SpyderGallery color calibration for iPad

September 3, 2014 by Jack Zimmermann Leave a Comment

Trying to display color corrected images on an iPad

A couple of weeks ago i bought the Spyder4Elite so I could color calibrate my Retina MacBook Pro 15“ and my Asus PA246 24” monitor. And the calibration works really well.

There is no way of color calibrate your iPad, because Apple has not given developers the ability to create or change the calibration of the screen. But Datacolor, the makers of the Spyder4 line of calibrators has solved the problem by making an app that connects to your Mac via your network and use the calibrator to calibrate their app called SpyderGallery. This enables you to see calibrated versions of your pictures inside the viewer. But the calibrated data only works in the SpyderGallery app.

[Read more…]

Airmail for Mac a Great Replacement for Apple Mail

August 14, 2014 by Jack Zimmermann 14 Comments

Update to the update 2018

Still my favorite email client, and I’m now also blessed with a version for iPad and my iPhone. It’s up to version 3. It never crashes, and the search is fast and excellent. Best email client ever!

Update 2016-02-16

I’m still using Airmail now, two years after I wrote this post. It has never failed me in any way. It’s now up to version 2. I guess Apple has probably fixed a lot of the problems they had back then when connecting to Gmail. And let’s face it, Google changed a lot from the original IMAP standard, so everyone had to keep up. But I’m sticking with Airmail 2. Now there’s even an excellent version for Airmail for iOS. And you’ll feel right at home. It also syncs your settings from your Mac OS X application, so now I have an HTML signature on my iPhone. Yay! The only complaint is that they did the app for iPhone only and not an iPad version. In a perfect world, it should have been a universal app. But hopefully, they’ll fix that in the coming months.

Airmail, my new favorite mail client

After Mac OS X 10.8, Apple Mail has been going downhill by every update. It’s weird because the iOS Mail app is rock solid. I have my email domain on Google Apps, and I know that Gmail doesn’t follow the IMAP standard, instead choosing to do it their way. So they use tags instead of folders, etc. The blame has to be put on Google for not following standards but is a significant player; you can pretty much set your own rules. Anyway, Apple Mail has become a slow, unreliable application although they have fixed some of the more severe problems in the latest release. For the first time in many years, I was on the lookout for a new email client software.

Time to find a new Mail Client

I wanted to be able to have both of my private and work email accounts in the same program but have them separate to make life easier, and after searching the net, I found an application called Airmail. The feature list is comprehensive to the point of me not wanting to list all the features here, but follow the link to get a lowdown on all the things the application can do. I’ll go through the things that persuaded me to switch.

[Read more…]

Overcast iPhone Podcast App

July 31, 2014 by Jack Zimmermann Leave a Comment

Overcast makes it fun to listen to Podcasts again

After reading a lot about a new podcast app called Overcast created by Marco Arment, famous for creating Instapaper I downloaded the app just to check it out. I love Instapaper, an app that really has made me appreciate long form journalism, so I thought I’ll try to see if Overcast could make me interested in listening to podcasts again, something I haven’t done in a while.

[Read more…]

Pogo Connect Bluetooth pen and How To Kill It

July 7, 2014 by Jack Zimmermann Leave a Comment

Pogo Connect, washed and dried

A year ago I bought myself a Pogo Connect Bluetooth touch sensitive pen. I’ve been very happy with it during the year I’ve used it. The most amazing thing with it is the battery life. It’s insane! Throughout the time I owned it, I never needed to change the battery. It uses low power Bluetooth, so it only works with newer iPads and iPhones that support Bluetooth Smart.

[Read more…]

MultiMarkdown on iPad iPhone Revisited

July 7, 2014 by Jack Zimmermann Leave a Comment

MultiMarkdown on iPad – an update

I have updated my list over how well iPad Markdown writing apps handle the more advanced MultiMarkdown rendering. I also added some new apps to the list of the features I tested. Since I wrote the article, a new favourite writing app of mine, Editorial has been added to the list, and also IA Writer which now has MultiMarkdown support.

Almost all of the apps on the list supports Dropbox syncing, so writing in one application and rendering it in another that supports the features you need isn’t to hard. And with the enormous potential for scripting provided by Editorial, using x-callback-url schemes to send the text to another app for final rendering is pretty easy.

x-callback-url

You can read an article here about x-callback-url and URL schemes and how they work. There’s a web site with a database over x-callback-url supported apps and the commands that you can use.