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Momento is a unique diary writing app for iPhone & iPod touch, which provides a quick and easy way to record moments throughout your day..

A moment is basically a brief post that is accompanied by a photo or group of photos.  You can save each moment with a people, place, or custom tag and rate it on a scale of one to five stars.

One feature that the creators really nailed is the social media integration.  It allows you to quickly and effectively pull in feeds from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Foursquare, Gowalla, Digg, YouTube, Vimeo, and custom RSS/Atom Feeds.  After adding these feeds, you can then browse a day-by-day view of all your online activity.

Momento makes all these moments and feeds fully searchable.  This means that if you want to find out the last time you checked in at your favorite restaurant or find an old tweet that had something you’d like to reference again it’s only a search away.

There are a few other features definitely worth mentioning.  Momento offers a passcode protection for those interested in keeping a more private journal.  Also, if you’re using an iOS4 device and are afraid of losing the moments you have the option to backup, restore, and export all your data within iTunes.

With such a solid feature set, an absolutely gorgeous interface, and $2.99 price tag I’d have to say that Momento is well worth it.  It’s currently available in the iTunes app store and you can follow Momento updates on twitter.

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Four months ago Bobby Ghoshal was living in Southern California with a couple very talented designers and was inspired to start working on a secret project with Matthew Ausonio.  It wasn’t long before his living room was covered with whitewashed paper, black and red ink, design books, and crushed up red bull cans.  They worked only during the night to create FLUD – a constant controlled flood of relevant news for each iPad user.  A month later, they released FLUD to the app store for approval that immediately sprung into one of the top three spots of iPad news reader apps accompanied by Pulse and Flipboard.  At four developers strong and currently not benefiting from any investors, they have tripled their user base and continue to push the envelope of relevant news delivery by releasing an iPhone version.

FLUD aggregates content from various news sources into a beautiful Windows Phone 7 like interface.  The iPhone version is slightly different than the iPad because each feed has its own dedicated screen real estate.  You’ll notice on the iPad that there are multiple feeds cluttered together on the same screen, but Ghoshal said that they are working on a complete overhaul of the iPad’s interface and will be pushing it out in early January.

Unlike Flipboard, which depends on your social networks to generate content, FLUD gives you the option to select feeds from their featured list, search the internet to find feeds, or even add them from your Google Reader account.  Currently there isn’t any Google Reader integration on the iPhone, but this is going to be pushed out along with some bug fixes in the update set for next week.

FLUD also gives you the ability to share interesting articles with others via Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail.  It comes equipped with a heart icon that allows users to “Love It” which is similar to Facebook’s “Like” and lets other Fluders know that the article is worth a read.  This feature also allows you to read an article later – even if you’re offline.

Overall, FLUD is an excellent way to catch up on your latest news and discover new articles and feeds.  The FLUD team does have a few bugs to fix with the iPhone including some crazy text that shows up in the feed, but i’m sure those minor glitches will be worked out in the next update.  The iPad and iPhone apps are available in the app store for free right now and you can stay up to date by following the FLUD on twitter.

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Earlier this year many of us purchased a MacHeist bundle that unlocked a beta version of Tweetie 2 for Mac.  Shortly after that, the big dogs at Twitter acquired Tweetie and developer Loren Brichter – better known as Atebits.  Since then we have all been in suspense on if we will ever see Tweetie 2 for Mac.  For months I have tried various Twitter clients like Kiwi, Nambu, and even Itsy, but… they’re not Tweetie 2.

Today the team at Raptor Apps was feeling the Christmas spirit and released a beta version of Weet for Mac.  They are also the creators of Weet for iPhone which was released a few months back.  It’s currently available on iTunes for 99 cents.  Now I have obviously only been using Weet for Mac beta for a short while today, but I can see it definitely has potential of becoming a big player among the other Mac Twitter clients.  It’s minimalistic, clean, and well-polished even for a beta.  Weet comes packed with some of the more modern Twitter features and also adds a few others like muting users and blocking keywords.  The one thing that did throw me off with Weet is its inline tweet box.  I like the touch but you’ll notice that there is no submit or tweet button.  You’ll have to click Command + Enter to send your tweet.  The other option is in the General preference pane and allows you to send a tweet by pressing Enter.

While in beta it’s currently free and I’m not sure what the final price tag will look like or the date of an official release.  Check out the screenshots and then give it a try for yourself – let us know what you think.

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Today is Thanksgiving.  A time for remembering what and who you are thankful for.  I’m thankful for family, friends, health, etc…  But we’re about apps here, so let me share my Thanksgiving app story with you.

Yesterday evening, we began our 400-mile or so trek east, to the great state of Ohio.  This journey is really not too difficult, aside from the usually snarled traffic in Chicago.  To complicate matters, last evening, the weather in Chicago was reported to be lousy: rain, sleet, potential snow, heavy winds.  Include with this, the fact that it’s supposedly the busiest travel day of the year, and you have a recipe for a traffic nightmare.

Avoiding this traffic situation really is impossible.  But, there’s strength in knowing exactly where and when to expect the traffic snarls.  I decided to give INRIX Traffic! a try, which is available as a free app in the app store.  As you might have guessed, INRIX Traffic! was developed by INRIX, Inc.  I tested out the iPhone version, but they also offer up an iPad and Android version of their app.

I found this app to be really surprisingly good.  That’s not a slap at the folks at INRIX – quite the contrary.  Considering the fact that this is a free app, I had somewhat low expectations on usability, appearance, and accuracy.  I was really surprised – and did I mention the app is free?

Usability – This app is very usable.  It just makes sense.  I only tested the free features (there is a Pro version available within the app), but they all made sense.  Speaking of the Pro version, if you want to make that jump, it will set you back $9.99 for a year of Pro membership, or if you are a more long-term commitment type of person, there is a lifetime version available for $24.99.  Pro membership will give you additional features, such as enhanced commuting information and traffic cameras.  All of that sounds really nice, but honestly, the free app is pretty solid.

Appearance – I have seen some pretty ugly apps in my lifetime, but this is not one of them.  The real place where appearance matters in these types of apps is the maps; and INRIX Traffic! does a nice job at displaying maps, traffic conditions, and other potential incidents, construction zones, etc…

Accuracy – All of these cool features are useless if the app isn’t accurate.  INRIX Traffic! was extremely accurate on our Ohio-bound journey.  Traffic jams were accurately reflected, and construction zones were spot-on.

Also worth mentioning is that users can submit accidents, construction zones, “live police”, etc…  I’m not completely clear on how this is verified, and I didn’t want to become too distracted while driving!

Overall, I highly recommend this app for your next journey.  It does exactly what it says, and does it quite well.  And, in case I didn’t mention this before – the app is free!

Happy and safe travels!

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When I first purchased my iPad on launch day, I was very optimistic.  This was the device that was going to help me read more books, carry less laptops, and – *cough cough* – watch more Netflix.  And in many ways, the “magical” iPad has delivered on that promise.  For some strange reason, I do find myself reading more books, I will only bring my iPad with me on Thanksgiving, as opposed to a full-fledged laptop, and I definitely watch more Netflix!  What hadn’t occurred to me is that this thing could be a really good educational tool for our three boys, too.

So, my 4-year old and I decided to browse the iTunes App Store one fine morning, and came across ABC:  Look.  Listen.  Write. We decided to make the $1.99 plunge, and purchased the 67.6 MB app.

ABC:  Look.  Listen.  Write. was developed by Tangorang Labs, a self-described “team of semi-domesticated orangutans dedicated to spreading the fun through original and innovative mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad.”  I took a brief look at their site (which is rather cute), and they offer several other apps as well.

Anyway, we sat down and started our ABC:  Look.  Listen.  Write. adventure.  And for the most part, it was a fun journey.  Whenever I review educational apps, I like to look at the functionality, and of course, what kind of educational value the app offers, but just as important, I try to pay careful attention to the “independence” factor, too.  For example, my 4-year old doesn’t read yet, but that didn’t stop him from being able to figure out how to get started with this app, thanks to the simple splash screen accompanied with a very obvious “Start” button.

It doesn't get much easier than this.

Once you enter the app, it really is quite easy for a child to figure this process out.  The whole alphabet is presented to you, and the helpful voice prompts tell you to touch on a letter to get started.  Again, that all important “independence” factor!

After deciding which letter to tap on (that was easily a 2-3 minute process for us), you have several options available to you.  Initially, the screen will show you the letter you selected, a picture of something that represents that letter, and the lovely voice prompts will read to you as well (”K is for Knight”, etc…).  You can tap the speaker icon to hear the voice prompt again, tap the arrows to navigate through other letters, tap the pencil to enter the “tracing mode” (more on that in a minute), and there is also a home button that will return you to the letter selection screen.  So far, so good!

The “tracing mode” feature of this app is pretty well done.  It’s nothing fancy, but it doesn’t need to be, does it?  You are given a simple outline of a letter, and with just the dragging of a finger, you can trace that letter over and over again.  You can clear the screen to start over, tap the speaker to hear the letter and word combination again, navigate through other letters, flip back over to the word/picture combination screen, and head back to that letter selection screen.  Easy-peezy!  And, perhaps most importantly, this app was able to harness my son’s attention for over 10 minutes – which is quite an accomplishment.

There are a few improvements, to the “tracing mode” in particular, that would make this app even better.  My son can easily trace within the outlines of a given letter, but he doesn’t necessarily do it in the right order.  Some directional arrows of some sort would be a helpful addition for teaching kids how to create letters, rather than just learning how to outline them.  Also, when you are in trace mode, my son became frustrated because at times, when he attempted to trace a letter, he pressed one of the navigational buttons by mistake, which switched him to a different letter.  I don’t know exactly how to improve upon this, and it may have been the way he was holding the iPad.  One item that I found somewhat humorous was the words that were sometimes chosen to represent a given letter.  Maybe I am not as refined as I should be (maybe I need to read more books on my iPad), but when I think of the letter “F”, I think of “Flag”, or “Firetruck” – not Film Noir. I still chuckle at that one!

But overall, I found this to be a really solid app, and I highly recommend giving it a try.  $1.99 perhaps is a little pricey, but with a few refinements, I think that price would likely be well worth it.  Kudos to that team of semi-domesticated orangutans!

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I’m guilty of this as much as anyone – taking photos of my food to share with friends on Facebook or Twitter.  In fact, my first photo of 2010 was on January 1st of two biscuits and a piece of bacon on a plate simulating a smiley face.  The team at Foodspotting describe their app as a visual guide to good food and where to find it.  It answers the question “What’s good to eat around here?”

Foodspotting allows you to take a photo of your food and uses your phone’s GPS so that you can tag where you’re eating it.  After taking the photo you can choose to share it with other foodspotters or your Facebook, Flickr, and Foursquare friends automatically.  Others viewing your photos can then “Nom” them if they’ve tried something you posted and loved it.  Whenever someone compliments, wants, or noms a food that you have spotted you will earn tips.

Overall, I think that Foodspotting is not only a great app for sharing my foodie photos, but also for those days that i’m traveling.  Usually when I’m traveling to a new place, I have no idea where to go and it’s nice to see a picture of the food instead of just an address and rating.  The app is free and is currently available in the iTunes app store.  According to the website there is an Android version in the works, but until then they have a pretty snazzy web app to go along with it.

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The guys from Zurb just launched a free version of notableapp.com called Bounce App.

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Until recently I had no clue what tilt-shift photography was. It seems to be a very popular trend recently as I’ve seen several tutorials pop-up on how to accomplish the technique using software. Little did I know it’s actually a special macro lens that allows you to literally “tilt” the lens to distort the focus. But that’s an article for a different site altogether. We’re here to review two iPhone apps that fake this technique, so let’s get to it.

TiltShift By imimux

We’ll start with the basics, which is about all your going to get from this app. You can take your own pictures or load images in from your Photo Albums, and save your images when your finished tweaking them. No emailing them, no in-app sharing.

On to the tools.TiltGen does have some nice “extra” options like two different blur types “Gauss” and “Lens”, and a “bloom” feature that can give your night shots that Bokeh effect, which TiltShiftGen doesn’t have. Both apps have radial and linear blurs, saturation, brightness and contrast.

TiltShift lets you chose between visual guides so you can actually see where your blurring is fading off at which can come in handy on the small screen.

Both apps also allow you to tilt, and resize your blur area via multi-touch and pinching, although I did notice a fairly significant delay between update with TiltShift each time I made adjustments to my blur area, and all of the different tools are very sensitive so dialing in an exact setting takes a bit of getting used to.

At $0.99, it’s a good buy, and if you absolutely must have the bokeh effect, then TiltGen is the way to go. As you can see from the before and after below, you can get some pretty impressive effects.

BEFORE & AFTER IMAGES FOR TILTGEN

click for large image

TiltShiftGen by Art&Mobile

You know how sometimes you get a feeling an app is going to be good simply based on the icon? (I’m not suggesting you actually do this) Well, TiltShiftGen gave me that feeling, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least!

Right away I notice TiltShiftGen’s UI. Very Apple-like. It doesn’t look like a native iPhone UI, but it’s enough that right away makes it feel familiar. Very clean, large buttons for my fat fingers, and even the pixel font used is very readable. I think it’s ok to stray from looking completely like the iPhone UI, but that’s something I didn’t like about TiltShift. It was too far from what most people are used to and took some time to get comfortable with.

TiltShiftGen has the glossy menus at the bottom where they should be, and even though they took a sub-menu approach, it’s still very intuitive where you are with the arrow pointing down to the parent menu selection. With TiltShift, all the menus were at the top which just didn’t feel right.

As we move into the settings I am very happy to see that I can post my creations to Twitter for everyone to ignore, I mean bask in my awesomeness! And I can do so using twitpic, twitgoo, or yfrog.

Diving a little deeper into the settings I see, “Communities” with Flickr, Facebook, and BigCanvas PhotoShare. At first I thought I was going to be able to post directly to these from the app, but alas I was wrong. It simply opens Safari and takes you to these sites for you to do your own manual posting.

I don’t understand why these are even in here. It’s very misleading and unless Art&Mobile is planning on adding in-app Facebook, and Flickr posting as a feature, I suggest they remove it. It’s unnecessary and could cause someone to write bad things about it. ;)

Other settings include, “Resolution” where you can change your size from 1200×1600, native to the 2.0 MP camera, all the way down to 320×427. Great for posting your Tweets and not having to send such a large file. There’s also the “Shake for Reset” and “Autoload Image” which you can turn on and off as you please. All in all a nice set of features.

Now onto the actual tilt-shift part of TiltShiftGen. Just like TiltShift, it has Radial and Linear Blurs, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast. One thing this app had that TiltShift didn’t is Vignetting. I think this feature is more valuable than the bloom effect of TiltShift. It really puts a “polish” on the end result and used correctly enhances the tilt-shift effect. The controls were very responsive and I was able to quickly get to the desired result as the image updated fairly fast and I didn’t have to continuously minimize the controls each time I wanted to see what changes I was making.

As we mentioned before, TiltShiftGen has the ability to post to Twitter and save it to your Gallery, but also lets you sent it by email, another feature lacking from TiltShift. It’s not crucial. You can always mail it from your Gallery the old fashioned way. However, reducing the number of steps to accomplish something you’re probably going to want to do anyway, is an added benefit.

Also weighing in at $0.99 TiltShiftGen is another great buy.

BEFORE & AFTER IMAGES

click for large image

Summary

TiltShift may have more tools, but TiltShiftGen wins this hands down with features alone. The UI is superior, the controls are more responsive and really there’s just no comparison. If Art&Mobile add Facebook and Flickr API implementation, this app would be over the top!

Photo by @dandenny

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Tweetdeck updated today to the beta build of 32.0. Just one of the updates Tweetdeck made is the use of lists. Like the last version when you added people to specific columns you can now add them to lists through the same interface and pop-up panel. This is a simple and efficient way to add people to specified lists or create new ones. Tweetdeck now supports Linked-In as well as Facebook and I think the term “SocialDeck” seems a bit more appropriate since they have stretched their term “Tweet” about to its limits.

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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I recently had the pleasure of sending Andy Hatkoff, the Vice President, OEM and Technology Licensing at PANTONE some questions about their iPhone app myPANTONE. myPANTONE is an awesome companion for designers and creatives alike. We are excited to bring this information from behind the app and a review of the app itself.

The iPhone is a perfect platform to carry a pocket PANTONE guide, what steps have you taken to make this be the easiest way to locate and use the PANTONE colors you need?

In the development of myPANTONE, one of the key fundamentals in the design of the app and its user interface was to make it easy for the user to find the desired PANTONE colors.  To that end we have taken advantage of the iPhone’s “touchablity” with the fanned out guide view and allowing the user to move about the guide until they locate the color range they wish and then by touching the page desired bringing up a close-up few of a numerous pages and scrolling through the colors in a page view.  The idea was find the general area of color and then “zoom in” to get a closer view of the colors.  I liken this to mapping solutions that let to zoom in closer for more detail once you have the area geographic area identified. Another approach is the SEARCH function that allows the user to simply type in the PANTONE number desired.  myPANTONE will then return the colors where  those numbers are used. myPANTONE also provides color sorting in two ways (1) the standard order used in the fan guides and (2) a sort in more of a chromatic type sequence.  This make chromatic type sequence makes it simple to find, for instance all the reds or blue,  etc.

How accurate is the iPhone screen and what steps have you taken to make sure that the color displayed on screen are correct?

iPhone screens are not synonymous with color accuracy.  There are a number of limitations and issues that make accuracy of the display of colors on an iPhone a problematic.  ANY app on the iPhone that uses color to its benefit (including photo apps) suffers from the same issue – iPhones are not meant to be color accurate. There exist differences on the displays between the various versions of the iPhone. For example: the first iPhones were set to a cooler white point that made the screen whiter and bluer, while subsequent versions use a warmer color temperature and different white point.   From a developer’s point of view the Software Developer Kit (SDK) provided by Apple does not give us access to anything about the actual display except its size. At this point in time, the SDK does not offer the possibility to provide any control over the calibration of the display.  Additionally, issues such as ambient lighting and the angle from which the screen is held (and viewed) can affect the perception of color.

Because of these inherent limitations, we would caution users of myPANTONE (or any other color intensive app) should not be used to validate and approve color.  MyPANTONE is a creative tool and not a production tool. It allows users  to capture the idea of color with a wonderful mobile device  that is used broadly in the design community. The user of myPANTONE  can select a color and play with it, amend it and use it as inspiration in the design process. That’s what myPANTONE was developed for; and it is what you can expect of an iPhone app. A PANTONE Color guide should ALWAYS be used for an accurate representation of a color in a print environment, regardless of whether you used an app or a monitor in the design process.

Creatives are on the go more and more these days especially as mobile technology is getting faster and easier to use. This app allows you to share via email, post to the myPANTONE site & send to other devices. Why is sharing and integration the best possible outcome for an app like this?

It was important for us not only to provide a way to deliver a creative tool, but also to add significant utility and shareablitity.  By taking advantage of the iPhone’s  connectivity functionality, we can e-mail a palette as not only an HTML document, but also as enclosures whereby the user created palette can used within the Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXPress.  Getting information into the iPhone was only one half of the equation for the user experience- the other half is getting the information out of the iPhone and a way to make it useful and usable.  Through support of the popular design and page layout apps it is now possible to create a palette in your iPhone with myPANTONE and then easily integrate and use the palette in the design process.

At what point did a PANTONE app seem like a logical step?

It was clear that the paradigm for creativity was rapidly shifting from the confines of the desktop (or laptop) to a mobile environment.  The device was there waiting to be populated with tools.  In the same way that the computer is rich environment that will only become useful if  it was populated with meaningful solutions, the mobile platform of the iPhone also offered a robust canvas waiting to be inhabited with solutions that provide a rich user experience.  In focus groups and discussions with our customers, it was apparent that their creativity is was not restricted to the time they spent in front of computer.  They were seeking the freedom to be creative wherever they are and wherever they go.  The iPhone represented a great platform to untether their creativity and give them the capabilities to work with a highly portable version of the PANTONE Color Systems.

How many different variations of the current app have there been before it went to the final version?

It is hard know exactly how many concepts, wireframes and prototypes were iterated before we decided upon the current implementation.  Needless to say we wanted to take full advantage of the iPhone user experience and provide a robust app that would be not only cool but have a high degree of utility.  Our team wanted to make sure the app deployed the touchable aspects of the iPhone to full advantage and at the same time provide a visually interesting environment for a creative audience.  Obviously dealing with the size of the screen and understanding that apps need to be focused and are not just a small desktop application were challenges we had to understand.  At the end of the process, we were delighted that we had successfully married the user interface and capabilities of the iPhone platform (touch, e-mail, GPS, voice functions) with an app that is not only fun, but useful.

Now that the app has launched, is this app finished or will there always been a constant refinement of the app and pushing it into new developments and integrations?

When we were designing the myPANTONE app, we had so many more features, functions and product ideas that, rest assured, there will be ongoing enhancements to the existing product, but also a series of the other apps.  The mobile platform is an exciting way to deliver tools to our audiences.  Also, the mobile environment is part of a larger strategy where the desktop, the web and mobile will all be tied into a large Pantone ecosystems that will have a high level of interoperability and synergy.  The key is providing access and usage of the PANTONE Systems regardless of whether you are on the go, on the web or on the desktop.

The app is listed at $9.99 how does pricing weigh in to the app? Did you think of other price-points and has this one worked for you thus far?

The setting of price points provided many interesting internal discussions.  I think the market is in the formative stages whereby developers are trying to balance the original concept whereby a vast majority of apps were free.  But as the mobile platform evolves to serve as not only a delivery vehicle that is beyond games, social networking and other similar apps, there is a realization that developers can provide highly useful tools that can be monetized.  We have been extremely pleased with the response to myPANTONE.  In less than 2 months since it was launched we have over 27,000 downloads.  It is a learning experience and the customers ultimately will tell us what is working (and what is not).

The Review

myPANTONE gives you the ability to have several PANTONE colorbooks in your hand at any given place in the world. This is a perfect app for designers, Art Directors, Creative Directors, Interior Designers or anyone that has to deal with PANTONEs. myPANTONE is an amazing app to use. The app has a simple and clean user interface that is both intuitive and consistent with normal iPhone standard applications. The beautiful thing about myPANTONE is it operates like a PANTONE swatch book and you can rotates and flick through colors. This is extremely enticing if you have ever needed to leaf through a PANTONE book while you were on the go and needed something. However, this is not just for people that use PANTONE’s anyone could enjoy this app and learn new things about colors, hues and how to make a color palette.

The fundamentals are simple and the app gives you access to big and bulky swatch books with just a few flicks of your fingers. Some other awesome features are the fact that you can share your colors between your machines (that will open the colors in In-Design or Quark or CorelDraw) or to your friends. You can email the colors which is great if someone in the office is asking for a color palette or a client wants to know their PANTONE color.

myPANTONE also allows you to pull colors from a photo which is great if you are trying build a color palette from a photo for a room or a design. This feature works flawlessly. I used a very complex image and this app was able to handle it with relative ease.The only minus that I found with the app is the fact that there is not a way to see the CMYK value for a PANTONE chip. This seems a bit off to me as color books give the CMYK value. It gives the RGB but not the CMYK. Aside from that being the only feature that I could see the app was lacking, this app surpassed my expectations.

Some other features include:

• You can capture and extract colors from photos and snap to the closest PANTONE Color.

• Automatically generates harmonious color combinations

• cross-reference PANTONE colors to other PANTONE color libraries

• Email an HTML image of your palette

• Email color palettes that can be used in Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXPress & CorelDraw

• Text & Voice annotations of palettes.

• Post notifications of new palettes to twitter and facebook

• GPS tagging of palettes

Conclusion

myPANTONE is the perfect companion for any designer/creative that needs a simple and effective mobile solution. The pricepoint of the app is $9.99 which at first seemed high to me however, if you have used any PANTONE product you know that they are not low dollar and being able to have several swatch books in one application is more than ideal instead of ordering swatch books in paper form. The app has a robust enough feature list to be listed at $9.99  and more importantly is an app that anyone can use and get a grasp on quickly and easily.

Screenshots

More Info

iTunes | Twitter | Site

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If you’re going to develop applications for the web, where do you look for software? Do you try and scourer the web for reviews, or do you ask your friends what they use to develop? Maybe you download a trial version and see if it works for you. What if you are new to the industry and don’t have the resources to buy multiple apps, or the friends to draw experiences from? What if you find an app and the workflow is horribly off, and its something that you regret paying for? Luckily, I did some of the hard work for you. I have always been frustrated with the fact that when it comes down to buying software, you have the companies’ beautifully designed web pages, and some quotes, but nothing else to go on. If it’s marketed well, how do you know if it’s right for you?  I selected a few people who are movers and shakers in the industry, and I asked them what they use. For Part 1, we are talking about Mac Coding apps. But don’t worry PC folks, there will be a Part Two (There is also some feedback from Dreamweaver, which is available on PC).

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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The most talked about iPhone app, recently, has no doubt been Tweetie 2. I have become very familiar with the controversy revolving around the developer, Loren Brichter, who has been attacked for denying Tweetie 1.0 users a discount when upgrading to the new version. However, I am going to refrain from ranting and raving about why he didn’t offer a discount to his existing consumers. What I am going to tell you, however, is why I think Tweetie 2 is the best Twitter app created thus far, and why you should purchase it.

The Review

First, let me just say that Loren did his homework; Tweetie 2 is everything one could want in a mobile Twitter app. Since he re-wrote the entire app from the ground up, Tweetie 2 is smaller, faster, and more sleek, than the original application. The user interface is a beautiful adaptation of a Twitter app that implements an easy-to-use design. For example, when viewing your time line or @mentions feed, you can refresh the feed by “pulling down” on the feed. You would normally scroll to the top of the app to see the most recent tweets anyway, so this is certainly convenient. Also, you now have the ability to double tap on direct messages and @mentions to mark them all as read. Additionally, all tweets in the replies/main time-line are able to be indexed and searched in real time. These are just a few examples of the unique features that make this app better than its predecessor.

The original Tweetie application won an Apple Design Award in 2009 for being cutting edge, and I strongly believe that Loren is in the running for another one. Tweetie 2 uses the iPhone platform to its full advantage and adds features that are not only simple to use, but are also 100% useful. Tweetie 2 is heavily designed to keep you focused on the task at hand, which is to send tweets. As seen on the “Compose” screen, there is a “down” arrow that allows you to hide the keyboard, as well as expose several other features, such as shortening links and adding an image.

The Price Debate

As previously mentioned, Loren has received some flack by not offering an upgrade price. Now, if you are buying this app for the first time, it’ll cost you $2.99, which is cheaper than a few of its top competitors. However, if you are upgrading, it’s a bit different. You paid for the first one at the price of $2.99, and the second is also $2.99. This brings you to a total of $5.98, which is about the price of a $5 Footlong from Subway with some tax. It is also just barely above its competitors:

• Echofon (formerly Twitterfon) – $4.99

• SimplyTweet – $4.99

• Birdfeed - $4.99

If you ask me, with all the research and functionality over gadgets and whistles that Tweetie 2 has, I would pay for each additional update to this app. My reasoning is that Loren literally thought about all sides of this app. The only negatives that I have seen or heard, is that there are no themes like there were in Tweetie 1.0, and it also doesn’t have a “Reply All” function (I know there is a way to reply to multiple people in one tweet, but I am talking about multiple people in a time line.)

Now, to the controversy (that I wasn’t going to talk about, *cough*.) Do I think that Loren has a good reason to charge original users to upgrade? Simply put, yes, I do . He completely re-wrote the app to be faster, kinda like Apple did with Snow Leopard (and their upgrade was $30.) He also added more features that impact your user experience everyday, like Adobe does with its products (except Tweetie doesn’t cost $700 for an upgrade.) Now, regardless if you agree with me that he has a reason to change or not, you should be able to agree that this app is stellar and there is not like anything else on the market.

Concluding Thoughts

The little details that have gone into this app separate it from all other Twitter apps. Once again, Tweetie 2 sets the bar high, through its speed, sleek new features, and its amazing user experience. Most importantly, though, you should purchase Tweetie 2 because it was created by a developer who pours his heart and soul into his work, and doesn’t settle for anything less than stellar. Tweetie is setting the trend for iPhone Twitter clients and I am deeply looking forward to seeing what the next step for Loren Brichter is.

Note: Do you need help using Tweetie while on your iPhone? Loren even thought of that too. He made an iPhone optimized help guide that gives you all the simple/advanced features for the app.

Screenshots

More Info

Full Feature list/Reveal Post

Twitter

iTunes Link

Site

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Video Games

From their in-game graphic user interfaces to working game interfaces, video games have always been a source of inspiration for me. The creative possibilities are virtually endless when you’re designing a video game interface; you can create just about anything your mind can think of. You can have a futuristic design like Halo or something cartoonish/illustrated like Grand Theft Auto. Video games have always been a good place to acquire some unique and cutting-edge inspiration.

Ember App

EmberApp.com is an amazing online repository for screen captures and other images. Ember is made by RealMac software, the creators of Little Snapper & Rapid Weaver. Ember is a great place to browse through interface designs, web designs, typography and anything in between. With great interface designers, like Tim Van Damme, uploading images everyday, there is more than enough for you to look at, drool over, and make notes of, for your next interface.

Flickr

This rapidly-growing image uploading service receives an exorbitant amount of images everyday. Flickr has become so massive that there are even interface design groups, as well as various other groups, within the web interface, to find inspiration from. Most importantly, its minimal interface allows you to easily view the beautiful pictures that others have uploaded.

Library or Bookstore

by Dunny

In this digital age, we often tend to forget that print publications still exist. Books and magazines still provide tons of places for inspiration. Go to a book store, take your laptop, get some coffee, and read; not on digital format, via your Kindle, but on actual paper. Leaf through some magazines and you will be surprised by the mountains of fascinating ideas that will flow into your brain. Oh, and don’t forget to take a sketchbook or notebook with you so you can record your thought process.

Outside

by Casey Templeton Photography Inc

Sometimes we, as slaves to our own work, forget that we would be 100% better if we just got out of the house for a change. It’s true. Go out for a walk or a run, and even take your dog (if you have one) with you. You will be able to come up with some amazing ideas when you have relaxed and set your mind free.

Concept Cars

This is probably my favorite of the entire group. Concept cars have always been able to push the limits without having to actually have everyday function since they are, concepts. The cars are made to push the boundaries of the Transportation Design industry, so they tend to have sleek steering wheels, doors that open in the opposite direction, solid glass roofs, pushing function over form instead of form over function. Nothing can inspire me more than a groundbreaking concept car design that has amazing attention to detail and incredibly elegant lines.

Where do you find yours?

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“User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user’s experience and interaction. The goal of user interface design is to make the user’s interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals—what is often called user-centered design” - Wikipedia

Over the last few days, I have been trying to submerse myself in as much UI as possible. Why? Because I am on the hunt to cut down my workflow and become more efficient. Everyone does it, but I have made it my job. I have been reading about adding “droplets” to Finder . I’ve  timed my actions and tried to see which methods of production work the best. I’ve deleted apps, re-installed apps, bought apps, deleted apps I bought, etc., in hopes that these applications will allow me to streamline my social networking life, my design life, and my blogging life. Ultimately, I will be able to get more done in less time.

Thoughts

In one of my tweets today, I said, “I have an easier time editing things on the iPhone than on the native app.” Now, this is not always true, but I have started to notice a trend that things (normal app functions) are easier to accomplish on an iPhone. Responses? Dave Kaneda said, “Restraint + context = win.” And according to Graham Smith, “…therein lies the real truth to simplicity in user interface design…”

If people recognize the simplicity in user interface design, why is it executed more effectively on the iPhone and not in the native application? Why do people insist on cramming 65,000 features underneath crazy animated dropping tabs, weird swirls, and whatever else they can pull out of the magic interface hat? 9 times out of 10, I find myself utilizing the simplest and cleanest apps, unless another app is offering something the pretty one doesn’t.

What should you learn learn from this experience?

Simplicity is key. Keeping things simple makes for a more satisfying user experience. The reason I can do these tasks better on an iPhone is because the screen is small, the platform is clean, and that creates a more enjoyable experience overall. These constraints force the apps’ to stick to its core features and omit extra fluff.

Your Turn

Do you find this to be true, or am I simply too close to the spray paint? Hopefully this trend will start to receive greater acknowledgment, and we will soon see simplicity in our desktop apps in addition to our mobile apps and engross us in an app where the interface fades away and let you accomplish what your set goal is.

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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!

Are you looking for an app to look amazing and perform just the same? Delivery Status Touch 2.3.3 is the app you are looking for. This iPhone app is amazing. I saw the beautiful UI and was hooked on wanting to test it. This app gives you multiple options for you to track packages.
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:

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