It Could Be A Mac App: Nirvana, Web Based GTD Management. With Style.

When it comes to getting things done on a Mac, Things from CulturedCode is the way to go. I wrote an in-depth review of Things (both for Mac and iPhone actually) some weeks ago, and let’s face it: Things is just great. It’ one of the finest examples of a simple app that provides a stunning feature set, enabling the user to go through both easy and more complex and structured tasks.

There’s only one major drawback about Things, sync. CulturedCode hasn’t managed yet to come up with an over the air solution for syncing Things for Mac and iPhone, so everything still happens locally - in a local network. As we’re approaching to a cloud based web, forcing the users to sync their stuff locally will soon become outdated and unacceptable. At least for data, everything should move to the cloud now. This is the future, and it’s already happening in many ways.

Back to the GTD thing, what’s the deal of pushing everything to the cloud? It’s a big deal actually. In this post I’ll talk about Nirvana, a very promising web application which already comes packed in a very Mac OS-like interface and aims at revolutionize the way you organize and complete tasks. Both on your Mac and your iPhone.

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How To Style Google Reader Like a Mac App

I use NetNewsWire as my default RSS feeds reader on my Macbook. I find it simple and straightforward, proving a fair amount of features for the stuff I need. But I know many people still uses the web interface available at google.com/reader, which allows you to do some extra things like sharing and liking objects.

Today I was browsing Ember (also, be sure to follow me) and I stumbled upon some nice screenshots of what it seemed Google Reader running in a web browser, but with a custom style that looked like a Mac app. Userstyle, I said. I found the style, I posted a screenshot on Twitter and it turned out many of you guys liked it.

Here’s a brief guide on how to install the style.

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Adobe Could Provide the Source Code of Flash…If Apple Wants It.

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“On Wednesday I expressed some of my concerns about the new iPad, and the expanding footprint of closed platforms built by Apple. Since then, Apple has posted a video of the keynote, and it turns out that in a span of about 2 minutes browsing the web, there are at least 5 instances where there is broken web content. I’ve also spent a lot of time the last two days talking with people about how Apple could consider this a great browsing experience. It’s perplexing.

Unfortunately, a lot of the speculation I’m hearing for why Flash Player isn’t on the iPad doesn’t make sense:

“Flash technology isn’t open” – The Flash file format specifications are open and unrestricted, so Apple can build their own Flash Player if they want. If Apple wants the source code to the Flash Player, we’re happy to provide it, just as we have to many other device manufacturers.”

Apple building its own Flash player? Unlikely. Apple ignoring Adobe? Yes.

iTunes 9.0.3 Available - Bug Fixes, Improved Stability

From the official changelog:

iTunes 9.0.3 provides a number of important bug fixes, including:

  • iTunes no longer ignores your “Remember password for purchases” setting;

  • Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod;

  • Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.

  • Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.

Available through software update, fixes one of the most annoying bugs ever.

New Multi-touch Interactions on the Apple iPad

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“During Apple’s 90 minute unveiling of the iPad this week, a lot of new multi-touch interactions were shown off. But they went by fast. So as a service to digital product designers everywhere, we took the time to extract 8 minutes of new user interface demos from the iPad keynote. Now you can quickly just catch the UI in action on Apple’s new native iPad and iWork applications.”

Interesting video showing off many new gestures and interactions of the iPad. /via @DavidKaneda

EXPERIMENTER, Science Made Easy.

Science has always been a sore subject for me. Maybe it was because I bombed chemistry class in senior high, or struggled with physics in college, but I could never wrap my head around the complexities of the world around me. That is at least until an iPhone app showed me just how awesome science could be. And while it’s not your LHC atom crushing awesome, it’s your accessible easy to do yet you never thought of kind of awesome.

If you’re ever interested in learning how to turn water into ice instantly with a touch of nothing but your finger, this is the app for you.

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Acer Has No Plans for iPad-like Product

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“Historically, closed platforms are typically limited in terms of scale and are confined to niche markets. Apple has built is business out of carving its own niche, which means that while Apple could see success with devices like the iPad, other players are unlikely to be able to replicate its result simply by copying”

Sure they won’t copy the iPad, but we should expect an explosion of tablet devices. Just look at what the iPhone did.

Rucksack: A Better Way to Handle Archives on Mac OS X

I don’t know why, but there’s something wrong about Mac OS X and archives. As you may know Mac OS comes with an application called Archive Utility installed by default, and it’s pretty good when it comes to opening simple .zip archives. Problem is, Archive Utility totally sucks when the file isn’t encoded in zip or it’s a password protected archive. And if you consider that most of the files I download are encrypted .zip’s and .rar archives, you realize that I have a problem. So I decided to try something else. I installed the popular Unarchiver, good for .rar files, but unable to join split archives. I was about to give up.

Fast forward to this morning, my friend Dietmar from Green & Slimy sends a tweet about an app he’s been working on and that’s in beta: it’s called Rucksack. I open the link, I see a sexy website saying “the new iArchiver” and “…the new way to handle archives”. I download the .zip file. I unarchive it with Archive Utility. For the last time.

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Interview with Mike Matas

Great post over at Cocoia blog, where Sebastiaan has asked some questions to Mike Matas, former Delicious Library UI designer and worker at Apple. You’ve go to read this.

“My favorite designs are the ones that don’t just solve a problem, but also engage you on an emotional level—where you take away more from it than just the end result of its function.”