I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

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.

And another app offers further automation possibilities … Phraseology

Posted by on in Mobile Applications

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

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Tech

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

Posted by on in Mobile Applications

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)

Posted by on in Tech, The Internet of Things

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.

iOS Automation apps page is live

Posted by on in Admin

If you’re interested in automating stuff on your iOS device then I’ve just published a little list of the main apps I use for this. I hope to publish some more on the subject too, but for now, the list is available here.

A huge and amazing guide to iOS automation and workflow has arrived

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Tech

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:

Some things I’d like to see happen, some time soon …

Posted by on in Stuff

Here’s my little app wishlist so far …

  1. I’d like to see the IFTTT (iTunes link) app go universal and work properly on the iPad as it just doesn’t cut it running it in 2x mode.
  2. I’d also like to see IFTTT come to Android as well, as I think it’d be an interesting way to cross platforms and automate from iOS to Android and into the real world etc.
  3. I can’t wait for the next version of the Editorial app for iPad. I mentioned this only a few days ago as an app that I’m already very impressed with. I’m looking forward to seeing the workflow directory directly in the app itself, that’s going to be so useful.
  4. Whilst on the subject of the Editoral app, I’d like to see it go universal and come to the iPhone as I think it would be amazingly useful.
  5. Continuing with apps, one of the best email apps for iOS (iPhone, not universal) is Dispatch (iTunes link) in my opinion, and I’d love to see it go universal as I think it would work brilliantly on the iPad, especially the iPad mini.
  6. Finally, I’d like to see Zapier bring their service to iOS as well. Even though it’s more business focused than IFTTT I think it would be useful.

So that’s my little list for now. I wonder what I’ll get from that list?

Editorial for iPad, powerful automation, workflow and scripting for iOS

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Tech

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.