App Journal is a series aimed at showcasing apps we have enjoyed using on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but decided not to feature in a standalone, lengthy review here on MacStories. App Journal is a mix of classic reviews, app recommendations, and a diary of our experiences with apps that still deserve a proper mention.

After a two month period of inactivity, the App Journal is back and we’ve got some cool apps to share. From text editing to beautiful diagrams and (gasp) dinosaurs, make sure you don’t miss Episode 10 of App Journal, brought to you directly from the MacStories Team, good coffee, and, why not, Italy’s snow.

If you’ve got apps to recommend, our Tips inbox is just a click away up in the site’s toolbar. Enjoy!

Federico Viticci - Daedalus Touch

When Cody reviewed the first version of The Soulmen’s Daedalus Touch for iPad back in May, I was intrigued by the app’s unique take on portable text editing and document management, but ultimately didn’t pull the trigger on a purchase as I didn’t believe I needed yet another take on Dropbox and text editors. Cody wrote:

Daedalus is interesting. Everything you create in Daedalus becomes a sheet, which exists under a topic sheet that creates a stack. It reminds me of writing a screenplay or developing a report with a cover sheet, but what’s more interesting is how you navigate between these sheets. A majority of the interactions in Daedalus involve pinch-to-zoom actions, which is a bold navigation choice that’s almost pulled off perfectly. You zoom in and out of stacks, and are able to browse between multiple sheets with simple flicks.

After seeing The Soulmen release a couple of updates to bring new functionalities and improve support for things like external hardware keyboards and system clipboard, I thought I could give the app a shot, especially considering it’s on sale at $2.99 on the App Store. In our review, Cody detailed how Daedalus Touch is different from the majority of text editors available on iOS as it allows you to navigate multiple stacks of documents through touch-based interactions based off gestures such as swipes and pinches to navigate in and out of sheets and paper stacks. Having used Daedalus, I think what’s really cool is that – attention to detail and elegant design/typography aside – Daedalus allows you to sync different Dropbox folders independently, meaning you’ll be able to, say, keep your standard notes in a first stack and your book writing project (with additional notes, chapters, and maybe drafts) in another stack. What I’d like to see in a future version of Daedalus Touch is support for more file formats (.md would be a good choice) and automatic sync to avoid the need of hitting “Save” every time.

If you’re looking for a different take on Dropbox-powered text editing, Daedalus Touch is an interesting option at $2.99 for a limited time. Read more

App Journal is a new series aimed at showcasing apps we have enjoyed using on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but decided not to feature in a standalone, lengthy review here on MacStories. App Journal is a mix of classic reviews, weekly app recommendations, and a diary of our experiences with apps that still deserve a proper mention.

This week’s App Journal is all about reading, text, and music. With the iOS reading scene going through some interesting shake-ups with Readability announcing a free service, Flipboard for iPhone coming soon and Evernote getting into the “distraction-free reading” business with Clearly, I take a look at two little gems from the App Store that offer their own take on RSS feeds and article consumption.

As the holiday season nears, developers are putting the final touches to the apps they’ll be selling for Thanksgiving and Christmas to new iPhone and iPad owners. Stay tuned for more App Journals in the next weeks.

Newstream

While we wait for Flipboard to arrive on the iPhone, Amazing Softworks’ Newstream offers an interesting solution to turn your favorite websites into newspaper-like reading experiences. Using regular RSS feeds to fetch a website’s latest articles, Newstream allows you to create a list of favorite sources that will be turned into virtual publications on a newsstand that you can swipe through. The app loads an article’s text and images, and lets you tap on headlines to read the full text in a single-article view. When you’re done, you can go back to the main screen, and swipe to another website. Alternatively, you can tap on a website’s name at the top and instantly jump to another one through a popover menu. Articles can be tweeted, shared on Facebook, emailed to your friends or added to the app’s own reading list. Unfortunately, there is no support for Instapaper or Read It Later in the app, which means the reading list won’t sync to other devices or services. The app doesn’t even sync or import feeds from Google Reader, which means you’ll have to add your favorite blogs manually.

I think Newstream’s limited feature set might also be its strongest selling point for people looking for a simple way to load a subset of RSS feeds into a separate app with an easy-to-read format. Newstream is $2.99 on the App Store.

Audium

Developed by Michael Pringle, Audium is a beautiful, lightweight and gesture-based music player for your iPhone. Instead of imitating the Music app’s interface by adding a number of new features as many third-party music players do, Audium focuses on simplicity and ease of use. Audium doesn’t display a list for your artists and songs – instead, it visualizes artworks from albums you’ve synced on your device at the bottom of a wooden shelf. Swipe through albums, and double tap on one to start playing; double tap again to pause, swipe left or right to change song. It’s very simple. You can even swipe up or down to adjust the volume, and the app displays a tiny circular indicator rather than a classic progress bar to see how much time is left in a song.

Audium is a clever app that’s intuitive and fully takes advantage of the iPhone’s touch-based interface. It’s a $0.99 download from the App Store.

(album artwork via Aldrin)
Read more

App Journal is a new series aimed at showcasing apps we have enjoyed using on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but decided not to feature in a standalone, lengthy review here on MacStories. App Journal is a mix of classic reviews, weekly app recommendations, and a diary of our experiences with apps that still deserve a proper mention.

With iOS 5, iCloud and the iPhone 4S now out in the wild and available for all users, App Journal gets back to its regular programming schedule and we couldn’t be more excited to start trying new apps that fully take advantage of the new features offered by iOS 5 and iCloud services. This week, Graham takes a look at the global version of iPlayer, while I try to set a personal record in Whale Trail (thanks to our friends at The Next Web for writing about this gem), experiment with a new Twitter client for iPhone, and enjoy the comfort of a quick-entry panel in a Mac app that creates reminders, but it’s not Apple’s Reminders.

We think this week’s selection is pretty great. Stay tuned for more App Journals in the next weeks.

NotifyMe

With iOS 5, Apple introduced Reminders, and as I wrote in my overview of the app, I’m glad they did. Reminders makes iOS as a platform more efficient and productive, allowing users to forget about having to purchase a standalone to-do app because now the functionality is integrated right into the system. But as I also wrote, it’s not like Reminders aims to replace more complex solutions like OmniFocus, Todo or Things: Reminders is very simple and aimed at people who don’t need advanced personalization of their to-do lists or project management features. Reminders targets the average iOS user that has always wished his iPhone would let him create reminders for when he gets home or needs to take out the trash. With Siri integration, Reminders gets even more accessible thanks to voice-based input.

There will always be room for third-party apps in the iOS ecosystem, and even if Apple “borrows” basic functionalities from third-party software every once in a while, developers always find a way to give their apps a reason to exist and prosper. Just take a look at Instapaper, Grazing, or Fantastical.

NotifyMe, a set of apps by PoweryBase, is an interesting and powerful alternative to Reminders for those who wish they could do a bit more with their to-dos and, more importantly, have them synced back to a native Mac app. NotifyMe is very similar to Reminders in its underlying concept: you create to-dos and they’re synced to the cloud. Unlike Reminders, NotifyMe doesn’t use iCloud – instead the developers have built an infrastructure called the NotifyMe Cloud that keeps iPhone, iPad and Mac clients always up-to-date with a free account you can create at notifymecloud.com. Syncing is free, with no subscriptions – but you’ll have to buy the iOS apps separately on the App Store (no universal version yet) and if you want to have to-dos on your desktop as well, NotifyMe for OS X on the Mac App Store.

Where NotifyMe really stands out is customization. You can assign reminders to specific categories and create new ones from scratch choosing a custom icon. On iOS, you can pick a melody for NotifyMe alerts, set a [Category] prefix in the notifications that you’ll get from the app, and choose whether or not you want the app to default an “auto-done” state for non-repeating reminders. Furthermore, you can set auto-snooze, customize the app’s badge type to overdue+today or overdue+all upcoming, and select a category for shared reminders added by your friends. NotifyMe makes it easy to curate a personal list of friends and family members that you want to share reminders with – just head over the Sharing & Friends tab in the iOS app, and send a request via email to another NotifyMe user. Friends can create shared reminders, but they can’t browse your whole account and see the reminders you’ve chosen not to share.

Both on the Mac and iOS, the app’s interface is easy to use and focused on lists and the “New reminder” button. Lists include your upcoming reminders, completed and recent ones, as well as your categories and Sharing. On the iPad and Mac you’ll see categories (and to-dos assigned to them) right in the left sidebar, whereas on the iPhone you’ll have to tap on Categories first to navigate to another view. NotifyMe also comes with a web app for those who don’t own a Mac, which you can find at webapp.notifymecloud.com.

NotifyMe’s reminders don’t have location features, but they have some other options worth mentioning. You can set repeating reminders and pre-alerts; pick a category, set auto-snooze, sharing and melody on a reminder basis and attach notes. The biggest advantage of NotifyMe over similar to-do software for iOS is that its Mac app enables you to create reminders with an OmniFocus-like quick entry panel, which can be assigned a systemwide keyboard shortcut and optionally expanded to reveal more settings as you write. The quick entry panel is possibly the single best feature of the Mac app that justifies the (steep) price if you’re going to create many reminders on your desktop, and have them always available through the cloud.

NotifyMe works reliably, and in some areas it offers more customization options than Apple’s Reminders for iOS 5. The full set of apps (iPhone, iPad, Mac) doesn’t exactly come cheap, so consider the purchase if you’re really going to use the Mac’s quick entry functionality and iPad client a lot. Read more

App Journal is a weekly series aimed at showcasing apps we have enjoyed using on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but decided not to feature in a standalone, lengthy review here on MacStories. App Journal is a mix of classic reviews, weekly app recommendations, and a diary of our experiences with apps that still deserve a proper mention.

Amidst iPhone 4S and Siri announcements, the sad news of Steve Jobs’ passing and iPhone pre-orders, App Journal took a break last week and is back this week with quick episode in preparation of the app releases that will follow after the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud on October 12th. You can expect a whole new category of apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac once iOS 5 and iCloud will be available to all users – developers have been spending all summer studying the new APIs, which include pretty neat things like Twitter integration, Newsstand, and iCloud Storage.

In the meantime, I’ve collected four simple apps that I’ve been trying in between Apple keynotes and iPhone 4S news. Check them out after the break, and stay tuned for more App Journal episodes in the next weeks. Read more

App Journal is a weekly series aimed at showcasing apps we have enjoyed using on our iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but decided not to feature in a standalone, lengthy review here on MacStories. App Journal is a mix of classic reviews, weekly app recommendations, and a diary of our experiences with apps that still deserve a proper mention.

As developers put the finishing touches to their iOS 5 and iCloud-based new apps and updates, this past week has been relatively slow in noteworthy App Store releases and features. Fortunately, I’ve dug up some gems worth mentioning, and I’ve been playing with the amazing If This Then That, now out of beta and open to the public.

Stay tuned for more App Journal episodes in the next weeks.

Dolphin Browser HD

I was a little skeptical when I first heard about Dolphin Browser for iPad, a port of what appears to be a fairly popular browser for Android devices. Furthermore, the app is free, and I always wonder how it’s going to play out in the long term without a business plan. Still, I have to say Dolphin Browser is pretty good. Mind you, it’s no Grazing, but I was surprised to see two features cleverly implemented: gestures, and the “webzine”. With gesture support, you can assign any URL to a custom gesture you have to “draw” so you’ll be able to launch your favorite websites by simply performing the gesture on screen. There’s a set of built-in gestures for Facebook, Twitter, and other websites, but you can create as many as you want by opening a new URL, and choose “gesture for this page”. A new window will open, asking you to draw the shape with a single stroke – after that, the gesture will be assigned to the URL and saved in the Gestures area of the app. Gesture recognition is pretty good, and you don’t have to be an artist or get really precise down to the pixel for the app to see what you want to launch. Overall, it’s a quite clever idea that, however, might use a more universal access without having to open a dedicated Gestures overlay (I’d like to draw directly on the webpage, if that makes sense).

Second is the webzine, basically a Flipboard-like magazine interface that, however, resides right within the browser and not in a standalone app. Dolphin’s main page, in fact, lists a series of speed dials on the left (think frequently accessed websites) and the “webzine” on the right, pre-populated with blogs you might want to read in a more uncluttered fashion. The thing with the webzine in Dolphin is that you’re not really forced to open this “start page” every time – once you visit a blog, say MacStories, Dolphin will ask you if you want to read it through the webzine UI. When a website gets passed through the webzine, a nice and fluid animation brings text in the foreground with articles and images as big squares – again, it resembles Flipboard.

The big difference is that Dolphin’s webzine doesn’t fetch entire articles and images – the actual webpage is loaded behind the webzine page, and you can jump to it (to see the rest of a story, images, or videos) with a single tap. It’s still unclear to me whether Dolphin’s webzine fetches articles via RSS (I assume it does), but I find it surprising the developers didn’t implement a refresh button (just last night I was reading MacStories through the webzine, and two articles I had just posted weren’t showing up).

Dolphin is a decent browser for the iPad with two really neat functionalities. You won’t find the “power user” aspect of Grazing and iCab in here (Dolphin doesn’t even have contextual menus for links), but overall, it’s a good free browser. Get it here. Read more