Tiny Computer: Apple's iPod Touch

(Still plays music, but more.)

16 August 2011


History
=======

Newton was Apple's first PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), and it was quite amazing. Sometimes not in a good way, but always amazing anyway.

Years after Newton was declared defunct, enthusiasts still use them and even make them do things that they could not originally do. Years after it died, some aspects of Newton have not yet been matched by the best of our modern PDAs. (In fact, there was a project aimed at getting Newton running on Palm hardware. It is said to have come as close as being able to run some old Palm software such as Tide Tool.) However, Apple's iPhone OS (running also on the iPod Touch, which is what I have) begins to come close to replacing Newton--and of course in some ways does surpass the facts of Newton, even if not its promise. (And now because there was some very useful and very specialized Palm software, there has been talk of getting Palm running on iPhone; I don't know how that has worked out.)

Some guy even claims that he has Newton OS running on iOS. I would want to see that.

I used my Newton for years, until it fell behind Palm in connectivity and in a couple of other ways, and I bought a machine running the Palm OS. Of course, Palm was far easier to carry than Newton had been, so it was nice even if was obviously less powerful and playful. I immediately began missing some of the niftier aspects of Newton. When the Handspring Visor began seeming creaky, I bought a Palm Tungsten. I did enjoy the Tungsten's higher-resolution color screen and its ability to play music, but they had broken its character-recognition system (I know how it happened, and I don't care; they broke it), which was already inferior to the latest of Newton technology. (Newton could read cursive handwriting--even mine! Most of the time. Actually, my older Newton did pretty well, and it was said that the latest version of HWR on the last of the Newtons was uncanny: If a human could read it, Newton could turn it into editable text. Excellent editing tools made correcting easy, when needed.)
The Tungsten's Web browser never worked, and this frustrated people no end. Palm apparently did nothing in remediation. (Nobody ever knew why, I think.) In fairness, the model above mine was fine in this regard.

So...Some of us had been waiting and watching for all these years to see what Apple would do in the PDA field, and there was speculation when the iPod was first mentioned (the name, not its nature) that it might be a PDA. Several years more elapsed before that expectation was realized. Incomplete as the new iPhone OS sometimes seems (no cursive-handwriting recognition, for example), it is pretty great ("insanely great") in enough ways that most of us are largely satisfied for the time being--and are eager to see what improvements will eventually come along.

I am delighted with my iPod touch (more or less identical to the iPhone), and I do find it noteworthy that so many interesting (and also so many incredibly stupid) applications have come to exist in such a short time after its introduction. I have looked at a fair number of them; I have examined three or four dozen; I regularly use a dozen or slightly fewer.

Here are my list of third-party applications and some observations. Nothing said here is to be considered authoritative; YMMV. If Your Mileage _does_ Vary, let me know. I'm always happy to learn that something I have been doing could be done better.

My iPod touch
.............

My 2nd-generation iPod Touch isn't an iPhone (no microphone, no camera), but with the addition of an external mic, it does _support_ sound in as well as out, like a phone. This can be managed in two ways--I have both:

• The new Apple headsets (earbuds) have inline microphones, but my older headset lacks the microphone; I bought a Griffin microphone-on-a-cable that connects inline with the earbuds. It's very nice.
• I have also a tiny mic that jacks directly into the sound port; it disables _sound out_, so it's suitable only for making quick recordings of voice notes, bird songs, etc.

The new iPhones and iPod touches have _everything_: Speaker, microphone, and _two_ cameras. I expect to have one of those in late October 2011.

This document tells about some of the software I have been enjoying on my second-generation iPod touch. There is a ton of interesting stuff I have not mentioned, either because I have not gotten around to experimenting with it, because it costs a little bit of money (and I have focused on the $free), or because there is so much of it that I have forgotten what I had learned.  Not to mention the very many things I haven't even heard of yet.

I solicit additions, corrections, or comments.

Mark_

15 March 2010
16 August 2011


Interesting iPhone/iPod Touch Apps
==================================

Some of these require a connection to the Internet--either by wi-fi or by the cellular wireless network--but because I have an iPod, not an iPhone (which is always on the cellular data network), I am interested in useful apps that don't require the network be present. Some of them do require occasional connections (such as for downloading books to be read offline).

Free of charge, except as noted--some as demo-ware with somewhat limited functionality, intended to tempt you into spending a few bucks. In no particular order:


Books
-----

There are book-reading apps that can go out on the Net and get books, and there are individual books and collections packaged into closed, freestanding apps. Don't be put off by the small screen; it's bright and clear, and most of the readers permit changing type-size, and other formatting niceties. Most permit screen rotation to _landscape_, which helps immediately.

• Stanza. This reader links to many online sources--some free, some pay--including to Project Gutenberg <http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/>, where thousands of public-domain books in plain text and some other common formats are available without cost: classics, old stuff that predates copyright, and interesting stuff that has fallen out of copyright.
- Gutenberg is the ultimate source for much of what's available for free on other book sites and services.
- Gutenberg of Australia has some stuff that ours doesn't, because of differences in copyright.

• Some libraries offer copyrighted e-books that can be "checked out" for three or four weeks, readable on specialized readers that know about DRM (Digital Rights Management); such a book will be disabled at the end of its checkout period. Both text and audio.

• Audiobooks. Links to a source of free (& pay?) audiobooks (read by amateurs).

• There are many other readers with differing sets of features and accessing different sources. I have several of them on my iTouch, although Stanza is the one I use most often.

• Kindle for iPhone. I think that when I first looked at this there was some free content available. Maybe not, now. Otherwise, it is apparently more or less exactly like The Kindle (except for the obvious). Useful for Kindle subscribers who want access to their collections when carrying the larger Kindle device is inconvenient.

The smallest of the iTouches could carry literally hundreds of such books.

The next versions of iPhone and iPod touch (running iOS 5?) may have _text to speech_--are likely be able to read text aloud. There is already at least one app that can do this, even under iOS 4 on older, slower devices.


Reading Offline
---------------

Books are easy--they are downloaded, etc. Web pages are different; we cannot normally read Web-stuff when not connected to the Web. However:

• Instapaper
• Read It Later
• Offline Reader
• iSaveWeb

All use combinations of special browser commands, iOS software clients, and Web servers to permit Web pages to reside on an iDevice for reading while away from the network. People who have iPod touches instead of iPhones (with their persistent connections) think these are really great.


Voice Notes
-----------

My second-generation iPod Touch has a very small speaker, but no microphone. I have just bought a tiny no-cable mic that jacks into the headphone (audio in/out) port. It is very small, sensitivity and sound quality are very good, and it was extremely inexpensive. However, while it is in place output is disabled.

For full-duplex talking & listening, Apple makes a nice headset that includes a microphone. Griffin makes an add-on microphone/cable usable with your existing headset. I have this one; it is excellent, and is not terribly expensive. Because it has its own cable, the combination ends up being pretty long. (Note that there are other brands of this type of adapter.)

• Voice Memos. Apple's "built-in" app. Syncs with iTunes.

• Dragon Dictation. Turn voice notes into text. Dragon is well-known dictation software on desktop machines. The free version may not be up to anything big, but it does work quite well. Does a couple of short paragraphs at a time, stopping automatically to upload the sound to where software on the server turns it into text and pushes it back to the device. (Pronounce the punctuation, too.) (Requires a network connection.)

• Dictamus. Voice-activated dictation software with a couple of interesting/special features. (Sound only, not sound-to-text.) (I have not yet used this, but it looks very interesting.)

• Black Box. Voice-activated: waits until there is something to record. Sensitivity is adjustable, if it's getting too much or too little of what's going on in a room. "Plan B" for situations where Dictamus is confused by room sounds.


Comms
-----

Audio-Visual
............

• Skype. Even on the iPod Touch (with network connection), using a microphone-equipped headset. I have tested this: really great. Text, too, for when A/V isn't needed.

• Facetime. Apple's new audio-visual "telephone". (Originally only between hand-helds (iPhones & iPod touches) there is now Facetime for Macintosh, although it may cost a few bucks.) Wi-Fi only, even on iPhone.

Text
....

• AIM Free. AOL Instant messenger: real-time ("instant") TEXT messages with your iChat (Macintosh) or AIM "buddies". No voice. I have this in addition to Skype because I have friends who have only Apple's iChat.

• Whisper. Text-only via Bluetooth to Whisper on a nearby iOS device. Background notifications even if it isn't running on the target machine.

• (Text messaging over wi-fi to cell-phones. There are several free apps for sending text messages to cell-phones without cost to you. I have not used any of these because I have been unwilling to give someone else's cell # to a third party. There have been warnings that some developers of these things have been "sharing" such telephone numbers to spammers. Google may have such a feature; I might trust that one.)


Reference
---------

• Encyclopedia (Wikipedia offline). For settling bets in places where no wi-fi network is available. This isn't, apparently, quite all of Wikipedia, but it does seem to be most of it. (Text only, though.) $10 for the app; the download, which requires wi-fi and about three hours, is free.

• Wikipedia Mobile (online). "Live" access to all of Wikipedia in a format designed especially for small screens. Does require a network connection.
Note that the Safari browser does a good job with Wikipedia and other Web services _without_ a special app for each, and in fact sometimes the Safari view of Wikipedia seems superior to this one. There are several apps for viewing Wikipedia; this one is from the Wikipedia people themselves. Free.

• (Dictionary & thesaurus. There are several, including at least one of each that operates without a connection to the network. I have both kinds. Webster's is good.)


Translation & Units Conversion
------------------------------

• AppBox Lite. Several utilities for conversion of various units of measurement and such, and other functions:
Currency conversion, Date calculator, Price calculator, Units conversions (area, length, pressure, temperature, volume, and weight), and Clinometer (bubble level). Currency conversion requires network connection.

• (Language translation. There are several of these; they all require network connection, I think. Some have individual languages, some have several. Some are geared to spoken language, providing sound output; some do only written.


Music
-----

The iPod is a music machine, of course, so it's no surprise that there are quite a few music-related apps in addition to Apple's own thing.

• Pandora. This is the hand-held version of Pandora's very interesting presentation of what they call the "music genome project": You tell it what you like (by selecting music by composer, style, or performer/s), and it plays music like that. Have a look at Pandora online for further information. I use this quite a bit on my computer, and occasionally on my iPhod.

• (There are other streaming music apps; things that make the iTouch seems like a radio.)

• NPR News. Listen to news and other content from your favorite NPR stations.

• Identify music playing nearby: Two apps will use the microphone to listen to and identify music playing in grocery stores and restaurants: Shazam and SoundHound. Both do recorded music, but one of them also supports your "quoting" (by singing or etc.) music that you have heard and want identified. (Both require network connection.) Extremely cool!

• (Relaxation sounds. There are many apps that will play thunderstorms, nighttime crickets, and such. Several are from the same company and contain overlapping content. Sleep and wake timers are fairly common.)

• (Sleep & wake to iTunes music. Several apps use music from your local collection to play music for a preset period at bedtime, and several will do the same for waking in the morning. Some may do both. If you leave the device connected to a charger on your nightstand, and tell it not to sleep, it can function as a regular nighttime clock, too. It sets its time from the network, but I didn't watch to see what happened at the switch to summer time--whether it did it while it was asleep on my nightstand, or did it when awakened in the morning. If left awake as nightstand clock, I suppose it would just do it at the official time, 02:00. I did notice that on Macintosh, iCal would not permit me to make a Change Household Clocks event @ 02:00 Sunday morning of Saving Time days--because that time does not actually exist on that day.)


Memoranda
---------

When I decommissioned my Palm, I had a database of nearly 5,000 big and small notes about things I wanted to think about, to discuss with dinner companions of similar interests, to look up on the Web, to do, or to match when shopping (household measurements, model numbers, book titles, etc.).

As of 15 March 2010, Apple's iTouch software suite still doesn't sync notes over the air. We think it's coming, but it is apparently not here yet.

However, when the iTouch is cabled to the desktop computer, Apple's iOS Notes app does sync to a special place in the Macintosh Mail application or to Outlook on the PC. It's rather a kludge, but it does work, and it is searchable on either platform. However, when a note needs moving to the iTouch immediately before departure from the house, waiting five minutes or longer for a full sync is not always feasible. There are other solutions, including one that does not involve any kind of notes application.

• Evernote. This really is pretty great (except as discussed below). Lots of database functions, sortable & searchable; can include sounds and pictures. The picture thing is especially great: A picture of text can be searched as if it _were_ text. (Reasonable resolution assumed.) Take a picture of a magazine cover or page, and later find it again based on the words it contains. Even though my iPod lacks a camera, I could e-mail pix from my cellphone-cam to a special address associated with my Evernote account; that pic would show up a moment later (if the iPod were connected to the network). When wi-fi is available it syncs over the air in the background to a web service, and from there to the desktop machine. View/edit the database on the Web, on the home computer, or on the device.

All extremely cool, and everybody loves this. However, I concluded that it was unsuitable for my use on iPod Touch.

Only titles live on the device, so content is unavailable while one is in the car or wherever out of range of wi-fi. Some notes can be designated as special, but even that failed too many times over the course of my several months' experimenting. _All_ searching depends on network; it's done by the server, not on the device.

The iTouch client was a bit crash-y, too; I don't believe I ever lost anything, however--except for my peace of mind.

Nice as the desktop client was, moving text from it to other applications had two problems:

I never understood a really nasty copy-and-paste difficulty except to see that the character it used to mark paragraph ends sometimes disappeared from a document when the content was copied to other applications. This left the last word (and punctuation) of the previous paragraph and the first word of the next jammed together without even a space between, rendering such content unusable until after a little or a lot of work at reformatting. It seemed related not to what application was being copied to, but perhaps to where the content came from when first put into Evernote. I think.

Looked fine inside Evernote; was broken in other text editors: not gibberish, but very badly mis-formatted. Really, really, weird.

The other problem also has to do with text that has been stored (parked, archived, whatever) in Evernote: It cannot be smoothly exported (i.e., in bulk) to other programs, either.

I have come to realize that failure to import and export in standard formats is a deadly sin for a database program. The (presumably important) stuff is trapped there, and I find this unacceptable. Therefore:

• Simplenote (on iTouch). Text only, syncs over the air via a free web service, to any of several desktop clients. This is my memoranda database on the iTouch. View and edit on iTouch, home computer, or Web

• Notational Velocity (Macintosh). One of several Macintosh database applications that sync over the network with the Simplenote web service. This is very quick, simple, direct, and lightweight (as are most of them), and supports import and export in usable formats (as at least some of the others do).

• (There are other notes apps that sync, and many that don't. The good ones cost, but they tend to be prettier--frankly beautiful--and to have more features. Some sync to Google Docs, some to their own web-based systems, and some back to your own desktop--or combinations of those.)

• (There is even OCR--optical character recognition--that depends on the device's having a camera and a connection to the network. Like an iPhone. There is also a handwriting-recognition memoranda app. I believe both of these cost.)


Connectivity
------------

Using Wi-Fi and your home LAN (Local-Area Network), the iTouch can connect directly with your Macintosh. Documents of several types can be moved directly from the desktop computer to the iTouch, and Macintosh can be controlled, even _used_ remotely.

• Briefcase. Establishes a wireless connection (over your local wi-fi network, your LAN) to the desktop machine, which can be browsed for text, sound, PDFs, picture, and perhaps other kinds of files to be transferred to the hand-held. The app can then be used to display or play them. This is the very fastest and surest way to have a particular file on the device before heading out the door. Use it to put your book report or speech or whatever onto your iTouch for use away from your computer.

• Remote. Connects to Macintosh over your LAN to permit more or less full remote control of the iTunes music player on Macintosh or of the Apple TV: Selection, Play/Pause, Volume, etc.

• TouchMouse. In concert with a server on Macintosh (also free), iTouch can connect to Macintosh over your LAN, and serve as a trackpad for pointing and clicking on the Mac. Good for controlling movies from Hulu or NetFlix while Macintosh is connected to your TV and you are connected to your couch. This is by LogiTech, the computer peripherals people; there are several others along the same line.

• VNC (Virtual Network Computing). There are a number of applications that can connect to your desktop computer over your LAN (Local Area Network--wi-fi) to actually use your desktop computer, displaying a part of the screen so that clicking & typing are possible from the hand-held. (This can even be done over the Internet, but setup is more complex.) Requires complementary software running as "server" on the desktop computer.

• (There are some for using the iTouch like a flash drive on the desktop machine.)


Tasks & Lists
-------------

Apple supports task lists ("to-dos") on Macintosh (in Mail and iCal), but not on the iTouch. Nobody can explain this omission. There are dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of list-management apps for the iTouch, some of which are specialized for to-dos, some for groceries, and some for tasks.

Because I haven't found any one that does everything I think I need, I use a combination approach.

- Urgent items are in the note field of calendar events named appropriately. Such events have audible alerts so that I look at them in the morning or as needed. They can be either moved to the next day by hand (if needed), or they made to repeat event (which will then ask about your intentions when it is edited). When everything has been completed and/or moved away into the todo archive, the calendar event is deleted.
This isn't the sweetest possible solution, but it does work.
- Ordinary tasks for the near-medium future are in a fairly nice database: ReQall ("recall"; note the spelling). This one supports context, tags, dates (although no alarms as such), and persistent search groups. There is no Macintosh support, but the database is accessible on the Web. There is a special e-mail address to which an item can be sent; there is also a special iChat ID to which one can send a text message for creating an item, although it is not always available for some reason. Dated items can go into iCal (Macintosh).
- _Future/hypothetical_ stuff is in with my notes (currently Simplenote*), marked with the the hashtag "#todo" and sometimes with hashtags to indicate context. (#house, #travel, #auto, #computer, etc.) Note that some database/search software will fail to find the "do" in "todo", and so will fail to find "todo" in "#todo". This is both a feature and a nuisance; understand your software, and plan accordingly.


News & Weather
--------------

• AP (Associated Press)
• BBC News
• Economist
• HuffPost (Huffington Post
• New York Times
• NPR News
• Seattle Times
• Time Mobile
• Yahoo!

• AccuWeather.
• WUnderground (Weather Underground).
• Weather Quickie. Quick Weather Underground front-end.
• MyRadar.
• (Satellite view of cloud cover, animated: <http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=sew&area=west&type=vis&size=1>. I find this very interesting and useful. After you have zoomed and slid the display around to show the part of the map you prefer, use Mobile Safari's _Add to Home Screen_ to make an icon for quick access.)

• Shralp Tide. Free tides program; there are other free tides apps, but they are either inaccurate or require network access, or both. It's no Tide Tool, but it is quite nice, with both tabular and graphical displays. There are pay apps, too.
• Skyclock (Sunrise/set times.)
• (Moon ephemera are on some of the weather sites.)


Movies
------

I enjoy looking up information about movies (actors and shooting sites) while watching.

• IMDb. Internet Movie Database: Good for looking up information about movies (except for _now-playing_ info about current films). Yes, you could just use Apple's Safari browser. This is somewhat slicker and quicker.

• PhoneFlicks. Access to one's NetFlix queue.

• (There are quite a few apps for locating _now-playing_ information, and for playing trailers.)


Documents
---------

• Documents Free (mobile office suite). Edit Word & Excel files; sync to Google Documents, and open on desktop. (Online only.) There may be others like this.

• MiGhtyDocs. Open and cache Google Docs on the iTouch for offline access. (Read-only, alas.)

• (Several documents and notes apps sync with Google Docs. Typically, a document can be created on the iTouch, but not edited after uploading to Google Docs.)


Travel & Outdoors
-----------------

• Several name-brand travel information Web sites are represented in apps for iOS.
• A number of apps are dedicated just to finding places for camping and other information about spending time outdoors.
• Audubon, Peterson, and others have apps about birds and other fauna and flora.
• Columbia University, University of Maryland, and Smithsonian Institution are developing a series of electronic field guides that purports to be able (eventually) to return the identity of a tree by examining your photograph of its foliage. It also contains pictures for you to use in identifying. Currently only east coast, but eventually the continental U.S. <http://leafsnap.com>


Maps+
-----

Online
......

• Apple's Maps app. Can do some very interesting tricks:
- Make a route from _here_ to _there_, and display all of the turns and distances. If there is enough unsecured wi-fi around, it can even follow along as if it were a real GPS. (Not actually reliable, but interesting when it works.)
- "Yellow Pages": Search for "coffee" and watch location pins fall onto the map, pointing to where coffee can be had.
- Tap an address in the Contacts app, and be taken immediately to the Map of that location.

• Google Earth app.

• Dex (Yellow Page thing).

• (There are some other mapping things that don't depend upon GPS, one of which may support "open-source" or public-domain maps of some sort.)

Offline
.......

• MotionX. Using a GPS receiver connected either by cable or by Bluetooth, this is real GPS using maps you download for free from the Internet. Henry likes this.

• Several apps contain maps and guides to shopping malls. For those of us who don't spend enough time in them to have their layouts memorized.

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