Posts tagged with "dropbox"

Scratch Review

Scratch

Scratch

For the past week, I have been trying Scratch, a new quick note-taking app by Karbon. While the app still can’t replace Drafts in my workflow, it has some unique ideas that will be worth a second consideration in the future.

The idea behind Scratch is to offer a simple way to save plain text in Dropbox. Like Drafts, Scratch allows you to create notes that you can forward to a variety of services like Messages, Email, and the aforementioned Twitter and Dropbox. Unlike Drafts, Scratch is also capable of appending text to an existing file in Dropbox. A number of hacks to manually add appending capabilities to Drafts have surfaced in the past month.

I like the design of Scratch. The app sports custom toolbar and menu design, but it’s the kind of carefully thought-out custom that’s a great fit for the iOS platform, now mature enough to accept and foster an ecosystem of different-looking apps. The main point of interaction in Scratch is the compose area, where you’ll be jotting down your notes. As in most text editing apps these days, there is a formatting toolbar located above the virtual keyboard; in Scratch, the toolbar is fully customizable and offers quick access to other features of the app as well.

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Dropbox Doubles Pro Subscribers’ Space

 

The very popular folder sync service Dropbox is giving every Pro member a big surprise today by doubling the amount of space of their Dropbox account. Pro accounts will now get double the space they had before. Their new blog post says, “Today we’re happy to announce that our upgrades are getting a huge upgrade! Dropbox Pro now comes in flavors of 100 and 200 GB, but at the price of the original 50 and 100 GB plans. For those of you who need even more space, a brand new 500 GB plan is also joining the posse! If you’re already a Dropbox Pro subscriber, just take a seat and enjoy the fireworks — your Dropbox will supersize itself automatically tonight.” Check out the Pricing page this evening to see the all new plans.

In May, Dropbox gave users some new options to increase space by adding the option to auto-upload media from your desktop or iOS device and in April, Dropbox doubled referral credits from 250 MB to 500 MB per link.

In a world of every-increasing asset file sizes, retina displays, and computer hard drive space, Dropbox is doing a fantastic service to all of its Pro customers by doubling the space they give to us. There’s no link to click or web page to activate, they’re simply updating themselves tonight.

  • Dropbox Pro is now 100 and 200 GB, but at the price of the original 50 ($9.99/month or $99.00/year) and 100 GB plans ($19.99/month or $199.00/year )
  • A brand new 500 GB plan will also be available (yet to be announced)
  • Dropbox is giving existing Pro users a three month Pro 100 trial to share with friends or family
  • Free accounts are not receiving the upgrade but with referrals and auto-uploads your 2 GB account can be up to 18 GB

WriteUp 3.0

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%201.png

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%201.png

In my original comparison of iOS text editors, I included WriteUp, a fast and powerful Dropbox-enabled app that stood out thanks to its support for folders and sub-folders, exporting options, and versions. Prior to settling with Writing Kit for my daily iPad writing efforts, in fact, I had been using WriteUp as my go-to text editor – version 2.0 of the app was solid, but in the end not as powerful as Writing Kit.

Version 3.0 of WriteUp, released today, adds new powerful functionalities to speed up the process of working with multiple Dropbox folders and notes, bringing a new built-in web browser to augment the app’s research capabilities with split view. I have been testing WriteUp 3.0 for the past two weeks, and while I won’t completely switch from Writing Kit just yet, this new iteration of the app has stayed on my iPad because of the very specific features it introduces.

Split View

If you write on the web, split view is kind of a big deal. Being able to take notes and write blog posts while referencing a webpage on the other side of the screen is something we do every day on our Macs, yet it has been increasingly difficult to find iOS apps – especially iPad apps – that can get it right. In the past months, I have tried several applications that promised to allow me to “take notes while browsing”, yet most of them either failed at delivering a serious text editing environment to begin with, or simply didn’t function as advertised.

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%201.jpeg

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%201.jpeg

WriteUp 3.0 takes a nice first step on the right direction by offering a built-in web view that you can use in full-screen or split mode by hitting a Lion-like controller next to the address bar. There are no tabs, no bookmarks, no search box – just a URL field, a refresh button, icons to navigate, and an action menu. The latter is called “research actions”, and it allows you to open a link in Safari, copy it, email it, send it to Pocket or Instapaper, or “insert it into the note”. This option will basically copy the link to WriteUp’s clipboard highlighting the dedicated link button in the extra keyboard row, allowing you to open anInsert Link panel with the address already copied. Unfortunately, unlike Writing Kit, WriteUp 3.0 still doesn’t let you select words in text and only wrap those within Markdown links; I hope better Markdown auto-wrapping options will come in a future version of WriteUp. Overall, I also still prefer Writing Kit’s custom keyboard row.

The built-in web browser isn’t perfect: its performances aren’t comparable to Mobile Safari, and because of its size constraints, webpages will often be displayed partially, even when using the iPad in landscape mode. On a couple of times, I also noticed WriteUp would “freeze” a webpage without letting me reload it, and I really think there should be a dedicated Google button to relieve stress from the address bar. In spite of these few bugs and limitations, however, I can’t help but like WriteUp’s split view. It doesn’t let me drag & drop text between panels – I am not even sure that is technically possible – but it works in portrait and landscape mode, it’s dismissible with gestures, and, more importantly, it has already helped me write several news posts for MacStories when I needed to work side by side with webpages to reference quotes and other facts. It can only get better from here (idea: split view for multiple notes).

Pinned Notes, Favorites, and iCloud

The second major addition to WriteUp 3.0 is something I’ve been wanting from a Dropbox text editor for a long time, and which the app gets precisely right. WriteUp can now mark notes as “favorite” and make them available anywhere no matter the folder they are into. Furthermore, a separate “pin” option lets you pin notes at the top of any folder, and both favorite and pinned items are synced across devices running WriteUp with iCloud.

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%203.png

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%203.png

Here’s how I use this feature. As outlined in my Dropbox writing workflow, I try to keep a consistent environment of text files that are always accessible and up to date independently from the tool or device I decide to use.

Lately, I have unified all my notes, drafts, and lists inside a single Apps folder that I can access from Writing Kit, TaskAgent, Drafts, TextDrop, and my Mac. My “longer notes” are located in the root of the /Apps folder, with sub-folders for the aforementioned apps inside it. OS X and TextDrop make it easy to navigate through these as they have access to my entire Dropbox filesystem; most iOS text editors, on the other hand, typically force you within a single folder, and won’t let you move between sub-folders. Not only does WriteUp let me navigate notes and folders, it now also a) enables me to mark my most used TaskAgent list as favorite so I can see it in the main Apps folder and b) pin my Scratchpad.txt file to the top of the folder view so I’ll always know where I can quickly jot down notes and links (and if I happen to be cleaning up my Drafts folder, I can easily cut links, and copy them back to Scratchpad.txt without navigating back to /Apps).

Pinned and favorite notes have been a terrific addition to my workflow, and I found both the implementation and iCloud sync solid and reliable. It’s not for everyone – admittedly, several writers I know like to keep their Dropbox notes and folders in separate locations – but if you’ve been looking for a way to unify your text files and folders in a single view, WriteUp 3.0 should have you covered here.

Wrap Up

There’s a bunch of other neat additions in WriteUp 3.0. Markdown Extra (tables, footnotes, etc) is now supported, and the app can send notes to OmniFocus, iMessage, and publish to Tumblr. Terminology integration lets you look up or replace words using Agile Tortoise’s fantastic dictionary app; you can move “complete” folders to other locations in your Dropbox; and because Dropbox now lets you share files from any folder, WriteUp 3.0 can upload images, and give you a streamable link you can share or use as source for images in your notes. If you plan on serving images from your Dropbox account, this will come in handy.

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%202.png

https://cdn.macstories.net/002/29904_Camera%20Roll%202.png

In my tests, I experienced a few bugs with WriteUp 3.0. Sometimes, the built-in Markdown preview wouldn’t be displayed, forcing me to tap on another note, then select the previous one again to activate it; the app didn’t crash, but it failed to create a text file with “2.1” in the title (it wrongly recognized .1 as the extension, thus not creating a .txt file), and the bottom navigation bar (where the + button to create new notes is placed) isn’t displayed when using a Bluetooth keyboard. Fortunately, the developer has been extremely responsive, and I was told fixes, stability improvements, and new features are already underway now that 3.0 is available.

WriteUp 3.0 is a great update. In my opinion, Writing Kit still remains the most powerful text editor around, but, as I mentioned above, at the same time I couldn’t get myself to stop using the functionalities introduced in WriteUp 3.0 such as split view and favorite items. For those specific purposes – writing while referencing a webpage and browsing notes across folders – WriteUp 3.0 is superior to Writing Kit.

With strong sharing options, support for Versions (another feature most iOS text editors are lacking), images, custom CSS previews, and all the other features of version 2.0, WriteUp 3.0 has still some rough edges, but shows an incredibly promising, and possibly even more powerful text editing future.

WriteUp 3.0 is $4.99 on the App Store.

My New Dropbox List-Making App: TaskAgent 2.2

In the past few months, I have been refining my Dropbox-powered writing workflow, adding new tools and checking out updates to existing ones in order to achieve a reliable, yet seamless environment for quick notes, longer articles, and lists. In particular, I mentioned TaskAgent, an iOS app to manage lists through easily formatted text files inside Dropbox.

In TaskAgent, I keep lists of apps I want to buy or update, and lists of stories I want to work on. These lists can be archived and retrieved later, and they exist as standalone .txt files in my Dropbox. If I want, I can add items to my lists using TextDrop, GoodReader, or TextEdit on my Mac; I guess it’d be nice to have a dedicated TaskAgent Mac app with the possibility of entering items with keyboard shortcuts.

See, on my computer and iOS devices, I keep lists. I have the aforementioned work-oriented lists of apps and posts I’d like to work on. I have lists of apps I want to recommend for our Inspiring UI series, and I have lists of developers I want to interview. But I also keep lists of podcasts I want to check out, movies I want to buy, groceries I need to pick up, and ideas I want to submit to a developer as feedback for his beta app.

In my mind and in my workflow, lists and tasks are separate entities. A list may contain items that will become tasks; my OmniFocus keeps the things I know I have to do – neatly organized and synced to the cloud. Over time, I have found the separation of lists and tasks to be necessary to properly divide my organization skills in two distinct areas: remembering Vs. doing. And I have found TaskAgent 2.2, released today, to be the best app at enhancing this text-based setup on the iPhone and iPad.

From a core functionality standpoint, TaskAgent 2.2 isn’t too dissimilar from the versions we have previously covered here at MacStories. However, alongside a much simpler formatting syntax and a slew of new features, TaskAgent 2.2 impressed me thanks to its completely redesigned interface and Dropbox sync engine.

On the iPad, large “notebook thumbnail previews” adorn a sidebar that can be dismissed with a button in the upper toolbar. On the iPhone, lists are shown through a Facebook-like panel that also contains shortcuts to create a new lists, enter the Settings, or open Archived lists (which aren’t permanently deleted). TaskAgent 2.2 cleverly uses these new list previews to bring up functionalities that would have otherwise been buried in sub-menus within the main interface. A tap & hold on a list will reveal options to quickly delete, rename, duplicate, or archive a list. To avoid the guilty remorse of having too many items in a list, TaskAgent now lets you hide the “0 out of x completed” description, so you’ll focus exclusively on managing your lists without feeling bad about having too many items inside them.

One of TaskAgent’s previously often criticized feature was its New Item dialog. Version 2.2 does away with uninspired blue alert boxes and introduces a new quick way of entering items one after the another: on the iPad, that’s a popover, while on the iPhone the menu has been rendered as another panel on the right. Depending on your settings, new items will be added at the top or bottom of a list, and you can enter multiple ones in a row without having to tap Done every time. The overall workflow is incredibly faster.

TaskAgent 2.2 is unarguably a better version of the app, and, to me, the best solution to manage lists on iOS while retaining the capability of editing them anywhere as long as I can open a .txt file. I can access my lists from my browser with TextDrop or from iOS using GoodReader and ReaddleDocs. I can associate TaskAgent’s folder (which can be moved anywhere inside Dropbox) with a text editor and start editing right away. I can quickly append new items to a specific list file using Alfred, and if I want, I can share a list to Evernote as well, as TaskAgent supports that service, too.

TaskAgent makes lists “open” and available anywhere. Only $1.99 for a limited time.

Justnotes is Simplenote’s Desktop Companion and a Little More

I already know what you’re thinking: “Justnotes looks a lot like nvALT.” You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that Justnotes is visually reminiscient of Notational Velocity and its poweruser fork, nvALT, but it wouldn’t be fair to judge without getting hands on. I’d posit Justnotes as an alternative to TextEdit on OS X — it’s a container for creating, sorting, and archiving text files. Otherwise, Justnotes is simply the desktop counterpart to Simplenote… With a twist.

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QuickShot 2.0→

QuickShot 2.0

I don’t only store text in Dropbox. Sometimes, I like to quickly send photos or videos shot with my iPhone or iPad to my Dropbox account – either into the standard Photos directory, or to a folder I’m sharing with the MacStories team. Previously covered on MacStories, QuickShot recently got an upgrade to version 2.0, adding a number of new features and optimizations to improve the way the app uploads photos and videos to Dropbox as soon as they are shot.

QuickShot is a standalone camera app that uploads media to any Dropbox folder. In version 2.0, the developer added support for specifying your own Dropbox path from a built-in browser. Similarly, you can now set custom file names for files that get uploaded – with default shortcuts for timestamps – opening the door for some interesting automation possibilities (imagine mixing up filename recognition with Hazel, or custom folders with IFTTT to save, say, receipts into Evernote). Custom path and file names definitely help in personalizing QuickShot even more (the app already allowed you to set custom file sizes for faster uploads).

The most notable feature of version 2.0, however, is “Capture Profiles” – a way to switch between different output settings for multiple scenarios.

The second goal was to transform QuickShot from a single-purpose app to one that could be easily integrated into powerful workflows. A single new feature called “Capture Profiles” you to go from shooting HD video of your kids and sharing it with the world through a shared folder to capturing business receipts and sending to Evernote using if this then that without the need for changing a bunch of settings. The app ships with a few great profiles by default but its really easy to create and customize them to suit your needs.

I am using QuickShot for photos and videos that I want to end up on Dropbox instantly, and I like the improvements of version 2.0. The app is $1.99 on the App Store.

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11.13 and The Dropbox SDK

Apparently, Apple has been rejecting some iOS apps with Dropbox integration lately (at least during the past week) for linking to the Dropbox website through the login/sign up process. The Next Web has a rundown of the “issue”.

Apps that integrate with Dropbox, in fact, can either authenticate through the installed Dropbox app, or, if not installed, open a web view to let users log in with the browser. The alleged problem with Apple is that the Dropbox mobile login page contains a link to go back to Dropbox’s main website/account creation page, and possibly purchase a subscription bypassing Apple’s App Store (and thus 70/30 revenue split).

Of course, this isn’t new. In its App Store Review Guidelines, Apple has been enforcing for years a policy that doesn’t allow developers to visibly link to external websites that contain links to subscriptions sold outside of iTunes

Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected.

In the past, a number of developers and services that included buttons/links to external websites containing subscription options were forced to update their apps to remove such functionalities. The most notable example to date has probably been the official Kindle app, which removed a button that linked to Amazon’s Kindle Store (where books can be purchased with an Amazon login, and saved into Amazon’s cloud locker). The list goes on, and the core issue at hand seems to be just how visibly developers are linking to external websites featuring “external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions”. There doesn’t seem to be a “visible” link to purchase additional Drive storage on Google.com, but you get the possible irony of this scenario. In the past few days, if these forum posters are to be believed, Apple decided to reject some apps that offered “an external link to Safari to create a Dropbox account”.

Before we march to Infinite Loop with our community pitchforks and torches, there are some necessary notes to be made about these rejections. First, the latest public version of the Dropbox iOS SDK is 1.2.1, available here, and I know at least two apps – Ultimate Password Manager and Drafts – that use it, and were approved today. Dropbox integration isn’t a central feature in these two apps, but they do have the Dropbox SDK built-in. On the forums – thus, not on the public developer page – the Dropbox team has already released a “beta” version of the 1.2.2 SDK, which removes the option to create an account on Dropbox.com. The beta SDK was seeded a few hours ago, and there’s the possibility Apple will reverse its decision on those rejections once they see the removal of the incriminated links. Right now, we don’t know.

Perhaps more interestingly, Dustin Curtis notes how some developers had also trouble linking to Rdio content inside their apps. It’s interesting, because Rdio came up with its own way to comply with Apple’s terms without losing money: they are offering subscriptions at a higher price through in-app purchase. But then again, the issue isn’t that Rdio does offer IAPs in its iOS app (the restriction on different prices was relaxed last year): it’s that the Rdio website still displays links to subscriptions users may potentially purchase through Safari (or any iOS web view).

As iOS apps become increasingly connected with third-party services and APIs, it’s going to be difficult for developers to keep track of websites and login pages that may or may not contain purchase mechanisms Apple doesn’t like. Sometimes, these mechanisms go unnoticed for months; other times, Apple decides to take action, such as in the (reportedly few) cases of Dropbox rejections this week.

Does this signal a change in Apple’s stance on Dropbox-enabled apps? We don’t know, though developers are naturally asking for clarifications and expressing their doubts. It may well be that Apple decided to simply start enforcing its old existing rule, and that they will be perfectly fine with the new SDK for newly-submitted apps. More importantly, while these few rejections are being talked about now, it’s important to note how, this week, other apps with the old Dropbox SDK have been approved.

Apple’s 11.13 rule isn’t new, and before we dabble in speculation about Apple wanting to “kill Dropbox”, I suggest we wait.

My New Dropbox “Quick Note-Taking” App: Drafts 1.1

In my review of Drafts 1.0, I wrote:

Drafts is neither a text editor nor a minimal Twitter client. Drafts is a frictionless way to capture and save ideas that also happens to be integrated with system functions and applications you may be already using to elaborate on those ideas. Drafts can be used as an inspirational notepad to store the genius idea you have while you’re brewing coffee, or when you’re busy writing something else (just fire up Drafts, and quickly dictate your text if you have an iPhone 4S). I would like to see an even faster way to email text (like Captio or Note 2 Self do) as well as support for Evernote and more text-based iOS apps in a future update, so here’s to hoping the feedback on this initial version will be strong enough to encourage Greg Pierce, the developer of Drafts and Terminology (which the app also supports for definitions), to consider more functionalities and an iPad counterpart.

And from my Dropbox Writing Workflow, about the service I use to save “quick snippets of text” into Dropbox:

I am not always writing long form content. In fact, most of the time I am simply saving ideas and short sentences in Dropbox. The web service I use to quickly get bits of text as .txt files into Dropbox is Send To Dropbox. Using my “Attachments” folder, Send To Dropbox connects via OAuth to my Dropbox account and gives me a unique email address I can email stuff to.

Drafts 1.1, released today, delivers in the two areas I used to find myself dabbling in: quick notes and Dropbox. Aside from a new icon by Wet Frog Studios, some minor UI refinements, and better feedback for executed actions, Drafts 1.1 comes with direct Dropbox integration to let you easily save a draft with one tap into your Dropbox account. Drafts will save notes as timestamped .txt files, meaning that, if you’re clever enough and want to automate your quick note-taking workflow, you could build rules in Hazel to look for specific timestamps and content inside the Apps/Drafts folder in Dropbox.

Personally, Drafts 1.1 fills a particular void in my workflow – a native iPhone app whose sole purpose is to save quick bits of text as single .txt files in Dropbox. With Drafts 1.1 and TextDrop, I can reclaim control of my drafts without being forced to use Send To Dropbox (which still has the obvious advantage of working anywhere). I like how I can type text into Drafts 1.1, hit the Dropbox sharing button, forget about it, and then access my text snippets with TextDrop, iOS file managers like ReaddleDocs and GoodReader (which allow you to directly edit text or “open in” other apps), or my OS X Dropbox folder.

Drafts 1.1, however, doesn’t just bring a few enhancements, bug fixes, and Dropbox support. For instance, third-party app integration has been supercharged with direct support for Sparrow (text will be passed along as email body, and the cursor will be automatically placed in the Subject field), Messages, and Simplenote. Even better, Drafts now lets you configure the apps and actions you want to keep visible in the sharing list with a dedicated menu; installed apps are automatically recognized, whilst supported-but-not-installed ones have a link back to the App Store (the App Store link button could use the same fresh coat of UI paint the icon received). You can enable and disable actions with a double tap.

Typically, 1.1 updates don’t fundamentally change the nature of an app, as they improve on existing features and fix glaring omissions of the first release. For me, Drafts 1.1, with the addition of Dropbox and more stability, feels like an all-new app that now sits in my iPhone dock to quickly save .txt into Dropbox. If you liked the functionalities of Drafts 1.0 and were waiting for more, I highly recommend Drafts 1.1, available on the App Store today at $0.99.

My Dropbox Writing Workflow

Ever since I wrote about my new year’s resolutions to work smarter using better tools, compared my favorite iOS text editors, and shared some of my workflow techniques on Macdrifter, I thought it would be appropriate to share a bit more about the activity that takes up 80% of my work time: writing.

As I wrote in my comparison of iOS text editors:

Two months ago, I noted how there seemed to be a distinction between text editors focused on long-form writing, and the ones stemming from a note-taking approach. I think this difference is blurring with time, but there are still several apps that are clearly focused on distraction-free, long-form writing, like iA Writer and Byword, whereas the ones I tried for this article belong to the note-taking/Markdown/Dropbox generation of text editors. I like iA Writer and Byword, but I’m saving that kind of apps for another article.

In my workflow, there is a distinction between apps “for writing” and tools for quick “note-taking”, but in order to minimize the effort required to keep everything in sync and tied together, I set out to make sure the differences of such tasks could coexist within a single ecosystem.

My writing ecosystem is powered by Dropbox. Read more