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Apple

I need your feedback – you are not alone!

I sent out a mail last week with the heading “You are not alone… in using Story Software”.

I am making a all new version 3 of Story Turbo and Story Lite, so I need some feedback.
The survey is here:

Story Software Survey – please spend a few minutes to help get a better app >

Version 3 will probably have a new name and have a mix of desktop and online activities.

If you have done it already and have further comments please use our contact form

I will be posting the results of the survey by next week.

Thanks
Geoff Davis

Back to life, back to reality: freeware writing software

I have discontinued Story Lite v2.2 as most people just went for the Story Turbo upgrade (new window) which is same but has Images too.

So the old Story Lite v1.1 freeware is back, this has fewer features but is very usable as a notes writing organizer.

Nag nag nag:
You just have to sign up to download the freeware Story Lite. It still has the old nag screen asking for your email for updates etc, just do that with the same email, will get merged. It is too expensive to recode just for that.

New version of writers app Story Lite 2 out soon – update

Operation Lust - sex and crime novel

Operation Lust - sex and crime novel - no images in Story Lite sorry!

There is a new version Story Lite 2.0 coming out, this has all the features of Story Turbo, but no images. Feedback has been that people want the writing app to continue and adding images makes it a bit of a desktop publishing app, which is a distraction.

Story Lite 2.0 new features are:

  • Snap to grid – line up boxes
  • Group boxes – very useful, can now have a multiple box arrangement and move it about, even clone it
  • 400% zoom – see more
  • More shortcuts for zooming windows
  • Many speedups and improvements

So we are making Story Lite into the main writers app, and Turbo will continue down the writing, DTP, presentations, slide shows, etc path.

We are also adding spell check, text styles and pagination to selected boxes, so Story Lite can be used as you main word processor – this means you don’t have to export from the outline version in Story Lite, you can completely finish a work in it. Obviously you might still want to export to Word etc for more formatting, but you don’t have to.

We also have a new web app coming out, and an iPad version later on, probably next year now. These will be based on Story Lite and also not have images.

For more on text styles, see the blog entry on it, there is a new example file for them.

Crowd funding for Story Mobile extended end August

The pitch for Story Software new iPad app Story Mobile has been extended – so please visit Appsfunder Story Software pitch for iPad app now >

Story Mobile crowd funding

Story Mobile crowd funding

Story Mobile, iPad and tablet app with images, text, Instagram social media integration

Story Mobile crowd funding

Story Mobile crowd funding

Last week to invest and get a return in Story Mobile, my iPad and tablet app with images, text, Instagram etc integration.. pls visit:

Story Mobile crowd funding iPad and tablet images, text, Instagram app >

iPad app Story Mobile – crowd fund, invest and get a return

Story Mobile iPad tablet

Story Mobile iPad tablet

Crowd funding is the new way to get projects off the ground, and also get a return on your investment. People power!

We are crowd funding a new Story Mobile image/text editor for the Apple iPad, and later the Android tablet. You can invest and get a return on sales of this very popular app. Story Lite has 40,000 people using it, many have an iPad.

It will have same features as Story Turbo, image and text boxes on a huge canvas, with a zooming interface. Plus some extra features.

Story Software suits the iPad as it does all that zooming and panning.

Please visit to see Story Mobile videos and fund – starts at 2.50 UKP to 100 UKP.

Visit Story Mobile info and videos now on the Appsfunder site >

Amazon Kindle Fire review for writers and readers, ebooks, Story Software Live version

News from Amazon is the expected iPad competitor, the color Amazon Kindle Fire. Funny name, but eh… Kindle a Fire… geddit? That has to be the naffest name for a corporate product since Chrysler car names – a small sporty car is called the Crossfire as in

“Chrysler’s hot new sports coupe, the Crossfire, has a name that does justice to the car’s edgy, explosive looks”

– in some parallel universe that is.

Amazon Kindle Fire ereader tablet

Amazon Kindle Fire ereader tablet

Anyway back to the Kindle Fire, it looks very good, is cheap, cheerful, and will knock a lot of iPad sales. The iPad is expensive and many people don’t buy in to the Apple DRM (digital rights management) experience. The Kindle Fire uses a custom Amazon browser, the Amazon Silk browser (is that to contrast with Google Chrome?). It uses Amazon’s cloud storage for backups, and Whispernet for delivery. In all these respects it can outperform Apple and also come in a lot cheaper. Will the Silk browser be available on the web as another browser? Don’t know yet.

The Fire will deliver color magazine content with news, sports, films, etc, plus advertising. It is a tablet rather than an ereader… so it will be interesting to see how that works out, given the current user base of the Kindle. One assumes a big take-up.

Amazon Silk

Amazon Silk

Silk browser

The Silk browser uses a lot of cloud computing concepts to prepare content for delivery (ie, caching, reducing file size by compression, and presumably custom content). This is creating another ‘walled garden‘. So does all this indicate the fracturing of the internet and web into many separate competing technologies and ecology?

We already have Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Apple producing app ecologies. These are all different as this is quite natural commercial activity, which tends towards segregation of core audiences. A lot of standards-based tech, but with a lot of proprietary tech mixed in – just enough to divide and rule.

This means developers have to produce for Apple OS, Android, HTML/CSS/JS etc Web OS (I mean the Web operating system, the ‘web as in HTTP’ rather than the defunct HP system) (for browsers) and Silk format; for desktop, Windows, Apple Universal and (possibly) Linux. This is going back to the old format wars. Software companies now have to develop many different versions of the same app, which is going against basic web internet principles. I suppose the argument is that tablets are not the web, it just uses the internet for delivery. For optimized apps, developers will have to use specific localized proprietary systems.

The use of HTML5 will be used to try and circumvent all this, but has a performance overhead.

Pricing and marketing

The Kindle Fire will retail at an amazing $199. There is also a Kindle Touch, with a touchscreen, so you page turn by tapping, which is easier than the little button it has now, and no keyboard, as with all this tech, the fewer button or keys the cheaper it is to manufacture. A lower price basic Kindle is also due out at 79$, and a sponsored with advertising version, at an even lower price. Eventually (sooner than you think) there will a free tablet ereader with live content, given away at train stations and malls. Compare this to Apple’s chase for the high end consumer and haute design.

We will be getting a Kindle Fire and testing it when they are available here in November.

Story Software

Here at Story Software, we are nearly launching our Story Live online version of the multiple box editor. This is in standard web technologies so we can deliver it anywhere. The Story Live system allows editing online, for saving in Story format (.sto), rtf and text. We are planning some sort of ebook publishing system off Story Turbo, the new upgrade version of the desktop application. All this is due November 2011.

See this Reuters Kindle Fire news item with video >

QR code scan image for your mobile phone, smartphone, iphone, Android or tablet

qrcode

If you don’t already have one, get a QR scanner download app for free, point it at this, and you can then save off the Storylite.com link.

QR Code is for Quick Response code.

We have a mobile site version for smartphones.

This is also on the right side of all pages now.

Apps and the web – trends

Research shows that app use is now greater than web surfing. This is calculated in minutes spent (consumed, wasted, gained!) on each.

There is a graph here:

Apps versus Web use >

Which I show here small size so you get the general idea.

Apps use versus web use

Apps use versus web use

Wired magazine has announced this as the death of the web. But it is really that people now use apps to do things, play games, read ebooks, magazines, look at stocks, musical games like Biophilia by Bjork, and so on forever; rather than randomly search around the web.

Using an app has an extended and potentially unlimited time frame (Angry Birds, reading, music), unlike surfing which is usually doewn for a specific reason – research item Z – or to fill in ten minutes – have a look at the news, or Ebay, etc.

Web use is moving towards the ‘walled garden’ style of the old days – AOL etc – where people stay in comfort zones, rather than browsing the chaotic web, where all sorts of nasty things lurk, the least of which is viruses. Most time is within Facebook, then some apps, then a short bit of web research to Google a product, say.

So it is a kind of maturation of user habits, and the technology is there in smartphones and tablets. Chicken and egg?

Use of apps is moving away from a standards compliant web, as the apps conform to whichever platform and version they have to run on.

People used to make Macromedia Director games, Flash web modules; now it is a range of apps in many languages, this is a big boon for the developer (more work) but not so good for the company that pays up for them, especially as a lot are free.

With branded TLDs – the new dot coms for brands and also categories, such as .apple, .microsoft, .pizza etc, at high prices (175,000 UKP has been quoted), we are heading towards a ‘safe’ zone and an ‘outside’ for the rabble and the geeks… where all the free and interesting things are.

Incidentally, many of the new apps for the ipad, Android etc look like the 1990s multimedia CDROMs – remember all those DK learning multimedia books, even offbeat Arts Council funded things (yes I was on one called The Hub, with a multimedia game from the Nnn Goes Mobile novel)?

So perhaps the technology has caught up with the multimedia ideas at last.