Tag Archives: mobile

Continuing with the Nexus 7

Posted on January 12, 2013 | 1 Comment

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I’ve been using the Nexus 7 for a couple of weeks so I  want to share some thoughts on how its been going. Over all, I continue to really like the tablet. My only nag on the hardware is the layout of the volume rocker and sleep/wake button. They are placed so close together I often find myself putting the device to sleep when I want to change the volume. Read on for my other thoughts.

Media Consumer

I’ve been using the Nexus almost exclusively for media consumption the last couple of weeks and its been great. One of the issues I have with my iPad is the need to go through iTunes to add media to the device. On the Nexus the file system adding media can be done several ways.

First, the Android File Transfer App allows the Nexus to be connected to a Mac via USB. Adding files is a matter of dragging and dropping.  Second, the open filesystem on Android allows me to save any file on dropbox to the device. iOS places limits on what can or cannot be easily added to an “iDevice.” Third, using a USB to go cable allows the Nexus to act as a USB host. This allows thumb drives, and even some portable hard drives, to be connected directly to the device. The camera connection kit ads similar functionality to iOS devices, but the closed filesystem limits what types of files can be added.

The ease of adding media to the Nexus makes it an ideal consumption device.

Gaming

Android does have good games, and I’ve been enjoying some for about a week. The ability to connect a game controller only adds to the experience. Even with on-screen controls games are responsive and animations are smooth. It would be even better if I could mirror the Nexus screen to a TV.

Productivity

When I first got the Nexus I was disappointed at the productivity tools for Android. My preferred work flow is to write in markdown and have my work automatically synced to a dropbox folder. When I first got on the Google Play store the crop of markdown editors was rather slim. Most didn’t recognize the .md extension common to markdown files, had limited dropbox support, and couldn’t export HTML from the app.

I finally found a passable editor called Write. The dropbox support is clunky, files have to be imported from the dropbox app and then shared back, but it exports clean HTML and has a persistent word count.

The mobile office suites on Android are a mixed bag. I’m a Documents to Go user on iOS, but the Android version was so awful I asked for a refund. Quick Office has better file management setup, but the editor only has a page layout view. On the 7 inch Nexus screen, this makes text look far too small to be a comfortable editing environment. On spreadsheets this isn’t as much of a issue, but the word processor is really difficult to use. Quick Office also, for some inexplicable reason, doesn’t have a way to select all text. This boggles my mind.

Of all the suites I’ve used on Android so far, SoftMaker is the most powerful, but it’s Google Drive integration is currently broken. In all, I hope SoftMaker fixes it’s GoogleDrive integration – it’s a solid app.

In another productivity realm, I’m still looking for an app comparable to Notability or Notes + on Android. Nothing I’ve found even comes close. Papyrus is capable, but it’s not as easy to use add its iOS cousins.

For productivity, I continue to see the open filesystem as a mixed blessing. While I appreciate the ease through which I can add media to my Nexus, I have to say I like the sand boxing of iOS better for productivity work. Cloud integration on iOS  “just works” – in Android every app tends to use the cloud differently and the integration is usually only partially implemented.

Conclusion

The Nexus made a good first impression and continues to grow on me. The immaturity of the productivity apps show when I’m trying to get work done, but the ecosystem shows signs of maturing. I still like 4:3 better for a productivity device, but the Nexus could be the sign off things to come.

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Distractions smactions…

Posted on May 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

One of the first objections I hear from pastors regarding the use of digital technology in worship is,

“Then people will be too distracted, I want them to be completely focused on the sermon.”

I don’t buy it, for several reasons.

First, this makes the assumption that people ever were “completely focused on the sermon.” Well, perhaps “ever” is too strong a word.  It makes the assumption that people have been focused on the sermon at any point since the advent of recorded (and then broadcast) media.  Since this advent, the choice has been between mostly “ok” preachers, and a recording of your favorite entertainment or a really good preacher/teacher.  Is it any wonder people have been finding it difficult to listen to what is preached in churches since the late 1800′s?

Second, the desire as expressed above is too narrow.  I guess I can’t blame the preachers I know.  After all, in Protestant circles, we spend a lot of time being taught how to preach during our education.  On the other hand, we don’t spend a significant amount of time on the nature of worship.  Is it any wonder we think of worship as, “Three songs, an offering, and a sermon?”  The reality is, we need to help people focus on the entire pageant of worship – and not simply the sermon.  If this is the case, and I believe it is, then perhaps digital technology could be helpful rather than distracting.

Third, it assumes that taking away people’s digital devices would mean their attention would be automatically focused where we want people to focus.  This isn’t the case.  Taking away digital devices will merely shift a people who are naturally distracted and shift their attention to a  new distraction.  These range anywhere from writing out a shopping list, playing hangman with a neighbor, doodling on the bulletin, or (when all else fails) napping.  My working theory would be the subtraction of digital devices in low-church Protestant worship, in particular, would actually increase the amount of people being distracted from worship by their bad napping habit.

So, if people are going to be distracted anyway, what can we do?  Do we simply give up and never hope people learn/grow/change through worship?  Not at all.

People are distracted, but many are able to sit through  a sporting event, movie, or TV show with no problems – and even point out details later on.  Why?  Because there is movement.  The shifts in these media are such that it changes people’s perceptions and keeps their attention.  Churches, particularly low-Church Protestants, need to remember worship needs a movement to it.  People need to be able to change their eye levels, move their body position, and even cheer when the drama of God is unfolded (a good  liturgical “Alleluia!” is a wonderful example of this).

We can also, frankly, preach differently.  Aside from using a screen well (which I cover here), we can also work our content to match our audience.  Preaching is about communication, not about getting through a weighty manuscript and tossing out huge amounts of data at people.  We can always stretch people to be able to focus for longer periods of time, and we should do this, but perhaps preaching isn’t the best venue for this.  How many of us have been in, or preached, sermons where the main point was covered ten minutes earlier – but the sermon keeps on going because there are stories to tell and quotations to utter forth?  What if we just cut off the sermon when the main point was made?

Finally we need to allow for the truth that people will be distracted.  We are not an “all there” society, and haven’t been for generations.  We are a “here and elsewhere” society, and this was true long before the advent of texting.    If we use digital devices to aid in the awareness that worship is a movement, however, perhaps we can subvert a distracting influence and make it an ally to help people be more “present.”  No, it’s not an easy path to walk – and for some people a digital device will never help them focus.  I do know, however, that it’s easier help people turn the wheel toward a different heading, than it is to scream out against a forward momentum which has been gaining steam for over a century.  One lands us in a different location, the other gets us run over and bitter.  I’ll choose the former.

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Mobile Suite Showdown – Importing and Exporting

Posted on February 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

Productivity apps on the iPad continue to be one of the top selling points for the device. It’s no surprise, then, that there are several office suites available in the App Store. This post is going to explore the three main “all in one” suites which are available on the iPad – Documents to Go, Quick Office, and Office2 HD. Apple’s iWork is also available in the App store, but the “separate app” nature of the suite sets it outside the scope of this comparison.

Today we’ll be looking at the fourth, and final, comparison – importing and exporting. Each suite will be reviewed on both how they deal with data both on a local network and to the cloud.

Quick Office HD

One of the selling points for Quick Office is the ease of which documents can be uploaded to, and retrieved from, computers on the local network via a built-in file transfer interface. This setting can be toggled by tapping the gear button in the file screen and toggling the “file transfer” option. Turning the option on will reveal an ip address which can be used to acces files which are locally stored inside Quick Office. For additional (or, really, any) security an added authentication option can be toggled which will require users to input a user and password combination before connecting. It’s a good idea to make sure this is on. Once file transfers are enabled, users can access Quick Office’s files (for locally stored files only) though a simple web-interface, or by connecting to the server through the finder or windows explorer. In my experiments with Quick Office I found that the file transfer server will disconnect a finder connection when switching to another app on the iPad – this is probably a limitation of iOS.

Quick Office HD also has an impressive number of options available for storing documents in the cloud. Aside from the “big three” of Dropbox, Google Docs, and Box – Quick Office also allows to connections to Sugar Sync, Evernote, and several more. Connections to these services benefit from Quick Office’s excellent file managment tools, however features which are unique to each service are not implemented. This is especially true for the lack of “starred documents” in Google Docs.

Documents imported into Quick Office are handled well – even supporting elements such as outlines, which cannot be generated by the suite itself. Quick Office will also display unrecognized fonts in a default sans serif face without stripping the font information from the actual document. The suite handles spreadsheets well, but my two test presentations suffered from lost formatting and stripped animations.

Office2 HD

As with Quick Office, HD Office2 HD has a built-in file transfer option. This can be access by tapping the gear button in the lower left of the file management screen and toggling “Enable File Sharing.” Similarly, security can also be enabled for this feature. While Quick Office has a colorful and well-thought out web interface, Office2 HD brings up a plain list hyper-links with an upload button at the bottom of the page (which you will probably need to scroll down to reveal). It gets the job done, but it’s not fun to look at. If you are using the file transfer option for this suite connecting via the finder or windows explorer is a better option.

The available options for cloud storage are not as great as in Quick Office. The “big three” are present, as are some other players, but that’s it. The suite, however, adds the ability to connect to a service via webDav – so “roll your own” cloud storage is an option.

Importing files into Office2 HD doesn’t render quite as good results as Quick Office. Unrecognized fonts are displayed in a sans serif font (and retained when opened elsewhere). Outline lists, however, are not displayed correctly though, again, the formatting is retained when opened elsewhere. The application handles spreadsheets well, however, and has in previous months been able to handle files which caused the other two suites to crash. It retains most cell formatting, but cannot hide cells. My first test presentation displayed with moderate success. My second test presentation removed the gradient background and didn’t handle a bullet list very well. Neither presentation retained animations.

Documents to Go

Unlike the other suites in this comparison, Documents to Go makes use of a desktop application to handle local transfers. In one sense, this can be seen as a hassle, because it requires the downloading an application to transfer documents over a local network. On the other hand, Documents to Go removes the need to manually move documents between devices (as in the other two suites). Once installed, Documents to Go’s desktop application creates a folder which will automatically sync files across devices. For uses who want to sync only on their local network, this is a good option.

Documents to Go has the least available options for cloud storage out of the three suites in this comparison. It has the big three, and adds only Sugar Sync as an alternative (each suite also offers iDisk, but this product will soon be discontinued so it can hardly be counted). It does, however, offer some special hooks for GoogleDocs users (the previously mentioned “stared documents”) – this is a nice touch.

Files imported into Documents to Go are displayed nicely. Text is re-flowed for the screen and font information is retained. I sometimes noticed a glitch in the font for outlines when a document is created in the Suite and then uploaded to GoogleDocs, which is an error which should be addressed. Also, Documents to Go has a tendency to strip out paragraph spacing when information is moved through the suite. Again, this is a glitch which I’d like to see fixed. Spreadsheets imported well, retaining cell formatting and even hiding cells which had been hidden in GoogleDocs. One of my test presentations, however, caused the application to crash.

Conclusion

Each of these suites handles importing and exporting in slightly different ways. Documents to Go allows for local syncing, which is a plus, but the added step of installing a desktop application to do so is a non-starter for many. The local file transfer feature for the other two suites is a nice touch (though the web interface is prettier in Quick Office) but requires a manual transfer of data. Again, this is a non-starter for many users.

Each suite has the “big three” cloud storage services available, but Quick Office offers the most options of all the suites. To it’s credit Office2 HD has built-in webDav support, allowing users or organizations to set up their own cloud storage services. Documents to Go has the fewest cloud storage options available, but has some key features GoogleDocs users will appreciate.

The suites each do a credible job importing word processing documents and spreadsheets, but are dismal when importing even the simplest of presentations (really, don’t even bother). The parity of features for each suite makes it difficult to declare a “winner” in this category. As a GoogleDocs user I tend to lean towards Documents to Go, but users of other cloud solutions will be happy with any of the three suites in this comparison.

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Mobile Suite Showdown – Editor Layout

Posted on February 11, 2012 | 1 Comment

Productivity apps on the iPad continue to be one of the top selling points for the device. It’s no surprise, then, that there are several office suites available in the App Store. This post is going to explore the three main “all in one” suites which are available on the iPad – Documents to Go, Quick Office, and Office2 HD. Apple’s iWork is also available in the App store, but the “separate app” nature of the suite sets it outside the scope of this comparison.

Each suite will be explored for file management, editor layout, editing features, and importing/exporting. We’ll primarily look at the word-processing features of each suite, but will also compare the spreadsheet and presentations modules for each app. Today we’ll be looking at the second comparison – editor layout.

Quick Office Editor

Quick Office

Quick office places  it’s formatting buttons at the top of the editor screen. The number of buttons is minimalist, with text formatting options to the left and tools to the right.  The buttons are persistent, allowing for quick formatting without too much trouble.  Oddly, many formatting options are hidden behind a gear icon – grouped with the tools.  Found under the gear icon are font options, alignment, lists, colors, and indents.  While I applaud the attempt at a minimalist interface, I don’t find burying the bulk of formatting options in one cluttered interface to be an elegant solution.

Quick office also displays it’s content in a page-layout format – allowing a content creator to see how their content will look when printed or exported to a PDF.  This can be a useful feature in some instances, but it ends up wasting most of the iPad’s screen real-estate with an exciting display of document margins.

Office 2 HD editor

Office2 HD

If Quick Office to be minimalist in its layout, Office2 HD celebrates complexity.  There are two “pages” of buttons in it’s interface – the first holds text formatting options and the second contains paragraph level formatting like alignments, lists, and intents.  There is, however, one paragraph level formatting option which can be found in the first page of options – paragraph styles.  While is is more a “feature” than a layout choice, Office2 HD is the only “all in one” mobile office suite which supports paragraph styles, and their inclusion as an obvious option is welcome.  The buttons are not persistent, though, they only appear when the keyboard is engaged.  They also feel cramped, and accidental  taps are not uncommon when flicking between button pages.

This suite also defaults to page layout view.  Unlike Quick Office, however, there is an option to switch to “screen layout.” This makes much better use of the iPad’s screen size, and also allows users to zoom the text to a comfortable level without affecting the layout of the page.

Documents to Go editor

Documents to Go

Documents to Go places it buttons at the bottom of the editor.  This is likely a carry-over from the iPhone UI, where bottom buttons are easier to reach while typing, but it translates well on to the larger screen.  There are five buttons in this row – file options, text formatting, paragraph formatting, lists, and tools.  Each button tap reveals a list of common options for that category, along with a “more” option to access more complex formatting.  The buttons, however, are not persistent and actually disappear when the on-screen keyboard is active. Again, this is likely a by-product of the suite being a universal app.  Hiding the buttons when typing makes some sense when using a smaller screen, but on the iPad the vanishing act gets frustrating.

Unlike the other two suites, Documents to Go doesn’t have a page layout view.  It uses a screen layout view only, reflowing the text as a user pinches and zooms the content.  Given that screen layout view makes much better use of the iPad’s screen, the lack of a page layout option isn’t missed much.

Conclusion

Quick Office attempts to create a fast, minimalist, interface while laying out content with a metaphor common to a desktop suite (page view). In the end it ends up failing in both button layout and content layout.  Office2 HD has a complex, and cramped, interface.  It does, however, have two views for content – allowing a user to view content in a way which makes sense on an iPad’s screen.  Documents to Go manages to split the difference and uses a simple button layout and has no page view option at all.  While Documents to Go has some quirks, mostly due to it’s universal nature, it’s still the best editor layout among the three suites.

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On the phone, and other archaic communications technology

Posted on April 7, 2011 | 1 Comment

I really dislike the phone.  It’s annoying, intrusive, and demands my attention by an annoying clanging (or, worse, a digital rendition of clanging).  For a while in the 1990′s I found a use for my phone-line, it got me on the Internet.  When I got broadband, however, the phone just became annoying again.  I don’t enjoy being interrupted for political ads, or Christian call-spam, or your pledge campaign.  I don’t like that the person on the other end of the phone demands that I respond to their inquiry immediately.  They do this because once the phone conversation is ended, it’s over, there’s no lingering connection.

I can count the number of friends I enjoy calling on the phone on one hand, and two of those I call only once or twice a year.   I do use the phone, because people want me to call them on the phone, but I really don’t like it.  I feel like I’m intruding.

I’m not alone, phones are on their way out.  Not only landlines, but the concept of a phone is on the way out.  Mobile devices are booming, but it’s becoming increasingly the case that phone-calls are among the least used features on these ever-present objects.  Texting is used, the camera gets used, youtube gets watched, people even occasionally use e-mail or IM, but voice-calling isn’t a first-option.  That list, by the way, is what I see teens and pre-teens doing on so-called “feature-phones” – on Smart-Phones it’s even longer.

Why bring this up?  Well, earlier this week I got an e-mail from a friend who is planning on writing an article on how Church’s need to change the way they use phones.  He had some good questions, and as we talked I kept on asking, “Do Churches really even need a phone?”

Here’s the thing, Churches seem to be continuing under the assumption that phones should the primary means of communication and everything else is secondary.  The reality that has emerged, however, is actually the opposite.  Texting, e-mail, Twitter, FaceBook, and instant messaging (among other things) have become the primary means of communication – I’m not even sure that the phone reaches secondary status.

What’s this mean for churches?  Well, first it means that our voicemail message (in which we try to convey when the congregation worships, does discipleship, and that Jesus loves everyone who calls) is, almost entirely meaningless.  Akin to this, it also means that paying to update your yellow-pages listing is also akin to mulching cash to put on your garden.  If people want to connect to a Church, they aren’t calling it’s office number.  Marketer’s, however, love to call the office number.

So how do people find out about a Church to see if they want to check the community out?  Let’s take a look.

  • They search for Churches in their area on google maps (or, bing maps if you must).  Click here to see the Churches in my neighborhood.
  • CBC Web-profile

    Central's listing on Google Places

    They see a Church with an interesting listing (if you notice, Central Baptist Church is first on the list – we have a complete Google Places profile so I believe it puts our ranking up higher).  Once the see this listing, they click on it for more information.

  • On the pop-up they see a link to Central’s web-site and follow it to find out more about the Church.
  • Alternatively, they may click the “more info” link on Google pop-up and be taken to a Google place profile which has videos, images, and reviews of the congregation.
  • If the person or persons doing the search want to ask questions, they may submit an e-mail inquiry to the church, or tweet their twitter account or leave a message on their Facebook fan page.  Or, if they liked what they read, saw, heard on the site they might decide to stop by for a visit – using their GPS app or a Google Maps link for directions.

As you can see, people now have multiple ways to “cold-connect” with a congregation, and each one does a better job communicating than a rapid-speak voicemail message (which always get’s cut off – yet another annoyance born from the phone).  Does this work?  Yes.  In the past 4 years we’ve had any number of visitors here, many of whom have stuck around and become part of our fellowship.  Inevitably, I’m told that the fact that we had a decent web-site played a role in their coming out – and many have also said that the ability to connect on Facebook, twitter, e-mail, and IM have encouraged them to come back.  Why?  Because it shows that we have a voice and ears in their world – we’re able to speak into it, and able listen through it.  We do this for the glory of Christ.

So, if you can, ditch your phone* – get broadband!

*Sadly, Central can’t currently take this step – our fire-alarm is dependent on a POTS line.  We also have people who still believe that people look up phone numbers in the Yellow Pages (I won’t tell them we don’t have a listing there if you don’t).

 

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