For the uninitiated, App.net is an ad-free, subscription-based service that is being used for not only Twitter-like conversations, but private messaging, file storage, sharing, and more. If that sounds a little scattered, it is, because App.net is more than just a social network — it's a family of APIs that can power all sorts of individual, discrete services, all with a single…
Chatology is a Mac app that allows you to search your Messages and iChat history, rather than relying on the frustratingly poor search features built into each one. Essentially, it's a well-designed front-end for your Mac's chat logs. You can view your entire chat history with anyone on your list, and it lets you easily narrow down to just the images or…
About a week ago, the guys at Pixelmator released version 2.2 of their popular image editing app, code-named "Blueberry". It was packed with new features, such as smarter shape-selection tools, a palette with drag-and-drop shapes, a new light-leak effect, and a lot more. What they didn't announce until yesterday though was that there was another, more hidden feature built in: Vectormator. Press…
The developers of the popular Screens VNC client for iOS recently released another great utility called Mini Display. The two apps are similar in that they both require a free Mac app to be running, but what Mini Display does differently is turn your iOS device into an external display for the Mac (as long as they're on the same WiFi network),…
Remember back in 2009 when designer Rob Rhyne unveiled an ambitious UI prototyping toolkit for iPhone called Briefs? After several years of waiting, and a couple of rejections by Apple, Briefs has (finally) made its introduction to the public. Briefs for Mac allows app designers to arrange UI elements (such as buttons, toolbars, alerts, text/search fields, etc), entire screens, artwork, and transitions…
If you're a Mac-owning WordPress user, there's a good chance you're also a MarsEdit user. If so, I doubt you're in the market for any other blogging software, but if you are (or if you're looking for a cheaper option), you might check out newcomer Metropolis. It's got a lot of the same functionality as MarsEdit, such as multi-blog support, HTML and…
Adobe Lightroom is the go-to app for many professional photographers, and it's about to get a big update. The new version boasts better healing tools, more powerful vignette options, off-line editing and more. The beta is free, and you check it out here.
Whenever I'm editing photos, one of my favorite things to do is fiddle with color temperature. Nothing drastic of course, because I prefer subtle tones over the kinds of blown-out highlights you see in HDR photography, but a slightly different hue can completely change the feel of a shot for the better. That's why I'm interested in this first group of photo…
Ramotion is giving away a nice little set of Mac icons to replace the built-in artwork for Safari, System Preferences, Trash and more. Whether you have a vendetta against blue icons or are just looking for some different, this is a fun way to spice up your Mac.
Keyboard-centric application launchers are becoming more and more popular. There are three big ones: Quicksilver, Alfred, and LaunchBar. What many people may not know is that LaunchBar is the original application launcher — it dates all the way back to NeXT. Like many, however, my introduction to application launchers began with Quicksilver many years ago. But in 2009 I began using LaunchBar…
Speaking of iPads and meetings, Pear Note is a brand-new iPad app that was made for exactly that. This note-taking, audio-recording, Dropbox-syncing, iPad app is built with one thing in mind: taking notes while at meetings and events. It records audio as you type your notes and comments, and then it maps the audio time stamps to the notes you typed. Clever…
Instacast is not the first iPhone app dedicated to managing your podcasts, but it is the first I have ever truly liked. Its most notable feature is that it offers over-the-air updating of your podcasts. You can update all your podcasts at once, or just one subscription, or even just one episode at a time. It will update the listing of all…
When you work on a 23-inch monitor a good full-screen writing app can be hard to find. Apps that look good in full-screen mode on a 13- or 15-inch screen don’t necessarily scale well to 23 inches. Byword, however, scales quite well. It looks great regardless of if I’m writing on my laptop display or my cinema displays. And the dark color…
Dialvetica is the best way to find contacts on your iPhone. It’s like the whole app has been built for a single purpose: get to a contact fast. Dialvetica’s custom interface is designed for this sole purpose, and so is the way it works under the hood. Searching for a contact within Dialvetica is far superior to searching within the Contacts pane…