Cody Fink

1547 posts on MacStories since January 2010

Former MacStories contributor.

[email protected]

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Skitch for iOS Brings Back PDF Reading and Markup in Latest Update→

Skitch is great for marking up images and annotating documents, and it’s brought PDF reading and markup back from the dead. You’ll need to be an Evernote Premium subscriber to take advantage of PDF markup, but regular Skitch users can enjoy general enhancements and bug improvements. From iTunes:

Hey, here’s what’s new in this release
- PDF reading is back. Open a PDF in Skitch.
- Markup a PDF is back. Requires an Evernote Premium account.
- Web capture has been added back
- Improved crop mode
- Lots of bugs were crushed (no actual bugs were harmed)

Previously, Skitch added a crop function to their iOS app, and improved integration with Evernote for choosing a default notebook to save to.

Grab the latest update from the App Store.

 

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Beats Music Coming in January, Reserve Your Username Today→

If you can’t settle with Rdio, find a happy home at Spotify, or are satisfied with Google Play Music All Access, there’s a new music streaming service coming from the same guys who make those bass heavy Beats headphones. Matt Panzarino at TechCrunch writes:

… It’s in an internal, private beta with ‘people who know and love music’. It’s also rolled out to some ‘artists and other influencers’ in order to get feedback, so celebs are playing with it as we speak. Rogers says they’re tweaking the service based on the feedback that they’re getting, and re-iterates that the service is set to launch in January.

If you want to grab your username, sign up here.

How does a streaming service like this differentiate? Do you make a service and launch with mobile apps that give you the most options like Rdio and Google, or differentiate in a specific way as Spotify does with playlists, Spotify Apps, and sharing? Considering who’s behind the project, I’m both curious and excited to see the end result.

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Pod Wrangler on the Web→

David Smith’s lightweight podcast app now has a web companion in beta.

Today I’m rolling out a beta version of website integration for Pod Wrangler right on feedwrangler.net. You can now listen to your podcasts from within any modern browser. Playback position is synced up with Pod Wrangler so you shouldn’t need to fuss with finding your place. This works great for finishing off that episode you were listening to on your drive into work or in a context when you just can’t use your iPhone.

If you don’t like listening to podcasts in iTunes or in Apple’s Podcast app, give Pod Wrangler a try. It’s not an app that’s big on looks, but it’s fast and functional. If you run or listen to podcasts on your daily commute, Pod Wrangler recently added On-the-Go which makes playback controls big and easy to tap. You’ll have to become a full member by making an in-app purchase in the iPhone app to gain access to the web version, but being able to listen to your favorite podcasts from any of your desktops and laptops is really nice.

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iBeacons as a Mechanism to Push Newsstand Publications→

Darrell Etherington from TechCrunch writes about how iBeacons are being used to sell digital magazines. Here’s a clever idea:

The tech is very handy in a number of scenarios, as in a coffee shop for instance, where the establishment could subscribe and enable access to full magazines to patrons who come in. It’s made even more convenient with the addition of iBeacons on iOS, as the whole digital handshake can happen automatically, providing the user with the best possible and most frictionless experience. Another possible use is in modernizing the doctor’s office, offering up publications in the waiting room that are more useful and more current than five-year old issues of Good Housekeeping.

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On Relaxing App Store Rules→

Marco Tabini of Macworld uses the recent TextExpander touch debacle to the make the argument on why App Store rules should be relaxed.

On OS X, TextExpander can interact with just about any app. On iOS, Apple’s sandboxing makes this much harder, but in the past Smile’s developers have circumvented the problem by implementing a software development kit that other programmers can easily and quickly integrate into their own software.

Unfortunately, this leaves one problem unsolved: Third-party apps still need to synchronize their text-snippet database against the main TextExpander app, which is difficult to accomplish in an environment where programs are largely prevented from talking to one another—or even being aware of one another’s presence on the device.

Thus, Smile had to find another workaround, which involved relying on iOS’s built-in Reminders as an ersatz synchronization mechanism. After initially permitting that usage, Apple eventually rejected it as an improper application of a technology whose primary goal is, after all, to help you compile grocery lists.

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Temporarily Capture Moments with Meteor for iPhone→

There are lots of pictures we take in the moment that we shoot off to social networks, private chats, and to others in emails, but they don’t necessarily need to stick around. Meteor advertises itself as a photographic memo pad that lets you take photos that only matter right now, deleting your photographs after a period of time unless they’re manually saved to the Camera Roll. For a buck during their launch sale, Meteor tries to unclutter your Camera Roll by separating memories from photographic reminders, in the moment goofiness, and can even perhaps save you from post “why did I take a picture of that” regret. It works with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, iMessage, your email app, and your favorite photo app.

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Honda Announces Deep iOS Integration With Upcoming Vehicles→

Eric Slivka from MacRumors on the latest in-dash technology to be found in the new Honda Civic and Honda Fit:

The new Civic, which goes on sale tomorrow, and the upcoming Fit, which launches early next year, will offer an all-new Display Audio interface featuring a 7-inch touchscreen that will be familiar to smartphone users, offering easy access to a variety of features.

“Display Audio” is quite the oxymoron.

Whatever happened to iOS 7 in the Car? What Honda is offering are proprietary (and expensive in the case of navigation) apps that are simply launched through the car’s virtual dashboard.

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‘A Gift From Steve Jobs Returns Home’→

Nick Wingfield for the New York Times:

On a recent night at an elegant Beaux-Arts ballroom in San Francisco’s financial district, Laurene Powell Jobs received a computer with an unusually rich history. Around 1980, Ms. Powell Jobs’s husband, Steven P. Jobs, donated the computer to a nonprofit organization, the Seva Foundation, to help the group manage data from its efforts to restore sight in the developing world.

The nonprofit was now giving the computer — an Apple II that spent the last 33 years in Katmandu, Nepal, most of it packed away in a hospital basement there — back to Ms. Powell Jobs and her children from her marriage to Mr. Jobs.

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