We did miss last weeks edition due to annual holidays, but are now back fully refreshed and ready to go, and include some iPhone travel tips so that readers can also enjoy a break from work, but take the right tech with them!
The print highlights first: while we were away the good folk at PrintWeek filled the Product of the Week slot with the Centurfax EasyDot dotmeter product. The review points out that if you are adopting the ISO12647-2 standard you do need to check your plate quality on a regular basis. To do that effectively you need a dotmeter, and there are none better than those provided by Centurfax.
In the ink world, Ink & Printing Technologies, the UK Van Son distributor, announced the availability of inkWise, a software that can significantly reduce the amount of ink used on press.Also in the news during our hols was that Apex has installed its first Ryobi 920 SRA1 format press in the UK at Pardy & Sons in Dorset. The catalogue producer has purchased a five-colour version of the machine, which will allow the company to bring back a significant amount of work that it had been placing with other print shops.
One really interesting link that came to our attention just this morning is from our friends at Mashable, and it offers 12 beginner tutorials for Photoshop. If you have new guys that need to get a start in the world’s number one photo tweaking app take a look.A Holiday for your iPhone? When taking any phone abroad you need to be very aware of the potential costs involved through both calling and through data acquisition. Recent legislation has helped to limit the costs involved, but do study the detail before you leave the UK, especially if you are heading for distant shores outside of Europe. We had a week in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt (abbreviated to SeS further down!).
Following PIND’s recent excursions, we thought it would be good to include few iPhone app tips for you happy travellers. Firstly, the simple need for file sharing. You have some files that you would like to take with you to read on the beach, or just because you think you could need them: example, the PDF that your travel insurance company sent you (like mine). For this iFiles is certainly the best in my opinion. Apps like DropBox [this is quite a funny link by the way!] and Office2 need internet connection to access the files from a server, whereas iFiles has a copy of the file on-board, so you can read it on the plane or on the beach!
For reading those all-so-important web pages that you just didn’t have time to read before you left, you copied them to your “read later” Instapaper widget didn’t you. You then synced this with your phone before you left the office, and if you did this will work just find and great when you are out of network.
Another great reading app of course is iBooks, which we are certainly pleased to report works well with already downloaded material. A tip for those that don’t want to spend a fortune on downloading new reading material: take a look at the samples. You get a good chunk of text to give you a great idea of how the book will shape up. Check it out before you buy, or just read loads of samples! You may also prefer to buy a real book of course. They are still so much more flexible than an e-book! Also free books are arriving and leaving the bookstore all the time. Keep checking what is available. I will confess that my library is mainly free books and samples.
For your music requirements you have iPod already "built in", but many readers may be Spotify converts like me! I can report that all was fine in offline mode, though it did keep asking me to switch aeroplane mode off and connect to a network whilst in flight (a bug?). Beach use was just fine. For those not familiar with the wonders of Spotify, you must pay a monthly subscription for offline mode, which allows you to download your favourite playlists for offline use. You need to download the lists you want to listen to before you leave these fine shores, which has to be done in network and with power too; you are limited to 3,000 tunes I think. You then need to switch to offline mode when you go out of network coverage.
If you need a musical change, you can play your radio recordings that you made with TuneIn Radio. As an example, I had an hour long recording of Planet Rock, my favourite DAB station, which was great to listen to lounging on the beach at SeS.
It probably goes without saying, but Notes was also just fine; I typed some of these bits of text! But then I didn't expect anything less from good old Notes! I was able to add some of these thoughts on the plane and others on the beach at SeS.
More importantly for iPhone 4 users, the video camera was very useful when looking at the wildlife in the Red Sea [from the confines of a glass bottom boat]! The camera quality also comes into its own (click on the image for more detail and some nice stripy fishes).Something completely out of “left field”, and not actually tried: home security system for your iPhone! Yes, one little problem that holiday’s can introduce is security back at the ranch. Well, as Apple might say, there’s an app for that! Take a look at Dropcam as featured by our good chums at Mashable for full details.
Your further thoughts on which apps are essential holiday material can be sent through to PIND.editor@gmail.com
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