iPhone (iPod Touch) Picture Board idea

iphone Apr 22, 2010

I’ve been looking at non-verbal communication tools for the iPhone. Most cost too much or generally were not fit for our purpose. So, I decided to create my own free Picture Board, but with two key criteria:

  1. To use existing, free graphic/pictures/clip_art, respecting any licensing
  2. To use the in-built iPhone Photo viewer. It too is free with every iPhone/iPod Touch

In summary, it worked!

Quick steps

I obtained the raw images, mainly from Open Clip Art, such as the glass one from  http://www.openclipart.org/detail/4431

flomar_Glass_(cup)

 

I added my own text – and a white background if required.

drink

Created a new folder on the PC called MyPicBoard.  Saved this updated graphic (above) as drink.jpg in this new folder.

Repeated for the other images, like Bed, I Want, I See.

Synced the iPod Touch with my new MyPicBoard folder as the folder to be synced.

And look what appeared on the iPod Touch:

IMG_0020

All going well, when I touch MyPicBoard I should get a ‘dashboard’ of my Pictures. And yes indeed:

IMG_0021

If need be, I can touch one of them to see it in detail (or to confirm that’s what I want):

IMG_0022

I’m very happy with this, as a first effort. Some points of interest

  1. Notice how the Verbs/Actions appear first (I See, I Want).  The trick was that the iPod sorts the pictures by file name. So I called the files 1_iWant.jpg, 2_iSee.jpg ; these bubble to the top of the sort list.
  2. You could create multiple folders, for different actions, time of day, activities etc
  3. As I said, you can tailor it with your own images, phrases, have your own display order etc etc

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