, I know), ash, cherry, maple, oak, plum, and walnut. (I like the walnut. It’s no secret that I do a bit of woodworking myself and I really like my GroovBoard.

Sponsor: Sendy

My thanks to Sendy for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week.

Sendy is a self hosted email newsletter application that delivers your emails via Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).

Compared to hosted newsletter services, Sendy is an app you can install on your own server. That means, you don’t have to pay monthly fees just to maintain your account. As Sendy uses Amazon SES as the sending engine, deliverability is high at a very low cost.

Sendy uses multi-threading to deliver your emails to Amazon SES, Amazon in turn enable your emails to pass SPF & Sender ID policy checks enforced by many ISPs & DKIM-sign all outgoing emails to ensure high deliverablity rate.

The features you get with Sendy are what you’re familiar with other hosted services, like lists & subscriber management, giving your client access, beautiful reports, custom fields, autoresponders and so on.

Find out more about Sendy or get your copy at sendy.co.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

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Happy Thanksgiving Fellow Geeks

A few tips for the day:

Love your family.
Don’t deep fry your turkey or at least be really really careful.
Give thanks to at least one person. I’m thankful to you for being here.

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Productivityist

Mike Vardy’s newest project is interesting. I’m looking forward to see where he goes with it.

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MPU112: Self Publishing and iBooks Author

I’ve received several inquiries from readers and listeners asking about the details of writing a book in iBooks Author and the thought process that went into releasing the Field Guides through the iBookstore only. This week’s Mac Power Users episode explains it all in detail. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the podcast. All the cool kids do.

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starwarigami

I just spent way too much time looking at paper based spacecraft. You can too.

Pixar Shorts

Those little shorts Pixar puts before for each of their movies are fantastic. I love watching these things. My kids’ favorite is probably Jack Jack Attack, the back story of what happened with the baby-sitter during the Incredibles movie (though Presto is a close second). I think my favorite is Boundin’, which always sets me right when I start feeling sorry for myself. The short from Brave, La Luna, is now available online. As a dad, this one gets to me every time I watch it.

As an aside, the I was pleased to see Disney put a short at the beginning of Wreck-It Ralph, Paperman which is, in my opinion, Pixar caliber.

Backup Basics

James Coleman over at TechRoom.com just started a nice series on backup. I’m looking forward to see where he goes with it.

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iStopMotion 3

As a dad and a geek, I’m always looking for ways to interact with my kids and technology. It’s probably a selfish thing but why not mix the two things I love so much?

For several years now, I’ve been using iStopMotion with my daughter. With it we make little movies with Lego, dolls, and whatever else strikes our fancy.

This most recent version from Boinx Software includes some really great improvements:

iPhone and iPad Support

No longer do you need to tether your camera to your Mac. Instead, you can now set up your iPhone or iPad and use its camera to take pictures for you. This used to be a huge problem for me since we use iStopMotion on an iMac and it was really difficult setting up our “shoot” anywhere out of USB cable length. Now we can have the computer in one corner of the room and are “set” at the other end of the room. This is really useful.

Final Cut Pro Export

The new version also lets you export directly to Final Cut Pro X straight from the application. If you want to get more serious about this stuff, this could be a big help. To be honest, we do most of our editing right in the application.

More

iStopMotion includes many additional features including Onion Skinning, which lets you see the animation before you capture the frame, and Chroma Key, letting you put your scene anywhere you want using green screen or, alternatively, inserting a live actor in your animation scene. There is also a tilt shift filter which can turn your scene into a miniature.

With the holidays coming up, a great use for this application would be to set up your iPhone on a tripod and point to your Christmas tree while you decorate it. Then have iStopMotion capture a frame every few seconds and at the end you have a really nifty time lapse video. We do this at the Sparks house and it’s a lot of fun watching later.

A Sad, Lonely Man and his Lego Yoda

At some point, my kids will get too old and too “cool” to be fiddling with stop motion video with their dad and then I’ll just have to suck it up and admit I enjoy doing this for my own benefit. The good news is at that point, I can just jump into it whole hog and buy myself some really cool Star Wars Lego.

You can download iStopMotion from the Mac App Store for $50 or buy directly from the website. If you’ve ever had any interest in this stuff, you should really give it a try. It is a lot of fun.