Ommwriter for iPad is there - impressions from a fan

As recently announced, Ommwriter for iPad is finally here. At first, only in a few Appstores, but now, I think every Appstore should have it available. 
It works almost the same as the desktop version, with the same new sounds and visuals.

However, I have two issues with the current version.
First, there is no dropbox or other filecloud thingamajingy support. Emailing a text to yourself is really 90s. So I hope a next update will incorporate dropbox or cloudapp support.

The lack of a cloud service is a minor annoyance, my biggest peeve is with the keyboard. Understandably the guys from Ommwriter chose to modify the keyboard to blend in more with the app, and thus make it less obtrusive (and have a little wobble while typing). That's perfect in theory. however, the implementation leaves to be desired. Because, with this, they also made the keyboard more narrow. And now, I miss quite a few keystrokes, and it makes me concentrate on the keyboard, which is in contrast with what the app actually wants to achieve: concentrate on your writing.

See the difference between the regular iPad keyboard and the Ommwriter version below. Note that the latter is almost a key width narrower in width and height:

I am one of the few persons who can type blind on an iPad with almost the same speed as on a regular keyboard, and this Ommwriter keyboard really reduces my performance in speed and more importantly accuracy.

Edit
looks like I spoke too soon (RTFM!). It's actually possible to enlarge the keyboard at will..

So, you can make it even wider than the original keyboard.. That's just awesome!

It's here! Bibble 5.2 and our book "The Bibble Survival Guide"

Today, Bibble Labs released version 5.2 of their awesome raw workflow software. (Press Release)
This version has a lot of improvements and new features, like:
- support for 14 new raw camera formats
- new regional editing features, like layer transparancy, subtractive overlapping regions, rotation and distortion correction, etc
- more options for Heal & Clone tools
- copy sets, selective copying
- more advanced Preset options
and lots, lots more.

together with Bibble 5.2 we announced our book "The Bibble Survival Guide", your definite guide to everything Bibble. This 200+ pages PDF ebook (no DRM!) has extensive information for both new and experienced users of Bibble. Check out the site for information, samples and purchase.

Het is er! Bibble 5.2 en ons boek "The Bibble Survival Guide"

Vandaag heeft Bibble Labs versie 5.2 van hun raw workflow software aangekondigd. (persbericht). 

Deze versie heeft weer een hele hoop nieuwe functies en verbeteringen zoals:
- ondersteuning voor 14 nieuwe RAW camera formats
- geavanceerde tools voor lagen en regio's. Transparantie, overlappende lagen, rotatie, etc
- Heal & Clone uitbreidingen
- verbeteringen in de workflow en bugfixes

en nog veel meer.

Tegenlijk hebben Andreas en ik ons boek "The Bibble Survival Guide" uitgebracht. Een 200+ pagina's tellende e-book (non-DRM pdf) waarin uitgebreide informatie staat over hoe je Bibble op de meest optimale manier kan inzetten in je raw workflow. Een voorproefje kan op de site gedownload worden, ook staat er een inhoudsopgave.

Bibble Labs releases Bibble 5 Pro - it's the real thing baby!

Bibble Labs has (finally) officially released Bibble 5 Pro. This amazing piece of software will make your raw workflow a lot faster and easier.

Check out the full specs on their website bibblelabs.com

From their website:

Bibble 5 is an ambitious project to revolutionize Digital Photographic Workflow. Expanding on Bibble 4's speed and power, Bibble 5 is designed to unite unparalleled photographic editing capability and blazing speed in a sleek, modern interface.

Bibble 5 offers Complete Selective editing - apply essentially any image adjustment to the whole image, or just a portion of the image - Asset Managementthat is fast and flexible, and an intuitive design that's easy to learn, and is up to 88 times as fast as other similar applications.

Bibble Labs releases Bibble 5 Pro - it's the real thing baby!

Bibble Labs has (finally) officially released Bibble 5 Pro. This amazing piece of software will make your raw workflow a lot faster and easier.

Check out the full specs on their website bibblelabs.com

From their website:

Bibble 5 is an ambitious project to revolutionize Digital Photographic Workflow. Expanding on Bibble 4's speed and power, Bibble 5 is designed to unite unparalleled photographic editing capability and blazing speed in a sleek, modern interface.

Bibble 5 offers Complete Selective editing - apply essentially any image adjustment to the whole image, or just a portion of the image - Asset Managementthat is fast and flexible, and an intuitive design that's easy to learn, and is up to 88 times as fast as other similar applications.

iPhone: Push or multitasking, what's the difference?

The 3rd party Push notifications have been announced two years ago, and are finally available for general use in iPhone OS 3. Apple has put up push notifications as an alternative to multitasking, mainly because multi-tasking apps running in the background would drain your battery quicker and multi-tasking would use more memory. 

Well, it is a fact that the more apps you are running simultanious, the more memory is used. And yes, especially if an application is polling the network for new messages, that can consume battery life quite quickly.
 
So, push notifications is the solution and holy grail for iPhone users.
 
Now, back into real life. I installed Worldvoice, a "radio" application that uses push for notifications of new "broadcasts" and such. So I switched on the push notifications and played around with the application a bit. I then switched the app off and pretty soon, a push message was shown. Cool. I got bored with it, and switched off the individual notification settings for Worldvoice. The general Push setting remained "on" (because I forgot about it) - see screenshot.

After half a day, I noticed that my iphone battery indicator dropped significantly more than I am used to.
 
Did some more tests during a few days and yes, even though you're not actually receiving any push notifications, just having the push notification enabled makes that your battery drains quite a bit quicker than usual. Because the connection to the push server and phone is open constantly.
 
I am now wondering if this push is actually such a good idea. It drains battery, even without using it. This is with only one app, with very few updates. If you have three or four apps, with a lot of updates (say a twitter client with notifications for DMs and Mentions, and an MSN client with notifications for messages, etc), I think your battery will be gone after a few hours. That sucks, and I think is not much different than just run the apps in the background, really.

Do more people have the above experience (or not?) and willing to share their opinion?