iMessage - A Real Game Changer.

I always knew that iMessage was a game changer, but I never really realized how much of a game changer it was until I traveled abroad.  During my travels, I had to turn off all cellular data and essentially use the iPhone as an expensive iPod, until I realized that a few apps would save me from ridiculous phone bills upon my return.

First, you should and must download SKYPE.  It is a necessity.  Without it, my phone calls back to the United States would have been over $1 per minute after all of the overage charges were assessed.  But iMessage, with its reliance on only WiFi*, which was available at a lot of the hotels, family homes and businesses made texting to and from many of the Caribbean and Atlantic Islands a real possibility.  Not only was it a wonderful addition to my armament, it was fast and free!   Although many in the Caribbean use an app called WhatsApp to deliver text messages, I was a little queasy about giving up my 500 member Contacts list to a third party developer while outside of the U.S.  What was nice was the fact that just about all of the people that I needed to contact carried iPhones.  It meant that even in small villages, I could still communicate quite easily with friends and family, as long as I had WiFi.  For those who did not have an iPhone, WhatsApp would have sufficed as well.

The wonderful thing about iMessage is its ability to be completely non discriminatory when it came to texting data.  I sent an 80 mbyte video easily to a family member during a diving trip without a hiccup.  And when I was ready, I used Skype to communicate with folks in London and New York.





Granted, I wasn't knee deep in the Amazon rain forest, for which this whole WiFi scenario would have been moot, but the Caribbean and Atlantic islands are immersed in intermittent WiFi - the quality of which is not equal unfortunately, but it affords a few free avenues of communication if you have a smart phone - and one particularly brilliant and flawless avenue if you have an iPhone.




Addendum:

Interestingly, for all of the chatter about Facetime on 3G/4G, I did not use it at all during my travels.  I don't know why, but it didn't really feel necessary.  Something I found rather interesting.  Perhaps not everyone is as interested in seeing you as much as they are in just talking to you.


*  Facetime was not available on 3G when I originally penned this article in August, 2012.

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The Magnificent 7: A brief look at Jack Of All Trades Software....

HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One CM750A#B1H

 

Software  is the bane of our existence on our Smart phones.  It is what separates one phone from another.  But Software is nothing if all it represents is a way to make money for the developer and to have the user engage in mindless banter.   As a Physician, I am often looking for simpler ways to do things  - Recalling trivial facts, important formulas, dosages of medications in age specific populations etc.  In the past I used my Palm Pilot, but the iPhone (and for that matter, the Droid and other Smart phones) has set the bar so high that it is a wonder how I ever lived without the device. From work to play, the smart phone, and for the sake of simplicity I'll constantly refer to the iPhone since it created the genre (yes, you could argue Palm),  we have all been transformed, changing the way that we do things, from looking up directions to asking questions.  

But outside of this I look for medical reasons to use this device as well.  That's where things get a little more difficult.  A lot of so called Medical Apps are "Health" Apps, oriented towards patients.  Some of the Medical Apps are still rudimentary first generation Apps, transported from Palm to the iPhone.  For example iSilo hasn't really changed since its Palm days.  A few Apps have been a bit more innovative, but require a major leap of faith due to cost.  $50-$90 is a large leap of faith for an App.

And then there are the Apps that are not really medical, but can be used in a myriad of situations.   I love these Apps the most and I call these the "Jack-of-all-trades" Apps.  Here is a listing of my newly cloned Magnificent 7:  Jack of all trades apps:

Say Hi 

 This, to date, is the most innovative and impressive App for language translation that I have ever seen.   I discovered it completely by accident, looking for something else.  Say Hi is an App that has an interesting twist.  Instead of typing your phrase in English, you speak your phrase into the microphone and watch as the dictation comes up in near perfect English and the translation to whatever language you choose occurs simultaneously.

The dictation element is smartly handled by Nuance, while the translation is done by the company.  And I have to tell you it is very accurate.  In response to a question that I asked recently, I was told by a company representative that the company has developed its own "sauce" for the translations so you are not looking at a clone of Google Translate.  In terms of accuracy, I cannot believe it.  I would say easily 99% most of the time and 95% for a brief period.   It even understands Medical Spanish.   And yes, "Dos Cervezas por favor," was easily translated to English, making it a perfect travel App as well :).

iGenApps My App

I wrote about this App earlier.  A real game changer that will transform the way many simple Apps are made and distributed.  I do not think that it will challenge the official App store in any way, but it is definitely a game changer.  This is still, in my opinion, a proof of concept App showing you that it is possible to create a simple App for yourself without spending any more money or having any knowledge of Objective-C, the programming language of iOS - the operating system of the iPhone.  There are some draw backs, including storing your stuff on someone else's server; not being certain how much private data you can leave in the App and as someone pointed out, not knowing if the data stored in your App is searchable via a search engine.  This is especially true for address book Apps that are easy to make on the iPhone with the MyApp software.   Another weakness is the inability to create standard, stand alone non web Apps.  But for simple tasks, such as a web based bookmark or a simple address book or even a simple company web app to introduce your company, it's quite good.   The finished product, the App is also accessible in all mobile phones, not just the iPhone.

A full detailed report to follow on this game changer. 

Addendum:  I was just informed of a competitor called App.cat.  I haven't used it yet, but it looks interesting also. 

Tweetbot

Tweetbot has been around for a while and really, if you have an iPhone you are essentially wasting your time, your patience and your mind looking at any other App to cover Twitter.  There simply isn't anything on the market that comes close to this App.  It is perhaps the best App ever written for Twitter on the iPhone.  I know, you think it's Hyperbole, akin to my Video Player blog posts, but seriously, don't waste your time downloading anything else if you have an iPhone.  This App actually makes tweeting fun.  And the developers continue to improve on perfection.  Unless you use Twitter none of this makes any sense.  But this weekend as I traversed this great country of ours I was able to see the goings on at other conferences and "hear" about other events, books, presentations etc.  Twitter is amazing.  And it is all the more amazing when you have an App that understands Twitter and how Twitter works.  

In terms of its medical uses, I have run into several authorities on medicine and have actually asked for advice in some instances.  Every one's essentially equal and many people on Twitter are quite receptive and willing to answer questions.  If I'm on call, I can find someone else in the USA or somewhere far such as Australia or New Zealand who is on call too and we can commiserate together.   Amazing.

It's also a great place to meet fellow physicians and people in your medical circle.   Surprisingly, when I joined Twitter I had no intention of having any physicians follow me, but many did, along with other non physicians.   I am really happy that they did and I am really happy that others follow me too.  It's innovative and a fast learning environment.   

One of the greatest things about Twitter is the early dissemination of news.  I figure that we will know the results of the General Election long before CBS or any of the other networks get around to it just by looking at the trending data.   If you haven't signed up, you should.   Tweetbot makes everything easy, even translating your foreign tweets for you. 

Instapaper

Okay, there are a few Apps that you should always have around on your iPhone or on your Desktop.  This is one of them.  The other is Evernote, although you may have some issues with your Firewall, if you have that cumbersome Websense Firewall at your job.   Instapaper is a brilliant App that essentially saves your articles in a stripped down format, leaving only the articles and the pictures.  No ads and no cumbersome pop ups or pop unders.  Well worth every penny that its founder and programmer Marco Arment charges for it.   A great application for journal articles.  It is also found in Tweetbot.

Evernote

If your company allows you to store articles, documents and other stuff in your personal cloud, then Evernote is brilliant, inexpensive cloud storage.  However a serious caveat here.  Don't go around storing patient information on Evernote, especially if it is easily identifiable.  That is a no-no and totally HIPAA non compliant.   The potential to do this is why it's banned in my neck of the woods.   Other than that, it's a brilliant App.  Especially useful for colorful brochures, manuscripts and long form documents.   It was one of the first truly utilitarian cloud Apps that made it easy to store and access documents from your smart phone, desktop and just about anything that could access Evernote.  In 2009, I truly felt that my data could be accessed from anywhere and I wasn't tied to a computer.  

Week Cal


Have you ever wished that your calendar could do more than just show dots on a screen?  Did you know that if you open up the calendar App that comes with your iPhone and turn it sideways, you will get an overlay view, albeit not perfect, but present anyway so that you can see if you have any scheduling conflicts.  Not a lot of people know about this and that's not your fault.   Apple doesn't exactly broadcast that you can actually do this with the Calendar App. 


It also doesn't mention, because there isn't an ability to do so, the ability to view your calendar in many different ways, from task, mini-month, week, among others.   Nor does it have emoticons and other color changes for meetings, major and minor alerts, URL, Contacts and notes.  That's because Week Cal is able to do all of these things.  More importantly, the makers of Week Cal, didn't just make a calendar program that stands alone with no integration, it is fully integrated into the indigenous calendar App that Apple provides with the iPhone.  So, if you make a change in Week Cal, it shows up in the Calendar App.  If you make a change in the Calendar App, it shows up in Week Cal.  It's literally seamless.   If you want to make just a simple entry for say tomorrow's grand rounds there's no reason to use Week Cal, just open up the regular Apple Calendar App and do so.  But if you want to make that Grand Rounds occur every second Thursday of the month, you will need to have Week Cal. 


Oh, and do you support a major Football/Soccer/Hockey team?  Or do you need to know exactly when Apple will report something big?  Or does your company have a RSS calendar of events?  You can subscribe to premium calendars in Week Cal and get an overlay of upcoming games and announcements right in your calendars. 


Worth every penny.  I cannot live without this one. 




1Password



This one's been covered elsewhere, so I won't belabor the point here.  But if you have an institution like mine that changes its passwords for logins at least once per month and you have a plethora of numbers and logins to remember ( 15 for me at any month), then you need to invest in 1Password.  It's a little expensive on the desktop side, but your peace of mind is so worth the investment. 


1Password will also log into websites for you if you have the login set up, thus thwarting those pesky key loggers.   Another one that I cannot live without. 






So, do you have a Jack-of-all-trades pick?  Why not list it here and share it with the world?   Remember, Jack-of-all-trades refers to the app being able to be used in a number of different occupations and not whether the app does a gazillion things (ie. AppBox Pro). 

Thanks for stopping by...

LDD. 

HP LaserJet Pro P1102w Printer CE657A#BGJ

Still waiting for THE Apple TV

Currently I have two Apple TV2's.  I picked up the "hockey puck" style device the first week it came out and considered it a work of wonder.  The idea of having no on board hard drive or "Mega Memory" didn't faze me.  Netflix adoption was the key and I was satisfied with the idea that on any given friday or saturday, sitting with my family, we could order a movie from Apple's large library of new releases or find a movie or show on Netflix.  Along the way, we suddenly noticed that we wanted to re watch some of our older movies and actually watch a few of the movies that were given to us for birthdays and holidays.  We rarely used a DVD player thus saving a copy of the movie on the computer was beneficial.  But it became cumbersome.  Add to that, the idea of converting formats for older films, the whole thing became burdensome.

With that in mind, I picked up a second ATV2 device with the intent of modifying it completely.  I looked around and considered Firecore, but decided that this would be better if I did the whole modification myself.  I was able to keep the installation nimble, using up very little memory and installed only the programs that I needed.  XBMC became the go to product.  With XBMC, there were issues that were eventually worked out, including the intermittent playback issues of movies encoded in Apple's .MV4, the defacto for the AppleTV.   However, I was able to watch other movies from my NAS server without problems.   More importantly, I did not need to have a computer on to stream movies to the Apple TV.  A simple NAS drive with AFP or SMB protocols did the trick.   Surprisingly, I was even able to play back 1080p MKV files without problems or hiccups.

Along the way, the family decided that it would be good for my psyche to pick up an old BOXEE device.  They got it on the cheap and I was a happy camper.  Something else to tinker with.  Although the software was not as refined as the Apple TV, I was impressed by its ability to stream anything and everything with impunity.   It was even able to Airshare and 1080p was the defacto setting.  Without a doubt, Boxee, with its 150+ apps was a winner and I found myself watching less and less of the Apple TV.  However, my wife and kids still loved the ATV hockey puck.  Whether it was the hacked version or the unadulterated one, they went back to Apple's simplicity - the one remote control with its minimalist buttons.  Everything about it was better for them.  And to be honest, the UI was just simple to use.

The New Apple TV Apps/Home Page

So imagine my dismay last night when I updated the ATV2 (vanilla device, not the hacked one) and saw what appeared to be a very close cousin of the Boxee UI. Additionally, imagine my dismay at the finding that one can only select two screen sizes - Standard and 720p.  The ATV2 has the A4 chip, the same chip found in the iPhone 4, which by the way can also handle 1080 p videos without a glitch.  The new ATV3 has the new A5 chip which is supposedly the reason why it can handle 1080p.  However, as many of the hackers have already proven, the A4 chip found on the current ATV2 can handle 1080 p without problems.  This begs the question - Why is 1080p only allowed in the new Apple TV and not the current model?

The Boxee Apps Page

Additionally, why is Apple skimping on the Apps?  Boxee has 150+ Apps, including the Wall Street Journal, Netflix and Vimeo which are found prominently on the ATV iOs 5.0 .  These incremental adjustments may be making way for what I believe is an inevitability.   I believe that this is an incremental upgrade in the grand scheme of things.  It is a move akin to the iPhone 3G to 3GS.   There is really nothing in the new Apple TV that would warrant a major purchase.  The hardware serial numbers or markers are probably preventing 1080p downloads from Apple's servers.   And this again must mean that Apple is planning on making the hockey puck obsolete within the next 12 months.  Obsolescence is always started and concluded by Apple and not by its competition.  If the reports are true, expect the next great release of hardware to be a real television or a totally revised Apple TV.

Still waiting for an Apple device that reads from a NAS drive without iTunes.

iPhonedoc.

Dear Amazon and Apple, We Need Family Accounts

We live in a land that has food, clothing, water and electricity.   We have gadgets that make a mockery out of those shown in the 60's.  We have bought into the commercialization of "must have it" gadgets, not just as individuals, but as a group and more aptly, as a family.   So why is it that after falling for all of the commercials, rantings and sales pitches, we the people cannot get two of the best companies in retail to get their acts together and create a family account?

Both companies have succeeded in getting consumers to purchase multiple devices that bare their name.  With integration via Whispersync for Amazon and now iCloud for Apple, both companies have made it possible to download files to all devices - ie Kindles or iPod Touches, iPhones etc from one account, without having to pay additional funds for the privilege.

But where both companies fall short is in the implementation of a real family account.  Apple has iTunes linked to one owner.  All who own an Apple device who want to share from the same iTunes account, must have links to the same Apple ID.  Hence, your son's iPod Touch must use the Master ID to access iTunes and download media.   It's not a bad system, particularly if you download apps, but recently, with the advent of iCloud, the system has gotten a little more disturbing.  Apple assumes that all devices - your kids, your wife's, etc - linked to the iTunes Apple ID account all belong to one person - the person with the Apple ID.  So, it will automatically download an app to your wife's iPod, kid's iPod Touch etc., without your permission.  This includes songs and other things as well.  It may not be in your best interest to do this all of the time and it can become downright annoying.

Amazon's system is a lot worse because it revolves around books.  For the Apple iBook store the same problem applies, but since Amazon's main dish is books, this is more of a problem.  I recently purchased Kindles for my kids.  I have a lot of books in my archive space - this is Amazon's cloud storage for your books (a nice system since you can archive 100's of books and only keep a few on your Kindle, thus saving space).  Due to the fact that both kids will be reading the same books a few years apart from each other for required reading at school, it behooves them to have the same account.  I have found out that the master account, which is mine, is not the best place to do that.   My son, in no time flat, began downloading free books without a password and is now only steps away from ordering from Amazon with One-Click to my credit card !  As of Christmas day, one required a credit card to open an account at Amazon and an email address.  So I will have to create a whole separate account with a prepaid credit card to "Stop The Madness."

Both of these solutions are obviously riddled with problems.  Both were created with one end user in mind and both systems have not modified their programming to include multiple users in the same household.  Both have successfully placed commercials showing the benefits of kids having a device with happy, smiling family faces and cute little children pressing touch screens.  But the reality is this. If you're on Amazon and you've got yourself a Kindle and a host of cheap Kindles for your family, your 8 year old could be downloading from your archive Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians or the unabridged works of James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence!   Apple is not immune to this.  The same holds true for their iBook store as well.

What we need is the following:


1.  A Master Account (MA).

       This account would tie all of the other accounts together and would have an Archive that may or may not be visible to those who have a secondary account tied to the main account.       This would be similar to Windows/Linux/OSX Main account in the OS. 

2.  Secondary Accounts (SA).

        Secondary Accounts link to the Master Account with separate permissions in place, ie.  Each secondary account may have its own password and download books to the Master Account, but  release the book to anyone tied to the Master Account (MA). 

        The holder of the Master Account (MA) would have full access to all Secondary Accounts including the ability to terminate Secondary Accounts and to not download from the MA archives.  Additionally, it would have the ability to shield secondary accounts from actually seeing the entire catalog of the Master Account and allow visibility access to only those who get permission to view it.        

I am sure that more restrictions could be placed, such as limiting the secondary accounts to no more than six people living in the same household or something like that.  But this would eliminate the multiple separate accounts that need to be created for both Amazon and Apple in order to separate media from kids.  The way that this exists now means that if you own Amazon Account A, you cannot download books belonging to the same family member with Amazon Account B.  In the Master and Secondary account structure detailed above, the parent will still have control over the subsidiary accounts and not have to purchase an item twice.

TIPD.


Attributes:

Liz Peeking Picture taken from Scholastic (http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/games/coloring/liz_peeking.htm)

Side by Side  taken from Step up to the Call blog (http://stepuptothecall.blogspot.com/2010/08/review-kindle-3-first-impressions.html)

Why Siri Matters.....

The iPhone4S has been derided as a minor upgrade by many in the press, but its presenters were somber for reasons that became apparent 24 hours later to the public.  But the highlight of the presentation was SIRI - a software Artificial Intelligence program built into the 4S. 

I have been using Siri on my iphone 4 for the past year, but it was only useful for restaurants.  I did not really need it for anything else.  What Apple has done is to transform Siri into an Artificial Intelligence application that not only obeys commands - something that the Android users have been ranting about for over a year - but appreciates context.   I am not going to go into specifics because you can view that on You tube

Where Siri comes into play is in the arena of disabilities.  At the end of the video above is a young blind lady using the device. She is able to dictate a message replying to a message that was received.  In regards to this, someone jokingly responded on Youtube that she would have to find the phone to use it.  But jokes aside, this is a really useful tool if you are disabled.  Not just for the blind.

I have a patient who was once a computer programmer and who worked as a nuclear scientist, but is now confined to working in a hardware store due to his disability.  He became disgruntled 2 years ago because his Parkinsons disease was not responding to his medications.  He was unable to write things down, but was able to work and live on his own.  He relied on his telephone - then a Palm Treo because he was able to tap the keys for appointments.  He came up with his own syntax, shortening words as much as possible.  So he would use "mn" for morning "tk" for take etc.  It would take him 2 minutes to type a sentence.  He was weary of buying an iPhone because of the lack of tactile feedback, but he welcomed the ability to do one thing that he saw on a presentation a year ago.  Phil Schiller presented a special feature in the email app that made my patient smile.  Since he used his device to mainly to make appointments and to attempt to answer email, he was able to tap on a date in his email and an appoinment would be automatically set up.  I actually do this a lot with email invitations and conferences.  The following is from About.Com on how to do this with your iPhone, if you have not done it before (http://email.about.com/od/iphonemailtips/qt/How-to-Create-Calendar-Events-from-Emails-in-iPhone-Mail.htm).


Yet, he took back the iPhone, because it was too difficult to type.  He needed the tactile feedback.  He settled for a regular Razr because of the predictive text, before eventually buying a Blackberry.  I couldn't understand the Razr purchase, but understood the tactile issues necessitating the need for the Blackberry.   But through it all, I remember him saying the following:  "If I could just tell the damn thing what to do, I'd be happy."  He had tried a Droid in the store, but found it lacking in some of the features that he needed.  It is possible that the iPhone 4S may be the phone that he needs.  Obviously real world use will dictate the reality of this device, but it looks promising for the many people with disabilities.

If he has not done so already, I plan to show him the video above when he comes to his next appointment.  For those missing the importance of Siri, which appears to be hardware dependent and hence the importance of the iPhone 4S, you should know that for many disabled people, the sheer act of holding a phone in one hand can be as difficult as writing a note.   For the patient in question, his constant shaking, particularly when he becomes nervous, makes writing near impossible and texting a chore.  This is why Siri matters.