James Coleman over at TechRoom.com just started a nice series on backup. I’m looking forward to see where he goes with it.
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.
Timeline 3D for iOS
One of my favorite software developers, BeeDocs, just released their first iOS product, Timeline 3D (Website) (App Store) for iOS. I’ve written about BeeDocs’ Timeline 3D application for the Mac before.
This new version brings many of the same powerful tools to iOS and that alone makes this pretty spectacular. I am increasingly walking in meetings and presentations with just my iPad. Before, the only way to include a BeeDocs caliber timeline in my presentation would be to generate screenshots or movie files on the Mac and save it out to the iPad. The interactivity and ability to make changes on the fly were both lost.
In short, this gives me all of the interactivity I normally enjoy sitting behind my Mac on my iPad. The whole thing works with AirPlay Mirroring so I can build a timeline while talking to the client and wirelessly beam it the conference room (or courtroom) screen through an Apple TV. It is like magic and makes me look brilliant. Another useful feature is the ability to email a PDF of the timeline right from the iOS device.
I definitely see myself giving future presentations with a complementary timeline running on my iPad. I can then switch between Keynote (or any other presentation tool of choice) and Timeline 3D right in front of the audience. I’m thrilled that BeeDocs has come to the iOS platform with this software and I plan to take advantage of this application in courtroom and conference rooms immediately.
Adam Behringer, Timeline 3D’s developer, has been laboring at this product for some time and it shows. Adam made a video showing off the application .
MPU 111: Presentations with Les Posen
Les Posen from PresentationMagic.com joined us for episode 111. In it we talked about the practical (and spiritual) sides of creating a presentation.
Why I Love Omni Group Apps
The Next Web has a nice article about how The Omni Group goes about making apps. I often think The Omni Group is one of the most similar companies to Apple in its fixation with making great things.
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“And then I told them that Ken the CEO was going on vacation and Ken the Engineer would be working in his office instead.”
Screenflow 4 Comparison Video
JF Brissette made a nice little screencast showing off the improvements to ScreenFlow 4. This gets you up to speed in under three minutes.
Squarespace: “We’re Still Up”
I don’t think I’ve ever had occaision to post something positive about a web-hosting service before. It is usually some cranky rant about downtime and dead elephants. Alas, times have changed.
I’ve been watching Squarespace’s herculean efforts to keep the motor running throughout some pretty dreadful weather. At one point they had guys hoofing gassoline up and down stairs to feed constantly thirsty generators but they pulled it off and, once again, affirmed my decision to move MacSparky to their service. If you want to feel good about a web hosting service, this story is worth your time.
The Microsoft Surface
Adam Christianson and I recently visited a Microsoft store and kicked the tires on the new Surface “tablet”. It felt to me a lot more like a MacBook Air than an iPad. I talked about it at some length this week on the MPU After Dark episode.
The iPad mini Dividing Line
The iPad mini has been out a few days now and it seems everybody is going bananas over it. Because I’m weak, I pre-ordered one as soon as I could. My wife received the delivery and did the initial set up for me. (iCloud makes that so easy.) As a result, it got handed to me as I sat down to record the Mac Power Users After Dark episode that published earlier this week. That is an interesting bit of tape in that it captures my immediate reaction “on air”, which was twofold: 1. “Holy Crackers, this is really nice”, and; 2. “This is definitely not a retina screen.”
After now having used it for several days, my immediate reaction hasn’t substantially changed. The small form factor is great. The smaller device footprint and lighter weight make it much easier to carry this out the door and even carry around the house. Nevertheless, I don’t see the iPad mini replacing my retina iPad for a couple of reasons.
- The Retina Display is a Really Big Deal (to me)
I don’t think I can overstate how much I love the trend towards high pixel density in iThings. The retina display iPhone, iPad, and now MacBook Pro are all gorgeous. I spend a lot of time reading and working on my iPad and the retina screen makes this easier. Crisp, sharp text makes a huge difference in my ability to spend hours working in front of a screen. Looking at the iPad mini, the non-retina display is immediately apparent. I understand why Apple made the decision not to include the retina display with this first iPad mini. I would not like a heavier, more expensive iPad mini but the lack of a retina display is a significant difference and one particularly relevant to the way I use it. I’ve heard people explain how you “get used to it”. I haven’t.
- Content Creation
While content creation certainly is possible on the new iPad mini, I still think it is easier on the larger iPad screen. Creating mind maps, writing words, annotating PDFs, and the other things I do with an iPad to pay for shoes are all easier using the larger screen. It is not impossible to work with these apps on the iPad mini but just like it’s easier to carry the iPad mini out the door, it is easier to create on the retina third-generation iPad. (As an aside, I believe the iPad mini may be a superior device for wireless presentation. I’m looking forward to trying it out in that capacity at my next speaking gig.)
For now at least, I think one of the big dividing lines between the iPad mini and the larger size iPad is content consumption versus creation. If someone is just going to be reading books, surfing the web, checking email, the iPad mini is perfectly adequate. If someone is going to do significant writing, digital art, or any of the other more traditional “creation” tasks, there’s a really good case to be made for larger iPad.
Microsoft Office for iOS
This makes so much sense to me. There are (at least) 100 million iPads “out there” and Microsoft will make a killing on Office for iOS. I’m really curious to see how far down the rabbit hole they go with feature parity. It could be a slippery slope.
Regardless of the money Microsoft will make, I think this is also necessary to keep Office relevant. A lot of previously die-hard Office users picked up iPads already and are questioning previous assumptions about word processors. I’ve written about this before.