If you’re a Text Expander user and you can’t remember the abbreviation for a snippet you want to use, just click on the Text Expander icon in the menu bar and select that snippet from the quick access menu. The selected snippet will be inserted at the point of your cursor in the active window on your desktop. Yes, it’s that simple.
Typing Tools
Trying to type on the small screen is a challenge at best. Even the large onscreen keyboard found on the iPad can be a frustrating experience at times. That’s where auto-text apps come in. These apps let you set up dictionaries of words, phrases and even paragraphs and assign each a unique abbreviation. Then, when you want to include that phrase in your text, all you do is type the abbreviation and the app takes care of the rest. Because finding the pound sign on a small keyboard can be a challenge, just setting up your most commonly used Twitter hash tags can save a significant amount of time. And where do you think those smart people get their hearts and flowers updates? Once you start using these apps you’ll find all kinds of phrases you use frequently.
These apps help make typing on the small screen less frustrating. And, once you get used to using them, you’ll want them on your desktop too. Here’s a look at some of the auto-typing apps available for you.
Mac and iOS users can take advantage of Text Expander [iOS - $4.99, Mac - $34.99]. Text Expander works in a growing number of apps and can keep your abbreviations dictionary synched between the desktop and mobile versions.
Mac users will also find the free Typinator and TypeIt4Me apps work quite well.
Android users can take advantage of the Smart Keyboard app [trial - free, pro - $2.99]. It is a complete keyboard replacement app that allows you to fully customize your device’s keyboard. One of its many features is a smart dictionary that is used to save commonly used text. Unfortunately, this app is not available in the Amazon or Barnes & Noble app stores.
Windows users aren’t left out either. There’s AutoText [Win - $22.85] and PhraseExpress [Win - free].
As you get comfortable using these auto-typing tools, you’ll be surprised at how many ways you find to put them to use. It’s the tool that keeps on giving.
iPad Blogging
The iPad is a great platform for reading, watching movies and keeping up with friends and family, but can it be used to blog too? You betcha! And, it does it quite well. There may be some of you scratching your head about that last statement, especially if you’ve tried using the Mobile Safari browser to work on your blog. It ain’t gonna happen in the browser – you need a blogging app. Fortunately, there are several good ones that will have you up and running in minutes.
The WordPress app [iOS - free] is a great tool for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress users. You can set up multiple sites in the app and easily move from one to the other. It lets you create and edit posts and pages, add photos and videos and even moderate comments. A recent update has improved performance, fixed a lot of bugs and added the pull to update feature I’ve come to rely on in my Twitter and Facebook apps.
In this example, you see the editor view with the photo picker displayed. I accessed it by touching the photo icon at the bottom of the editor. From here I can choose the image I want to include on my post and select size options. Images come from the iPad’s photo albums. Other tools included at the bottom of the editor are Preview, Publishing Options and Edit. The paperclip displays all the images currently included in this post. In the left sidebar are icons that allow you to move from posts to pages or comments. The sidebar will display an items list of your selected content.
You can choose to publish now or set you content as either a draft or local draft (especially useful when you have no Internet connection). You can also set both categories and tags in each post. You do not have access to plugins or widgets from this app.
The BlogPress app [iOS - $4.99] is currently on sale for $2.99 (until March 27th, I think) and supports WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal and more. You can have multiple blog sites set up in the app and easily move from one to another.
The BlogPress editor also supports local and online drafts. You’ll find the tools located at the top of the screen once the onscreen keyboard is displayed. Tap the information icon to the right of the post title to display a details pane for entering tags, categories, publishing status and date. BlogPress does not have a facility for managing comments.
Other Tools
As we all know, a blogger needs more than an editor to publish. The same holds true on the iPad. To post on the road, you’ll need the Camera Connection kit to move your photos from your camera to your iPad. Next, you’ll need a photo-editing application. Photogene [iOS - $2.99] gives you an impressive set of editing tools and then you can either save them to your iPad Photos for access via your blogging app, save to Dropbox, upload to the site of your choice via FTP or post to your favorite social sites.
Another very useful app for bloggers is TextExpander [iOS - $4.99]. It allows you to save commonly used phrases with a short abbreviation so all you need to type is the abbreviation to add the entire phrase to your text – very handy when all you’ve got is the onscreen keyboard. It can be used to save HTML code as well as plain text making it especially useful to bloggers. TextExpander works in a growing number of iOS apps including BlogPress, Twitter, SimpleNote and many more. This is one of those apps that you’ll think isn’t going to be that useful until you start to use it. Then you keep finding more and more ways to put it to work. Mac users have a desktop app [Mac - $35] available too and you can use Dropbox to keep the abbreviation database synched between the two.
It will take a bit of practice to get comfortable with iPad blogging, but soon you’ll find it second nature. And, this time of year who wouldn’t rather be blogging in the spring sunshine?
G-Notes: Essential iPad – Working Apps
First on my list of working apps is Dropbox. In addition to moving ebooks to and from the iPad, Dropbox is quite handy for making work files available between computers and devices. It’s also extremely useful when you are collaborating with others. In addition to installing the free Dropbox on your iPad, you should also install it on your desktop/laptop.
Next to Dropbox, the app I use the most is Notebooks for iPad [$8.99]. It’s my todo list, research notes, topic ideas, journal and much more. You can share your “books” (an organizational element in Notebooks) and imported documents to your desktop and/or iPhone via wifi using Dropbox or via USB sych using iTunes.
The iWork apps (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) are available in scaled-down versions just for the iPad. Even so, they are impressive applications and at $9.99 each, not a bad deal. While you can save your documents to the free iwork.com site, you cannot open files from there. You can open files from Dropbox and there’s a work-around for saving them using the DropDAV service.
Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite gives Microsoft Office [$24.99] users the ability to create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and includes a file manager that lets you synch files using any number of online platforms including Dropbox and Google Docs.
GoDocs [$3.99] provides full support for Google Docs.
For photo editing, Photogene for iPad [$3.99] is a great option. It provides all the basic editing and adjustment tools you need plus a few goodies added for good measure.
Bloggers using WordPress, LiveJournal and Squarespace have free apps available to help their blogging efforts. The WordPress app is very usable. The BlogPress app [currently on sale at $2.99] works with just about every blog platform and is a very capable app. MacJournal [$5.99] can be used to post to Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress and MobileMe.
If you’re going to do any serious work on your iPad, I would recommend a bluetooth keyboard. There are many options to choose from, but since my Mac’s keyboard works fine with the iPad I haven’t investigated any others. I’m also getting quite good at two-finger typing with the on-screen keyboard and I take full advantage of the Text Expander [$4.99] app with allows me to save phrases and other commonly-used text with assigned abbreviations. Whenever I type the abbreviation, Text Expander replaces it with the full phrase. A growing number of iPad apps support Text Expander. There’s also a desktop version for Mac and you can use Dropbox to keep your phrase library synched on both. Oh, it also supports HTML so you can set up commonly used HTML to quickly drop into a blog post.
I still do most of my writing on my desktop, but I find that I’m frequently carrying draft projects with me to edit whenever I have a few minutes. Once you get comfortable selecting text with your finger, you’ll find the iPad is quite nice for editing. And, because you’re more likely to carry it with you than your laptop, it’s there when you need it.
On our recent trip to California, we only took our iPads. Travel time each way was about 12 hours and we were reading, listening to music, playing games and doing some work. The batteries held up throughout the trip. It was a very pleasant surprise.
Yes, my iPad is more than just a pretty face
