haniblog

They’ve done it again, those Tapbots boys. Pastebot the third iPhone app they’ve released, after Weightbot and Convertbot and they’re getting better every time.

Pastebot is a clipboard manager for your iPhone and your Mac. Quite simply, with this app anything you copy, image, text or link can be pasted into Pastebot. Run the app, hold down on the item and it will be put into the iPhone’s clipboard to be pasted anywhere. The magic really happens when you get Pastebot Sync, a free system prefpane on OS X. Once connected with the iPhone when it’s running Pastebot, anything you copy on your Mac will automagically transfer to the app on the iPhone. Copy an image, a block of text (with formatting), html, video or an mp3 file and it pops into a slot in the iPhone.

Now how would this be useful? Here are a few recipes I picked up from different websites. As you can see I copied the recipe image and text and Pastebot did it’s duty and created slots for each item. The really cool thing is if I hold down on any image or text on the app it’s pasted into the current running application on my Mac! This operation is so quick it feels as if I hit ⌘-V on the keyboard.

Click to see the full interface.

As with the previous apps Tapbots conjure up, the interface is magnificent. Guys, you’ve done it again. Pastebot costs a paltry £1.79 in the App Store.

Barely a day after the iPad introduction and everyone and their next-door neighbour’s cousin’s friend’s dog has an opinion on the new device. I think the ratio of the number of people who have actually used one over the people opining are probably 1:20,000,000 or so.

“It’s just a big iPhone!”

“No camera and no flash!”

As everyone who knows me knows I’m an unabashed Apple fanboy and my opinion? I’m very impressed and I think I see the potential, but I am also ambivalent. I’ll wait until I hold one and try it myself. Everyone who was actually at the keynote and tried the iPad is completely won over, from John Gruber to Stephen Fry to Michael Pusateri. Money quote from the latter:

I am a technology professional. For almost 20 years I’ve tested, used, broke, fixed, and played with all kinds of technology from broadcasting to air conditioning to software. I am not easily swayed in these things. But even with all my skepticism, I think the iPad is something different. A new way of computing that will become commonplace.

Of course it’s called iPad! What was I thinking of? No clues yet on pricing or availability in the UK but with current exchange rates it should start at £300. Which makes it a nice birthday present, no?

This feels just like how it was before the iPhone was revealed, doesn’t it? The Tablet will be announced 6.00pm London time and I have to admit that I’m a teensy bit excited. Today’s tablet rumour video looks slick now but how will it appear after the event?

Seriously though, I love how Apple work so incredibly hard to make me a birthday present.

With Apple’s special event happening this Wednesday I thought it would be fun to feature the best Tablet mockups over the next few days. Today’s video rumour is a Tablet running an Ikea app (in Pounds Sterling, no less!). Enjoy!

There’s been a huge volume of speculation on the rumoured Tablet and now it’s all but confirmed. Apple sent out invites to the press for a special event next week and the rumour mill has now changed into the cast of CSI: Apple Invite. Among the names for the new device, the two that seem to have stuck are iSlate and Apple Tablet but a recent comment on Twitter by Cabel Sasser just lit a big lightbulb over my head. My Apple predictions have been ropey, to say the least, but that comment along with the invite design above, seems to fit.

So, Apple Canvas?

I’m not one for complacency so I sometimes throw out what I’m used to and start again. I bought a MacBook Pro recently and started fresh with only my MobileMe sync to get me going. Actually I’m typing this on my second-new MacBook Pro since the first one had wobbly feet which Apple replaced with, again, no quibbles.

Like any long-time Mac user, Safari was always my main browser but there have been times where I’ve had Firefox, Camino and even Opera as my default. I almost always go back to Safari after a while and shake my head at my folly. This is the browser, I’d say to myself.

And here we go again with Google’s Chrome. But after two days I’m encouraged and I really like what I see. The tabs are brilliantly organised and much better than the short-lived Safari beta implementation. My favourite feature so far is the Omnibox. Most other browsers have an address box along with a separate search box on the side. Chrome combines the two into a “How could I have lived without this?!?” feature. Type in any search term into the address field and Google Suggest finds relevant sites for you. Or go for an URL you know and it’s there. Brilliant.

Chrome is also snappy to launch and quite a fast browser. I’ll forcibly use this for this week and then switch back to Safari to see if I miss anything Chrome-wise.

Updates to follow.

UPDATE 15th Jan: What? No auto-RSS detection? Am I missing something? And no Mac Extensions yet. Crap.

UPDATE 18th Jan: Right it’s back to Safari for this week to compare.

UPDATE 30th Jan: Safari it is I’m afraid. Chrome was snappy and responsive, as I stated previously, but there’s a feeling of gimmicky-ness that I just couldn’t shake.

Click for a larger view.

Amazon finally released a free iPhone app for the UK. Aside from searching for items as you would using a normal browser, this app has an interesting feature called Amazon Remembers. It will let you take a photo of an item you’re interested in, upload the photo and Amazon will try to find it for you. Yes, you read that right. Amazon will analyse the photo and match it to the items available for purchase.

Actually, that’s partly incorrect. The service doesn’t computationally analyse the photo, it uses Mechanical Turk to farm the job out to people who match the photo with items Amazon sells. Mechanical Turk is their online market place for people to carry out repetitive data-based menial jobs for a few cents per task.

When I tried the Remembers feature, the results came back within 15 minutes of the upload. I took a photo of our juicer and kettle and sent them off. The juicer was matched perfectly but it returned a coffee machine instead of the kettle. I’m sure the service will be refined and only improve over time.

It’s clear that Apple created a very compelling platform on which developers are using in inventive and brilliant ways.

Thanks to a tip on MacOSXHints, in Snow Leopard if you need to know how much space is available on the internal drive, just highlight the drive icon on the desktop and then press space to invoke Quick Look. It’ll display the drive size and remaining space.