Federico Viticci

10789 posts on MacStories since April 2009

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.

Advertisers Plan to Exploit iPad Size

Macnn reports:

“As the iPad is incapable of Flash, and blocks cross-domain cookies, more interest is said to lay with in-app advertising. AdMarvel CEO Mahi de Silva notes that the iPhone 3.2 SDK allows for interstitial ads, click-to-connect commands and even video, none of which can be found in present iPhone campaigns. Most iPhone apps rely on small banners or links, which can moreover take people away from whatever content they happened to be looking at.”

Looking forward to Google’s take on this.


The iPad and Horror Vacui Application Design

I was reading Marco’s latest post about Instapaper for iPad last night, and as I saw the screenshots of the new version I realized something: developers seem to see the bigger screen of the new device only as a way to put more information on screen, rather than a way to lay out information in a different way.

Don’t get me wrong, of course with a bigger screen you’d like to insert more interface elements and stuff - the point is, you don’t necessarily have to. Instead of focusing on how to fill that space with elements that would be located in a different window otherwise, why not thinking about how to explore new ways to present information?

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Keypoint Winners Announced

Thanks everyone who entered the Keypoint giveaway. We’d like to thank Bert Timmermans for the promo codes he gave to MacStories.

Here are the winners:

Martin Král

William Bithrey

Olìve

Doob

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.


Manage Geo Tagged Photos with TravelPad. Review and Giveaway.

If you have an iPhone and you’re not a professional photographer or, at least, you don’t don’t have a pro camera, then I guess you shot a lot of pictures with it. And it’s not that the iPhone keeps you away from shooting pics: good built in camera aside, there are hundreds of photography applications in the App Store and most of them are excellent pieces of software that can power up the iPhone with tons (really, tons) of additional features.

TravelPad is a new application from Counterwinds which allows you to collect and organize your photos in albums using geo location. We’re gonna take a look at it, and - guess what - we’ve got some promo codes to give away.

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Webkit + Eye Tracking: Gaze Controlled Tabs

We all know Webkit is a fantastic engine, just as we all appreciate its 3D capabilities and css transforms effects when we see a well implemented one. But when I thought I had seen everything Webkit could offer (or at least a good part), there I stumbled upon this article on HplusMagazine, describing the Text 2.0 project, an enhanced reading experience that combines (or should, at last) eye tracking, neat javascript and CSS tricks to create a brand new, revolutionary way of reading web content.

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My Backup Workflow

You’ve probably read John Gruber’s post about backups last week, the one where he talked about his experience with a damaged internal hard drive and, luckily for him, the way he managed to save data with Dropbox, Super Duper, Disk Warrior and a couple of external hard disks.

I think John made some strong points in suggesting to purchase not one, but a couple of external hard drives - as you really don’t know when a hard drive is gonna fail. Just as an internal drive can die, so a Firewire one with all your backups can.

Anyway, there are some other practices I’ve gotten used to follow over time I’d like to talk about.

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