Most of the apps from Molecular Materials Informatics have been updated recently, due to the iPad3: the retina-class screen has half again as many pixels as a 1080p monitor (i.e. a lot), and the performance profiles of some graphics operations have changed. A few things that were fast became slow, and so a few tweaks were necessary. A whole lot of apps got reviewed and passed in quick succession: MolPrime+, MMDS, MolSync, ODDT and ChemSpider Mobile. Others will follow soon.
MMDS
Sketcher improvements: familiar toolbars, and helpful tooltips
The 
chemical structure diagram editor used by the Mobile Molecular DataSheet, and all other apps created by Molecular Materials Informatics, is currently undergoing a refit in order to make it more accessible to new users. The sketcher, which has been around for nearly 2 years, is based on a drawing paradigm that was designed from the ground up to be suitable for small-sized devices with severe constraints on screen real estate and user interaction methods. It can be used on iPads, iPhones, and even non-touch BlackBerry phones with trackpad+keyboard, to draw publication quality structures, both quickly and perfectly. While the method makes extensive use of gestures, there is still a down side to all of this functionality: it comes with a learning curve. But this about to change, which you can watch via this YouTube clip. Continue reading
Icon makeover for MMDS and other mobile apps
The Mobile Molecular DataSheet,
and other mobile apps, will soon have an icon makeover. Implementing a publication-quality molecular drawing user interface for all sizes of mobile device, from the palm-sized iPhone to the page-sized iPad, is no simple task: there are many aspects of functionality, and the screen only has enough room to represent all of the options with iconic glyphs. Because there are so many components to drawing chemical structures, there are correspondingly a lot of icons. Continue reading
ACS Talk: Building a mobile app ecosystem for chemistry collaboration
The slides for my recent presentation at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Diego (Spring 2012):
The slides cover a whirlwind tour through some of the apps produced by Molecular Materials Informatics, showing how they can be used together in a realistic chemical information workflow.
Mobile sketching: convert group to formula
Version 1.3.9 of the Mobile Molecular DataSheet (MMDS) for iOS has just come out, and it brings a nice improvement to molecule sketching: there is now an action button for converting a selected terminal group into an inline abbreviation, which is automatically set to its molecular formula:
The action subsumes the selected atoms into an inline abbreviation, so the original chemical structure is preserved. Representing formulae within a molecular structure is a very common way to condense representations of a structure, and using this method ensures that the structural nuances are not lost, i.e. the abbreviation can be restored by re-expanding it, and the overall molecular formula for the structure is still calculated correctly. Continue reading
A new app is on the way: MolPrime+
There is now another iOS app waiting for initial approval on the AppStore, by the name of MolPrime+. As the name suggests, this is an enhanced version of the MolPrime app. Once the app gets through the review process, it will be available for the grand price of one dollar, whereas its predecessor was free. In return for this investment, advertisements are gone, some more advanced structure-properties can be calculated, and more graphics exporting options are available, including exporting vector graphics to Microsoft Word’s .docx format. And also the user interface has been overhauled, and if you’re not convinced already, it even has new cover art:
2011 redux
2011 has been a busy year for Molecular Materials Informatics, with new products, new features and new developments coming on hard and fast. 2012 begins tomorrow, and promises to keep up the same breakneck pace. This post is an executive summary of some of the news that was released over the year. Leaving out of course some of the projects that have yet to be unveiled.
At the beginning of 2011, there were just two products, with the same name: the Mobile Molecular DataSheet, or MMDS for short. Due to the rapidly shifting fortunes of mobile device platform makers, the iOS version for iPhone, iPod and iPad took centre stage in 2011, leaving the BlackBerry version behind. The iOS version was mostly feature complete by the beginning of 2011, having already added webservices access and reaction editing. Throughout 2011 the product has steadily matured, with a regimen of software updates adding minor and not-so-minor features, enhancements, bug fixes and ergonomic improvements.
Recent MMDS improvements: drawing and rendering
The Mobile Molecular DataSheet (MMDS) v1.3.7 has had a bit of attention to its sketching interface, and now makes available the most commonly used small ring templates from the context menu:
New sketching features for MMDS
The designed-for-mobile sketcher that was introduced with the Mobile Molecular DataSheet app in 2010 is based on a collection of primitives that was later published in the scientific literature. Over the last year or so the molecule drawing interface has received a lot of fine tuning, but not many major new features. The next version of MMDS (1.3.6), currently awaiting approval on the AppStore, has two important new primitives, which are seen in a redesigned bond sub-bank.
The first of these new primitives is used to add two new substituents to the subject atom:
Creating Microsoft Office documents from within apps
As mentioned in an earlier post, updates for apps from Molecular Materials Informatics with Microsoft Office export capabilities are starting to pass through the AppStore.
Cheminformatics 2.0 