Very useful post over at Bjango’s team blog, analyzing the various types of iTunes links.
The iPad Paradox
“Technical people always complain about being buttonholed at every family get-together by relatives who want “free tech support.” But why do they want this? Why do they need it? The answer is that consumer technology is overly complex.
And whose fault is it?
Unfortunately, it’s my fault. And possibly your fault. It’s the fault of everyone, including marketers, who relentlessly call for more, more and ever more features. Combine this with our calls for backward compatibility, and the result is systems that do everything. They’re so feature-rich, so complex, that some people can’t get them to do anything.”
Sponge: Feeds Aggregator for iPhone. One App to Rule Them All?
Trying to pack all the websites you’re subscribed to in a single application isn’t a new concept at all. Apps like Socialite for Mac and Ego for iPhone have successfully managed to integrate the most popular social networks in one single and easily accessible place, thus making really simple for people to take a look at what’s going on, what they missed and, overall, what’s new.
Sponge by Oobah Studios is a new application for iPhone which aims at collecting all your internet feeds in one screen, enabling you to catch up with the latest happenings on your various accounts. It’s very good, but it might use some adjustment and fixes. Read on to find out what.
Tweetie 1.2.6 for Mac Fixes Bugs, Adds Support for New Retweets
Available through the “Check for updates menu”, the new version fixes various bugs (including the since_id one) and adds supports for new retweets, but in the old RT way.
Go download.
FML for iPhone, Delight in Misfortune. Review and Giveaway.
Life has no mercy sometimes, but I really don’t care much about it. As long as I can keep doing what I love and not doing what I can’t stand, I won’t give a shit about what could happen to me if I do something. That’s how I live everyday. But on the other hand, I can’t help but laughing at listening to other people’s tragedies, bad happenings and FAILs . If you ever lol’ed for someone falling down the stairs, you know what I’m talking about - let’s face it. But what about telling the world your own everyday life stories,and let people laugh at them?
Meet F* My Life, unofficial FML client for iPhone.
MplayerX: Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, Multi-Touch Powered Alternative to Movist and VLC
In the past months we covered some interesting alternatives to VLC for Mac, like Movist and Mplayer OS X Extended, which sported really interesting features and playback support for almost every format out there.
Today I’d like to talk about another similar app, found on Google Code once again, which is an evolution of Mplayer OS X Extended: meet MplayerX.
Developing Behind the Great Firewall of China - An Interview with NibiruTech
Everyone always says, “There’s an app for that”, but what you don’t often hear is, “There’s a story for that app”. I chatted with NibiruTech, the team behind the recently reviewed MobileRSS to learn more about what it’s like having to deal with a government that doesn’t let you browse the web the way it should be.
Opera Mini for iPhone, First Impressions
“Whatever its performance turns out to be like, Opera Mini has some features that might lead some folks to opt for it over Safari, at least on a part-time basis. It’s got Opera’s Speed Dial feature, which lets you get to favorite Web sites with one tap. It uses Opera Link to synchronize bookmarks with other copies of Opera on different devices. It lets you search for text within the current page, a pretty basic feature which Safari lacks.
On the other hand, Mini doesn’t try to match the desktop-like accuracy with which Safari renders Web pages: It just displays a rough approximation (albeit an acceptable one, at least on the pages I visited). And I don’t think it offers Safari’s ability to play YouTube videos.”
Radar Winners Announced
Thanks everyone who entered the Radar giveaway. Also, we’d like to thank the Madewithbits developers for the licenses they gave to MacStories.
Here are the winners:
x0r
David
oykun.yilmaz
Thibaut Ninove
ralph
Davide85
Michael
Martin Král
Dennis
Knox
You’ll receive the licenses in your inbox in a matter of a few days. Stay tuned for other giveaways coming this week.
In the meantime, you can follow the official MacStories Twitter account as @macstoriesnet.