I’ve never had that great of a relationship with internet radios, mostly because the Italian ones suck. Plain and simple. As many other things in this country, internet isn’t really seen as an opportunity to bring innovation and better quality to old media and traditions, and so internet radios are slow, unreliable and stuck to mid 90’s standards. But like I said, I’ve never had that great of a relationship with internet radios. Not that big of a deal.

I remember last year I stumbled upon a promising new service called Spotify which, though it wasn’t officially available in Italy, looked too much interesting to not give it a proper spin. So I signed up for an account, downloaded the Mac client, enjoyed the freedom of having an immense music catalogue legally available for high quality streaming. Man that was the future of music, a mix between internet radio and iTunes. I upgraded to a Premium account to avoid ads and use the iPhone app, which has been one of the best things of summer ‘09 (yeah, together with that goat we stole and put in my car, but that’s another story). I mean, the Spotify iPhone app is the thing you want to bring with you on the Lost island. It lets you listen to music under a simple 3G connection, all the music you want. Jesus, wish I had it when I was 10 (damn new boys).

Back to our business, we’re talking about internet radios. Well, there was this application for Mac OS X I never really consider until my friend Zak Soup reviewed it here on MacStories, which looked so sexy and useful - Snowtape. From the review: “Snowtape is an internet radio player for the Mac, a one-of-a-kind app that looks good as it blasts your tunes. Sporting a slick, dark, interface, Snowtape is like an iTunes for your iRadio, helping you browse through thousands of stations and even import your own.”

Fast forward 2 months. I remember there’s this music app I have to test. I install Snowtape. I love it. I read the iPhone app announcement post. I get accepted into the beta testing group. I love Snowtape even more.

Then Apple rejects Snowtape for iPhone. I’m sad, upset, I wanna talk about the app. Damn Steve Rea, you can’t reject this.

I woke up this morning with the feeling something good was about to happen. Checking out store.apple.com didn’t help, nothing was apparently new. But wait, I’ve got an email from Vemedio telling me Snowtape for iPhone is out.

Here we are folks, talking about one of the most beautiful and useful music applications for iPhone to date. Meet Snowtape for iPhone.

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Though I doubt that these things are actually wascally wabbits (perhaps more like stanky hares), there is undoubtedly something awesome going on here. Because while it might be the oddest game you’ll ever play (dude, you’re rotating bunny heads), think of it this way: it’s addicting. It gets hard. And it will make your head spin. And on top of that, you have a chance to win $100.

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It seems there’s never a shortage of good GTD apps for the iPhone, and I think that says something about Apple users in general - we’re always looking for ways to become more productive and get a grip on daily life. Taska, fresh off the App Store palette (it still smells like the packaging!), is a very powerful and feature rich GTD app that’s similar to Omnifocus. Plus, it oozes with beautiful pixels.

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When something works, don’t touch anything. When a software just works, it’s still possible to make it work better. I think this is the rule that Silvio Rizzi followed when thinking about the new version of Reeder, the feeds reader application I reviewed some months ago, calling it the best RSS reader for iPhone. Reeder 1.x was a great application, but as time went by it started to fall under the pressure of the features new applications such as MobileRSS, Newsprint or Newsrack introduced, and as consequence to this people started complaining about Reeder and Silvio not caring much about it anymore.

They were so wrong. Silvio has been working hard on the just-released 2.0 version, a free update for previous Reeder users that introduces some new functionalitites, and a lot of tweaks under the hood that make Reeder feel completely new, and fresh again.

You can call this a comeback.

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Great ideas often come at the worst times. I’m always either in the shower (insert mental picture here), in line at Bojangles, or in some other awkward position that prevents me from jotting down my latest iteration of the Kitty Cannon 5000. And by the time I get home or near the most reasonable napkin wad I can write on, I often forget the specific details that made it such a brilliant idea. So with a stroke of a red pen, the idea is quickly axed and yet again, I add yet another snotty tissue to my assortment of good ideas gone missing.

Luckily, Ideawell is here to help.

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And the winner is…

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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You know what really pisses me off? When someone comes with me for a beer on Saturday night and when it’s time to pay, he realizes he doesn’t have any money with him. Man I hate stuff like this, and every single time I have to stay quiet and lend this person some money - ‘cause it’s not very appropriate to give him a dose of “Ticci Hyper Mode” in a random pub. So there it goes, 5 Euros to John for the beer. Different scenario, my friend calls: “Hey man, would you please buy me that thing on eBay? I heard you’re good with computers. Oh of course, I’ll give you the money as soon as we’ll meet!” Fine, 20 Euros for that damn rare manga.

Fortunately, money always comes back to me but guess what - it’s a pain to remember who owes me something. And of course I won’t jot this stuff into Omnifocus. OweMe is a very nice application for iPhone which aims to collect all the things you’ve lent, and even those you owe, into a single window, powered by a good looking design which makes the dirty job a pleasure to look at.

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I’m not a designer of any sort, but I can recognize a well made interface, wallpaper or icon when I see one. My girlfriend says I’ve got good taste in things, I say all that time spent on MacThemes at least was useful for something. Also, writing reviews everyday helped in developing my sense of “graphical taste”, and I think I’ve come to a good point when my eyes spot a beautiful UI meters away from the screen.

Sometimes I try to think as a designer though, and I guess it must be a hell of a job to come up with the right interface, with everything at the right place, for the right application. With the myriad of iPhone apps out there, many of them sporting lickable stunning UIs, there’s no lack of inspiration or references, but on the other hand that could become a problem when trying to be unique, still respecting the interface guidelines provided by Apple. More important, mixing custom design elements with standard ones might result in having an app that feels somehow awkward and weird. Designers and developers should mockup, wireframe and sketch before trying to put in design their thoughts, and what better than an iPhone application that lets you..mockup an iPhone app?

Meet Interface, a mockup and prototyping tool for iPhone…on the iPhone.

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