Posted by Jason on October 9th, 2008
Slate [iTunes] popped into the App Store a few days ago. It’s a $1.99 iPhone/iPod touch app that acts in place of a physical slate for marking scenes and syncing picture to audio.
It’s a great idea, and probably the best dressed production-related iPhone app I’ve seen yet. You’re given a black on white (or white on black, your choice) interface with fields for production title, scene and take numbers, and director’s name. When you touch the clap sticks at the top, a visual cue appears for a moment and an audible beep or clap is played through the speaker. Scene and take counters are incremented when you tap the current scene or take number. The screen is dominated, however, by a running timecode which acts more like a glorified clock than a helpful way to keep things in sync.
I think I’d prefer to have the option to choose my own starting timecode — and have it freeze when clapping — instead of flashing “clap” (or “beep”, depending).
I’m also not hugely impressed with Marker Felt as the font choice here. It’s got the same tacky feeling that Comic Sans has. I get that maybe it’s supposed to feel like the words were handwritten on there, but it doesn’t. To me, it looks like somebody just took the easy way out. There are better fonts out there.
I’m also a little frustrated that you can’t fit much in the production field without running into an ellipsis. I can’t stand that. It’s like when Twitter gets confused and accidentally lets you type more than 140 characters, but then just throws up an ellipsis condemning the rest of your thought to oblivion.
I think part of the problem is how much space the “Prod.” abbreviation takes up, especially considering the app’s vertical orientation. If only I could rotate my phone and put this whole thing into landscape mode. That would solve my ellipsis gripe, and make a lot more sense visually.
But really, Slate isn’t too bad at all. Especially for just $1.99. It’s very usable and seems like it’ll be a handy tool to have while shooting. For that, I’m happy. I’m also happy to see somebody finally trying to fill the void of production-related apps in the App Store. I expect that these Swedes probably have some more things planned for the iPhone and I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for whatever is next.
In the meantime I guess if I don’t like it I could always just try and build my own.
Posted by Jason on September 9th, 2008
Of the seven items on my wishlist, five (and a half) of them were announced at today’s Apple event. I’m counting the new Nike + iPod announcement as a half since it wasn’t expanded to include iPhones. Kind of a bummer, but maybe that just means I have an excuse to buy a new iPod nano.
Today will also go in my calendar as the first time I’ve ever really been jealous of iPod touch owners. They have the ability to download the new 2.1 firmware immediately, while the iPhone firmware won’t be available until Friday. I’m anxious to get my hands on it. From what I’ve read so far however, there was no mention of the push notification service at the event today — which leads me to wonder if we’re in for another firmware update by the end of the month. It’s a feature that could be really handy for apps like NetNewsWire and Twitterific (or Twinkle, if that’s your thing), and I was surprised that there was no mention of it.
I like the new visualizer in iTunes. It’s actually not quite as awesome as I was hoping, but it’s still fun. I was a little curious as to why it’s listed under the nondescript label, “iTunes Visualizer” while the other visualizers have names like Lathe, Jelly and Stix. Either way, it’s something I probably won’t use very often. But it’s nice that it’s there.
I’m really excited about HD shows coming to iTunes. I’m not as excited about the 1.5GB that each episode is going to take up, but having the option there is very cool. It’s also worth noting that when you buy an HD episode (which is a dollar extra) you still get the standard version too.
Even cooler still are the Genius playlists. I have a lot of music that I never really listen to. I tend to roll through a few bands at a time, then slowly migrate to another. I’m not a fan of shuffle. I like listening to the albums the way they were produced — in order and (generally) uninterrupted. Shuffling makes me uneasy as I have no control over what’s going to play. The Genius playlists afford me a safety net of general musical similarity. I like that.
And now that I’ve settled down a bit, I can clearly see that we once again have no new displays. I really thought we had that one on lockdown this time. Oh, well. I guess you’re really can’t have it all. But HDTV sure is a good start.
Posted by Jason on September 3rd, 2008
- HD television shows and movies available in the iTunes store
- iTunes 8 (to support all those new TV shows and movies)
- Nike + iPod upgraded and expanded to include iPhones
- 4th generation iPod nano (pretty much a given)
- 2nd generation iPod touch (also a given)
- iPhone/iPod 2.1 firmware update
- New cinema displays
Okay, that last one is kind of a joke. I think I’ve wished for new displays before every major Apple event for the past few years. Still, I can hope.
Something I’m not expecting are new MacBooks or MacBook Pros. As much as I’d love to see a new design for the Pro, I’m not counting on it happening this month. There have been rumors floating around for a while about a dramatically redesigned case for the next generation, but nobody’s mentioned any dates yet. October, perhaps? Maybe by the time new models do come out I’ll actually have enough money to buy one.
I guess I’ll just have to satiate my Apple addiction with September 9th’s event, and hope that before the day is out I will have finally realized my dream of downloading Mythbusters in HD.
Posted by Jason on July 12th, 2008
About a year ago I worked for a few months teaching myself Ruby on Rails. I’m not a programmer, but I really wanted a tape logger that I could use on my iPhone, and one hadn’t been introduced yet. So I made my own.
It’s not perfect. I did the best I could with the knowledge of programming that I had at the time, and the result was a single release of a web app I called Tapes. Since it’s debut in Apple’s web app section I’ve had 5,485 people sign up as users. I have no way of checking to see if they’re actually using the application, but if even a handful of them still find it useful I’d be thrilled.
But now we have the ability to write native apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. I would love nothing more than to be able to sell Tapes (don’t worry, I’m thinking $4.99) through the iTunes store and do my part to fill the gaping void of production-oriented apps. My biggest problem in reaching this goal is that I’m STILL NOT A PROGRAMMER. I’ve been studying up on C since February, but I don’t really feel like I’ve got a firm grasp on it yet. And after that I have to learn Objective-C. And then the Cocoa-touch framework. And make sure the UI is intuitive. And then get accepted into Apple’s dev program even though I’m not really a developer. All without having a formal education in computer science.
Basically, it’s hard.
But hard isn’t bad. Just challenging. So I promise you this, Internets: If it can be done, it shall be done. I will do my best to come out with a native tape or footage logging application at some point in the future. I have no idea when, or how. But I’m going to try.
And if you know anybody that knows anything about writing Objective-C apps, please send them my way.
Because I need some help.
Posted by Jason on July 10th, 2008
This summer has been pretty crazy what with moving across the country and everything. I haven’t had the time to write about everything that I thought was interesting, so I thought about creating a linked list (no affiliation to this guy, of course) to catch up on what’s been going on around here.
- The real bombshell here, however, is that Meagan is going to be working with legendary, dragon-slaying designer Dan Cederholm, of SimpleBits fame. We’re all pretty excited about that, and I can’t wait to see what kind of mind-expanding creations these two come up with in the months to come.
- A week (to the day) after arriving in Salem, Meagan and I found ourselves attending the first ever gathering of The Build Guild. The Build Guild is a collection of web developers and designers from the greater Salem area, who meet to talk shop and eat some delicious Salem food. The first meeting was a lot of fun, thanks in a big way to the Guild’s founders, Marc Amos and Angelo Simeoni.
- A fews days prior to leaving Orlando, I wrote about my MacBook Pro having a logic board failure. After I got the computer back I decided to try and restore the system from my latest Time Machine backup. Something I wasn’t aware of is that Time Machine uses your computer’s MAC address to identify it for a backup. When that address changes (such as when you get a new logic board), you have to perform a bit of Unix voodoo to get it to work again. I found a great walk-through on the topic over at Mac OSX Hints. If you’re having a similar issue, this should straighten things out.
- I’m a big fan of The Edit Blog for it’s fantastic production-related content. On a recent post Scott linked to a post by a very frustrated filmmaker trying to work with Soundtrack Pro for audio mixing. He lists his grievances and calls for it’s immediate execution by Apple. I’ve had my share of frustrations with Soundtrack Pro, but I’ve never wished death upon it before. He makes some great points though. Definitely worth a read.
- Lastly, I’m going to bookend this post with another mention of moving. One of my new favorite blogs, Big Contrarian recently had a post about moving that I loved. Read it and subscribe immediately.
