MacResearch

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Faber Acoustical presents SignalScope Pro for the iPhone/ iPod Touch.

SignalScope Pro, which has been available for Mac OS X for over four years, has finally gone mobile. The new mobile version incorporates a significant portion of its desktop counterpart's functionality for real-time signal analysis and data acquisition.

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Brad Larson presents Pi Cubed. You may also remember Brad Larson as the developer of Molecules, a molecule visualization application for the iPhone.

Pi Cubed is a visual math application for iPhone / iPod Touch, available now on the App Store for $9.99 (or the local equivalent). Unlike traditional calculators that use fixed buttons and a small numerical display, Pi Cubed uses the entire screen to typeset and evaluate calculations as you enter them.

Author: Drew McCormack

On March 26th, 2009 at MIT, Apple and MacLearning.org held the first of four AcademiX conferences primarily focussed on emergent technologies in teaching. The one-day conference included many interesting presentations, and finished with a poster session. Presentations covered a wide range of interesting technologies, and not all from Apple.

Need a little help recognizing mathematical symbols or LaTeX commands?
I always tend to lookup certain LaTeX commands on the internet when I'm writing. So I decided to write a simple iPhone/iPod Touch app that lets me look up LaTeX symbols anytime when I'm feeling inspired.

It's free. And updates are on the way!

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Corey Floyd presents Compounds, an iPhone/iPod touch application that can be used to solve chemical stoichiometries.

Too often in our work, we are forced to use tools that perform functions we require, yet
werenʼt specifically designed for our exact purposes. A calculator, with itʼs fixed
interface, is a great illustration of this fact. It is a great all-purpose device, but in many
cases, makes the user jump through hoops to accomplish a specific task.

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Bartas Technologies presents Transcriva, a Mac OS X application that helps you transcribe lectures, classes or other audio or video files.

Transcriva is a manual transcription tool that targets users who cannot rely on automated transcription powered by voice recognition. As a result, the application is focused sharply on providing as much “power assist” as possible in your manual transcription tasks without getting in your way.

There are a number of competitors ranging in cost and complexity (from “free” to “ouch”). The trouble with voice recognition packages is that they are still too expensive, too inaccurate, and cannot distinguish between different voices. On the opposite end of the spectrum are “solutions” which amount to little more than a basic text editor and a media player.

Transcriva sits squarely in the middle, combining features found in top-of-the-line manual dictaphones and transcription software packages with the simplicity and pricing of the more basic packages. The diverse feature set makes it an ideal tool for many different types of transcription tasks, including dictation, medical transcription, meeting minutes, video captioning, and more.

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Aaron Thompson presents a taxonomy browser for iPhone: KPCOFGS .

KPCOFGS is a biological taxonomy browser for iPhone that contains the entire ITIS database of known life forms on earth, from every kingdom and every phylum all the way down to every species. As the developer of KPCOFGS, I'd like to give a tour of my little app and also explain some of the work and decision making that went into making it what it is.

In 'Showcase' reviews, the reviewer is the developer. No claim of objectivity is made, but it’s a chance for the developer to show off his/her app. Here, Meritt Reynolds of Ripplon Software Inc. discusses BiotSavart, an application for designing experiments involving magnetism.

The purpose of BiotSavart is to facilitate the design of experiments employing magnetic fields. It does this by providing an intuitive and interactive environment in which it is easy to explore various design possibilities. You specify a three-dimensional system of conductors with specified geometry, and BiotSavart calculates quantities such as the magnetic field, force, torque, and linked flux. Visualization of the configuration with superimposed field lines, contour plots, or volumetric information promotes understanding of the system under analysis.

QLFits, as its name indicates, is a QuickLook generator for Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) files. QLFits 1.0 provides a quick access to FITS headers. It gives a quick summary of the most important information, and colorizes the keywords/values/comments. In case it detects a file created by the European Southern Observatory, it also provides web links to program's abstract, weather conditions and more.