More Siri: Turning voice into status updates

I think it's safe to say that most librarians use at least one social networking service, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+.  But logging into those systems just to do a status update can be time consuming, especially if you're on the go and have only your phone with you and no convenient keyboard. 

But if you're an iPhone 4S user, you can use the built-in Siri personal assistant to update any of those social networks.  First, you go into each service and follow the directions to allow sending SMS message (texts) from your phone to the service.  Then, you go into your phone and update your contacts so that you have contacts named "Facebook" or "Twitter" or "LinkedIn" or "Google", with the phone number being whatever number is used by the social service for incoming text messages.

After that, all you need to do is tell Siri to "Text Facebook" (for example) following by your status update. 

Hmmm, I'm already getting some ideas on how to use this to promote library events as they are happening!

GoodReader: Mobile pdf annotation made easy

Alert: This software is only available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

There is a plethora (I always love using that word) of apps for reading pdf files on mobile devices. I've used iBooks, Evernote, Dropbox, Bluefire Reader, plus others. And they're all fine for just reading the file. But when I'm reading a C&RL article or an Ithaka S+R report or a white paper from an ALA committee, I like to highlight sections and make margin notes. GoodReader lets me do that and more.

GoodReader, by Good.iWare, has standard ebook reader functionality like day/night mode, bookmarks, easy navigation within a document, automatic page orientation, full text searching, and email/print functions. What makes it special is it's robust pdf annotation features.

There's highlighting, underlining, squiggly underlining, strikeout, text insertion marking, and text replacement marking - all with color wheel color selection. There's a typewriter feature that lets you add text anywhere on a page. There's also a popup note function that records your note and inserts an icon wherever you tap. The popup note can be color-coded as well and has several icons you can select from (question mark, key, edit mark, triangle or delta to name a few). Finally, there's also drawing tools to add lines, arrows, circles/ovals, and squares/rectangles, plus a freehand tool for drawing or writing. The drawing tools all let you select color, line size, and transparency.

So what else makes it special? Any annotations that are added can also be deleted. You can encrypt the file if you need that level of security. If multiple people are reviewing the same file, the current annotator's name can be set in the, wait for it, Settings. If you want to send the annotated file to someone who doesn't have GoodReader, you can flatten the pdf, which will embed the annotations into the main pdf body page. Another nice feature is that you can add your mark-ups to the existing file or created an annotated copy.

And there's more! It does pdf to text conversion. The vendor provides fairly good online documentation, which a lot of app developers don't seem to think is important. There are consistent upgrades that improve the functionality of the product and you can pull files to annotate from iCloud, Dropbox, Google Docs, SugarSync, IMAP or POP3 mail servers, WebDAV servers, or FTP/SFTP servers.

Now we know it can't be perfect… and it's not. Here are some of the cons. It's not free. But it's not exorbitantly expensive at $4.99. The iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch versions are two different applications, which is a big no-no in my book. However, I only use it on my iPad because I can't imagine trying to annotate on an iPhone/iPod Touch screen. And, as alerted above, it's not available on non-iOS mobile devices or in a desktop version.

With all of this, GoodReader has gotten very good to excellent reviews by the likes of PC Magazine, Macworld, and CNET. Why not give it a try and let us know what you think?

Siri: First impressions mean a lot

It's human nature to size up a new person in your life in the very first few minutes of meeting them for the first time.  Much the same can be said about software and online services.  But what happens when that software acts like a human being?  Let's just say that it had better deliver from the first few minutes, or you're probably not going to bother with it.  Fortunately, Siri doesn't disappoint.

If you haven't been keeping up with the latest Apple fanboy/fangirl news, then you might be excused for not yet hearing about Siri, the artificial intelligence that is part of the new iOS 5 but that so far works only on the new iPhone 4S.  I've only had my new phone since late Friday afternoon, so my experience in using Siri is somewhat limited.  But let me share a few highlights that might point toward Siri becoming a great new productivity tool.

Siri not only has the power of Nuance Communications for voice recognition (yes, the same wonderful people that have brought you Dragon Dictation software over the recent years), but also it can take apart the words you've just said and figure out what you probably meant.  If you want to read all of the funny questions that people have asked Siri (and the equally funny answers), there are plenty of other blogs out there where you can find those.  I'll focus on the slightly more serious side of Siri.  First, it definitely understands my voice, and that's with essentially no training.  I expect it will get even better with time.

Second, it has access to your location (well, if you allow it to), so it will understand what "here" means.  And that means that you can find the nearest this-or-that (restaurant, store, etc.) to where you are.  Obviously, you can also ask it for directions. 

Siri began by calling me "Andrew", but that is no surprise, since that's how I had "officially" listed myself when I bought the phone.  But I told Siri "call me Drew", and from that point forward, that's what Siri did.  (I resisted the urge to have Siri refer to me as "Lord and Master", as I aim for more subtle ways to boost my ego.)

I asked Siri to tell me what Barbara Lewis (my blog partner in crime here) had in the way of a mobile phone number, and Siri told me.  I then asked about Barbara's (no mention of "Lewis") work number, and Siri told me that, too, understanding by context which Barbara I meant.  And when I then asked for "her" email address, Siri continued to understand the context and correctly gave me that information, too.

I can use Siri to text messages for me, simply by voice (making it somewhat safer to text while driving), and to read aloud any text responses to me.  I've also set up Siri to use Twitter for me, using a little feature of Twitter where you can text Twitter and Twitter sends the text message out as a tweet. 

I'll keep you posted as to whether Siri can help my productivity by reading aloud my calendar, adding items to it, or doing similar things with my to-do list.  But if it can't do those things today, I know it's only a matter of time before it can.

Hmmm, I wonder if I can train Siri to write my blog postings for me?

Free Audio Books: Life is soooo good!

We're all busy, right? That's what this blog is all about - finding web and mobile solutions that make life easier for busy librarians. And, to repeat a stereotype, we love to read. But how does a busy librarian find time to read?

For me, the solution is listening to audio books in my car, while I do yard work, etc. I have been downloading audio books from my local public library to my mp3 player and/or iTouch for years and loving every minute of it ("The Help" was amazing!). However, the available books tend to be current popular fiction, which is great at times, but sometimes I'd like to lose myself in a "classic".

Imagine my delight when I discovered websites and apps that provide free audio downloads of books in the public domain. Austen, the Brontes, Conan Doyle, Dickens, Twain, Plato, Shakespeare, etc, etc, etc, all at the click of a mouse button. There are many services out there. Today, I'm going to mention three of then and hope that our readers will add their suggestions to the comments.

As of this writing, Librivox.org has over 4200 completed audio books recorded from the Project Gutenberg catalog. There are multiple readings of some books. For example, there are 6 versions of "A Christmas Carol", including a dramatic reading and a Dutch version. Available download formats include mp3, ogg, and m4b and you can download individual chapters or the entire book. One caveat I must include about the Librivox audio books is that the reading is done by volunteers. Some are stellar and some are less than stellar. Also, since the volunteers record one chapter at a time, you could get a download with multiple readers. So far, my experience with their files has been pretty good.

Lit2Go is an audiobook (mp3) project from the Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse (College of Education, University of South Florida) that provides access to works in the public domain. All of their audiobook files can be downloaded from their website and some can be accessed through iTunesU. PDF versions of the text are also available for download and, in many cases, support materials for teachers are provided. Since this is an educational service, you can search the database by reading level as well as title, author, keywords, or subject matter. There are classics in the Lit2Go catalog, but the collection tends to focus on African-American lit (poems of P.L. Dunbar, "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man", "Up from Slavery"), YA and children's lit ("Anne of Green Gables", the Oz series, "Treasure Island"), education ("History of Modern Mathematics", presidential speeches, "Twenty Talks to Teachers"), and Florida ("In the Wild of Florida", "Ocala to Tampa by Train", "Billy Bowlegs and the Seminole War").

Finally, for iTouch or iPhone users, there is Free Audiobooks by Spreadsong, Inc. This app provides the listener with a library of "4,728 classic audiobooks for less than a cup of coffee" ($1.99 one-time charge for the app). Their Apple app store page doesn't say where they get the audiobooks from, only that the collections are "handpicked". However, their collection looks amazingly like the Librivox collection. So why not just download Librivox audiobooks. Well, their player does have a couple of nice features. First, you can set it to only download sections/chapters when you're ready to listen to them where most audiobook players download the whole book at once. Second, it has a sleep timer so, if you're listening at bedtime or in a hammock, the entire book doesn't play while you're snoozing. I've tried it… it works.

Final thought - being busy doesn't mean you have to give up reading. I was an audiobook skeptic, now I'm a fan.

Toodledo: The essential to-do list manager with the funny name

When it comes to books about time management and staying organized, I've probably read (and even owned) them all.  I certainly got a good idea here or there from each of them, but I kept running into one problem: the concept of the "trusted list".

In other words, the only way to stay on top of everything that you need to do (whether it's at work in the library or at home) is to have a list that has everything on it.  This means that there aren't some things kept on a white board, some things on sticky notes, some things on a lined pad of paper, some things in a computer file, and some things stuck in your faulty memory.  It means that there is only one list, one place, with everything on it.

Yes, I went through the days of having those carry-around personal planners, but the thought of losing one made me nervous.  Even keeping a list on my computer was a bit scary, because a computer crash could leave me wondering what I had committed to do.  And a strictly online list would be ok but too often I would need to be somewhere with no Internet access.

So the ideal solution is an online service that synchronizes with various mobile devices, including smartphones.  I finally found that to-do solution in Toodledo.  First, the online service is at toodledo.com (no surprise there).  Second, there is an official Toodledo app for iOS devices (which obviously syncs with the online service).  Third, Android and Blackberry users can see a mobile version of the website, or use a number of third-party apps that sync with the online service. 

I have a lot more to say about how good this online service/app is, but I'll save those comments for another post.

Noted: And now for something completely simple...

One of the nicest thing about apps is that programmers can design one to do something very simple but also very useful.  For me, I can't think of a better example that the iOS and Android app Noted (from AnalogueBits), which has but one function: It lets you type in a message that is automatically mailed to your email address at the touch of a button.

In many ways, this is the ideal reminder that doesn't involve getting into a more complex to-do system.  It some ways, it's like a sticky note, but because it is designed to be emailed, it can go from there into my to-do system.

If I'm away from one of my desktop computers or my iPad, I can quickly type in that reminder ("Make a directional sign for the government documents shelf" or "Tell Barbara about the new website I found"), and then put it out of my mind, knowing that my email will have that reminder when I have the time/equipment to process my email.  Type.  Send.  Done.

What more can I say about it?  Oh, it does remember your older notes, but you can delete them if you like.  Or you can email them to someone else.  I haven't used that feature yet, but that's not why I got the app. 

Do you need Noted if you are already using Evernote?  Possibly not, but then again, maybe you need Evernote only when you're dealing with organizing and preserving notes.