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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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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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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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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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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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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:

Site | iTunes | Twitter

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In 2003 eBuddy was the first company to create a web browser-based instant messaging service. eBuddy allows you to chat via MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Myspace, Facebook, ICQ and AIM all from within one application. The iPhone application also includes push notifications for those who have an iPhone or iPod Touch running OS version 3.0. Being the iPhone app-0-holic that I am, I had to try it out.

First Impressions

The first time launching the application, you’re presented with a registration screen. You will need to have an eBuddy account in order to use the service. If you don’t already have one, registration is very simple from within the application. Once registered, you can then begin adding instant messaging accounts. I was able to add my Yahoo, Google Talk, Facebook and AIM accounts with no trouble at all.

Features

eBuddy is full of some truly great features. Being able to access all of your instant messaging services in one place automatically makes this one of my favorite instant messaging apps. It even supports multiple screen names on the same messaging service. Another detail I appreciate, even though it’s a rather small one, is the message notification chime. To me, the chime is far more pleasant than the default chime in AIM.

The biggest feature eBuddy touts is push notifications. When you exit the application, you can opt to receive push notifications when you receive a message on any one of your accounts. Sound and vibration are options that can be turned on or off via the app’s settings screen.

While push is the most appealing feature of eBuddy, it also leaves a few things to be desired. Push notifications from eBuddy notify you that you received a message and tell you from whom, but the message itself is not displayed in the notification. To read the message requires launching the eBuddy application. I also noticed that when receiving a push notification from a Facebook contact, a string of numbers shows up instead of the contact’s name. Having used the AIM iPhone application, I much prefer being able to see the message in the notification pop-up.

Another thing lacking in eBuddy’s push notification is that it only allows me to stay signed in for up to 30 minutes, after which push notifications stop. I would much prefer to stay logged in for at least 24 hours, if not permanently. A push notification is also sent to the iPhone when you are logged out of eBuddy after the time you’ve specified in the app’s settings. This notification seems unnecessary.

The only other feature that is noticeably lacking in eBuddy is landscape mode. I’m not sure how difficult it is to enable such a feature, but the application’s developer promises it will be coming soon. They also promise other free and frequent updates in the future.

Final Thoughts

Overall eBuddy is a very solid iPhone application. It’s one of the few iPhone applications that enable access to multiple instant messaging services in the same place. The most-notable application providing a similar service is BeejiveIM, priced at $9.99. With a well-designed, easy-to-use interface and a price that can’t be beat (free from the iTunes App Store), eBuddy is definitely an application worth downloading, and certainly worth keeping an eye on for future updates and enhancements.

Where can I see more eBuddy?

Site | iTunes | Twitter

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Ever since I was a little geek, I have always wanted a RAID array. If you’re not familiar with the term, RAID is an acronym for redundant array of inexpensive disks. A common implementation is a housing that holds three disks attached to a single computer. Data gets written to all three disks, allowing your information to be safe in the case of losing a single disk. In A+ training, I was in major awe of them.

So, take that basic concept, throw it into the cloud computing environment and you get services like SugarSync and Dropbox. Ok, so technically speaking, they are (NAS) Network Attached Storage, but please spare me my illusions. I have a RAID array!

What they do for creatives

These two services provide instantaneous backup of all of your creative work and allow you to access it from anywhere with an internet connection. If you combine one of these services with a Portable Web Toolbox, you could have a completely mobile office.

How they do it

Once you create an account, you create a folder that will hold all of the data that you would like to backup and access on-the-go.

When you save something in this folder, it automatically syncs with the app’s servers, putting your work in the cloud. If you upload something through the website, it will be saved in this folder on your computer. The awesomeness kicks in when you add in more computers.

An example setup

I currently have a pc with Windows XP, a laptop with Windows Vista and an iMac with OS X Leopard. To really give these services a run for their money, I have both of them running out of a single shared folder. This means that every file that I save gets sent to the Dropbox server, the Sugarsync server, my laptop and my pc. (I’m currently working on my mac in Espresso, but I have done parts of this post on my laptop with Dreamweaver and on an XP PC at work using notepad (by accessing the website).

Each time I click save on the html file that I am writing this post in, I can actually see the notification pop up on my PC, indicating that a file was updated. I have not actually run benchmarking tests, but I firmly believe that these service networks are faster than my home network. The simple fact that it is automated instead of manual is the real “time-saver”.

What they do different

At their core, both services function almost exactly the same. Files are saved in a folder, which get updated on the website and on as many computers as you like. The difference is how you can interact with your data with mobile devices.

From what I experienced, it seems that Dropbox focused on creating a web app for access, while Sugarsync put their focus an iPhone app. You can use each service through your mobile device to upload, download and view your files, but of the two, Dropbox has the more polished web app.

For iPhone users, Sugarsync made a rockin’ app. It is very fast and easy to navigate.

What they cost

Each service currently has a free trial that gives you full functionality and 2GB of storage. Both of them also run affiliate programs that enable you to earn earn extra space if you invite others and they sign up.

While 2GB is great for testing them out and seeing if you would like to use them, you really need more space to be working in the cloud! For Sugarsync, packages range from 30GB – 250GB and are priced from $49.99 – $249.99 per year. For Dropbox, you can choose from 50GB or 100GB packages and they are priced at $99 or $199.99 per year.

Of the two, you get more gig for your buck with Sugarsync. Either option is significantly less than the hardware that you would have to purchase to run a redundant backup on one machine.

Why you should be using them

• Automated protection against crashes. If my mac died right now, I would be able to finish this article on my laptop or my pc from the point of my last save. (As soon as I got done crying).
• Worldwide access to your files. No matter where I am tomorrow, I have the ability to access this article to edit it.
• Save embarrassment. Now I know that you are probably much more organized than I am, but I am willing to admit that I have saved files on the wrong machine and/or forgotten to save them on a usb drive before going somewhere that I needed them. If you think there’s the slightest chance that could happen to you, these services can save you some face when showing up at a client’s office to show them your masterpiece!
• Sharing. All of your items can be shared with others as well. Each service has the ability to create a shared folder that you can send invites to access.

Try them, they’re free

I suggest that you sign up for both services, save some files and then access them online and on multiple machines. This will allow you to determine which interface works best for you. Once you’ve done that, I believe that you will see how great these apps are and how much time and hassle they can save you.

As for me, I’m just happy to finally have my RAID, even if it is in a cloud!

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As web developers, we can take for granted all of the important tools we use regularly and keep at our fingertips on our computers. That is until the unfortunate day that we suddenly find ourself sitting in front of a strange machine we are unfamiliar with. It’s cold monitor glaring back at us with no love in its pixels. We find ourselves at the mercy of this machine that does not contain our go-to apps. Our lifelines. Here I am going to try and alleviate some of that discomfort by providing you with a list of portable windows apps which can be loaded onto a single flash drive to create a portable web developer’s toolbox. With this, you should be able to do any web developing you need to do from any computer, loveless pixels or no.

Firefox

Use – Web Browser

Bonus – Install Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar to complete your toolbox

Size – 27-77MB (depending on addons)

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Thunderbird

Use – Email Client

Bonus – Also has RSS Capabilities

Size – 25MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Sunbird

Use – Calendar, Scheduler and GTD

Bonus – Leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on

Size – 17MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

OpenOffice

Use – Office Suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database

Bonus – Compatable with MS Office, Word Perfect and Lotus

Size – 231MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Notepad++

Use – Text Editor

Bonus – Major features include syntax highlighting and auto-completion

Size – 10MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Xampp

Use – Setting up an integrated server package of Apache, mySQL, PHP and more

Bonus – Available in both a full and lite package depending on your personal needs

Size – 221MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

FileZilla

Use – FTP Client

Bonus – Has an intuitive drag and drop interface

Size – 9MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Gimp

Used For – Editing Images

Size – 67MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

7zip

Used For – Compressing and Uncompressing Files

Bonus – Compress and Uncompress 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, and TAR. Uncompress RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB, and NSIS

Size – 2.5MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Sumatra PDF

Used For – Viewing PDFs

Bonus – Extremely small and starts very fast

Size – 1.5MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

VLC

Used For – Media Player (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, mp3, ogg, avi, DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols)

Bonus – Can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network

Size – 32MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Toucan

Used For – Synchronise, backup and encrypt data

Bonus – Includes portable variables, point to places on you USB drive no matter what its drive letter is

Size – 3.1MB

Download Portable App

pidgin

Used For – Instant Messaging

Bonus – Works with AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo and more

Size – 50MB

Download Portable App | Visit Main Site

Your Turn

Were there any apps essential to your toolbox that I left out? Leave me a comment and let me know.

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I did a light review of Fluid App earlier in our site and I am going to expand on what I use Fluid for on a daily basis. Fluid is a Mac app that allows you to turn a webpage into its own application. This is great for things like gmail, facebook, twitter, Basecamp, Mint, Google Analytics and Google Reader to name just a few the possiblities with this app are honestly endless. Today we are goingt look into the Menu Extra SSB which lets you make an app that resides in your menu bar.

I have setup multiple apps that I run like this but one of my favorites is Instapaper. If you’re like me you have 65 tabs open in your browser and you sometimes need to clear those out and check them later. Instapaper is an app that lets you add the links to their service through an applet and then you can look at them later. Great! So now I can get rid of my 65 tabs in firefox and be more productive because I don’t have all of these other distractions.

Video How-To

[vimeo clip_id="5370519" width="600" height="375"]

Resources

Instapaper

Fluid App

Instapaper Restyled

credit to finding this add-on to TimVanDamme Site | Twitter

Fluid Icons Flickr Group

Free Menubar Icon

instapapertif

This is designed by me (chadengle) I am giving this icon away free for whatever you wish. Did you end up using the icon? Take a screen cap and add it to our flickr group.

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This week was a pretty big week for the app world. I selected a few of the big highlights of what happened this week.Obviously every week is not a huge release week but, this week had some mega hits. From the iPhone 3.0 software to a big Tweetdeck release all the way to Feed a Fever. Here is the list:

Seesmic releases an update to their app

iPhone 3.0 Software Update Launches

TweetPsych Launches

iPhone 3GS ships and is ready to buy.

Sirius-XM Finally Comes to the iPhone Platform

Facebook Launches Usernames

Photo by pshab

Tweetdeck refresh + iPhone app

(read our review here)

Shaun Inman Launches Fever

(read our review)

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Today Shaun Inman launched a creative RSS Reader solution called Fever. (Whats an RSS Reader?)

To make the most of the Hot list, Fever asks you to make a simple distinction between essential and supplemental feeds. Essential, must-read feeds are Kindling. Supplemental, low signal-to-noise feeds are Sparks. Sparks ignite Kindling raising the temperature of items and links that should not be missed.

Fever is an awesome alternative for readers because it lets you know what you need to read. I felt like I needed more information or a demo before I made my $30 purchase so here is a video review about the app.

[vimeo clip_id="5211425" width="600" height="375"]

Availability:

Fever comes as a web application. This means that is open to PC and Mac users. However you have to host it yourself so if your server doesn’t support a Unix-like server (no IIS) running Apache, PHP 4.2.3+ and MySQL 3.23+ then you can’t run it. The good news is that it also has an iPhone version as well. This makes it super easy for you to take your feeds with you and keep them in the same exact order that they were in when you left your desk. You can also run fever using Fluid App (highlighted here) and I am 99.9% sure you can run Mozilla Prizm as well. This means you can have an awesome stand alone reader to use with your feeds.

iPhone Images

Where can I connect with the Creator Shaun?

Shaun is on Twitter he also is the creator of HaveAMint a fresh look at your website traffic. Shaun also has a blog and a wicked looking website.

Twitter Buzz:

Future Posts?

I am going to play around with Fever more and get to know the ins and outs of it. I plan on making a review of it vs. Google Reader to see if the app lives up to its $30 price tag compared to its free G-Reader counterpart. Where ratings are given to both of the apps and the +/- are weighed to see which one is the best bet depending on what you want out of your reader.

Stay tuned for the post. The best way is to subscribe or follow us on twitter so you don’t miss a beat.