We are extremely thrilled that MSNBC has chosen to use Air Sketch for use On Air. Here’s a segment of the Daily Rundown where Chuck Todd uses the iPad and Air Sketch to walk through the changes in Electoral Votes across states (hey, I didn’t even know these could change!). The segment starts at around the 18:55 mark of the 9/30 broadcast:

Here’s an earlier show which shows more page flipping (but no sketching) The segment starts at the 16:42 mark of Last Friday’s broadcast:

Thank you NBC for choosing Air Sketch!

Updated 10/1: Added a link to the new segment.

Update 10/1: Air Projector 1.5 has been released which fixes this issue.

A couple days ago, we discovered that certain devices with the latest iOS4.1 update and Air Projector v1.2 had problems accessing the Photo Library. We have decided to temporarily suspend Air Projector from the App Store while we investigate further. We hope to have it back online by later next week.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused. :( We want to make sure our users have the best experience when downloading our Apps.

Right now, it appears that this problem only affects certain devices. If you already have Air Projector installed and notice a problem accessing the Photo Library, please let us know, and include the model of device and OS version you have installed.

Thanks for your understanding, and we appreciate your help.

Update 10/1: This issue has been fixed in Air Projector 1.5

It turns out that there was a last minute API change in iOS 4.1, where the Camera Roll (default) album would not without a change to our code (which worked for iOS4.0). With the fix in v1.5, the Camera Roll album now appears on iOS 4.1, though you may see it appear twice on iOS4.0. We expect that most people will want to upgrade (if they haven’t already) to iOS4.1.

Thanks to everyone who helped us track down this issue!

As part of the Air Projector launch event, we are pleased to announce a giveaway program for our loyal fans! Air Projector is scheduled to be released to the public in early September, but you can get a free download code for it today. Just do either of the following:

1. Follow us on Twitter and tweet “@qrayon Air Projector for #iPhone pre-release giveaway!”

2. OR, drop us a short note on our feedback form and tell us how you might find Air Projector useful.

Over the next 5 days, we’ll randomly pick one winner per day and send you a free download code, so the earlier you enter the more chances you will have to win! Only one entry per person. The giveaways end September 1st.

If you win, we would really appreciate your feedback on the product, feel free to let us know what you liked and didn’t like about it via our feedback form.

Please note that Air Projector requires iOS4, which currently isn’t available for the iPad.

Please tell your friends about Air Projector.

Thank you and good luck!

It has been quite a summer! While we have been hard at work releasing major updates for Air Sketch and Stickyboard, we have also been busy working on our next “secret project”. Well, the secret’s now out of the bag, and today, I’m happy to be able to share with you what we’ve been hard at work on.

Announcing Air Projector: Project PDFs and photos directly from your iPhone to a local browser over WiFi.

When we released Air Sketch, we were overwhelmed by the positive response we received from our users (thank you!), as well as feedback on where you would like to see us go next. One direction was to do an iPhone version of Air Sketch, so that you could take it with you wherever you go. We thought long and hard about this, and even worked on several prototypes. In the end however, we found that sketching on a screen as small as the iPhone would not be an optimal experience. We chose to focus on what would make an iPhone version really great instead – as a slideshow presenter.

There have been several apps that let you use your iPhone as a remote control for PowerPoint, Keynote, and other desktop apps. However, we realized that we could make the iPhone serve up the presentation content itself and use it as the ultimate presentation clicker. The wireless approach used in Air Sketch would be ideal for this as well, since no one wants a long heavy VGA cable attached to their iPhone.

We also had to completely rethink how the interface would work. One of the Apps that works exceptionally well on the iPhone is the Photo app. It feels completely intuitive to navigate even a large collection of photos by tapping and swiping. We realized that this would be a great model to follow.

We designed Air Projector to look almost identical to the Photos app. Navigating albums and photos works in exactly the same way. The major difference is that whatever photo you are looking at is also simultaneously projected to a web browser.

Air Projector projects images via WiFi from your iPhone or iPod Touch to a browser connected on the same local network. No additional client software is required. To use it, you just need to fire up Air Projector on your iPhone and type in the displayed URL in your web browser. Images show up as you navigate them on your iPhone.

We also added the ability to project PDF documents in the same way. Air Projector does not store PDFs directly. To project a PDF document, send it from the Mail App, or a third party document manager such as Dropbox, to Air Projector. This works great with exported PDFs from PowerPoint or Keynote (note: transitions and animations are not stored in PDFs). BTW, we wholeheartedly recommend checking out Dropbox if you haven’t already. They have an excellent service and their iPhone client works great with Air Projector. They are also currently offering a free 2GB subscription.

Coming soon to the App Store

Air Projector will be available for the iPhone and iPod Touch running iOS4. It is currently in final Beta and is scheduled to be available in the App Store in early September 2010.

We hope that you will find Air Projector a useful addition to your iPhone’s capabilities. We plan to have a special introductory pricing at launch time, so please subscribe to our twitter feed to be the first to hear about the launch. Also check out the Air Projector homepage for more details.

If you are a writer, and would like an advance copy of Air Projector to review for an article, please drop us a line and we’ll try our best to accommodate you.

We’ve made a couple of changes to make transitions between background images smoother without an intermediate blank screen on the remote display.

Now tap erase once to erase the drawing layer, and tap again to erase the background image. Also, when setting a new background image, the previous remote sketch is erased only after editing the new one is complete.

Thanks for using Air Sketch!

Thank you for all your feedback and great reviews in the App Store! We really appreciate all your support!

We are introducing two brand new features in this update: Zoom/Pan and Send To.

You can now fluidly zoom and pan around your sketches using 2 fingers. The remote image stays the same (full) size. Tip: Write smaller and smoother text while zoomed in. You can also make some fairly detailed drawings or edits using the pencil tool and zooming. Also, the eraser shrinks when zoomed in, allowing finer control.

Tap on the new Send To icon to email your sketches as PDF and JPEG images, or save them to the Photo Library. Tip: JPEG images are typically much smaller than PDFs and are recommended for email to others, but PDFs contain the full-quality image.

This release also includes numerous smaller bug fixes, including smoother erasing.

We hope you enjoy these new additions.

BonjourFoxy is an excellent Add-In for FireFox that displays available Bonjour servers, such as Air Sketch, in a sidebar just like Safari. This let’s you connect your browser to Air Sketch without having to type in the IP address.

To use BonjourFoxy, just install the add-in, then select View (menu) –> Sidebar –> BonjourFoxy. When Air Sketch is started on the local network, a link will appear under the Websites folder:

To make it even easier, you can also add a BonjourFoxy button to your toolbar. Right click on the toolbar –> Customize. Select the BonjourFoxy icon and drag it to your toolbar. You can now click on it to open the sidebar:

BonjourFoxy is available on OSX, Windows, and other platforms. Note that you may need to install Apple’s Bonjour libraries if you haven’t already (see the BonjourFoxy website for details).

[Updated 9/4/12: Looks like BonjourFoxy is now deprecated. Check out the DNSSD add-in instead.]

An extra bonus is that you can bookmark the address that BonjourFoxy or Bonjour in Safari links to. This uses your iPad’s machine name (e.g. http://my-ipad.local.:8080), which should remain static as long as you don’t rename your iPad in iTunes. We recommend you give your iPad a unique name (like “Sam Spade’s iPad”) to avoid potential conflicts on the network. In contrast, the IP address may change from day-to-day or on different networks.

Bonjour is a relatively unknown, but awesome piece of technology that makes networking just a little easier. If you know of a Bonjour add-in for other browsers, please do let us know about it.

Several users have asked if its possible to use Air Sketch when a WiFi hotspot isn’t available. It turns out the answer is YES! Air Sketch works just as well when connected directly to a computer running an Ad-Hoc network.

An Ad-hoc network is basically a private WiFi hotspot that runs off your notebook or desktop computer. All modern operating systems allow you to create one very easily in a couple minutes. This can be very useful when you are in a WiFi-less environment, or don’t want to risk connectivity issues on an unfamiliar network.

Here’s how to use Air Sketch on an ad-hoc network with Mac OSX Snow Leopard:

1. Start on the Mac. Click on the Airport (WiFi) icon in the menu bar and select "Create Network...". Give it a name, and (highly recommended) a password.

2. Go to network settings on your iPad, and join that new network. Wait for the WiFi icon to appear in the status bar. We found that it can take up a minute for the ad-hoc WiFi connection to be established.

3. Now launch Air Sketch. The IP address will be different, but everything else should work the same.

That’s it! On the first connection it may be necessary to manually refresh the browser a couple of times if the network hasn’t been fully established yet.

The steps for other operating systems should be very similar. Here are the steps for setting up an ad-hoc network on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Note that you can’t set up an ad-hoc network from the iPad itself.

But wait, there’s more!

Once you have your ad-hoc network set up, additional devices can connect to it and to Air Sketch as well, just like any other WiFi hotspot. You can even connect your iPhone, another iPad, or iPod Touch to the network and project Air Sketch to those. Before you go too crazy on this, remember to limit the number of Air Sketch clients (we recommend less than 4) to avoid performance issues.

We hope you find this tip useful. If you try it out, do let us know how it works out for you. Feel free to leave a comment or shoot us an email.

*** Update: Download our brand new App, Vittle, which turns your iPad into a Recordable Whiteboard. You can now make videos right on your iPad! ***

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to record your live sketches using Air Sketch on your iPad and QuickTime Player on the Mac.

Most people may not be aware that QuickTime X that ships with Snow Leopard has a built-in screen recording feature, which works great with Air Sketch. Here’s how to use it to create quick videos of your live sketches:

1. Start Air Sketch on your iPad.

2. Open Safari on your Mac. Under the bookmarks menu, select “Show All Bookmarks”, then select the Bonjour category on the left list. Double click on “Air Sketch by qrayon”. If you are using a different browser, such as Firefox, tap on the server icon on the bottom left of Air Sketch and type in the displayed address into the browser’s address bar.

3. Adjust the size of your browser window to show the full drawing area. It may be easiest to just make it full screen.

3. Open QuickTime Player. Under the file menu, select New Screen Recording, or Control+Command+N.

The Screen Recording window will appear:

4. You can choose to also record sound via your computer’s microphone, or not via the dropdown. This also let’s you set the quality and destination of the recording.

5. When you are ready, click the record button, then “Start Recording”.

6. Create your masterpiece.

7. Click “Stop Recording” in the menu bar or Command+Control+ESC when you are done. This will open the movie you just created.

8. You can trim the movie using QuickTime Player. Useful to remove the inadvertent pause at the beginning and end.

9. You can now rename your movie file, and perform any additional post production work you need.

Here’s an example of a movie that was produced this way:

For Windows users, check out the amazing and free CamStudio recording tool.

Feel free to post links to your own creations in the comments!

Get it from the App Store.