Mac Fanatic

Just in case you haven’t heard, if you’re wanting to get an Apple iPad as quickly as possible, head on over to the Apple Store online to pre-order yours today!

From the Panic development blog:

The idea quickly grew beyond “Project Status”, and has become a hub of all sorts of internal Panic information. What you’re actually looking at is an internal-only webpage that updates frequently using AJAX which shows:

• E-Mail Queue — number of messages / number of days.
• Project Status — sorry for the heavy censorship — you know how it is!
• Important Countdowns
• Revenue — comparing yesterday to the day before, not so insightful (yet).
• Live Tri-Met Bus Arrivals — when it’s time to go home!
• The Panic Calendar
• Employee Twitter Messages
• Any @Panic Twitter Messages — i.e., be nice! They go on our screen!

I absolutely love this screen and the idea.  Wish I had the time and resources at my office to whip something like this up to get people motivated and really get some stuff accomplished.  Read more form the Panic blog here.

The good folks over at MetaLab reported being ripped of by Mozilla earlier this week.  The open source Mozilla project, JetPack FlightDeck, was showing using UI mockups that clearly used the MetaLab UI elements and not just “borrowed” pieces or was the object of inspiration.

Mozilla issued a public apology to MetaLab today stating:

At issue are early mockups for one of the Jetpack developer tools that included design elements from the MetaLab web site. While the design direction being implemented does not utilize these design elements, we inadvertently included the early mockups in our blog post and videoannouncing the next phase of development for the Jetpack SDK.

We’ve since removed all of the early mockups from our web sites, and updated the videos and screenshots with the correct content.

We sincerely apologize to MetaLab for incorporating design elements from their web site in our early mockups and for posting them publicly without proper attribution.

I applaud Mozilla for not waiting to make a public response and clearing this up as soon as possible.  And you really should check out MetaLab for their design services.  The site is gorgeous and they have created some amazing interfaces for clients such as Ball Park: Simple Invoicing.

Links

Mozilla JetPack FlightDeck

MetaLab Blog

I’m having a great time working on the application and incorporating some features that you’ve requested.  One of those will be a huge deal of iPod Touch users (Drafts), scheduled with the v1.1 release in the next couple weeks.

v1.0.2 brings:

• NEW: Comments/Ratings are now instantly displayed in application. No longer waiting on moderation.
• NEW: About & Support areas under the “Share” tab
• NEW: Smart date & time display throughout application, such as “3 minutes ago” & “4 hours ago” on reviews and jokes
• NEW: When browsing jokes in the detail view, shows “1 of 74″ instead of the joke name for clarity
• NEW: User is prompted to leave a rating on iTunes App Store after installing application (maximum of 3 times)
• FIXED: When writing a review, the stars rating control is now reset to 0 every time
• FIXED: Submitting a review with no text is now accepted
• FIXED: When browsing jokes, and selecting an item, the scroll position is saved. Previously the list would be at the top when the user returned to the listing
• FIXED: Application crashed when tapping on a joke from searching, and then going back to search results
• FIXED: The up/down navigation buttons in the joke detail view now correctly take you through search results
• FIXED: Fixed bug that didn’t pass user information along when submitting a new joke
• FIXED: Users are no longer prompted to register after being asked 3 times
• FIXED: Several user interface refinements

This release brings several nice “tweaks” to the app, such as relative times when browsing jokes and reviews.  Previously, you were presented with static times like “Mar 02, 2010 3:10pm”.  Now, times are converted in facebook style (using the exact code from the open source facebook project three20 actually) to achieve times such as “3 hours ago” or “just a moment ago”.

As always, if you run into any bugs, be sure to shoot me an email and let me know!  If you haven’t gotten a copy of the only application delivering That’s What She Said Jokes to your iPhone & iPod Touch, be sure to check it out in the iTunes App Store now!

Links

That’s What She Said Jokes [iTunes Store Link]

Three20 Project

I recently wrote about BitBQ’s acquisition of LittleSnapper for iPhone, now Cinder, that was originally developed by Realmac software.  Being a very light LittleSnapper user myself, I was interested in who had taken interest in the application and wanted to get to know Patrick just a little better. He agreed to answer some questions I put together, including:

• Personal and company background
• Talks about the Cinder acquisition
• Talks about transferring an existing app from one company to another
• Rates experience with Apple and the iTunes Store
• Advertising tips
• Gives his favorite Mac and iPhone apps

Read after the break for Patrick’s answers.

Continue Reading "Interview with Cinder iPhone Developer Patrick Burleson"

Apple’s eagerly anticipated iPad will be available in the United States on April 3, the company said Friday.
Wi-Fi models of the tablet-style computer will go on sale that Saturday, while ones with Wi-Fi and 3G networks will be released later in the month.

Customers can start pre-ordering the iPad on Apple’s online store on March 12.

Surprised the product launch wasn’t delayed.  I had suspected an early May introduction and 3G models by WWDC.

Read more about the launch from CNN.

It’s always interesting to see what people are coming to the site to read, how long they’re staying and where they’re going to.

I use and love Mint, from Shaun Inman, for all this analysis (in conjunction with Google Analytics of late) and this one caught me off guard this morning.

A lovely 2200% increase in traffic to this one post reviewing Flow FTP, originally posted on April 4th 2008.  My simple explanation for this trend being the ongoing MacHeist  Nanobundle 2, which offers Flow FTP as part of the 7 applications available ($260 value at $19.95).

If you’re a blogger and have an interesting trend to share, or if you have an alternative explanation for the Flow FTP review being so popular all of a sudden, I’d love to hear it.  Leave me some feedback in the comments.

MacHeist is know for giving consumers a great deal on awesome Mac software.  The NanoBundle 2 is a collection of 7 great Mac applications, valued at over $260 separately, for just $19.95!

Now’s your chance to get great Mac applications, such as:

MacJournal ($39.95)

MacJournal is the perfect app for you if you do any amount of writing, whether it’s blogging, writing a journal, a password-protected private diary, or anything else you can think of.

RipIt ($19.95)

It seems like forever since you were manually popping a CD into a player to listen to music. So why are you still doing this for your DVDs? RipIt makes it virtually effortless to import your DVDs to your Mac…simply pop in a disc and it does all the work for you, automatically.

Clips ($27)

Clips is copy & paste reinvented. Forget about each new copied item erasing your clipboard: copy everything you might want to paste, and paste whatever you’d like when you need it from your clipboard manager.

CoverScout ($39.95)

In a nutshell, CoverScout enables you to get all the missing cover art for your prized music collection within minutes. Make those ugly gray gaps in iTunes a thing of the past.

Flow ($25)

Are you still using Transmit, an app that dates all the way back to MacOS 8? Well, if so, then it’s time to make room for the new kid in town… Flow.

Tales of Monkey Island ($34.95)

Tales of Monkey Island is a five-episode adventure game saga featuring mighty pirate Guybrush Threepwood and his motley crew. The game pulls the legendary franchise thundering and plundering into the modern era with an epic storyline conceived by some of the same team that dreamed up the original LucasArts games.

RapidWeaver ($79)

RapidWeaver is widely regarded as the best website creation app out there. Even better than Apple’s very own iWeb.

Past Reviews & Information

I used to use RapidWeaver to manage this site, a few years ago.  The software is very elegant and powerful, and easy enough to allow people who do not understand the slightest thing about making websites to create stunning websites with ease.  Please check out a few words of my praise for RapidWeaver here.

I have also written a review of Flow FTP back in 2008, which you can catch here.

And most importantly, check out MacHeist.com!

From the Realmac Software Blog:

Over the past few months, we’ve been giving LittleSnapper for iPhone some thought. We love the application as it is, however since its launch, we’ve remained entirely focused on the Mac, building applications for a platform that we love. Given our continued focus on the Mac platform, we’re excited to announce today that BitBQ LLC have acquired the code behind LittleSnapper for iPhone, and will be continuing the development of the application under a different name in the new year: Cinder.

Cinder has been acquired by BitBQ and was just placed on the iTunes App Store.  From the BitBQ Blog:

I’ve received several questions from owners of LittleSnapper for iPhone whether or not they are going to need to repurchase Cinder once it becomes available. The answer to this is yes. Before you howl, let me tell you that Cinder will be FREE for two weeks after launch. After that, Cinder will become a paid application.

So if you already purchases LittleSnapper, you have until March 17th to download Cinder for free to make the switch.  And if you haven’t already made the purchase, you can get a great piece of software for free!

Grab your copy of Cinder from the iTunes App Store now! [App Store Link]

Realmac Software

BitBQ, LLC

Sadly, as a web developer, I spend a lot of time designing, coding and testing web applications in several browsers to make sure that I can get the product to as many users as possible.  Internet Explorer is always the one that causes me the most headache, hands down.

Queness has an excellent post detailing 10 awful bugs in Internet Explorer, and provides some insight and solutions to those issues.  A great read for any web developer.  After doing this job for 2 years, I still learned a few things.

Read the full article from Queness here.