Updates to LDS Library App, Improved Navigation

LDS Library was silently updated without fanfare that I can see,but boasts one of the most improved ways for quickly navigating books that I have seen in any scripture or book app.

The LDS Library, which contains scriptures, manuals, media and resources designed for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is freely available to anyone who may be looking for a gospel study companion.

Below, see a screenshot of the interface in study mode with highlights, references, tags and other notes visible.

Below, See two screen noting the navigation tool comprised of tapping the book you are on (top middle of screen) and seeing the immediate hierarchy of books and then also tap the new windows button top right to see quickly all the windows currently open for fast switching.

The LDS Library app link in iTunes App Store notes several other changes including:

– ios7 look and feel
– Simplified search
– Redesigned bookmarks
– Unlimited screens
– Integration with LDS Music app
– Improved language support and support for mixed language content
– Simplified settings
– Bug fixes

What do you think of the app? Faster navigation than your old Quad?

Competition: Good

There’s nothing I love more than good competition. In the post Jobs era of Jony Ive, Android’s rapid UI iteration can do nothing but strengthen iOS’s need to ensure a strong response.

Windows Phone and Blackberry? Well, if there’s a chance to reclaim ground from the shakeup in the universe from Jobs’ passing, your window of opportunity continues to close rapidly.

Mastering your iOS keyboard

Labnol has a great tutorial on how to master the secret features of your iOS keyboard.

I used this today in order to enter a degree symbol in text. Hint: it’s done by shifting to numbers, and holding down the zero.

Another great hint: When typing an email address hold down the period key and it will pop up with .com,.net, and.org extensions to make your thumb squee with joy.

What’s your favorite iOS keyboard shortcut?

LinkedIn for iOS Nailed It

LinkedIn for iOS is rapidly becoming a profession-centric social powerhouse app.

My latest favorite feature? Article Readability!

• Find an article shared to your network.
• click the “reader” icon to the top right

• Poof! Instantly easily read article!

Now, if only it synced to readability.

Marriott App UI Issue

The Marriott iOS app isn’t perfect, but it gets a lot of the job done, but there’s one UI feature that trips me up all the time:

Move the “Clear Remembered User” button on the login screen for rewards members!!

I can’t even complete my login without pressing “done” on the keyboard and mentally punishing myself so I don’t habitually press the HUGE BLUE BUTTON in the place where the “submit/go” button should be.

Google voice mobile: how to add contacts to groups?

Okay, Google, how do I add a contact to a group from my iOS device?

In a related item, can you make it easy for me to mark a caller or text as a spammer? I know I can do this on the web, but I need to able to do this from my mobile app.

Any suggestions?

Ubuntu OS for Tablet, Phone, Computer?

I’ve used Ubuntu, the Linux desktop “for humans”, before. In fact, for several months it was my primary OS and I loved it.

Now, the South African-based CEO of Ubuntu (pronounced /ʊˈbʊntuː/ uu-buun-too) wants you to consider leveraging Ubuntu as your core for all your computing–all stemming from your smartphone–and all powered by the Cloud.

Jason Perlow at ZDNet explains some of the move:

In a video posted to YouTube this week, a very Bono-like Shuttleworth, channelling his inner Jony Ive and Steve Jobs, spoke at length about the mobile version of the company’s open-source and Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu for tablets. The OS will be entering a preview release shortly that will be installable on selected Android hardware, such as Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets and Galaxy Nexus phone.

The mobile version of Ubuntu has spent a long time in gestation. Canonical is entering the tablet and smartphone market five years after industry leaders Apple, Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry all carved out their respective chunks of the consumer and enterprise pie for mobile operating system mindshare.

…it is what Shuttleworth said toward the end of this video that I found most compelling, and I think what he speaks about in general can be considered in a platform-agnostic form as being very prescient about the future state of mobile and desktop computing.

For me, if Ubuntu can cross the chasm of hardware (which they are doing by allowing you to use the best hardware from leading Android phone/tablet makers) and they can ensure the devices are speedy enough and reliable enough that Joe/Jane User intuitively think of reaching for them over anything else–AAAAND if they can run the apps people want (which currently allows for HTML5 and frameworks like PhoneGap as well as native, graphics-heavy app development infrastructure) — this might just work.

Maybe.

What do you think?

You’ve Got Mail!

You’ve just got to wonder… what’s the battery-life on a messaging platform like this?

Downloading Purchased iTunes Content to your iOS Device

If you have multiple iOS devices or Mac/PCs that share the same iTunes account, you might have done content downloaded on one that you want on another device.

How to download itunes content you’ve already purchased to other iOS devices:

First, access the iTunes Store:

Now, choose the “More” menu in the bottom and choose “Purchased”

Now, browse to the song you want (ONLY SHOWS BY ARTIST NAME?!?)

Finally, click the “Cloud” icon to download the song from iCloud to your device:

Did that work??

LDS Library Feedback

This is the greatest scripture app! The fact that it has all church materials available is incredible. THANK YOU for supporting and developing this!

A few refinements that would be helpful:
– When I link a scripture, can I have the scripture I link /to/ be automatically linked /back/ as well?
– When the footnote bar is active on the iPad at least, if I tap it wrong to put it away, it flips me to my next open window in the app. Odd. It’s “hard” to grab hold of and slider back down to dock it.
– Can I have my notes I’ve made for a page all be opened or closed by default? This would be great for lesson-teaching.
– when I highlight something to make a note or copy it, the default is to select the whole verse… This is good overall, but gets very tedious if I want to mark only a portion of the verse… Especially when I get into marking up manuals or talks with long paragraphs! Let me turn off this feature and just use iOS’s standard copy/select/select all options on a long-press?

WISHLIST
– When I highlight something to make a note, I can choose colors or just underline if I just “mark” something (but it’s universal after that and affects all markings)… I would like to choose a format for the highlighted text that is not so glaring… In both “notes” and “marks” can I choose a default formatting option AND then individual formatting for specific kinds of marking I want to do? Various colors, styles, etc…?
– SHARE my notes with friends if I want! Can you show me what family or friends have said about certain scriptures? Or can I send notes to friends in some easily formatted way? Ideally, have this synced with my lds account and show up IN my app (for example, I want to share certain insights with my children and I would like to see things my father or mother might note… Let me link my lds account with theirs and then when we make notes in our app, allow us to make them “visible to family and friends” or even “public” (tied to my Mormon.org profile?) and sync LINKED family/friends notes that are shared with me to my notes section (with some special formatting so I know this is their notes, not my own)
– See globally popular scriptures: On the kindle, phrases that are especially popular are underlined lightly. That would be a great feature!
– Better sync with lds.org. The LDS.ORG experience on the iPad has challenges because of the floating toolbar. I just can not get it to work. A better mobile lds.org experience integrated with the app would be great.
– Show me references: It would be great if I could see references to a certain scripture or other media that mention a verse I am reading. For example, John 14 & 15 might have several references to certain scriptures in them given in conference talks or ensign articles, manuals, etc… Perhaps even a video of the Last Supper, etc. this would be like “what do the prophets say about this verse?” these are often already linked in the footnotes or index of articles… Can you “link back” to the incoming links or search for incoming links to this scripture?
– Easier sharing:
Ok, this is a stretch. I’d like easier sharing in two ways: asynchronous and synchronous.

First, asynchronously, I would like to copy an item and have the public web-URL for that item so I can share it easier. It would be even more fantastic if I could immediately email, tweet or Facebook out that item… “Here is a great scripture that helped me today… {include link}”

Second, synchronously, how can I share a reference to something I am looking at RIGHT NOW with people around me? perhaps on the same wifi network as me if I am teaching a class, or through geo/sync or something like the app “bump” uses to know who is near you? It’d be great to teach a class and create an ad-hoc “classroom” locally and then slide verses or paragraphs from lesson manuals, etc, for people to read then have the participants in the room be able to sync with my lesson outline. Perhaps to see my lesson flow on the left In outline form, then tap the items to see the item to read/note on the right? Take to the next level and allow class members to share notes with the class (that they can keep or ignore) or “raise their hand” and ask questions on.

Thanks for the great app! I look forward to more!

New feedback: Jan 2013:
Love the app. 99% of the time it’s perfect. But my key need is still better/easier annotation.

Can you develop an “underline mode”? Perhaps where I can enable it, then simply drag across text in a verse with finger or stylus to highlight text? When I pick up my finger, a note box appears? The current method of highlighting is exceedingly tedious unless I want to select a whole verse, which I hardly ever do. Just a key phrase here or there, and often several small bits here and there in a verse.

Learn from kindle highlighting please. It’s not perfect either, but way better.

If I double tap a verse, maybe select that whole sentence. Triple-tap? The whole verse?!

Changing iPhone speech recognition input over Bluetooth #cooltip

iOS has excellent speech recognition, either through Siri, or through the microphone button on the keyboard in devices such as thaw the iPad 2, new iPad, iPad mini, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, And the recent iPod touch devices

This feature, which was introduced in iOS 5, allows hands-free usage of your phone or device.

However, when using Bluetooth in your car or headset or otherwise for phone calls works nicely, but for speech recognition the Bluetooth device often degrades the quality of the speech-to-text translation.

To change quickly between your iPhone’s microphone and your Bluetooth microphone for speech recognition, try this:

1. Hold down the home button like you’re going to engage Siri for command.
2. To the right of the Siri button you will see a Bluetooth icon lit up if you’re connected to Bluetooth
3. Simply tap this button and you will get a selector to choose between your Bluetooth devices and your iPhone for the microphone for speech recognition.

This affects all speech recognition use, either Siri or the microphone button on the keyboard.

See screenshot below:

Your iPhone Can Read To You #cooltip

Your siri-capable iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch can read to you, if you enable it.

I am probably the last person to find this out, but using an accessibility feature in iOS, you can set your iPhone or iPad or iPod touch to read any selected text to you.

This is something I’ve been looking for, especially while I am trying to consume text content at the gym or in any other situation where reading it is difficult.

Lifehacker gives us the skinny:

To enable this feature, follow these steps or (watch the video above for a demonstration):

1. Open the Settings app on your home screen.
2. Tap the General tab.
3. Scroll down and tap the Accessibility tab.
4. Tap the Speak Selection option (it should be set to off, currently).
5. Tap the toggle switch to turn it on. You can also adjust the rate of speech as well. It’s worth noting, however, that the default is already pretty fast. If anything, you might want to slow it down.

Once you’ve got Speak Selection enabled, just highlight any text like you would if you were going to copy it but tap the “Speak” button instead. This option will change to “Pause” while the text is being spoken so you can stop it at any point. Pretty cool!

Enable this on your iOS device to get cool text-to-speech functionality:

Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speak Selection to enable. (Click to enlarge)

Select text, then choose “Speak” to hear it. (Click to Enlarge)

Google Maps for iPhone!

Commence man crush upon my phone.

iOS Open Safari Links in Chrome

I had wondered if there was a way to take a web page I was looking at in Safari (iOS) and open it in Google’s Chrome browser (which I love).

Of course, a smart Bookmarklet can save the day, linked from Lifehacker (of course):

iOS: By now you’re probably aware that Google released Chrome for iOS yesterday, but no matter how much you like it you’re still stuck with Safari as your default browser. Jailbroken iOS users can use the Browser Changer tweak to truly set Chrome as the default, but developer Jon Abrams has come up with a simple hack for everyone else.
That hack comes in the form of a bookmarklet you can stick in Safari’s address bar and tap any time you want to open that same page in Chrome. Here’s the very short amount of code you need to add to your bookmarks:

javascript:location.href=”googlechrome”+location.href.substring(4);

Here’s some screens:

The lifehacker article (referenced above) as seen in Safari

After you’ve added the bookmarklet, tap Bookmarks in the browser, tap the bookmarklet and you’re off and running…

Here’s the same article, as seen in Chome on iOS.

Google Drive for iOS

I’m very excited about the additional ability to edit spreadsheets in Google drive!

Social Media Encourages Us to Be 'Alone Together'

“Some experts believe that Facebook, endless texting and other activities that keep kids “connected” actually add to a major disconnect that is hard on those who have depression”
Shutterstock

“…The very magic of the new machines, the efficiency and elegance with which they serve us, obscures what isn’t being served: everything that matters.”

“What Facebook has revealed about human nature — and this is not a minor revelation — is that a connection is not the same thing as a bond, and that instant and total connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity.

… Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect.” [src]

RIP Tungle. Seeking Replacement

I am pretty sure this is what denial feels like.

Cereberally, I’ve known that Tungle, the innovative and (actually awesome) online scheduling tool, was going the way of all the world for a while now.

I have yet to emotionally grasp what that means for me personally and professionally.

I’m a recruiter. It’s what I do all day long every day (and nights and weekends on-occasion). There’s literally days where I have hours upon hours of booked interviews and follow-ups and calls booked back-to-back-to-back.

In fact, I often just laugh after I finally dig back into voicemails and get two or three repeated VMs from candidates that say: “Hey, I got your email suggesting I book a time with you on your calendar, but figured it’d be easier to just try and catch you, so call me whenever you have a free moment….”

Truth: No moments are free.

But, since this is 2012 and not 1962, I don’t have an admin (according to my research, they used to call admins “secretaries”) booking all my appointments. Even if I did have someone who could do all this, I am not sure I would really want to have them spending their time doing something so monumentally time consuming compared to the resulting ROI. A 15 min meeting that takes 15 min to coordinate back-and-forth phone calls and emails? Please.  Shoot. me. in. the. face.

Enter Tungle: Brainchild of entrepreneur Marc Gingrass and others. Since 1996, they’ve been killing it for helping busy professionals allow meetings to be scheduled automagically with a tool that didn’t suck.

Enter RIM (the makers of BlackBerry): They purchased Tungle in April, 2011. You should know that I have a soft spot in my heart for BB. They innovated in the smartphone space for years without a rival. Now, they are flagging and have realigned all their resources around shipping BlackBerry 10. Along the way, they’re killing off Tungle, which brings me to my current state of desperation–finding a replacement scheduling app that doesn’t suck.

And it’s not going well.

Requirements:

• Sync instantly with all my online calendars. I use Google AND Exchange. You’ve gotta support them both. In fact, let me mash up as many calendars I want into a “free/busy to rule them all” calendar. In three years with Tungle, I never had a double-booking.  If I get one, you’re fired.
• Easy URL to hand out.
• MOBILE MOBILE MOBILE: Users need to be able to book me from mobile and I MUST be able to confirm appointments via mobile. MUST-HAVE. PERIOD.
• Allow meetings to default to a certain length (15 or 30 min) but can be changed.
• No surprises  Make sure meetings can’t be scheduled immediately.  Give me a time-buffer before the next meeting can be planned.
• Not give away my personal email address unless I want it shared.
• Easy on schedulees — Validate their email address, sure, but allow people to book meetings without an account and make it crazy-pants easy to book a meeting without registering, logging in, or doing anything else.
• Sync or ICS option — Give me the option to get the appointments just “placed” on my calendar or send me an ICS invitation.  Send the people I am meeting with an ICS every time (unless they have an account with you and choose otherwise).

Schedule Once has almost got all these things licked, except for MOBILE! I am also trying out Doodle and now Hakema(?).

Google Handwrite is Kindof Awesome

Google just made search on your mobile perfect-er.

This is in beta, but by hitting the “settings” button on the bottom of google.com in your mobile browser or by going to google.com/preferences in your mobile browser, you can enable handwriting now as an option among others!

Then, refresh your browser window and you’ll see a small lowercase-cursive “g” in the lower-right corner of the screen.  Simply tap and start scribbling away.

• Autocomplete works… either finish what you’re typing or pause and goog will find suggested completions of what you might be seeking.
• More room? Tilt your phone/device sideways and it still works!
• Between this and voice search, you’ve kindof got it covered.

Is this actually awesome? Mashable wonders.

More about getting this going from the Google Blog:

Getting started is easy: go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on “Settings” at the bottom of the screen and enable “Handwrite.” Note that after you’ve saved the setting, you may need to refresh the homepage to see the feature.

Tips from Google:

Writing tips

• Use print writing, not cursive. Both upper and lower case work.
• Write the number one with serif like [ 1 ] , and zero with a strikethrough like [ Ø ] for better accuracy when writing numbers.
• Try symbols and special characters such as + @ & $ # – * “ : = . , ‘ ! ? ( ) [ ] { } / %.
• Write your search terms anywhere on the screen. You can write them in multiple lines across the screen.
• Space will be automatically inserted between search terms, but you can tap Space to manually add a space to your search terms if necessary.

Using your device

• Try writing with your thumb while holding your phone in the same hand. You don’t need to use two hands this way!
• Use your phone in whichever orientation you like. You can use Handwrite in either portrait or landscape orientation.

Best Navigation – Mapquest for iOS

The Mapquest App for iPhone and iOS is boss. Really.

The voiced turn-by-turn navigation is excellent. The visual on-screen display is great. Coupled with my Bluetooth speakerphone, this app is killer.

Drawbacks? It doesn’t find locations by search nearly as well as “Maps” which uses Google results. I will shortcut this by adding important locations to contacts in Maps and then searching Mapquest for the contact. Also, iOS 6 will have an updated Maps app that could render this obsolete. We shall see…

How Amazing is Fusion-io? Get the Fusion Face App!

Ready to find out what Fusion-io’s blazing performance can do for your applications?

Check out and download the free, funny Fusion Face app for Apple or Android and find out what the Fusion-io performance boost will do for your application performance.

If anything else, just download it for fun. It’s a cool, fun application that you (or your kids) will have a really fun time playing with.  Take a picture and see what your “fusion face” looks like, then share with friends, rinse and repeat!

After you get the app, if you think you might want to work for us, well, we’re hiring, too.