iPad By Davis: “Live streaming comes to ABC Player app for iOS” plus 7 more

Live streaming comes to ABC Player app for iOS
Oggl by Hipstamatic: More than just an Instagram clone?
No iMore show tonight because, BlackBerry!
iPad Art: Solar Powered
Battle of the Bulge for iPad: Update Coming Tomorrow – New Scenarios!
iOS 7 and my continued, unrequited desire for a Files.app!
Dino Walk Contest – Winners
Editor's desk: Orlando live!

Live streaming comes to ABC Player app for iOS

Posted: 12 May 2013 09:22 PM PDT

ABC plans to begin live-streaing content from its local stations in the New York and Philadelphia markets this week. What's more, the company is negotiating to enable the service to work with more than 200 affiliates, according to Brian Stetler of the New York Times.

The ABC Player app already provides full-length episodes of ABC's prime-time television shows. ABC secured rights from programming providers to show locally broadcasted content including syndicated shows.

It's a bold step for ABC to differentiate itself from other broadcasters that offer apps for their own programming. Most of the focus of such software has been to provide streaming access to current or in some cases legacy content, but it's been delivered purely on demand. This turns the process on its head by rebroadcasting content from local affiliates instead.

It's also a shot across the bow of Aereo, a new startup that promises to deliver local broadcasting over the Internet; the service has already launched in New York and goes live in Boston this month. Aereo charges subscribers for access, but provides content that's broadcast over the air for free. It's a situation that has landed Aereo in court.

ABC says it'll start with iOS support, but plans to support other phones at tablets in the future.

Oggl by Hipstamatic: More than just an Instagram clone?

Posted: 12 May 2013 02:33 PM PDT

Beyond having an odd sounding name, Oggl is the latest creation by the long serving team at Hipstamatic. The app just went live in the App Store, but at the moment it requires an invitation code to use -- though you can apply for one in the app. But, what exactly is it? The official tagline reads as: "A community of creative people capturing & curating their Lives through photography." So that'll be a social photo sharing service then, will it?

Anyone who knows Hipstamatic knows that the fundamental principle stands around applying filters to your photos. Pretty common these days, but Hipstamatic has been doing it for a number of years now. When it comes to the social aspect, there's only one clear market leader; Instagram. So, is Oggl just an Instagram clone, or does it offer something more?

The main 'timeline' view is a definite improvement on the way Instagram attacks it. It's much cleaner, much simpler, with no usernames or comments on display it's all about the photos. You can customize what it is you want to see, be that from people you follow, editors choices, global or at the moment there's a special featured selection to see photos from San Francisco. When you see something you like, tapping on the image brings up the user information, and the lens and film combination they used to shoot it.

That then gives you the option to take that combination, and automatically select it to shoot your own images with. I quite like this touch. Quite often I'll see an effect in a photo that I really like the look of, and having the chance to use it myself in a couple of taps is really handy. Of course, it won't make me a better photographer, though.

So, onwards to the shooting side of Oggl, Hipstamatic's bread and butter. The camera app itself is pretty nice, with the different effects being applied during shooting. Below the viewfinder are the selections for film type and lens type, along with some preset effects made up of a specific combination of film and lens. You aren't bound to applying the effects before taking the shot either. If you don't like it, you can change it up using the same effects afterwards.

The camera button remains at the top or bottom of each view throughout the app, so wherever you are it's only a single tap to access shooting mode. To the left of the shutter button is one-tap access to your Oggl gallery, and to the right of it is your exit point back to the global feed. So far then, so good.

It's when we get to the sharing that things become a little, peculiar. With Instagram, you hit the camera button, take your shot, edit it, tag it and upload it to whichever of the available services you desire. With Oggl, you take the photos, and then you have to go get them and decide what to do with them. It isn't difficult, but I have to admit that it took me a few minutes to figure it all out. With a sharing service, you would expect to take a photo, then share it pretty much straight away, not leave it sitting in a gallery.

Perhaps oddly too, Instagram is one of the available sharing services for Oggl. The other usual candidates are there: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare and Tumblr, but being able to share to Instagram also seems like a strange move. The main Hipstamatic app can also share to Instagram, I just can't quite get my head around why you would use something like Oggl, only to then send the photos to Instagram.

This becomes an even stranger thought when you take into account the yearly subscription that Hipstamatic is charging for full access to Oggl. Priced at $2.99 quarterly or $9.99 yearly, paying up serves two purposes. The first is keeping Oggl free of all forms of advertising and keeping the app as a free download. The App Store listing puts it better than I could:

Oggl is an experience designed for capturing and curating beautiful photos, not for showcasing advertising. To support this vision for the community, Oggl will offer two subscription options: Quarterly for $2.99 & Yearly for $9.99. While Oggl itself will always remain free, each subscription comes with access to Hipstamatic's entire catalog of current lens and film gear, and guarantees new gear each month.

Oh yeah, and that's the other benefit to paying up. While Oggl is free to use for everyone, none-paid members are classed as 'contributors' and only get access to a limited number of the photo effects. Paid members get access to Hipstamatic's full catalog of filter packs.

The Good

Well designed and good looking UI
Sharing options a plenty
Huge selection of effects for paid members
Easy navigation, lots of one-tap access to various areas of the app

The Bad

Slightly confusing method to sharing
Limited effects available to free users
Invite only at the moment

The Bottom Line

I want to love Oggl, really and truly I do. Instagram has always just felt like an extension of the other social networks to me, and like people tweet about anything and everything, there's a tendency to Instagram anything and everything. And every meal. Oggl feels different though. They're penning it as a way to curate and enjoy beautiful photography, and you do get that impression. The photos are always front and center, with the person who did it, where and how they did it and all that other business tucked out of the way.

Whether it will take off or not is another question. Whichever way you look at it, Instagram is free, and the best experience in Oggl is not. The average eye may see little difference between the two, only the mention of subscription fees, and then decide to stick with Instagram. And I still don't know why you can share your Oggl photos to Instagram. If you want to do that, the main Hipstamatic app will do that for you. I'm going to give it a chance though. I've signed up for a three month subscription. I like what I see so far, lets see what I think three months down the line.

So, is Oggl more than an Instagram clone? In some ways, yes. It takes the same idea and makes it a better experience. But it's going to need people using it to make it worthwhile.

Free - Download Now

No iMore show tonight because, BlackBerry!

Posted: 12 May 2013 02:13 PM PDT

No iMore show tonight, sadly, as I'll be airborne and on my way to Orlando to help out with BlackBerry Live and #TM13. Hopefully I'll be able to hop on some of the shows we do from there, but either way, I'll be back next week with more podcast than should be allowed by law.

Have a great night! And if you miss your weekly dose, make sure you check out some of our previous shows!

iPad Art: Solar Powered

Posted: 12 May 2013 11:01 AM PDT

Today I'm continuing our new iPad Art series of weekend posts featuring some of the incredible art being created on iPad. I've been and admirer of art created on iPads and iPhones for years now and I hope some of you will enjoy it too.

Today's iPad painting picks are all solar themed, starting with the 'Torn Sunset' image shown above. This one is by A. Harrison. It was created as a free hand drawing with the Sketch Club app.

Here are three more solar themed iPad paintings for this week:

Solar Power by hgberk (Helene Goldberg) – created with the ArtRage app:

Catalan Beach 15 and Catalan Beach 18 – both by Albert Viladrosa and both done in the Paper by 53 app:

All of these images were originally shared to our iPad Insight Flickr group. Check it out if you have a chance, and by all means share some of your work if you're creating art on an iPad.

©...

Read the whole entry... »

The superb Battle of the Bulge strategic wargame for the iPad is getting a major update tomorrow, adding several new scenarios and two new artificial intelligence opponents

This is easily the best wargame I've seen on the iPad – created and developed by an all-star team of old school wargame makers. Here's a little of its App Store into, for those who haven't come across it yet:

Battle of the Bulge is a historical wargame, designed specifically for iPad. It's a turn-based simulation in the spirit of traditional board wargames. Pieces represent actual military units fighting on the terrain of the famous WWII battle.
• Play three ways: online through Game Center; vs a computer opponent; or Pass & Play
• Fast turns, deep strategy
• Two scenarios: a quick, tense, fight in the opening days; and a campaign covering the entire battle
• Tutorial, quick...

Read the whole entry... »

No filesystem but no real alternative

At the risk of making it obnoxiously clear, I don't think iOS needs a filesystem. Dropbox is a filesystem and while it's fantastic at what it does, it's the past, not the future. Apple doesn't seem to think iOS needs a filesystem either, but they haven't yet provided what's needed to make filesystems obsolete. Hence, Dropbox. From Stuck between the Dropbox that was and the iCloud that isn't yet:

The [current iOS] architecture is unnecessarily dependent on apps. If I create a document in Text Editor 1, not only do I have to remember the document I created but, if I want to access it again, I also have to remember the app I created it in. If I later switch to a much better Text Editor 2, my document doesn't switch with me. I have to either copy and paste every document from Text Editor 1 into Text Editor 2, or keep a list of which documents are where. That's a non-trivial amount of cognitive overhead. If at some point I move on to Text Editor 3, or delete (or switch devices and don't re-install) Text Editor 1, it gets even worse. I have to track my documents over multiple access points, and perhaps even re-install old apps just to get back to the documents locked inside. It's a mess.

Decoupled, documents that present themselves to any app that supports editing their type, and apps that simply pull any document whose type they support, would be much simpler and better. A smart version of a document picker would remove the cognitive burden from users and let the system do all the heavy lifting.

Apple doesn't seem to think iOS needs a filesystem either, but they haven't yet provided what's needed to make filesystems obsolete.

In a world with a Files.app, you'd just tap its icon on the Home screen, tap the type of document you want (the way you tap an album in Photos.app), and go to your document. Then you tap the document and choose where you want to open it. Conversely, you could open any document app -- text editor, presenter, spreadsheet, etc. -- tap the open button, and FilePicker would present you with every file (including iCloud files) that can be opened by that app. Again, with the ability to quickly filter to help with longer lists.

Faster still, you'd just type something in a search box and Spotlight would filter right to whatever you want.

Mapping Files to Photos

Back before iOS 6 launched, I did a series of mockups on how Files.app could map to Photos.app, FilePicker could map to ImagePicker, and File Stream could map to Photo Stream. From How Apple could provide direct document access in iOS 6:

We didn't get better file handling in iOS 6, however. We got Passbook, a repository for tickets, cards, coupons, boarding passes, and more. And not without reason. From iOS 6 and why we got Passbook instead of Files.app:

It's easy to see why Apple gave Passbook that attention as well -- mobile ecommerce is going to be huge. Billions of dollars huge.

It's already in use everywhere from Starbucks to Delta airlines, and it's built in such a way that when/if Apple embraces radio transactions (be it via NFC or something else), Passbook should handle it as gracefully as CoreLocation handles GPS vs. Wi-Fi mapping. It's good now and could be terrific in the future.

But file handling on iOS isn't even good now, and needs to be terrific. It's far more personal, and will drive far less revenue, but great file handling is the difference between an operating system being truly useful and truly frustrating. Android has intents and sharing, Windows Phone has contracts. There's whole levels of app interoperability that iOS lacks at the moment.

Finding the future

I've evolved my thinking on Files.app and FilePicker somewhat since the pre-iOS 6 days. A flat repository with search, for example, is more future-proof than any single layer of folders or albums. A much better, more robust, and more useful version of Spotlight that has "just type" functionality similar to what webOS had, and BlackBerry 10 is rolling out, with the ability to see into iCloud and Files.app, would go a long way to making things easier and faster.

Apple could no doubt figure inter-app communication and file handling and do just enough to provide that functionality without compromising security.

The same way Apple knew "I want multitasking" was really "I want Pandora, Skype, and TomTom to work while I'm on the phone or browsing the web", and did just enough to provide that functionality without compromising battery life, Apple could no doubt figure out "I want inter-app communication" is really "I want to open and send my files where and when I want to open and send them", and do just enough to provide that functionality without compromising security.

Multitasking had a small group of different API, and inter-app communication would certainly require similar to truly address current pain points. Files.app and FilePicker would just be part of that, but an important, highly user-facing part. BackBoard, XPC, there are a lot of ways Apple could choose to handle these problems. I just hope screaming fast, ubiquitous file access is front and center come keynote time.

Bottom line

Six years into the mobile revolution iOS started and we're still stuck at the gates when it comes to file handling on iPhone and iPad. With iCloud, the need only grew greater. With fresh blood in control of the product, perhaps this year we'll see some movement. Perhaps rolled into more robust inter-app communications, perhaps on its own. Either way, I've been asking for it for a long time, other technologists have been asking for it for a long time, and other apps have tried to fill the gap that only system software can really fill.

What say you? Will iOS 7 finally be the time and version when great file handling comes to iOS? And if it does, will it be in the form of Files.app and FilePicker, something more, or something else?

Dino Walk Contest – Winners

Posted: 12 May 2013 08:36 AM PDT

Thanks to all who took part in the Dino Walk promo codes contest. Here are our lucky winners:

Heather, Bill, whnn, Chris M, and Byron

Winners – congratulations and please keep an eye on your Inboxes and spam folders, as you will soon be receiving an email from Vito Technology with your promo codes.

Look out for more cool contests coming soon.