Apple and Piracy

Very difficult subject, and a simple and clear take about it over at Parollo’s blog.

Link.

“Now I have many friends who actually buy application and games for their iPod Touches or iPhone, and I almost see it as a half miracle. Mainly, because it is easy to get apps.

If you want to sell things, make sure that it is easy to buy them.”


NetNewsWire for iPad, Reviewed

I’ve been a NetNewsWire user for a long time. It’s my default RSS app on Mac OS X, and I downloaded the iPhone one with a lot of excitement the same day it was released in the App Store. Sadly, for as much as I love the Mac iteration of NNW (seriously, there’s no better app - yet) I was very disappointed by the iPhone counterpart of Brent Simmons’ app. It was slow, sluggish and, also, it didn’t look nice as I expected. I was so disappointed it that I uninstalled and never installed back again on my iPhone.

For this reason, and because I’m always hoping things may eventually change, I approached NetNewsWire for iPad with a lot of caution. I mean, it comes at 10 bucks, and it will soon go up to 15. It’s a considerable expense, and I didn’t want to be disappointed again like it happened before.
Fortunately NetNewsWire for iPad is a good application, a great first version, which I’m sure many people out there are already loving. I’ve been testing it for over a week now, let’s see what it looks like.

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GameTapp, The Videogames Reviews Aggregator

There was a time when I used to play a lot of videogames. Back then I spent almost 5 hours a day playing, inviting my friends over to beat them at Tekken and share tips and tricks about Final Fantasy VII. We had great times together, and that is also how I got started to English.

Problem is, I don’t have time to play anymore. Work, other business and family stuff and a a dog to take care of are all things that keep me away from firing up my Xbox 360 and enjoy some FF XIII. Yes, I do have a 360. Just as I have a Wii, a PS2 and every Nintendo console you may ever think of. It’s just I don’t have all that time anymore, and if I want to relax a little bit I open Guerrilla Bob or Orbital on my iPhone and spent 15 minutes catching up with my previous records. But still, it’s no console experience.

I still enjoy reading articles and news about games though, and that’s why this new app called GameTapp got me interested when I first saw it in the App Store.

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Alice for iPad, Redefining Digital Books

Who said books on the iPad are lame? No seriously, because after this one you’ll have to fire up your credit card and buy this book in the App Store. Perhaps you’ve already heard about it in the past few days, but we’ve had the chance to put our hands on a copy of Alice for iPad, a recently released book which runs on the iPad but it’s not available in iBooks.

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Complete your Music Collection with Tune Finder

When I find a new artist that I really like on iTunes or elsewhere, the first thing I’ll do is check out their current album. For me, I like to keep only music from the past two years and up on my iPad and iPod touch. With such a current collection, there might just be an earlier album I missed from what I think are new and budding artists, so instead of heading over to Wikipedia or Myspace, I’ve come to check out Tune Finder instead. Read more



Split the Bill, Leave a Tip, Checkmate. Review & Giveaway!

On the fringe of my college campus exists a slew of restaurants. Chinese. Greek. Mexican. No matter where you go, you’re gonna have to sit down and eventually tip your hot, um, friendly waitress. But if there’s one thing I can’t do in my head, it’s percentages (especially if more than one person is involved). How the heck do you tip? Does each person leave a dollar? What if one person forgets to bring cash? (Damn card carrying bastard!) For situations such as these, there is Checkmate. Read more


Marketcircle Announces Billings Pro [Beta]

Marketcircle has just announced that they’re working on a Pro version of their award winning time tracking and freelancing tool, Billings, which we reviewed here.

The Pro version will come with support for multi-user tracking and billing, meaning that it will be geared towards small and medium teams and offices. You can sign up for the beta testing group here. We can’t wait.


Reshaping the Night With Instapaper for iPad

Imagine this: it’s 5am in the morning, your wife is sleeping. But you’re awake, and you don’t want to leave the internet as you’ve got some cool conversations going on with your Twitter followers that just can’t be interrupted now, even if your wife is sleeping and you feel a little bit guilty about it. You stayed up until 5am again. Every day, every night, with the usual excuse that you have to work on your website, you decide to avoid the bed and focus on the latest stories from John Gruber instead. You know everything about iPhone multitasking. You got pissed off when that Adobe’s employee published that post against Apple, you installed iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 1 and you watched Twitter’s Chirp live streaming while having a good cup of coffee. You’re an internet guru, but that doesn’t mean you have excuses for staying up all night again, alone in the dark with your glasses shining in the light of your Macbook.

Then one day, completely enlightened, you thought that maybe, just maybe, you should find a productivity purpose for your dirty little AM secret and do something good for yourself instead of faving tweets. Perhaps you should work? No, something more intellectual. Something that requires darkness, a comfortable chair and silence: you realized you can read in those morning hours. A calm, relaxing and stress-free read you’re usually not able to have during the day because everything is too fast, too short. Read can’t happen when writing blog posts. Definitely not.

Maybe it’s time to give Instapaper another spin.

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