Majority of us when given a business card exchange pleasantries then tuck the card away in our wallet or other form of business card holder never to be seen again. This is exactly what I do which I find a complete waist and not a smart way in todays times to file contact information. So, I thought I would try out a few business card scanner apps for the iPhone. The best I found after reviewing a number of different apps was WorldCard Mobile. The app is extremely easy to use and recognises the various aspects of the business card with great accuracy.
To scan a new card to your iPhone/iPods contacts is simple:
1. From the main screen press the 
icon
2. A listing of tips to increase the accuracy is displayed. Press OK to continue or Don’t Show Again to not be notified of these tips in future
3. At this point you can simply line up the business card within the guidelines and press the 
button to capture the card. However, a great feature included in this app is the Anti-Shake Mode capture. Line up the card within the guidelines, press the 
button and the app will wait until the camera is steady enough to take an accurate snapshot of the card.
4. Once a snapshot of the card has been taken, simply click the Recognize button and the app will scan the acquired image for contact information
5. A new contact record will be displayed containing the acquired information from the card snapshot. Add to or edit this information as required then press the Export button to create a new contact in your iPhone/iPods contact list
There are a number of business card scanner apps in the App Store but personally I found the speed and accuracy of WorldCard Mobile exceeded that of the other apps that I compared.
I have been using Handbrake for quite sometime now but have recently increased my usage due to my acquisition of an Apple TV. The Apple TV is only capable of playing video files that are supported by iTunes. These supported video formats do not include AVI (well not without a Jailbreak and aTV Flash, but I will save that for another time) which is the current format of majority of my movies and TV shows. Due to this flaw in the Apple system I have been forced to convert all my unsupported videos to a format supported by iTunes. Enter Handbrake!
Handbrake is an open source video transcoder available for Windows, Mac and Linux and comes equipped with various conversion setting presets. Handbrake can convert a single video file, a queue of video files or a DVD video in a few simple steps:
- Select the source video file or DVD title/folder
- Select a destination for the converted file
- Select a conversion preset or configure the specific audio/video settings
- For a single file conversion click the Start button or click Add to Queue if you wish to convert multiple files. Click Start once you have added all videos to the queue
- The conversion process will start and notify you once all videos in the queue are complete
Note: For greater compatibility with iTunes, enable the ‘Use iPod/iTunes friendly (.m4v) file extension for MP4′ setting
Handbrake is by far the best free MP4 video transcoder that I have come across. Let me know your opinions or alternatives that you may use in the comments.
There are a number excellent computer control iPhone/iPod Touch apps out there that come in various forms and have a multitude of amazing features. But… these apps all come at a price. For the user who simply wants to control their mouse and keyboard from there iPhone/iPod Touch for FREE, there is TouchMouse.
TouchMouse from Logitech allows you to control your computers mouse and keyboard in three easy steps:
1. Download and install the Logitech TouchMouse Server computer application (www.logitech.com/touchmouse)
- The server app is available for Windows XP/Vista/7 and OS X
2. Download the TouchMouse iPhone/iPod Touch app from the App Store.
3. Open TouchMouse on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app will find any available computers on the same network that have the TouchMouse Server application installed.
Connect and enjoy!
The app has many options including; two finger scrolling, tracking and scrolling speeds and a nice settings for prohibiting your device to go into sleep mode.
Considering that this is a WordPress blog, I thought that I would do my first iPhone app review on the WordPress app (recently released WordPress 2). I am writing this post from the application on my iPhone and I intend to keep them short as the title suggests. (Inline images added through WordPress Admin)
The app is quite simple and well set out for ease of navigation. The setup is as simple as inputting your blogs web address, username and password. The app contains three sections; Comments, Posts and Pages.
The comments section allows you to approve, unapprove or edit user comments. The posts and pages sections allow you to review, add or delete posts or pages and their content.
Overall the app works well and is extremely easy to use. I can see this app being quite handy for posting on the run or when you just don’t want to sit in front of your computer. A couple of things that I can think of to improve the app would be; the ability to add a hyperlink to a post or page and the ability to add inline images into posts or pages.
The app did crash on me once while I was adding a category but reopening the app recovered my unsaved post as per the pic below…
The school which I currently work at has recently manufactured an initiative to allow students to bring their own wireless enabled devices to school to assist them in their educational endeavors. Students would be granted access to the school internet connection and internal student online services via the schools wireless network. The task given to me and the rest of the schools ICT department was to allow the students to have access to the mentioned resources throughout the school whilst maintaining the schools current level of security.
We currently have a very basic and limited wireless network that was primarily put in place for staff notebooks. It was easy to see that the current wireless network would not be able to handle the amount of devices that we would potentially be throwing at it. We researched a number of wireless solutions including Netgear, Cisco, Ruckus and XIRRUS. We decided to request a trial of the XIRRUS arrays as we loved the concept and were very intrigued by its design and methods of providing a wireless network solution.
A member of the XIRRUS team came to the school along with an array for us to test. We were pleasantly surprised with the initial tests in terms of coverage against our already in place wireless network. However, coverage was only one of the boxes that needed to be ticked so the array was left with us for further testing. I proceeded mapped out how I intended the configuration of the array to fit in with our current network infrastructure.
This included:
- Multiple SSIDs – We required multiple SSIDs for various reasons (eg: Staff or Student devices & Visitors).
- VLANS - The array needed to be able to provide access to different VLANs on our network by different SSIDs.
- Captive Portal w/ RADIUS Authentication – I chose to have the array authenticate using Captive Portal against a RADIUS server as this would allow us to control which users (via our Active Directory authentication directory) could access the network and keep the network safe from outside (neighbours, etc.) sources
- IP/VLAN Address Filtering – Although our switching infrastructure could handle this via ACLs the added level of security on the array itself would assist in maintaining our current level of security.
- Centralized Management – We required centralized management of the arrays that would allow us to configure/make changes to multiple or all arrays at the same time.
- Access from Any Device – The final configuration would need to be simple but secure to allow the ability for a vast range of devices to connect.
Using the XIRRUS array I was able to implement the above configuration. The XIRRUS support team assisted me through certain aspects of this process via their excellent technical support team.
The Result:
- The XIRRUS array was setup to support numerous SSIDs with different access and security configurations.
- I was able to configure the array to handle our VLAN configuration and specify the VLAN required per SSID.
- The array has a built-in customisable Captive Portal (WPR) feature. We were able create a Captive Portal page to suit the schools style and host this on the array. For this implementation I built a new RADIUS server using Windows Server 2008 and its built-in Network Policy Server (NPS). The captive portal (WPR) on the array was then set to authenticate against this server.
- I created a new VLAN for the student wireless network to segregate the network from the rest of the schools devices. This was done for security reasons as students devices could potential be crawling with harmful material. ACLs were then applied at a switching level todeny access to or from this VLAN apart from the required servers and services (ie: Internet and internal online services). The XIRRUS array is also a Layer 3 switch which allowed me to apply further IP/VLAN filtering to the wireless network on the array itself. I was able to limit the access to specific ports only on the required servers.
- XIRRUS provides software to centrally manage and monitor the arrays. I have only just started exploring this software but from what I have seen so far it is an excellent utility to have.
- The connection was setup as an 802.11 agn OPEN connection allowing any device with a, g or n wireless capabilities to connect. The Captive Portal is simply a web page built using PERL and CSS meaning any device with a modern web browser should be able to connect.
We decided that XIRRUS was for us and proceeded with the project. A site survey was completed and the stock was ordered. Two XIRRUS representatives assisted with initial installation and configuration of the arrays and we are currently in the process of deploying the XIRRUS arrays as cabling work is completed. We hope to have the network up and running throughout the school for the commencement of Term I 2010. More to come as we proceed further…
I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the XIRRUS sales and support team for their excellent assitance throughout this process. I would have no problem recommended XIRRUS to any school or organizational looking to implement a complete wireless network infrastructure. We have not been able to fault the XIRRUS product (we tried hard!) or their support.
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