Today’s photo is one taken whilst I was at work. A client’s public wifi network failed and of course it was one of the “out of sight” units that had failed!
Not every photo is going to be a landscape some will be work photos – but hopefully they will not be as dusty or “fibre glassy” as this one.
One big difference between the versions of Memory-Map on my old Windows 6.5 phone and my current iPhone 4 is the way they handle imported routes. The Windows version simply connected to the complete route library in the PC application, then on the phone you could choose which routes from that list to show, turning them on and off as required. On the iPhone you have to load the routes individually and once you have finished with that route unload it and then load another (keeping too many routes loaded at one time impacts the performance of the app).
But the issue is getting the routes into the app from Memory-Map on the PC. The first thing you have to do is save the individual routes as gpx files on your PC. In my Memory-Map I have a category for Lincolnshire – which has over sixty entries, both routes and location markers – if I save the whole of this category as a gpx file when I open it on the iPhone it is too confusing on the screen to be useful – another reason to limit the open routes/markers on the iPhone.
In the knowledge base on the Memory-Map website it describes how to email gpx files to your iPhone for use in the Memory-Map app. However I use my Dropbox account to transfer (and store) my gpx routes and markers.
It is easy to save gpx files on my PC with descriptive names, into a Dropbox folder, these then synchronise to my Dropbox online. Using the Dropbox app on my iPhone I can access the files.
gpx files in a Dropbox folders
These files are opened in Drpbox, by tapping on them – they open as text files. By then tapping on the “open in” icon I can choose to open the file in Memory-Map.
showing the “open in” option
The gpx file is loded into the Marks and Routes section of the Memory-Map app.
the gpx file available for use in Memory Map
From there it can be opened and used on a map.
I have a number of gpx files available for free download here – more are always being added.
This article is sponsored by Octagon Technology.
I have written a short article today, on the Octagon Blog, about using QR Codes.
A short walk in the woods yesterday.
I set out early and took some extra breakfast with me – and boiled water on my meths stove for tea, having found a convenient fallen tree, in a quiet clearing, to sit on.
I had to stand over the sapling, below, to get the frame I wanted and from that position I could not hold the iPhone steady enough, so I used the “stabiliser” finction in the Camera+ app to get a sharp image.
On Friday evening, I went into Lincoln city centre, with a couple of friends to shoot some photos of the Christmas lights and anything else of interest we came across. Between them they had a Sony SLR, and two Nikons – I took my iPhone.
One of the apps I wanted to try out was 6×6, a camera app that takes square images. I know you can crop any photo you take with an iPhone to a square but this app forces you to create your image inside a square, something that photographers used to do when using medium format cameras with 6cm by 6cm film frames. 6×6 also has a setting to take only mono photos (no second colour image saved) – it gives a similar experience to when I used to shoot black and white film.
A number of the following shots were taken on Steep Hill – the best street in the UK.
The Pie Shop used by Lawrence of Arabia.
And the rectangle shot for comparison.
Another camera app I used was Pro HDR, when the app takes two images to make the final shot, it takes some interesting ghost images.
And in colour…
I used to take a lot of black and white photos, on film, using a manual camera (a Nikon FM2) which I then processed and printed myself. It was great fun and I could produce some interesting and satisfying results. I thought it might be interesting to produce some mono images on my iPhone. I have tried the B&W effects available in the Camera+ app but thought it could be better and then I came across Photogene² as a featured app on the iTunes store and decided to try it out.
Photogene² is primarily an image processing app for the iPhone with many options including a fully featured black and white section. The interface is exceptionally good with controls that expand, become semi-transparent or disappear as you edit your image making it very easy to manipulate the effect you want. I particularly liked the contrast and exposure effect on the mono image to make the photo look like it had been printed on hard, high contrast, grade 5 paper – a result I was keen to produce.
Below is the first image I have made using the app (if I forget about the others I just experimented with).
The original image was made using Pro HDR – below is the starting image, with the colour saturation tweaked up a bit in the app, before saving.
Another feature of Photogene² is that it has a Black and White camera function, which displays in black and white as you frame the shot, to which you can add filters in real-time – I am looking forward to trying that out on some landscapes next time I go walking.
It looks like this is a good addition to my growing collections of camera and imaging apps on my iPhone digital camera.
When I checked the iPhone updates last night there was an update for Stanza – and having installed it the app is now working. However do I transfer my loyalty back to Stanza (until it breaks again) or stick with the supported app MegaReader.
I think I will stay with MegaReader.
I had to pull in at the RAF Waddington Public Viewing area today to make an important phone call on behalf of one of our client’s and whilst I was there a VC10 was carrying out some training loops.
Upgrading to iOS 5 on my iPhone 4 broke one of my favourite apps, Stanza, an ebook reader. A quick search on the internet will show you how many people are upset by this. I have used my PDAs/smartphones to read books for years, starting with a Psion Series 3a device and books I got on CDs at computer fairs and from BBSs. So I was keen to get another ereader and fast. (See my original post here.)
Well I tried ShuBook - it is OK, but there were two problems. I really could not get on trying to ignore all the Chinese characters and although I could connect it to my Calibre library, it would not download the catalogue to the iPhone. I could transfer books to it via iTunes and it was a good reader.
Whilst looking on the web to see what was to become of Stanza I found this page
which led me onto trying (buying) MegaReader and using it this week and it is working out fine.
Things it does
There are a few issues (if I use Stanza as the bench mark).
Octagon Technology has a client who we support, with manuals he distributes to staff on their iPhones. For this week they have been using iBooks but if MegaReader works out for me I may recommend he buys this for his staff.
Here are a couple of pages with links to free ebooks.
FREE eBooks, Excerpts, Stories! « Mike Cane 2008.
Over 900 Free ePub eBooks! « Mike Cane 2008.
Following the iOS 5 upgrade my favourite ebook reader, Stanza, has stopped working. As the company that wrote the app Lexcycle, has been bought out by Amazon it is unlikely Stanza will be fixed, so I am now looking for another reader app for my iPhone.
As a quick fix, so I could continue reading my current book, I switched to Apple’s iBook app, but to be honest it is a very weak app. It is so slow to open and start reading a book, slowed further by the auto-rotation trying to work out how to display the book. This problem could be fixed by adding a “lock screen rotation” in the app – Apple will tell you to use the system “lock screen rotation”, this is not convenient as I of course open the book before locking the screen or when I have finished reading I have to remember to unlock the screen when I am trying to use the iPhone for other tasks. Come on Apple just add an in app option – make iBooks a better app.
So I need a better reader. I am trying ShuBook and Bluefire.
ShuBook is Asian orientated but it does have English options including excellent English help pages. Bluefire is a much simpler app. Both work well as readers but It was the extras Stanza offered that I liked.
Both Bluefire and ShuBook turn the pages quickly and have links to some online book collections (although many of the ShuBook ones are in Chinese, but I can ignore these) and ShuBook has an option for adding your own download locations including Calibre on your PC.
I am going to use ShuBook first – but hope like many others that Stanza is fixed.