To educate, inform, inspire

Interesting apps

February 15, 2017 - Mobile Apps , Technology - by Mark - 1 Comment

It has been a while since I reviewed selected mobile apps. My most recent set of reviews focused on those I encountered during my summer of travel in 2016. I have recently been using the following apps. Since they represent a broad spectrum of what one can do with mobile […]

Super Bowl 51 Commercials

February 8, 2017 - General , Huh? , Mobile Apps , Technology , Web , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

As I did last year, I paid attention to the commercials on the first Sunday night in February. Others may be aware of this tradition as well. Lots of new commercials frequently interrupted by a football game. Ok, it was fun to watch the game as well. This year had […]

Apps

August 3, 2016 - General , Learning , Mobile Apps - by Mark - 2 Comments

During my summer of travels, I encountered a number of apps for smartphones and tablets. Since many of these were new to me, I thought I would provide an overview of some of the ones others mentioned (during various conversations at events this summer). Here is a quick list of […]

Adobe XD and Material Design

May 11, 2016 - Mobile Apps , Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

Google announced Material Design in June, 2014. The main goals are discussed in the Material Design specification. Essentially, there are two goals (below copied directly from above link). “Create a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.” “Develop a […]

Adobe XD

March 16, 2016 - Adobe , Mobile Apps , Web - by Mark - 2 Comments

A new preview product was released by Adobe on Monday, March 14. It was first demonstrated at AdobeMAX and looks to be very useful from a UX/ UI design workflow. Previously, one could develop simple mock-ups of web pages or mobile apps using tools like Photoshop or Illustrator. However, it […]

Super Bowl 50 commercials

February 8, 2016 - General , Huh? , Mobile Apps , Technology , Web , Who knew? - by Mark - 1 Comment

Yes, I watched Super Bowl 50 last night. No, I didn’t pay that much attention to the football. I think one of the teams won. I confess I really like the commercials. Rather than just watch the commercials, I thought I would do a bit of analysis. As we all […]

Philips HUE API

January 13, 2016 - IoT , Mobile Apps , Technology , Web - by Mark - 1 Comment

My first weblog post in 2016 focused on the basics of using the Philips Hue lighting system. As I mentioned, one of the features of this environment is the ability to interact with the RESTful API via a web interface. You need to determine the IP address of the bridge […]

Philips HUE and Internet of Things

January 6, 2016 - IoT , Mobile Apps , Technology , Web - by Mark - 2 Comments

One of the presents I received over the holidays was a Philips Hue starter kit. [Thanks again, Ben and Lindsay.] I had been thinking about getting one of these myself. As you may suspect, I am always keen to learn new technologies and approaches. For those who may not be […]

Adobe Post

December 23, 2015 - Adobe , Mobile Apps , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

Adobe released a new app for the iPhone [Post] on December 17, 2015. At the moment, this seems to be iPhone specific (I tried it on my iPad and was not pleased with the results – for example, it was very difficult to edit the supplied example text). On the […]

Floid

December 16, 2015 - Mobile Apps , Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

I have been working with an interaction design tool called Floid. Presently, it is only available for the Mac platform. This tool is easy to use to develop working prototypes of various apps and web pages. The generated code is HTML5 (and validates). I developed a very simple example to […]

Mobile App Development with BlueMix – part 5

November 18, 2015 - IBM , Mobile Apps , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

Last week, I focused on using the IBM BlueMix facility to create a simple Hello World app which pings the IBM BlueMix server instance you created. Those looking for my previous posts on BlueMix can find them linked below (in reverse chronological order): BlueMix app development with Kinetise [these links […]

Mobile app development with BlueMix – part 4

November 11, 2015 - IBM , Mobile Apps , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I have been covering the IBM BlueMix facility in several weblog posts. These are linked below (in reverse chronological order): BlueMix app development with Kinetise [these links open in a new browser window/ tab.] BlueMix Cloud Foundry Node.js app BlueMix overview For those who have been following these posts, we […]

Techsmith Fuse

November 4, 2015 - Mobile Apps , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I often need to take screen captures on mobile devices and then annotate and share them with students. One of the tools I use for this is Techsmith Fuse. I like it because it is very simple to use. I take a screen capture on a mobile device, open Fuse, […]

Mobile app development with Bluemix and Kinetise

October 28, 2015 - IBM , Mobile Apps - by Mark - No Comments

I am amazed at the different ways one can readily create apps for mobile devices these days. Adobe Phonegap (and Phonegap Build) is a great solution. IBM’s Bluemix offering with the Kinetise service is another. I previously provided an overview of Bluemix and covered Cloud Foundry integration. Using the Kinetise […]

Acrobat enhancements

October 21, 2015 - Adobe , Mobile Apps - by Mark - No Comments

Adobe recently released some improvements to Acrobat DC (Document Cloud). I thought I would focus on one I find particularly useful. Specifically, you can take an image of a document with your smartphone camera and process the document as if you scanned it (and convert text as needed). I find […]