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Four 'text' stories July 2014 - January 2016

Paper by 53 gains app extension, new text formatting tools on iOS

Zac Hall Jan 25 2016 - 12:03 pm PT

FiftyThree has steadily been turning its Paper app into a full-fledged notebook from just a basic sketching app, and the latest update for iPhone and iPad goes even further. Paper already supported plenty of sharing options for notes and drawings within the app to destinations like Facebook and Twitter, and version 3.5 adds a new iOS Sharing Extension so you can easily send images and notes from other apps directly to Paper.

The app has also been updated with some new text formatting tools for note takers. Check out the full release notes below:

What’s New in Version 3.5.0

This update introduces new automatic text formatting to make your notes look better, faster. You can also now send text and photos from other apps directly to Paper via our iOS Share Extension.

Love Paper? Please give us a review! We are reading every comment, review, and tweet, and your thoughts and suggestions will definitely be taken into consideration as we continue to evolve Paper.

Need help or want to send us feedback? Please contact us at support@fiftythree.com. We can’t respond to App Store reviews so please email if something seems broken.

– New text ideas will start with big bold text, and auto format to normal text as you continue typing.
– Text ideas will vertically center in the Spaces grid view.
– Paper is now available as an iOS Share Extension for compatible apps. Import text and photos from other apps directly into Paper through the iOS share menu.
– Bug fixes.

Paper by 53 is available for free on the iPhone and iPad through the App Store.

Opinion: Is iOS’s Home screen heading towards text-free 3D icons?

Jeremy Horwitz Oct 1 2015 - 11:23 am PT

56 Comments

Is Apple considering another round of major changes to iOS’s Home screen? If watchOS and tvOS are any indication, the answer could be “yes.” Earlier this year, Apple launched the Apple Watch with a purely text-free Home screen, requiring users to identify 20-some initial apps (and manually-added third-party apps) by icon designs alone. This month, it will release the fourth-generation Apple TV with a refreshed UI, again almost entirely eliminating below-app text in favor of redesigned icons with 3D depth.

While it would be easy to write off Apple’s changes to text labels as one-off decisions for “really small screen” and “really big screen” devices, they collectively raise an interesting question: if developers properly redesigned their iOS icons, would text labels — a staple of graphical user interfaces for decades — really be necessary any more? I’ll take a look at some of the pros and cons below…

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iOS 8.3 How-to: Type like a Vulcan

Sarah Guarino Apr 10 2015 - 5:00 pm PT

8 Comments

With Apple’s release of iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3, there are now over 300 new emojis including diversity options. Apple uses the unicode emoji set, which includes Spock’s Vulcan salute. However, Apple hasn’t added the Vulcan salute — or “raised hand with fingers separated between the ring and the middle finger” symbol as it’s officially named — to the emoji keyboard, so you cannot type it without creating a workaround. There is a trick, however, that can be done by creating a keyboard shortcut.

Live Long And Prosper

🖖

— Sarah Guarino (@sarahg1113) April 10, 2015

Open up this tweet on your iOS device. Then you are going to copy the emoticon by tapping and holding on it. Then press Copy.

Since we copied Vulcan salute emoji, we can now create the text shortcut. Open up Settings, and then select General.

Scroll down and select Keyboard.

Then select Shortcuts.

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FreedomPop brings its free voice, text & data plans to tablets including a $319 iPad mini

Jordan Kahn Jul 30 2014 - 5:58 am PT

5 Comments

FreedomPop, the carrier offering free and cheap data plans on Sprint’s network, today announced that it’s bringing its free voice, data, and text plans to tablet users starting with the iPad mini and Samsung Tab 3. Since LTE iPads only support data over their cellular connection, the carrier provides iPad users with Apple headsets with mics for making calls and an app that routes calls/texts through its own VoIP platform.

While there are competitors like Skype that enable VoIP calling on iPads already, FreedomPop has a couple things going for it. The company’s CEO Stephen Stokols notes that “unlike some apps, we actually provision a new unique phone number and enable voice mail, number porting, etc, on it” …
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