Compare Timezones On The Go With Timelanes

When I ask myself what timezone a friend (or more recently, colleague) lives in, I fire up the Clocks app on my iPhone or Every Time Zone when I’m on my Mac. In many cases, this needs quite some time and disrupts my workflow; I need to go back to my mail or calendar or any other situation which required this knowledge (meetings, mails or projects) and apply the time differences to them. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Timelanes by B-ReelProducts, immediately bought it, and from time to time while trying it out, I remembered some awkward situations in which I could have needed exactly this app to enhance my workflow.

Timelanes basically is Every Time Zone on the go — with some handy extras and a different, but in no way worse UI. When launching it for the first time, the app automatically locates your current timezone and displays it styled as a horizontal lane. This way, it centralizes your chosen hour of the day, plus indicating the exact current time with a small clock indicator. At the same time, you can easily switch between the days or come back to the current time using the arrows and the clock button at the center of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, or you can scroll horizontally until you reach the exact point in time you need (Timelanes works both in portrait and landscape mode).

From here, comparing timezones and times is just two taps away. Using the plus button, you can search for any city in the world — not just those standard “indicating” cities like NYC or Mumbai — and add them to your lanes. Those behind your current timezone are displayed above, those ahead are arranged below it. Tap the weekday information and it will change to the actual date, so you can see when the new day begins in every timezone; swipe one, and you can delete them again. Here lays a small and more or less the only design flaw of the app: the edges of the delete button are scruffy and look pretty ugly in my opinion. Read more

Bloomberg: Apple Announcing Thinner MacBook Pro at WWDC→

Bloomberg: Apple Announcing Thinner MacBook Pro at WWDC

Following today’s report from The Wall Street Journal about new iCloud features set to be announced at the upcoming WWDC in June, Bloomberg has weighed in confirming a rumor posted today by 9to5Mac about the company’s new MacBook Pro line.

The MacBook Pro machines, to be unveiled at Apple’s annual developers conference starting June 11, also will feature high- definition screens like those on the iPhone and iPad, as well as flash memory to cut startup times and extend battery life, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been made public.

According to Bloomberg, Apple may also announce the release of the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, at WWDC. Previously, Apple had simply confirmed the desktop OS upgrade would be coming “late summer”, without specifying a release date. The publication also suggests Ivy Bridge chips from Intel will be used, as previously reported. Retina displays for Macs is something Apple has been experimenting with in software releases for quite some time now, too, albeit such hardware implementation will require app and website developers to update their graphics for the new screens.

As many are speculating, two distinct reports about WWDC in one day seem to suggest a “controlled leak” by Apple to set expectations for the event, something the company did in the past. Prior to the iPhone 4S’ announcement, for instance, The Wall Street Journal pinpointed the device’s release timeframe and carrier support in the US, a move that several blogs connected to a “controlled leak” amidst rampant rumors during the summer. Apple itself went on the record saying those rumors negatively impacted the iPhone’s performances during the quarter.

WWDC ‘12 kicks off in San Francisco on June 11.

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Simple: Online And Mobile Banking With Style

New services providing financial management usually evoke doubtful feelings within us, as we tend to rely on big, long-time running companies with a good reputation rather than small competitors new to the game. More or less exactly two years ago, in May 2010, Alex Payne joined and co-founded a company called BankSimple with the imagination of a bank without fees, caring for support and responsible money treatment — plus a love for good design and usability concerning its user-end products. It already sounded like an ambitious goal the day he published his announcement post.

Two years later, his company, Simple, has grown into a still small, innovative and transparent financial service for US-residents who own a social security number, a computer, and an iPhone. It’s a combination of “classic” credit card payment and modern online banking. Read more

WSJ: iCloud Getting Photo Sharing and Commenting, Video Syncing at WWDC→

WSJ: iCloud Getting Photo Sharing, Commenting, Video Syncing at WWDC

A new report by The Wall Street Journals claims Apple will be announcing a series of new features for iCloud at WWDC, including a revamped photo sharing system with support for user comments.

The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

The full report is available (behind paywall) at The Wall Street Journal. The publication also confirms iCloud.com will be getting support for Notes and Reminders web apps, as we previously detailed based on a “leaked” beta version of the service.

However, to say that “users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream” is incorrect. A feature of iPhoto for iOS called “Journals” and released in early March allows users to build sets of photos and share them publicly with a URL through iCloud. These Journals even support additional graphics such as backgrounds, text captions, and they can be viewed in any browser, allowing users to zoom in on single photos and download them. Here is an example of iCloud Journal.

Whilst it would make sense for Apple to simplify iCloud photo sharing and allow easier commenting especially from mobile devices, Photo Stream isn’t the only option to “store one set of photos”. Journals are limited to iPhoto, which is a separate app sold on the App Store that doesn’t come pre-installed on iOS devices, but they certainly show that Apple has been experimenting with iCloud-based public sharing for quite some time, even offering an API to developers for that (albeit limited to storage, with no display options as the WSJ implies here). With MobileMe approaching its deadline of June 30, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Apple’s existing solution to store and share photos, MobileMe Gallery, will stop functioning alongside the service, so it wouldn’t be a surprise for Apple to offer an alternative.

Apple’s WWDC is scheduled to kick off in San Francisco on June 11. Developers have been asking for more tools to integrate their apps with iCloud, and it’s very likely that Apple will announce additions to the service, as well as offer previews of iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion at its upcoming developer event.

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Sparrow 1.2 for iPhone Brings Landscape Support, Labels Management

Sparrow 1.1 brought minor enhancements to the best alternative email client for iPhone, including a built-in browser and a Send & Archive option. Sparrow 1.2, released today, adds much-requested support for landscape mode to an email app that, in this new version, also lets you manage email labels and folders.

I have been testing Sparrow 1.2, and while I am no fan of landscape mode on iOS (I never use such functionality on the iPhone), I recognize how some users are going to perform some serious typing for their email replies thanks to Sparrow 1.2. The whole compose interface has been updated to take advantage of the different orientation.

Two features that I have been enjoying in Sparrow 1.2 are proper label/folder management, and improved navigation between messages. The latter brings a nicer, cleaner design to the message “preview” you get when pulling a message up to reveal the next one. Folder/label management, on the other hand, now lets Sparrow directly create, edit, and delete labels or folders without leaving the app to use a web interface or desktop client.

I have tested the feature with Gmail (both regular and Google Apps accounts) and iCloud, and I was pleased to see Sparrow differentiated visually between labels (for Gmail) and folders (for iCloud mail). Because label management has been implemented in the mid panel – the one Sparrow uses to list an account’s mailboxes – you won’t be able to swipe-to-delete; instead, management has been assigned to a new “Edit” button that shows up in the Folders or Labels sections of a single account.

Meanwhile, the Sparrow team has also confirmed that Apple won’t allow them to implement push notifications through the VoIP framework, as they did in early betas of the app. Sparrow will have to build notification support on the server’s side, and the developers confirm this will require a yearly subscription for Sparrow users willing to use push notifications. Previously, the Sparrow developers said push support would be coming “with or without Apple”.

With proper label management, landscape mode, localization in 9 additional languages, and bug fixes, Sparrow for iPhone continues its march towards becoming the best email client for iPhone. You can find Sparrow 1.2 on the App Store today.

Review: World Atlas For iPhone

Good design certainly is not all to care about. Sometimes, a nifty UI can solve many problems or even hide certain failures in functionality. But it can be as perfect and unique as conceivable — if a product doesn’t work at all, good design cannot change that. Unfortunately, I came across a very good example for this: World Atlas by Technoplus. I only tested the iPhone version, so I cannot tell anything about the usability of the separately sold iPad app yet. But on the iPhone, it’s easy to sum up World Atlas as a well-designed, yet pretty useless app, coded without real care for good UX and features. Read more

Apple Starts Changing “iPad WiFi + 4G” Name To “WiFi + Cellular”

As noted by 9to5mac, Apple has started changing the “iPad WiFi + 4G” name to “iPad WiFi + Cellular” in some countries. Currently, the change is live on several international versions of Apple.com, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong. Other countries, such as Italy or France, still report the new iPad as “iPad WiFi + 4G” in the Tech Specs page of the product in what appears to be a gradual update of the device’s name. On the websites where the change has already taken effect, a version cached by Google shows the old “WiFi + 4G” product name.

The new iPad, available in almost 90 countries, comes with “4G” networking capabilities, albeit only in some countries, and on selected carriers with support for LTE. Because of Apple’s initial marketing of the device as “4G” regardless of country availability, the company came under scrutiny from Australian and UK regulators, who claimed Apple was falsely advertising the iPad as “4G” and misleading customers without properly specifying such feature was dependent on carrier support.

In Australia, Apple was forced to change its marketing for the new iPad by stating on its website the device wasn’t compatible with Australian 4G networks. In spite of the iPad still working with 3G networks, however, Apple decided to keep the “WiFi + 4G” name even after the initial clarification. This appears to be changing now as the company rolls out an updated product name across all its international websites.

Apple’s iPad Tech Specs page carrying the new name is available here.

Paperless→

Paperless

For the past year, I have been getting rid of paper to archive everything – from receipts to medical bills or business cards, everything – digitally, securely, online. In doing so, I found David Sparks’ Mac Power Users a great resource to learn more about apps and workflows I can use on my Mac and iPad to capture, organize, and archive documents I may need again someday. For the past few weeks, I have especially enjoyed using Scanner Pro on my iPad in combination with a Doxie Go for “bigger” documents and Notability, which is a fine app that lets me annotate webpages and documents and save them into Evernote. On the iPad, I keep a plethora of apps to work with PDFs, but my most used ones remain PDF Expert, PDFPen, and GoodReader.

This week, David published his first book about going paperless, aptly named The MacSparky Paperless Field Guide. Put simply, if you’re planning on removing paper from your life or you’re even slightly interested in this whole idea of digitalizing bits of paper, David’s book is the guide you need to achieve a state-of-the-art system. I have been reading the book, and it’s full of tips and broad recommendations to illustrate how you can capture documents, the apps you can use (both on OS X and iOS), and the best techniques you can rely on to future-proof your PDFs. I have already discovered a couple of new apps thanks to David’s book.

Even better, Paperless has been entirely built using iBooks Author, and it shows: it’s not exactly a “book” as much as it’s an interactive guide with support for two iPad orientations (with different layouts), image galleries, contextual menus, over an hour and a half of screencasts, and iBooks Author’s fancy touch-based navigation. This is the future of independent publishing.

Paperless is only $4.99 on the iBookstore.

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Astronut→

Astronut

One of my favorite iPhone games, Astronut by The Iconfactory, was released on the iPad earlier this week. In 24 levels fully optimized for the Retina display, you can enjoy Astronut’s well-known game mechanics (a floating astronaut jumps from planet to planet avoiding enemies and obstacles) with controls reworked for the device’s larger display.

Graphics and sound effects aside (they are both top-notch), I am liking Astronut for iPad even more than the iPhone version because of its control scheme. Astronut for iPad plays in portrait mode, with buttons to jump and activate boost placed at the sides of the screen where your thumbs typically are. This is extremely intelligent game and interface design. But there’s more: you can use Astronut for iPhone as a remote – this has allowed me to prop my iPad on a stand in my living room, and enjoy the game with my friends, sharing the iPhone as a controller.

Only $1.99 on the App Store. Don’t miss the video.

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