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Please Do Not Be Alarmed
If you follow our RSS feed, a bunch of old blog postings will have suddenly reappeared. Don't worry, this was just a side effect of some changes we have had to make across the Wooji Juice site, as we've renamed one of our products.
Presentation Remote 1.5.9
I hope you're having a good Saturday! It's a beautiful day here in London, I've been out in the park catching some sun.
I also got confirmation that the latest Presentation Remote update is in the App Store. It's a relatively small update, mostly tidying up a few details to do with default settings, but you can also now choose to mute your computer's sound whenever the screen is blanked (thanks to one of our customers for suggesting this).
Presentation Remote 1.5.4
The new version of Presentation Remote, 1.5.4, offers something we've been hoping to provide for a while: thumbnail previews of slides.
Keynote, unfortunately, even in the new '09 version, doesn't provide thumbnails to other applications — only the plain text of slides. But, if you save your documents with a preview (we recommend setting the Keynote preference "Include preview in document by default"), we can extract that and make good use of it.
Presentation Manager 1.5.0
Presentation Manager is the helper application that Presentation Remote uses to communicate with Keynote. We just updated it — being a regular Mac app, we don't need Apple's approval to do that — and I wanted to show you the improvement we made to the image quality.
Check out these before/after shots (taken on the iPhone itself to show you the end result) to see how small text is now easier to read:
Presentation Remote Update: 1.5.0
The latest version of Presentation Remote has been released; as usual, you can update for free using the App Store.
If you use audio in your presentations, you can now change the loudness from Presentation Remote with a popup volume slider. And where the presentation browser used to show an image of your Macintosh, it now shows a thumbnail of the presentation itself, with a larger preview shown when you tap through to the Info screen.
Presentation Remote 1.4.3
Presentation Remote 1.4.3 is now available, and I wanted to take a moment to highlight a couple of the things you can now do.
The new version, as mentioned previously, includes the option to show the Presenter Display instead of the slide in Slide View mode. Keynote's Presenter Display is highly customisable, and this means that if you wish, you can:
Presentation Remote: A Tip and an Update
There's a new update of Presentation Manager availble, version 1.3.2. This is the "advance guard" for a forthcoming Presentation Remote update. Between them, they feature a couple of bug fixes, plus our first stab at the ability to resize the highlighter using two-finger "pinch" gestures.
This is an experimental feature, and for reasons mentioned previously the user interface might change. Because of this, it's switched off by default — you'll need to explicitly enable it from the Presentation Remote Settings.
Presentation Remote: Slide View
In earlier posts, I talked about the difficulties of offering both a resizeable highlighter and Slide View navigation, and the limitations Keynote places on fetching slide images, and how this impacts Slide View.
Well, Presentation Remote 1.4 is currently undergoing testing, and it features both a resizable highlighter and Slide View navigation — and yes, even both at the same time!
Announcing Wooji Presentation Remote
We've just released a new product: Wooji Presentation Remote.
Wooji Presentation Remote is an iPhone/iPod Touch application that allows you to remote- control Keynote presentations. It also shows you your presenter's notes and offers a highlighter feature that, like a laser-pointer, allows you to pick out details for your audience.
Presentation Remote will be available as soon as the iTunes App Store opens; in the meantime, you can download Presentation Manager so you're all set up and ready to go. Presentation Manager is the Mac utility that you use to give permission to control your presentations. It's a pretty small download and has one button. :)
Updates, Presentation Remote 1.4.1
It's been quiet here on the blog for a while — we've been busy doing R&D, and haven't had much to say. A quick announcement, then:
Over the weekend, Presentation Remote 1.4.1 was released on the App Store. This is a small update, it fixes a couple of bugs, and also allows you to disable screen-locking automatically during a presentation, so you don't go to change slides and find your iPhone/iPod has gone to sleep on you.
Things To Do
The blog's been a bit Presentation Remote-heavy recently, so here's something different.
In a few recent post, I've mentioned the to-do list. The list in question is kept in Things, by Cultured Code, which, as well as having a pleasingly vague name, has recently jumped in usefulness because they've brought out an iPhone version that syncs to the desktop. This Is A Good Thing1.
Superstition, Rumour and iPhone Development Agreements
A couple of rumours have come to my attention recently — both of them nonsense. At first glance, they're completely unrelated, but musing on their popularity despite being false, I noticed some common threads, and wanted to write something about it, particularly since it links a few of my interests together, and I happen to be in possession of evidence regarding one of them.
Presentation Remote Updates
So, we've been working pretty much non-stop for the past week on Presentation Remote and Presentation Manager updates.
Presentation Manager is the Mac application that you use to authorise an iPhone or iPod Touch to control your presentations. Being a Mac app, we can update this more-or-less whenever we like, which is why there have been a handful of releases since launch, offering faster response and bugfixes in each one. The current version is Presentation Manager 1.2.4, which offers a new Wireless Signal Test as well as an assortment of fixes.
Presentation Remote: Updates & Expectations
First of all, we expect to have a new update out soon, which will offer a few small bugfixes, and the "blank out screen" feature that a number of people have asked for.
But I'm going to spend most of this post talking about the number-one feature request: Changing slides in "slide view"/"highlighter" mode.
A lot of people ask for this. Seriously. It's the most-often asked-for thing in reviews, posted to our mailing list or asked about in tech support emails. So, obviously, it's at the top of the to-do list, and we want to add it as soon as possible.
Presentation Remote 1.3, and Progress
Presentation Remote 1.3 is out in the App Store; if you already have version 1.0, you should be able to upgrade it from your iPhone or iPod Touch, or from iTunes.
I've mentioned what's new before; also, if you want to see a preview, you can check out a video review one of our customers put up on YouTube.
New Project and Presenter View
It's been a grey week so far here in London, but today the sun has come out. Coincidentally, it's also sunny inside at Wooji Juice, as we've finished our latest project! Currently in beta test, but keep an eye out for more information coming soon...
We also have a new update for Presentation Remote ready for testing1, bringing a mixture of features and fixes. Amongst the new stuff will be a countdown timer (with vibration alert on devices that support it) and the option to show Keynote's Presenter Display instead of the current slide.
Keynote '09 Compatibility
Update Presentation Remote now works with Keynote '09 — see below
Original post:
If you've already rushed out to buy Keynote '09, you've probably noticed that Presentation Remote doesn't work with it. This is because Apple changed the Keynote file format for the new version. However, there are a couple of bits of good news:
- We're currently testing a Presentation Manager update that works with the Keynote '09 file format, and we hope to make it available within a few days.
- In the meantime, if you go to the Keynote '09 preferences and enable the option "Save new documents as packages" then any new presentations you make should work with Presentation Remote.
June Already?
Time's been a-passing, what's been going on at the Wooji Juice Underground Command Bunker?
Well, we've been working on lots of stuff behind the scenes. I guess I should tell you about some of it...
First up, we were asked to contribute to a book on iPhone development, so I wrote up a chapter on handling multitouch gestures, based on our experience of developing Presentation Remote. It's not (quite) released yet, but it's due out this month from the usual places.
Hexterity 1.0.1
Just a quick note: A small update to Hexterity was released today. The main change is that you can now enable "tap to rotate", where simply tapping a tile rotates it one 'notch' clockwise, as many people have asked for this.
To be honest, we still find it a bit perplexing — in beta testing we experimented with several control schemes and found the default (turning tiles with your finger, like a record turntable or an old-fashioned telephone) to work best. If you accidentally overshoot with tap-to-rotate, you have to tap 5 times to go back the other way.
Happy New Year '09
As you've probably heard, Apple are releasing an iPhone app called Keynote Remote1, that does mostly the same things as our Wooji Presentation Remote. Since a few people have emailed us to ask: No, they didn't license Presentation Remote, or contact us about it.
They appear to have mostly followed the same UI decisions we did — swipe to navigate, connect over Wi-Fi, display your slides and notes, with notes in portrait mode and slides in landscape mode, and so on. We're flattered :)
Creating Airport Networks
Something we occasionally see people confused about is the need for Wi-Fi to use Presentation Remote, sometimes paired with "Wouldn't it be better to use Bluetooth?"
Well, we don't have the choice, since only Apple have access to Bluetooth on the iPhone — it's Wi-Fi or nothing. But, you don't need your venue to have a Wi-Fi network, to use Presentation Remote: your Mac almost certainly has a Wi-Fi access point built in. Any Mac with Airport, which includes all Apple laptops for a few years now, can create its own Wi-Fi network.