uppercase SOFTWARE

Now available on the Android Market!
We’d love to hear your comments and feature requests!

IdeaBox is a different way of looking at file management on your Android phone.
The inspiration of IdeaBox came from the need, as a developer, to keep track of project ideas for a varied, and often times rotating list of different projects.

What we came up with is an easy to use application that is useful not only for developers, but anyone managing “notes” type data.

In short, IdeaBox lets you create “boxes”, that represent your projects/books/paintings/hobbies/etc, which contain all your notes and pictures that relate to that project.

You can email your notes with a click of a button, or send an image via gmail. (image attachments are currently only supported via gmail, other accounts such as exchange, or pop/imap accounts will not automatically attach the image)

Lets walk through some of the features of IdeaBox as if we were a writer working on a couple of new novels. This will show you why IdeaBox is so useful.

After running IdeaBox for the first time, you will be looking at the home screen. It is here that you will see all the boxes that you have setup.

On the home screen (and all screens in IdeaBox), there is a control bar at the bottom with icons representing the actions that are available. Here you can see the trash can icon, and an icon for creating new boxes.

We don’t start with any pre-created so lets set a box up for our book.

Click on the Add Box icon (next to the trash can) and the screen on the right opens. This screen allows you to name your new box, and also whether or not to set a password. We’ll cover the password later, so for now leave it blank. Lets give the box the same name as our novel “The River”.

We simply type in the name, and then finish by pressing the same box icon in the bottom right of the screen (in the toolbar).

At this point our box is created and we are taken back to the home screen where we now see our new box!

We’ve used several “notepad” and “file manager” types of applications, most of which we found to be either too simple or too complex for our needs. If you often find yourself in impromptu meetings, brainstorming sessions, or just out at lunch with a co-worker, discussing a project or thinking through ideas, we think IdeaBox will be a great tool to take notes, snap a picture of a drawing on a whiteboard (or a napkin) or just take a picture of an inspirational scene.

Creating documents inside our boxes is just as easy.

Lets click on our new box to open it, and in the same way we created the box, we will create a new note document.

These next two pictures show the process of creating a new note document. We do this by clicking the document icon, and then entering a name for the new file.
(the default name “newfile.txt” must be changed)

Here we have our name entered and now we work on the document content. I have a couple ideas that I was toying around with for the book so I enter them here for later consideration.

Like a typical file manager application, you can copy/paste/delete the files. Encryption/Password protection is available for your boxes for when you need to keep your data secure from prying eyes. Setting up the encrytion is as simple as adding a password to your box at creation time, and protects your files using industry-standard DES encryption.

All boxes and the data inside them is stored on your SD card and is easily accessible to you by mounting your SD card on your PC (or just plugging in your phone via USB). Password protected boxes can be entered in this way also, however all of the contents remain encrypted and cannot be accessed.

We’ll go through all of the features here in a bit, so for now press the document button on the far right of the toolbar to save the file, then press the back button (the arrow on the toolbar) to close the document and return to the box view.

While we are here, lets take a picture of the kid hanging on the wall, he resembles our mental image of the main character and might be useful to email this to the artist once illustration time has come.

Press the picture icon to start the camera. Then press the picture button again to take the photo. Once finished, press the back button to return to the box view.

(width distorted a bit, Android bug)

What we see here is that our photo was automatically saved with a temporary name. We can click on the picture to view it and change the name at the same time.
(The distortion seen in the camera preview is not present now, and our pic looks good)

We can now simply type a new name and press the back button.

Now lets email this picture off to the artists and we’re done. Simply press the email icon in the toolbar (in the document view) to open the program selector, from the list choose gmail, type the address and press send.

In the process of writing the book, I’ve enlisted alot of friends and relatives help. Reading parts of the book, reviewing my ideas, etc… And my wife has become accustomed to checking my “The River” folder and seeing the changes I have planned. Most of the time this is ok, but there are some plot ideas that I would prefer remain private as they need to be read in context, not as just general ideas.

Because of this, I am going to want to create a private folder that requires a password. This way my permission is needed before viewing the contents.
We do this in the same method we did above, so lets go ahead and go to the “Add Box” screen.

This time, in addition to naming the box, we will type a password to keep the data safe. After saving the box, we will be back at the home screen and we will see our new “safe” box, with a different icon, and an asterisk (*) appended to the name.

Clicking on our “safe” box brings up a password request, here we enter the password, then press the lock icon. If the password is correct, we are notified and then sent back to the home screen.

Now that we have a password entered, in the toolbar on the home screen, a lock icon appears. The lock icon will remain on the home screen the entire time that a box remains unlocked. To relock the box, simply click the lock icon at the home screen.

Creating files and accessing data works the same in locked boxes as they do in unlocked boxes.

The last bit of functionality we need to cover is file operations such as copy, paste, and delete. Files may be copied and pasted across folders whether they are safe folders or not. One thing to keep in mind however, is that if you copy a file from a safe folder to a normal folder, the file will be automatically decrypted and placed in the destination box it’s original form. Likewise, the opposite is true. Any file copied into a safe folder, is automatically encrypted.

Before we move on, it is also very important to set passwords that you will not forget. IdeaBox uses an industry-standard encryption system (DES), and while our implementation is not of “national-security” standards, forgetting your passwords will render your content permanently useless. uppercase SOFTWARE can help in the event this happens, but bear in mind, we are not in the file-recovery business, and contacting us for this service will cost significantly more than we are charging you for IdeaBox

Clicking on the trash icon from any screen in IdeaBox will toggle delete mode. The trashcan turns red to alert you that delete mode is active. With delete mode on, you will be asked if you want to delete any file or box that you click on. Note that boxes must be empty before they can be deleted.

Copying a file is done by long-clicking on a file (press and hold). You will then be presented with a menu. From here we select copy. Now the file list will show an additional entry at the top. This is the clipboard and it will follow you as you navigate your boxes. Open the box in which you would like to paste the clipboard, then long-click the clipboard to bring up the menu again. This time select paste and the file will be copied to the new location.

Now we are free to roam the country looking for inspiration for our book. Castle Rock seems to be the place good writers go, so thats where I’m headed

If you have any questions/comments or suggestions, feel free to email us at info@uppercasesoft.com.

Thanks!