When Matt Comi and friends Neven Mrgan and Cabel Sasser set out to create a one of a kind experience on the iPhone and iPad, they not only succeeded in delivering something that met everyone’s expectations: they knocked it out of the park.
Posts in reviews
The Incident
Speed-Up Gives you an iTunes Playback Throttle
Audiobook and podcast listeners might be a little more impatient than most. Occasionally we come across that news podcast or something that doesn’t require our full attention. When time is of the essence, why not speed things up a little bit? Speed-Up by WetFish Software is an incredibly simple application that sits in your menubar and allows you to adjust the playback speed of currently playing items in iTunes. While speeding through some of the blogger podcasts just to get the gist, I got thinking, “What would a Molly Rant sound like at .25x the speed?” You’ll just have to download the application and a BOL podcast to find out.
Simple utility status: Not for everyone, but it works like a charm. Licenses come at $5 a pop.
[Speed-up]
Nozbe: Web-based GTD on iPad and iPhone. Reviewed.
Talking about GTD apps and online tools is difficult, and you know why? Because my method of Getting Things Done will always be different from yours, so will the apps I use, so will the fact that I used to constantly switch between different softwares. More on this tomorrow, though.
Discussing GTD is like talking about favorite foods: at an extent, it’s pointless. I can’t come up here and say “Hey, you should work this way - don’t organize tasks like that”. That’s why when Cody and I reviewed Basecamp and Backpack we decided to talk about our experience, rather than giving away some pretentious advices to wanna-be entrepreneurs and the like.
GTD is personal. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a Nozbe account and downloaded the iPhone and iPad apps. I was intrigued by the whole “Do in the web, find it again on mobile apps” concept, and I was fascinated by the terrific amount of integration with 3rd party online services the developers advertised.
So, Nozbe. I’ll just throw this out there: if you’re not an OmniFocus user and feel the need of having more than just tasks in your GTD application, Nozbe is the best you can have right now. With real OTA sync. With real Evernote integration. Oh, and with team-management capabilities.
Review: IconBox 2.0, Icon Management for your Mac
I know quite a few of you MacStories readers are die hard icon fanatics. The Mac community is full of young and vibrant designers willing to get down and dirty with Photoshop, and entire communities are built around various Mac themes, icon sets, and related design mischief. Though after folders and folders of icons, you might be wondering if there’s a better way to organize your collection of icons. Today, I’d like to introduce you to IconBox, a full featured icon library for your Mac. If you haven’t heard about IconBox and their latest 2.0 release, or you’re on the fence about an application like this, I think you’ll enjoy this review.
Refresh for Mac Gives you Instant Search on Any Website
Fever & Ashes, The Full Review
Color us red – Federico and I were never Fever users until recently. Supposedly we had been missing out on one of the world’s greatest RSS applications, and sequentially we were told to, “Get out.” So both of us bit the bullet a couple weeks ago and dropped the $30 from our paychecks just to see what all of the hype is about. And after a bit of monkeying around with Nearly Free Speech, both of us now have relatively cheap server space to host it all. As a result, we have a review.
Blast for Mac Keeps Recently Opened Files and Apps in your Menubar
When Federico talked about subfolders on iOS 4 earlier today, he started to hit on an issue with folders in general. Management. We’re entering an era of computing where it’s not so much about where you store files, but about your device taking care of you. I suppose the word I want to use is “containers.” In iOS 4, we have a hidden container for photographs and pictures which the Photos app manages, and we have a hidden container for podcasts and music which the iPod app manages. My ideas of management have been fluctuating lately, and today I’m feeling a little frisky: people shouldn’t have to manage the files and folders on their computer even though they want to.
I even think of the Mac having containers; your Documents folder; your Downloads folder; your Desktop folder; all of these are places where users dump files for basic organization. Some wish to further their organization with subfolders, but when it comes to finally retrieving documents it can be a pain.
Blast realizes that finding files between editing and viewing can be cumbersome – it’s worse when you can’t even remember what you worked on yesterday if you happen to have weird naming conventions. Blast by Apparent sits in your menubar and gives you access to recently used files and applications which helps reduce the need to navigate the filesystem.
Apple to Sell 18 to 25 Million iPads in 2011?
The iPad is gaining such momentum that I can see it hitting the 18 Million mark (especially as the corporate world adopts the device), but 25 million might stretching it. All Things D is reporting that the iPad could become the new iPod, stating that Apple could sell 15 million units this year and 28 million next. This is considered as the best case scenario for Apple, but even I’m a little skeptical of estimated numbers.
[All Things D MediaMemo & Digital Daily via 9 to 5 Mac]
AppChest: Manage Your Licenses, Find Hot Deals - Review and Giveaway!
One of the greatest things about the App Store is that you don’t have software licenses to keep. You have an account, you purchase apps, those apps are tied to your account. No paid upgrades to keep track of across mailboxes, no registration emails, in-app purchases at best. That’s why people buy applications in the App Store: because it’s simple and you only have to setup a Paypal account or enter your credit card details.
The same cannot be said about the Mac: there’s no unified store, and if you want an app you have to visit the developer’s website and download it. You have a license for each app, and storing all of them in a single location can be a huge time waster. That’s why softwares like AppChest come in handy and, guess what, we’ve got 5 (ahem) licenses to give away.