In case you’ve somehow missed it, Photo Stream in iOS5 is quite a game changer. Once you’ve upgraded all your devices, whenever you take a photo on one, it auto-magically syncs to all the others. Let’s say you are projecting a presentation with Air Sketch and want to quickly add a photo of something in the room. You can take a photo with your iPhone, tap on the insert photo button,  open the Photo Stream album, and your photo will appear after a few seconds. Instant new feature that would have been pretty hard to do before. No wires, no new hardware needed, no mess. Apple really did a great job with Photo Stream, and we’ve found that it does indeed work as advertised.

Note that it does take a few seconds to a minute for the photos to sync, depending on your network connection. If you are doing this in a live presentation, it would be a good idea to take the photo first, finish your current slide, then try to add it.

Works with iPhoto too:

Bonus tip: It seems that the latest version of iPhoto ‘11 also automatically synchs newly imported photos to Photo Stream. We found that if you drag a photo from the Finder and add it to iPhoto, it will appear in Photo Stream shortly. However, it seems that the Photo Stream is sorted by the File date, not the added date, so older files may appear at the beginning of the Photo Stream album, not the end as you would expect.

Stickyboard has continued to be popular in the App Store, and we have received plenty of feedback from you guys on how to make it better. Thank you! We’ve been listening carefully, and have actually been hard at work on a completely new version for a while. Truth is, the original Stickyboard was among the very first Apps ever designed specifically for the iPad. We’ve learnt a lot since then, and have created a completely new release, rebuilt from the ground up.

With Brand New Features:

Board management is completely redesigned around a gallery view. Flip through large thumbnails of your boards. You can now name your boards, and make copies of them easily.

 

 

 

Stickyboard 2 supports unlimited undo/redo. Don’t worry about messing up your carefully arranged layouts again.

 

Copying notes is now a snap. Select multiple notes using our unique lasso-select, then tap to cut & paste. This also makes it easy to move notes across multiple boards.

 

The ink system is based on a brand new OpenGL engine, and is much smoother than ever before.

 

 

 

And A Little Magic…

The most exciting feature of Stickyboard 2 is something we call Magic Arrange. One of the biggest pains of working with many sticky notes at a time is having to arrange and rearrange them. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just wave your hands and have them neatly arrange themselves? Well, with the magic of the iPad and Stickyboard 2, now you can!

Just select a bunch of notes, then swipe with 3 fingers to instantly arrange them into neat piles, or fan them out into a grid, columns, or rows. Here’s a video of Magic Arrange in action:

 

This is going to change the way you work with sticky notes, and you are never going to look at paper notes the same way again!

A Free Offer for our Fans:

Update: The Public Beta has now ended. Thank you for all your great feedback! Download Stickyboard 2 here.

Stickyboard 2 will soon be available for purchase from the App Store for the iPad and iPad 2. Because the code is literally all new, it will be released as a separate download. However, we wanted to reward our loyal users and readers of our blog, so are offering a very limited number of free download codes. To request one, just write in via our feedback form with a brief note on what you would use it for, and if you are an existing Stickyboard user. Preference will be given to those who have purchased the original Stickyboard (we’ll use the honor system here ). All that we ask in return is that you use Stickyboard 2 and let us know what you think about it in email.

Thank You for your Support!

We continued to be fascinated by the magical things you can do with the iPad, and are committed to bringing more and more innovative Apps to you. If you like what you see, please continue to rate our Apps in the App Store and tell your friends about them. We also appreciate your continued feedback on what else you would like to see in the future. There’s still lots more to be done!

(The brief story of how QDo came about…)

Some might say we are a little nuts about productivity here at Qrayon. Making software, like many things in life, can take quite a bit of focus -- to stay on task, to polish that next feature, and then the next, all the way to completing a launch. Having to juggle multiple projects, priorities and distractions makes that tricky at times, and we’re always looking for the best tools and techniques to help us stay focused and on the critical path.

We’ve tried lots of project management and to-do systems, and have found most to be too complex and inflexible. So, like all good software designers, we decided to make our own tools.

We actually use a couple different systems, but for smaller projects, we like to keep the remaining tasks list (the “backlog” in agile-speak) in a simple todo.txt file, that looks something like this:

These files are a simple list of tasks, with time estimates in brackets. The project owner can see at a glance how much is left to do until the next milestone. They can easily check off tasks, add new ones, and move them around as priorities change. These files are also be checked-in with the rest of the documents, so that they are always in sync with the project.

We wrote a little App that lives in the menu bar. It would oh-so-gently remind us what the very next task was on our queue, and also does the math to tell us how much work time is left to complete the milestone. It monitors changes to the to-do files, and automatically updates each time we make changes.

We all use it everyday and love it. This App has worked so well for us, that it occurred to us that other people might find it useful too. So we decided to build a more polished version from the ground-up, and call it QDo (“Queue-Do”).

I’m happy to announce that we’ve also decided to release it free in the Mac App Store. If you think you might find QDo useful, please give it a try, and let us know what you think. (If we find enough interest, we might release an enhanced version in the future).

If you have never tried a text-based to-do system before, we recommend trying it out just to see if you prefer the simplicity and flexibility it offers. If you already have a text-based system that you find useful, we’d love to hear about it (we’re always looking to improve ours). Feel free to drop a line via the feedback form.

We hope you enjoy using QDo as much as we do!

Thank you again to all our beta testers. We really appreciate all the feedback. Everyone can now get their copy of Air Scanner from the App Store.

It’s been a busy Spring between the iPad2 launch, update releases, and of course trying to answer all your email. We really do try to get back to everyone who writes in, but don’t always get to – rest assured we do read all our mail, and your feedback is very helpful in prioritizing updates and new releases.

One request we’ve heard from a number of people is to provide video support as an add-on for Air Projector. This would be useful as an overhead document camera or an easy-to-use scanner. We took a hard look at this problem – it turns out that doing any kind of video processing is not  easy – and think we’ve ben able to come up with a useful new App.

Announcing Air Scanner: Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a wireless HD document camera!

If you are familiar with Air Projector, Air Scanner works the way you would expect. Fire it up and anything you point the camera at is projected to a web browser on the local network, in full 720P HD quality. It turns out that the camera on the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4th Gen is more than good enough to transmit high-quality images of a full page legal-sized document or picture. Air Scanner works by taking rapid photos and sending them to the browser wirelessly – with a good network connection updates should happen about once per second.

This works great with a homemade DIY cardboard stand, which you can easily make out of scrap cardboard. Here are a couple sites with instructions to build one (Lifehacker, VitaminCM). If you’re lazy, we found that a standard cardboard document box is the perfect size when you place it on it's side (handle-holes facing up and down), and put your iPhone’s camera over the top hole and what you want to scan below it. The only downside is you need to face the open end of the box to a light source.

While we don’t expect your iPhone to replace fancy document cameras that cost hundreds of dollars, this would be a great tool for projects such as show-and-tell, or for letting large groups of people view a physical object simultaneously.

 

Beta Testers Wanted!

Air Scanner is currently in final Beta and we are looking for more Beta Testers. If you are interested, just drop us a note via the feedback page with a brief blurb about what you think you would use Air Scanner for. We have a limited number of download codes, but if you receive one, it’s good for a free download of the full version of Air Scanner plus future updates. All we ask in return is that you use it and send us your feedback on what you think:

1. Do you find it useful on a regular basis? i.e. how do you actually use it as part of your work?

2. What do you like and not like about it / what would make it a more useful tool? Did you run into any issues using Air Scanner?

3. Do you know anyone who might find this App useful? Please let them know and help us spread the word!

Air Scanner requires an iPhone (3GS or higher, but supports lower-resolution on 3GS), or iPod Touch 4th Gen (the one with a camera).

Bloggers and reviewers: If you are interested in writing an article or review on Air Scanner, drop us a note too – we have a few codes reserved for you.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

We appreciate all your continued support in the form of feedback and App Store ratings. Please keep them coming. 2011 is shaping up to be an exciting year. We have a few more products as well as updates planned. Stay tuned!

A new year, and a new decade. There has never been a better time to be alive. Never a time filled with more possibilities. Never a time when each of us has been more empowered to make all the things we want happen.

Now that we are all over the initial hump of new year resolutions, marathon gym sessions, and the allure of that new diet is starting to wear off, we could all use a little extra push each day. Today, we’re introducing a little app the team put together that might help give that extra jumpstart to your day. We gathered all our favorite motivational quotes, picked one for each day of the year, and built an app that will overlay then on your favorite photos. The result is Quote Daily, now available for free from the App Store.

We thought this would be a great app to kick off 2011 with. We hope you enjoy it!

Link: Quote Daily on the App Store.

We’re pleased to announce that Air Projector Free has just gone live in the App Store, our little holiday gift to you and your friends. This app lets you project your recent photos from your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad to a browser on any computer on the same network.

Just fire up Air Projector Free and type in the displayed URL in your web browser. Then flip through the photos on your iPhone and the remote display updates automatically. Hook up your laptop to your TV to show off your latest photos to your friends and family on the big screen.

If you like Air Projector Free, also check out the Full Version, which also allows you to:

• Project PDF files and photo libraries
• Use a virtual laser pointer
• And more!

Happy holidays from everyone at Qrayon!

Link: Air Projector Free in the App Store

Air Sketch’s open PDF feature works with all Apps that support the “open in…” function including the built-in Email App as well as third party Apps such as Dropbox, Box.net, Goodreader, Readdle Docs, and many others. Here’s a short walkthrough on how to use Air Sketch with Dropbox:

Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage / backup service. They currently offer a free 2GB account, and subscription plans starting from $9.99 a month for 50GB. You can sign up for an account on dropbox.com. With an account, you can upload files either directly on the website, or using a free sync client for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

With their free iPad app, you can view your uploaded files directly on your iPad. To open a PDF file in Air Sketch, just select it, then tap the “open in…” (aka “send to”) icon on the top right and select Air Sketch:

 

Note that the “open in…” dropdown is scrollable if you have more than 4 Apps that support PDF files.

Tip: You can also store your files locally on your iPad in the Dropbox app by simply marking it as a favorite (with the star icon). This way, you can still access your files later if you don’t have Internet access.

We’ve found Dropbox’s service to be very easy to use and reliable, and it works great with Air Sketch. If you are looking for a simple way to keep your files in sync across multiple devices, Dropbox is definitely worth a try.

Update: This issue has been addressed in v2.1, released on Oct. 21st.

An issue has been discovered where the undo-drawing function doesn’t always work when annotation PDF documents on non-FireFox browsers such as Safari or Chrome. We have already shipped a fix which should be available as a free update once it passes Apple’s final review, hopefully in 7-12 days time. We have noticed that the review times have been quite unpredictable lately.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused. :( In the meantime, we recommend using the latest version of FireFox (3.6.10) if possible.

Easier page flipping

On a slightly brighter note, this update (2.1) will also include a small refinement: You will be able to flip PDF pages by tapping on the left and right side gray margins when the page is zoomed all the way out. This should make it easier to navigate slides during a presentation.

We have gotten lots of great feedback from our enthusiastic users over the past few months (thank you and do keep it up!). It’s clear that many people see the potential of the iPad as a powerful presentation tool. The iPad is the perfect size as a personal wireless whiteboard, and it’s even light enough to carry around in front of an audience.

We’ve taken all your feedback into account and are launching a major new version of Air Sketch today.

Air Sketch 2.0 takes presentations to the next level: You can now open multi-page PDF documents in Air Sketch to wirelessly annotate and project them. This works wonderfully with exported PDFs from all major presentation packages, such as PowerPoint and Keynote. Just email the PDFs to yourself, view them in the Mail app, and open them in Air Sketch. You can advance or flip through the pages in the PDF and draw over them, all of this being wirelessly projected as before.

Tip: Tap the page number on the new PDF controls to quickly jump to any page.

You can also send PDF documents to Air Sketch from any App that supports the “open in…” feature, including 3rd party document managers such as Dropbox or Goodreader. Note that Air Sketch works with one PDF file at a time, and doesn’t store or manage PDF files directly.

 

 

Email Annotated PDFs

When you are done with your presentation, you can even email the complete PDF file with all your annotations right from Air Sketch using the Email as PDF option on the Send-To control. This makes it easy to share your notes with your audience right after a presentation.

One thing to be aware of is that there appears to be a limit to the size of email attachments on the iPad. We’ve found that documents under around 10MB (or PDF files up to around 75 pages) tend to be sent ok, but sending larger ones may fail. This appears to be an OS limitation and happens in other Apps as well, which we hope will be addressed in a future upgrade.

 

Full Page Zoom

We’ve added a few more refinements to Air Sketch, including the ability to zoom out to see the whole page: Just pinch with 2 fingers from the default full-screen zoom level.

 

Switching in and out of PDF Mode

If you are in the middle of presenting a PDF and need to sketch on a blank page, just erase the annotations and background (if there are annotations, you need to tap the erase button twice). You can then return to where you were by tapping on the PDF button:

This works the same if you need to load a snapshot, or a background image from the Photo Library.

 

Other Improvements

Air Sketch 2.0 comes with additional performance improvements, including smoother background image transitions. The short blank page “flash” between background image changes has been greatly reduced. Scrolling large lists of snapshots is now also much smoother.

 

Free Update for Existing Users

We have decided to release Air Sketch 2.0 as a free update to everyone who has already purchased Air Sketch v1. This is our little way of saying Thank You to all our early adopters. We are very grateful for your continued support! The update should be available in the App Store within 24 hours.

 

Please Rate this New Version!

If you like these new features, please consider taking a minute to rate this new version in the App Store. Ratings are per version, and your 5-star ratings go a long way towards helping support future free updates. We are committed to building great apps and earning your 5-star reviews.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please contact us via the support form and we’ll respond as quickly as possible. Also, do keep your feedback and suggestions coming. We do try to answer all our emails in person, and take all of it into account for future releases.