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Filed under: Software, Cool toolsIn Mac OS X (and back into OS 9 history), a creator code is a hidden value attached to a document and bound to a preferred application, allowing the OS to know which application to use for opening that file. This is particularly helpful for filetypes that have multiple valid 'target' apps (JPEG, PDF, etc.); the

creator code lets Preview 'own' its PDF or image files, TextEdit automatically open its text files, and so on.

Those who are familiar with the process are already (painfully) aware that...
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I quite fancy the native Weather.app for iPhone: it’ simple and intuitive, providing some basic info about the weather and forecasts. And obviously, there are hundreds of clones out in the App Store: some apps are useful and “professional”, other are just pieces of shit thrown together into an .app bundle. That’s the truth.Today I’d like to talk about an app that has made it to the first page of my homescreen in a matter of 5 minutes and which has changed the way I “look at the weather” on my iPhone: Outside.Outside is an application designed by Michael Flarup and developed by Will Wu of Robocats, a new and promising dev team. When I first launched Outside I asked myself two questions: “Is this the actual interface? Why would someone develop such an application?” Let’s start from the second one. Outside is a new twist on the typical weather

application: it combines weather, local forecasts and notifications in a single, awesome package. It’s an application made for people who are really interested in the weather, like: “Should I wear a coat today?” and “When can I wear my favorite t-shirt again?”. Basic stuff, useful app. No complicated data or ultra-nerd graphs, Outside displays a window on the screen. A window, nothing more, nothing less.Then, I said I asked myself if the interface was real. I mean, it’s very likely that you’ll think it’s the welcome screen: it’s so gorgeous it seems fake. After some seconds I realized the UI has been designed by Michael Flarup: Michael is 25 yo talented graphic and icon designer from Denmark, which blogs and showcases some of his works over at PixelResort. Now you understand how come it’s so gorgeous, huh? Movin’ on, let’s see what Outside could do for you.Well, it displays the...
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The iPhone’s most elusive app to date is about to sweep back onto the scene -- but don’t look for it in the App Store, and you won’t even have to jailbreak your device to get it.

Google Voice remains one of the most controversial apps for the iPhone. While Google themselves had Apple slam the door in their face before they even got to the App Store, a couple of small developers did manage to bring Google Voice to the iPhone, albeit briefly.

In addition to Sean Kovacs’ excellent GV Mobile (which is still available for jailbroken devices), developer Riverturn was also there early on with VoiceCentral. Both apps were pulled from the App Store on the heels of Google’s own denial, and the resulting firestorm even

set off an FCC investigation that is still ongoing.

None of this sat too well with Riverturn (check out that full story here), so they’ve set out to change the rules by coming up with VoiceCentral Black Swan. They call it “the next revolution in iPhone applications,” meaning it’s not tied to the App Store nor is it a website optimized for the iPhone (which Google has been rumored to do for Voice since they were shut out). Riverturn calls Black Swan a feature-rich “weblication” that enables you to view and manage your Google Voice data just like a native iPhone application, combining the device’s easy-to-use interface with the convenience of an always-up-to-date web application.

Among the features promised for Black Swan are a native iPhone look & feel, the ability to sync Google Voice data (including importing Google Contacts), offline access to Voice data, the ability to listen to Voice messages and read transcriptions and even swiping to delete calls, voicemails or SMS conversations.

Black Swan is currently in a very limited beta, but if you...
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We all knew this was gonna happen. The day Ryan Petrich announced he was working on a new application to manage backgrounded apps on the iPhone, everyone thought of Multifl0w, and how ProSwitcher (this is the name of the new app by Petrich) could become the new, best multitasking application from Cydia. And here we are today, with ProSwitcher in public beta and a multifl0w update on its way. I’ve been trying ProSwitcher for a few hours now, and I’ve already ditched Multifl0w for it.Find out why.ProSwitcher is smooth. It works like Multifl0w, basically, but it’s in details where it stands out. First, animations: when you activate ProSwitcher so that it brings the backgrounded apps on front, the windows fades in and out as if it’s powered by Mac OS’ CoreAnimation or CoreGraphic. It’s sexy. Same applies when you choose the application or quit ProSwitcher: everything feels so natural and

integrated into iPhone OS you’ll ask yourself if it’s a native appllication. And I repeat, it’s the first beta, many updates and fixes will come.Moving on, ProSwitcher comes with a large set of Preferences: you can choose to display the application’s title right under the preview window, dim the background, swipe to close, set a corner radius and many other things. Also, you can choose between 10+ activation methods, including taps / swipes on the statusbar and pinch on the Spingboard.ProSwitcher is way better than Multifl0w right now, there’s no doubt about it. You can download the beta by adding this source in Cydia: http://booleanmagic.com/repoAs for Multifl0w, the developer Aaron Ash has just tweeted...
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Paul Westerberg, lead singer of The Replacements, used to sing “And everybody wants to be special here..They call your name out loud and clear.Here comes a regular, am I the only one here today?” in that mid-80s song, Here Comes a Regular. I believe this song pretty much describes the situation of to-do and notes taking applications available in the App Store: everybody wants to be special, yet a very few developers clearly admit that they have just “regular” apps. I mean, there are kinda 2000 notes / todo apps out there, and everybody says their app is the “most complete manager whatever bla bla bla”.Sure.But this is a different story. I had to write this review many months ago, but for one reason or another I never found the time to sit down and write it. I’m talking about AwesomeNote, of the most popular productivity apps of the App

Store, which has been updated to 2.5 version,update that truly makes it the best GTD and note taking application ever made for the iPhone.Find out why.First, I’d like to say that AwesomeNote is different from Simplenote. Otherwise, I’d say Simplenote is the best note taking mobile application but they’re different. Simplenote is aimed at people who need to store quick notes / ideas, have them backed up...
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HootSuite has just announced the release of HootSuite for iPhone, which should be available tomorrow in the AppStore. They also posted a video of HootSuite mobile in action and, truth be told, I’m really impressed so far. They included most everything the web service has, like statistics and Twitter lists. But there’s so much more inside this application, watch the video below.Now, I think HootSuite could become the perfect companion to Tweetie 2 on my iPhone. If you have a blog, or you manage your brand, be sure to check out this HootSuite thing.Expect a detailed review as soon as it’s available.

...
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MacNN - Video hosting site Qik says it has submitted a new iPhone application to the App Store, one capable of live streaming. The present app has so far bee...

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Turns out many web designers and developers are switching to Mac OS X and guess what, I couldn’t agree more. If you want to do some serious work guys, I think Mac is the best option available. But anyway, the “switching process” can be really hard: especially if you come from years of Windows usage finding the best applications could be a big problem.That’s why I decided to collect the best applications for web designers and developer using a Mac. But please notice that this roundup doesn’t cover every application out there, I’ve only picked up the best apps (free and paid) I know. If you have more suggestions, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.Enjoy!Design & DevelopmentCoda – The all in one web development tool from Panic. It combines a text editor, ftp and live previewer in one place. You can read this great

review from Shawn Blanc and my roundup of 120 useful resources for Coda.Espresso – Very similar to Coda, Espresso is developed by the same creators of CSSEdit and it’s extensible thanks to plugins called Sugars. I’ve never used it deeply, but I’m sure a lot of users seem to appreciate it.CSSEdit: Edits and previews CSS. The app of choice of many designers, though I still prefer Coda’s built-in CSS editor.Flux – One of the most gorgeous WYSIWYG editors out there, combines powerful features and a simple (yet effective) interface. Read my review here if you missed it.TextMate – Simple and powerful text editor. It has a huge number of fans.BBEdit - The most famous text editor available for Mac, provides many features and a linear interface.TextWrangler – An alternative to BBEdit.SubEthaEdit – Collaborative text editing tool for Mac OS.Slammer – Grid manager app, read this AppStorm review to know more about it.MailMail – Mail.app comes bundled with Mac OS X, and I believe it’s no doubt the best mail client available. It’s stable, extensible with plugins (just to name a few: LetterBox and GrowlMail) and powerful thanks to features like Rules.Mailplane – If you’re a Gmail user and you like the Gmail native interface, then Mailplane is for you. Mailplane brings all the Gmail features to a desktop app, with a lot of great additions like drag & drop and multi-accounts. Read my review here if you missed it.Postbox – I’ve tested Postbox some weeks ago and I wasn’t really satisfied with. I mean, the interface remembers us that Postbox comes from Windows, and this is not good. But anyway, this app has a few features many people seem to love so here’s why I included it in this roundup.Herald – Herald is a great mail notifier that integrates with Mail.app. Besides an obvious notify feature, Herald can mark a message as read or even start a new reply. Read my review here if you missed it.Notify – A mail notifier which sits in the manubar and alerts you when new messages arrive. The upcoming version 2.0 will be a complete rewrite of the app, which will support Gmail, IMAP, Rackspace Mail and MobileMe. AppStorm wrote a great preview post about it.Mail- Grab – Mail-Grab is a lightweight application which lets you extract multiple addresses from messages and send multiple mails at once. Read my review here if you missed it.Image EditingPhotoshop – Should I really say something about Photoshop? Just one thing: I hope the CS5 version will have a better UI, that’s it.Pixelmator – A famous image editor built only for Mac OS X, Pixelmator is no doubt a great piece of software. The user interface is awesome – way better than Photoshop in my opinion – it’s fast, stable and user-friendly. With the recent 1.5 update Pixelmator gained some nice features like the Slice Tool, which will come in handy for many designers who’d like to use Pixelmator for their works. But please remind, Pixelmator is not Photoshop. That said, it’s a must have.Smoking Apples Review.Picturesque – A quick and easy image editor which automates some processes with its built-in features. Read my review here if you missed it.Acorn – Another alternative image editor, which has recently gone under a major update that made this app even more stable and complete. I personally use it for quick stuff and minor adjustments and it works fine.BloggingMarsEdit – A desktop publishing tool which supports various services like Wordpress and Squarespace. John Gruber loves it.Blogo – Powerful, simple and elegant. If you have a Wordpress powered blog on your portfolio site, you’d like to give Blogo a try.MySQLSequel Pro – A free app which makes it easy to manage your SQL server.Querious – A full featured MySQL database manager, one of the most famous for the Mac platform. I prefer it to SequelPro. Read this AppStorm review to know more.OrganizersFinder – “What’s better than a well organised Finder?”, you may ask. That’s true, Finder is a great file manager, but it lacks supports for Tags and other features many 3rd party apps have.Yojimbo – The anything bucket. Yojimbo is an information organizer where you can store everything: photos, notes, bookmarks, passwords. Read my article here if you missed it.Evernote – One of the most famous organizer out there. Evernote is available for Windows, Mac and iPhone, which means total cross compatibility. Moreover, Evernote lets you sync everything over the cloud. I don’t like the interface though.Together – Much like Yojimbo, Together lets you store everything inside it. It’s just your personal preference.Thoughts – An upcoming app which will let you store notes, pictures and links into its elegant interface. Read my exclusive preview here if you missed it.Shovebox – Available both on Mac and iPhone, Shovebox sits in the menubar waiting for you to shove stuff onto it. It’s not as complete as Together or Yojimbo, but it’s great to store quick notes and links. The iPhone sync is amazing. To-DoThings – The award winning application from CulturedCode, Things is “Getting Things Done” app that provides a simple and elegant interface together with an amazing user experience.The Hit List – THL takes a different approach from Things: it’s a notebook where you store all your todos and tasks. Many people prefer this app thanks to its great keyboard shortcuts integration.FTPCyberduck – An open source application, surely the most famous FTP client available for Mac. It has a few problems, but the app is updated every month or so.Forklift – More than a simple FTP app, Forklift is a complete file manager for both your remote and local files. But most of all, it’s fast. Seriously.Flow – An elegant application from Extend Mac. It features a nice UI, QuickLook integration and multi-panel view.Transmit – The leading app from Panic, it seamlessly integrates with Coda and provides a large number of features. Rumor has it it will be updated to 4.0 soon.ExpanDrive – This is cool guys. ExpanDrive mounts a FTP / SFTP server as a Mac OS volume. This means you can access your remote files as you would do for a normal folder. Awesome.Browser AddonsThurly (Safari) – Lets you shorten urls and tweet from Safari. Read my review here.Glims (Safari) – A must have for Safari users, adds an incredible number of features to the browser, including tabs restore and search thumbnails. Read my post here.Firebug (Firefox) – The best add-on for web designers, everyone uses it. Read this NetTuts article.SharingCloud – Cloud is still in private beta at the moment, but it will be public very soon. Cloud sits in the menubar and lets you share everything from your Mac with a unique, system wide hockey. Trust me, it’s so easy so you’ll wonder why such a thing didn’t exist before. Read my exclusive review here if you missed it.FileShuttle – FileShuttle lets you quickly upload stuff to your own FTP server with a single drag & drop. it’s great, fast and the icon it’s pure awesomeness. Read my review here if you missed it.Tinygrab – Very similar to FileShuttle, Tinygrab also allows you to upload directly to its built-in web interface. Read my review here if you missed it.Droplr – Another private beta app, Droplr is a menubar app that lets you share links and photos giving you a short url. It provides Twitter integration and a web interface to check the stuff you’ve uploaded.IMiChat – Comes built-in with Mac OS X.Adium – A multi-protocol IM application which supports MSN, Facebook, Twitter and so much more.Skype – World’s most known IM service, supports text, audio and video chats. Go create an account now.SubVersionVersions - I’ve used Versions a couple of months ago and I was really happy with it. Fast, great interface and easy to use.Cornerstone - An alternative to Versions, some people think it’s more “complete” though I didn’t spot a real difference.FeedsNetNewsWire – My feeds readers of choice, supports Google Reader and various 3rd party services like Instapaper. Most of all, it’s free and frequently updated. Seriously, I think you should use this.Socialite – See social networking section below.Gruml – A native Google Reader client, with a simple interface and a menubar item which quickly alerts you if new feeds are in your inbox. You can read this Mackozer review about it.Chill Pill – Use Fever from Shaun Inman? Chill Pill is a desktop, thimble application that integrates with your Fever remote installation. Doesn’t seem anything more than a Fluid app to me, anyway.Social NetworkingTweetie – The best Twitter client for Mac. Multi-accounts, third party services integration, Twitter searches all in one window. The upcoming update will add support for Retweets, Lists and many other stuff and improvements.Fluid – Fluid is not a client for some social network out there, it’s just an app that turns webapps into Desktop applications. So, this means you can access Facebook or Flickr from your dock . Read my roundup here if you missed it.Socialite – Formerly known as Eventbox, then Realmac Software bought the app and decided to rename it Socialite. But the core it’s still the same: Socialite packs many social networks in one place. It supports Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Google Reader, but many others will come soon.Facebook Desktop – A simple menubar utility which lets you check your latest Facebook updates and even change your status on the go. Very useful.Flickery – The best app to manage Flickr from your Mac desktop. Supports Photosets, Tags, Contacts and more. Read my review here if you missed it.Delibar – Another menubar application, developed by ShinyFrog, which allows you to manage / search / share your Delicious bookmarks. Read my review here if you missed it.Time Tracking & InvoicingBillings An award winning application from MarketCircle, integrates time tracking, client management and invoicing. Highly recommended.On The Job - Way simpler than Billings, it’s perfect if you’d like a straightforward application for you time tracking and billing needs.BackupTime Machine – Apple’s backup solution, it saved many people during these past years.Dropbox – The best online / sync service ever made, which allows you to remotely store up to 2GB of files for free. Read my roundup of 40 creative uses of Dropbox here.SuperDuper - Create a bootable copy of your Mac hard drive.TestingMAMP – The best way to manage a local web server for testing purposes, installs PHP and MySQL as well. I highly recommend the Pro package.VirtualHostX – With VirtualHostX you can easily create and manage Apache virtual hosts with just a few clicks. Integrates with MAMP and Apple’s built-in web server.Parallels - Emulate Windows / Linux / Whatever on Mac OS X under a virtual machine. It’s my favorite application to virtualize Windows.VMWare - Tried it some months ago, it didn’t seem as powerful as Parallels. The recent 3.0 update changed a lot of things though.ScreenshotsLittleSnapper – The best screenshots taking application for Mac. Comes with a built-in quick editing features, annotations, smart folders and collections. You can also upload screenshots to Flickr and Ember directly from the library.Layers – Lets you capture your screen like a Photoshop layered file. Read my review here if you missed it.Fonts ManagementFontcase – An elegant font manager and previewer from Bohemian Coding. An award winning application, easy to use and packed with a beautiful UI. Read my review here if you missed it.FontExplorer – Fonts auto-activation, previews, CS4 suite support. You must have this.Other Design / Development ToolsSwatch – A color picker that sits in the menubar. Simple and effective.xScope – Layout and screen measurement utility, the Mac-way.Integrity – Broken links checker app, but it doesn’t get an update since many years.Silverback – Professional usability testing applicationMiscellaneous1Password – Passwords manager and automatic form filler. But it’s so much more than this, it’s simply one of the best apps for Mac. Read my review here if you missed it.AppZapper – With AppZapper you can delete every file associated to an application. You won’t leave any preference file on your Mac anymore.Dropzone – An app that sits in your Dock and lets you perform many actions like image uploading with a single drag & drop. Read my review here if you missed it.Multi-Firefox – Runs multiple Firefox installations and profiles on your Mac. Read my post about it.Tags – Have you ever wanted to tag everything on your Mac? From folders to mail messages, Tags is the best application to organize (with tags) your digital life. And the upcoming version 2 rocks, trust me.Quicksilver – The best application launcher for Mac. Read this excellent piece from Smoking Apples to know everything about it.Growl – System-wide notifier for Mac.Snippets – Manage and collect code snippets. Free. Read my review here.TextExpander: Text substitutions to the next level. A terrific time saver.Screenflow: the best solution to record screencast for your website. The recent update made the app even more powerful and feature-rich. ...
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Ok, maybe I’m not the best person to review Foobi. I mean, I’m italian and Italy is famous for its foods goodness: pasta, pizza, they’re famous all around the world. Maybe food is one of the few reasons I still love Italy. Anyway, when I first saw Foobi I was shocked by its gorgeous interface and smooth animations. Now that I’tried it, I can say that Foobi, if in the right hands, could be one of the most useful apps on your iPhone. And turns out that we’ve also got some codes to give away. Foobi is an application which helps you in keeping track of your diet. Well, it keeps track of what you eat and how much you eat, not the diet you should follow, actually. Indeed, Foobi doesn’t count calories: many people (including me) don’t know what calories are, so the developers wisely chose to exclude this feature and

go for another solution. Servings. Foobi keeps track of how many servings you had for each food during a specific day, and this works perfectly for diet n00bs like me. The interface is made of two main sliders: the top one allows you to switch days back and forth, while you can change food “categories” with the bottom horizontal slider. Foobi comes with almost 20 default food categories (like Meat, Eggs, Sweets) but you can add as many as you like with a few taps.  Once you’ve choosen the categories that fits most to your usual “diet” you can start using Foobi. Where “using” means” telling the application how many servings you had for a category. Like “Today I eat…2 eggs, 1 banana and 1 sandwich”. Tap, tap, tap and you’re set. Then, you can track your eating habits by switching to landscape mode and Foobi will display a weekly graph with the...
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The world renowned application, Photoshop, is known for its extremely versatile usability, interface, and flexibility; having these features is good. Then again, for the full version you will have to spend about $700. Now we would like to introduce you to Pixelmator, an application for the Mac that closely resembles Photoshop’s performance (Clarification, it is not as good as Photoshop as that is nearly impossible to accomplish), yet keeps a budget friendly customer’s attention. With Pixelmator, all things are possible and then some. The Team Photoshop has been developed by a staff of hundreds. In contrast, Pixelmator has been designed by two brothers, Saulius and Aidas Dailide. This, ladies and gentlemen, is miracle!  These two individuals developed a complex, thorough, and all around kick-ass application. Some would say this task is impossible, but they did it! They defied all odds and made an application to fit the standard of all the gods

in Rome (Did the Roman gods use Macs?). The UI The user-interface is what users find to be the most important part of their experience with an application. With that in mind; This, my friends, is good news! Pixelmator has one of the best user-interfaces we have ever seen! Its layout resembles Photoshop...
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