Owners of business big or small always benifit from talking with other business owners. When that isn’t possible, just reading what people in the industry has to say can be enlightening to enforce what you know or start a new idea.
A source of this is the American Express’s OPEN Forum area where very smart people write articles on what they have seen, tried, failed with and succeeded with. One of those spots you access articles by Guy Kawasaki, Ann Field and many others that you wont fine elsewhere.
If you have visited the site, there is an endless supply of content to read… which usually means that you can’t get away from your computer monitor. Lucky for us, American Express has released a free app to access the content.
The American Express OPEN Forum app opens to an ‘ALL’ articles tab and the most recent articles. If you wish to narrow the subject to location, money or technology, choose that tab across the top. The search (upper right corner) is a nice touch if your in a particular industry or have a unique interest at the moment.
Moving across the options at the bottom of the screen, you can see what is popular amongst other readers, jump the a list of the writers (Experts), and articles you have saved for later.
If you choose one of the Experts, your presented with a list of articles written by that author no matter what group that article falls in.
Selecting an article takes you to the full article, complete with links (these will open to Web pages outside of the app in a browser) and adjustable font size (two sizes to choose from). The content scrolls up/down for quick skimming if your looking just for the highlights.
As any regular reader of my posts know, I love to share with others when I find something I have enjoyed reading. The list is what you would hope it to be… Facebook, Twitter and eMail. A logical bonus method of sharing is through Linked In. It seems like a natural fit since the American Express OPEN Forum is all about bringing Business people together. Here, the mobile access to the articles doesn’t limit you from telling your Linked In business contacts about a article they may find important too.
Posted in For the Business user, News.
Tagged with access anywhere, American Express OPEN Forum, Business articles, energizing the business owner, enlightening content, for business owners, free iphone app, read on the iPhone, top authors, useful information.
By admin
– August 31, 2010
Picked up my iPhone this morning to see very happy news!
Yes, it is an alarm from the universal F1 app saying that the mid season ‘off’ time for F1 is over and there are cars going fast at Belgium. The first practice the screen mentions isn’t shown in the US so I jumped right in to see what was going on.
As I mentioned earlier, the F1 app will show an event in progress or you can download any of the events from the season from Practice 1, 2, Qualifying and the Race. The second Practice will be on TV shortly so I buzzed through these first laps to catch up on the news.
Landscape view so we can zoom in on the actual car locations…
Both views have the streaming news feature which is nice for us with limited TV coverage to stay up on the latest breaking news. F1 fans, if you go look for the app, they don’t call it the ‘F1′ app, instead it’s Timing ’10 CP – works on both the iPhone and iPad.
Posted in Fun, News.
Tagged with 2010 F1, end of vacation, F1 events on the iPhone, F1 off season, morning alert, race timing, real time steaming, recorded events, universal race app.
By admin
– August 27, 2010
If you saw the last Apple Keynote, it was let out that we would be getting Netflix movie streaming on our iPhones ‘soon’. The app has been a hit on the iPad since the day it was released. Watching movies and TV shows… just about anytime and anywhere, over WiFi of course. Talking with others, it seems that documentaries have gotten a huge increase of viewers when you can choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch via your mobile device (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch).
Today, time at work as we know it just ended! Well, maybe the ride to the office and at break time.
If you have a regular Netflix account, shows come to you as simple as installing the app and logging in. It is a ‘free’ universal app so grab and go. Netflix opens to show your regular home page list of show groups and links to movies you are in progress with. Genres, Search and Instant Que is available through the buttons at the bottom.
Choose a group to see a list of names and show thumbnails, swipe to scroll and load more… and more and more…
Tapping a show results in the description. You can add to your list of shows to watch later or ‘play’ to nave Netflix start the show now. Notice that if the ‘show’ is a series, you can choose which episode you want to watch instead of having to watch one stream of shows end-to-end.
Shows are streamed in Landscape view – switch between letterbox and full screen anytime while playing. As well, the usual progress bar and volume/play controls are available.
Start a Netflix movie on your iPhone while on the go, watch later on the iPad where you left off. Or on your notebook/desktop… progress in sync across the many different devices.
Posted in Fun, News.
Tagged with choose genres, documentaries on the iPad, free iphone app, free universal app, full season of shows, letterbox movies, Netflix for the iPhone, Netflix movie streaming, sync movies.
By admin
– August 26, 2010
The free Fotopedia Heritage app gives you direct access to their 890 sites containing over 20,000 images. There is no need to search around for a location and then through a ton of average pictures to find one that is of someplace fun and interesting. Then, try to find out more info on that location.
Heritage gives you a quick way to find increadable images from all around the world. You can drill in for more information and share that information out to your friends. You can also quickly find additional images from that location. As if that isn’t enough, you can choose the world globe to see a pinned map taking you right to the place in the world for that particular image.
Selecting the ‘i’ will give you more data on the area the picture is from. Swipe up and down for information from a variety of sources.
Continued…
Posted in Fun.
Tagged with 000 image source, 20, additional area images, amazing pictures, Fotopedia Heritage resource, free iphone app, location information, pictures from around the world, points of interest, universal app.
By admin
– August 23, 2010
For the latest two iPhones, you can choose where the camera focuses on by tapping the screen prior to snapping the picture. If your dealing with dark/light areas, taping will change how the camera sees the whole area. Tapping dark will cause the brighter areas to wash out, tap the lighter area and the dark areas go black.
An app I use all the time when I want to take a picture that had light and dark areas is Pro HDR. I have written about it before. Using the app, you tap the bright area which the camera adjusts for, takes a picture. Then you tap the dark area, the camera adjusts, takes another pic, then marries the two together. It takes a bit longer and an extra couple finger taps but you get images that are just like what you would see with your eyes.
Pro HDR was just updated with an ‘auto’ option. Now, you tap once, the camera adjusts all through the range, goes back and snaps two images on it’s own, merges the two together and gives you a finished image.
iOS4 has given us a much faster camera action, which I enjoy when just snapping pics. When I have a bit more time and there are not moving objects, I use Pro HDR. It does require you stand still for about 10 seconds, but the output is well worth is.
Here is an example of the two images joining. Normally you would choose either outside or inside to be clear (viewable brightness, not focus). Pro HDR also aligns the two images since you most likely move a little between the shots being taken.
After merging and aligning, you are given a chance to adjust the overall new image to tune to what your looking for.
The final image is full size that the iPhone is able to do, no quality and size loss.
The above window shot was just to show something dramatic so you can see what is possible. More along the lines of what I use the app for every day is product and landscape shots. Below, normally you would have the wood or the MiFi bright and the other dark or washed out. With this image, I did crop to fit my need using Photogene. An app that is fast for rotating, scaling and cropping.
Finally, a quick image from downtown. Again, just taking the picture without going through Pro HDR, you would have black trees that look like fuzzy areas or the building would be too bright to appreciate it.
Posted in Advanced, News, Using every day.
Tagged with app updated, auto mode, dark spots, enhancing iPhone photos, HDR from the iPhone, images for presentations, images washed out.
By admin
– August 21, 2010
Every day I come across text pages that I want to share out with folks. Even more often is our hard work on Whiteboards. There are several options to use your iPhone camera to take a picture, clean up and share out. I have bought them and wrote my thoughts here. Some have powerful alignment and image adjustment controls. Most end up creating a white background with rough text… enough for folks to get the idea of what you where sharing.
A pleasant surprise was finding the free app, Genius Scan. No excessive frills here… it does the basics and it does those very well.
This is an a screenshot of an actual document I was taking while at the accountant’s office.
The app attempts at finding the text area and recognize if the pages needs a bit of a twist to straighten the text. You can grab the corners and move/resize the box to best match what you where hoping to share.
You can choose how Genius Scan ‘sees’ the document so it has a better chance at giving you the results you want.
Below is the result from the image, alignment and auto clean up. The app runs rather quickly compared to most of the other options. Don’t like what you see, hit the ‘Back’ button and take another run at it…
Tapping the ‘share’ button allows you to save the image off to your ‘Camera Roll’ to treat as you would any other photograph. Or, you can insert the image in a new or document in progress. And of course, used a lot by me, share out via email.
This is an actual output from Genius Scan. There is no OCR engine built in, but you can use other apps that specialize in that. In my case, I’m interested in sharing what I saw as it was originally, not as editable text. Whiteboard successes for me has similar nice results.
A quick snap from a magazine… color and B&W chosen via ‘enhancement’ after the image was already aligned.
Posted in Advanced, For the Business user.
Tagged with free app, iPhone camera, resize and align images, share via email, share whiteboard notes, sharing articles, text clean up, Text notes.
By admin
– August 19, 2010
