someone who's doing some things
I’m a big fan of mobile applications. It started with the Palm OS and Windows Mobile, and has continued with iOS and Android. Who knows where mobile apps will go to next, it’s a journey, and an interesting one at that. If you’re looking for more on mobile apps then also check out the menu sections for pages on specific apps and things I’ve done with them.
This has been a long time coming in my view. Launch Center Pro as a very handy app and well worth having if you’re trying to automate things on your iOS device. Now that it’s available for the iPad that represents a big step forward for automation and workflow.
Also it’s 40% off for launch (no pun intended), so it’s £2.99 right now.
These apps are so old that when they first came out we weren’t calling them apps. They were applications, or software! But they’re still good, still work, and are usable.
It’s all part of my ‘make the Axim’ useful project. I’ll let you know how it goes.
It’s only a start, but I’ve published my iOS automation and resource page here. There’s only a couple of links there at the moment, but both of those are very useful indeed, and I expect to add more over time.
I was recently contemplating setting up a page to collect all of the various resources for iOS automation and then today, Mac Stories published this guide to automating iOS workflows! It’s huge! I haven’t actually read the whole thing as yet, in fact I’ve just started reading it, but it has enormous promise, and I’m very hopeful that it is, in fact, just what I’ve been looking for to get me going.
So, I’m going to read the whole thing and then embark on my task of getting things properly automated in iOS. I think I probably will put together a resources page as well soon, and I think that this guide will almost certainly be on it.
Of course, if you don’t know about drafts (for iOS iPhone or iPad) then this won’t mean a lot to you. However, if you’re an iOS user and automation is something you’re interested in then this is the app to start with according to this guide.
Drafts (for iPad) on the app store:
I saw this app for iOS and knew that I had to get hold of it. It’s a very different way of calculating anything, and when you look at it and use it for any sort of calculation it is very intuitive, allowing you to take the result of one calculation into another.
In some ways it’s like a little spreadsheet for simple calculations. It’s a good start, but I think it needs some more work. I’d like to see the ability to save little calcs and also to schedule updates to them. I think it would be very useful if you could use simple variables in the calcs too. Things like today’s date would be useful, and I’m sure that there’s more too. I’d also like to be able to back up my calcs to dropbox.
Anyway, it’s a good start and I hope that the developer will take a it further.
As far as dealing with email goes, I’m not the best, not by any measure. But with an app like Dispatch, I find it a lot easier. Why? Good question, that’s easy to answer. One of the things I find myself doing a lot of is needing to deal with URLs / links from emails and send them to the right place or places quickly. With most email apps for iOS that means selecting the link to copy it or open it then copy it from inside safari then paste it into whatever app I want, Pocket, or Instapaper for example. With Dispatch I don’t have any of those complications. Tapping a link brings up the options I want in terms of sending it to the right place quickly and simply. No fuss.
In fact, that’s the main reason I bought the app in the first place, but it has a lot more besides, and, as usual, I’m scratching the surface so far and just beginning to find out what else the app can do.
I only just found out that the developer has published a URL scheme for Dispatch. This means that you can launch and run Dispatch from another app with parameters from the calling app. So, for example, you could use Drafts to ask Dispatch to open and create an email to a particular person, from a given account, and with a specified title. In fact, you could even tell it what to put in the body of the email too if you wanted to. That’s quite impressive.
The other thing that I like about Dispatch is that you can include snippets or blocks of text from within the app, like per account signatures and more. That could also be really helpful, but at the moment I’m not using that, so far.
So I’m slowly moving over to using Dispatch as my main email app on my iPhone, and I hope that the developer will eventually make it available for the iPad too as I think it would be brilliant there.
I bought this app a while ago and have only just really started getting to grips with it, but I’ve started to see just how powerful it is. The real power in this app is in the workflow features. Think Automator for mac, but inside an iPad app that’s built for writing and with added power besides.
Editorial is a nice writing app and has a lot of features for writing and publishing, but its real power comes with a series of built in workflows that are pre-configured to do some straightforward things you might need for writing. These built in workflows are great as a place to start from with automation in Editorial, but making simple workflows is also a very easy process. Workflows are assembled by connecting simple building blocks, almost the same as automator for mac. Building blocks like ‘if … then’ statements, copy, select, etc. Combining these together is easy, and you can make some very powerful automated processes.
But it doesn’t stop there either. The workflow editor can also include python code which vastly expands the options available to any workflow. Obviously writing python code isn’t for everyone, it isn’t easy, but the option is there. There is also another option. There’s now an Editorial workflow directory in beta. If you access the directory from your iPad with the Editorial app installed on the device you can directly install workflows to the app without any difficulty at all. What this means in that you can add complex workflows into the app that have been designed and built by other people and use them for yourself.
Apparently in the next version of Editorial the workflow directory will be even more beefed up so you can upload and download within the app itself. That’ll be popular I’ll bet, and it’ll give everyone access to some great workflow and automation.
I’ve got a long way to go with this app and getting used to creating workflows, but I think that it’ll be worth the time investing in this app. In the end it’ll send a lot of time.
Of course it was wonderful to see the new version of Jasuto (v 1.5) finally arrive on the app store after such a massive gap. And it wasn’t a disappointment at all. There’s plenty of new toys in there that are all great and shiny. It’s fun to play with this after such a long time. It reminds me just how good it is to make things, to put things together and see how they work.
I remember when Jasuto first came out it was a truly amazing step forward for music making on mobile devices, but it was hard to get into and I think a lot of people found that too, not really understanding how to make things work in Jasuto. It too me a while, but it was worth the effort and when I went back to it this week it was just as I’d remembered.
So I’m looking forward to spending more time with it and making more things as a lead in to some increased creativity after a somewhat dry spell.
Jasuto Modular Synth is available on the app store:
The new version of Launch Center Pro looks like it’s a big improvement on the previous version. Having said that it is an iOS7 only update so I’m having to move up before seeing what it can really do. Not that I’m upgrading just for Launch Center Pro, there’s quite a few other reasons too, but I think that Launch Center is a handy way of automating stuff in iOS and that’s something I increasingly need.
I am Ashley Elsdon 