Kitting Out the iPAD for the Writer – Part 6
The IPAD is a fantastic product for writers-on-the-go. I have been busy kitting mine out for on-the-go (and garden) writing. Here, then, are my own top choices in apps and kit. In Part 1 through 4 of this series, I profiled my own favourite apps for writers and bloggers. These are summarised in the table found in Part 5.
Consider Part 6 of this series the addendum – here I’ll be listing alternatives to the apps I’ve recommended in the previous posts plus some additional apps worth taking a look at. All will be added to the summary table of apps found in Part 5.
File Sharing and Syncing
Also see Part 2 of this series for my favourite syncing App.
SugarSync (free)
Sugarsync is a synching service similar to Dropbox, and if you’re looking for an alternative with more storage, then consider this one. Dropbox is better supported by compatible apps which provide internal selection through to sync via DP, but there are some which are beginning to utilise Sugarsync also.
With Sugarsync, syncing takes place across PCs, netbooks, and multiple mobile devices, just as with Dropbox. Access your high resolution data (good for images, obviously) via the GB’s available at SugarSync. Currently this service is providing a 30 day free trial which gets you 30GB of storage, and after the free month it will cost $5 per month or $50.00 per year. Larger GBs are also available on subscription. Although the service is subscription based, the iPAD app to access this is free.
Link: SugarSync website and SugarSync App
Notes
Also see both Part 2 and 4 of this post series for some of my own favourite note and text editor apps.
Dragon Dictation (Free)
Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking is one of the most popular dictation-to-text software available on the market today, often recommended to journalism classes in writing, and by many writers who have some success with this. Although the software itself is commercial, Nuance Communications has released Dragon Dictation free as an app. Based on the software, the app provides some creditable attempts to translate your voice into text notes. I wouldn’t say that it can be relyed upon for note-taking, but it’s certainly fun to try out.
Having moved recently from spending a decade in the UK, I must say that my attempts using Dragon Dictation set on English (Australian) as the language, were quite successful, in comparison with that of my family, who still retain some hefty mid-English accents. Mine is a strange mix of Kiwi/mid-English, but with enough kiwi to have that success in translation. I couldn’t, for the life of me, get the App to pick up words like ‘November’ and ‘December’ however.
Dragon Dictation may be useful to you as an interesting note-taker, especially if using the iPAD at a distance, and as a writer who likes to – or needs to – walk around when creating ideas.
Link: Dragon Dictation app
Reading Apps
Writers are good readers. If we’ve fictional writers of a certain genre we often read in this genre or around it, to keep up to speed with it. As non-fiction writers we keep abreast of news and markets with the reading of newspapers and magazines. In Part 4 of this series I recommended several newspaper reading apps or amalgamates. Here are the must-have apps for reading, and additional feed readers of interest to the pro-bloggers out there.
iBooks (free)
Apples’ own iBooks is a free library app, and of all of these, I much prefer the reading interface within iBooks, which converted me over to e-books for fictional reading. You can find quite a few free iBooks to pick up from the iTunes store, but the commercial listing is much less than e-books found in the Amazon Kindle store, which is a pity.
The iBooks app provides a catergorisation feature where you can setup several different libraries, and put books into these. This is used everyday in my own family, where there is a library full of children’s and young adults readers for my daughter, and my own books of choice are hidden away from her eyes in a thrillers and chillers library.You can also sort books by title, author or category, and of course there is an excellent bookmarking and search function within.
I also enjoy the open-page interface and flip-book rendering more than that of the Kindle, plus the function to turn up or down backlighting on the pages for differing light settings, and the choice of fonts for readibility (no jokes about aging eyes, please). iBooks also supports PDFs.
Link: iBooks app
Amazon Kindle App (Free)
The Kindle App makes iPAD reading all the more worthwhile, with the ability to read up to 950,000 books and magazines and blogsites via the Amazon Kindle store. Unfortunately, due to some changes in terms of service from Apple, most e-readers have now taken out the internal buttons/links to access their book stores automatically, so Kindle for iPAD users are now forced into using the less-than-friendly (in my opinion) iPAD Safari browser to purchase books before these are sent to the Kindle App.
Background colour and font size are changeable in the Kindle App, and there is a nice page-flipping interface, and dictionary lookup. Like iBooks, the Kindle reader app ‘remembers’ the last page you left off reading on and returns you to it when you open the app again.
Link: Kindle for iPAD
Zinio (Free)
Zinio is perhaps the world’s largest service for digital magazines, providing you with the ability to subscribe to many digital editions of popular international magazines in many categories – including sports, womans, crafts, DIY, hobby magazines and from many countries. Registration with the service is free, then you purchase either a termed subscription or individual copies of your choice of many magazines. Now living in Australia, I find through Zinio that I can still access several UK magazines I enjoyed, and the digital editions are often much less expensive than the same magazines bought as imports in a local news agency or magazine store.
Magazines are kept stored on the Zinio web servers, and can be downloaded onto your computer into a desktop App, read online, or downloaded onto several mobile devices for off-line reading.
Which is where the iPAD’s Zinio App comes to the forefront for off-line reading. The magazines are glossy with high resolution images, and flip-page technology provides an enjoyable reading experience. Inside the App you will find your own library – which can be sorted through monthly editions, featured mags, and a Zinio store link.
Link: Zinio App
Reeder for iPAD ($4.99)
Reeder for iPAD gets excellent reviews, and deservedly so.
As a Google Reader user myself, Reeder gives me access to my feeds on my iPAD, including shared items from my friends. I obviously need to have wireless access for this, but once synched, I can also send to Instapaper, or Readitlater for later reading, of course.
Link: Reeder.
(Note – as an alternative, try Feeddler - picked as a top iPAD app, which has a current version upsetting some users with annoying animations).
Read it later (Free)
Read it Later is a good alternative to Instapaper, if you want one. With extension apps for Firefox, Google Chrome browsers, Internet Explorer, Safari and others, the iPAD free app allows you to also download your pages and these later offline.
Link: Read it Later List (website) and Read it Later app
Bluefire Reader (free)
Nowadays there is some progress in providing e-books and publications with DRM protection. Several publishers are using Adobe’s ebook Digital Rights Management service for this. These DRM pdfs and e-books in ePub format can be downloaded and read on computers via Adobe’s own Adobe Digital Edition software. You can download and use this for free once registered with Adobe.
To read these same e-books with DRM protection on the iPAD you require a free reader device supporting e-Pub and PDFs with DRM. Bluefire Reader provides this as a free app. An alternative to Bluefire is BAM, created for the Books-A-Million service.
To transfer the publication from Adobe Digital Editions to the iPAD with one of these e-readers, you need to authorise both the computer and device to use Adobe DRM. This may be a matter of simply plugging in the iPAD to your computer – Adobe Digital Editions automatically picks up the device and requests authorisation before transferring the file over. An alternative is to simply authorise Bluefire with your Adobe ID when first opening it, then using the iPAD’s Safari browser to login to your bookstore account and download the book from there. The iPAD should pick up your Bluefire Reader to download it into. Mine did, thankfully.
Link: Bluefire Reader app or BAM app.
Brainstorming, Mindmapping and Outlining
In Part 4 of this series, I featured my favourite apps under this planning category. Here are some more.
OmniOutliner for iPAD ($19.99) and OmniGraffle for iPAD ($49.99)
OmniOutliner is based on a successful MAC software, by the makers of the very popular OmniGraffle (discussed below). Designed with a very beautiful-looking interface, OmniOutliner is based on the appeal of having a quick and easy functional app for creating – um, outlines. Some of the interesting features include the ability to drop in any images you can copy and paste from within the iPAD, as well as making links inside become html links. Claims are towards syncing with email, and the Mac’s iDISK facility, and compatibility with OmniOutliner on the MAC.
The current version of OmniOutliner does not support folders as document structures, a feature I personally look for in usage.
OmniGraffle was recently a popular and rich-featured graphing app on the iPAD. However it has some problems – according to comments – with building shapes and defining connection points for flowcharts. At 24.7mb, the app is reasonably large but contains a lot of charting templates, useful for those like me who like to flowchart storylines or timelines.
However, with such a pricetag for both apps, I have not personally used OmniOutliner or OmniGraffle for the iPAD. For those using it on the MAC, however, the iPAD apps may be a valuable addition.
Link: OmniOutliner for iPAD. and OmniGraffle for iPAD
Popplet ($4.99)
I’ve been a fan of the popplet platform on the web for some time now, and am happy to find Popplet for iPAD. Popplet lets you capture ideas or brainstorm or create interesting graphs using text and images. These can also be created online at Popplet, and synched to the iPAD. The Popplet diagrams can be colloborated with online, and PDF versions shared.
There is a Popplet Lite version available for free which allows you to play with one popplet, but once you upgrade you can’t import this to your full version due to constraints through the iPAD operating system. I find Popplet an excellent format for personal brainstorming sessions.
Link: Popplet (full version) for iPAD and Popplet Lite.
Helper Apps and Miscellaneous
There are some apps which defy categorisation. However, I included a Misc category within Part 2 of this series (which included two good dictionary apps), and here are some more of interest.
Alpha Writer ($4.99)
Designed by Montessorium, Alpha Writer looks interesting for those wanting to provide a writing boost for pre-schoolers. An Alpha mode presents the early writer with a screen of icons to choose from. Once chosen, a voice will name the icon (bee, dog, bus, etc…) and the child can then play with various letter sounds from an alpha strip above.
In Write mode, they can use the icons to build a storyboard. Once the board is complete, the young writer can then show this to his or her proud parents, and explain the story they made up. They can also use a camera to take a snapshot of their storyboard to share as a photo. Designed to Montessori principles – where writing comes before reading – Alpha Writer looks a good fit for the very young speller / reader and writer. However, there are some comments on the iTunes site suggesting that not all children get on with this app. My viewpoint on this is that it should be easier to trial an app before full purchase (but when have you ever had to trial software off-the-shelf like that?) and writer’s are in need of some decent storyboarding and timelining apps (and software) in total.
Link: Alpha Writer
Story Tracker ($7.49)
I also use Andrew Nicolle’s Artwork Tracker, and Story Tracker is based on the same premise.
Providing a database app for writers, you can input your story title,wordcount, genre, and notes, setup markets to submit these to, and input financial data on your story successes. Response times are based on market responses, but can be over-ridden. Guidelines for submission markets can also be entered, and your submission history viewed. Submissions are sorted in date order.
Backups of the full database over Wifi and your internet browser, and CSV imports/exports from and to your desktop spreadsheeting software. Story Tracker has apps for the iphone and other mobile devices also.
Note – there is a Story Tracker Lite version (free) which provides 5 stories, 5 submissions and 5 markets, and backup of the database onto the web so that you can import it back into the fully paid version if you choose to upgrade.
Link: Story Tracker (paid full version) and Story Tracker Lite (free)
Total Submission ($2)
Total Submission is another submission app for writers, on sale until December for this price. There is limited details on the iTunes store, but I believe the app provides functions to input title, genre and market sent to, and automates a response date. There is also an export function to a spreadsheet. Although lacking in sorting features, and backups etc, Total Submission has a really nice looking interface – the app displays a graphical notebook with labels on sticky notes, and a hand-drawn menu structure.
Link: Total Submission
Read the other posts in this series -
Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers
Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer
Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers
Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and Brainstorming & Task Management
Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series
Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (this post).
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