Posts in Linked

Ending The App Store Top 200→

Manton Reece thinks that Beats Music’s editorial curation efforts could work well as a template to improve how apps are discovered on Apple’s App Store:

The answer is in Beats Music. They have no overall top 200 list! Instead, they have a bunch of people — musicians and writers who deeply care about music — curating playlists. The top 25 playlists in a genre are so buried in the app that I had to search them out just to write this blog post, because they seem to carry no more weight than any other playlist. Much more common are playlists like “our top 20 of 2013”. That’s not a best-selling list; it’s based on real people’s favorites.

There are literally hundreds or maybe thousands of other playlists. Intro playlists for a band, related artists that were influential to a singer you like, playlists for a mood or activity, and more. This extra manual step makes it much easier for an algorithm to surface great music: just look for playlists that contain songs you already like, and chances are good that you’ll discover something new.

I’ve argued in favor of more editorial curation before, and while I’m a huge fan of what Beats Music is doing, it’s too early to tell whether the company will be successful or not.

I think there is merit to the idea of showcasing human-curated playlists in lieu of an automatic system (charts) that can be exploited with bots, paid installs, and other solutions. Beats Music’s curated playlists are updated every day, they are contextual to current events, and, more importantly, they are visible in search. Apple has been building a good collection of curated sections for featured apps and categories, but they are not regularly updated and they’re completely hidden from search.

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Wordsalad Generates Beautiful Word Clouds→

If you want to present an idea or just create a cool word cloud, Wordsalad for iPhone and iPad takes a bunch of words and generates a beautiful image that you can export in full HD in PNG or PDF formats. The app is able to pick out the most important words and bring those forward, filtering out unimportant words like articles, prepositions, and pronouns. You can customize the result by changing fonts, colors, and word layouts. Great for posters, presentations, and brainstorming, Wordsalad is $2.99 in the App Store.

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Reporter for iPhone Privately Tracks Your Life Story→

Ellis Hamburger for The Verge on Reporter, a new app that tracks your daily activities:

Reporter works by buzzing you several times per day with a brief quiz based on the questions Felton asks himself. They range from “Where are you?” to “What are you doing?” and “Who are you with?” Some questions can be answered by tapping Yes or No, while others are multiple choice questions, let you type in text, or offer a location picker that polls Foursquare for nearby places. You can also add your own questions (like “Are you happy?”) or program certain questions to occur only when you hit the app’s Awake or Sleep switch (like “How did you sleep?” and “What did you learn today?”). Each time you report, the app also pulls in various pieces of information like the current weather, how many steps you’ve taken today (using the iPhone 5s’ M7 motion coprocessor), and how noisy it is around you using your phone’s mic.

There’s lots of little interesting things that bubble up in Ellis’ review, such as Nicholas Felton’s ideas for printing your records into a book. The best thing about this app is that everything stays on your phone and you can export it in CSV or JSON. The downside is that you have consistently use the app to make it work. The app only costs a few bucks on the App Store, and the website looks great.

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Beep Synchronizes Music Across All of the Speakers You Already Have→

Beep provides a sort of middle ground between a $99 AirPlay receiver, like an AirPort Express or Apple TV, and a system like Sonos where a wireless bridge costs $50 bucks in addition to a Connect or Connect:AMP which are $349 and $499 respectively. If you already have your own stereo system and a few bookshelf speakers throughout the house, Beep can sync music across them at $149 for each receiver. Beep requires their app to play music, which currently gets music from Pandora or directly from your phone, with more sources coming soon.

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Why “Threes” Took A Year To Make→

Ben Kuchera, writing about the creation of Threes (which we covered today) at Polygon:

That year-long journey of adding mechanics and art for testing, only to strip them away and get back to the core game again and again wasn’t wasted; the amount of testing and failed experiments gave them a sense of purpose and clarity when it came to the final game. It needed to be small, simple and easy to understand. The visual information needed to be clear and readable. Every other concept or theme was thrown out in deference to the original idea of matching tiles in multiples of three.

The article shows some of the concepts that the developers decided to throw out, and I think they made a good call. I don’t play many puzzle games, but Threes is fun and entertaining and challenging because it focuses on a simple mechanic: matching threes. Reducing the game’s feature set actually augmented the experience because it made the essence of the idea – numbers – immediate, easy to grasp, but hard to master.

I’m loving Threes. Its animations and sound effects are quirky and cute, the music is good, and the entire game can be played with one hand; you can pause and resume at any time, and there are no In-App Purchases or other tricks to let you win faster/more by paying. You either come up with a good strategy for matching and multiplying numbers, or you don’t get a high score – simple as that.

Go read Ben’s piece here, then get Threes for $1.99 because it’s a great iOS game.

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Spacious 2 for OS X is a Mouse Friendly App for Navigating the Desktop→

If you’re not a fan of Apple’s unergonomic Magic Mouse, or making broad gestures with Hot Corners, Spacious 2 gives you a wheel of commands with a click of the middle mouse button. Spacious presents a small palette of tools for switching to the Dashboard, activating Mission Control, or switching to another space. The app includes an alternative app switcher, and can be configured to your liking if the defaults aren’t for you. If you don’t like using keyboard shortcuts or regularly use your Mac’s trackpad gestures, Spacious can help make the most of your desktop with your favorite mouse. You can download a free trial for 30 days, and purchase the app direct for €9.99.

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How to Optimize Your Settings in Paper by Facebook→

Facebook’s new Paper app is the best excuse yet to ditch the social network’s older offering. But while the re-imagined mobile experience adds beautiful fullscreen images and new, intuitive swipes to the mix, it also comes with a few limitations. So before you banish that blue and white standby to the netherworld of discarded apps, you probably want to make a few quick changes.

Roberto Baldwin for Wired writes about how toggling a few switches can make Paper by Facebook better and turn off some annoyances, like videos that automatically play.

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