Inspiring.
Improving Download Behaviors in Web Browsers
Apple Accidentally Reveals Approved iPad Games
Who’s gonna be fired for this?
Snippets Winners Announced
Thanks everyone who entered the Snippets giveaway. Also, we’d like to thank Lucky Ants for the licenses they gave to MacStories.
Here are the winners:
notyoubutme
stream
Andre Kradolfer
You’ll receive the licenses in your inbox in a matter of a few hours. Stay tuned for other giveaways coming this week.
In the meantime, you can follow the official MacStories Twitter account as @macstoriesnet. And also, be sure to check out our teaser page for the MacStories:Next project. Something magical is coming soon.
On Symlinks
Shawn Blanc has published two interesting posts (here and here) about the process of creating symbolic links on Mac OS X, following up to Gruber’s post from last week where he wrote about his configuration of Yojimbo’s library synced and backed up with Dropbox.
I’d like to cover two neat ways of playing around with Symlinks (for a basic knowledge about the subject you can head over the Wikipedia page) which involve the terminal, and I’ve found them very useful so far.
Taptaptap Is Giving Away 14 Limited Edition iPads
The launch of the new Digg app for iPhone has been a huge event so far, but Taptaptap plans to make it even bigger. Turns out that the guys have been working really hard together with Digg to developed the mobile application, and they want to celebrate the launch by giving away a limited edition Colorware iPad every day for 2 weeks. This is the official giveaway page.
Whether this might end up in a Twitter spam galore, no doubt Casasanta and company know how to get the word out for their products.
Today 2.2 Adds Exchange Support
Today, the application from SecondGear Software we reviewed here, has been updated to 2.2 version, which brings Microsoft Exchange support and various UI improvements. If you missed our review, here’s an excerpt:
“It basically displays in an elegant and uncluttered window all the events and tasks you have in iCal. The cool thing is, iCal doesn’t have to be running for Today to work.It can run both in dock and the menubar only, you can assign a shortcut to invoke it, you can adjust the window’s opacity. It’s all there, in that tiny yet powerful window.”
You can download Today here. If you’re an heavy iCal user, you might want to check it out.
Syncode Announces “Synotes Slate” for iPad
Syncode, the developers behind the Synotes iPhone app we reviewed a while ago here, have just announced that they have submitted “Synotes Slate” for Apple approval. If everything goes fine the application should be available for the App Store Grand Opening on April 3rd.
Synotes for iPad will offer pretty much the same features of the iPhone counterpart, obviously benefitting from the bigger screen and new interface elements of the iPad.
From the blog post:
“We felt, as many other developers have expressed, that a universal application was not for us. The new platform brings many new opportunities, and to fully utilize them with a changed user interface we have decided against a universal binary. It is important to note that the application has been written from scratch for the new platform. This means a better user experience for everyone involved.
The biggest difference between designing for the iPad compared to the iPhone is the capacious screen we had to work with. Before even thinking about how Synotes Slate would be designed, we carefully studied and analysed Apple’s standard iPad applications and their design in both function and form. Like many iPad apps, Synotes Slate uses universal iPad UI elements such as a UISplitView and Pop-Over menus to both increase productivity and provide a continuous experience between multiple applications.”
Extensive use of modal windows, popovers and split view, as you can see from the screenshots posted by the developers.I can’t wait to put my hands on this, waiting for an iPad version of Simplenote to be announced.
Spot Color: Use Mac OS X Color Picker As a Standalone App
One of the greatest thing about Cocoa technology is the system wide color picker: I can’t even remember how many times that thing came in handy while working, and that’s even people who can’t stand it. Come on, the color picker is great. And if you don’t know yet, it’s extensible: you can install plugins into your Library/ColorPickers folder and enjoy the revamped tool with additional functionalities. There are some you should definitely check it out, like the Hex Color Picker, the Developer Picker from Panic, or the one that lets you choose palettes from the Adobe Kuler community.
The only thing I can’t really stand about the picker is that you can’t use it as standalone app, as it’s closely bound to applications that have a color picking feature built in. Well, actually there’s a way to invoke the Color Picker at any time, but it requires Applescript and I’m sure many of you guys don’t wanna mess with it. Today I’m going to talk about something way simpler instead, is called Spot Color and it’s a simple app that enables you to use the Color Picker at your pleasure.