Hellmansoft/Blog

Many of you may have noticed already, but Planbook Touch is now available on the Apple App Store. Planbook Touch brings many of the features of the desktop version of the software to the iPad. In no particular order, you can:

• Create a schedule that matches how you teach- rotating, A/B days and traditional schedules are all supported
• Enter Lesson information using six customizable fields
• Add assignments with due dates
• Bump and Pull Back Lessons. Make Non School Days
• Much more

Planbook Touch is also file-compatible with the Mac version of Planbook. You can sync files using the built in Dropbox support or by utilizing Apple’s iTunes File Sharing. Planbook Touch does not interoperate with the Windows version of Planbook

I’m tremendously excited by the opportunity that the iPad’s touch interface offers for Planbook. 1.0 is only a beginning. Updates (free) are really going to exploit the intuitive nature of the iPad and help make your teaching day a little easier.

Updates will be coming reasonably quickly to add features (in fact, an update is already pending as of this post to allow editing your schedule after creating your file).

Just a quick break from some long hours writing code to open up the opportunity to beta test the Planbook for iPad application. Drop me an email at jeff@hellmansoft.com and I’ll add you to the list of testers.

In order to test Planbook for iPad you (obviously) must have an iPad. While the app can be used without the accompanying desktop application, I’m hoping that at least some of the testers will use both versions of the program. So, if you have a Dropbox account as well as the desktop (Mac only) version of Planbook that would be a big help. The beta testing process for iPad applications is more involved than a regular application simply because of the requirement that your iPad be “provisioned” to run the program before it is available in the App Store. This doesn’t require “jailbreaking” or anything like that. If you are approved as a tester, I’ll send you a provisioning file. You’ll install that onto your iPad so that you are able to install the pre-release version of Planbook on your iPad.

I hope to have versions suitable for testing this weekend. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Like many, I’m anxiously awaiting my iPad to arrive- partially to play around but mainly to see if I can use it to create some useful software for teachers. While I know that Apple isn’t likely to let me get mine early, it’s tough to keep my hopes in check when it’s so close. If it really does make it to Eugene early tomorrow, maybe UPS could be kind enough to drop one of at my house?

And, yes, as of writing this UPS seems to be displaying tracking information about dates in the future. I haven’t ever seen that before so I’d guess something’s a bit wonky (hence the shipping exception) with the iPad delivery system.