After stellar remarks and compliments from Nissan and Unilever, you’d think iAd was a complete success in winning over the hearts of Apple’s partners right? All Things Digital is reporting that Apple’s restrictive iAds policies are having a dramatic effect on progress in the mobile ad space. Disney, J.C. Penny, and Citigroup Inc. just recently got their ads into the mobile space after the month of July was dominated by Nissan and Unilever PLC, while companies like Channel SA ended up dropping their iAds compaign announced at Apple’s launch event.
Apple’s iAd Not Off to a Happy Start After All?
Nebulous Notes for iPad
When I saw Nebulous Notes for the iPad in the App Store, I raised an eyebrow at the reviews. An otherwise solid looking notepad was getting shit ratings because the developer started things off on a good note with an honest, self review. Yes, he gave himself five stars. But I don’t know why people get bent out of shape when the developer openly admitted he’s reviewing himself when there’s shady companies that do this hundreds of times over to game the system. One five star review isn’t going to greatly affect an app ranking in the large scale of things, so kudos to the developer for his strong beliefs in an application he’s put a lot of work into. I think there was good intentions here, even if commenters on the App Store have taken it the wrong way.
So I downloaded the application, and I found Nebulous Notes to be okay as an ideal Dropbox application for taking notes. All the icons are pretty, Dropbox syncing is seamless, and I can lock my contents to keep my work private from users I share the iPad with. With a few improvements, this could be my go-to notes application.
Times for iPad Winners Announced
Thanks everyone who entered the Times for iPad giveaway. We also want to thank the Acrylic Software developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.
Here are the winners:
Daniel
Justin Heintz
Canfora
Francesco
Rajkumar
You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few minutes. Congratulations!
Survey Favors iPad as a Go-To Device
One of the reasons I read on the iPad so much is because of tools like Instapaper, Reeder, and Times. I think of my Dad every time I use Instapaper, as I imagine the plentiful snippets of articles I send him are immediately dropped into a “do later” folder that never gets checked. His ability to readily read content would be dramatically increased via Instapaper’s web app on his aging Dell, especially if I created a script for it. I haven’t heard from him lately, but I imagine he’s still perusing through Yahoo or MSN news rather than reading the few All Things Digital or Ars Technica gigs I send him.
I used to visit sites every day, but by achieving a workflow with so many wonderful tools that all do different things, I’m able to delegate content for later reading, tackle it now, or share good articles with my friends. You can bookmark and highlight text in a paperback book or a newspaper in real life, but the digital savviness acquired by the iPad (and even the Kindle) have made digital content less disposable than physical paper. Mind blown right? Obviously it should be the other way around. While we’ll elaborate on this some more another time, a recent survey in the United Kingdom has me hoping that people live along the same lines of thinking I do. Digital content is more convenient, accessible, and engaging than paper equivalents.
Win A Copy of TaskAware for iPhone
TaskAware is an iPhone application we reviewed a while ago here which lets you tie your tasks to a specific location and organize them. It’s a got a good-looking UI and, most of all, looks great on the iPhone 4 Retina Display.
We have 3 US promo codes up for grabs. Just leave a comment below, and that’s it! Winners will be announced on Sunday - good luck!
Axon Haptic Tablet Can Boot Snow Leopard for $800
The Axon Logic Haptic might be the iPad alternative you’re looking for if you’d like to run any flavor of the Darwin OS, which includes OS X.
First Look: Cloud2go, a CloudApp Client for iPhone
Cloud was one of the hottest app released for Mac OS X last year. Clever marketing techniques (remember the “every Mac user’s wet dream”?), invite-only beta, a great “Raindrops” plugin system: Cloud app quickly became for many the de-facto standard to share stuff on the web. Whether you want to upload and share links, pics, archives or documents, Cloud is perfect: powered by an elegant web view and beautiful short URL (cl.ly), I’m still using it.
Now you know what’s missing from the Cloud ecosystem: a mobile version. And that’s exactly what Cloud2go is all about: it’s the first unofficial iPhone client for CloudApp.
The iPhone 4 Skin for the most Sophisticated Photographers
Eighteen dollars can nab you an SGP Skin Guard that not only protects that classy glass, it transforms your iPhone into a camera lover’s best friend.
Regent Street: “Highest Traffic” Apple Store In The World
I’ve never been to England, but once I’ll go there I’ll make sure to visit the Apple Store in Regent Street. It’s the highest traffic Apple Store in the world, one of the company’s most successful ones and a “big bet that worked”.