ipad screenshot 1-2-1

Sir David Attenborough’s Story of Life

by with No Comment Apps

One of the most enjoyable educational apps I’ve yet experienced :

Join broadcast legend Sir David Attenborough to explore more than 1000 of the greatest wildlife moments ever filmed.

  • Explore the most comprehensive collection of Sir David’s work ever released online.
  • Includes six decades of highlights from more than 40 landmark BBC programmes, including Planet Earth, Blue Planet, The Life of Mammals, Africa and others.
  • Watch unique collections of films curated by Sir David and others.
  • Create and save your own collections and share them with friends and family.
  • Hunt for hidden films featuring Sir David, recorded exclusively for the app.
  • Explore extraordinary sequences of animals and plants, from iconic large species to rarely seen enigmatic creatures. See them hunt, mate, eat, travel and communicate in their natural habitats; ranging from the high mountains to the deepest oceans, across deserts, forests and the polar ice caps.
  • Watch lions, polar bears, whales, sharks, eagles and giant lizards and many more.

Available at no charge as a universal app for iOS, and on Android, this has barely been off the family iPad since we downloaded it.

Tip of the hat to Vowe.

Awesome Apps

This week’s Awesome Apps: Bear and Infuse Pro (plus a bonus, Duet Display)

by with No Comment Apps

Each Monday I’ll be selecting a couple of tried and tested apps that I use on a regular basis – one that is business or productivity-related and another that adds value during leisure or down time. Given my professional focus is on collaboration and community, and my work involves documenting and delivering strategic recommendations, facilitating workshops and training large groups of executives and community members, I’d expect that a good number of apps will be useful in those and similar scenarios.

Conference Speaking

Ummo: your personal speech coach

by with No Comment Apps

Planning a conference session or work presentation anytime soon? This app might come in handy…

Ummo logoUmmo is your personal speech coach. Whether you are practicing for a presentation or looking to improve your day-to-day communication, use Ummo to track your filler words (“Umms” and “Uhhs”, “like”, “you know”), pace, word power, clarity, and more.

This iPhone app is definitely a version 1.x, and has its flaws, but looks extremely promising in terms of providing machine analysis of presentation and speaking styles.

Install the app, allow access to the microphone, click the mic button, wait for the countdown to complete and then start talking.  The app will capture each work as it is said, looking for pre-defined filler words, any lack of clarity of tone, and any overly-long pauses. Once the recording is complete, it provides quite detailed reports and analysis of the effectiveness of the recorded session:

ummo1 ummo2 ummo3 ummo4

As I mentioned, there are some (um, err) issues – this needs a fast iPhone (it works considerably better on my iPhone 6s+ than it did on the iPhone 5 I tested, and even then, it does sometimes mis-capture the words. However, speech is by its nature imperfect, and I can forgive the app some teething pains.

For my use at least, it gave some good data, and helped me to spot some weaknesses in my speaking style that I hadn’t isolated previously.  The reviews on the UK store are not great at present (1.5 stars! They are much better on the US store…), but this review from MacStories is, I believe, fairer to the developer.  Anyway, it costs just $1.99 (£1.49), so it could be worth your time and hard-earned cash to give it a punt!

Grab Ummo from the App Store.

ResponsiveDesignMode_2x

Safari 9 Responsive Design Mode

by with No Comment Apple

Do you host a site or platform that you need to make available to a wide range of desktop and mobile devices, including those Apple iThings running iOS9?

Then you need to check out Safari’s Responsive Design Mode (found in the Develop menu in Safari 9 for the Mac).  Take a look at this (video courtesy of Casey Liss):

Yes, you can test your site in all the new split-screen modes available in iOS9.  This feature is already proving to be useful for testing a number of my own sites, including this one:

Testing this site

I have a feeling it will come in handy for checking customer projects too, not least custom themes and layouts. This session video from WWDC 2015 covers the feature in great detail (and much more besides…)