Finally LastPass Autofill on iOS

I have to admit that I don't know how long this has been there, I just noticed it last week.
iOS (on my iPad) can finally use LastPass

(my favorite password manager) in addition to it's own keychain.

All you have to do (besides of course having a LastPass account and having the LastPass app installed on your device) is the following.

Go to the Settings menu, and find the section "Passwords & Accounts".
There you will see the item "AutoFill Passwords". Touch on the arrow to the right to get to the next step.

.

You should see all installed AutoFill applications there, in my case Keychain and LastPass.



All you need to do here, is select the check mark to the right to enable it.

Depending on your LassPass vault and settings, on the next Login (app or web-page), you will be given a choice to select the credentials from your LastPass account. In my case I have to provide a fingerprint first... but that's it.



Pretty cool. Essentially the same as with Keychain, just accross platforms. That's why I use LastPass.

The iOS9 Podcast app is totally broken

Usually I hate and hence avoid to slam an app or service like this, but the podcast player in iOS9 really sucks. At least for video on an iPad.

No full screen video anymore, too much white space, and even with all that unused space, the controls are too small

Exhibit A:

Please Apple, we need an urgent update to fix/revert this.

Bluetooth beats Wifi

The other day - when  I was on the train to Prague - I needed to get some work done on my iPad, but the WiFi on the train was dead. Usually then, I enable the hotspot on my Android phone, but this time I decided to finally try this over Blueooth.

I wanted to do this a long time ago already, but the Wifi was too easy.

So, what can I say... it is almost as easy (of course), but uses a lot less energy, both on the iPad and more importantly on the Nexus 5.

I guess, I'll keep it like that. Bluetooth tethering definitely beats Wifi tethering.

Google Now on Chrome vs. Celsius

A couple of weeks ago, I enabled Google Now notifications in my (desktop) Chrome browser.

One thing I noticed, that on the weather card the temperature for Vienna, Austria, was given in Fahrenheit, instead of Celsius. Weirdly, there was no setting for this.

My PCs are definitely all running with Austrian locale (so it should be Celsius), this particular PC even with German language (and the combination of German and Fahrenheit is rather odd). And nowhere could I change this.

My mobile devices are also all on Celsius, so I thought it could not have been picked up from there.

Oddly, however, on my other PC (laptop), it displayed in Celsius. And even more oddly, this PC had English as language.

So did some Googling and found suggestions that you need to change this on the iPhone (iPad in my case), and that maybe switching to F and back to C could work.

That's what I did. Go to Google app on iPad, then into Settings > Google Now > Weather > Temperature.
Change for Fahrenheit, save.
Repeat with Celsius.

And voila, it is Celsius on the Desktop Chrome as well ...
Weird, but part of my software developer brain actually understands this.

Five Reading Tools - part V: Reader in Safari

And finally... on my iPad in Safari I use the Reader.

It has about the same features as Evernote Clearly, except that it is not an extension and only exists on iOS.
Luckily it is built into the browser since several iOS version (not sure how long) and therefore is just there (for free).

It also comes with a reading list feature, but I never use that, simply because I want my reading list centralized (i.e. pocket).

I only use it to clean the article of all the clutter around it, and it works like charm.

All you need to do is press the little reader icon (seems to represent some text lines as in "text only") left of the URL bar.

Our Wikipedia entry looks like this (click to enlarge).

Nice thing is, that links work.

Five Reading Tools - part IV: Read Quick

Now for something quite different:

While I studied at TU Vienna (Computer Engineering) I took some lectures in Computer Linguistics offered by the Linguistics Department of the (regular, good old) University of Vienna.One of those lectures/courses was about Text Comprehension and Computers (this was 1990), and I was the proud presenter of the topic Reading on the Screen.

One of the methods I came across during preparation was Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). It is about presenting one word (or very short phrase) at a time at a fixed location. This allows for reading rates of up to 700 words per minute [1].


Flash forward 22 years (ouch) and imagine the déjà vu I had, when I learned about ReadQuick. Because it is exactly an implementation of this.
ReadQuick is an iOS app, that uses Pocket, Readability or Instapaper as a back-end service to store/queue the articles and then presents them in RSVP style.

You can set the speed yourself (in words per minutes). I'm currently at 335 as you can see. You'll notice that over time your reading speed will increase - as advertised. I think I started around 220 or so.

One nice side effect is, since the article size (in words) and the speed is known, it can tell you how long in minutes this article is, or how much you have left.


It actually is a totally different reading experience. After a time you'll get rid of "reading" and just absorb the text as it flies by.

It's $4.99 in the app store, but totally worth it.

The longer or more narrative an article is, the rather I read it with ReadQuick. However, you do need a quieter environment then for the rest (at least I do), because once you get distracted, you cannot easily jump back one sentence or paragraph.

Also, and option to mark the article as read, once you are done with it, would be nice.

Unfortunately, this app is iOS only for the time being. An Android version is said to be in the works.

~~
UPDATE here.

--
[1] Mills, C.B./Weldon, C.J.: Reading Text from Computer Screens. ACM Computing Surveys 19,4 (1987)... to be found here. Well at that time, I got it from TU Vienna Library back in the days.

Getting an iPad Air

A bit more than three years ago I bought an iPad (Generation 1 from today's point of view). 64GB, Wifi only.
There were good reason to stay on Wifi only, because I intended to use the iPad mainly at home and not as a "large" phone to carry around.

My iPad came to be a real companion at home...

• first email and news check in the morning - on the iPad
• last check in the evening/night - on the iPad
• second screen while watching TV - the iPad
• checking news (feedly), email, facebook, twitter in between - the iPad

It did not want to use it while commuting to the office, because I know that I'm an online junkie and that I'd be online all the time on the train/underground. In urgent cases I could still tether through my Android phone.

However, the performance and stability of the iPad deteriorated... or rather: began to suck.
For example. when entering a new appointment in the calendar app, the lag when trying to select the time was a couple of seconds (!). Feedly, Pocket, Facebook would crash, i.e. just exit, several times a day.
This really started with iOS 5.1... And since this is an Generation 1 iPad there is no upgrade path to iOS 6 or 7.

So, as much as I love my iPad I also started to hate it.
I used to work a lot (while at Sun Microsystems) with Thin Clients (specifically the SunRay) and loved the notion of a client device, that would not age. Meaning that the capacity in the client (CPU, memory, screen estate, ...) would suffice for all IT trends for say 7-10 years.

In a way the iPad started as a thin client, and - call me naïve - I expected an iPad to last 4-5 years.
It did not. Not even three years and it got obsolete (for my usage pattern).
That's a PC replacement cycle, not a thin client cycle.

So over the last couple of months I was actually considering switching to a Nexus 7. But then I decided to stay in both worlds, Android on my phone, iOS on my tablet.

Yesterday I ordered my iPad Air... to get back stability and speed. Still Wifi only.
The old iPad will probably stay around as a TV/raspbmc remote...

Syncing Google Contacts to iPad/iPhone Address Book via CardDAV

The cloudier software and services get, the less I sync my iPad with iTunes.
It took Apple a while, but even podcasts can now be sync'd over the air without iTunes.

The only thing that I really needed to go through iTunes was syncing my iPad address book with Google Contacts (in GMail). I only synced about once a month (probably even less often) so my address book really missed some contacts.

But now that we have 2013 Apple and Google both support CardDAV - if you will, the address book equivalent of the more popular CalDAV (for calendar data).

With CardDAV the iPad (or iPhone for that matter) directly goes to Google without the detour through iTunes on the PC. The benefit: you'll be really in sync, like on Android. (SCNR)

Here's what you need to do:

Create a new Account with CardDAV

In Settings find the Mail, Concacts, Calender bullet; the first section is the Accounts section, and there click on Add Account.... Create a new Other account and then select Add CardDAV Accont in the Contacts section.

All you need to provide then is google.com for the server, and your Google credentials (userid and password). You can of course modify the description, but the default - taken from the server name - google.com sounds quite apt, doesn't it.

That's it.
Really.



Unless...

... you did sync your Google contacts previously through iTunes - like I did.

Because then you will notice - in the contacts app - that now all entries are duplicate. Once from the new CardDAV account, and once from the iTunes sync.

Let me show you the fastest way to
Delete the old Address Book

Back to the Settings / Mail, ... page.
Create a new Microsoft Exchange account with dummy parameters like test for Email, Username and Password. I used "test" for it.

Then the iPad will prompt you for a server name, say m.google.com, just to have one that really exists and answers.

Next the iPad will ask you for the services on this account, make sure you turn Contacts to ON.

And now the nice part: you will be prompted if you want to delete all your local contacts. Say you do. And confirm. Be sure to save the account settings, because it will only delete when you save.

And now the old local address book will be gone.
Remove the dummy Exchange account you just created.

Now you have all your Google contacts sync'd to the iPad through CardDav... over the air. No iTunes needed.
Don't forget to go to the PC and turn of Contacts sync (to Google) for the iPad as well.

Android v iOS

The three top areas where/why I think Android is superior to iOS:

#3  Notifications
Apple really has to fix them in iOS6... currently they are just laughable.

#2 Widgets
Yes, a lot of widgets are just noise, but many are really helpful, like tasks, calendar, clock, ... maybe messaging and/or email inbox even (although I don't use that)

and
<drumroll/>

#1 the Share Intent
This is what you usually see in an app as the "Sent to" or "Share" menu item or button.

Just take the example of Read-It-Later (or pocket as it is now called). On iOS you have to install a bookmark-let  and manually edit the URL (which cannot really be considered user friendly), and then it is still clumsy. On Android the application just declares that it is capable of receiving URLs and voila, it will be in the list. And it can be done from any application that allows to share.
Or Dropbox, or ...

This is really the thing I miss most on my iPad.
 

iPad Video App Freeze

Since I updated my iPad[1] to iOS 5, I frequently had the problem that the video app that comes with iOS is simply frozen, when you open it.

Even closing the app does not help.
A reboot of the iPad did not help either.

My idea was to somehow not start the video app, but launch a video directly, but for lack of a file manager on iOS, this is not easy.
Turns out it is... simply do a spotlight search for a known video name, wait for it to appear in the search results and tap on it there. Next best thing to a file manager :)

Voila, the video app should start and not freeze...
Works everytime for me know... a bit cumbersome, but still.

Hope that Apple will fix this.

--
[1] first gen iPad, that is

They joy of forgetting your Kindle at home

Yesterday I was on a business trip in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and wanted take my Kindle with me to continue reading the Jobs bio. However, in the hotel I noticed, that I forgot.

No problem... take the iPad, start the Kindle app, sync to the furthest point read... and continue reading.

And tonight, I'll sync again on my Kindle an continue where I left on the iPad yesterday.

Still, the reading experience is a lot better on the Kindle than on the iPad, but occasionally, when there's no Kindle around, it is sufficient.

Flight Search - Hipmunk

If you ever wanted to know how fast a search for flights can actually be, try Google Flights. Only US for the time being ... but this is really fast.

But what I really wanted to show is, how flight search results can be presented... Try Hipmunk.

Cool overview; excellent timeline; nice and helpful coloring. Check the above image (click to enlarge)

Also: redundant flights are being masked out, i.e. flights with the same time but different number (code sharing), or just a higher price - but you can unhide them with the dropdown to the very right.

I have yet to search a real-life flight for me to be able to judge it, but it looks promising indeed.
Also available for iPhone and iPad and Android. Granted, on sub-tablet form factors[1] this is less helpful than on PCs and tablets.

Most importantly: it got an animated chipmunk.


--
[1] formerly known as smart phones.

iPad - the missing key

If you want to edit HTML on the iPad, you quite frequently have to switch to the special character keyboard.
Conveniently it contains all the keys/characters you need to e.g. type in a those nasty HTML tags.

Almost.
The forward-slash (/) key is actually missing.

Oddly enough, there would be enough room for it, see my rendering of this

(The place where I put the key is actually empty).

iPad/iPhone date dialog anomalies

It is really odd how developers use the iOS datepicker[1]...

The built-in calendar app - which has many other shortcomings  - only lets you enter the time in 5 minute increments. Which is - usually - OK, but when you want to enter e.g. the departure time of a plane or train, you might want to enter the exact time.

On the other hand, there is Qando, a service (with an app) that lets you check the timetable of public transport in Vienna. Oddly enough, when I want to specify a (rough) time for departure (or arrival), it lets me pick the time in 1 minute increments... the one place where e.g. 15 min resolution would be fine....

This really is annoying - it make the time selection (e.g. when you want to jump to 17:30 = 5.30pm)  a lot slower, because it makes you scroll through 30 values...

Did you also notice that the datepicker is not correctly localized? Almost everything here is proper German ("Jän" = Jänner for January, "Di." for Dienstag = Tuesday), but it still quite prominently says "Today" instead of "Heute".

--
[1] the dialog/control which lets you enter date & time on your iPhone/iPad/iPod

Reading 2.0

The iPad and a couple of additional tools (not 100% related to it) changed my online reading habits a lot.

Here's my "Reading 2.0" or rather: as of December 2010, it will probably evolve further:

1. I have Google Reader as the central management point for the RSS feeds (blogs, news, ...)
2. about 30% of those articles I read online while I'm in front of a PC.
3. the rest I scan on my iPad using Reeder.
4. Most of the interesting articles and postings I save for later reading with Read it later, also on the iPad with their app.
5. Item with more "eternal" value might then get save to delicious, but that's only one or two a week.

So basically I separated the consumption phase (step 4) above from the discovery phase (step 3 above).

Updated my iPad to iOS 4.2

Finally, yesterday the 4.2 update for the iPad arrived. Well for other devices as well, but the iPad I cared most for.
I had to install it immediately... well when I say immediately, the 500MB download took 5 attempts to finally get through (networking problems, not Apple's fault I guess).

First impression: multi-tasking and app-switching is awesome :-)
I wonder how long it will take me to get used to the screen rotation lock being software only now.

Folders, AirPrint and AirPlay I have to digg into a bit more, I'm not sure I even have a demand for it ... yet.

How to sync photos FROM the iPad...

This is a bit embarrassing, but I still post it here... so you others don't have to admit you didn't know this... of course you knew... everyone knew... except for me.

So for a while I was wondering why a sync of my iPad through iTunes did not store the images generated on the iPad to the specified folder on my PC. Here's why:

In iTunes select your iPad, then click on the "Photos" tab and select a folder there.
This will then (everytime you sync) copy all the images from this folder on the PC to your iPad.

OK.

However, for the other way round it does not work through iTunes, but rather like this:

One thing that bugged me about my iOS devices is that everytime I hook them up to my PC, Windows prompts me to select an action or application for this device... Quite annoyed me because... hey... you're supposed to connect to iTunes... duuh.

So iOS devices register themselves to your PC as a camera as well. Still I thought: How stupid, my iPad does not have a camera. And neither does my iPod touch.

Well, in some weird way it is a digtial camera: from a Windows / interface perspective the iPad is a device that creates and (more importantly) stores images. Just like a digital camera.

So images you create on your iPad (e.g. as a screen shot, or email attachment, ...) can easily be sync'd to your PC through this interface then. Windows (or the program of your choice) will do the transfer for you.

Odd, though, that Apple suddenly relies on Windows features...

So, this is how you sync photos from your iPad to your PC... but of course, everyone knew that.

App Store Quality ?

So this is the rigid quality control on the Apple App Store ??

How could that pass?

Moleskine Covers for iPhone and iPad

I don't know... to me this is a cultural clash:

Moleskine introduces two new hybrid tools designed for making it easier the simultaneous use of paper, phone and internet utilities: a Smartphone Cover compatible with iPhone 3G and 3GS, and a Tablet Cover, iPad compatible. Both Covers are combined with blank notebook pages. They are conceived as analog-digital ultra-portable workstations for the contemporary nomads.

The analog darling embracing the digital darling...
How strange.

Enabling Multiple Google Calendars for iOS

Found the following tip recently:
iPad Quick Tip: Enabling Multiple Google Calendars: Apple:

quick version: if you go to http://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect you can select which of your Google calendars will be visible on your iXxxx (iPad, iPhone, iPod, ...)

Previously I had to manually copy/paste the various caldav URLs from Google to the iXxxx, which is quite cumbersome.

This here is a lot easier.