Because I only used these apps for about a week, many of the goals I established were short-term, like, “Go running,” “Respond to that pile of personal emails” or “Call Grandma this week.” I didn’t enter in many long-term goals, such as “Run another half-marathon” or “Learn a new language.”

And I didn’t hit all of my set goals. (Poor Grandma — I still haven’t called her.) I blamed this partly on the fact that we had our annual D conference last week, so life was more hectic than usual.

But that’s really the point of these applications. There are always plenty of excuses you could throw out there for skipping the gym or putting off a task. By checking in regularly with a network of people who know your goals, you may be more inclined to get them done.

Overall, I like the Lift app more. I like it for the same reason that I prefer mobile fitness apps over Web dashboards: When I’m constantly on the go, I find it much easier to input data on my mobile phone.

Alive’s system of allowing people to make micro-bets is intriguing, but the website is confusing in its layout. I spent more time trying to figure out the website than I did on tracking my goals.

Also, some friends and contacts of mine were already using Lift, which means it was easy to follow a few people and build a network in the app. None of my friends were using Alive, so I had to invite people and start from scratch — which isn’t fun if you’re already suffering from a bit of social network burnout.

Both are relatively new: Lift launched last August, and Alive soft-launched a few months ago, so both apps are still making improvements.

Lift is currently available on iPhone only, and it’s free to download. (There’s also a Lift website, but the application is really mobile-focused.) There are three tabs at the bottom of the Lift app: Habits, Activity and Me.

“Habits” is where you create your goals. You can search from a list of popular topics, such as health, productivity and learning habits, or you can enter your own.

Once you’ve completed a task or achieved a goal for the day, you select that habit and then tap a giant check mark in the app. Your completed goal then appears in the Activity feed.

“Activity” is the feed of your actions and your friends’ actions. This is also where the app’s social element comes in. You can give your friends digital props for their activities, as well as comment on them.

I liked this feed. Few of my close friends are using Lift, but two co-workers are, including one who has been regularly meeting his exercise goals (who knew?). I gave him props a couple times and commented on one of his workouts. I was also given props on my own workouts, which made me feel surprisingly good.

Then there’s the “Me” tab, which takes you to your own profile. It shows your number of friends, followers and “check-ins,” which are the number of times you’ve tapped the check mark after hitting a goal.

Lift is straightforward, simple and satisfying. I like how easy it is to open up the app and hit the check button after, say, finishing a workout or responding to a pile of emails. After a few consecutive days of hitting my targets, the app sent helpful push notifications to my phone, challenging me to do more.

It’s not perfect, though. There isn’t an Android version of Lift yet, and, there are no privacy controls right now, which means anyone and everyone can follow you and see your profile. I would like to see more features — for example, a photo feed, or the ability to import data from other apps I use for keeping track of things.

Alive.do offers more features than Lift does. But the website is a bit of a head-scratcher, with many different tabs, tiles and notification buttons. And I kept wishing I could access it easily from my smartphone.

I signed up for Alive using Facebook Connect, and was guided through the steps of setting my “Challenges.” I added a couple of evergreen Challenges, such as “Eat healthy while traveling,” but also a more immediate one: “Go running on Tuesday.”

As with Lift, you can find friends and follow others on the site, and they can follow you back. None of my actual friends were using Alive, so I followed strangers in the Alive community.

Unlike Lift, Alive has a subcategory called “Next Steps” that I didn’t understand at first. In fact, when I set my Challenge as “Go running on Tuesday,” I didn’t see an option to check this off when Tuesday rolled around.

According to Alive’s creator, Next Steps are the small steps you’re supposed to record as you walk toward your bigger-picture Challenge. So my long-term Challenge should have been, “Run another half-marathon,” while my Next Step should have been to run on Tuesday. Once I understood how these are broken down, Alive made a little bit more sense to me, and I had some baby steps I could check off each day.

You can create these steps yourself, or you can simply add Next Steps that others have created and are suggested for you, based on your goal.

Alive uses “Boosts” for social encouragement. Your steps, combined with boosts, can translate into points through the app.

And here’s where Alive is unique: Others can boost you on your Challenges, and if you take the necessary steps, both you and your booster will get points. If you fail to complete them, he or she will lose points. This is usually a nominal amount of points, but this idea of placing micro-bets is supposed to incentivize you to actually complete your challenge.

The app’s creator says the points will eventually go toward actual rewards through product partners. If your goal is to run a race, for example, your points might go toward a new pair of sneakers.

But Alive’s layout is a little confusing. At the very top of the page there are three notification buttons, alongside Activity, Me and Challenges. Below the profile picture, there are Next Steps, Activity, Challenges, Resources and Followers. Then, to the right, there are tiles for your Challenges and your Next Steps. It all seemed redundant.

And during a very busy week, it felt like another chore — or another goal in itself — to take the time to sit down and navigate the Alive website. Alive’s creator says the company is working on a mobile app, but it’s unclear when this will be available.

In this day and age of the quantified self, goal-setting definitely has its place. But I think that it’s best tracked through a well-designed mobile application.

http://allthingsd.com/20130527/dating-apps-for-the-already-attached/ http://allthingsd.com/20130527/dating-apps-for-the-already-attached/#comments Mon, 27 May 2013 13:00:27 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=325389 Online dating services are expert at setting up people who never knew each other before, and some 40 million Americans use them. Lately, a lot of attention has been focused on location-based mobile apps that help people find others to date — sometimes fleetingly — right in their neighborhood or local bar.

But what about dating ideas for couples who are already attached and need to shake up their routines?

Naturally, there are apps for that. Some, like HowAboutWe for Couples and BeCouply, are specifically for people in relationships. Others, like Vimbly or Sosh, aren’t targeted solely at couples, but they are good for finding stuff to do around you.

They can be accessed for free, either through the Web or your smartphone, and they lure you in by promising a better, more exciting dating life. So, instead of watching “Breaking Bad” on Netflix again, like some people I know, you could go horseback riding, wine tasting or dancing, all in the same fabulous day, all arranged by a bot.

How did my parents ever survive 40 years of marriage without apps? I have no idea.

Last week, I booked a handful of dates for me and my significant other using these apps, primarily HowAboutWe and Vimbly. We had a brunch date, took a jazz cruise around Manhattan, saw some art and went to the movies. We did all this in six days, like some sort of romantic boot camp.

Now I can’t wait to get back on the couch and watch Netflix.

The apps did have their benefits: They were great for drumming up ideas. Vimbly does a good job of aggregating a wide variety of options in one place. Members of HowAboutWe for Couples get rewards, like one monthly free date — in our case, movie tickets through Fandango.

HowAboutWe for Couples also offers a concierge service, in which a real live human emailed me ideas and planned a multi-stop date for us.

But there was also room for improvement. Neither app was great for booking dates on the fly. With Vimbly, for example, I had a hard time finding a date that was both within my budget and within my time frame. HowAboutWe for Couples roped me into a monthly membership without making it clear how much I would be paying for it.

And these services aren’t available outside of the New York and San Francisco metro areas, though both expect to expand to other cities in the coming months.

I went first to HowAboutWe for Couples first. Targeted at anyone looking to plan a date, HowAboutWe for Couples is a newer service, with a separate website, and requires a membership. It’s not yet available as a mobile app.

HowAboutWe for Couples presents date packages on digital cards with catchy titles, like “NoHo Night Out” and “Love to Laugh.” There’s a standard price per date and a discounted rate for members.

In my experience, I automatically became a member when I purchased my first HowAboutWe date, and even then I had no idea how much I would be charged for that membership. I had to ask a spokeswoman for the company, who told me it was $18 a month. The company said it has since made this more clear on the website.

Initially, a HowAboutWe date called “Clay Time” jumped out at me. It was a pottery class. We could relive Demi and Swayze in “Ghost”! Minus, you know, the whole mugging part.  

But the class was $115, even with the member discount, and was still BYOB.

So instead I purchased a brunch for two for $30 at a Spanish restaurant. Tapas! Sangria! Flamenco! All before noon on a Sunday. Somehow, brunch makes it okay to spend $30 on eggs and day-drinking. But with the brunch booking came a pair of free movie tickets, just for being members.

Two days later, I still hadn’t received a code for the free movie tickets we’d been promised. On May 20, three days after I’d first purchased the date, I got an email with the ticket information. (We saw “The Great Gatsby.” He liked it; I hated it.)

I also hadn’t received a response from the HowAboutWe reservations team confirming our Sunday brunch time. Sunday came and went. We ended up using Sosh and Foursquare to find brunch spots in our neighborhood.

At the same time, I set out to book another date, this time through Vimbly. Vimbly is a Web-only app that currently lists about 5,000 activities, limited to New York City. The company plans to expand to other cities soon.

Unlike HowAboutWe’s subscription service, which offers discounted dates, Vimbly isn’t in the business of offering deals. It simply aggregates a bunch of options for you, and acts as a booking platform. Also, while Vimbly has a dates-for-couples filter, the service isn’t aimed entirely at daters.

Vimbly has two modes: Calendar mode and tile mode. Calendar mode, which I used most of the time, lets you search for interesting date ideas based on your schedule.

Some of Vimbly’s most appealing options, like a collection of dates pegged to a Gatsby theme, weren’t available until June or July. But I managed to book a “sunset” jazz cruise around Manhattan for around $50 per person, which included two free drinks. When we showed up to the dock later that evening, it was raining. We rocked around the island and gripped our drinks while a jazz band played onboard. It was all very “Titanic.”

As a service, Vimbly was easy to use, and our date went off without a hitch, but I’d use it more often if I could book more dates immediately, and on mobile.

The same is true of HowAboutWe for Couples. I heard back from HowAboutWe regarding our Spanish brunch a couple of days after I put the request in. It turns out that the service needs two full days to process your date request. Would I like to try to book for a future date, limited to Saturdays or Sundays? Yes, I would. I had already paid $30 for it.

But maybe we’ll book it for next week. I need some couch time.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130527/dating-apps-for-the-already-attached/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130520/lenovos-horizon-pc-turns-your-coffee-table-into-a-touchscreen-game-center/ http://allthingsd.com/20130520/lenovos-horizon-pc-turns-your-coffee-table-into-a-touchscreen-game-center/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:20 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=323233 What kind of computer comes with an explicit warning not to rest your coffee cup on it?

A computer like Lenovo’s new IdeaCentre Horizon PC does -– and with good reason. This 27-inch computer transforms from a standard all-in-one into a giant touchscreen tabletop display.

When the Horizon is upright, it’s running Microsoft’s Windows 8. Slide down the kickstand in the back and lay the thing flat on your coffee table, and it automatically jumps to “Aura” mode, a Lenovo-created interface for playing games with friends and family.

I’ll admit that I was quick to poke fun at the Horizon when I first saw it at the International CES trade show earlier this year. I enjoyed giving the games a test drive at the time, but I was wondering if a computer this size could really have a place in my small Manhattan apartment. I don’t even have a coffee table.

After using the Horizon on a dining table for the past week and a half, I’ve been able to fully assess it. I like it, mostly because having a second large display at home is great for media consumption. But I still wouldn’t buy it. At the end of the day, it’s a niche product.

And, it’s pricey: Lenovo is currently selling its top model, which has a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor and eight gigabytes of memory, for $1,849. A slightly less powerful model, with a Core i5 chip, costs $1,699.

On June 23, Best Buy will begin offering the Horizon for slightly less: $1,599 for the Core i7 configuration, and $1,499 for the i5 model with only 6GB of RAM.

That’s still more expensive than the Sony Vaio Tap 20, a hybrid PC/tablet that starts at $880. And Asus’s 18-inch Transformer AiO, a similarly-designed computer that runs both Windows 8 and Google Android operating systems, costs $1,300. So if you’re looking for a PC that can also be used like a large tablet, there are more reasonable options. 

And if you just want a tablet for game playing and watching videos, well, you can spend $400 and get a pretty good one.

Lenovo says there are a few reasons why the Horizon is so expensive. First, and most obvious, is the size of the display. Then, there’s the preloaded game software — nine games total, including three from Ubisoft, one from EA and five developed by Lenovo. Some of those games require accessories, like e-dice, joysticks and strikers, which are thrown into the mix. Lastly, it comes with a one terabyte internal hard drive.

Let’s say you’re willing to splurge for all this, and the family-centric games are a big draw for you.

As I mentioned, it’s running on Windows 8, and if you’re not super familiar with Microsoft’s newest operating system, there will be a learning curve as you adjust to all of the new swipes and gestures, designed with touchscreens in mind.

I tested the Core i5 model. It measures 27.2 by 16.9 by 1.17 inches, and weighs 18 pounds. Lenovo envisions that users will want to move this computer around the house, but I lugged it from room to room just once, and “lug” is the appropriate description here. It’s definitely not portable. I am not, for example, going to bring it to a friend’s house, or travel with it on a plane to the D11 Conference next week, as I would a tablet.

On the left side of the Horizon is the power button. The right side is loaded with two USB ports, an HDMI port, a media card reader and jacks for headphones and the power cord.

The 27-inch diagonal display is a full-HD multitouch display. It’s nice but not particularly brilliant. Games looked fluid and bright, but when I watched a couple episodes of ABC’s “Scandal” on Netflix, colors were a little washed out.

On to gaming, the main event: The Horizon has a respectable Nvidia processor and 2GB of processing RAM, enough for all of your needs with this computer, but not the kind of power you’d expect with a hardcore gaming machine.

Preloaded game titles include Lenovo Air Hockey, Lenovo Tycoon (Lenovo’s version of Monopoly), Lenovo Fishing Joy, Lenovo Texas Hold ‘Em, and from other publishers, the original Monopoly and Ubisoft’s Raiding Company. It also comes with BlueStacks, an app interface that lets you play Google Android games.

I laid the PC flat on the table, prompting the Aura desktop overlay to appear, and “convinced” my boyfriend to geek out and play games with me. We played a few intense games of Air Hockey, sliding the strikers along the surface of the PC to score. He got hooked playing Lenovo Fishing Joy. Then we started games of both Lenovo Tycoon and the much-better Monopoly.

Rolling the e-dice was, at first, pretty cool. A set of virtual dice in the game would spin and stop moving when the physical dice did. As we took turns in Monopoly, the game zoomed in to show us different spots along the boardwalk, then zoomed back to the whole game board again when it was the next person’s turn to roll.

But I encountered a glitch with the e-dice: When I rolled the physical dice, the virtual dice on screen kept rolling … and rolling …

After a minute or two of excitable dice, we finally unplugged the Bluetooth dongle to disconnect the dice entirely, then started over again.

Overall, playing the games was fun, and I’m sure I could entertain my young niece and nephew for awhile with this. I’d like to see more brand-name games on the Horizon. On a few occasions I went back to the Windows 8 desktop — which appears when you stand the computer upright again — to load up Angry Birds. Lenovo says that more Horizon-optimized game titles are in the works.

When it comes to non-gaming activities on this machine, the touchscreen on a 27-inch display creates a unique dilemma: Sit close enough to touch it, and you’re really, really close to a giant screen. Sit further back to avoid eye strain, and you might not be close enough to comfortably use the touchscreen.

Fortunately, the Horizon also comes with a wireless mouse and keyboard, which I did end up using for email and productivity apps, allowing me to use tactile keys and sit further back from the screen.

Finally, battery life is less than that of the similar hybrids I mentioned earlier, but this is a bigger machine. In the first test I conducted, I bumped up the display to full brightness, played iTunes and had an email application running, and the battery lasted two hours and 22 minutes. During the second test, I streamed videos and played a couple games, and it lasted two hours and 10 minutes.

Now that I’ve tried the Horizon, I’d like a bigger display in my living room. But I wasn’t blown away by the game experience, and I wouldn’t want to pay $1,700 for it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130520/lenovos-horizon-pc-turns-your-coffee-table-into-a-touchscreen-game-center/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130516/alcatel-one-touch-idol-smartphone-nothing-to-be-idolized/ http://allthingsd.com/20130516/alcatel-one-touch-idol-smartphone-nothing-to-be-idolized/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 13:31:21 +0000 Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=321731 How do you introduce the world to a new smartphone from a company that most people have never heard of? With a cameo in “Iron Man 3,” of course.

Alcatel One Touch is a cellphone brand from Chinese consumer electronics company TCL Communications. Its first U.S. smartphone, the mid-range Idol, will make its debut at the end of the month. To get the name in front of more eyes, the Android-based handset is featured in the latest installment of Marvel Comics’s “Iron Man” film series. But in real life it faces the heroic task of going up against smartphone stalwarts like Samsung, HTC and LG.

Unfortunately, this smartphone isn’t going to reach superhero status. I’ve been testing the Idol over the past week, and I found it to be unremarkable. The phone lacks 4G LTE support and is somewhat sluggish, which makes it frustrating to use. Plus, it’s currently priced at $299 without carrier backing. For that money, you’ll get a lot more from the Nexus 4 by LG.

There’s really nothing that sets the Idol apart from the competition. The design resembles a lot of other all-touchscreen smartphones, and without any type of branding on the front of the device, you’d be hard-pressed to pick it out of a lineup of Android devices — not that I want a huge company logo splattered across the front. Alcatel One Touch does offer the Idol in a number of colors, including red, green and blue, but, alas, I received the boring silver one.

The smartphone measures 5.24 inches tall by 2.66 inches wide by 0.31 inch thick, and weighs 3.84 ounces. It’s smaller than the Samsung Galaxy S4, but bigger than the iPhone 5. The construction of the phone is largely plastic, but I didn’t think it felt particularly cheap or fragile. It was comfortable to hold, and I had no problems navigating through the menus with one hand.

The Idol has a 4.7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 960 by 540 pixels. That’s on par with other midrange smartphones, and the display was bright and clear for reading text and viewing videos. But for the same price, you can get the Nexus 4 with a 4.7-inch, 1,280 by 768-pixel touchscreen, which offers sharper image quality.

Another advantage to the Nexus 4 is that it’s running the latest version of Google’s Android Jelly Bean operating system (4.2.2). The Idol runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.1, so it’s not too far behind, but the rate at which it will receive software updates may not be as quick as the Nexus, since the latter is offered directly by Google.

The good news is that the Idol’s user interface is clean and easy to use. The company hasn’t added too many of its own customizations, and it’s not bogged down with useless software. A couple of apps that I found particularly useful were MobiSystem’s OfficeSuite for viewing and editing Office documents, and Movie Studio for editing videos right on the phone.

The quality of the Idol’s main eight-megapixel camera is mediocre. As with many camera phones, I got the best results when taking pictures outdoors in natural light. But even then, I didn’t find the colors to be that vibrant. Photos taken indoors or in low-light conditions were a bit grainy, and using the built-in flash only washed out colors. There were other issues, as well.

To focus, you can tap on the screen, but I found it slow at times (the phone also makes a weird clicking noise). There were also delays when I tried to launch the camera from the lock screen, and a couple of times the camera app unexpectedly closed as soon as I launched it from the main menu. It didn’t give me much confidence for using the Idol’s camera to capture spontaneous moments.

A photo taken with the Alcatel One Touch Idol’s 8-megapixel camera.

Unfortunately, performance issues weren’t uncommon during my time with the Idol. It’s powered by a slower processor than other phones in its price range, and I ran into delays when launching apps or loading social networks like Facebook. There was once instance where it struggled to even get to the main menu of apps, which I have never seen before. The problems weren’t constant, but it was enough to make it frustrating. The speed of the Nexus 4 offers a more fluid experience.

Also, the Idol doesn’t support 4G LTE for faster data speeds. Instead, it works on another 4G standard called HSPA+, which can be just as fast or faster than LTE in some places, but in my testing I didn’t find this to be the case. Using the iPhone 5 on AT&T’s LTE network in San Francisco, I averaged download speeds of 22.04 megabits per second and upload speeds of 18.17 Mbps. Meanwhile, the Idol averaged 3.77 Mbps down and 1.03 Mbps up. To be fair, the Nexus 4 also lacks 4G LTE.

Calls sounded clear, and I didn’t experience any dropped calls. Voices sounded natural, without any disruptive background noise. But the volume can get piercingly loud, even at mid-levels. My friends had no major complaints on their end.

For my battery drain tests, I simulated a voice call with Wi-Fi on, allowing the screen to time out after 30 seconds, and the Idol offered six hours and 18 minutes of continuous talk time. In real-world usage, where I used the phone to check email and social networks, read articles on the Web and watch a couple of YouTube clips, I needed to recharge the phone by early evening.

Sadly, Iron Man can’t save the Alcatel One Touch Idol. At its current price, the smartphone doesn’t hold a candle to the more powerful and robust Nexus 4. Even if the smartphone was eventually offered by a carrier at a cheap price or even for free, the performance issues aren’t worth it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130516/alcatel-one-touch-idol-smartphone-nothing-to-be-idolized/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130514/apps-raise-the-ipads-aptitude-for-real-work/ http://allthingsd.com/20130514/apps-raise-the-ipads-aptitude-for-real-work/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 01:08:44 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=321647 There’s a popular myth that Apple’s iPad and other tablets are simply media-consumption devices, unsuitable for productivity applications. That’s just not so, and this week I tested a variety of office suites for the iPad for mini-reviews of their capabilities. In fact, I wrote and edited this entire column on an iPad using the most popular paid iPad app, the $10 Pages word processor by Apple.

Not every productivity task is optimally done on tablet software, of course. Writing a plain text document like this one isn’t the same as creating a large, nuanced spreadsheet. For complex documents, I still recommend using a PC or Mac.

And then there’s the problem with typing on a tablet’s virtual keyboard. If you’re going to use your iPad for longer documents, I suggest using a Bluetooth keyboard. I used a physical keyboard to write this, though I usually am fine with the on-screen one.

Despite these caveats, iPads and other tablets are being used every day for productivity tasks once reserved for laptops. Every time you reach for your iPad to read, or tap out, a work-related email, that’s productivity. Every time you make or change a business appointment on an iPad calendar, that’s productivity. And there are way too many tailored productivity and business apps to list here, including apps for salespeople, contractors and doctors.

There’s a major gap, though: Microsoft Office. The software giant doesn’t yet offer a tablet-optimized version. So there are iPad apps that attempt to emulate the features of Office and can import and export files in Microsoft’s Office formats. They generally don’t offer all of the features of Office and don’t always offer perfect fidelity with PC and Mac versions of Office. But I have found they are fine for the basic documents most people create or edit. And all can open and edit Office-type files attached to email, using the iPad’s “Open In…” command. You just touch the attachment icon for a bit longer than usual and a grid of compatible apps to use for editing appears.

Here are my impressions of some of these apps, including AstralPad, from a three-person startup that launched a few months ago. I tested these by doing two things with each. First, I created an identical word-processing document, with text in various styles and a photo, and then exported it to Microsoft Word on a PC and Mac. Then I imported a 23-page PowerPoint file to see if it looked as it did on a PC and Mac.

iWork’s Keynote is built for touch.

iWork

Introduced by Apple at the iPad’s launch in 2010, the touch-version of the company’s office suite is now in its seventh revision. It’s the most touch-friendly of the products I tested and the most transparent about cases where it’s incompatible with Office. Apple even maintains a Web page disclosing incompatibilities. The suite consists of Pages, the Numbers spreadsheet and the Keynote presentation app, which are sold for $10 each.

iWork synchronizes documents as you type them with its cloud-based iCloud service, which can be accessed from any Web browser and can export the files in Office formats. You can email documents in Office format. But unlike many other iPad apps, it lacks built-in access to popular online storage sites like Dropbox and Google Drive.

The suite works well offline, as it stores documents locally as well.

Pages was fastest and easiest at creating my test document, but the document had a misaligned line when I viewed it in Word on a Mac and PC. On the other hand, Keynote on the iPad imported the presentation perfectly.

QuickOffice is fine for simple documents on the iPad.

QuickOffice Pro HD

This Office substitute has been around a long time on various platforms and is fine for simple documents on the iPad. It costs $20 for all three modules in one app. It stores files locally and integrates with many popular cloud-storage services.

However, I couldn’t insert the photo into my test document, and the presentation I imported was formatted wrong.

AstralPad

The newest competitor is merely a window into an office app running on a server. Since the server app is meant for PCs, it has many more features and in some cases, better fidelity, than apps that live on the iPad. It’s free for now, but will soon cost a few dollars a month for more than a limited number of documents.

AstralPad is merely a window into an office app running on a server.

However, the cloud-based program Astral uses isn’t even an actual version of Office, but an open-source clone. And because it’s meant for a mouse, I found it difficult to manipulate, even though Astral has added some touch controls and a virtual mouse.

In addition, it converts files in the current Office document formats into older formats before you can work with the files.

AstralPad has some nice features. It allows you to work with multiple documents simultaneously and to cut and paste between them. And it has video and audio calling for collaboration. It works with cloud-based services and local storage. But it can’t work offline.

It created my test file fine after the company fixed a bug that at first wouldn’t allow me to import a photo. But it didn’t display the presentation file correctly, with overlapping text and pictures.

I found AstralPad to be a work in progress.

CloudOn uses a real, remote copy of Microsoft Office.

CloudOn

Like AstralPad, this is just a window into a server and won’t work offline. But it uses a real, remote copy of Microsoft Office and is free. It was able to create my test document fine and to display my test presentation properly. It also integrates with cloud-based storage. But while it was easier to use than AstralPad, I still found it clumsy to use its PC software on a touch tablet.

Bottom line: None of these iPad office suites is perfect, but you can get basic work done on them that will translate to a computer with little or no effort.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130514/apps-raise-the-ipads-aptitude-for-real-work/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130514/breathe-relax-repeat-devices-for-inner-peace/ http://allthingsd.com/20130514/breathe-relax-repeat-devices-for-inner-peace/#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 22:22:06 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=321609 Breathe in energy and positivity. Breathe out distractions and bad feelings. Envision a calm place and let yourself go there.

Who are you kidding? You’re probably racing to or from work along with hundreds of other people and the anxiety level you feel is indescribably high. You may want to try to meditate or center yourself in stressful situations like these, but never actually remember to do it.

This week, I tested two sensors that might help: the $99 HeartMath Inner Balance Sensor for iOS and $119 Tinké by Zensorium. Each device plugs into Apple’s iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, and digitally monitors heart rate and breathing patterns, offering on-screen coaching to get you into a calmer zone.

While a traditional heart monitor often just spits out a number, both the HeartMath Inner Balance and Tinké provide feedback as you use them. People who meditate regularly but don’t know whether or not their heart and breathing are reacting to their meditations will get some specific answers with these devices and apps. Both of these free apps offer ways to save results and share them via email or social networks. Using them taught me how to lower my heart rate and steady my breathing.

The HeartMath sensor is the company’s first mobile device after years of working only on computers. One end clips to an earlobe, resembling a Bluetooth headset from afar, and uses an infrared sensor to see blood flowing through the skin and measure heart-rate variability. The other end attaches to an iOS device.

The company suggests spending 10 to 15 minutes with this app in the morning to prepare for the day and 10 to 15 minutes at night to get settled before sleeping. It measures what HeartMath calls coherence—an algorithm applied to heart-rate variability, which the company says can reflect emotional states and stress levels.

In stressful situations, I watched the screen register my low coherence level with a red icon, but I gradually learned how to get into the zone of high coherence, which is represented by a green icon.

I tried this for several days in the morning and at night, and found myself looking forward to my time with the app. I also tried it at different times of the day, including after a quick walk at lunch and while riding the subway home.

The first time you use HeartMath, helpful slides walk you through how the product works. You can switch between several views to focus on during a session: a flower pulsing in and out with your breaths; a shade that lifts and lowers as you breathe; a photo of a waterfall, which you can change to an image you’d like to stare at; or a statistical screen showing heart-rate variance, coherence over time, pulse and a spectrum analysis of heart rhythms. Relevant coaching phrases pop up to encourage you. Some included, “Breathe through the heart area” and “Excellent! You’re in high coherence!”

During setup, I was never asked for my gender or age, but a company spokeswoman said it plans to add these personalized levels later this year. Early next year, the company plans an Android version and a wireless version of the sensor.

The Tinké (pronounced “tink”) by Singapore-based Zensorium is a tiny sensor that comes in white, gray, pink or blue. After downloading its app, I was invited to use it as a guest, or by creating a new account. I tried guest mode and later created my own account, where session scores were saved. Even as a guest, I was prompted to enter my age and gender for a more accurate reading.

I plugged the sensor into my iPad, which made its infrared light glow. On-screen instructions told me to place my thumb over the light, and I waited while Tinké measured either my Zen Index or Vita Index. The Zen Index uses heart-rate variability to quantify stress levels in a simplified manner, according to the company. The Vita Index is a cardio-respiratory score that looks at heart rate, blood-oxygen level and respiratory rate (the number of breaths per minute).

I started with testing my Zen Index, which I did by breathing in time with one of five circle patterns that appeared on the screen, each pulsing at different paces. In just a few minutes, my score out of 99 points was displayed: “Calm, 57/99 points. Doing well. Keep calm and carry on practicing your breathing to improve.” When I tested my Vita Index, my score said: “Fresh, 84/99 points. Looking good! Your heart rate, respiratory rate and blood oxygen level are within normal ranges. Stay motivated!”

Fun factoids appeared on the screen while I used the Tinké sensor. One said, “Did you know? Your right lung takes in more air than your left.” Another said, “Eating fish helps lower your risk of depression.”

I chose a “Shout” icon in the app to share results with Tinké users but I could also share my results via Facebook. Tinké awards badges for activities and gives users extra points when they measure their Vita Index three times daily. There’s a leaderboard of all users, which might motivate people even more.

If you’re curious about your heart-rate variability and the other data that can be gleaned from it, I’d recommend the HeartMath Inner Balance for a comprehensive approach.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130514/breathe-relax-repeat-devices-for-inner-peace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130513/three-battery-boosting-cases-for-iphone-5/ http://allthingsd.com/20130513/three-battery-boosting-cases-for-iphone-5/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 13:00:33 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=320680 As advanced as new smartphones are, battery life can still be an issue for people who use a lot of juice-sucking apps.

Sound like a familiar first-world problem? Luckily, the next generation of battery cases is here. They’re slimmer than earlier models, and they promise more.

They’re not perfect, but they’re pretty darn good.

Over the past week and a half, I’ve been comparing three cases for iPhone 5: Mophie’s $100 Juice Pack Air, the slightly less powerful $80 Mophie Juice Pack Helium, and MyCharge’s brand-new Freedom 2000 case.

The Freedom 2000 also costs $80, and yet it claims to give even more extra juice than the Mophie Juice Pack Air.

While Mophie has been making smartphone-charging cases since the days of the original iPhone, MyCharge is a relatively new company, mostly making portable charging packs. Its iPhone 4/4S charging case never even made it to market.

The best part about this new MyCharge Freedom 2000 case is that it doesn’t add the additional junk to my iPhone’s trunk the way the Mophie packs do, with their slide-on bottom attachments. But it does have one notable design flaw: It renders the phone’s power button pretty much useless by covering it with a plastic “dummy” button that barely sticks out. I found it nearly impossible to power off the phone or take screen grabs with this case on the phone.

Still, after using the MyCharge, the Mophie packs felt big and long in comparison, especially when I was holding my phone in my hand during a long run outside. And the Mophie Juice Pack Air is expensive, at a third of the cost of the iPhone. The Mophie Juice Pack Helium is a little more reasonably priced, and still provides a good amount of extra battery life.

From left to right, the MyCharge Freedom 2000 (in gray and black), the Mophie Juice Pack Air and the Mophie Juice Pack Helium.

But let’s say you’re still considering one of the Mophies — it’s important to know the differences between the two cases I looked at.

The Air is Mophie’s top model, claiming 100 percent extra battery life that’s drawn from a 1,700 milliamp (mAh) pack inside the tough plastic case. The Helium, by comparison, promises 80 percent extra juice from a 1,500 mAh case. The Air, at 5.5 by 2.6 by 0.6 inches and 2.68 ounces, is just a little bit larger and heavier than the Helium, but the size difference is barely noticeable.

Both the Air and Helium packs split apart and then reattach to form a case around your phone. The bottom portion of each pack has a built-in adapter that connects to your iPhone 5 to charge it.

Another small but noteworthy difference between the two — the Air covers the entire band of the iPhone, whereas the Helium case has a gap on the side to let the phone’s buttons hang out. While Mophie likes to say the Air offers more “protection” than the Helium, I just don’t like plastic obstructing the phone buttons.

On the back of the packs, there are LED light indicators to let you know when each pack is charged. One light means low battery, and all four lights signal that the Mophie is ready to go. The Mophies also have a “standby” switch: Flick it to begin charging, and snap it back to put the Mophie in standby mode.

In my unscientific tests of these cases, I used my iPhone 5 as I would on a normal day, taking a handful of phone calls that lasted 30 minutes or more and running multiple apps, like Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps and Gmail. I connected to both an LTE cellular network and a Wi-Fi network when available. The display was on about 75 percent of maximum brightness. This would normally last me from approximately 8 am to 5:30 pm, or nine-and-a-half hours.

I began using the Mophie Air in the early evening, when my phone’s battery dwindled to under 5 percent. Within an hour and a half, my phone’s battery had been boosted to 84 percent. Shortly afterward, the Mophie itself was out of juice.

I answered work emails, made phone calls and played mobile games. I went for a long run, using both streaming music and fitness apps, and used Foursquare to find dining options. In total, the Mophie Air got me just about eight hours of extra battery life — enough so that when I woke up the next morning, the phone still had some life.  

In a separate test, the Helium boosted my 5 percent-charged iPhone to 78 percent before the pack itself died, and ultimately got me nearly as much extra juice as the Air.

So, given the choice between these two, I’d go with the less-expensive Mophie Helium.

But if you’re going to consider spending $80 on a battery case, and you prefer a case that lets your phone buttons hang out freely, that’s where the MyCharge Freedom 2000 comes in (hence the “Freedom”). This one has a 2000 mAh rechargeable battery, claiming 110 percent extra battery life. It’s a few ounces heavier than the Mophie Air pack, but is only 5.1 inches long compared with the 5.5-inch Mophies.

The MyCharge has a tiny tethered arm that extends from the bottom of the case and connects to the iPhone 5. I like this extendable arm: It’s small enough to go unnoticed, and yet I knew from a quick glance at my iPhone whether I was charging or not, depending on whether the connector was plugged in.

It also has a multicolored LED indicator light to let you know when the pack is charged (green), or alternately, when it’s dead (red). And, finally, it has a gap on the side to give the phone’s volume buttons some breathing room.

The first time I put the MyCharge through my test, the pack’s indicator light was green, leading me to believe it was ready to go, and yet it stopped charging my iPhone at 47 percent of its maximum battery capacity. In follow-up tests, however, it basically matched the Mophie Air in terms of performance.

If you don’t mind the extra length the Mophie packs give your iPhone 5, I can recommend the Helium as a reliable case. Otherwise, the MyCharge Freedom 2000 is a more wieldy option for the same price, despite the way it makes the power button tough to press.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130513/three-battery-boosting-cases-for-iphone-5/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130509/apps-that-curb-the-temptation-to-text-and-drive/ http://allthingsd.com/20130509/apps-that-curb-the-temptation-to-text-and-drive/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 13:00:45 +0000 Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=319422 Would you ever drive the length of a football field at 55 miles per hour blindfolded? Some daredevils might consider it, but what if the field was filled with obstacles like people and cars?

I’m guessing most people’s answer would be a resounding “no,” but that’s pretty much what you’re doing every time you text and drive.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, texting drivers are 23 times more likely to get into an accident than those who don’t. It’s no wonder that it’s now illegal to do so in 39 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Yet we still do it. Studies have shown that younger drivers are the biggest offenders, but adults are guilty of it, too. This past week, I checked out several apps designed to curb this dangerous activity: Text-Star by Cinqpoint, DriveScribe by Drive Power and DriveSafe.ly by iSpeech.

Each app handles the task a little differently. Text-Star sends automatic responses to incoming texts, so you don’t feel compelled to answer right away. Meanwhile, DriveScribe blocks incoming messages and calls when it detects you’re in a moving car. Finally, DriveSafe.ly allows you to receive texts, but reads them out loud, so you don’t have to look at your phone. They all worked well, but still require discipline on your part.

Text-Star is free, but it’s currently only available for Android smartphones. Cinqpoint said it hopes to offer an iOS version in the future.

I used it on my Nexus 4 and found it easy to use. The app offers three operating modes: Automatic, Manual and Passenger. I left it in Automatic mode most of the time, which sends auto-replies as soon as it detects that your car is moving faster than 10 mph (it does this by using your phone’s various sensors and radios).

Before you head out, you can select from a list of preset messages, such as “On the road, ttyl (talk to you later),” “At the movies, ttyl,” or you can write a custom message. Though primarily designed for in-car use, you can also use Text-Star for other situations, like when you’re in a meeting.

To test the app, I drove around an empty portion of a shopping mall parking lot and had my brother text me. The Nexus 4 chimed just as usual to let me know I had a new text, but I resisted the urge to check it, knowing that an automatic response was sent. My brother confirmed that he received my custom message.

There’s really nothing in TextStar that prevents you from checking or sending messages while in the car. Some apps, like Textecution ($30), require an unlock code from a parent or administrator. Cinqpoint says it believes that brings potential liabilities, but to help encourage good behavior, it is working with national insurance carriers to provide discounts. As you use the app, Text-Star takes note of whether or not you’re using your phone while on the road, and gives you a star rating. A good star rating can then potentially be used to lower insurance rates.

DriveScribe also uses rewards to encourage safer driving, and includes a number of useful tools for parents with teens who drive. Available for Android and iOS, the app blocks texts and incoming calls when a car is moving faster than 12 mph. There’s an auto-response feature, and messages appear once you’ve stopped. The app also offers an option to allow texts from certain numbers, such as a parent’s, even while in motion. All the features worked well on the Nexus 4.

DriveScribe also monitors other driving habits, including speed, and all the data is available to parents via a Web-based dashboard. Based on their behavior on the road, drivers are awarded points for each ride. These points can later be redeemed for rewards like discounts at national retailers, which are provided by a DriveScribe partner.

For example, 1,000 points gets you a $10 Amazon gift card. But to take advantage of rewards like this, you have to subscribe to one of DriveScribe’s paid plans, which start at $3 per month. Still, it might be worth it for parents who want to give their kids an incentive to be safer drivers.

For those moments when you can’t bear to be disconnected from text messages — say, if your wife is pregnant — DriveSafe.ly is a good option.

The free app reads incoming messages out loud, and automatically replies to the sender with a custom message. It’s available for Android, and a BlackBerry 10 version is coming next month. But there’s no iOS app. There’s also a Pro version ($10 for Android, $14 for BlackBerry) that adds the ability to reply by voice, though I’d argue that can be just as distracting as typing.

Upon launching DriveSafe.ly on my Nexus 4, I thought something was wrong with the app. This is because it only displayed a small image in the upper left-hand corner of the screen rather than the entire screen, but it still worked fine. ISpeech said this is something it’s planning to fix.

Under the Settings menu, you can indicate what you’d like the app to read out loud, such as text, emails and sender’s name. This is also where you can write a message for your auto-response.

Using the same test method as the other two, DriveSafe.ly announced my brother’s name and read the message in a pleasant female voice. I was pretty impressed with the text-to-speech translation. The voice didn’t sound too robotic, and it didn’t horribly mangle the pronunciation of any names.

I’ll admit, by actually hearing the message, I was a little more tempted to grab my phone and respond, compared to the other two apps. But knowing that they received an automatic reply from the app saying that I was driving curbed the temptation.

These apps aren’t perfect solutions for completely stopping texting and driving, but they can certainly help, and are worth a test drive.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130509/apps-that-curb-the-temptation-to-text-and-drive/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130507/two-products-for-people-who-miss-the-old-windows/ http://allthingsd.com/20130507/two-products-for-people-who-miss-the-old-windows/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 01:03:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=319263

The face of Windows 8 — the tablet-like, tile-based Start Screen that comes up every time you start a new PC — is nicely designed and works well on touchscreens. But a lot of people hate it. They do almost all of their computing in the traditional Windows desktop environment, which has been demoted to secondary status in Windows 8. And they are annoyed that Microsoft has replaced the familiar Windows Start Menu with the Start Screen in Windows 8.

That means when you want to launch a new app that isn’t pinned to your taskbar, you have to jump back and forth between the desktop and the Start Screen, two radically different user experiences. It drives some folks crazy. They dearly miss the Start Button, which launched the Start Menu, at the left end of the taskbar.

Microsoft is planning a revision of Windows 8, code-named “Windows Blue,” later this year that may smooth out the interaction between the two interfaces. But there’s been no promise that the company is dumping the Start Screen, refocusing on the desktop or restoring the Start Menu.

If you’re a desktop and Start Menu lover using Windows 8, you don’t have to worry about Microsoft’s plans. That’s because ever since Windows 8 emerged in October, numerous third-party utilities have sprung up that restore the Start Menu, allow you to boot the PC directly into the desktop mode and otherwise reassert the desktop’s primacy over the Start Screen. They essentially allow you to use Windows as you always have.

This week, I tested two of these Start Menu add-ons and found each different, but both effective. If you don’t like these, there are many others to choose from.

Start8

This is a $5 utility I found to be the best I tried at simply restoring the old Start Menu. If the price deters you, there’s a 30-day free trial. Start8 comes from a company called Stardock, which makes utilities and games.

Start8 lets users pin apps to the top of it, show a user picture on it and change the physical Windows key so it launches the Start8 menu instead of the Start Screen.

As soon as I downloaded and installed Start8, the old Start Menu was back. You can choose its taskbar icon — either a Windows 8 logo, the Start8 logo or a custom image, including ones that resemble the Start icons from older versions of Windows. A nicely designed, easy-to-use settings screen allows you to customize many other features of the Start Menu, desktop and computer.

One huge feature is the ability to boot directly into the traditional desktop once you’ve signed into your PC. So you don’t have to see the new Start Screen at all. This essentially makes your Windows 8 PC behave a lot like a Windows 7 machine. Start8 can be configured to look something like Windows 8’s “all apps” view, if you prefer, but I suspect most users will stick to its default Windows 7 style.

The program allows you a host of other choices. You can pin apps to the top of it, show your user picture on it and change the behavior of the physical Windows key so it launches the Start8 menu instead of taking you to the dreaded Start Screen. You also can disable the various new Windows 8 controls that appear when you perform certain swipes or mouse movements.

What if you want to be able to get to the Start Screen quickly and you’ve disabled all the usual ways to do it? Well, Start8’s menu comes by default with a link at the top to the Start Screen and it lets you directly launch the new-style Windows 8 apps.

Start8 worked very well and was worth $5. The company says it has been downloaded five million times since Windows 8 launched. You can download it here.

Pokki

If Start8 recreates the traditional Windows Start Menu, Pokki aims to modernize it. The free product, from a company called SweetLabs, does restore the Start Menu, but with an updated look and feel, as well as a built-in app store.

The free Pokki is a window that lists a user’s program categories and recently used apps on the left, and their favorite apps and an app store in a series of panels on the right.

Pokki is a window that lists your program categories and recently used apps on the left, and favorite apps in a series of panels on the right. These right-hand panels, which you can flip through, resemble the screen of a smartphone or tablet, with apps represented by icons.

The left-hand side is a list, with major categories for Favorites (the smartphone-type view), All Apps and the Control Panel items.

There’s also an app store, which was Pokki’s main business before Windows 8 came along and opened the Start Menu opportunity. The apps Pokki offers are all free and many are like Web apps with the browser interface removed. I downloaded YouTube and Gmail, which behaved exactly as they did in a browser. Pokki hopes to make money from app developers.

When first installed, Pokki advertises its apps at the bottom of the Start Menu, but you can turn this off. You can’t, however, turn off the icon for the Pokki app store itself, though you can move it. Apps you buy from Pokki are automatically pinned to the taskbar, though you can unpin them.

Pokki also has a smartphone-like notification system, that, in my tests, listed new messages in the Gmail app.

Like Start8, Pokki also allows you to boot directly into the desktop, skipping the Start Screen. You can set the Windows key to open Pokki, not the Start Screen.

To get quickly to the Start Screen, Pokki has an icon at the lower left. You can download Pokki here. The company says the product has been downloaded three million times since Windows 8 launched.

Bottom line: Whatever Microsoft does or doesn’t do later this year, you can get back your Start Menu and desktop supremacy in Windows 8, right now, with these utilities.

Email Walt at at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130507/two-products-for-people-who-miss-the-old-windows/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130507/at-10-you-still-have-some-tricks-itunes/ http://allthingsd.com/20130507/at-10-you-still-have-some-tricks-itunes/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 22:28:56 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=319226 Apple just celebrated the 10th birthday of its famed iTunes, which is easily the most popular source for buying digital content. Still, I regularly field questions from my family and friends about how iTunes works. These range from basic questions about syncing to storing music in the cloud and sharing music with family. And iTunes also has a lot of features most people don’t know exist. This week, I rounded up some ways to improve the way you use iTunes.

Digital Allowance

If you aren’t thrilled at the prospect of setting your credit-card number as the default payment on your kid’s iTunes account, a monthly allowance might be a better solution. From the iTunes Store home page on your computer, select “Send iTunes Gifts” on the right, then “Learn More About Gifting” and scroll to the bottom to find allowance settings. You can set the allowance in amounts ranging from $10 to $50.

Recipients must have an Apple ID, but you can set up an Apple ID for them at the same time. You can decide to send the allowance right away or wait until the next month, on either the first or the day of the month you set up the allowance. You also can add a personal message.

Redeeming Gift Cards

Some people are thrilled to receive iTunes gift cards, but they just don’t know how to redeem them. A simple shortcut on a computer or mobile devices is to open iTunes, navigate to the iTunes Store, scroll to the very bottom of the store’s home screen and click Redeem. (On a computer, this is under Manage. In the iOS app, it’s in the bottom, center of the screen.) You’ll be asked to enter your Apple ID and then to enter your gift card or download code. If you accidentally scratched letters or numbers from your code like I did once, call or email Apple Support and they’ll help you figure it out.

Gifts Without the Gift Card

Anything in the iTunes Store or Apple’s App Store can be given to another person via an email. On your computer, select the arrow beside the price and click on “Gift this.” If you’re using an Apple mobile device, select the share icon (a small square with an arrow pointing right) at the top of the screen from the store and choose “Gift.” Then enter a personal message and choose Now or Other Date to decide when the recipient gets it.

This is especially helpful for favorite games or TV shows that you want friends to start playing or watching.

Sharing Libraries

Many family members or friends may find themselves frustrated by how their digital content is stored in individual libraries associated with individual Apple IDs, making it harder to share this content. While you can’t merge Apple IDs to combine libraries, you can turn on Home Sharing within your home Wi-Fi network to let various devices share content while they’re within range of the network. Turn on Home Sharing from the Advanced menu in iTunes and enter the same Apple ID on up to five computers. Likewise, you can stream content from other shared computers, or drag it onto your computer’s local library.

You also can see this shared content from iOS devices and Apple TV. Within the Music app on iOS, click the More tab in the bottom right. In the Videos app, tap the Shared button at the top. On your Apple TV, go into Settings, Computer and turn on Home Sharing, then open the Computer icon in your Apple TV’s main menu to access libraries and stream content.

iCloud vs. iTunes Match

Owners of Apple products surely have heard of iCloud, but they may not use it. Some people aren’t sure how it works with music and how it differs from iTunes Match.

ICloud is a handy insurance policy against losing your iPod and all of your iTunes content along with it. Once you set up iCloud using your Apple ID, any content that you buy from the iTunes Store will show up on other devices without any syncing. Any past purchases from the iTunes Store will show up on all of your devices, too. Tapping a tiny cloud icon beside each file will pull it onto your device.

To replicate all of your content across devices, including stuff you haven’t bought from iTunes (like CDs you imported or bought elsewhere), iTunes Match will do the trick. This costs $25 a year and matches up to 25,000 songs. From iTunes on your computer, open the Store menu, select “Turn on iTunes Match,” enter your Apple ID and password and click Subscribe. On iOS devices, open Settings, Music and turn on iTunes Match.

ITunes Match will work on up to 10 devices, and it auto-scans for newly purchased content so you have it on all devices.

Getting Rid of Content

It may seem like everything in your iTunes library is stuck there for good. But if you’re tired of keeping unwanted files, like episodes of Season 2′s “Mad Men” or irritating tunes from a Christmas party playlist, the process to delete them is painless.

From your iTunes library on the computer, click the item to select it, press the delete key and click Delete Item. From here, you can opt to remove the item only from your iTunes library, which keeps the file on your computer though not in iTunes (click “Keep File”), or delete the item from your computer permanently (click “Move to Trash” and empty the Trash).

When you know how all of its features work, iTunes can be a real pleasure to use. But if you’re confused, syncing content can be a dreaded experience. If you know people who tiptoe around how to use iTunes, share this guide with them.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130507/at-10-you-still-have-some-tricks-itunes/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130506/can-these-ipad-apps-teach-your-kid-to-code/ http://allthingsd.com/20130506/can-these-ipad-apps-teach-your-kid-to-code/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:20 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=318415 The pillars of elementary education in the U.S. — reading, writing, math — have remained the same for a long time. Now another skill set is increasingly coming into focus: Computer programming.

This week, I tested two new mobile apps, Kodable and Hopscotch, that are aimed at teaching young children the basic skills necessary for computer programming. Both are for iOS — specifically, for iPad — although Kodable plans to introduce an Android version of the app. And both are free to download, but Kodable does include advanced levels that cost $1.99 to access.

What is programming, exactly? Also called coding, it’s the execution of different languages that make computer software, websites and mobile apps run. A series of symbols, like text, are grouped together to imply or prompt something else. A very common example of this is the use of a semicolon to signify a break in a line of code. There are also visual programming languages, which use graphical blocks of code.

Coding tools for kids and beginners are hardly a new thing, but many earlier applications are browser-based, while these apps capitalize on the gravitational pull that tablets seem to have on kids.

Kodable, which launched late last year, is aimed at kids in kindergarten through second grade. It takes a levels-based game approach, reminding me in some ways of a popular app called Cargo-Bot, which lets you move cartoon robotic arms using commands. Or, think Angry Birds, except instead of slinging birds through the air using your finger, you’re moving a fuzzball using arrow commands. Kodable also sprinkles game coins throughout the app as an incentive.

I found it easy to get the hang of Kodable, which is based on Basic, an early and simple programming language. But to say it teaches “coding” is a stretch. It more or less teaches kids how to think logically to get an object moving.

Hopscotch, on the other hand, is more advanced, aimed at kids age 8 and up. It’s based on Scratch, a visual programming language created at MIT. Hopscotch offers colorful blocks of code with which to execute a program on what is basically a blank slate. This means Hopscotch can be as easy or as difficult as you make it, but it also works under the assumption that you already know some programming basics.

Since I’m a few years beyond fourth grade at this point, it’s tough for me to approach these apps exactly as a child would. But I’ve never learned to code, so I can claim beginner status there. Hopscotch was definitely more challenging for me than Kodable was. But I learned more about actual coding from Hopscotch.

Let’s start with Kodable, and then “graduate” to Hopscotch. Once you get past the intro animation with ambient music (maybe meant to lull kids into a total state of relaxation and quietude? Parents and teachers can only wish …), you’re asked to enter your name. From there, you’re taken to a “Smeeborg” of unlocked levels.

Kodable’s main character is a blue fuzzball with eyes and a mouth. There’s a short course laid out for you, littered with coins; as the levels progress, the course gets more maze-like. On the upper right there is a toolbox with arrow keys. On the left, there’s a “script” area where, using the iPad’s touchscreen, you drag the arrow keys to create a command. With each new level of difficulty, a small cartoon hand will simulate the commands for you to give some guidance, but that’s all there is in terms of tutorials.

I dragged a sequence of arrows over to the script and hit the play button. My fuzzball made it through the course, and I went on on to the next level.

I made it through about a dozen levels on Kodable, even unlocking a new fuzzball named Simon Fuzz — he’s green and wears hipster glasses — before I found out that by swiping to the left I could skip to new areas in the game. These are called Function Junction and Bugs Below. Each costs $1.99 and contains 30 new levels of varying difficulty. For example, Function Junction teaches you to create a second sequence of arrow commands under the one you’re already using.

Kodable says it plans to add more curriculum-like education features to the app in the next couple months, including vocabulary exercises, so kids can learn programming words. I think Kodable on the whole could be a bit richer, but I like the app, and there’s no cost to download it and try it.

On to Hopscotch: This app takes you through a quick tutorial at the start, showing how to put together blocks of code to program a little monkey to draw a line. At the top of the app is a plus sign that allows you to choose from one of 10 different cartoon characters, including the monkey. Then, there are “method blocks” of programming on the left, including commands like “move,” “rotate,” “leave a trail,” “repeat” and “scale by.”

You drag these blocks to an empty script on the right, building them on top of one another and squeezing commands in between other commands the way you might play Tetris. Then, you can choose different prompts from a dropdown menu. So, for example, I could tell the app to execute the program I built when I tap the character, or when I shake the iPad, or when I simply press play.

For my first project, I attempted to make a space pod draw a line. I got the space pod to move across the screen, but it didn’t leave a line trail as I thought it would. I tried the same thing with a cupcake character, but still, no line drawn. In another project, I made a gorilla run around the border of the app, scaling up in size every time he turned a corner, but again, I was missing something.

This is where a “debugging” mode — something that lets you see the code being executed in real time to help you pinpoint your errors — would help; Hopscotch says it’s considering adding this feature.

I finally asked the app’s co-creator what I was doing wrong. It turns out that I was putting certain movement-specific blocks outside of the C-shaped “leave a trail” block, instead of inside of it. This kind of troubleshooting might be obvious to some people, but it just didn’t click for me without some basic knowledge of how visual programming languages work. In addition to the debugger, Hopscotch plans to build out more tutorials for this exact reason.

After I completed projects, I could save and share my work with others via email. I still need to hone my Hopscotch skills before I deem anything shareable, but I’ve seen projects by others that are pretty creative, including a chess game in which the Hopscotch characters represent different chess pieces.

These are just two apps in the growing area of coding apps for kids, but both offer value for beginners at varying stages of their learning processes.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130506/can-these-ipad-apps-teach-your-kid-to-code/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130502/twitter-takes-on-music-discovery-but-comes-up-short/ http://allthingsd.com/20130502/twitter-takes-on-music-discovery-but-comes-up-short/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 13:00:15 +0000 Bonnie Cha http://allthingsd.com/?p=317530 Back in my day, discovering new music and bands meant listening to the radio or going to Tower Records to sample albums at the listening stations. Now there are all sorts of apps and services to help you do that, right from the convenience of your smartphone, including a new app from Twitter.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Twitter, it’s a social networking service that lets you broadcast messages, called tweets, about what you’re doing or thinking, in 140 characters or less. People can follow you to receive your updates, and conversely, you can follow people you find interesting.

The new app, called Twitter Music, helps you discover new music and artists based on what people are talking about on the service — both within your network and the broader Twitter audience. The free app is currently only available for iOS devices, though Twitter plans to bring the service to Android. Twitter Music also works on any Web browser.

I’ve been testing Twitter Music on my iPhone 5 for the past week, and it’s a beautifully designed app. It helped me keep abreast of what’s popular, and turned me on to a couple of new artists. The Web version also worked well, and it was nice to be able to navigate through the various sections on a bigger screen. That said, Twitter Music as a whole has limited capabilities.

For example, you can’t create a playlist or listen to multiple songs by one artist in sequence, so it’s not a replacement for other music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify — nor is it meant to be. Rather, it’s more of a complementary service than an adversary.

The app’s value is largely dependent on how active you are on Twitter. While you’re not required to have a Twitter account to use the app, you’ll get more from it if you do, since it offers personalized recommendations based on the people you follow. Still, it puts the onus on the user to follow musicians and share what they’re listening to, which might not be appealing to everybody.

Twitter Music is divided into four sections: Popular, Emerging, Suggested and #NowPlaying. Popular shows you the 140 most popular new songs on Twitter, while Emerging surfaces 140 up-and-coming artists found in tweets. Both of these lists are constantly changing, depending on what’s trending at the moment on Twitter.

The other two sections are designed to be personal to you. The Suggested section offers recommendations based on the musicians you follow on Twitter, and NowPlaying shows what your followers are listening to. There’s also a search function, but you can only look up artists, not particular songs.

Navigating among the sections is easy. You can either use the drop-down list at the top of the page, or you can swipe left or right.

Each page is presented with an attractive grid view that displays the album covers for all the artists on that list. Tapping on an individual square will bring up a slightly larger image, where you can start following the artist on Twitter with a tap of a button, visit the artist’s Twitter profile page to see which musicians they follow, and listen to a 30-second preview of their song.

The preview is powered by iTunes, and you don’t have to leave the app to hear the clip, which is nice. If you’re sold after 30 seconds, there’s a button to purchase the full track from iTunes.

You can listen to an entire song if you are a Spotify Premium or Rdio Unlimited subscriber, though both of these services cost $10 a month. I’m a Spotify Premium member, and after entering my login details in the Settings menu, I was able to listen to full tracks with no problem.

While a song is playing, you can tap the spinning record icon on the bottom left of the app, which brings up a music player interface. Here you can fast-forward and rewind a song by moving the record in clockwise or counterclockwise, adjust the volume and tweet what you’re listening to. With the latter, a preset message is written for you, such as “#NowPlaying @Alabama_Shakes – Hold On,” with a link to the track, but you can add a custom message, as well.

Overall, I found the app to be well designed and easy to use, but I had mixed feelings about its usefulness.

The Popular section wasn’t filled with many surprises. It’s populated with a lot of today’s pop hits from artists like Justin Timberlake, Rihanna and Bruno Mars. It would be nice if there was a way to filter songs by genre.

The Emerging page was a lot more interesting to me. It introduced me to a ton of new artists that I’ve never heard of, and there were a handful of bands who piqued my interest, such as Guards and Houses. The problem is once I heard a song, I wanted to hear more from that particular artist, but there’s no way to do that from Twitter Music. Instead, you just have to take note of that artist and check them out on another service like Spotify.

The Suggested section is supposed to offer you personalized recommendations, but in order for this to work, you have to already follow artists on Twitter. Prior to testing the app, I didn’t follow a ton of musicians, so my Suggested page was nearly empty. I only follow people if they have interesting things to say, so if there’s an artist who rarely tweets or only sends messages to promote concerts or new albums, I’m not going to follow them, even if I enjoy their music.

Bottom line: I don’t want to be forced to follow people just to get music recommendations. I prefer something like Pandora, where I can create an artist-themed radio station and listen to a stream of their songs and musicians who are like them.

NowPlaying wasn’t particularly useful to me. If one of your followers has tweeted what they’re listening to, then it shows up in this section. I follow more than 300 people on Twitter, but only four people actually broadcasted what they were jamming to, so this section of the app was also barren. This could change as Twitter Music grows and more people use it.

For those who are heavily engaged in Twitter, the app offers a bare-bones way to discover new music. But for everyone else, there’s no compelling reason to use it over existing music services.

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