TiltShift By imimux

We’ll start with the basics, which is about all your going to get from this app. You can take your own pictures or load images in from your Photo Albums, and save your images when your finished tweaking them. No emailing them, no in-app sharing.

On to the tools.TiltGen does have some nice “extra” options like two different blur types “Gauss” and “Lens”, and a “bloom” feature that can give your night shots that Bokeh effect, which TiltShiftGen doesn’t have. Both apps have radial and linear blurs, saturation, brightness and contrast.

TiltShift lets you chose between visual guides so you can actually see where your blurring is fading off at which can come in handy on the small screen.

Both apps also allow you to tilt, and resize your blur area via multi-touch and pinching, although I did notice a fairly significant delay between update with TiltShift each time I made adjustments to my blur area, and all of the different tools are very sensitive so dialing in an exact setting takes a bit of getting used to.

At $0.99, it’s a good buy, and if you absolutely must have the bokeh effect, then TiltGen is the way to go. As you can see from the before and after below, you can get some pretty impressive effects.

BEFORE & AFTER IMAGES FOR TILTGEN

click for large image

TiltShiftGen by Art&Mobile

You know how sometimes you get a feeling an app is going to be good simply based on the icon? (I’m not suggesting you actually do this) Well, TiltShiftGen gave me that feeling, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least!

Right away I notice TiltShiftGen’s UI. Very Apple-like. It doesn’t look like a native iPhone UI, but it’s enough that right away makes it feel familiar. Very clean, large buttons for my fat fingers, and even the pixel font used is very readable. I think it’s ok to stray from looking completely like the iPhone UI, but that’s something I didn’t like about TiltShift. It was too far from what most people are used to and took some time to get comfortable with.

TiltShiftGen has the glossy menus at the bottom where they should be, and even though they took a sub-menu approach, it’s still very intuitive where you are with the arrow pointing down to the parent menu selection. With TiltShift, all the menus were at the top which just didn’t feel right.

As we move into the settings I am very happy to see that I can post my creations to Twitter for everyone to ignore, I mean bask in my awesomeness! And I can do so using twitpic, twitgoo, or yfrog.

Diving a little deeper into the settings I see, “Communities” with Flickr, Facebook, and BigCanvas PhotoShare. At first I thought I was going to be able to post directly to these from the app, but alas I was wrong. It simply opens Safari and takes you to these sites for you to do your own manual posting.

I don’t understand why these are even in here. It’s very misleading and unless Art&Mobile is planning on adding in-app Facebook, and Flickr posting as a feature, I suggest they remove it. It’s unnecessary and could cause someone to write bad things about it. ;)

Other settings include, “Resolution” where you can change your size from 1200×1600, native to the 2.0 MP camera, all the way down to 320×427. Great for posting your Tweets and not having to send such a large file. There’s also the “Shake for Reset” and “Autoload Image” which you can turn on and off as you please. All in all a nice set of features.

Now onto the actual tilt-shift part of TiltShiftGen. Just like TiltShift, it has Radial and Linear Blurs, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast. One thing this app had that TiltShift didn’t is Vignetting. I think this feature is more valuable than the bloom effect of TiltShift. It really puts a “polish” on the end result and used correctly enhances the tilt-shift effect. The controls were very responsive and I was able to quickly get to the desired result as the image updated fairly fast and I didn’t have to continuously minimize the controls each time I wanted to see what changes I was making.

As we mentioned before, TiltShiftGen has the ability to post to Twitter and save it to your Gallery, but also lets you sent it by email, another feature lacking from TiltShift. It’s not crucial. You can always mail it from your Gallery the old fashioned way. However, reducing the number of steps to accomplish something you’re probably going to want to do anyway, is an added benefit.

Also weighing in at $0.99 TiltShiftGen is another great buy.

BEFORE & AFTER IMAGES

click for large image

Summary

TiltShift may have more tools, but TiltShiftGen wins this hands down with features alone. The UI is superior, the controls are more responsive and really there’s just no comparison. If Art&Mobile add Facebook and Flickr API implementation, this app would be over the top!

Photo by @dandenny

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iPhone App Head To Head – TiltShift vs. TiltShiffGen

If you’re developing an application for the masses, there are several things to consider when road-mapping it’s functionality and features.

It’s a common mindset to think you have to offer more than your competitors in order to be better. People want more right? Wrong. People (most of them) don’t know what they want. Psychologist and Author of The Paradox of Choice says that people, confronted with a large pool of options will be less satisfied with a decision. The more options there are, the higher their expectation. So even if they have made the best possible choice, their satisfaction level has by default, dropped.

We can apply this same rationale to our application design at an early stage. We’re not talking about eliminating core functionality, or even dropping the “bells and whistles” but taking a step back and asking whether or not the, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” is worth the added complexity to what the end user is going to actually use.

Too Many Chefs In The Kitchen

Another reason your application will die a fiery death is that most of us (designers and developers) need approvals. More often than not these approvals come from people who are either ignorant, afraid, or stubborn. Ignorant of what’s been proven or possible, afraid of failure or too stubborn to think that there might be someone who knows more than them. I’m sure most of you are thinking of someone right now aren’t you?

If you are one of said chefs, and you aren’t open to listening to and considering input from your peers, your product is doomed to fail and my suggestion to you is to either open your mind, or find a new profession. Perhaps a prison warden or a S&M phone sex operator. That way you either have a captive audience that has no choice but to do what you say, or you have people paying you to belittle them.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

Some of us have the luxury of not being burdened by deadlines. However a vast majority are perpetually cognizant of launch dates. Sometimes these time frames are so tight, that we are forced to cut corners. These sacrifices can range from clean coding, UI design and even usability testing. We’re not saying that we can’t iterate after the fact, but first impressions are crucial and a bad initial experience can crush even the most brilliant project.

Conclusion

The next time you end up at one of these roadblocks, consider the actions you’re taking to remedy the situation? If all you are doing is complaining about the hurdles, to see the failure you need look no further than a mirror.

We are hard-coded with the desire to do the best we can. No one sets out to fail. We need to continually educate ourselves with facts and information to consider success, but even then there is no guarantee.

There’s nothing wrong with launching a great product that can get better. By taking careful consideration to avoid these potential pitfalls, we bring ourselves one step closer to making sure your next app doesn’t fail.

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Why Your Next App Will Fail

Just comment on this post with your new years resolution is going to be. We will choose 10 random comments and the winners will be picked Friday, January 8th, 2010.

I love it when everyone’s a winner!!!

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Ring in 2010 With a Google Wave Invite – Winners Announced!

In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations.

Are we pulling the emergency brake on innovation when we resort to using a pattern just because it’s been used successfully before? Henry Ford said, “I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.” Mr. Ford has actually said a lot of inspiring things in regards to innovation.

Sure. There is the usability argument that if people aren’t familiar with it they will shy away. People like the cozy and fuzzy and tend to migrate towards what they are comfortable with, so there are considerations to be taken. But if your innovation breeds experience, people will use it.

Patterns are a great to use as inspiration and to see what has and can be done, but they are not the holy grail and by definition, using them is not being innovative. There are times to use them as described but I would take them with a grain of salt. Look past what has already been done and find a better way. Maybe your innovation will be the next pattern.

A FEW PATTERN RESOURCES

ui-patterns.com/

uipatternfactory.com

quince.infragistics.com/UX-Design-Patterns.aspx

developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns

uidesignpatterns.org/designPatterns

patterntap.com

Agree? Disagree?

We would love to hear your thoughts!

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Do UI Patterns Destroy Innovation?

THIS YEAR’S BIGGEST APP STORIES…

Location-Based Apps

Apple’s iPhone has opened up a whole new market for developers with location-based apps. So it’s really no surprise that 2009 gave us more than our share of these little gems from an end-user standpoint. But as developers, it’s given us an opportunity to become millionaires with the stroke of a pen. Gowalla, based in Austin, Texas is valued at nearly $30 million dollars, and when reading posts like this, where IAC CEO, Barry Diller is sitting on $2 billion (yes, that’s a b) looking for valuable web properties to purchase, we are very excited to see what the next year will bring.

User Experience

We don’t like hearing the word “trend” when it comes to User Experience as it makes it sound as if it will come and go, and UX is surely here to stay. User Experience, User-Centered Design, Interaction Design, or whatever term you prefer, 2009 helped those of us who may not have understood it’s importance, drink the proverbial kool-aid and embrace it as an early necessity when developing and designing.

In the book, “The Brand Gap” author, Marty Neumeier describes brand as, “…a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.” User Experience Design uses this same type of philosophy, and in 2009, those of us not already riding the UX train, jumped on board.

Web Fonts, CSS3 and HTML5

Fonts on the web have been a thorn in the side of web designers and developers since the early days of the web. If you wanted to use typefaces other than Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, etc., you were out of luck unless you wanted to create an image and use it in place of fonts. Then came font image replacement techniques like Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) in 2005 and we’ve even seen some server-side dynamic image creation using ImageMagick in the early 2000s. In 2009 we saw a resurgence of this trend but now we are giving credit where credit is due by licensing the fonts. Sites like TypeKit and Typotheque offer these services and we hope to see a lot more sites embracing the concept.

Even though a final release still hasn’t been announced, we saw designers and developers taking advantage of CSS3 and HTML5.  Safari 4 and Chrome have the most feature support last I heard, with Firefox close behind.  The latest version of IE has a long way to go before they catch up. Most notable of the group is Safari Mobile, iPhone’s web browser, which makes iPhone App development pretty slick. When you can use CSS animations and transitions to mimic a native iPhone app and coupling that with the OpenSource PhoneGap, you can develop mobile applications that will run across multiple mobile platforms. The neat thing about using strictly browser-based technologies to develop your mobile applications (mostly iPhone) is that you can modify the browser elements of your application without having to go through Apples approval process when versioning, just update your mobile site.

1,000,000,000 Downloads

On April 23, 2009, Apple’s App Store reached 1 billion downloads, only having launched a mere nine months prior. This story could make a best of 09 list for the sheer shock value alone. But the reason it makes our list is because of Apple’s financial agreement with app developers and other potential income generating items like in-app advertising.

iPhone App developers earn 70% commission on every app sold which is really an amazing commission considering the App Store is the only place you can peddle your (iPhone) wares, and the massive amount of advertising Apple does to promote it’s store is a win-win.

In-app mobile advertising is a more slippery slope to consider. But if you’re offering your app for free, it’s certainly a revenue generating path to consider.

Social Networking

2009 saw an explosive surge of Social Networking apps, enhancements, and opportunities. From Facebook’s iPhone app and site enhancements, a gazillion Twitter apps from mobile, to browser to Adobe Air. It seemed as if there would be no end to how many ways we could share information between each other and even from one social medium to another. APIs, OpenID, OpenSocial, and OpenSource. These tools made 2009 an awesome year to be a developer.

Social Networking isn’t an app, it’s not even a technology. It’s a concept, and it dominated every aspect of our lives in 2009. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that we’re at, what Malcolm Gladwell would call, a “Tipping Point”. 2009 showed us as designers and developers that Social Networking is obviously here to stay and I can’t wait to see what 2010 will bring us.

PARTICIPATE

What did you think of our list? What do you think should have made the list? We want to hear from you!!

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Best of 2009 in the App Industry

I had the unique pleasure of beta testing this app and I am extremely excited this app is finally in the appstore and I can talk about it. Pastebot is a new way to command copy and paste on the iPhone. It allows you to save your clipboard history with images, text, emails, tweets, links or whatever else you desire. Both Mark & Paul did an extremely amazing job on Pastebot & I think its one of the most functional apps I have ever used on my iPhone to date.

Some of the features on Pastebot include:

• Save, organize, and edit text & image clippings with ease.
• Search capabilities and folders for organization.
• Apply text & image filters like “find & replace” on text or convert an image to black & white. 14 filters total with more on the way.
• Create new text clippings within the app.
• Create a new image clipping from your iPhone camera or import from your photo library.
• Useful metadata like image dimensions, character/word count and creation date.
• Copy items back to the iPhone/iPod clipboard with 1 tap.
• Send clippings as emails within the app or save images back to your photo library.
• Push text and images from your Mac to Pastebot instantly over wifi**
• Paste text and images to your Mac from your iPhone or iPod Touch instantly over wifi**

Hop over to the appstore and get yourself a copy of Pastebot because its an amazing little app that you are going to want to use again and again.

More Info:

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Say Hello to: Pastebot

Resources:

Facebook Developer Wiki

The developer Wiki has everything you need for making a page with FBML. They have tons of resources, API’s, dev resources and more.

Facebook Starter Kit

This kit gives you a ‘hello world’ template for building ColdFusion applications for Facebook. It is very much a barebones project, enabling you to easily modify and add to it and use it in the way you like to build ColdFusion applications. This is deliberate; its purpose it to get you passed the first hurdle of dealing with facebook, leaving the application framework design up to you.

FBML – Facebook Markup Language

A nice little slide rocket presentation about FBML. A quick crash course or a good starting point.

Static FBML: Not Every Facebook Fan Page Needs an Application

An article about using Static FBML vs. Regular FBML which is also a great case study from the designer of the Sunkist soda facebook fanpage. It provides some really good content and some really good rules of thumb. Also, it

FBML Essentials

Do you have an idea for a Facebook application? With FBML Essentials, you’ll learn how to build it quickly using the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and other easy-to-use tools in the site’s framework. This book not only gets you started with this toolkit, you also get a complete reference on every FBML tag Facebook has ever written, with advice on the best ways to use these tags in your code.

Comparing Flash iFrame and FBML Facebook applications

A table from adobe that summarizes the differences when creating your Flash Platform application as an iFrame or FBML Facebook application. The two most significant differences are the ability to control the embedding of a Flash object and the ability to access scripts.

Examples:

Sunkist Soda

Twilight

Southwest Airlines

Nissan

Mountain Dew

Honda

Harley Davidson

Dunkin’ Donuts

Coca Cola

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Facebook fanpage need more kick? Check out FBML

Another feature that is new is the new Twitter Retweet feature. It allows you to setup your RT style as the old version (manual) or the new version (auto). You can also tell Tweetdeck if you would like to keep the new or old version as standard and not bother you with annoying updates. There are several subtle (but nice) UI changes and it looks as if they have worked out it being such a ram hog. (running three accounts and about 12 columns and humming along at 218MB) I think the update is great and adds more functionality to some other twitter API’s.

Screencaps

Get It

I only listed a few of the updates about but you should checkout the full update right here.

Site | Twitter

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Lists, Retweets and Linked-In from Tweetdeck 32.0

I recently had the pleasure of sending Andy Hatkoff, the Vice President, OEM and Technology Licensing at PANTONE some questions about their iPhone app myPANTONE. myPANTONE is an awesome companion for designers and creatives alike. We are excited to bring this information from behind the app and a review of the app itself.

The iPhone is a perfect platform to carry a pocket PANTONE guide, what steps have you taken to make this be the easiest way to locate and use the PANTONE colors you need?

In the development of myPANTONE, one of the key fundamentals in the design of the app and its user interface was to make it easy for the user to find the desired PANTONE colors.  To that end we have taken advantage of the iPhone’s “touchablity” with the fanned out guide view and allowing the user to move about the guide until they locate the color range they wish and then by touching the page desired bringing up a close-up few of a numerous pages and scrolling through the colors in a page view.  The idea was find the general area of color and then “zoom in” to get a closer view of the colors.  I liken this to mapping solutions that let to zoom in closer for more detail once you have the area geographic area identified. Another approach is the SEARCH function that allows the user to simply type in the PANTONE number desired.  myPANTONE will then return the colors where  those numbers are used. myPANTONE also provides color sorting in two ways (1) the standard order used in the fan guides and (2) a sort in more of a chromatic type sequence.  This make chromatic type sequence makes it simple to find, for instance all the reds or blue,  etc.

How accurate is the iPhone screen and what steps have you taken to make sure that the color displayed on screen are correct?

iPhone screens are not synonymous with color accuracy.  There are a number of limitations and issues that make accuracy of the display of colors on an iPhone a problematic.  ANY app on the iPhone that uses color to its benefit (including photo apps) suffers from the same issue – iPhones are not meant to be color accurate. There exist differences on the displays between the various versions of the iPhone. For example: the first iPhones were set to a cooler white point that made the screen whiter and bluer, while subsequent versions use a warmer color temperature and different white point.   From a developer’s point of view the Software Developer Kit (SDK) provided by Apple does not give us access to anything about the actual display except its size. At this point in time, the SDK does not offer the possibility to provide any control over the calibration of the display.  Additionally, issues such as ambient lighting and the angle from which the screen is held (and viewed) can affect the perception of color.

Because of these inherent limitations, we would caution users of myPANTONE (or any other color intensive app) should not be used to validate and approve color.  MyPANTONE is a creative tool and not a production tool. It allows users  to capture the idea of color with a wonderful mobile device  that is used broadly in the design community. The user of myPANTONE  can select a color and play with it, amend it and use it as inspiration in the design process. That’s what myPANTONE was developed for; and it is what you can expect of an iPhone app. A PANTONE Color guide should ALWAYS be used for an accurate representation of a color in a print environment, regardless of whether you used an app or a monitor in the design process.

Creatives are on the go more and more these days especially as mobile technology is getting faster and easier to use. This app allows you to share via email, post to the myPANTONE site & send to other devices. Why is sharing and integration the best possible outcome for an app like this?

It was important for us not only to provide a way to deliver a creative tool, but also to add significant utility and shareablitity.  By taking advantage of the iPhone’s  connectivity functionality, we can e-mail a palette as not only an HTML document, but also as enclosures whereby the user created palette can used within the Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXPress.  Getting information into the iPhone was only one half of the equation for the user experience- the other half is getting the information out of the iPhone and a way to make it useful and usable.  Through support of the popular design and page layout apps it is now possible to create a palette in your iPhone with myPANTONE and then easily integrate and use the palette in the design process.

At what point did a PANTONE app seem like a logical step?

It was clear that the paradigm for creativity was rapidly shifting from the confines of the desktop (or laptop) to a mobile environment.  The device was there waiting to be populated with tools.  In the same way that the computer is rich environment that will only become useful if  it was populated with meaningful solutions, the mobile platform of the iPhone also offered a robust canvas waiting to be inhabited with solutions that provide a rich user experience.  In focus groups and discussions with our customers, it was apparent that their creativity is was not restricted to the time they spent in front of computer.  They were seeking the freedom to be creative wherever they are and wherever they go.  The iPhone represented a great platform to untether their creativity and give them the capabilities to work with a highly portable version of the PANTONE Color Systems.

How many different variations of the current app have there been before it went to the final version?

It is hard know exactly how many concepts, wireframes and prototypes were iterated before we decided upon the current implementation.  Needless to say we wanted to take full advantage of the iPhone user experience and provide a robust app that would be not only cool but have a high degree of utility.  Our team wanted to make sure the app deployed the touchable aspects of the iPhone to full advantage and at the same time provide a visually interesting environment for a creative audience.  Obviously dealing with the size of the screen and understanding that apps need to be focused and are not just a small desktop application were challenges we had to understand.  At the end of the process, we were delighted that we had successfully married the user interface and capabilities of the iPhone platform (touch, e-mail, GPS, voice functions) with an app that is not only fun, but useful.

Now that the app has launched, is this app finished or will there always been a constant refinement of the app and pushing it into new developments and integrations?

When we were designing the myPANTONE app, we had so many more features, functions and product ideas that, rest assured, there will be ongoing enhancements to the existing product, but also a series of the other apps.  The mobile platform is an exciting way to deliver tools to our audiences.  Also, the mobile environment is part of a larger strategy where the desktop, the web and mobile will all be tied into a large Pantone ecosystems that will have a high level of interoperability and synergy.  The key is providing access and usage of the PANTONE Systems regardless of whether you are on the go, on the web or on the desktop.

The app is listed at $9.99 how does pricing weigh in to the app? Did you think of other price-points and has this one worked for you thus far?

The setting of price points provided many interesting internal discussions.  I think the market is in the formative stages whereby developers are trying to balance the original concept whereby a vast majority of apps were free.  But as the mobile platform evolves to serve as not only a delivery vehicle that is beyond games, social networking and other similar apps, there is a realization that developers can provide highly useful tools that can be monetized.  We have been extremely pleased with the response to myPANTONE.  In less than 2 months since it was launched we have over 27,000 downloads.  It is a learning experience and the customers ultimately will tell us what is working (and what is not).

The Review

myPANTONE gives you the ability to have several PANTONE colorbooks in your hand at any given place in the world. This is a perfect app for designers, Art Directors, Creative Directors, Interior Designers or anyone that has to deal with PANTONEs. myPANTONE is an amazing app to use. The app has a simple and clean user interface that is both intuitive and consistent with normal iPhone standard applications. The beautiful thing about myPANTONE is it operates like a PANTONE swatch book and you can rotates and flick through colors. This is extremely enticing if you have ever needed to leaf through a PANTONE book while you were on the go and needed something. However, this is not just for people that use PANTONE’s anyone could enjoy this app and learn new things about colors, hues and how to make a color palette.

The fundamentals are simple and the app gives you access to big and bulky swatch books with just a few flicks of your fingers. Some other awesome features are the fact that you can share your colors between your machines (that will open the colors in In-Design or Quark or CorelDraw) or to your friends. You can email the colors which is great if someone in the office is asking for a color palette or a client wants to know their PANTONE color.

myPANTONE also allows you to pull colors from a photo which is great if you are trying build a color palette from a photo for a room or a design. This feature works flawlessly. I used a very complex image and this app was able to handle it with relative ease.The only minus that I found with the app is the fact that there is not a way to see the CMYK value for a PANTONE chip. This seems a bit off to me as color books give the CMYK value. It gives the RGB but not the CMYK. Aside from that being the only feature that I could see the app was lacking, this app surpassed my expectations.

Some other features include:

• You can capture and extract colors from photos and snap to the closest PANTONE Color.

• Automatically generates harmonious color combinations

• cross-reference PANTONE colors to other PANTONE color libraries

• Email an HTML image of your palette

• Email color palettes that can be used in Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXPress & CorelDraw

• Text & Voice annotations of palettes.

• Post notifications of new palettes to twitter and facebook

• GPS tagging of palettes

Conclusion

myPANTONE is the perfect companion for any designer/creative that needs a simple and effective mobile solution. The pricepoint of the app is $9.99 which at first seemed high to me however, if you have used any PANTONE product you know that they are not low dollar and being able to have several swatch books in one application is more than ideal instead of ordering swatch books in paper form. The app has a robust enough feature list to be listed at $9.99  and more importantly is an app that anyone can use and get a grasp on quickly and easily.

Screenshots

More Info

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myPANTONE: Questions, Answers and a Review

Delibar is a full featured Delicious.com Mac client. Delibar focuses on giving Mac OS X users an easy and quick tool for searching, managing and sharing their Delicious bookmarks. Delibar will be your best friend while using Delicious!

Delibar is a beautiful Mac App by Shiny Frog that solves the problem of being able to share your bookmarks to delicious simply and easily. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh good grief Charlie Brown! Another delicious application that I will never use?!?!” Lets stop that train of thought there. If you don’t know Delicious is a social bookmarking platform that has been around since 2003. In 2006 Yahoo acquired what was then del.icio.us now known as delicious. Delicious provides a way for you to bookmark your sites  and share them with your friends, co-workers or anyone who has access to the site. Delicious allows you to “tag” your websites so that other people searching on delicious can find specific resources and sites based on your “tags”.

So which app is right for you? A plugin? A Standalone? But if I get a standalone I can’t update it from the site! Not true. Delibar has all of this covered in a small and neat package. I think I have tried every for of delicious app or plugin at some point and could never get anything that worked just right. Delibar has solved that and  I am can undoubtedly say that “Delibar brought the fun back to delicious”. No, that was not a paid plug. The reason that Delibar makes this so easy is because it utilizes  a bookmarklet to upload the URL which is great because you can click, tag and then go do something else. A really big asset to the app is that if  other people have already tagged this site, in the right column it shows you what they have already tagged so you too, can tag the site with the same tags (with a few clicks) or add your own.

Delibars integration is very good it allows you to share via email, twitter, shorten the URL, share with MarsEdit or send to Facebook all from its nice little compact interface. A benefit of Delibar is that you can run it in menubar icon only so you can that precious dock space for apps that you run on a daily basis and let your Delicious network only be a click away. The UI of Delibar is amazingly simple, clean and beautiful. Its not overpowering nor weak and puny. It is also is very easy to setup and use on a daily basis.

Delibar is definitely the last delicious app you will ever need. The app is updated regularly which is a great sign that this app will receive some awesome features in the next version. We can only hope that the second released will be as feature packed and successful as the first.

More Info

Site | Twitter | ShinyFrog Home

What is Shiny Frog?

Shiny frog is a small software and design company based in Italy.  Since 2005 they have been dealing with web design and development of high quality applications for Mac and iPhone. Their mission is creating applications that combine nice look-and-feel and usability with a great set of features, both for Mac and Web.

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The last delicious app you’ll ever need?

Dropbox is a very sound system for file sharing, syncing my macs and keeping everything I need in check. I have used dropbox before and only lightly to share files between myself and some friends but the vast capabilities this app has because of its sheer speed and simplicity is something that I overlooked. I am now learning all the tips and tricks of Dropbox and going to share them with you as I shift my cloud computing from MobileMe to Dropbox.  I have had MobileMe since the service was released. I was on the beta for the app and was a little let down by its performance. I didn’t realize how much money I was throwing away a year for slow syncs, a bad backup resource and overall a sluggish service. My MobileMe account is set to renew at the end of this month. Long story short I am not renewing. I figured out how to couple Dropbox with some free apps or apps you already have and turn it into a cheaper/equal price version of MobileMe.

Why Dropbox? The straws that broke the camels back

MobleMe’s iDisk

First of all, have you ever uploaded anything to an iDisk? Did you go to the grocery store and come back and it still has not finished uploading? This has been my typical experience and one of the main reasons I am cancelling. Speed. That alone is a reason for change. I was so frustrated with sharing files, images or anything of the like that took my entire day to do so.

Sync

The sync feature that resides on Apple’s computers is a joke. This app is visible in the menubar and eats your system resources like you wouldn’t believe. The program syncs contacts and emails so why should it eat 99% of my CPU? It shouldn’t.  I am one of the biggest mac fanatics/fanboys you will find and I am thoroughly disappointed with MobileMe. When you “sync” your computer is rendered un-usable. This is not on a computer running Tiger with one gig of ram here either. This a fast Macbook Pro that turns into a Brickbook Pro when MobileMe is syncing my iCal and some contacts.

Dropbox – Salvation at last?

Files

The first time you sync a file to your dropbox account you will smile. Its really silly how something so simple can draw a smile on your face. The reason you smile? It just works. Its fast, easy, and gives you Growl Notifications when a transfer is completed or a file has been altered. What’s better than that when you are sharing across multiple computers? Speed and notifications when something has been changed.

Sync

Now, on the surface it looks like you can just sync some files with dropbox. Not true. With a little bit of thought and some Terminal trickery we can adjust Dropbox to be something that syncs not only files, but apps, contacts and a slew of other interesting things.

Other Thoughts

All in all I am pretty excited about this change and the fact that I get to share it with you and maybe help a few people make a more educated decision on what to do and spend there money on. I am not trying to take down Apple or MobileMe. I love both and have just found a better alternative for MobileMe as some before me have found. Be sure to keep an eye out for part two when we get into the nitty-gritty and maybe you can turn dropbox in your next cloud computing solution.

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Dropbox vs. MobileMe Part 1 – The Switch

How To: Dark Background with Noise

This is a simple tutorial to show how many sites now are using a “noise” background to add a nice texture. This is very simple tutorial that requires Photoshop. The source files are not for download because this tut is only a few steps long to show you, the idea of making a noise background.

1. Open a new document. For this tut I am using a 600×200px doc. Make sure your color space is setup for RGB.

2. Fill the canvas with your select color. For this tut we are using #343434 which is a nice dark grey that would show up well in a browser.

3. Go to Edit > Fill or Shift + F5 to fill the canvas. This just filled the canvas with the color that we had chosen in the step before.

4. We are now going to go to Filter > Add Noise This will pull up a dialog box which then you can send the amount of noise you want.

5. The point of adding noise is not to go overboard but give it a nice subtle pattern where, we can make a nice background image. The amount is very small set at 99%. Make sure the distribution is Gaussian and also make sure Monochromatic is checked. If it is not the noise will be in color and will overpower your backgound instead  of being in the black and white.

6. I then like to add a tiny bit of gaussian blur. This makes the noise a bit “blended” into the background color. I do this so you can’t focus on the edges of the pixels because its pretty distracting if left 100% in focus.

That wraps up how to make a dark noise background. You can experiment with different colors, blurs and noise levels.

**NOTE: **I also would recommend putting a dark gradient or a nice layer mask that makes the noise layer fade in from one side to another. This again makes another subtle background statement. You can also try making a repeating background by making a square pattern and then defining that pattern and using fill again to “fill with pattern” instead of just filling with color.

Examples:

Scraplr

Spiffing Apps

Flowchat

Eddit – Snow Report

Simply Tweet

Tweetie

iPhone App Template Site

Go Squared

Parking App

Birdbrain App

Teehanlax Labs

Beak – Twitter Client

JQTouch

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App Trends: Dark App Site Design

Noteworthy Articles

Google Navigation video hands-on: you want this

We apologize for being fanish, but Google has pulled off something with its new Navigation elements in Google Maps (or is it Google Maps in a Navigation app? It’s hard to tell) that has serious ramifications for a navigation device industry used to charging money for functionality. The introduction of satellite view, a tasteful touch of street view (peep a still of your next turn, or see your destination), and of course regular stuff like spoken directions and street names…

The Droid vs. the iPhone: Let’s count the apps

In the flurry of quickie reviews that appeared overnight after Wednesday’s unveiling of Motorola’s (MOT) Droid — Google (GOOG) and Verizon’s (VZ) latest answer to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone — little has been said about how the two platforms stack up in terms of apps.

iPhone Apps That Bloggers Need

Gadget Lab’s friends at WP Beginner, a WordPress enthusiast blog, has compiled a list of 10 must-have iPhone apps for bloggers: mobile software that could help bloggers while they’re on the run, or on an everyday basis in general. The list includes a blogging app, a Twitter client, note-taking utilities and others.

WordPress for iPhone 2 now available in the App Store

We’ve just received word that WordPress for iPhone 2 is now available on the App Store. Woohoo!

A quick note about installation: WordPress for iPhone 2 is a new app, and the previous version won’t automatically update to 2.0. Installing it won’t overwrite any previous version you have installed. When you launch the new app, you’ll immediately see “Version 2.0″ at the bottom of the screen. When you’re no longer using it, you can safely remove the previous version from your device.

Inspiration

Little Pixels

Just Notes

Pickin’ Time

Weather Maps

Cellar

Delibar

Live Preview

Internode Usage Meter

Resources

Disambiguity

This blog is where I share what I’m passionate about and what’s currently got my attention in the realm of User Experience (UX), User Centred Design (UCD), Information Architecture (IA), Interaction Design (IxD), and Usability.

Eddit – Icon Shop

iPhone App Site Design Trends

To compete with thousands of iPhone apps in the App Store, having a good app icon is not enough. A nicely designed website for the app is very important. A beautiful website helps to drive traffic in and also makes your app stand out from the crowd.

10 hot Growl styles to make your pop-up alerts really pop

Growl provides customizable pop-up alerts for hundreds of Mac apps, making sure you never miss an important chat message or completed download. You can use Growl to set an alert for just about anything, and you can also make Growl notifications look practically any way you want.

Twitter Followers

Seven people following us chosen every week at random.

@_mark

@MikeWRogers

@iamGarth

@enestanriover

@VM_DesigNut

@iPhone_Develop

@AJCates

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Monday Recap, Resources, Apps & Random Follows

Google released a strong new feature to their arsenal called Experimental Search. What exactly is an “Experimental Search”? It’s an exploratory new feature that Google has released that you can join, provided you have a Google account (Currently you can only use one account at a time, but hopefully the application will expand to allow the use of multiple accounts, at some point,) that allow you to use some much wanted features that have been added to Google.com.

The new features that Google has allowed people to test are keyboard shortcuts, SearchWiki with sound, Accessible View, and Social Search. These are huge. I tested out keyboard shortcuts and I am absolutely floored. Why? Google.com has become a standard in my searching career. With features like “The Wonder Wheel” for blogging and searching for information, it makes it impossible to conceive of switching to another search engine. Keyboard shortcuts will allow you to google your term, hit the shortcuts, slam the enter key, and then go on with learning, or finding what you needed to, without the extra mouse movements that you needed before.

Here are the keyboard shortcuts:

• J Selects the next result.
• K Selects the previous result.
  
• O Opens the selected result.
  
• <Enter> Opens the selected result.
  
• / Puts the cursor in the search box.
  
• <Esc> Removes the cursor from the search box.

Google has raised the bar and made “googling or searching” a social activity. Another notable feature is Social Search. It will be very interesting to see where Social Search goes in the future, as there is great potential in this feature. Example: If you’re a developer and you are buddies with other developers, you can see what they search and find great resources, helpful tips, and even snippets that you can take with you to apply to other projects.

Definition of Social Search:

More easily find relevant blogs, reviews and other public content from your social circle. Sign in to Google and do a search. If there’s relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your social circle.”

What is your social circle? It’s a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you’re publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed). Learn more about Social Search.

Conclusion:

With Google’s recent release of Wave, the Droid launch approaching fast, rolling out experimental features, a Gmail push app for iPhone, and other features like Voice, it seems hard to think that Google wouldn’t continue to set the standard for what a search engine can do for you. Google has really put in some development time to make their products “awesome,” and most are free for anyone to try and use. I think that Google could revolutionize the search engine again with these extra features. Google has definitely made their presence felt again (as if you forgot them,) so try bingin‘ that when you get the chance.

Note: Thanks to @thadwillnotstop for the tip!

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Google: Putting the mental in experimental

Throughout my career as a user experience designer, I have continually asked myself three questions:

• What should my deliverables be?
• Will my deliverables provide clarity to me and their audience?
• Where do my deliverables and other efforts fit within the spectrum of UX design?

Useful Glossaries For Web Designers and Developers

In a day in age where there are just as many freelancers as there are university educated designers, developers, and all around web gurus, it is amazing to me how much many of us don’t know or have forgot about our trade. As a self-taught designer, I will admit to you upfront that there is a lot I don’t know when it comes to official jargon or certain aspects of things like typography and graphic design. It is these reasons that I call upon glossaries from time to time.

Quick Usability Checklist

After reviewing websites for a few months, I’ve begun to see general patterns emerge that make a site more or less usable. In this post, I’d like to highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts.

Optimizing Conversion Rates: It’s All About Usability

In eCommerce usability improvements usually have a huge impact on conversion rates. However, usability doesn’t only mean better visual guide or better site hierarchy. It also means a better communication with potential customers using a professional, trustworthy design, delivering the right information at the right time and communicating with users instead of throwing ad-slogans at them.

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites.

iPhone Needs a New Home

The guys over at Teehan + Lax seriously made some awesomerness for the iPhone home-screen. This is a proposed home screen design that I think would work better then what the iPhone has now, which in turn, give you a more seamless experience.

Confirming Passwords is Annoying: Is here a better way?

The defining characteristic of a password field is that it abstracts text as dots. While the intention of this behavior is understandable (it makes users feel secure and protects from prying eyes), the unintended effect is that it creates a usability problem. Users can’t tell if they’ve entered a password incorrectly until after the site’s validation informs them. It’s like typing with your eyes closed.

Convert and the Evolution of a User Interface

An awesome post about the usability design of Convert. Just a constant reminder that experience design is always changing and the finished product is not going to the be the first.

Testled – Usable Usability Testing

See where your users spent their time, what they missed, and where they had problems. Analyse what they typed, where their mouse moved, and even what they are saying and feeling, with data straight from their webcam.

Off the Desktop and Into the World

Great post that “makes you think”. Dane Peterson talks about how Experience Design isn’t just “on a computer” and there are experiences everywhere.

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10 User Experience Related Resources & Findings