Importing and exporting from iWork apps

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use the import/export features of DocsPortal to use the iWork apps to edit the documents you have in Google Docs?  We think so too, but unfortunately the iWork apps are limited in their ability to export files.  Numbers and Keynote won’t even export files in the formats supported by DocsPortal (they will only save as Numbers, Keynote, or PDF formats).  Pages, however, CAN save in the Microsoft Word format (.doc), but unfortunately it can only use this format to save as an email attachment, or for iTunes syncing…it cannot export to other apps.  However, there is an interesting workaround that is possible, described below.

Exporting Pages files to DocsPortal – the hard way

OK, so you can easily export a Google Docs document file to Pages, and Pages will import it and let you edit it.  That’s great.  But now that you’ve edited it, how do you export it back to DocsPortal so it gets uploaded to Google Docs?  Well, as described in the section about, there is no direct way, but it is possible.  The secret is to use Pages to e-mail the document to yourself in the .doc format.  Even though Pages can’t export the document, it can e-mail it, and then when you receive the e-mail, you can easily export the attachment back to DocsPortal like you would any other e-mail attachment.  Inconvenient?  Yes.  But it works in a pinch.

File Navigation

DocsPortal makes browsing and searching for files easy.

The DocsPortal screen is divided into two main parts, the Navigation View, shown above on the right, and the Folder View, shown above on the left.

The Navigation View lets you navigate through your folders and browse the file lists.  For each file, you can quickly see at a glance, the name, type, and update date of the file.  Files lists can be sorted by title, date, or type.

The Folder View shows a list of ALL folders in your Google Docs account.  Tapping on a folder name will cause the Navigation View to immediately switch to a view of the contents of that folder.  Use the Folder View to quickly jump to different folders without having to navigate through them.

At the top of the screen also exists the Search Bar which lets you search for any file or folder using Google’s full text search.

File Viewing

View the contents of any file.

To view the contents of a file, just tap on it from the list in the Navigation View.  The file or document will be shown, along with additional details about the file.

From the file view, there are multiple actions you can take by using the toolbar right above the document.

• Open in… Open this file using another app that can support it.  For example, you could open a document file using Apple’s Pages app for further editing.
• E-mail. Create a new e-mail with this file as an attachment.
• Full screen. View the current file in a full screen view.

Offline Access

One of the great things about DocsPortal is that it will automatically download and cache your files so that they can be viewed even when you don’t have an internet connection.  Whenever you do have an internet connection, DocsPortal will automatically sync with Google Docs so that you always have the latest file updates on your iPad.

All of this happens automatically…no messy setup required, and no need to manually “download” the files that you want to access offline.

Importing and Exporting

DocsPortal makes it simple to import and export files to and from other apps.

Exporting

Exporting files to other apps.

While viewing a file, you can use the “Open in…” toolbar button to show a list of other apps that can handle opening files of this type.  Tap on an app name to launch that app and open the file.  In the screenshot above, you can see that this document file can be exported to the Pages app.

Importing

Import files from other apps.

DocsPortal also support importing certain file types into Google Docs.  Documents (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .html, .txt), spreadsheets (.xls, xlsx), presentations (.ppt, pptx), and PDF files are supported for importing.  Any app that can support exporting its files in one of these formats can be used.  For example, if you receive an e-mail with a Excel (.xls) spreadsheet attachment, you could tap on the attachment, and choose DocsPortal to open it.

When importing a file, DocsPortal will open with the simple import screen shown above.  From this screen you can choose to rename the file or choose its destination folder before importing it.  After tapping save, the file will be imported into DocsPortal and uploaded to Google Docs.

Conclusion

If you’re a Google Docs user with an iPad, i hope you’ll try DocsPortal.  We have plans to add a lot of new features in future updates.  Have an idea for a new feature?  Go to our support page and let us know!

DocsPortal is now available on the app store.

In this blog post I’ll address the current problems with NoteMaster syncing with Google Docs.  While I’ve already posted some info on our support page, I wanted to share some additional details about the problem with our customers.

To recap, there is a syncing issue with Google Docs, where notes that are uploaded to Google Docs have missing images.  Since image support is one of NoteMaster’s main selling points, this problem is especially frustrating.

When uploading documents to Google Docs, Google supports a number of file formats, such as plain text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), Word (.doc), Open Office (.odt), and HTML (.html).  When NoteMaster syncs a note to Google Docs, it needs to use one of these formats to upload the note.  Of these, the only ones that support headers and images (two important NoteMaster features) are .doc, .odt, and .rtf.  We chose to use .odt because it is a relatively simple, well-documented, modern format to use.

The current issue is that Google has broken the conversion of .odt file uploads.  Completely.  In fact, this is not just for NoteMaster, this is a general issue…even uploading .odt files to Google Docs with your web browser will result in a broken document.

You can prove this to yourself by doing the following:

1. Create a new document in Google Docs that contains text, headers, and images
2. Export this document to your computer in .odt format
3. Re-upload the document back to Google Docs
4. Open the uploaded document and notice two things: the text is missing, and the image looks weirdly lo-res (posterized). (Yes, this is screwed up in a different way than when uploading through NoteMaster, but that’s because we create the .odt slightly differently than Google.)

So you can see that .odt conversion is completely broken. It’s hard to believe that Google would let a basic feature like this stay broken for several week now, isn’t it? Yet that is exactly the situation we are facing. This exact same issue happened at the end of January, and I reported it, and they fixed it. So when I saw it happening again I knew it was the same problem. I have reported it again, but this time they don’t seem to be even looking at it…very frustrating indeed.

At the beginning of this week I got tired of waiting for Google, and I decided to try using one of the other formats for uploading notes to Google. Unfortunately, while .doc is probably the format Google supports the best, it is also the most complicated, proprietary, and undocumented. So I tried to use .rtf instead. The good news is that I had some success, it was able to upload notes with images. The bad news is that it wasn’t consistently successful…about 30% of the time you would end up with the lo-res/posterized images, and and although the text was there, any international (non-english) characters were lost. While this certainly is an improvement of sorts, I’m extremely hesitant to put out an update that claims to fix the images problem, when it still doesn’t work 100%.

So at this point I’m going to continue down two paths at once. First, I’m going to keep banging on Google’s door until I can get some sort of answer as to what’s going on with their .odt support. Second, I’m going to keep playing around with the .rtf format to see if it stabilizes.

I realize this blog post is going to come across as somewhat of a rant.  You might be surprised to know that this kind of thing happens all the time with Google Docs, only usually it’s not this bad, and usually it gets fixed a lot sooner.  Normally I try to shield our customers from the gritty details of Google breakage, because I realize that you don’t really care why it’s broken, you only want it fixed.  But this problem has been going on a few weeks now, and I thought our customers deserved a bit more information.

Our new app is called Smooth Movie, and its job is to smooth out any shaky videos you record on your iPhone 3GS.  What do I mean by “shaky videos”?  Well, when you’re recording video on your iPhone, it’s hard to keep your hand super steady, especially if you are moving around at all.  This results in videos that look shaky.  Smooth Movie can process these videos, analyze the frames of the video, and create a “smoothed” version.  The camera movement will still be there, but it will be a lot less jerky, and a lot less distracting to the viewer.

So, how does Smooth Movie accomplish this?  We implemented an image stabilization algorithm which analyzes each frame of the movie, and tries to figure out how much the frame has moved relative to the previous frame.  It then adjusts the position and rotation of the frame in a way that minimizes the apparent movement.  There are many computer programs that do similar things…iMovie for the Mac can do this, for example.  But Smooth Movie is the first piece of software that can do this on the iPhone itself, which is much more convenient.  For example, you could shoot some video, run Smooth Movie on it, and then upload the result to YouTube, all on your iPhone.

Smooth Movie does take some time to process and smooth a movie, which is why we recommend it for short clips, rather than long movies.  We spent a lot of time optimizing the code to be as fast as it can be, including taking advantage of the NEON intrinsics that are available in the armv7 processor of the iPhone 3GS.

We hope you’ll enjoy Smooth Movie.  It really is useful for almost all handlheld videos taken on the iPhone 3GS.  And if you find it useful for your own needs, please tell you friends, and please consider writing a review on the app store.

On our Smooth Movie page, you can check out some sample movies that were processed with Smooth Movie.

NoteMaster

In December, we released NoteMaster 3.1, and even though it was just a “.1″ update, it had a lot of cool stuff in it.  The focus of the release was user interface improvements, so we took the opportunity to add some features that would make NoteMaster easier to use.  Here’s an overview of what it contained:

• Added a “new note” button to the category screen so you can quickly add a note from any screen (yay!).
• Added an option to allow NoteMaster to launch to the screen it was on when you exited the app (finally!)
• Added the ability to preview the first three lines of your note right from the note list (helpful!).
• Greatly improved the speed of the note search, especially for large note lists (speedy!).
• New easy setup for Google Docs syncing and SMTP e-mail (easy!)
• Lots of other small tweaks and improvements to make NoteMaster more usable.

We’re currently working on the next update.  While the feature list is not yet set in stone, I can give you a little hint…think “lists”.

iPad Fever

Yes, I admit that I was one of those people who spent most of the month of January in anticipation of Apple’s “tablet” announcement, which turned out to be the iPad.  While I know a lot of people were a bit disappointed about some elements of the iPad, I wasn’t one of those people.  I’m very excited about it, as both a customer and developer, and rest assured I’ll be at the Apple store on launch day.

I’ve received a number of emails asking if we’re going to make a version of NoteMaster for the iPad.  The easy part of the answer is “yes”…there will certainly be a iPad native NoteMaster.  We’re still in the planning stages, so its too early to reveal exactly what the iPad version of NoteMaster will turn out to be.  We could certainly just whip together something that’s “NoteMaster, only bigger”, but we’re trying to look at the bigger picture a bit.  We’re asking ourselves what does “note taking” mean on a device like the iPad?  After all, we’re talking about a device where a full-featured word processor (iWork Pages) will be available.  The type of “notes” you’ll want to take on the iPad may be very different from the ones you take on the iPhone.  So, yes, NoteMaster for iPad is coming, and we’ll disclose more info when we have it.

One more tidbit…the iPad has inspired us to start planning another app here at Kabuki Vision…more hints about that in future posts!

Productivity Apps Get No Respect

In the world of iPhone apps, there are three categories of apps that get most of the buzz: (1) games, (2) social-media-twitter-facebook-enabled-whatever-whatever, and (3) cool little apps that do one little cool thing and do it well.  Of course I don’t begrudge any of these types of apps the coverage they get—most of it is well-deserved.  But I think the time has come to recognize the less-glamorous apps—the productivity apps that we use every day and couldn’t live without. While note-taking apps might not be as buzzword-ish as most, they definitely deserve recognition for their unique capabilities and for providing solid functionality that everyone needs.  And lets face it, without the note-taking apps of the world, we’d all be stuck with Apple’s built-in Notes app…and that would definitely not be good.  :)

(Interesting note:  The “Best App Ever” awards have 55 categories…about half of them are game-related…and only about 6 or so would be appropriate for any sort of serious productivity app.)

Why NoteMaster Is The Best Choice

OK, so obviously there are a lot of “notes” type apps in the app store…why is NoteMaster the best choice.  The answer is simple:  NoteMaster has a unique set of features that hit the sweet spot for mobile note-taking.  Let’s take a look:

• Notes and images, together at last. That’s NoteMaster’s marketing tag line, and it hits at the heart of one of NoteMaster’s premier features.  NoteMaster lets you easily create stunning-looking notes by inserting images right in the note…not as a clumsy “attachment” to the note, not by having to create an “image”-type note, but by simply inserting the image right in the text.  And you can do it easily with a single tap.
• Section headers. Most note-taking apps have a lot of features for keeping your notes organized, and of course NoteMaster does too.  But what about keeping your ideas organized inside the note?  Bold section headers let you easily organize a note into logical sections, making your notes much clearer to read.  Best of all, its easy to add a header…just a single tap!
• Google Docs syncing. Most note apps has some ability to transfer your notes to/from your computer or an online service.  NoteMaster has the ability to sync its notes with Google Docs, and unlike other notes apps, only NoteMaster lets you do “true syncing”—just a single tap and NoteMaster syncs everything that has changed in either NoteMaster or Google Docs.  No worrying about explicitly importing/exporting each individual note, which is a huge time-saver.  And or course the syncing preserves all the images and section headers in your notes.
• Easy to use. This sounds a bit obvious, but it really shouldn’t be.  Its easy to add features to apps, but its really difficult to do it in a way that is easy to use for the user.  NoteMaster was designed with the philosophy of “pick great features, make them easy to use, and implement them well.”  (See our demonstration movie, for an example of how easy it is to use).  So as we continue to add features to NoteMaster (which we definitely will continue to do), users won’t have to worry about the interface becoming overly-complicated or unwieldy.
• And all the rest. Of course, NoteMaster supports all the other features that have become expected in a notes app:  categories, password-protection, landscape mode, hyperlinks, sorting, full-text search, font selection, and e-mail.

Most Useful App?

All right, so NoteMaster certainly sounds useful, but is it really the Most Useful App?  Well, obviously that answer may be different for everybody, but for me the answer is a definite YES.  I personally use NoteMaster each and every day…and I’m not just talking about developing/testing…I’m talking about real day-to-day personal use.  It is truly the case that if I had to choose ONE 3rd-party app to keep on my iPhone, NoteMaster would be my choice.  If the app store disappeared tomorrow, I would still continue to use and develop NoteMaster for my own personal use.  So for me, the answer is yes, NoteMaster is my Most Useful App.  If you agree, we’d love to receive  a nomination from you as well.

http://www.mobileorchard.com/best-app-ever-awards-better-odds/

“New and Noteworthy”

On the front page of the iTunes app store is a section called “New and Noteworthy”, which features about 32 apps at a time.  ”New and Noteworthy” apps are displayed in both the iTunes desktop application and the “App Store” app on the iPhone.  It appears that Apple updates this section every Tuesday, adding about 10 new apps to the list.  This means that once featured, your app will stay featured for about 3 weeks, starting at the “front” of the list (displayed more prominently), and getting pushed farther back in the list every week.

Sales Boost Ahoy!

So how does getting featured affect sales?  For NoteMaster, it caused a significant boost in sales.  How much of a boost?  The first week featured, NoteMaster had a 10x increase in sales, and shot up to #8 ranking in the Productivity category.  For week 2, sales dropped to about 3x original sales, and then down to 2x in week 3.  Here a chart to show what it looked like:

“Staff Picks”

After the third week, NoteMaster dropped off the “New and Noteworthy” list, and sales went down, although they still remained higher than they originally were.  Whether this is due to the lingering after-effects of being featured, or due to the new updates we released is hard to say.  Once of the reasons we haven’t been able to fully analyze the results is that a couple weeks later, NoteMaster got featured again…this time in the “Staff Picks” section!

In some ways “Staff Picks” sounds like a more impressive placement, right?  Well, unfortunately, it’s not quite as useful in terms of being seen by prospective customers, due to the fact that this section only exists in the desktop iTunes version of the app store, not in the “App Store” app.  And as it turns out, a lot more people use the “App Store” app to browse and buy apps than the desktop iTunes application.  So the sales boost wasn’t quite as big as previously (it “only” doubled our sales), but it was quite helpful nonetheless:

How to Get Featured?

So, seeing how getting featured in the app store produces such a great boost in sales, the question you might be asking is “how does one get featured”?  The answer, I’m afraid is I have no idea. NoteMaster had been in the app store almost a year before it got featured…and then all of a sudden it got featured twice in a row!  We certainly have no special contacts at Apple, nor have we had any special coverage by the press.  The only conclusion I can come up with is that someone at Apple simply likes NoteMaster, and we’re very happy for it.

Of course, getting featured, while it does produce a temporary sales boost, the boost is just that…temporary.  It’s no substitute for writing a great app, continuing to add awesome features to it, and marketing the heck out of it.  Which is exactly what we plan on continuing to do.

Let me start by telling you a little bit about me.  My name is Adam Shaw, and I’m the founder/developer/tester/tech supporter/marketer at Kabuki Vision (yes, as a small independent developer you get to wear all the hats!).

While I’ve been writing software for about 15 years now, I never immersed myself into the world of Cocoa goodness until I started developing for the iPhone.  It’s funny because I had actually been a Mac user all that time, and I often thought about developing Mac applications in my spare time, but when you spend all day programming at your “real job”, it can be hard to get momentum on other projects.

That all changed when the iPhone SDK was announced.  After playing with the SDK a little bit, it was pretty obvious, even at that early time, that iPhone apps were going to be a Big Deal.  On top of that, I found myselfloving the SDK, Cocoa, and Objective-C.  I was hooked.

It took me a few months to figure out what app I wanted to write.  Remember, at this time there were NO 3rd-party apps at all, so on one hand there were lots of options.  On the other hand, there was nothing BUT options, and I had so many ideas…graphing calculator?  Voice recorder?  Remote control?  Photo editor?  These seemed like the big obvious ideas, which, in retrospect, every other developer had as well.  For me, the problem with each of these ideas at the time is that I personally didn’t care that much about them…I figured that in order to stay motivated, I needed to create an app that solved a problem that I myself had.  And that’s when I came up with the idea for doing a notes app.

I hated the built-in Notes app from the first time I used it, which was the day the original iPhone was released.  Way before 3rd party apps were even a gleam in any developer’s eye.  Sure, you could use it to take notes, but there were some very specific things that bugged me:

1. It used the first line of the note as a title.  While I do know that some people actually like this “feature”, for me, it’s never what I want.  The first line of my note was almost never appropriate as a title, and the idea of having to purposely write a special “title” line as the first line of the note drove me crazy.
2. No categories.  I understand that Apple was going for simplicity here, but for me, having all your notes in a big list becomes unmanageable after the list grows more than a couple screens.  I wasn’t looking for any complicated organizational scheme, some some basic categories (work, shopping, etc.) to store my notes in.
3. The notes were just text.  Using Marker Felt font.  Now of course, the main purpose of a notes app should be for text, that makes sense.  But this is the iPhone!  We shouldn’t have to suffer with the same old “regular” notes like all the other smart phones!  We want our notes to look amazing!  We want images!

And so NoteMaster was born.  My goal was simple:  create a notes app that I would want to use.  I focused on creating an app with all the same features as the built-in Notes app, but fixing the three major things that bothered me, and adding features like inline images and headers.  A lot of time and hard work later, NoteMaster version 1.0 was released in late November 2008.  Now it’s a little over a year later, and version 3.0 is about to hit the app store.

Since 1.0, we’ve added note sorting, html email, syncing with google docs, font selection, note backgrounds, hyperlinks, and a huge assortment of tweaks and improvements.  I still use NoteMaster as my personal notes app every day, and I’m very excited about all the great features we have planned for the future.

In future posts I’ll go into a bit more detail about the early days of planning, designing, and developing NoteMaster.