Editorial: A Week Without an iPod
I love my iPod Touch. I’m one of those guys you see going about his daily business that never takes his earbuds out. Since picking up my Touch late last year, it’s become my go to device for mobile media, messaging, gaming and more. It’s become an integral part of my daily routine. Heck — it’s practically a cybernetic implant. So you can imagine how I felt when I woke up the other morning to find that an audio issue had somehow crept inside of my little life extension.
Preview: Google Quick Search Box for Mac
Many Mac users know about an app called Quicksilver. It’s a simple productivity application that can help you do things with a few quick keystrokes. Just last month Google released a beta of a new tool that’s quite similar; Google Quick Search Box.
Google Quick Search Box opens with a simple double tap of the command key. From here you can just type in what you want. Google QSB has some basic search features, including the ability to search your computer and certain websites (such as Google, Youtube, and Wikipedia). You can navigate results with the arrow keys on your keyboard. Sadly, web search results only showed up for Wikipedia and Youtube, and it only displays limited results. For the other options it just opens a link in your default browser.
Safari 4 Beta Preview: A New Compass
On Tuesday, Apple released a public beta of its web browser, Safari’s, latest revision. The new version encompasses over 150 new and innovative features, with things such as CSS effects, Top Sites, and the new Nitro javascript engine toping the list.
The install process of Safari 4 was smooth with the only hiccups being the requirement of the latest security update and the Windows-esque reboot at finish. Upon first opening the app you are greeted with a very Apple looking ‘video’, which according to the Twitterverse, was done almost entirely using CSS and images. Once completed, you are dumped onto the new ‘Top Sites’ feature, it is a very Matrix looking method of looking at the sites you visit most, with screenshots of each individual site. This page is also very configurable, allowing you to remove certain sites, pin others, and change the size of the screenshots.
Layers Review: Advanced Screen-Grabbing
Screen-capturing can be a very important part of our jobs or even life. In OS X, we have a built-in screen-grabbing tool called Grab. It works well for just grabbing windows, selections and the whole screen. But, it doesn’t give you many options“Or at least, not as many as it could. Well recently, wuonm released a tool called Layers that adds a lot of functionality to screen-grabbing.
B1nary Game Review: Addicting Puzzle Game
Everyone loves simple yet very addicting puzzle games, and when they involve numbers, it gets even better. This is exactly the kind of game that B1nary is trying to become for the iPhone and we have decided to review it in order to see if it stands up to its promises.
Intro to Web Development: The Tools
It’s no secret that the Mac has been designed to incorporate the internet into its daily life. Just think of the “i”Mac and how Apple advertised how quickly you could get online compared to PCs. Did you ever think about how people develop the sites you visit every day? If so, read on to figure out how to get your idea and products out there using tools and app available on a dock near you.
To start off this series, I’ve decided to talk about some of the many popular tools web developers use every day to create their own websites. This post is divided into two parts because there are two kinds of web development apps out there: W.Y.S.I.W.Y.Gs and Text Based apps.
Editorial: Does Apple Care About Copyright?
On most gaming platforms, when a game goes through an approval process there’s some rigorous legal testing in addition to quality control. That’s why you never hear about Wii or PS3 games being pulled from the shelves for copyright violations. But the world of iPhone/iPod Touch games? Apple treats it like the Wild West. So long as it passes quality control (some games don’t — just look at Yoot Saito’s Gabo), Apple doesn’t seem to have a problem with releasing a title to iTunes — often despite glaring copyright issues. Just take a peek at these few examples.
Snow Report Apps, Part 2
A couple months, we did an article on snow report apps. There were a few that we found since then, so I am going to share those with you today.
The Snow Report (Free)
The Snow Report is The North Face’s snow report app. Like Ski Lodge, it has maps built-in. It also allows you to see the weather, Website of the resort and the position of the resort in Google Maps. However, none of these are built-in“They take you to Mobile Safari or Google Maps. You can see the conditions, temperate and a mini weather report of the resort in the app. The buttons it uses can be very confusing“They don’t even look like buttons sometimes. One cool feature it includes that none of the others do is the ability to change the background. They have many built-in backgrounds shot by professionals. However, you only really see the sides of the background, because the resort info is over the rest. Overall, for a free app, it’s very nice.
BBEdit Review: It Doesn’t Suck
The Mac is usually known as the platform that creative people work on. Whether it’s Web Design, Programming or Design, there are many possibilities for applications you can use. And especially when it comes to text editors, there’s an app everywhere. But, there are really two extreme text editors out there. Today I’m talking about one of them by Bare Bones Software, called BBEdit.
The first thing you will notice about BBEdit is how many menubar items it has. For basic text editing and programming, you probably won’t even use half of these. So, BBEdit can be used in extremely advanced ways, and basic ways. However, if you are just using it for basic tasks, it can be very daunting.
PocketFlix Review: Netflix for the iPhone
If you’re a Netflix user, you know that new movie ideas pop in and out of your head on a daily basis. Unfortunately, Netflix’s site is hard to navigate on mobile browsers, so changing your queue and finding new movies on the fly isn’t very easy. However, with the new PocketFlix application from Cyrus Najmabadi recently hitting Apple’s iPhone application store, you can handle all of your Netflix “doings” on the fly.
Up until this point, I have been fairly disappointed with all of the Netflix applications that have hit the App Store. Going into this review, there was one main question that stood out, “Does this application allow the user to fully, yet easily, manage all of the essential Netflix features on the run?”
