Evernote for iPhone 3.0 - NEW RELEASE

There is a lot of big news today, Evernote has a new iPhone client that is iPhone OS 3.0 specific. go to Evernote's Blog for more information.
More info as soon as I get my hands on this important productivity update!

Bento Template Exchange

Go to Filemaker.com to access the new Bento template exchange. Filemaker has added several new templates that they have developed and there are now a handful of user developed templates as well. I suspect this repository will grow over time and provide some great ideas for use cases.
Once you download a template, you can tweak it to meet your needs (using the Bento desktop application [Macs only]) and then sync it to your iPhone. Again, making the iPhone a very good data capture device for the data centric world!

Documents To Go - Thoughts

After using DTG for a couple of days, here are some random thoughts!

• Desktop syncing is great, 2 way syncing for documents in progress is a feature missing from other iPhone word processors. This allows you to leverage your iPhone to work on a document that is already in progress on your main computer. allowing you to make use of idle time. Then sync those additions back to your main desktop for completion on a full size system. Desktop syncing will be a big advantage when spreadsheet editing arrives.
• I miss access to iDisk, at this time DTG provides access to files that are setup for desktop syncing and files that reside on your iPhone (local files), hopefully with a future release Dataviz will add access to files stored in the cloud.
• Text entry... external keyboard please! OK, this is not an issue specific to DTG. With a foldable stowaway keyboard and DTG or Quickoffice it becomes feasible to leave the laptop at home.
• I like the ability to zoom in and out while in text entry mode, this is missing in QO. Numbered lists are available in DTG and not in QO. Typing does seem snappier with Quickoffice, especially in widescreen view.
• Good & Bad, with DTG you have access to the menu bar when the online keyboard is being used, with QO you need to stop text editing with the keyboard (close the keyboard) to launch the formatting toolbar. I like having access to DTG's toolbar all the time, the downside is that it takes up valuable screen space.
• For a 1.0 release, I am impressed with DTG. I will continue to compare and contrast DTG and QO.. trying to decide which platform to land on... at this point, I am leaning towards the DTG text editor, mainly because of desktop syncing.

Documents To Go for iPhone is Available in the App Store

DTG Is now available (special 2 week introductory pricing $4.99, or $9.99 with Exchange integration). This first release has DOC editing only, xls editing is a promised free upgrade. Powerpoint is veiw only, with no mention of future editing capabilities. Additional info soon.

DTG's word processor edits/creates doc, docx, rtf & txt files. The toolbar and screen layout are user friendly, I am finding the learning curve to be lower than that of QuickOffice.

For A comprehensive review of DTG

iPhone 3G S - The perfect Evernote Capture Device?

Yes, the new iPhone 3G S is reportedly twice as fast as the iPhone 3G.. this is good news. But to an Evernote junkie, the real news is the improved camera! Improved light sensitivity, improved auto-white balance, macro focusing to 10 cm (~4 in) and autofocus which is controlled by touching the screen, all of these new features/improvements are great news to Evernote users. You will now be able to use your iPhone as a capture device, think portable scanner - take a picture of any document, anywhere, upload to Evernote for safe storage, OCR and easy retrieval. I can't wait to test the camera, hopefully the improvements are as significant as touted in the keynote.
The camera improvements will also be a boon for "pricing applications" - you will now be able to focus in on pricing barcodes.

To me.. the camera is the big news!

Finally... It's iPhone Day! ... Maybe...

Here are my predictions for the WWDC keynote today... at one point during the keynote.. we all will be wowwed.. and for those of as that have been following all of the rumors for the past several weeks... at the end of the day there will be a little dissappointment as well!

Update.. Still no Dataviz Documents To Go on the app store, there is speculation on Dataviz's Facebook fan page that DTG might be shown/released today as a part of the WWDC keynote... keep in mind this is user speculation.

iTunes 8.2 - Touch OS 3.0 Very Soon?

Monday 6/1 saw the release of iTunes 8.2 via software update, the release notes state: "iTunes 8.2 now supports iPhone or iPod touch with the iPhone 3.0 Software Update". With this news, I think we will see the release of the 3.0 iPhone OS at WWDC next week.

New hardware is a little harder to predict... maybe an announcement at WWDC, or maybe Apple will wait a couple of weeks and announce at a press event... either way, it should be a fun summer!