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By Tony Abraham on July 29, 2011

We just updated our Developers page on the site, and it occurred to me that many people might not know about this offering. iAnnotate PDF, our iOS app, was built using a custom software library that our engineers developed. This library comprises most of the infrastructure for our app. Anytime you open a PDF, annotate a PDF, scroll through a PDF, etc., iAnnotate makes calls to this library to accomplish the task.

Why is this important? Well, through our developers page, we license out this library for companies and engineers to integrate into their own apps. If you have an idea for an app that could use PDF annotating capabilities, our library can quickly and efficiently add that functionality. If you don’t have an idea for an app, here are a few that I’d buy:

  • an app that lets you draw creative moustaches on historical figures
  • an app that tracks your frequency of academic nightmares
  • an app that constantly applauds your parallel parking skills

Check out our developers page and browse our library documentation for more information. If you’re interested, shoot us an email and we’ll be happy to discuss the details.

By Tony Abraham on July 15, 2011

Last week we hosted a function for our small (but mighty) team of Aji employees here in Chicago. With everyone together, we discussed the future direction of Aji and which features we’d like to add to or improve on in iAnnotate going forward. Read on below to see a round-up of pictures of us all at work.

 

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By Tony Abraham on July 6, 2011

We came across this post today on twitter: “How my iPad and iAnnotate make for Friendlier Skies.” Attorney Stewart R. Albertson describes the struggle of carrying 1,200 pages of trial transcript with him on a flight. This feat used to involve hefty binders, a bloated carry-on, and encroaching on his neighbor’s elbow-room. A problem no more. He now touts the ease in which he views and mark-up hundreds of trial transcript pages using his iPad (in airplane mode, certainly) and iAnnotate. Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Albertson.

This post follows two other  mentions of iAnnotate in the past month. In this LawyerTechReview article, attorney Hunter Reece describes how iAnnotate simplifies his document reviews by reducing time and paper and increasing the opportunity to take advantage of downtime.  This law.com post promotes iAnnotate for its document management, annotation, and form capabilities. The author also suggests that keeping documents open on the iPad while working away on a computer is a novel and portable way to optimize workflow.

By Tony Abraham on July 2, 2011

Click above to see the full video on Vimeo

Morgan Reed, director of the Association for Competitive Technology, testified before Congress recently on the importance of technology in improving the workflow in the House. He highlighted iAnnotate in a use case in which a Representative marked up a report on the plane home, synced the document when s/he landed, and collaborated with support staff on questions- all through iAnnotate.

Thank you for featuring our app in your presentation, Mr. Reed. If I were in your shoes, I’d follow iAnnotate with an Angry Birds Presentation, unless it was before the House Subcomittee for the Development of Green Jobs, Green Technology, and Green Pigs. Then I might choose something else.

By Tony Abraham on

Click above to watch the full clip on foxnews.com

We got word of this Fox News video clip last week. At the 15th annual Webby’s, Meg Baker asked the attending celebrities to choose their favorite apps. Marlon Wayans’ favorite is iAnnotate, which he uses to read and mark up his scripts. Thanks for the praise, Mr. Wayans.

To return the favor, we decided to choose our favorite Marlon Wayans vehicle. Phil and Ravi chose Requiem for a Dream. I was split between Senseless and Mo’ Money. I settled on the latter after a sleepless night of indecision.

By Tony Abraham on July 1, 2011

In 2008, the Hawaii State Legislature enacted the Hawaii Senate Paperless Initiative which reduced their paper usage from 8.3 million pages to 1.5 million over the past three years. With the Hawaii model in mind, the Vermont state legislature just completed its first “paperless” trial run using iPads and iAnnotate.

Duncan Goss, the IT director for the Vermont State Legislature, described the recent experiment to me on the phone. Legislators in Vermont’s House Committee on Government Operations received an iPad with iAnnotate installed to review bills, journals, and agendas. An IT staff member was present for a couple hours each day for the first few weeks of the session while the legislators became acclimated to the device.

Click above for NECN's interview of Duncan Goss

Mr. Goss chose the iPad because of its similarity to paper documents, 10 hour battery life, and user-friendly appearance. He chose iAnnotate as a default app because it gave the legislators the opportunity to do exactly what they would do with paper: mark it up, add notes, highlight, and tag important passages. This combination simplified the laborious printing and distribution of journals and calendars to a single click, saving man hours and reams of paper. Through this savings, Mr. Goss believes that the iPads initial investment will be balanced out within two years of use.

Mr. Goss considers the experiment a success. Committee members praised the reduction of clutter, the convenience in transporting their work, and the ease of use. Mr. Goss plans to bring more iPads to legislature in future sessions.