At Work On a Mac

From time to time, you come across technologies or gadgets that seem almost magical. It doesn’t happen quite that often these days because we’re totally used to having very advanced technology in just about everything but the Pulse SmartPen from LiveScribe really is one of those things that will impress just about anyone you give a demo to.

So what is it? Well for one thing it’s a $150 ($200 CAD) pen with an infrared camera, a microphone, an LCD screen and — of course — a USB port. Oh, and it also writes on paper if that’s your thing.

More seriously though, the PULSE SmartPen uses special paper (with a unique arrangement of micro dots printed on it so the pen knows where and on what page it is) and its infrared camera to record everything you write. When you plug it in to the Mac or PC, you automatically get a digital copy of what you wrote. The desktop software that comes bundled with the pen then allows you to search through your notes and it does a pretty good job of recognizing handwriting. On Windows, a companion software that you can buy for 30$ will allow you to transcribe your written words into text but that software isn’t available on the Mac so far.

I said earlier the pen had a microphone on it. At the bottom of each piece of paper you will find a serie of buttons. 3 of them, Record, Stop and Pause allow you to control the microphone. If you record while you are writing, not only will you get what you write, you’ll also get the audio of what was said when you were writing it. Because the pen always knows exactly where it is on the page at all time (thanks to the micro-dots on the paper), one click either in the desktop software or anywhere on the piece of paper with the pen will launch an audio playback of what was being said when you wrote that word. Depending on which model you get, you can record either 100 hours or 200 hours of audio with the pen. Once filled, you’ll have to delete some audio, but it doesn’t matter because everything is archived on your computer.

The pen also has a few applications built in and more scheduled to come out later. Write the word “CALC” anywhere on a LiveScribe paper and the calculator launches. Then write your equation (say “28×7=” and the LCD displays the result. Launch the piano application, draw a simple panio and start playing music.

The pen has been on sale for a few months but the Mac version of the software just came out in December and is currently in public beta. There are still a few things missing on the Mac side of things (you can’t yet print your own paper on Mac, but that’s coming soon according to the developers).

When I ordered the pen, I was convinced it would barely work (if at all) but I’ve been very impressed with it so far. When I demoed it at the Montreal Mac User Group, everyone in the room was really impressed and when I showed it to people at work no less than 5 people bought one the same day. I gotta say, I’m loving it though I do wish it were Bluetooth and the Mac desktop software still needs some work. Since it does host a USB interface and an infrared camera it’s not the most comfortable pen you’ll ever use, but it’s light and isn’t too big to feel uncomfortable.

And when you’re done with all the built-in apps, head over to Penlet.com to get more games and apps for your pen. Right now the site is just getting started, but a community is starting to build around the technology and an SDK is available to build your own app.

We’ve covered many search applications and options here before for your Mac. There is yet a new one and it is very nicely done by the search experts themselves— Google. QSB is part of the Google code project and is still at an experimental stage but shows promise. You can get it here. I like the simplicity of the interface and its powerful options. Give it a try.

The news over Steve’s health is taking its toll. Now former fake Steve Jobs, Dan Lyons a technology columnist at Newsweek is apparently banned from CNBC for criticizing a CNBC reporter on air. While he might not have acted properly, I think he had a point.

Apparenlty CNBC reporter Jim Goldman kept repeating what Apple PR was saying to him, i.e. that there was nothing wrong with Steve’s health. But here’s the catch, he allegedly knew about Steve’s declining health for a week but failed to report on it. It does not make sense and Lyons said that CNBC might as well repeat Apple’s press releases. The PR spokeperson at Apple’s is apparently a former CNBC employee, adding to the drama. This is beginning to sound like a genuine saga. Only in America.

Steve just sent this email to close friends and Apple employees.

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Last week, Steve sent a public note saying he was sick and wanted to reassure everyone that he would be Ok. The time off will benefit him and it’s important to keep in mind that he remains the CEO and while he won’t be there day to day to take every decision, he will be there to guide the company. Looking at Twitter this afternoon, a lot of people are panicking and saying that Jobs is basically stepping down, but let’s reserve panic when there’s something important taking place. This is not Steve’s first leave of absence, and just like last time, until further notice I expect him to come back to Apple.

In the meantime, I’ll wish him best of luck with his health. With all he’s done for Apple (and Pixar), he has certainly earned it.

As I said earlier, the biggest announcement as far as I am concerned for Apple at MacWorld 2009, was the removal of Digital Rights Management for iTunes, commonly known as DRM. Apple had hinted at that in February 2007 by publishing a letter to the Apple community.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

Well consider this a done deal with the big four major labels: Sony BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner.
Apple says that songs can now be downloaded onto the iPhone over 3G without surcharge (and saving steps along the way). They also announced three price points— 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 for songs based on future Apple cost. You can upgrade your current library of purchased songs to the higher quality DRM-free iTunes Plus format for 30 cents per song.

If there’s one thing we can say about Apple, it’s that the company knows how to launch a product and affect an entire industry. Wether it is in 2001 with the iPod, in 2003 with the iTunes (Music) Store or in 2007 with the iPhone, Apple has been making a big impact in the consumer electronics world these past few days.

Some of my current iPhone apps

The lastest proof of that is the Application Store for the iPhone platform (including iPod Touch). I’ve been buying a lot of stuff in there these past few months, but it’s evident that there’s a lot of quality software in there. I still remember the not so distant days when I was trying to buy Palm OS applications on Handango or worse still, Blackberry apps two years ago.The App Store has really changed everything in that regard. Just take a look at the launch for the Palm Pre— the first thing Palm did was to say there would be an integrated App Store at launch. Google did the same when it launched the Android platform a few months ago.

While there’s a lot of free applications in there, there’s also a ton of paying ones too and their associated success stories we’ve been hearing these past few days (iFart for example). The $0.99 price point is proving to be quite popular and quite a money maker. If you rank #1 in the iTunes Store on any given day, you are probably selling around 15-18K copies of your software per day. If you consider that most of these apps are developed by a single person or a very small team, it doesn’t take a long time to recoup your investment.

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch (and who doesn’t these days?), check out the “Best iPhone games” according to TouchArcade or maybe even the best iPhone apps ever or, better yet, my list of favorites:

• Crayon Physics Deluxe (amazing physics simulator in a game)
• FieldRunners (desktop tower defense done well)
• Labyrinth (best demo of the iPhone accelerometer I’ve found)
• Now Playing! (movie theater schedules — free)
• Rolando (A PSP-like level of quality in an iPhone game)
• Tweetie (so far, the best Twitter application)
• Things (goes perfectly with the desktop version)

Finally, I’ve caught up with my PC friends who have been using Picasa for years to share pictures online. Google just announced a Mac Beta version. It’s obviously intended for those who don’t already have a mobileme account, formerly a “dot” Mac account. It integrates well with iPhoto. A must have in the digital age. You can obtain Picasa 3 here.

I have to admit I am pretty impressed by the features that are packed in Picasa. It searched my hard drive in seconds to find my pictures. It automatically preserves the iPhoto library. It allows you to find duplicates across the drive. It has a simple to use, one button upload to the Web. It can export and resize pictures on the fly. It can email pictures at the click of a button. It can post pictures into your Blogger account. It can do a lot more, not bad for a famous Google “Beta”.

What will future digital archeologists do with the millions of pictures taken everywhere in the world at every instant? They will share their findings in Picasa no doubt.

Apple keeps impressing me. As you may know, iWork 09, just like the 08 version used to, has a 30 days demo available online from apple.com. When you download this version, you get a popup when launching the applications reminding you of the trial and offering you to buy it online. When you buy it, you can either select to get a S/N right away and activate your demo and simply buy the boxed version of the software and have it shipped to you.

While I did download the demo (hey, I’m impatient!), I had already ordered my copy the minute the store came back up after the keynote so I was suprised to see that my iWork 09 box had no serial numbers anywhere. Both the 07 and 08 had serial numbers and my trial was asking me for one, so I figured there was a error with my copy and that I would have to ask Apple to fix it.

But that’s when I got the idea of deleting the trial and installing the boxed copy. The installer never asked for a serial number and when I launched the applications, they were fully registered. A quick search on Google revealed that indeed the retail copy doesn’t need a serial at all. It’s the best of both world, you can get instant satisfaction with a downloadable copy or a no-hassle solution with a retail copy.

It’s little details like this that makes all the difference. Adobe and Microsoft should perhaps pay attention.

As much as it may have looked like, I’m not actually dead. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at Mac software to demo for the Montreal Mac User Group and once again the quality of the Mac shareware scene as astounding.

The first one I bought in 2009 was FlickrExport for Aperture. It’s a really nice plugin for Aperture (also available for iPhoto 08) that makes it easy to upload photos to Flickr. I’ve been playing with it a bit and it seems to works really well so far.

The second one I bought, a few days later was EventBox. If you’re at all like me, you’ve been spending a lot of time online on various social networks and EventBox is a neat piece of software that ties together Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Redit and generic RSS feeds. It’s not perfect (I wish I could manage more than 1 twitter account with it), but it’s at a resonable price and it’s made by a small company. I just love encouraging up and coming developers like this.

Finally, I just bought Things for Mac OS X to help me better manage my task list. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of OmniGroup and I bought OmniFocus the day it came out because I was convinced OmniGroup would again come up with a great piece of software. In a way, they did, but the interface feels a bit weird to me and because of that I never really got into it. The iPhone application for OmniFocus is nice and all, but the synching feels clunky too. Things is a new piece of software by Cultured Code, another new developer. Just a quick glance at their site will convince you that these guys know how to create a Mac application that actually feels like one.

Since I’ve only tried the software for a few minutes, I’ll report back in the next few days with more impressions of the software. One quick note though, the company has a coupon code for 20% off valid until January 15. Use the code THINGSPRESALE20 to get the rebate.

(Oh, and I also bought iWork 09. I’ll post on it in the next few days, but I must say I’m liking it a lot so far!)

Once in a while, for entertainment (we hope) and tongue-in-cheek humor, we will reproduce excerpts of our technology motivated conversations as they unfold in iChat, almost live. Today we upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and changed our style sheet to improve on readability and just because we like to stay current.