Quicksilver Helps Our Productivity

By Federico Viticci

There is no doubt that much of the beauty of Mac OS X lies in its simplicity: to install an app just drag it into a folder, move it to trash to uninstall it ,keep it in dock to quickly launch it.

Three simple processes that Windows users are still dreaming of. But what happens when you have several applications on your Mac but do not want to keep all in the dock?
You need a “launcher”, a small app that could be easily and that can afford to run any application in less than 2 seconds.

We therefore talk about QuickSilver.

Best Ubiquity Commands

By Federico Viticci

A small list of Ubiquity commands that I daily use:

tiny: to quickly create a tinyURL

g: to show the results of a search on google

And more after the jump!

Mailplane: brings Gmail to your Mac Desktop.

By Federico Viticci

“Get Gmail out of the browser tab. And start saving time. “

Today I want to talk about an application that have saved my life over the past two months: Mailplane.

Gmail is surely one of the most used mail services in the world.
Since Google has launched this service 5 years ago , after a first (and typical) period of skepticism, Gmail has been able to reach a large number of users due to its simple, clear and functional interface.
Not to mention the power and versatility of the available options .
Gmail, however,has been a regular “site” up to now: some people keep it in bookmarks, some keep an always open tab , but it’s still a site.

What would happen then if the power of Gmail were integrated into a desktop app?

Here comes Mailplane.

Designing the Browser of the Future

By Federico Viticci

[This is a total update & restyling of 7 months old post. Updated to December 2009]

I recently stumbled upon this post by Aza Raskin where he outlines the pros and cons of a brand new way of using Firefox: a vertical sidebar with multiple items in it. That post made me think a lot about this subject: how can we improve the browsers, what can designers and developers do to make browsers more usable and “modern”? I started searching for other similar resources and I found a couple of interesting mockups from GoSquared, IA and Cocoia. This post will showcase these mockups and provide some ideas about how can browsers evolve and get ready for “the future”.

Enjoy!