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Bounce – A fun and easy way to share ideas on a website

Just comment on this post with your new years resolution is going to be. We will choose 10 random comments and the winners will be picked Friday, January 8th, 2010.

I love it when everyone’s a winner!!!

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Ring in 2010 With a Google Wave Invite – Winners Announced!

I had the unique pleasure of beta testing this app and I am extremely excited this app is finally in the appstore and I can talk about it. Pastebot is a new way to command copy and paste on the iPhone. It allows you to save your clipboard history with images, text, emails, tweets, links or whatever else you desire. Both Mark & Paul did an extremely amazing job on Pastebot & I think its one of the most functional apps I have ever used on my iPhone to date.

Some of the features on Pastebot include:

• Save, organize, and edit text & image clippings with ease.
• Search capabilities and folders for organization.
• Apply text & image filters like “find & replace” on text or convert an image to black & white. 14 filters total with more on the way.
• Create new text clippings within the app.
• Create a new image clipping from your iPhone camera or import from your photo library.
• Useful metadata like image dimensions, character/word count and creation date.
• Copy items back to the iPhone/iPod clipboard with 1 tap.
• Send clippings as emails within the app or save images back to your photo library.
• Push text and images from your Mac to Pastebot instantly over wifi**
• Paste text and images to your Mac from your iPhone or iPod Touch instantly over wifi**

Hop over to the appstore and get yourself a copy of Pastebot because its an amazing little app that you are going to want to use again and again.

More Info:

Site | Twitter | iTunes

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Say Hello to: Pastebot

Resources:

Facebook Developer Wiki

The developer Wiki has everything you need for making a page with FBML. They have tons of resources, API’s, dev resources and more.

Facebook Starter Kit

This kit gives you a ‘hello world’ template for building ColdFusion applications for Facebook. It is very much a barebones project, enabling you to easily modify and add to it and use it in the way you like to build ColdFusion applications. This is deliberate; its purpose it to get you passed the first hurdle of dealing with facebook, leaving the application framework design up to you.

FBML – Facebook Markup Language

A nice little slide rocket presentation about FBML. A quick crash course or a good starting point.

Static FBML: Not Every Facebook Fan Page Needs an Application

An article about using Static FBML vs. Regular FBML which is also a great case study from the designer of the Sunkist soda facebook fanpage. It provides some really good content and some really good rules of thumb. Also, it

FBML Essentials

Do you have an idea for a Facebook application? With FBML Essentials, you’ll learn how to build it quickly using the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and other easy-to-use tools in the site’s framework. This book not only gets you started with this toolkit, you also get a complete reference on every FBML tag Facebook has ever written, with advice on the best ways to use these tags in your code.

Comparing Flash iFrame and FBML Facebook applications

A table from adobe that summarizes the differences when creating your Flash Platform application as an iFrame or FBML Facebook application. The two most significant differences are the ability to control the embedding of a Flash object and the ability to access scripts.

Examples:

Sunkist Soda

Twilight

Southwest Airlines

Nissan

Mountain Dew

Honda

Harley Davidson

Dunkin’ Donuts

Coca Cola

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Facebook fanpage need more kick? Check out FBML

Another feature that is new is the new Twitter Retweet feature. It allows you to setup your RT style as the old version (manual) or the new version (auto). You can also tell Tweetdeck if you would like to keep the new or old version as standard and not bother you with annoying updates. There are several subtle (but nice) UI changes and it looks as if they have worked out it being such a ram hog. (running three accounts and about 12 columns and humming along at 218MB) I think the update is great and adds more functionality to some other twitter API’s.

Screencaps

Get It

I only listed a few of the updates about but you should checkout the full update right here.

Site | Twitter

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Lists, Retweets and Linked-In from Tweetdeck 32.0

Delibar is a full featured Delicious.com Mac client. Delibar focuses on giving Mac OS X users an easy and quick tool for searching, managing and sharing their Delicious bookmarks. Delibar will be your best friend while using Delicious!

Delibar is a beautiful Mac App by Shiny Frog that solves the problem of being able to share your bookmarks to delicious simply and easily. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh good grief Charlie Brown! Another delicious application that I will never use?!?!” Lets stop that train of thought there. If you don’t know Delicious is a social bookmarking platform that has been around since 2003. In 2006 Yahoo acquired what was then del.icio.us now known as delicious. Delicious provides a way for you to bookmark your sites  and share them with your friends, co-workers or anyone who has access to the site. Delicious allows you to “tag” your websites so that other people searching on delicious can find specific resources and sites based on your “tags”.

So which app is right for you? A plugin? A Standalone? But if I get a standalone I can’t update it from the site! Not true. Delibar has all of this covered in a small and neat package. I think I have tried every for of delicious app or plugin at some point and could never get anything that worked just right. Delibar has solved that and  I am can undoubtedly say that “Delibar brought the fun back to delicious”. No, that was not a paid plug. The reason that Delibar makes this so easy is because it utilizes  a bookmarklet to upload the URL which is great because you can click, tag and then go do something else. A really big asset to the app is that if  other people have already tagged this site, in the right column it shows you what they have already tagged so you too, can tag the site with the same tags (with a few clicks) or add your own.

Delibars integration is very good it allows you to share via email, twitter, shorten the URL, share with MarsEdit or send to Facebook all from its nice little compact interface. A benefit of Delibar is that you can run it in menubar icon only so you can that precious dock space for apps that you run on a daily basis and let your Delicious network only be a click away. The UI of Delibar is amazingly simple, clean and beautiful. Its not overpowering nor weak and puny. It is also is very easy to setup and use on a daily basis.

Delibar is definitely the last delicious app you will ever need. The app is updated regularly which is a great sign that this app will receive some awesome features in the next version. We can only hope that the second released will be as feature packed and successful as the first.

More Info

Site | Twitter | ShinyFrog Home

What is Shiny Frog?

Shiny frog is a small software and design company based in Italy.  Since 2005 they have been dealing with web design and development of high quality applications for Mac and iPhone. Their mission is creating applications that combine nice look-and-feel and usability with a great set of features, both for Mac and Web.

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The last delicious app you’ll ever need?

Dropbox is a very sound system for file sharing, syncing my macs and keeping everything I need in check. I have used dropbox before and only lightly to share files between myself and some friends but the vast capabilities this app has because of its sheer speed and simplicity is something that I overlooked. I am now learning all the tips and tricks of Dropbox and going to share them with you as I shift my cloud computing from MobileMe to Dropbox.  I have had MobileMe since the service was released. I was on the beta for the app and was a little let down by its performance. I didn’t realize how much money I was throwing away a year for slow syncs, a bad backup resource and overall a sluggish service. My MobileMe account is set to renew at the end of this month. Long story short I am not renewing. I figured out how to couple Dropbox with some free apps or apps you already have and turn it into a cheaper/equal price version of MobileMe.

Why Dropbox? The straws that broke the camels back

MobleMe’s iDisk

First of all, have you ever uploaded anything to an iDisk? Did you go to the grocery store and come back and it still has not finished uploading? This has been my typical experience and one of the main reasons I am cancelling. Speed. That alone is a reason for change. I was so frustrated with sharing files, images or anything of the like that took my entire day to do so.

Sync

The sync feature that resides on Apple’s computers is a joke. This app is visible in the menubar and eats your system resources like you wouldn’t believe. The program syncs contacts and emails so why should it eat 99% of my CPU? It shouldn’t.  I am one of the biggest mac fanatics/fanboys you will find and I am thoroughly disappointed with MobileMe. When you “sync” your computer is rendered un-usable. This is not on a computer running Tiger with one gig of ram here either. This a fast Macbook Pro that turns into a Brickbook Pro when MobileMe is syncing my iCal and some contacts.

Dropbox – Salvation at last?

Files

The first time you sync a file to your dropbox account you will smile. Its really silly how something so simple can draw a smile on your face. The reason you smile? It just works. Its fast, easy, and gives you Growl Notifications when a transfer is completed or a file has been altered. What’s better than that when you are sharing across multiple computers? Speed and notifications when something has been changed.

Sync

Now, on the surface it looks like you can just sync some files with dropbox. Not true. With a little bit of thought and some Terminal trickery we can adjust Dropbox to be something that syncs not only files, but apps, contacts and a slew of other interesting things.

Other Thoughts

All in all I am pretty excited about this change and the fact that I get to share it with you and maybe help a few people make a more educated decision on what to do and spend there money on. I am not trying to take down Apple or MobileMe. I love both and have just found a better alternative for MobileMe as some before me have found. Be sure to keep an eye out for part two when we get into the nitty-gritty and maybe you can turn dropbox in your next cloud computing solution.

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Dropbox vs. MobileMe Part 1 – The Switch

How To: Dark Background with Noise

This is a simple tutorial to show how many sites now are using a “noise” background to add a nice texture. This is very simple tutorial that requires Photoshop. The source files are not for download because this tut is only a few steps long to show you, the idea of making a noise background.

1. Open a new document. For this tut I am using a 600×200px doc. Make sure your color space is setup for RGB.

2. Fill the canvas with your select color. For this tut we are using #343434 which is a nice dark grey that would show up well in a browser.

3. Go to Edit > Fill or Shift + F5 to fill the canvas. This just filled the canvas with the color that we had chosen in the step before.

4. We are now going to go to Filter > Add Noise This will pull up a dialog box which then you can send the amount of noise you want.

5. The point of adding noise is not to go overboard but give it a nice subtle pattern where, we can make a nice background image. The amount is very small set at 99%. Make sure the distribution is Gaussian and also make sure Monochromatic is checked. If it is not the noise will be in color and will overpower your backgound instead  of being in the black and white.

6. I then like to add a tiny bit of gaussian blur. This makes the noise a bit “blended” into the background color. I do this so you can’t focus on the edges of the pixels because its pretty distracting if left 100% in focus.

That wraps up how to make a dark noise background. You can experiment with different colors, blurs and noise levels.

**NOTE: **I also would recommend putting a dark gradient or a nice layer mask that makes the noise layer fade in from one side to another. This again makes another subtle background statement. You can also try making a repeating background by making a square pattern and then defining that pattern and using fill again to “fill with pattern” instead of just filling with color.

Examples:

Scraplr

Spiffing Apps

Flowchat

Eddit – Snow Report

Simply Tweet

Tweetie

iPhone App Template Site

Go Squared

Parking App

Birdbrain App

Teehanlax Labs

Beak – Twitter Client

JQTouch

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App Trends: Dark App Site Design

Noteworthy Articles

Google Navigation video hands-on: you want this

We apologize for being fanish, but Google has pulled off something with its new Navigation elements in Google Maps (or is it Google Maps in a Navigation app? It’s hard to tell) that has serious ramifications for a navigation device industry used to charging money for functionality. The introduction of satellite view, a tasteful touch of street view (peep a still of your next turn, or see your destination), and of course regular stuff like spoken directions and street names…

The Droid vs. the iPhone: Let’s count the apps

In the flurry of quickie reviews that appeared overnight after Wednesday’s unveiling of Motorola’s (MOT) Droid — Google (GOOG) and Verizon’s (VZ) latest answer to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone — little has been said about how the two platforms stack up in terms of apps.

iPhone Apps That Bloggers Need

Gadget Lab’s friends at WP Beginner, a WordPress enthusiast blog, has compiled a list of 10 must-have iPhone apps for bloggers: mobile software that could help bloggers while they’re on the run, or on an everyday basis in general. The list includes a blogging app, a Twitter client, note-taking utilities and others.

WordPress for iPhone 2 now available in the App Store

We’ve just received word that WordPress for iPhone 2 is now available on the App Store. Woohoo!

A quick note about installation: WordPress for iPhone 2 is a new app, and the previous version won’t automatically update to 2.0. Installing it won’t overwrite any previous version you have installed. When you launch the new app, you’ll immediately see “Version 2.0″ at the bottom of the screen. When you’re no longer using it, you can safely remove the previous version from your device.

Inspiration

Little Pixels

Just Notes

Pickin’ Time

Weather Maps

Cellar

Delibar

Live Preview

Internode Usage Meter

Resources

Disambiguity

This blog is where I share what I’m passionate about and what’s currently got my attention in the realm of User Experience (UX), User Centred Design (UCD), Information Architecture (IA), Interaction Design (IxD), and Usability.

Eddit – Icon Shop

iPhone App Site Design Trends

To compete with thousands of iPhone apps in the App Store, having a good app icon is not enough. A nicely designed website for the app is very important. A beautiful website helps to drive traffic in and also makes your app stand out from the crowd.

10 hot Growl styles to make your pop-up alerts really pop

Growl provides customizable pop-up alerts for hundreds of Mac apps, making sure you never miss an important chat message or completed download. You can use Growl to set an alert for just about anything, and you can also make Growl notifications look practically any way you want.

Twitter Followers

Seven people following us chosen every week at random.

@_mark

@MikeWRogers

@iamGarth

@enestanriover

@VM_DesigNut

@iPhone_Develop

@AJCates

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Monday Recap, Resources, Apps & Random Follows

Dan Rubin @danrubin | Site | Some Work Samples

designer, singer, photographer, philosopher, polymath in training; improving the world through design. also, half-English by birth.

I use a combination of Textmate and CSSEdit, and couldn’t be happier with the two. I used to use BBEdit back in the days before editors were cool, but I left it behind the day I first encountered Textmate. For me, using an app is as much about features and functionality as it is about “feel” — I need to enjoy using it, and looking at it for hours on end. BBEdit never quite reached that level, Textmate did the first time I launched it.
CSSEdit is likely the most underrated application on the Mac for front-end developers — it does one thing (CSS), and it does it incredibly well. I’m constantly giving demos of it to people, and they all end up falling in love with it (a similar reaction to people really using a Mac for the first time). My favorite feature is the ability to view a live site, extract its stylesheets and edit them, seeing the effects in real-time on the live site.

I’ve tried Coda and Espresso, and though I love Panic for Transmit (it’s all I’ve used for FTP/SFTP since at least the OS 9 days) and MacRabbit for CSSEdit, the attempt both developers have made to squeeze so many different apps into one interface falls short. The features of CSSEdit haven’t made it into Espresso (and it feels like CSSEdit has been forgotten as well, though I hope that isn’t the case), and Coda’s file transfer feels nothing like Transmit — if both all-in-one apps incorporated the full feature set of their publisher’s exceptional standalone apps, I would be more inclined to fall for them…

The theme for me is simplicity: Textmate and CSSEdit both focus on allowing a limited set of tasks to be performed as easily as possible, and because of that they both succeed.

Niki Brown @nikibrown | Site | Some Work Samples

I’ve been designing since I was a little kid – drawing cartoons, making fake newspapers, and planning my plot to take over the world. (Just kidding). My early interests in design were heightened when I got my first computer, it was love at first sight! I made my first website in 1996, with the help of geocities and word-art.

I use dreamweaver mostly for the instant visual feedback. I tend to use the split view (code & design) since I’m 2 parts designer 1 part coder. I know that the Dreamweaver design view isn’t completely accurate (I still check designs in safari, FF, chrome, and satan…i mean IE) , but it gives me the fastest feedback on how my design looks as I code. I’m also a fan of the auto complete feature and the source formating.

I have also been using Espresso which i got with the most recent Macheist bundle, and have tried Textmate and coda. When I’m on the go with my EEEPC I use Notepad++ mostly because its free and was easy to figure out.

Chris Spooner @chrisspooner | Site | Some Work Samples

I’m a creative Designer, avid Blogger and I’m generally crazy about pretty colours and shapes.

Nowadays I tend to use Coda for all my XHTML, CSS and the odd snippet of PHP. Previously I’d been a Dreamweaver user simply because it’s the app that introduced me to web design so I simple stuck with it out of comfort. It wasn’t until I switched over to Mac that there was a selection of great looking coding apps such as Coda, Textmate and Espresso that took my fancy. I tried out all the demo versions but always went back to Dreamweaver because I’d got used to the workflow and shortcuts. I hated how Dreamweaver took years to boot up, but I also couldn’t get used to an app automatically closing my tags for me right after I’d written it after being used to DWs ‘bracket, slash’ way of working.

Nevertheless, I was still determined to switch to an alternative, so I went ahead and bought Coda on one of their discount days and stuck it out over the first week or so. Now I’m happily typing away on a swish looking app that loads at light speed, I’m also enjoying a whole new collection of features that I’d certainly miss should I migrate again!

Adii Rockstar @adii | Site | Some Work Samples

Entrepreneur, co-founder of WooThemes and general creator of Rockstar Awesomeness!

First thing you’ve got to note, is that I’m not a natural coder and that what I know, I’ve taught myself. So when it comes to choosing a development app, I use whatever works for me, because of convenience; and not necessarily because it’s a hardcore development app. Anyway… When I switched from PC to Mac 2 years ago, I had to find a replacement for Dreamweaver and my best available option at the stage was Coda, which I continue to use to this day. I love the fact that’s it’s simple and uncluttered, as I don’t need much else from my development app. I’ve tried Espresso a few times, but I think I’ve just become to used to Coda.

Chris Coyier @chriscoyier | Site | Some Work Samples

Lead cascader. Head tag closer.

TextMate is the code editor of choice on the Mac. It’s incredibly simple to add in commands that do simple things. For example, I set up command-L to wrap selected text in <li> tags. I write a lot of HTML, so that type of stuff is awesome. But yet, I end up using Coda more than any other editor. I work live right on servers most of the time and having it all integrated with FTP is priceless. I’ve been trying to switch to the ExpanDrive / TextMate combo, which I think will be the winner. What I really want is a merging of the code editing powers of TextMate with the integrated awesomeness of Coda. And to be fair, I haven’t really given Espresso a fair shake yet. I did a little Beta testing but it wasn’t compelling enough at the time to make a big impression for me.

Jeff Croft @JCroft | Site | Some Work Samples

Knowin’ nothing in life, but to be legit. Don’t quote me boy, cuz I ain’t said shit.

For pretty much all of my coding, I use TextMate on Mac OS X. When TextMate first came out, it quickly became my favorite text editor, and the bundle approach to extensibility ensured that it continued to serve my needs, even as I explored different languages. I still think it’s the best overall app for my needs today. However, I do admit that I’ve grown frustrated with the lack of a significant update to the app since it’s original release. It’s still very good, but enough time has passed that it’s time for a refresh. I will note that I’m a big fan of Panic’s software and have considered switching to Coda, especially now that there are Django and Python plug-ins for it, but I have a certain inertia causing me to stick with TextMate — sometimes familiarity rules.

Tim Van Damme @MaxVoltar | Site | Some Work Samples

Designer at Made by Elephant, blogger at Maxvoltar. Will design for a warm bed.

A bit of history: I started with Microsoft Frontpage. As I learned that writing HTML manually was the way to go, I switched to Dreamweaver. After I said goodbye to Windows and started using a Mac, Dreamweaver was terrible slow. I did some research and ended up with a combination of Textmate, CSSEdit and Transmit. When Espresso launched, I didn’t like it at first. Maybe it was because it’s a Belgian product, but I forced myself to use it for an entire week. It just clicked. It combined the simplicity of Textpattern with the sexiness (and a lot of features) of CSSEdit. Another important aspect was the workflow, a reason why I never used Coda (it looks great, and a lot of people say some really positive stuff about it, but it just isn’t for me I guess).

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Web Dev App Reviews from the Pros – Part 1, Mac

How to Understand Your Users with Personas

Personas are a powerful tool for helping you to better understand the needs of your users. In this comic, drawn exclusively for Think Vitamin, you’ll learn more about Personas and how they’ll revolutionize the way you design and build web sites.

App Store Heresies: Higher Price, Better Ratings. Don’t Discount Your App At Launch.

Lower your price, lower your ratings. Lower ratings, lower social proof. Lower social proof, lower sales. That’s my theory, and I’ve got data to support it.”

The Exploded View Shirt

Originally I’d printed a small series of my WWDC shirt while I was in San Francisco, but after almost a hundred comments on my blog, and almost a thousand combined emails, twitter replies, messages, and flickr comments, I had figured out that it might be a good idea to make my shirt available for sale.

Adobe Max 2009 Videos (in case you missed it)

No matter where you are, Adobe MAX 2009 Online is your ticket to experiencing Adobe MAX 2009 on demand. Whether you joined us in Los Angeles and want to revisit your favorite sessions and keynotes or you want to catch up on everything you missed, this is where you’ll find links to the webcast keynotes and the session catalog, where you can access more than 200 sessions for instant viewing.

Introducing Atlas: A Visual Development Tool for creating Web Applications by Francisco Tolmasky video from FOWA

Start-up Metrics that Matter by Dave McClure video from FOWA

Branding and Marketing Essentials for Your Web App by Alex Hunter

Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Now web designers and developers can join the iPhone app party without having to learn Cocoa’s Objective-C programming language. It’s true: You can write iPhone apps quickly and efficiently using your existing skills with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This book shows you how with lots of detailed examples, step-by-step instructions, and hands-on exercises.

Ryan Block on First and 20

Even though the iPhone isn’t an especially good productivity device, that’s what I tend to use it for since I refuse to carry multiple phones. So in terms of the dock, the iPod had to go; between it and the bottom row, I’ve got most of what I need to get down to business……

All you Tweetie fan boys (and girls). This one’s for you…

Of course, many of you out there are will disagree and for you, I present these two cushions as a peace offering. Covered in spicy chocolate sea salt, these pillows are 100% hand-made! Available in two versions these Tweetie for Mac or Tweetie 2 pillows can be yours for $15 a piece or $25 for a pair. Buy them here.

Apple announces In App Purchases for free App Store software

Apple has announced that developers who offer free App Store applications can now take advantage of in-app transactions — a feature that was previously allowed only for paid software. The In App Purchase feature, which was implemented in the iPhone 3.0 software update for paid applications, has now been expanded for use in free applications. Previously, some developers were forced to charge a nominal $0.99 fee for their software to have In App Purchase capabilities.

iPhone app piracy numbers show low conversion rate

image by Nick Humphries

Pinch Media added code to its Pinch Analytic API last June that allowed for the detection of jailbroken devices as well as whether an application had been pirated. Since then, the company has been monitoring the applications of developers who chose to implement the API, and the numbers have been a bit staggering thus far (hat tip to ReadWriteWeb).

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Some Apps and Some Recaps

Recently I have been scouring the web high and low to bring you the best app news, resources and information. Here is a list of some well designed app related sites from along the way. What are some of the sites you have run across this week? Put your thoughts in the comments!

Thermometer App

Typography App

Sifter

Notify

Mozilla Labs

Mobify

Meta Lab Design

Livestream

Teehan Lax | Labs

JUFTi

Firerift

Fileshare HQ

Convertbots

Bottle Rocket Apps

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Found: App Related Sites

**UPDATED**

9/23/09

10/15/09

11/11/09

Articles:

iPhone Human Interface Guidelines

Phone and iPod touch are sophisticated devices that combine the revolutionary Multi-Touch interface with powerful features, such as email and instant-messaging capability, a full-featured web browser, iPod, and, in iPhone, a mobile phone.

The Making of Things iPhone

One of the first major design decisions was to either have a Tab Bar or a Toolbar.

We liked the idea of a Tab Bar very much as it allowed to quickly browse your tasks from different perspectives (by Projects, by Tags, by Due Date, Search, …)

How to Create Your First iPhone Application

What if you had a nickle for every time you heard: “I have the perfect idea for a great application!“? It’s the buzz on the street. The iPhone has created unprecedented excitement and innovation from people both inside and outside the software development community. Still for those outside the development world, the process is a bit of a mystery.

App Store Heresies: Higher Price, Better Ratings. Don’t Discount Your App At Launch

Lower your price, lower your ratings. Lower ratings, lower social proof. Lower social proof, lower sales. That’s my theory, and I’ve got data to support it.

Inspiration:

60 Sleek and Sexy iPhone App Websites

Like most of Apple’s expensive toys, the iPhone is a beautiful piece of kit. Its cool curves and bright display seem perfectly suited to sleek, glossy web design. Here’s a big bunch of lovely iPhone app websites for your admiration and inspiration.

Downloads:

iPhone GUI PSD

Over the past few months we’ve had to create a few iPhone mock ups for presentations. The problem we’ve encountered is the lack of resources to help us design something efficiently. Up until now we’ve used a nice PSD from 320480.com but we still found ourselves having to build out additional assets or heavily modifying bitmap based buttons and widgets.

iPhone PSD Vector Kit

Today, we are glad to release the iPhone Starter Kit, a set that comes with several button elements as well as six different iPhone interface options. This pack may be useful for mobile developers and front-end designers who need a professional way to show mock-ups to clients or to work out ideas. This set was designed by Renee Rist especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Ultimate iPhone Stencil

This is the ultimate stencil for folks designing iPhone interfaces.

• Contains backgrounds, title bars, buttons, selectors, and other iPhone UI elements

• Text is fully editable on lists, title bars, buttons, and scroll wheels

• Buttons can be resized horizontally by ungrouping, resizing the middle element, and then regrouping the elements back into a single button

iPhone PSD file

iPhone PSD for snapshots, icons, etc… Made entirely in photoshop. Based on the iPhone design by Apple Inc.

Resources:

MobileLex 2009

Sam offers his Keynote slides from MobileLex that highlights:

How I Made an App that Has Over a Million Users

Scrolling Like Butter

Web Services with Cocoa

iPhone Development: The Why and How

I cover what your options are for iPhone development and some tips and resources on how/where to get started. I also speak about how to maintain a good user experience with your iPhone development. Check it out!

The definitive iPhone user interface gallery from Engadget

After getting our hands on the iPhone we set ourselves the irresistible task of photographing every conceivable menu option available to us. So here it is: the definitive iPhone user interface gallery, almost 300 images deep. If you’re the type to obsessively pore over every possible menu, submenu, setting, and function in a new device, this one goes out to you.

Coding:

iPhone View Switching Tutorial

The world of iPhone development can be a bit of a daunting task and irritating at times. I’m the kind of person that likes to do things from scratch as much as I can. So when I headed down this path, I decided to start with the simplest template and create a very, very easy app: creating 2 views and switching between them.

14 Essential Xcode Tips, Tricks and Resources for iPhone Devs

Cutting Through The Clutter

We’ve collected a set of tips, resources, how-tos, tutorials and links ranging from newbie-to-expert to help you wring the maximum amount of productivity out of Xcode.

Learn How To Develop For The iPhone

We’re going to start off with 2 psd’s I made and get those working in an iPhone page. I am using images for the background and header although you could use just straight colors instead of images.

Tools:

Notepod

What’s a Notepod 3-Pack?

Three 60 x 110mm, 100pp Notepods printed on both sides. 80gsm laser throughout with a stiff black strawboard back.

Design Comission iPhone Stencil

- Layout Nav Bar, Tab Bar and Keyboard
- New overlay icons provide cleaner look
- Additional icons
- Overall dimensioning and layout improvements

Quickly sketch out iPhone UI prototypes. Brainstorm your application ideas using our precision cut stainless steel stencil and mechanical pencil.

Mobile Sketchbook

• 100 pages of to-scale design templates
• One organized place for User Interface Designs
• Get your designs down on the Sketch Book today!

What Not To Do:

iPhone Apps Design Mistakes: Over-Blown Visuals

The development of iPhone applications has recently become a hot topic in the design community; everybody tries to come up with some creative idea, port it into a stylish iPhone-alike application and sell it to thousands of users through the iPhone app store. However, many of these applications are poorly designed and therefore miss the chance of providing users with a truly useful product that users would find worth recommending to friends and colleagues.

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An Ever Growing iPhone Resource Thread

The ultimate package tracker widget is now available for iPhone and iPod touch. Get it now for an introductory price—don’t wait, this offer is for a short time only!

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These supported services include:

This is app is a definate must have if you want to track the status of your packages with such a beautiful user interface. Its very intuitive and super-easy to figure out and use. I don’t know how I could track packages on the move without it. I put this app through several different package orders and it worked flawlessly. I recommend buying it and for just $2.99 its worth every cent.

More Delivery Status Touch:

Site | iTunes | Twitter

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Delivery Status Touch Review

1. What does your typical day look like?

In general, I tend to spend mornings catching up on email and scheduling out various meetings or calls for the week. I spend time going through all the active projects in Basecamp and checking on progress and milestones, posting updates, etc. I’m not a good morning person, so I rarely ever do anything related to design or development before noon. I tend to spend three or four hours developing/designing/etc during the afternoon, depending on how many calls or meetings I have.

Around 4 or 5PM, I try to get out for a run and a little exercise. Then I tend to go back to work from 6PM to 8PM or so. This aligns pretty well with EOD in the Pacific timezone, where my business partner is, so we can touch base if necessary. Any time after 8PM is time I spend on side projects, going out, etc. I try not to work on anything business-related on weekends wherever possible and use that time for my own stuff.

This all is also completely flexible–one of the benefits of running your own business and working out of your home office is that you can do whatever, whenever. Another benefit is that we tend to have a lot of our internal meetings while playing Zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War.

2. What are some of the recent projects that you have been working on?

A majority of the stuff we’re working on at pinch/zoom right now I can’t talk about publicly (yet), but I will say a lot of it is related to the iPhone. Recently, we did some work for Lonely Planet, Telstra, Big Think and others.

Personally, I’m still working on various updates to Ego, and some of my other side projects including Prettify. I’m also in the beginning stages of creating a new iPhone application which I’ll be talking about more in the coming months.

3. Ego has an amazing UI which translates into an amazing UX. I bought the app based on looks alone and then fell in love with how stupid easy it works. Was the UI or the UX the driving factor when you made this app or did they fall under the same category?

First, thanks. And yeah, they sort of fall under the same category when it comes to an application like this. Ego is what I’d call a clear case of a utility application. It doesn’t do much (functionally) except display data, which means it needs to get right to the point in a clear and usable fashion. I wanted the widgets to look like they belonged on the iPhone but also felt somewhat unique. Sort of native/non-native if that makes any sense. I took a great deal of inspiration from the OS X dashboard and existing widgets for various tracking services, most notably Mint.

Luckily for me, the process for setting up a widget wasn’t terribly difficult so I was able to attempt to streamline that as much as possible. Little touches like the “Next” button on the keyboard going to the next field in the setup form and then finishing when on the last were simple to implement but made a difference when it came to entering data. I try to keep my eye out for those kinds of little enhancements when developing/designing applications.

And, most of all, *I* use things I write. Hell, I primarily write them for me, so I spend a good deal of time testing/using the application before I ever share it with others. I think that tends to add a bit more polish.

4. From start to finish in the production of Ego what do you think was the hardest part?

Hands down the Google Analytics support. Which is a bit ironic, of course, because it wasn’t even part of version 1.0. Back when I implemented GA support, Google didn’t have a public API. There were plenty of ways to get various bits of data out of GA through scraping and such, and the clamor for Analytics features from users was so strong that I went ahead and implemented a version of it. Luckily, it worked, but only for a time. When you have thousands of people all hitting the site from a specific application Google takes notice and they blocked Ego from scraping the data.

Over the next few weeks I rewrote the feature several times and even got friends to help me rewrite it in various ways. But it all felt like a dead-end. Then, finally, I was able to get into the secret Google Analytics API program and write an officially-supported version of the feature for the application. Two days after that version was released, Google publicly released the API. Figures.

The whole experience was pretty awful, though. There were a few weeks there were the app was getting blasted in reviews, negative publicity, etc. Not fun to deal with. Luckily the feature is solid now and I don’t have to think about it any more. But everything else pales in comparison to that whole ordeal.

5. How many different icon designs did you go through for Ego’s iPhone icon? How crucial of a role does this icon play in the branding of ones app?

I’m really lucky that I had an idea for the application icon right off the bat and didn’t have to do much back and forth on it. The original name of the application was actually Stacks, but a few days into development I was talking to my friend Shawn Morrison about it and he said it sounded like an application for someone with a really inflated ego. He told me I might as well call it what it is, and I agreed and changed the name to Ego. A few hours later while I was sketching out various bits of the UI, I had a sudden idea for the icon which was basically a golden statue of me on the same background the app uses. I sketched it out and made a SUPER rough version of the icon for an example.

Luckily, I had been in contact with Adam Betts years ago related to him doing some icons for an OS X app I wrote (xPad) but never ended up redoing that stuff, but I still followed his work very closely because he’s one of the best icon designers out there. I sent him an email with my sketch and rough mockup, as well as a screenshot of the in-progress app and he loved the concept and UI design and agreed to do the icon. And he did a fantastic job.

6. Its clear by your Flickr feed that you have a clear Mac obsession. What is your overall opinion of the Mac platform for your development? (both web and iPhone)

Yeah, I have a bit of a problem. That aside, I would say that I couldn’t imagine using any other platform for pretty much anything I do, whether we’re talking about web, mobile or app development, making podcasts, editing films, etc. The Mac experience is superior to any other computing platform on earth, hands down. Most of my friends are Mac people, and many of them have to use Windows at work and I can’t imagine the hell they suffer through on a daily basis.

7. How easy (or hard) has the iPhone SDK been to work with?

The iPhone SDK is wonderful. It really is. It’s as if someone went through AppKit (one of the core frameworks used for developing OS X applications) and threw out most of the garbage and cleaned up the remaining stuff. I was beyond pleasantly surprised when I sat down to write Ego, and since then when writing various applications for clients. It feels new but has the stability of the OS X legacy behind it.

A few months ago I wrote an OS X desktop application for a client (for the first time in about 6 years) and, after using the iPhone SDK, it was really rough. I just kept wishing I was building an iPhone app instead.

8. When did you start pinch/zoom?

We officially launched pinch/zoom in May of this year. We (Brian Fling, the other founder, and I) had been working together on various projects over the previous year and had been talking about creating a company together and things finally lined up for that in the beginning of 2009.

9. I noticed that the pinch/zoom site redesign has launched and shows an awesome apple feel (as well as iPhone). Were these conscience design decisions made to represent the fact that you live in the app world?

The design credit for pinch/zoom’s website goes completely to Brian. The design direction was definitely taken from our motivations and goal to design and develop lovely applications for the web and mobile devices. We’re both big fans of the iPhone and Apple in general, and we get a lot of our inspiration from their design work. We wanted our website to convey to potential clients the kind of design we enjoy and specialize in.

10. What is some insight that you would like to pass down to some up and coming app developers?

The best insight I can give: Become a workaholic. That sounds terrible, but it’s true. You have to keep doing it, all the time. Play with different technologies, build things, take existing applications apart, learn. I’ve been doing this for nearly 10 years and I still end up playing with side projects nearly every day.

Connect With Garrett?

Personal Site | Pinch/Zoom | Twitter | Blog/Stream

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Behind the App: Garrett Murray