Federico Viticci

10962 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.
@[email protected]
@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

Think - Not Too Hard.

Last week, we reviewed Concentrate, an application to help you focus on particular tasks by managing your entire workspace; for example, it will launch Pixelmator, change your iChat status to “Busy: Working!”, and block out Tweetie and YouTube so you can finish designing that icon for your client. It’s a great system for keeping you on task - but at the same time, it’s like a digital Mother Superior watching you over your shoulder with a yardstick. What if you’d just like a little help focusing on one application with the freedom to use other applications at will?

Let’s think about your options.

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Reportage Winners Announced

Thanks everyone for the support and the comments! Also, I’d like to thank the WhereCloud team for giving us these 5 promo codes for the giveaway.

Now, here are the winners:

dapper

Rossella

Henry Yue

Dennis

leesui

You’ll receive the U.S. promo code straight in your inbox in a matter of a few minutes.

Cheers!

Favorite Tweets of the Week Dec 28 - Jan 3

I usually tweet a lot of stuff: apps tutorials, news, videos, reviews, hacks and so much more. Everything that’s Apple-related and it’s interesting, it’s worth a tweet.

To keep up to date with all these links you can follow me on Twitter, but in case you missed here’s a small compilation of the best tweets of the past week.

You can find me on Twitter as @storiesofmac.

Enjoy!

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Snappy Gets the 2.0 Update

Snappy, the Cydia-only tweak I previously mentioned in this article, has just been updated to 2.0. This new version improves the overall stability of the app and adds many new features like:

  • Video Recording;

  • Default Video Recording on Tap;

  • MMS;

  • Geotagging;

Available at $1.99 via the BigBoss repository, I highly recommend this.

Crafting Subtle & Realistic User Interfaces

Link

“The underlying secret to beautiful user interface design is realism: making 2D objects on your screen appear to sit in 3D space with volume, surface properties and undulations that might appear in real life. These faux 3D objects have highlights and shadows just like objects on your desk might have, and they have textures that emulate real objects from glass to sandpaper and everything in between. Designing beautiful user interfaces has more to do with the why than the how.”

For everyone who’s interested in User Interface design, this is a great post. Go read it now.

Win a Copy of Notify!

Notify is a great mail notifier / client for Mac OS X that sits in the menubar waiting for new messages to arrive. It supports Gmail and Google Apps, Rackspace Mail, MobileMe and generic IMAP.

As I wrote in my review: “Notify 2 is one of the best application of this late 2009, allowing you to keep track of your mail accounts and manage your mail messages from the menubar, which is just great. The interface is clever and well designed, the animations smooth and,overall, the application is stable. But the coolest thing is that now I can finally keep Mail.app closed, leave Notify running and open Mail.app only if really needed. This – is just great.“.

Vibealicious gave me 5 licenses to give away to MacStories readers. This is a last 2009 gift for you guys, from MacStories, Kyle Van Essen (developer) Joel (developer) and  Sir Matthew Rex Downham (Graphic Designer and Media Dude). Details after the jump!

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