I thought I’d like to capture some Audiobus presets for myself and store them somewhere. So I found a way to capture the presets to a Google spreadsheet and then embed the sheet in a web page. The page you can find here. I’ll be adding to it over time, so it’ll grow and more and more Audiobus presets will get added. Obviously, to get them to work you’ll need to access them from your iOS device and not a desktop.
Tag: Automation
I like the idea of automating things and getting one thing to control another. I experiment with a lot of stuff like that.
Updates coming to Pythonista and Editorial
This is of course amazing news. These two apps are incredible powerhouses of iOS automation and the new UI module and its associated features will take both apps into new directions for automating text using iOS devices. The developer’s extensive description of how it all works and what’s behind the release is brilliant too.
I can’t wait to get my hands on the new versions. I just hope it won’t be long.
Where I am with iOS automation now
I’ve been talking about this a lot over the last few months and probably one of the biggest issues I’ve had with automating things is actually finding things that I need to automate.
That might sound a little strange but in many ways it has been a solution in search of a problem for me rather than the other way around. Of course when you start to find things that need automating the solutions become more obvious and you start to wonder why you could see them before. Or at least that’s how it feels to me.
Anyway I thought I’d write about a few of the things I’m starting to find that warrant some form of automation. They’ll sound obvious no doubt, but it’s taken me a while to get around to sorting them out.
The first thing I’ve started doing is using drafts a lot. That sounds obvious. I said that it would. I’m writing this using drafts. It’s such a simple app for just getting ideas down and writing wherever I am. I probably should have started using it before. So for notes and that sort of thing I’m using it more and more. It’s great. So far so good. But what of the automation stuff. Yep, that’s a good question. We’ll with some very simple actions I can send articles posts etc wherever I want. No problem. One app, multiple destinations and no issues. I can write things for here or for palm sounds or wherever, easy!
So that’s my start for automation. I’m sure I’ll do more over time, and when I do I’ll explain. I also hope to be able to share some useful stuff too. At some point.
What I think that iOS automation needs right now
I was thinking about this today whilst reviewing some links on general automation stuff. One of the best tools for automating stuff on iOS is Editorial. I love its workflow generator. It’s great but it doesn’t go far enough. What’s needed is a simple editor for creating iOS workflows that span multiple apps and even incorporate web services like ifttt. Perhaps that’s too far. For a start anyway.
But something that could just help you use the available building blocks and get things moving would be amazing. Rather than having to use loads of URL encoding and stuff like that. It’s a thought. I would certainly buy it anyway.
A big bunch of Launch Center Pro sample actions
I found these the other day when I was checking LCP’s twitter feed for useful things, and it is very handy indeed. Not just for the actual actions themselves, but for use as a starter to understand how to create your own from them. It’s always easier to do that with something to work from.
So if you want to use these you’ll need to from within mobile safari on your iOS device.
And another app offers further automation possibilities … Phraseology
And now another app promises integration and connectivity with the growing array of URL scheme enabled apps that I own but as yet can’t work out what to do with. This one, Phraseology is a writing app for the iPad. It looks very useful, and is from the same developer who makes Drafts, Drafts for iPad and Terminology. So in theory it should tick all the boxes, and as such I’ll probably give it a try.
But it does make me wonder where all this automation capacity is going to take me, and when? So far I’ve managed to get a few things working, but nothing ground breaking, nothing that really changes my workflow and delivers enough automation against what I’m looking for. Of course, I could just be being over ambitious, that’s a distinct possibility. So for now I’ll keep at it, and perhaps try some simpler things to start off with.
A new app in the automation collection … Unread
I found a new app that I’m hoping will really help with some of my aspirations for automating things in iOS. It’s called Unread.
Here’s the app’s description (which I’ve edited down a bit):
Rediscover the joy of reading your favorite writers with Unread, an RSS reader for iPhone.
Unread will surprise and delight you in many ways, but that’s not important. What is important is that Unread will help you find a little peace each day through quiet, careful reading.
FULL-SCREEN READING
Focus on the act of reading with Unread’s full-screen article view. Articles are typeset in beautiful fonts from Hoefler & Co. Let nothing stand between you and the words of your favorite writers except a thin sheet of glass.
DESIGNED FOR COMFORT
Move anywhere in the app with a sweep of your thumb, all without having to reposition your hand. Unread’s stacked navigation was built from scratch to be the most comfortable interface you’ve ever used. Flick left-to-right to go back from anywhere on the screen, just like dealing a deck of cards. Tug any screen right-to-left to show options for that screen — just like pull-to-refresh, but sideways.
MULTIPLE THEMES
Like to read in bed? Don’t wake up your partner with glaring white light. Unread has multiple themes designed to make it easy to read under daytime or nightime lighting conditions. There are several fun hidden themes, too.
SHARE THE GOOD STUFF
You shouldn’t have to struggle to send articles to the places you like best. Apps should do that hard work for you. Share your favorite articles via the rich options built with OvershareKit, an open-source sharing library for iOS. OvershareKit was born inside of Unread, and is being discovered by more apps all the time.
SO MUCH TO LOVE ABOUT UNREAD
- BACKGROUND REFRESH • Unread keeps your subscriptions up to date with power-efficient background updating. Articles and images are saved to your device for convenient offline reading.
- SHARING • Send articles to Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Pinboard, or your Reading List. Share articles and images via App.net or Twitter with as-you-type syntax highlighting, swipe gesture shortcuts for the cursor, and automatic smart quotes. Send a snippet of highlighted text to Omnifocus or Things for a quick reminder. Even more options are on the way.
- QUICK ACCESS • Double tap an article summary to instantly toggle read/unread status. Press and hold to show a menu of options. This is great for quick sharing or for jumping straight to the web to view the original article.
- LINKED-LISTS • If an article is a linked-list article, like those written by John Gruber at Daring Fireball, the article summary shows the domain name of the linked item’s site. Many times the domain is a punchline all by itself.
- BIG THUMBNAILS • Turn on the optional inline thumbnails to see big previews of article images while you scroll.
- FOOTNOTE POPOVERS • Articles with properly-formatted footnotes will show convenient popovers when you need to read a footnote.
- PERSISTENT WEB BROWSER • Instead of a transient browser that disappears as soon as it goes offscreen, Unread’s web browser stays around. It remembers your back/forward history and retains the current page. Now you can finally switch back to finish an article without losing your place on an interesting site. You will wonder why every app doesn’t work this way.
- VOICE OVER & ACCESSIBILITY • Unread has 100-percent VoiceOver coverage. Every screen and every feature is available to users with vision impairments. Font sizes are adjustable, too, from Tiny to EPIC and many points between.
What the description doesn’t really go into enough is that it is integrated with Drafts and is, as far as I can see, a reasonable step in the right direction in automation terms. So I’m going to try this out and see if it takes me in the right direction. We’ll see.
And then Launch Center Pro for iPad arrived
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.
If this then apparently not that (or when things go wrong)
Something I have relied on for a while now is IFTTT (if this then that). Today, it fell over. Here’s what they had to say about their issues:
Last night at approximately 10:00pm PST much of the work IFTTT does in the background stopped due to an issue with one of our backend services. Our monitoring systems would have alerted us to the problem immediately, but those unfortunately failed as well and we weren’t able to fix the issue until this morning at 10:00am PST.
Any affected Recipes should pick up right where they left off last night.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We know that many of you have come to depend on IFTTT in your everyday lives and we take great pride in that. A stoppage of work for this duration is unacceptable and we will do whatever it takes to ensure we get in front of these issues much faster in the future.
As always with this kind of thing you know that it’s going to get sorted, but waiting around is just a pain. It makes me realise that we rely on these services for so many things, or rather I do anyway, and increasingly, with the rise of the internet of things, these services extend themselves into the real world too.
Now I’m on GitHub
The main reason for this is for keeping an eye on various repositories of Pythonista and other iOS automation stuff. So, if you’ve got something you think I might be interested in then please let me know. Here’s a link to my GitHub profile.
I am Ashley Elsdon 