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Fake Shower Review

Akatu Fake Shower may seem like a very stupid app. I mean, watch the promotional video:

Seriously.

Yesterday, after my friend Matt tweeted about Fake Shower, I downloaded it (the app is free) expecting to stumble upon a silly joke. To use Apple’s parlance, I thought it was another fart app, disguised as a clean-looking utility to actually achieve the opposite goal.

Then I decided to look for more information.

It turns out, Akatu is a non-profit NGO that focuses on raising awareness about consumption choices. It was founded on March 15, 2011 (World Consumer Rights Day) with headquarters in São Paulo, Brazil. Here’s a TEDx presentation by one of the co-founders of Akatu, former Brazilian minister Helio Mattar, talking about “conscious consumption”. In short, Akatu’s goal is to show how our consumption habits could be improved.

All the “reviews” of Fake Shower that I found didn’t mention that this app leverages an embarassing premise to cleverly raise awareness on the issue of water consumption. The app’s motto – “Because love is blind, but not deaf” – perfectly sets the tone for an “experience” that, for a lack of a better description, offers a way to cover the sound effects of your bodily activities. But why aren’t more people looking into the organization behind this “stupid app”? Read more

Horizon Calendar 2.0 Adds Natural Language Parsing, Check The Weather Integration

Horizon

Horizon

Back in February, I covered Horizon Calendar, an app developed by Kyle Rosenbluth that cleverly combined the classic aspects of a calendar with basic weather information:

The core aspect of Horizon is how it mixes weather with event information. When creating a new event, the app uses Google location data (which I found to be the best provider here in Italy) to show a list of suggestions in a bar above the keyboard; once you’ve chosen a location, Horizon will fetch a weather forecast (up to 14 days out). The app was created for people who deal with appointments in multiple locations on a daily basis: by entering a single day’s view, you’ll see a list of all your upcoming events alongside their respective locations and weather forecasts.

Horizon Calendar 2.0, released today, is a solid update that adds powerful functionality without sacrificing the app’s usability and ease of use. Following a trend established by apps like Fantastical and Due, Horizon now comes with natural language parsing for event creation: type something like “Skype call on Monday 5 PM until 7” and Horizon will correctly understand and parse your input automatically filling the necessary calendar fields for you.1

Read more

Circles Memory Game→

Delightful new Universal game by Snowman, makers of Checkmark.

It’s clear to me that this is a post-Letterpress game: the menus and navigation are reminiscent of Brichter’s word game, and the multiplayer component is based on Game Center. There is, however, a single-player mode as well where you can practice or try to beat the 120 levels. If you have an iPhone and iPad, Circles will sync using iCloud.

I love Circles’ animations, sound effects, music, and overall flow of interactions within the game.

Plus, a percentage of each sale will be donated to help fund Alzheimer’s research and support programs. Buy a great game and support a good cause.

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Add Multiple OmniFocus Actions at Once Using Drafts 3.0→

When editing my Drafts 3.0 review last night, I removed this sentence from the Reminders section:

“Again, I don’t use this functionality, but it’ll be interesting to see something like this being tweaked to work with Drafts and Reminders”

Sid O’Neill figured it out right away:

Drafts just updated today to version 3.0. There are a whack of new features but one that I’m most interested in is the new “list in Reminders” action. It makes it easy to add multiple actions to Omnifocus without requiring Pythonista.

I forgot Daniel Jalkut had a script to monitor Reminders and add todos to OmniFocus for Mac. If you’re like me, you know you’ll try to make this work with a Mac server and modified default sync times.

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Drafts 3 Review: Better iOS Automation and Workflows

Drafts3

Drafts3

In just a little more than a year, Agile Tortoise’s Drafts has gone from being a quick notepad for small bits of text to a full-featured solution for launching apps, using web services, and chaining multiple apps together – always with a focus on text. With version 2.5, released in January, developer Greg Pierce expanded upon Drafts’ existing support for URL schemes to let users build their own actions and share them with others; in the process, he also updated Drafts to handle advanced operations such as customizable Dropbox write access, strftime timestamps, and deeper x-callback-url support.

Drafts 3.0, released today, is a major update that refines several aspects of version 2.5 and brings powerful new features such as Evernote and Message actions, better action and draft management, tighter Reminders integration, and a way to backup and restore entire sets of actions.

I have been testing Drafts 3.0 for the past month, and, even more than Drafts 2.5, it has become an essential part of my daily workflow.

Read more

Apple Posts “A Decade Of iTunes” Page With Interactive Timeline

Ahead of the 10th anniversary on April 28th, Apple has today posted a dedicated page on iTunes called “A Decade of iTunes”. Available here, the page consists of an interactive timeline with 10 tabs for 10 years, and two charts on the right side with top-selling songs and albums “based on worldwide data”.

As Apple writes:

Celebrate 10 years of iTunes – a decade marked by stunning musical and technological evolution. From historic iPod release to the debut of groundbreaking artists, our timeline captures key moments in our history. Plus, take a look back at the defining albums and songs that hit the top of the charts each year.

Key events are indeed listed in Apple’s timeline. From the introduction of the first iPod and the billionth song sold on February 23, 2006, to the iPad announcement in January 2010 and Justin Timberlake’s recent new worldwide record for album sales with The 20/20 Experience, it’s fun to click through the years and remember important events and releases of the iTunes Store’s first ten years.

The timeline can also be viewed from iOS devices (it’s currently featured on the iTunes Store’s front page), with a nice custom layout on the iPhone.

At its Q2 2013 earnings call yesterday, Apple said that iTunes’ solid media ecosystem helped them achieve more than $4 billion in revenue for iTunes, software, and services in the quarter.

 

Apple Announces WWDC 2013: Kicks Off June 10

Apple has announced the official dates for WWDC 2013. The developer event kicks off in San Francisco on June 10 and runs through June 14 . Tickets will be on sale tomorrow (April 25) at 10 AM Pacific Time.

Despite being an ever popular event that sells out quickly, WWDC 2013 still takes place at Moscone West. In the press release posted this morning, Apple confirmed there will be Apple Design Awards and previews of new versions of iOS and OS X that will be seeded to developers during the event.

We look forward to gathering at WWDC 2013 with the incredible community of iOS and OS X developers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps. We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into their hands at WWDC

WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by over 1,000 Apple employees. As usual, there will be hands-on labs where developers will be able to seek advice from Apple engineers for “code-level assistance, insight into optimal development techniques and guidance”. Read more

Nintendo’s Plan For The 3DS→

Great piece by Kirk Hamilton at Kotaku:

On my 3DS, the little games fit between the bigger games. On my iPhone, the little games fit between all the non-game stuff the device does. Fire Emblem and a handful of other games feel essential to my 3DS in the same way that email and Twitter functionality feel essential on my iPhone. Without the best 3DS games, I’d be much less interested in owning a 3DS; without email or Twitter, I’d be much less interested in owning an iPhone. It’s something of a chicken and egg scenario: Because the 3DS is made primarily to play games, its games feel essential; because the iPhone is made to do so much else, it derives essentiality from other things.

I agree. People interested in gaming aren’t buying a 3DS for its camera software, just like they aren’t buying a PS Vita for the Internet browser. On the flip side, would they buy an iPod touch to get a mix of quick-fix and hardcore games? Would they buy a 3DS just for the non-Nintendo titles of the eShop?

I’m biased, obviously. I am a long-time Nintendo fan and I am enjoying my 3DS. I haven’t been able to deeply appreciate the mechanics of any original iOS game as much as I did for Super Mario 3D Land or Luigi’s Mansion 2. Maybe I did for Ridiculous Fishing, but it’d be like comparing a succulent Italian meal to a great snack. The Wii U is doing bad, but I still have faith in Nintendo’s ability to turn this around.

As Nintendo becomes more serious about its digital ecosystem (here’s my idea from last year), how will they keep differentiating themselves from mobile app stores?

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