The iPad’s form has been seducing digital artists and those who love to doodle since its launch. It’s also the ideal size for taking hand-written notes. There are dozens of apps that create rich drawing or writing environments, but until recently input devices have been limited. Fingers just won’t do when precision is needed so artists and copious note takers usually rely on capacitive styluses which simulate the feeling of a pen, but are limited by the touchscreen interface. They aren’t sensitive to pressure, they offer no control over line thickness, and holding one comfortably tends to leave palm marks on the virtual page. Ten One Design offers one solution with their Bluetooth 4.0 Pogo Connect stylus. It doesn’t get everything right, but it’s a solid start in a promising direction.

At 5.1″ (130mm) with a price tag of $80, the Pogo Connect sports a stylish silver barrel with a rubber tip at one end and decorative cap at the other. There is a single button on the side and a LED light. It uses one AAA battery and because it’s Bluetooth 4.0 that battery will last a long time. A little wider than a regular stylus, the pen lacks heft, but it fits comfortably in the hand and has good balance. The tip is the same thick dark rubber that one finds on traditional styluses and is magnetic for easy replacement. Ten One promises new tip designs in the future.

Pogo Connect doesn’t pair with the iPad in the usual way a Bluetooth device would. To assist in getting everything set up correctly, users can download the free Pogo Connect app to link the stylus and then each of the 19 compatible apps – up from the original 13 – goes its own way. Some apps like Procreate just find the pen, while others like Noteshelf require users to poke around in the settings. It’s easy.

Because the stylus uses Bluetooth 4.0 it is only compatible with 3rd and 4th gen iPads and the iPad mini. Ten One offers iPad 2 owners a less-than-elegant work-around: there is a Pogo Bridge app that connects to the iPhone 4S or 5 and then sends the signal to the iPad 2, but at present only one app – Procreate – has incorporated the feature.

One of the more glaring flaws when I first tested the Connect back in December was that it didn’t prevent palm marks, but recent updates have improved that functionality. How well it works seems to depend more upon the app than the stylus.

And what about pressure sensitivity? That’s the key selling point, but it’s very hit or miss. Some apps respond to pressure by varying line thickness, others opacity, and none respond to a light touch despite claims that the proprietary Crescendo Sensor technology requires “0 grams of activation force.” That said, the Connect outperforms captive models. It’s not transformative, but with the right app and practice, sketching feels more holistic.

There are a couple of neat features worth mentioning: the Pogo Connect app has a pen locator, the button on the stylus works as an undo command, and the LED light indicates the active ink color. Still, while somewhat more intuitive than capitative models, the Pogo Connect needs a lot of tweaking before it warrants the hefty price tag, much less turns the iPad into a device that can compete with a dedicated graphics tablet.

A full list of compatible apps can be found here on the Ten One Design site.

FREE!

Pogo Connect

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2012-10-02 :: Category: Productivity

FREE!

Pogo Bridge

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2012-09-01 :: Category: Utilities

Recently released from Holly Brown, a Hong Kong-based coffee and gelato company, HB Latteland lets users take a stab at latte art on their iPhones.

I have to admit that before I saw this app, I had no idea that latte art existed. I took a look at the app and wondered who was creatively strange enough to think of an app where players make art out of coffee. A few YouTube videos later and I’m entranced by how cool some people (latte artists?) can make a latte look.

HB Latteland starts a player in “Latte Art School” where the choose a mentor from the Holly Brown team of baristas to lead them through school. When users “graduate” from the art school, they’re faced with challengers from around the world in the Challenge stage. Featured in the challenge modes are World Latte Art Champion Scottie Callaghan and Taiwan Champion Van Lin. In addition, there’s an etching mode where players can basically draw and etch on a cup of latte.

Holly Brown is a Hong Kong-based coffee and gelato company with coffee from Italian master roaster Domenic Spadaccini and made-to-order gelato for customers.

$0.99

HB Latteland

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2012-04-18 :: Category: Games

Insanely popular and recently Zynga-purchased game, Draw Something, has updated with many features that fans have been asking for since the app released back in February. Features to get excited about include Say Something!, Share Something!, and Save Something!

Say Something! allows players to comment on each other drawings. This adds a sort of chat system to the game that lets players tell them what they thought of each others drawings. Share Something! lets players share their favorite drawing to Facebook and Twitter for their friends’ amusement. Right after a drawing is finished, a Facebook and Twitter button becomes readily available for users to press and instantly share with their friends.

And Save Something!, probably the most desired feature from people I’ve talked to, gives users the ability to save drawings to the iOS device’s camera roll. In the same screen that displays the social networking sharing buttons, a save to device button is presented. It’s an easy way to save those special drawings players spent their valuable minutes on. Sharing options from the camera roll then become limitless.

Other features include Undo Something! and Refresh Something!, adding the ability to undo the last line and refresh game updates by pulling the list down. More updates are sure to come soon.

$2.99

Draw Something

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2012-02-01 :: Category: Games

Studio-quality sketchbook app, Procreate, has updated with a huge selection of new features to their professional sketching app. Months ago, Lisa Caplan reviewed Procreate. Lisa gave Procreate a perfect five out of five star rating and the app received a 148Apps Editor’s Choice award. She described Procreate as “the serious artist’s best choice” and “the simplicity and clean canvas are altogether too inviting to ignore.”

Upgrades include a completely rebuilt gallery, new brush management, pro tools, a shop for more brushes, new painting mode actions, layers, and gestures. As I said, there really are a quite a few new features. Within the brush management system, users can now create custom brush sets (groups of brushes) for easier organization. Within the Pro Tools, the new 48 brushes added to Procreate have been organized into sets of their own. And the additional brushes available as in-app purchases can be previewed before they’re purchased.

There are simply too many new additions and upgrades for me to cover in the post. There are equally as many tweaks and fixes to the app to make using the app a better experience. Check out the update notes in the app description. If this was a five star app months ago, what does that make it now?

$4.99

Procreate – Sketch, paint, create.

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2011-03-16 :: Category: Entertainment

Remember the Courier? That dual-screened, book-like tablet that Microsoft might have released. We’ll now there’s an iOS app that attempts to give users the experience they might have had on the Courier. Tapose, a successful Kickstarter project by developers Benjamin Monnig and Ricky Drake, has just been released.

Tapose’s main feature is the “slide bar” in the middle of the screen. It functions as a control panel for both sides of the screen. It can also be moved to change the sizes of each screen. Users can control two separate functions on each side of the bar (web browsing, note taking, etc). Tapose even offers web storage so that work done through the app doesn’t fill up the iPad’s hard drive.

The Kickstarter project raised over $26,000 and was partially funded by the leader of the Courier project at Microsoft, J Allard. Taposé is available in the App Store for $2.99. Check out the video of Tapose in action below.

$2.99

Taposé - Collaborative Content Creation

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2012-03-27 :: Category: Productivity

Fish are always cool. Know what’s cooler than fish? Robot fish. So it stands to reason that Robot Fish from Liger Games gets automatic cool points. They also deserve some cool points for making a game that involves drawing lines that doesn’t quite adhere to the norms of most line-drawing games.

Rather than tracing a path to an exit or preventing collisions, players will seemingly have to plan their route through each level in one go. The kicker is that they can use all manner of fruit to acquire special abilities (i.e. bashing through hazards, duplication, etc…). It’s hard to fully picture it with screen shots, but the videos on the developer’s blog should help. Looks pretty nifty, huh? I can only imagine how much planning and practice it takes to blow through levels that fast, and most of the time they’re barely earning “C” ranks!

Robot Fish should be hitting the App Store soon. Within the next couple of weeks, assuming it makes it through Apple’s approval process in a timely manner. No word yet on a price, though.

DeepSketch, a 2D and 3D sketchbook app for iPad, recently updated to version 1.4 adding the ability to zoom and pan around the user’s canvas to be able to add better detail into their work. The new version also adds more ink-like brushes with tapered ends, twitter integration as well as better save and export options. Created by Norway-based indie developer Mattis Folkestad, DeepSketch is known for its 3D sketch capabilities. Users only need to wear a par of 3D glasses to get the third dimension. Users are able to use automatic or manual control of depth with brush strokes to create customized art. Additional features include photo import, a large amount of export options and 3D control for the digital artist. This app requires colored, anaglyph 3D glasses (purchased separately) to create and view 3D images and does not work with polarized 3D glasses or with active 3D glasses used on 3D TV’s.

$2.99

DeepSketch

iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2011-12-14 :: Category: Entertainment