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DropDAV 2.0: Making Dropbox Integrate with iWork and More on the iPad, Better

By on June 3, 2011 in Quick Tips

There are two major things in technology that have changed the way many of us approach computing in the past few years: Dropbox and iOS. Dropbox enables us to keep all of our files synced seamlessly, so you never have to worry if that important file will be there when you need it. And iOS has freed many of us from the constraints of desktop computing, making it easier to be productive (and entertained…) on the go than ever before.

There’s only one problem: iOS and Dropbox don’t work perfectly together. iOS doesn’t include a full file system, so you can’t just sync Dropbox like you would on a Mac or PC. Then, the iWork apps, Omni apps such as OmniFocus and OmniOutliner, and more don’t include native Dropbox integration. Continue Reading →

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Superpower Your Photoshop with Script Arsenal

By on April 7, 2011 in Quick Tips

Several months back, I was excited to discover Elements+, a great addon for Adobe Photoshop Elements that brings many missing features to the otherwise excellent photo editing app. It’s become part of my standard PSE workflow, letting me unlock layers in folders and get more power out of Elements.

The developer behind Elements+ is back with a new tool: Script Arsenal. This new set of scripts is designed for standard Photoshop, and runs on Photoshop CS3+ for Windows and OS X. Script Arsenal contains over 100 scripts that can speed up your Photoshop workflow and give you easy access to features that make editing images a snap. I haven’t been able to try out Script Arsenal, since I do not have a copy of full Photoshop, but was impressed at the detailed descriptions of all of included functions. You can use it to quickly close all other photos, add torn edges or a page curl to your images, open photos from a folder based on a set of rules, and more. Continue Reading →

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Evernote Web, Totally Redesigned

By on March 29, 2011 in Quick Tips

Evernote, one of the best cross-platform note taking apps, has just unveiled their newly redesigned webapp. While there are Evernote apps for Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, and more, the webapp is the easiest way to edit your notes from any computer. Until now, the Evernote webapp has been the service’s weakest link. It was rather difficult to use, and the design quality was much lower than their desktop and mobile apps.

The newly redesigned Evernote webapp

Not anymore. Evernote unveiled a new design for their webapp today that makes it almost as powerful as the desktop app. It looks like the desktop app, shows thumbnails of your notes in the middle and lets you read them in the right column. Edit notes with one click, without having to go to a new window. Best of all, edits auto-save as you type, so you’ll never lose the data you’ve entered. And, you can share notes right from the webapp with others with a link or Facebook integration. It just might be the most full-featured online notes app.

Now, of all things, I’ve personally have been switching to more plain-text note apps like SimpleNote, mainly because the Evernote Windows app is still rather pokey, even after tweaking it to speed it up a bit. Hopefully they’ll now focus on improving the desktop apps again, too! For now, though, the Evernote webapp is almost nice enough to use on its own, sans desktop apps. With the Chrome Web Clipper for Evernote, it’s a great way to remember everything you come across online.

Get more info about Evernote Web

Sign into your account and try out the new version

Want to learn more about Evernote? This is the book you need: Evernote Essentials

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The Courier Tablet May Live Again

By on March 28, 2011 in Quick Tips

The Courier Tablet May Live Again

Microsoft may have killed off the fabled Courier Tablet, but if two enterprising developers have their way, it may live again … as an iPad app! 2 Boeing engineers are on a quest to redesign the Courier interface on the iPad with an app called Taposé, and you can pledge $10 or more from now until May 21st to help make sure the project gets developed.

The Courier Tablet was a Microsoft Research project designed to make a dual-screen tablet where you could browse the web, email, and more on the left screen and then manage your notes and add content on the right screen. It was one of the first Microsoft products in a while to make even Apple fans excited. Or at least it was going to be. Unfortunately, Microsoft killed off the project, so Courier as we knew it will never see the light of day.

That’s where the Taposé Project comes in. It’ll be an app that will let you gather info from a left pane, and save it in a notebook on the right. The developers plan to let you share notebooks, so presumably there will be a Taposé webapp as well. Either way, it’ll be exciting to see what they cook up! As a PC and iPad user, it’ll be very interesting to see if Microsoft does end up making a Courier-style tablet in the future, but until then, this might be the killer productivity app we’ve been waiting for.

Read More at Taposé’s Kickstarter.com Project and pledge to help make it a reality!

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Send Tweets Directly From Your WordPress Site

By on March 26, 2011 in Quick Tips

BraveNewCode is one of our favorite WordPress developers, and their WPtouch 2 Pro plugin it what powers the awesome mobile and iPad versions of Techinch. One of their other, less well-known plugins is the equally awesome WordTwit. This simple plugin lets you automatically publish your new posts on Twitter without setting up a third-party service. I’ve featured it before in an article about Moving Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress, since Tumblr automatically tweets new posts by default and WordTwit gives you that same feature.

WordTwit just got a bit more awesome today with the release of the new WordTwit 2.6. This new version lets you configure your site as a custom Twitter application! This means, when you publish a new post, it’ll be tweeted immediately, listing your site as the app it was tweeted from. This is great for branding, and plus, for anyone who loves to tweak everything they touch, it’s a fun way to customize your site’s tweets.

 

And.... it works!

To enable this, you’ll need to register your site as a new Twitter application at http://dev.twitter.com/apps. Then, update WordTwit on your site, and enter your OAuth unique codes from Twitter. Finally, activate it with your account, and your site will now automatically tweet your new posts and let the world know they were sent from your site!

 

 

Can Techinch access my personal Twitter account? Sure!

For more info about the new features in WordTwit 2.6 and setting up the Twitter custom app feature, check out BraveNewCode’s blog post about it from today. There’s a new pro version of WordTwit that BraveNewCode will be releasing in the near future, so it’s especially neat they went to the trouble to add the custom app feature to their free plugin. Thanks, BraveNewCode!

 

 

 

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