<div><strong>Screencast Something</strong></div><div>The night I discovered DoodlecastPro I didn’t sleep much as I began to enjoy myself thoroughly. Despite the fact that I’m always exploring apps, I never fail to get excited when I find something that takes a fresh twist on how to do something. Doodlecast is just such a delight. This app, for iOS, is a virtual whiteboard. You have a pen and colours and an eraser and you write or draw stuff. You can change background colours and fills and even pull in images from your camera roll. You can change the thickness and opacity of the pen and fills.</div><table width="100" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="6" border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td><img width="125" vspace="6" hspace="6" height="125" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=0f445bf0-14cf-4088-be8b-052191e48622&groupId=222922&t=1350720840942" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "><strong>DOODLECAST PRO</strong></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div> </div><div>But none of this is by itself very interesting because lots of whiteboard apps do all this and more. What’s nice about Doodlecast is that you can press the Record button to make a video of your session. Not only does it record whatever you do on the board, it also records your voice! So what you can end up with is a presentation with voiceover. You can use that to send an explanation or idea to someone, using pictures or screenshots along the way, drawing shapes and charts, talking through it. Or you could use it to create little training modules and guides, or even just send someone an email with pictures and spoken comments. You can pause and add new screens and images to make a full-fledged presentation and even move forward and back between screens. And you add things on the fly. There’s even an on-screen pointer.</div><div> </div><table width="100" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="6" border="0" align="left"><tbody><tr><td><img width="125" vspace="6" hspace="6" height="125" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=4523ba6c-ff17-478a-b8bd-cc6920a27610&groupId=222922&t=1350720988418" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "><strong>HANDYSCAN</strong></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div>Once you’re done, you can choose to save the MOV file in the camera roll, email it, send to Dropbox or upload to YouTube. And you have three levels of recording quality to choose from. And off it goes! It’s really about sharing ideas rather than being a replacement for PowerPoint.<br /> </div><div>DoodlecastPro costs $1.99 and has only gone free once since it was developed. There’s a version for kids. There are a few similar options on the App Store, including Explain Everything and Explain A Website. It’s worth doing a search for Doodlecast as there are many videos showing what it can do.<br /> </div><div><strong>Beautiful Widgets</strong></div><div>One of the most enjoyable things about owning an Android phone is the extent to which you can customise it, even without installing “ROMs”, which jailbreak the device. Widgets are one of the ways with which you make a phone your own by putting upfront whatever app or information you want. Beautiful Widgets is a pack of widgets with skins which you can use to give your phone some personality. </div><table width="100" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="6" border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td><img width="125" vspace="6" hspace="6" height="125" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=da8f3062-0d69-4e0c-8c5a-39db263f9ad9&groupId=222922&t=1350720917615" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td> </td><td><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "><strong>BEAUTIFUL</strong></span></td><td><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "><strong> WIDGETS</strong></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div> </div><div>Clock, weather, and battery indication can be stylised in many ways including colours, graphics and size, to fit your background themes or the way you like them to look. You get into the app’s settings to choose and download skins and styles. The pack costs about Rs 200. There are many free ones as well, but with Android, always be careful what you download. Beautiful Widgets has been an Editors’ Choice.<br /> </div><div><strong>Scan Anything</strong></div><div>The free version of this Windows 7 app is not really worthwhile, except to see if you would be comfortable with it because functionality is limited. <br /> </div><div>The paid version of HandyScan should be around $2.99 (app prices change as developers offer discounts frequently). When you use this app on your Windows phone, you can scan a document or object, which is then optimised. <br /> </div><div>You have flash options as well. You can zoom, grayscale for clarity, align, crop, and skew to get the image you want. You can also create page collages and see thumbnails. You can add text to images, including digital signatures, and once you’re done, you can upload scanned documents to SkyDrive or Dropbox, backup all your sources to the cloud, send by email or convert to PDF or JPG. <br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; ">(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)</span><br /><br /> </div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
