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Tap to Chat 2 Launches with New Design, Google Talk Support

When I first reviewed Tap to Chat back in December, what I stumbled upon was a very simple app with a nice and clean design to access Facebook chat and talk to your buddies without all the clutter of the Facebook website or other similar applications for iOS. The app was driven by simplicity in the way it put contacts on a grid, and let you simply tap on one to start chatting. No additional screens or options, just a tap and a chat. On top of that, notifications enabled me to keep up with the conversation even if I was busy doing something else on the home screen or another app. Tap to Chat 2, released last week, builds on the factors that made the original version so great and popular on the App Store, adding support for Google Talk but retaining the fundamental concept that online chat should be easy and accessible.

First and foremost, the app has got an updated UI to switch between Facebook and Google Talk: there’s an iOS-like multitasking dock at the bottom to switch between the services, but if you don’t like the dock idea you can hide it and simply swipe horizontally to change buddy lists. Friends available for chat are still displayed on a grid, though this time the design has been greatly improved to show better contact pictures, inline previews and a button to mark a person as “favorite.” Favorites will be placed on top of your lists when they’re online for quick access, and you’ll also receive a Growl-like notification on screen when they log in. These notifications are displayed for a few seconds like Growl on the desktop, but they obviously only work inside Tap to Chat as iOS doesn’t allow for other notification systems to be injected in the main Springboard. However, when you’re chatting with multiple contacts at once, the notifications make it super simple to jump from one chat to another, as does the aforementioned dock at the bottom – switching between services and chats is a real pleasure in Tap to Chat 2.0.

As for the chat itself, it’s really just a box with a text entry field and buttons to clear the conversation or go back to the grid. If you want, you can also tap on a friend’s profile pic to rename the contact, remove it, or open his Facebook profile in Safari. From the settings icon in the upper left corner, you can change your online status, account names, or color theme for the whole app. General settings include options to turn off sound effects, chat alerts and session alerts – if you really don’t want to be bothered unless you’re actively using the app, you can even turn on auto disconnect to make sure you’ll go offline once you close the app.

Tap to Chat 2 is simple, fast, incredibly reliable (I didn’t see a single connection error on Facebook or Google Talk) and it runs both on the iPhone and iPad. You can get it here at an introductory price of $0.99.

BlueNube Is The First CloudApp Client for iPad

If you love CloudApp as much as I do and you own an iPad, you’ve probably been looking for a way to upload and share items from the tablet without having to use Safari and the web application. There’s no shortage of CloudApp-enabled clients on the iPhone – the excellent Cloud2go is a staff favorite here at MacStories – but the iPad hasn’t seen a real native CloudApp client so far. BlueNube is a $1.99 app I bought a few months ago but never really used because it was only focused on letting you see uploads to your CloudApp account from the iPad, without letting you send an actual file or URL to the service from the device. I was told the next version would include full upload support and other features, so I decided to leave the app in my iTunes library and wait for it. Version 1.1, released yesterday, indeed adds upload capabilities to BlueNube, thus making it the first CloudApp client that runs natively on the iPad.

The interface design of BlueNube isn’t as delicious as the one I’m currently testing in the upcoming Stratus for iOS, nor does the app support live streams and other fancy things as in Cloud2go, but it sure is functional to the main purpose of uploading files and bookmarks to CloudApp using the iPad and third-party applications. The biggest feature of version 1.1, in fact, is the possibility to upload anything from any other app thanks to the “Open In” menu integration that allows you to select a file from 3rd party apps like, say, iFiles or GoodReader and send it to BlueNube, which will start uploading automatically and paste a link to the file in your clipboard.

You can also upload photos and videos within BlueNube with Camera Roll support, upload an image or link from your pasteboard as you open the app thanks to clipboard detection and even cache entire images and other files so BlueNube won’t have to download them every single time to display them. Cache size can be modified and reset from the settings; items uploaded to CloudApp can be shared on other social networks like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.

Overall, BlueNube may not be as sexy as other apps but it gets it job done when it comes to integrating with CloudApp on the iPad to offer uploads and smart URL detection from the system clipboard. If you need CloudApp on your iPad, this simple and lightweight app is a $1.99 purchase here.

DwellClick Changes The Way You Click & Drag

Whether your main desktop setup consists of an iMac rocking a Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse or you’re more of a MacBook user relying on the built-in glass trackpad, input methods on OS X machines don’t change. In fact, moving the cursor on screen and clicking and selecting and dragging stuff around hasn’t changed for decades. In the same way Steve Jobs saw the first mouse device almost thirty years ago and was impressed by the concept of interacting with items on screen, today’s pointing devices retain the original concept of a user’s hand and fingers touching an external or embedded surface / buttons to perform actions like scrolling, selection, clicks and drags. Of course iOS devices have changed this: with multi-touch gestures and displays, the user no longer moves something on screen, he touches the screen. Many say Lion is going the way of iOS with the addition of gestures and iOS-like commands, but as long as computers have non-touch displays the fundamental concept of indirect clicking and controls will live. DwellClick, a new app available on the Mac App Store, provides a way to change the default behavior of clicking and dragging on OS X by enhancing the experience with less clicks and button pressing.

DwellClick basically enables clickless operations on a computer. Instead of clicking you move and point, and DwellClick will take care of the actual clicking for you. Same applies for dragging windows and files or scrolling a page: as DwellClick is smart enough to recognize whether you’re hovering over an app window, a folder or a scrollbar, the utility will understand what you want to do and contextually change its functionality to let you move a window, scroll without releasing you hand from the trackpad, and so forth. DwellClick wants you to save hundreds of clicks every day, but it’s clearly not an app for everyone. Those who are used to clicks and scrolling after years of computing won’t probably appreciate the new ideas brought along by DwellClick. In fact, I had a hard time trying not to click everything on screen in my first tests when I was just moving the cursor with DwellClick enabled – as you move and stop the cursor, DwellClick clicks. You can set a click delay time in the settings, as well as disable automatic clicking and dragging, or customize the color of the blinking light that tells you DwellClick has clicked something on screen or started dragging an element around.

DwellClick also plays well with modifier keys and control-clicking: when the app’s turned on, you can hit keys like Cmd, Option or Control to tell DwellClick they should go with the next click. Or, you can simply double-press one of those keys to “lock it” with a visual cue displayed on screen. Similarly, hitting the Fn key when DwellClick’s running will activate an iOS-like popup menu to double-lick, drag and control-click. It sounds complicated but it’s actually very intuitive once you’ve found your perfect delay time. You can read more to get the hang of it in DwellClick’s online User Guide.

At $11.99 in the App Store, DwellClick doesn’t come cheap but it’s undoubtedly an app that dramatically changes the way you control your computer. For users who don’t mind change and innovation, this utility will probably make using a Mac even easier; for people like me, change will be difficult especially when you’re really used to the standard way of clicking and selecting files. But you should give it a try if you’re looking for something new.

Aelios Lets You Explore The World’s Weather with an Innovative Concept

Released earlier today in the App Store and created by Jilion, developers of the beautiful SublimeVideo HTML5 video player, Aelios for iPad is a new weather app that I’ve been testing over the past week, which aims at offering a fresh and innovative experience for “exploring weather” on the tablet like no other. The app, rather than displaying complex data sets and graphs to showcase current weather and forecasts with every possible detail, wants to give users a great new way to browse an interactive map on screen that’s also able to automatically tell the app the location you might want to check out.

The concept is new, so here’s how Aelios works: the main UI is made of a map and a “ring” you can dial and move on the map. When you move the ring on the map, it automatically locks to the most highly populated location it finds; so, for example, if you head over Italy quickly, the ring will lock into Rome by default, and same applies for London in the UK. If you do want, however, to fine tune your location search and see the map in greater detail, you can zoom in and choose any other location recognized by the software, or simply hit the button and fetch your current position. You can also manually search for a location thanks to the search button in the upper right hand corner. Once you’ve found a location you’re interested in, it’s time to focus on the ring. By default the ring displays time in a convenient 24 hour format that places midnight at the top and noon at the bottom in a virtual watch. The watch also shows the hours of dark and light, and visualizes how many hours of the current day are left before tomorrow. As you tap on the screen, weather icons for current conditions and forecasts will jump next to the ring to show temperature and wind depending on the time of the day. Everything happens around the ring and virtual watch locked to your location, basically. But if you try to rotate the dial, the ring switches to a different view and shows the next 7 days of forecasts, rather than just today. The concept is the same with icons next to the virtual watch, temperature, wind, and so forth. When you want to go back to the 24 hour view, rotate again and you’re set. The animations, the graphics, the sounds are top-notch in Aelios. The app supports both landscape and portrait mode and allows you to tweak units in the Settings.

At $2.99 in the App Store, Aelios is a beautiful app by Jilion that doesn’t disappoint when it comes to quickly checking out weather forecasts through an innovative UI that might be disorienting at first, but grows over time as it makes the entire experience of browsing maps and tapping around real fun. Make sure you don’t miss the promo video on the app’s website.

Zootool for iPhone Collects Your Visual Bookmarks

Zootool, a visual bookmarking platform I had the chance to review when it first came out almost two years ago, has launched an official app a few weeks ago in the App Store, taking the full Zootool experience to the iPhone. If you’re already a Zootool user, you know what to expect from the service: Zootool allows you to collect anything from the web anytime and anywhere thanks to a series of bookmarklets that are capable of grabbing images and videos, as well as entire webpages to save as bookmarks in your account; accounts can be either public and private, with the former option allowing you to share your web discoveries with other Zootool users, a vibrant community that collects cool inspirational resources and links from around the web. Items in your “zoo” can be tagged and collected in packs, plus the service, unlike other bookmarking tools like Pinboard and Delicious, adds a whole visual layer to saved websites and files thanks to inline previews for everything. Zootool is highly visual, and the iPhone app is the perfect replacement for the web browser while you’re on the go.

The main screen gives you access to your bookmarks, the public timeline of people you follow, your profile and active / popular / featured users. Users can be followed in-app, you can check out their recent “lasso catches”, and all entries and links to other web profiles (like Twitter). Entries from others can be copied and opened in Safari, viewed inline or added to your collection; Zootool for iPhone provides the same editing interface of the web app to modify tags, descriptions and links, but the developers also went as far as adding a new bookmarklet built specifically for Mobile Safari that will help you save images and pages from the browser. In the “Your Zoo” view, the app allows you to view all your entries, items organized by packs and tags. Youtube videos can’t be viewed inline as in the web app, but everything else performs exactly as you would expect from Zootool, only it’s been ported to a native app. One cool thing I’ve noticed: if a URL is in your clipboard, Zootool will automatically detect it and ask you to add it to your Zoo.

Zootool for iPhone is a great example of how a full-featured web app should be brought to a smaller screen. The app is elegant, fast, gorgeous to look at and retains all the functionalities seen on the web. You can download Zootool for iPhone at $1.99 from the App Store.

Tweed for iPad Filters Your Timeline, Integrates with Instapaper

Released earlier today at $2.99 in the App Store, Tweed is a Twitter client for iPad aimed at presenting you links from your Twitter timeline. Instead of visualizing all tweets from people you follow, mentions and direct messages as most Twitter clients do, Tweed filters links out of your timeline, enabling you to “drag them” onto a stack on the right that will generate previews for the selected webpages. As you log in with your Twitter credentials, Tweed will display tweets that contain links in a narrow sidebar on the left; if you place your finger on a tweet, you’ll be able to move in on the right, and go back to the timeline. The more tweets you save in the right panel, the more pages Tweed will stack on top of each other, letting you tap on them to read the original article. Very simple. When in web view mode, you can check out the normal page or switch to text-only mode. When you’re done reading, you can tap on the tweet bubble and flick it to delete it from the stack.

One cool feature I’ve noticed in Tweed is direct Instapaper integration. Tweed comes with a Read Later tab, but unlike other apps that support Instapaper and also have their own reading queue, Tweed’s reading list mirrors every link to Instapaper – if you save 5 articles in there, those 5 articles will be immediately sent to Instapaper. If you can’t find enough reading material in your timeline, Tweed’s developers have baked some curated Twitter lists into the app showcasing relevant Apple and tech news, world news, and so forth. The selection is pretty good, although limited for now given the early nature of the app.

Tweed won’t replace your default Twitter client, but it may come in handy if you’re looking for a way to turn your timeline into a list of links you’re likely interested in. You can download Tweed at $2.99 from the App Store.

Tweet It Makes Tweeting from iOS Simple and Integrated

There’s no shortage of Twitter clients with embedded web views on the iPhone and iPad: most Twitter apps nowadays allow you to check out a webpage inline without leaving the timeline and jumping to Safari, thus making it easy to follow links from people you follow and go back to the main view in seconds. However, most of the time I still find myself discovering articles and stuff I want to tweet when browsing the Internet using Safari or iCab mobile: whether it’s a new post by Ben Brooks or Shawn Blanc, or a cool video I stumble upon on YouTube, I want to be able to easily send a webpage from the browser to my Twitter client of choice. But that’s usually not possible, as Twitter clients typically don’t offer integration with the system browser in the way I want – that is, being able to send both the webpage title and URL from Safari to the client. And those apps that do offer bookmarklets to send a link from the browser straight to the app are often limited to the link itself and not the title, which I always have to copy and paste manually.

Tweet It, a new $1.99 universal app released today, provides a sweet solution to tweet links to webpages including the title of the original source, also allowing you to set up a custom URL shortening service for a bit of personalization, and other options to make tweeting super simple. Tweet It is solely focused on enabling you to tweet links: the app supports multiple Twitter accounts but there’s so timeline at all – it’s an app to tweet links you found interesting. Sure you can send regular status updates too, but the focus on browser integration is made obvious by buttons to shorten a link using CloudApp, bit.ly and goo.gl, or an embedded web view that, through another button, lets you open webpages within Tweet It and choose to insert a title, URL or title+URL in the message. Alternatively, if you’ve copied a link from Safari and you launch Tweet It, the app will detect the link in your clipboard and offer you the possibility to fire it off to Twitter. There’s more: with the installation of a bookmarklet, you’ll be able to send a webpage title and URL from Safari to Tweet It in seconds. In any way you want to share a page, Tweet It has you covered.

Tweet It is minimal, simple and powered by a delicious UI. It runs both on the iPhone and iPad, and it’s got some clever ideas to make tweeting links a real pleasure. You can download Tweet It at $1.99 from the App Store.

Picturescue Recovers Photos from iOS Backups

When an iPhone or iPad gets stolen or lost, we immediately worry about our personal data stored on the device (like email, contacts, passwords and history) being accessed by someone else with no good intentions. Whilst Apple’s free Find my iPhone service allows us to easily block and wipe a device that’s no longer with us, the loss of personal media like photos and videos is something we can’t fix remotely, at least not yet. Picturescue, a new Mac app by developers Pádraig Kennedy and John Ryan, provides a dead-simple solution to recover photos from an iOS device: rather than plugging directly into an iPhone or iPad, Picturescue reads the backup stored locally on your computer to retrieve photos and export them in their original format to a new location. This means that, provided you’ve synced your device with iTunes and you’ve decided to save an unencrypted backup (Picturescue can’t read encrypted iTunes backups for now), you’ll be able to view photos and export them at any time. It’s as easy as firing up the software, selecting the device in the sidebar, and choosing the photos to export.

Picturescue can be downloaded for free if you only want to view photos found in the backup file, and a $4.99 purchase gives you the possibility to export. The lack of support for encrypted backups is a major downside, but considering iTunes defaults to unencrypted backups on Mac and Windows machines, this shouldn’t be a problem for all those people that don’t care about password-protecting their iOS device backups. Get the app here.

3do: A Reminder App with a 3D Twist

There’s no shortage of reminder apps on the iPhone: from the excellent Due app that also works on the iPad with Dropbox synchronization of alerts and tasks to Notificant, a cloud solution that fires off notifications on iOS devices, Macs and web browsers, one could say reminder apps are the new Twitter clients or GTD apps of the App Store ecosystem. As the iPhone is always with us, being able to be easily reminded of important things has become a priority for iOS software developers. 3do, a new app by Cleversome, aims at reinventing the mobile notification space by offering an innovative interface based on swipe gestures that, instead of forcing you to switch between multiple screens to get your alarms and due dates going, allows you to do everything in one screen thanks to beautiful 3D animations within a single menu.

3do is made of two screens: the reminders you set up, and the settings, accessible with a pull-up gesture from the main screen. Think of Twitter’s popular pull-to-refresh gesture, only applied at the bottom and aimed at opening a new window. It works pretty well, though it may be unintuitive at first. The easiest way to get how 3do works is by adding a new reminder: tap the + button, and begin typing to add a description. Once the reminder is written down, swipe on it to rotate the view and get to another menu with icons to mark a reminder as complete or favorite, share it via email or SMS, or delete it. If you swipe again on the reminder, the view rotates a second time to reveal the alarms you can assign, and I deeply appreciate the fact that you can set up two by default – say one 15 minutes before and one “on time.” But there’s more: keep swiping and the cube rotates to show due settings like “due once”,  “due daily”, “due weekly” and “due monthly”, which are pretty useful to create repeating timers and reminders for the future. One last swipe, and the 3D view gets you back to the original screen. Is 3D a gimmick in 3do? Maybe, but at least it works well. I’ve been beta testing the app, and whilst there’s no doubt the whole thing has fancy effects to capture your attention, I believe using animations to save space and put everything in a single window is actually quite clever. Like I said, using 3D effects surely isn’t “necessary”, but in this app is functional to the main purpose.

3do has also got an intelligent implementation of alarm notifications and snooze options. Besides letting you assign multiple alarms and due dates, when a reminder is due you’ll get the standard iOS notification that brings you to app; but once a reminder nears its overdue time, 3do displays a menu telling you that’s the last alarm, and you can choose to set up a new one in 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or just mark it as complete.

You can download 3do at $4.99 from the App Store. The app might be a little pricey for the average iOS user looking for a simple reminder solution that works across devices (3do doesn’t have iPad or web counterparts at the moment), but if you’re looking for an innovative way to manage and schedule reminders on the iPhone 3do has got you covered. Check out more screenshots below. Read more