I’ve made a little app store page where I’m listing my favourite iOS apps. It’s a bit like my other store, for books, and it isn’t all musical apps either, it’s a bit more varied than over at Palm Sounds. If you want to take a look you can find it here.
Category: Mobile Applications
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.
iOS and Automation (or, a solution in search of a problem)
I wrote yesterday about an app called drafts. I was showing it to a friend today and it made me realise that actually, whilst I do look out for these kind of automation app they rarely, if ever, do what I need them to do or end up being part of any wider automation solution that I’m looking for. So, why bother? Well, that’s a good question, and one that I find myself asking quite a lot.
I looked at Drafts yesterday, which seems to have some quite good features in it, like the ability to include additional actions using javaScript. Apparently you can use JavaScript if it’s interpreted by Apple’s built in JavaScript engine. I didn’t know that, but it makes a lot of sense now. Anyway, using this, Drafts can load new ‘actions’ that allow it to integrate with other apps and get them to do some simple things, but, that’s the problem. All they do is simple things.
Another app that showed some promise was (is) Launch Center Pro. The idea of this app was to be able to launch apps with specific criteria. However, it suffers the from the same limitations as Drafts. What it is able to do is limited to simple app launches and actions like, ‘launch app X and search for Y criteria’.
The last one is called triggers. Triggers is a different beast altogether. It’s more about creating physical parameters and when those are met it triggers a response. Quite interesting really, but again limited. The app doesn’t work in the background, which means that it can’t track it’s physical activities when it isn’t on. So, not much use.
So iOS is in many ways a good deal behind the likes of Android when it comes to automation. Nothing like Tasker (Android app) exists for iOS. If it did, if Apple allowed it, that would be amazing.
Here’s a quick list of the apps I mentioned:
Drafts
Launch Center Pro
Triggers
Drafts for iOS
I’ve only just heard about this app for iOS which seems to be a great companion to apps like Launch Center Pro, but both seem to come into their own when used with tweaks or hacks like these from lifehacker.
I’ve been looking for better ways to automate things in iOS, ideally in a similar way to Tasker for Android, but nothing comes close, at least not so far. However, things are improving. So I’m going to have to have a look at some of these automation ideas and see where they can take me next.
I’ll keep you posted on how the experiments are going.
Drafts at the app store
Launch Center Pro at the app store
SpinPad controlling Shruthi-1
Another little video that’s been posted elsewhere I know, but it’s here too now, and I’ve been enjoying my Palm PDA renaissance of late, especially the whole controller experience. There’s more to come too.
Shruthi-1 Template nearing completion
This is where I’ve got to with my Shruthi-1 template in TouchOSC. It’s really coming along, and I hope to be able to start testing it very soon. Of course, as you make these things more and more ideas come to you, which isn’t much help in actually finishing anything off.
Punchdrunk, part 1.
Originally I wanted to release Punchdrunk as a collection of 60 1 minute songs which described a single fictitious day in a person’s life. However, I’ve never finished all the songs. So I’ve decided to release it in a series of batches.
The first batch is 20 instrumental tracks, which would have been the first 20 songs on the whole album.
After this I’ll release another two batches of instrumentals and then finally a collection of the actual songs that I did finish.
credits
released 09 February 2013
These tracks were made with Bhajis loops on a Palm PDA, a Tungsten T3, Zire 72, Tungsten E and a Song Clie NX73V.
TouchOSC Page up
You can now find my TouchOSC page here. The long term plan is to include templates I make so that anyone can download them.
Baby Hedgehog controlling Shruthi-1
I’ve posted this elsewhere but thought I’d get the maximum value out of it by posting it here too. It’s fun experimenting with old and new tech all in one go.
BeatPad controlling the Shruthi-1
I’ve posted this over at PalmSounds but I really like this and it’s kind of a fun thing to be doing with old and new tech all in one place.
Nexus + Arduino, first step …
Getting these two finally connected is just the first step! Loads more to do with this as I think it’s going to form the basis of a number of projects for me.
I am Ashley Elsdon 