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Luc Vandal:

You see, we independent developers rarely get any positive feedback. A lot of it is composed of bad reviews (that are actually support or feature requests) with the occasional pat on the back. I’m also a consumer and, like most of you, I rarely take the time to write a review for apps I use daily. I’m also guilty of leaving bad reviews that may not have been deserved or didn’t bother to contact the developer first. With over one million apps on the App Store, it’s getting harder and harder to have your app stand out in such a crowded market.

This is a good idea. Most people don’t know how positive ratings and reviews can help in the App Store. The fact that users tend to publicly point out the things they don’t like rather than describe the ones they enjoy doesn’t help either. If apps make your personal life or work even just a little better every day, consider using 10 minutes of your time to rate them on the App Store. If you have more detailed feedback or feature requests, send an email to the developers directly. I know what I’m doing tonight. So good.

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Win a Copy of Mailplane

MacStories 1st Giveaway Contest:

Thanks to Ruben Bakker from Mailplaneapp.com, I’m giving away three coupon codes of
Mailplane, the tool that “brings Gmail to your Mac Desktop” and allows you to access Gmail directly from your dock. They are worth $24.95 each,a single user license.

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Mac OS X 10.5.7 Released

Apple has just released 10.5.7 update for Leopard, available through Software Update.

Among many fixes, DFU iPhone compatibility issues have been fixed and it works fine now. A new build of Safari 3 is available as well, together with iPhone 3.0 notes sync.

Launch Mac Applications with Firefox: Quickfire

A little update  to talk about a recently released mac-only extension for mozilla’s browser: Quickfire.

Quickfire can launch any application directly from Firefox : simply start typing the first letters in the address bar to get the results from / Applications folder, press Enter and start the application.

QuickFire Mac Firefox Extension

QuickFire Mac Firefox Extension

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Firefox Bookmarks: How Do You Use Them?

I took inspiration from a post on Planet Ubiquity (http://tinyurl.com/9tten8) to discuss a very important issue of our browsers: bookmarks.
Surely you all know what they are, you can call them Favorites, but in the end they are always bookmarks.

As Dicarlo asked ,do we still need bookmarks? Or are they an unnecessary thing of the past, when the Web was still “new“?
Well, I think he‘s right: bookmarks are too Web 1.0.

At least as we have known them until today.
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Quicksilver Helps Our Productivity

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.

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Mailplane: brings Gmail to your Mac Desktop.

“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.

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Designing the Browser of the Future

[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!

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