AirDrop on Mountain Lion is great, but it would be even better if it supported iOS devices. Step forward Instashare!

Instashare is a great new app for transferring files using your local Wifi network or Bluetooth. It allows you to transfer files to your Mac or iOS device seamlessly and has support for all file types.

Just run the free Instashare app on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and you can transfer files using drag and drop between them. Run the free Mac client, and your Macs become visible to your iOS devices and vice versa. Instashare accesses your Photos and allows you to tap and drag to initiate a file transfer. Other files can be accessed from with their native applications by using the iOS "Open in.." feature to load them into Instashare and allow transfer.

And as I anticipated, the day I publish this tutorial, they bring out an iPad version!

Instashare is free and supported by iAds although you can upgrade using an in App purchase to remove the iAds.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Introduction to Instashare
• iOS to IOS Transfer
• iOS to Mac Transfer
  
  
  

Create beautiful letterpress cards with the revised Cards app for iPhone and now iPad. Cards is a simple but effective app from Apple, that allows you to use your own photos and images to create and mail all sorts of cards directly from your iOS device.

I also take a brief look at some of the new features in the updated iBooks 3.0 app, now updated with a new continuous scrolling theme, full iCloud integration and the ability to share passages from certain books.

Continuing on from last week, I continue looking at using GoodReader.

Initially designed as a File Viewer and PDF annotation tool, GoodReader has matured into the "Swiss Army Knife" of file transfer applications.

In this second part, I take you through some of the more advanced file transfer capabilities of this amazing application.

GoodReader has built in support for many different file transfer protocols and as a result, can interface to many, many external services. In this episode, I take a look at searching for and connecting to local Macs using Bonjour and AFP as well as downloading web content via URLs or using the GoodReader browser. As far as external services are concerned, I demonstrate how you can access you DropBox account and set up Sync Folders.

One of the unexpected benefits of syncing HTML files to Goodreader, is that you can run them on the iPad itself, without an Internet connection. I put this, and the ability to create local links to GoodReader files, to good use by creating a local Safari bookmark to run the Cheaters webpages directly from Safari - a bit geeky but it kept me amused!

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Connecting To Local Macs
• Web Transfers
• Copying URLs
• Using "ghttp"" Links
• GoodReader Web Browser
• Moving Files
• File Transfer From External Systems
• Creating & Using Sync Folders
• GoodReader Links

Do you wish file transfer on the iPad and iPhone was just a little bit easier?

This week I take a look at an application that may ease some of your frustrations - GoodReader. Initially designed as a File Viewer and PDF annotation tool, GoodReader has matured into the "Swiss Army Knife" of file transfer applications.

In the first of a two part series, I take you the capabilities of GoodReader and look at some basic file transfer methods - there are many to choose from!

As well as looking at some of the basic file transfer methods, I also explore the file viewer and some simple file and folder management.

The file transfer methods covered in this tutorial include via iTunes, via the GoodReaderUSB Mac utility and also using the built in WiFi transfer mechanism of GoodReader. In next week's tutorial I'll be taking a look at Web Downloads and connecting to both local Macs and remote services, as well as looking at some typical use case scenarios.

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• GoodReader Capabilities
• GoodReader Introduction
• File Transfer via iTunes
• File Viewer Controls
• GoodReaderUSB Utility
• GoodReader Built In WiFi Transfer
• Transferring Files via Browser
• Transferring Files via the Finder

Two applications in this week's tutorial, both from the same vendor.

The main focus of the tutorial is Drafts, a new application intended to remove the friction of entering short text notes on your iOS device.

Just fire up the app and you'll be presented with a new note - no creating or naming required. Once you've entered the text, you can send it to all sorts of places - Twitter, email, clipboard, etc.

Add in Markdown and TextExpander touch support, and it's earned a place in my doc.

I also take a look at Terminology, a great Dictionary/Thesaurus application with native integration with Drafts and other applications.

The main idea behind Drafts is that it's your go to application for creating quick text notes. You don't have to worry about what you intend to do with the text, just open the application and type away. You don't have to do anything with it, in fact, you can leave your note in Drafts and retrieve it later to edit or action.

If you do want to send it elsewhere, Drafts has built in Twitter integration courtesy of iOS5, the ability to send your note to your Twitter client or to send it as an email or to your clipboard. If you're a Markdown aficionado, you can use this great, lightweight markup language to format your plain text note, then preview in Markdown, send as a formatted email or copy to the clipboard in HTML.

With full TextExpander touch support, Drafts can become your all purpose text entry app on your iOS device.

The tutorial also covers Terminology, with native integration with Drafts and other applications, just select a word in Drafts and either lookup the word in Terminology, or lookup and replace with a new word. All with just a few taps.

Drafts is currently only available as an iPhone app, but works great in 2x mode, especially on the new iPad.

Terminology is available as separate iPhone and iPad apps

This full tutorial includes sections on:

• Drafts Overview
• Basic Usage
• Terminology Overview
• Drafts Integration

A great ScreenCastsOnline favourite, PDFpen on the Mac is indispensable for reading and annotating PDFs.

Well the rich functionality of PDFpen is now available for the iPad.

Not only does it have the ability to annotate and correct your PDFs right on the iPad, PDFpen for iPad also has full iCloud support and integrates with a multitude of different services. So you can update a PDF on your iPad, save to iCloud and access it with PDFpen on your Mac.

The application has a multitude of features including:

• Read and edit PDF documents on your iPad
• Store documents in iCloud for sharing between devices
• Add text, images and signatures to PDFs
• Correct text in original PDF with editable text blocks
• Move, resize, copy and delete images in original PDF
• Import images from iPad Photo Library
• Save frequently-used images, signatures, objects and text for reuse
• Fill out PDF forms
• Add notes, comments, and freehand scribbles
• Draw lines, arrows, rectangles, ellipses and polygons
• Mark up documents with highlighting, underscoring and strikethrough; proofreading symbol collection included
• Copy, combine, rename and delete files
• Thumbnail view sidebar for easy skimming
• Retrieve and save PDFs directly with Dropbox, Evernote and Google Docs; share PDFs with a computer via Wi-Fi; transfer files using iTunes, FTP, WebDAV, and iDisk.

In this sponsored screencast, I take you through all the important features as well as leading your through the setup of the iCloud integration.

1Password for iOS allows you to securely store all your passwords, personal information, credit cards, software licences and much more on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.

This tutorial shows how to effectively use 1Password within the limitations of iOS multitasking and fast application switching, and demonstrates the use of the built in 1Password browser,

The tutorial also demonstrates the use of a Javascript bookmark in Mobile Safari, to rapidly look up your login information from any site in 1Password.

The full tutorial includes sections on:

• Introduction to 1Password
• Setting Up a Login Entry
• Using the 1Password Browser
• Setting Up A Shortcut Bookmark
• 1Password Information Types

Links

Unofficial "Look Up in 1Password" bookmarklet for iOS 5

Text Snippet for Javascript Bookmarklet

javascript:window.location='onepassword://'+window.location.href.substring(window.location.href.indexOf('//')+2)