Tutorials – Page 5829 – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

iTerm 2 in early development

Power users of the command-line are no doubt familiar with iTerm, the free replacement terminal application. iTerm has been the go-to alternative for people who wanted tabbed windows and other advanced features.

Development of iTerm has been fairly slow and irregular. The initial release was back in 2002 and the 0.10 release is almost a year old. A look at the version history shows very little has happened since 2006.

A “fork” of the project is now available on Google Code and goes by the name iterm2. The current version, labeled “Alpha 6” was just released yesterday. On the surface it looks pretty much the same, until you get into the bookmarks, preferences, and profiles which have been completely rewritten.

Thanks to TUAW reader Nikola Knezevic for sending this in!

TUAW iTerm 2 in early development originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Twitterrific 3 for the iPad: change, tough love, and better

Here’s a good sign that you’ve made some pretty significant changes to your application: three different people from the company write three different posts about the new design. That’s what the folks from Iconfactory did about Twitterrific 3. David Lanham wrote about Redesigning Twitterrific, not just the timeline, but also the settings, contacts, filtering, and more to “optimize the user experience.” Gedeon Maheux wrote about Twitterrific’s Tough Love, and realizing that Twitterrific had gotten out of hand, along with the steps they took to make it better rather than just pile more on top of it. Craig Hockenberry wrote about not designing for early adopters, whose expectations may limit making something better by expecting you to simply build on what you had before.

I was an early adopter of Twitterrific on the Mac, and still compare all other applications to Twitterrific when I am using them. When I first heard about the changes in Twitterrific 3, I was sure I was going to hate them. After having used it for awhile, I still think Twitterrific is my favorite iPad app. I’ve been using it since I bought my iPad back in mid-June, and although I’ve tried some of the others, I keep coming back to Twitterrific. Many others have just started using Twitterrific 3 for the iPhone or iPad because Twitter turned off “basic authorization” logins. All Twitter applications now must use Twitter’s (severely, thoroughly flawed) OAuth system for logging in.

Read on for my thoughts on the app, as well as what TUAW heard directly from Iconfactory about the future of the app.

TUAW Twitterrific 3 for the iPad: change, tough love, and better originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

iPod Touch 4G Teardown

The FCC has posted images of the iPod Touch 4G teardown. Apple announced the iPod Touch 4G on Wednesday, Sept 1st 2010 along with iOS 4.1 and iOS 4.2 for iPad. Checkout the iPod Touch 4G Specs.

Teardown images of the new iPod Touch after the jump…

You can follow us on Twitter, Join us at Facebook, and also Subscribed to RSS Feed to receive latest updates.

Also checkout:

Twitter for iPad is Now Available for Download

The official Twitter for iPad is now available for download in the AppStore for Free! With this release, the official Twitter app is now a universal application for Twitter available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

The iPad version of the Twitter app comes with an amazing user interface. The introduction of panes and multi-touch gesture makes the app the most complete twitter client available for iPad.

What is Twitter for iPad? And how is it different from our iPhone app?

Twitter for iPad brings your Tweets together with web pages, photos, videos and more. Tap on any tweet, and a related content pane will open, displaying any linked content from the tweet, including web pages, profile information, hashtag searches and similar users. Slide panels from side to side and quickly navigate through related content.

There’s also easy ways to quickly peek into a tweet

Pinch on a tweet to quickly unfold related information and actions
Use two fingers to drag on tweet and reveal replies

Download Twitter for iPad [iTunes Link]

Communicating With iOS App Graphic Designers

At times I’ve had difficulty working with graphic designers. Usually problems occur when the designer starts getting some great ideas and throws deadlines out the window.

I found a great post on communicating with designers from Mike Berg, and here are three concepts that I took out of the article that I think will be very useful:

1. Find reference material and put together a mood board showing different images so the designer knows what sort of mood the graphics should be in. (see the article to know what a mood board is).

2. Set clear deadlines. If the artist starts to change scope make sure they can meet the deadline.

3. Always get the source image files from a graphics (eg. PSD files) .. do not just get the .PNG or other finished graphics files just in case you want to change or have the images changed.

You can read the article here that shares many other useful ideas for communicating with designers:
How To Effectively Communicate With Designers

Thanks for reading, please share this article by using the buttons below!

Share and Enjoy:

Liberate Your Video with Pixorial

We human beings have come almost a full circle in communicating with each other. From the paintings in caves during stone age, we have now come to communicating with images & combination of fast moving images (videos) in this modern age. When a picture speaks thousand words, it is only logical that videos speak about a few thousand more. Most importantly, when it comes to sharing memorable moments in life with loved ones, videos are indispensable.

Pixorial claims to have been created to liberate the world’s video – to empower people of all ages to share, create and connect with friends and family through video. With Pixorial, people can easily send, upload, edit, organize and share their video memories. Today, we are going to put their claim to test.

Overview

Pixorial is an online video service where personal videos and people interconnect. Pixorial empowers its users to collaborate with others by adding and sharing clips taken on mobile or full resolution home movies using tools offered by Pixorial. You can edit and remix this video content to create unique & personalized clips of any duration. Regardless of the source of origin, the final video clip retains the full quality and resolution of the master clips.

Sign Up

You can sign up with Pixorial directly using their sign up form or login instantly using Facebook Connect. Login using Facebook account happens via OAuth & your credentials are never stored at Pixorial.

After signing up for the service, a pretty looking window showed up explaining how the service works in just three steps. I clicked on the video upload option in the first step to see what happens next.

Uploading a Video

Video Upload

After a ToS page, we are taken to the actual upload page and I uploaded the Toy Story 3 movie trailer in MP4 format. You can upload upto 10 files at a time. I found the upload process to be pretty quick and the status bar kept me informed of the time remaining and percent of upload complete.

Uploaded videos are sent to the conversion queue and you can go grab a cup of coffee while Pixorial does its magic. An email will arrive shortly after the conversion is done and I found the process to be very quick taking into account my experiences with YouTube & Vimeo.

Dashboard

The dashboard has a clean, three column layout without much fluff that could confuse a newbie. The layout is simple – folders & filters on the left column, the video files in the center column and once a video is selected, the meta data is shown in the right column.

Tagging Scenes

Tagging scene is an option with which we can clip scenes from a video. Consider this essential to create the highlight reel with just the good stuff. Pixorial has done a great job in creating an online video trimming tool. Move the trimmers, one to the starting point in the timeline of your choice and the other to end of the scene.

Using Trimmers

Add a name to the scene and some meta data if needed & click on Tag the Scene to create a clip. Once the clip is created, you can move the trimmers along the timeline to create as many clips as you want. Once you are content that all the clips have been created, save the project.

Remember to name each and every clip or else the clips cannot be tagged.

Creating Stuff

Time to head back to the dashboard to create an awesome video from the clips we have created. You can select multiple clips using the Ctrl key in the keyboard and click on Create Stuff.

Select clips from the bin and add them to the storyboard. From the transition tab, select any of the four transition effects to spice up the video. The effects in the storyboard and clips can be moved around by dragging them left & right. Titles can also be added from the Titles tab.

Sharing Options

When all things are upto your satisfaction, click on continue to explore the sharing options. The video created can be shared in popular sharing networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and YouTube among others. A free low resolution video download is readily available and higher resolution downloads will cost you a bit. Video download link is mailed to your email address and you also have the option to mail it to your friends & family.

The Facebook App

Connections

Pixorial also provides an exclusive email address and videos mailed to this address are added to the Pixorial video library. You can also connect your social network profiles and publish videos to designated sites in just a few clicks.

Besides the great web app, Pixorial has a fantastic app on Facebook too. Now that Facebook is becoming the go to destination for sharing multimedia content with friends and family, Pixorial will help you enhance the video content you share.

Facebook App

With Pixorial’s Video and VideoAlbum applications, it is now a cake walk for Facebook users to upload, edit, share and archive their videos without leaving Facebook.

Posting a Video

The Pixorial Facebook app launches to a simple looking page with two options – Post a video and Create a Video Album. Let us go ahead to post a video using the app. As with the rest of the apps, Pixorial will also require access to your account information before allowing access to the app. If you are comfortable with the data they pulling from the account, allow the app to proceed.

Posting Options

After approval, Pixorial takes to a page from where we can upload videos. There are three video upload options to choose from. First is the webcam option which captures the video using the webcam and then uploads it to the Pixorial library. To the app’s credit, it recognized my webcam quickly and the video captured was uploaded without any issues.

Since I am not interested to showcase and edit the webcam video of me sitting in PJs, I chose the option to use the existing video from the Pixorial library. For those who do not have a Pixorial account created in the first place, there is always the Upload from desktop option which works in the same way the web app does.

Video from Library

Pixorial Facebook app was pretty snappy when pulling videos from my library at the web app and the video we created showed up in not time.

Editing the Video

Edit Mode in Facebook App

I was surprised to see that editor worked the same way as it did in the web app and editing happens by way of moving the trimmers. In the Facebook app, there is an option to add a soundtrack to the video being edited. A lot of tracks are available to select from multiple genre and am pretty sure this collection of music tracks will fit the mood of any type of video. One downside is that you cannot upload your own song into the app.

Soundtrack Selection

The volume level of the soundtrack and that of the video can optimized using the volume slider below the player. After the mixing is done, Pixorial allows you to post the video not only in your wall but also in the walls of your friends too. I chose to post in my Facebook page instead.

Creating a Video Album

A Pixorial video album is like a video playground where you and your friends share videos of an event, experience or interest in one album. Here too we have the same three options to upload videos from. Once the video is in the system, we have a editor which almost looks like a standard PowerPoint template.

Video Album Creation

There are different templates to select from. In each template we have the option to edit the Title, add some text alongside video describing it. For those of us very particular about the template design, you have the option to create a custom template with colors and fonts of your choice.
Once you are done, click on continue to select the list of your friends who will get to see and comment on this video.

Final Thoughts

I really liked the way Pixorial uses overlays to help you with instructional videos during every step of the creation process. Some may find this window popping up multiple times to be annoying, but it is a great way to make first time users familiar with the web app. Pixorial could consider redesigning the player to bring it more in line with the stylish design of the rest of the web app. Current player design looks totally out of place and a bit cheap.

When editing videos or templates in the Facebook app, it takes a while before we move from one step to another. May be that is because the app has to communicate with the Pixorial server. But the wait is a bit longer than normal and a progress bar or a status message of some sort will make us not to rush to refresh page again. All said and done, Pixorial is a fun app to play with and share memorable moments with your kith & kin.

Secure Your Data in the Cloud with CloudSafe

Everything’s stored online nowadays. Contact information, bank details and even your files. But just how secure are those backups?

CloudSafe helps to secure online files by the use of heavy encryption. In this article, I’m going to be showing you how to set up a virtual safe where you can store your encrypted files and data.

Overview

CloudSafe is an app that allows you to create virtual safes to store your heavily encrypted files and keep these away from prying eyes. With various advanced settings for permissions, it allows you full control of exactly who has access to your precious files.

Overview

Pricing

CloudSafe is priced quite moderately, using the freemium business model and only employing a small change between the free and premium accounts. Where the free plan only allows for a maximum of 3 safes per account, all premium plans eliminate this cap and allow unlimited safes to be made. Premium plans also allow for group access, where the free plan does not.

Pricing

The main difference between the free and premium plans is the maximum limit on storage allocated to the account. Whilst the free plan offers a heavy 1GB of storage, the medium plan offers 5GB for $2.99/month and the large offers 50GB for $7.99/month. However, their currencies are not balanced and whilst the premium plans would be $2.99/month and $7.99/month in the US, they would be £2.99/month (approx $4.60 USD) and £7.99/month (approx $12.30 USD) in the UK, respectively. This shows a serious flaw in the pricing model, but one that is becoming ever so common with businesses who do not compensate for this change.

Get An Account

Before you can start using CloudSafe, you’re going to need an account. Once you hit the register page, you’re required to enter some basic contact details. It’s quite straightforward and once you’ve done this and entered the correct CAPTCHA string, you’re almost good to go.

Registration

However, before you can do anything, you’ll need to activate your account using the link sent to the email address you provided during registration. As far as I’m aware, this is a security precaution that ensures that users are legitimate before they can use the service. Because you probably are a real person, it shouldn’t be too much trouble and once you’ve done it, you’re ready to go.

Manage Contacts

I’ve found that the best thing to do before you do anything else is to add some contacts. Because this is only necessarily if you plan to securely share your files with other users, you can skip this step if you’re just using it to store your files for self-reference.

To add contacts, click the “Contacts” tab along the main navigation menu and then in the right sidebar pane, a bright blue “Invite Contacts” button will have appeared that will open a new form. In here, you can enter a list of all email addresses (comma-separated) and an optional personal message and those people will be sent an invitation to join CloudSafe. Once they’ve accepted your invitation, they’ll be automatically added to your contacts. Now that you’ve some contacts to share with, you can create your first safe!

Adding Contacts

Create a Safe

Creating a safe is an easy process once you understand how it works. Navigate to either the dashboard or the “Safes” page and in the right sidebar, you will find another big blue button that will take you to the first step to create your safe. On the first page of the form, choose a short name for your safe and provide a description.

Creating Safes – Basic Info

You are then given the option of adding a note that will be encrypted and further visible to those accessing your safe as well as the ability to upload the first files to your safe. Note that it’s not required that you upload files as you can do this later.

Manage Safe Access

On the next page of the form, you will be given a variety of options that will denote the access you would like for the safe. You can also, however, choose to have no access chains if you only want to access the virtual safe yourself.

Manage Safe Access

Full Access

This option allows you to allocate access to certain contacts and they can have unmonitored access
to all files in the safe at any time. This is good if you’re only using the service to share files with a trusted group of people.

Two-Man Rule

This is quite a strange setting for file access but it must work for some people. This allows the safe to only be accessible between two people who must have permission from the other person before accessing the safe.

Via Confirmation

This allows you to allocate “confirmers” who control whether the requested users can or cannot access the safe. Though the confirmer does not have access to the contents of the safe, they decide whether or not the user who requests access can access to the safe.

Manage Files

Now that you’ve set up your safe, you can start adding files. To do this, visit either the dashboard or the “Safes” page and you will find a list of your safes. Choose the one you would like to add files to and click the green circular button to view your safe.

Manage Files

From here, you can alter the encrypted message and you will find a list of all files in your safe (if any). It’s self-explanatory from here but it’s possible to add directories and files which will be encrypted and stored securely in your safe.

Final Thoughts

Though it can seem a little complicated and some are the practised can leave one quite confused, overall, the app is actually quite useful for those who want more security when they’re storing their files in the cloud. In terms of design and overall usability, the app doesn’t shine but it’s quite easy to ignore this if you’re using the app for the right purposes.

Despite the pricing issues I have mentioned, it is priced well (providing you live in the US!) for the level of service provided and would definitely be a good tool for those that would use it well.

Easy Design Feedback with Notebox

Collecting feedback and incorporating them in the design revisions is as important to a designer as his/her creativity. The easiest and the most common way a designer collects feedback is by emailing a PDF file or an image and the client will revert back in an email with the changes that has be done.

Misinterpretation and confusion creeps in with this asynchronous feedback model and often times few comments from the customer can go unnoticed. Notebox is a design and concept feedback app that helps designers to get client feedback literally on their designs.

Overview

With Notebox both you & your clients can now make notes directly on your design, allowing the notes to appear in context. Built by designers who themselves understood the importance of getting relevant feedback from clients, Notebox is simple and intuitive to use.

Overview

Notebox makes it extremely easy to upload the concept image, organize clients, projects and designs, and get email notifications when notes are added. The look and feel of the page & notes can be changed and add custom branding elements can be added. So, there are no more PDF downloads and asynchronous feedback via email – just instant point, click and add goodness.

Pricing

Including a free trial, Notebox has 3 plans in total. The free trial lets you access most of the core features and allows getting feedback with upto 5 designs. Notebox Lite allows unlimited design uploads and the Pro version allows extreme customization & branding including the option to perform advanced CSS editing.

Pricing

Sign up is quick and the design looks great. However, when loading the sign up page for the first time, there was a strange transparency issue. Also, selecting the free trial link from the pricing page takes you to one more page that explains the same things displayed in the previous in detail.

Dashboard

After signing up, a strong password is emailed to you. The dashboard is minimal and clean looking with a textured background.

Dashboard

Unlike a lot of other apps I have seen, Notebox’s dashboard design is so intuitive, you don’t have to stumble upon links and buttons to begin using the app. The design makes it very clear to a first time user that app usage begins with adding a new client.

Adding a Design

It’s a bit to strange to see that the first step in client creation is just a single field to enter the client name. But the design aesthetics and the textured background add a sense of beauty to this minimal design.

Adding a Client

The next page also has a single field to add a name to the project and the app advises us to keep it under 12 characters as it will used in the URL to be shared with client. Once that is created, another minimal page for naming the design shows up.

Uploading Images

Once the naming has been done, it is time to upload the design for the client to review. Design images in jpg, png and gif formats are supported.

Editing the Note Color

You can also style the notes from this page so as they stand out on your design by choosing a few simple colours. An URL and a short URL are displayed at the bottom of the page to share with the client.

Adding a Note

All the client has to do is to visit the URL, click on the Add new note icon on the top left hand corner and start commenting. Names can be added to comments to avoid confusion and URLs can be added to the notes as well. Yep! That’s it. I was surprised that it was just this simple to add a note.

Final Thoughts

Considering the fact that we went through to upload the design, the app falls flat with just a single feature. Apart from adding a note there is nothing else we can do with the app. Notes are not shown until you mouse the mouse across the screen to find them. Tiny icons or pins can avoid the hassle of scouting for the comment on the design.

Inspite of being a one trick pony, Notebox does give you a quick and elegant way to get concept feedback that your clients will love!

Appbistro: Supermarket for Facebook Apps

Just like Android apps, Facebook apps are growing exponentially in number. But just like the Android platform, Facebook app platform is also bogged down by the lack of a great centralized repository from where people can find, read about & install apps and comment on the usefulness apps as well.

Enter Appbistro. Appbistro is a great place to find third party Facebook tab apps. They have partnered with the best Tab Application developers to be the online destination of choice for Fan page admins. Each and every app has a professionally written review accompanied in most cases with multiple screenshots. Users can add their own thoughts on the apps and can also rate them. Let us go check out some cool apps from the Appbistro stable.

Pagebuilder Welcome Tab

With an user friendly CMS like interface, Pagemodo’s Pagebuilder Welcome Tab allows you to spruce up your Facebook Page without having to use HTML or CSS. The image wizard helps you to resize images uploaded to suit the tab and as soon as you add a pic or input text, a realtime preview can also be seen. The type, size, color and justification of the font can be changed to make the textual content more appealing.

Pagemodo’s Pagebuilder Welcome Tab pricing is free, but if you want to add more features and remove their footer, you will have to choose any one of the $9, $19 or $59/month plans.

Work For Us

Work For Us is a arguably the quickest way to post job openings in your Facebook Page. The app makes applying for the job as easy as possible and the prospective candidates do not have to leave the Facebook page to apply for the job. Users have the links to recommend a job opening to friends right from the tab.

With the free account you can post only one job at a time. Paid accounts allow more postings, keyword search, job categories and the option to use Facebook advertising credits to promote your job postings.

Donations

Using the Facebook page to promote & raise money for a charitable cause or an open source project? Donations app facilitates integrating PayPal for your fundraising program. With a title of the project, a short description and a PayPal id you’re ready to start your fundraising campaign. A professional looking fundraising tab can be created with a custom header image and matching colored payment buttons.

The app has a 7 day free trial period and after that a one time fee of $11.99 helps you in seamless fundraising for your non profit.

Fan Appz

Fan Appz is an integrated suite of multiple social media marketing applications for Facebook fan pages which helps you to engage, grow and monetize your fan base with Contests, Quizzes, Polls, Top5 lists, Promotions, virtual gifts and more!

The app offers extensive customization for the tab running a campaign and the multiple social sharing options opens up the possibility of it going viral. Top 5 lists and quizzes can be created for free and if you are looking forward to offer coupons & promotions, you will have to fork out $50 a month.

Payvment E-Commerce Storefront

Monetizing the loyal fanbase of yours is now so simple with Payvment’s E-Commerce Storefront. The ecommerce app lets you build a professional storefront tab on your Facebook page. A full featured admin area allows you to manage your storefront and add new products directly from the Facebook page.

The payments are made via PayPal and Payvment’s tab allows you to upload photos, list Terms of Service, provide shipping options, offer coupons etc. to promote sales. This is a free app.

Menutab

Tempt the visitors of the restaurant page on Facebook with the sumptuous menu items of cuisine with the Menutab app. To start with there are four default categories – appetizers, main courses, desserts and beverages. Custom categories can also be added based on your menu.

Simply type the item name, price and a short description to go with it and you will have the item saved to your menu. The app is free to use.

Join My Mailing List

Developed and promoted by the famous online mailing list company Constant Contact, this app lets you convert visitors to mailing list subscribers. Users can sign up with just their email address or by providing additional details that you specify. The app can pull user information directly from their account without forcing them to fill an extensive survey form. The app is free for existing Constant Contact paid subscribers.

My Etsy

Are you selling your goods at Etsy? Now you can get the Etsy listings in your Facebook page too, to improve sales prospects with the My Etsy app. The app allows you list your items from your Etsy shop and favorited items as well. Your Etsy profile banner is automatically imported adding legitimacy to your tab. My Etsy is a free app.

Foursquare

Foursquare for Pages is a third party app created b White Horse apps that allows admins of Facebook Pages to share their Foursquare profile on their Facebook Page. Once the admin adds the Facebook page URL, the app instantly pulls your business name, address, map, check-ins and comments to their tab. This is a free app.

Poll

Poll is a free app useful to create and carry polls on your Facebook Page. Poll app has an easy-to-use, straightforward interface and allows adding pictures, videos or links into your polls. Once a poll tab is created, it also appears on your Facebook page wall attracting user attention to take part and register their views.

NetworkedBlogs

NetworkedBlogs app creates a user-generated blog directory to your Facebook page. With this app you can upload your own blog into the directory, as well as choose from over 300,000 other blogs to follow and promote. All he blogs listed are organized by topic or geographical location, making it easy for admins to target the right audience. This app helps in promoting content that aligns with the interests of your audience leading to increased user engagement.

Support

Support for Facebook page is developed and maintained by the leading online support app GetSatisfaction. The app brings the power of Get Satisfaction’s social CRM & customer support platform to your Facebook tab. With this app installed, users can now post their questions, feedback, ideas and praise in the Support tab of your page.

All conversations are stored in Get Satisfaction servers ensuring that your content is permanently available. This app is for the paid subscribers of the online support service.

Easypromos

With this free application, it is now fast & easy to manage and customize your own promotions on the Facebook Page. Select a start or end date during which the promotion will run, create fields to gather user data such as birth year, gender, country and email address, and voila! you will have your promo up & running in no time. Promotions can be made public or can be locked down exclusively for your fans.

TabSite

TabSite app is a simple & easy way to make available all the information and content about you or your brand on the Fan Page or personal page. Tab Site’s WYSIWYG editor to create a tab rich with content to promote your business. Photos, coupons, text can be added to the tab without having to knowing FBML at all. There is also the nifty feature to add sub-pages, which are essentially tabs within a tab.The app is free for personal pages and costs $5 a month for Fan pages.

YouTube Channels

With this app installed, a Simple sign in with your email address, name and YouTube login and YouTube Channels automatically imports videos from YouTube. From this tab, users can subscribe to your YouTube channel, comment on your videos and also invite friends to view them as well. YouTube Channels is a free app.

TwitPic Sync for Pages

Fan of Twitter and have lot of pics uploaded to Twitpic? Twitpic for Pages lets you display images from your Twitpic account directly on your Facebook Fan Page. Integrating the two services is as simple as entering your twitter login credentials and the app will do the rest.

Once integrated, you can share individual pictures with Facebook friends by private messages or in the Facebook News Feed. This is a free app.

ffwd Videos

FFWD Videos offers a fantastic way to import all the videos to your Facebook account. Be it may from YouTube, Bright Cove or your own server, this app will import all the videos to be played in your Fan page tab. In the case of videos hosted in your won server, the app will need the RSS feed to perform the import. This is a free app.

Plancast Tab

Plancast is the easiest way to share events and other real-life activities with friends and now that you have all your friends in Facebook, Plancast Tab app brings planning goodness to a tab. The app atomically posts your newest plans to Twitter and Facebook streams. The app is free for everyone.

Gifts for Pages

Now that virtual goods and gifts are the rage, you can have a virtual gift shop of your own with this app. Gifts for Pages is a free app and it allows you to create and distribute custom branded virtual gifts to promote your brand.

SoundCloud

SoundCloud platform takes the hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.The app lists tracks from SoundCloud web page along with comments and a neat waveform display in your Facebook page.

That is not all. Appbistro has a bunch of apps, take them task and share your thoughts in the comments section.

FlickStackr: Flickr on Your iPad & iPhone

When recently scouring the App Store for a full-featured Flickr app, I came across FlickStackr. It comes with a grand claim: “FlickStackr allows you to browse photos in the Flickr universe, upload your images, and easily edit metadata.”

Packing so much functionality into one iPad application is no simple feat, and all too often this type of grand aim results in a fiddly, difficult-to-understand app. If you’re a Flickr user, FlickrStackr offers a promising solution for interacting with photos on-the-go. Let’s take a look and see whether it can pull off all that it claims to!

Connecting to Flickr

Although FlickStackr does have some functionality when not linked to a Flickr account, it’s limited. The first thing you’ll want to do is authorise the application to access your Flickr content – it’s able to do everything except delete your images. This is a straightforward process, and works well.

The only bug I found was that if you enter your password incorrectly, you need to exit the authorisation process and start again – be sure to get it right first time around!

The Interface

The Basic Interface

As I mentioned before, FlickStackr packs a great deal of functionality into one app. The interface is split into the traditional two-panel iPad view, with navigation on the left and content on the right. Broadly speaking, you can either access your own content, or flick through public areas such as “Explore”, “Recent from Everyone”, and “Search”.

Although the interface is fairly easy to understand on the whole, it breaks down in a few areas. The icons, for instance, are really poor. Each one is exactly the same colour, with similar imagery across the board. I’d actually prefer it if these were simply removed altogether.

Typography isn’t perfect, either. Font sizes and spacing aren’t standard throughout the app, and it becomes frustrating after a while. If the developer took the time to hire a professional interface designer, it would make the next version a far more pleasant experience to use.

Browsing & Editing Your Photos

After tapping on your name in the top left, you can browse through your Photostream, Sets, Favourites, and Contacts. Clicking on “Profile” simply pops up an in-built web browser to display your Flickr profile page.

Browsing through your photos is a pleasant experience. They load quickly, and you’re spoiled for choice by the different range of viewing modes available:

Interface Options

If anything, this range of choices could be a little confusing for new users. I’d have preferred FlickStackr to focus upon one design decision and execute it perfectly, rather than leave it up to the user to pick the one they feel is best.

Viewing photos is an enjoyable process, though – you can browse thumbnails, read comments and meta data, or flick through images in full-screen mode if you prefer.

My niggles with the interface design culminate in the wonky layout of the page displaying comments and metadata:

Comment Display

If you’d like to edit the metadata of your photo, this can be instigated by tapping “Edit” towards the top right of the screen. It works well, and lets you adjust the Title, Caption, Tags, Sets, and Groups relating to the photo. You can also change various size and security settings, specifying whether an image is viewable to public/family/friends, and what permissions people have.

Uploading Photos

If you’d like to upload new photos – granted, an unusual thing to do from an iPad – the process is fairly straight forward. You first select the source of your images; Camera Connection Kit, iTunes File Sharing, Saved Photos, or Photo Library.

Uploading Photos

After doing this, you tap on the images you’d like to upload, and set the process going. It’s possible to edit the metadata, sets, and permission information on a photo before uploading.

Once in progress, the interface and feedback is very odd. Providing the application remains open, you receive a small dialog at the start of each photo upload, informing you that the image is being resized.

After that, there’s no feedback until FlickStackr begins uploading the next image. The obvious solution would have been to design a progress bar screen, detailing how the upload process is going.

Other Features

FlickStackr has another few useful features, focused around the public aspects of Flickr. Search is particularly useful, and gives you a range of advanced options for fairly accurate results:

Searching

Because the application is a universal app, it also works great on the iPhone (your $1.99 goes a long way!). The functionality is almost identical, so I’m not going to delve into this aspect deeply today. The interface is very similar, and shares a few of the same quirks as on the iPad:

iPhone Version

Conclusion

On the whole, I’m really pleased with FlickStackr. I honestly didn’t expect to find an application that had so much functionality – especially at the bargain price of $1.99 for the iPad and iPhone version. Everything worked well in my testing, and I didn’t come across any major bugs.

The one thing that might stop me opening the application on a regular basis is the interface. I know how difficult it is to pack so many features into an app and still have it look simple, but I do think that FlickStackr can do better. If the look and feel is improved in a future version, I can see it wiping the floor with every other Flickr client available.

Despite this annoyance, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the app if you’re a regular Flickr user. The sheer amount of functionality on offer for $1.99 is incredible.

Apple Media Event Summary: iPods, iTunes, AppleTV and More!

Earlier today Apple held its annual live media event covering all things new in the land of iPod, iTunes and even AppleTV.

They’ve released a ton of enhancements and upgrades across the board and we’ve got your one-stop coverage. Below you’ll find a brief overview of all the goodies you’ll be blowing your paychecks on in the coming weeks.

iOS 4.1: Launches Next Week

The next iteration of Apple’s iOS features a few bug fixes that Steve jokingly noted that they’ve been receiving emails about. These mostly revolve around Bluetooth, the proximity sensor and the reported iPhone 3G issues. iOS4.1 will be a free download for all users and should show up sometime next week.

iOS 4.2

HDR Photos

An unexpected but welcome update comes in the form of automatic HDR photos. These aren’t the heavily stylized versions you see in countless blog posts but rather a practical way to get great photos from a not-so-great cell phone camera.

HDR Photo Comparison

Activating the HDR option will cause your device’s camera to take three photos in rapid succession: one underexposed, one normal, and one over exposed. These three photos are then automatically combined to create a single photo with a much better range of highlights and shadows than you could otherwise achieve.

Game Center

Game Center brings social gaming to iOS devices. Using the new game center app you can hook up with friends and compete/cooperate in live game matches, compare scores, and more.

Game Center

Other providers have been experimenting with social game networks for a while on iOS but Game Center promises to be the ultimate experience by bringing in truly interactive multiplayer gaming.

iOS 4.2: Launching in November

iOS4.2 brings all the cool new features of the iPhone and iPod Touch to the iPad. So starting in November iPad users will get multitasking, Game Center, folders, etc.

One interesting thing to consider is that Steve listed “HDR Photos” as one of the features that will be coming to the iPad. However, there is currently no camera on the iPad, nor was one announced. It’s probable that this just refers to overall system support for the new format and might indicate that iPhoto will require a similar update.

iOS4.2 is coming in November and will be a free download.

AirPlay

AirTunes has been around for ages and is now being upgraded to AirPlay. Where AirTunes streamed only music, AirTunes will stream music, video, photos, etc. over a Wifi Connection.

New iPods

Steve claimed that the entire iPod lineup was getting an update, but the Classic was strangely ignored. They didn’t exactly say they were killing it and it is in fact still on the store, but they sure didn’t include it in the current lineup of products.

Everything else got a complete makeover. Let’s take a brief look at each below.

iPod Shuffle

In the last generation of the iPod Shuffle, Apple ripped off all the buttons and made it a VoiceOver only device. Obviously, users completely hated this idea and missed the presence of a physical way to control the device.

iPod Shuffle

Consequently, Apple has reverted to the older design, albeit a slimmer, sleeker version of it. Here is a rundown of the features and specs:

5 Colors
Clothing Clip
15 Hour Battery Life
Genius Playlists
VoiceOver
$49: 2GB of Storage

iPod Nano

Thanks to the iPod Touch, the iPod Nano has been knocked off its throne as the most popular iPod. Apple has responded by changing just about everything about it in the newest generation (the 6th).

iPod Nano

The most notable change is that the Nano is now a Multi-Touch device running a sort of scaled-down version of iOS without custom apps. But it doesn’t stop there. The previous version was widescreen, this version is square. Also, the previous version was the first to record video, this version has dropped that ability completely.

Despite the fact that it would suck to watch movies on, the new design is quite stylish. Steve made a joke about one of the Apple board members wanting to wear it as a watch and I can already see arm band and case producers scrambling to create just such a product. Heck, I almost think a multi-touch iPod Watch sounds cooler than just another Nano so sign me up on the list of people that would buy such a ridiculous contraption.

Here’s the feature rundown:

Mutli-touch
42% Smaller
Clothing Clip
Physical Volume Buttons
FM Radio
Rotating Screen (pinch and twist)
7 Colors
$149: 8GB
$179: 16GB

I can’t imagine why anyone would buy the 8GB version when you can double the storage for an extra $30!

iPod Touch

The iPod Touch finally received the update we’ve all been waiting for. Apart from being even thinner (it’ll be invisible soon) it now has the beautiful retina display, an Apple A4 chip (like the iPhone), a 3 axis gyro for improved gaming, two cameras (front and back), FaceTime video conferencing with other iPods and iPhones, HDR photos, Game Center and HD video recording.

iPod Touch

In case you were digging the bullet points, here’s all that in a list:

Thinner
Retina Display
A4 Chip
3 Axis Gyro
Front and Rear-Facing Cameras
FaceTime
HDR Photos
HD Video Recording
Game Center
iMovie Compatible
8GB: $229
32GB: $299
64GB: $399

iTunes 10: Available Free Today

Apple launched a new version of iTunes today, ditching the antiquated CD-themed logo and replacing it with a simple round icon.

iTunes 10

iTunes 10 has been given a slight facelift with a few UI improvements including inline album art in list mode. By far though the biggest new enhancement is Ping.

Ping: A Social Network for Music

For years, LastFM has cultivated and grown a music-based social network. Today Apple dealt them a major blow by dishing out a competing network built right into iTunes.

iTunes Ping

Ping allows you to follow your friends and favorite artists just like you can on Twitter. You can view their favorite songs, what they’ve been listening to and purchasing, upcoming concerts that they’re either playing or attending, leave comments, make posts and more.

Apple is spinning this primarily as a new way to discover music. Ping is also an iOS app that you can use right from your iPhone and iPod Touch.

It’s interesting to note Apple’s strategy here. First, they’ve discovered the holy grail: a monetized social network. This is something the major players like Twitter and Facebook are still struggling with. Second, Steve made a big deal about privacy. This is key because Facebook has made so many people angry about it. With Ping you can elect whether or not you want everyone to be able to follow you, no one to be able to follow you, or just open following up to a specified “Circle of Friends.”

It’ll definitely be interesting to watch Ping unfold and evolve in the future. Will this be a major milestone for Apple or a failed experiment that we’ll laugh at five years from now? Let us know your thoughts.

One More Thing: AppleTV

Today’s “One More Thing” was of course the AppleTV, which has not been rebranded to iTV as many predicted. It is also not the iOS wonder device that many thought it would be but rather a refocused attempt at a media console.

AppleTV

The Apple TV is now black and is a quarter of the size of the old version. It has a brand new interface and a new strategy: rentals. You can no longer purchase movies or shows on the AppleTV, only rent them. This may sound like a bad thing but in reality it does in fact solve countless storage and syncing problems and you can in fact stream purchases from your Mac, iPad, iPhone, etc.

The AppleTV will feature new release rentals for $4.99 with older movies being even cheaper. ABC and Fox have jumped on board to provide TV show episodes for a mere $0.99 a pop with the hope that other networks will soon follow.

AppleTV is integrated with a number of services including Netflix, Youtube, Flickr, RottenTomatoes and MobileMe. On top of being a place to consume video content it also has some awesome new photo slideshows that can be wirelessly streamed from your Mac or iOS devices.

What Do You Think?

That’s the latest from Apple. Be sure to stop by Apple.com to check out more detailed information and to grab the new iTunes.

Before you go, leave a comment and let us know what you think of all the new goodies. Do you love or hate the new iPod Nano? Will the new AppleTV make up for the poor sales of the previous version? Will Ping be the next big social network? Tell us your thoughts!

Quick Look: ProCamera

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the polls below if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting ProCamera. The developer says Daemgen.net today updated its famous ProCamera iPhone camera app to version 2.9, introducing the Easy Expert Mode with advanced focus/exposure control and real-time white balance adjustment. By setting focus and exposure separately to different spots on the viewfinder, users can easily benefit from technologies even high-end digital cameras and camcorders cannot provide.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

ProCamera

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

Maximum native resolution for photos and videos
Expert Mode for both videos and photos
Various capture modes for best possible shots
Photo Studio
Arrangement guides for both videos and photos

Requirements: iOS 4

Price: 2.99

Developer: Jens Daemgen

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of ProCamera? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see ProCamera reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?Market Research

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.

Track Your Money with iMoneyPad Pro

Tracking your spending habits and establishing a budget can be a completely life changing experience. To many people all over the world, it’s the difference between losing a house and keeping it, between stressing out about bills or managing them easily, and even between financial contentment and bankruptcy.

So if budgeting is so great, why do we all suck at it? Aside from the fact that it’s simply not fun to impose harsh rules on our consumer lifestyles, budgeting is usually a ton of work. You have to analyze your spending habits against income trends, decide what to allot where, perform daily calculations to see how you’re progressing and a lot more.

Fortunately, your iPhone can take much of the work out of this task. Today we’re going to look at one of the many budgeting apps available for iOS: iMoneyPadPro. This app boasts tons of features and comes with a hefty $10 price tag. Below we’ll walk you through how it works and then discuss whether or not it’s worth the investment.

Getting Started

Since you carry your iPhone with you pretty much at all times, it provides the perfect solution to staying on top of a budget. With a few quick taps you can track every dime you spend, view trends, make adjustments and see where you need to cut back.

iMoneyPad Pro is a powerful solution for tracking both your income and expenses as well as setting up budgets for various areas of spending. The app is divided up into four main functions: History, Budget, Analysis, and Automator.

History

The History screen is where you input your income and expense items as the occur. This screen is split into two columns and shows a month at a time. The left column allows you to sort transactions based on a specified criteria. You can either sort transactions by date, category or payment type (cash, credit, checking or savings).

History

To add a transaction, you simply tap the “Add” button at the top right of the screen. From this screen you can either input an expense, income or transfer.

Then you can set the amount and identify and account and category (you choose from a number of handy presets). You can also set a date just in case you’re inputing the transaction early or late. Finally, there’s a large notes area for any extra information that you want to remember.

New Transaction

Budget

Setting up a budget can be intimidating. Fortunately, iMoneyPad Pro makes the process extremely simple and completely customizable. You can be as brief or thorough as you like with your tracking.

How this works is you have the option to set an overall budget and/or create category specific budgets to be sure you’re staying on track in those troublesome areas such as eating out.

Budget

The meter at the top left shows you how much of your total budget you have left and the circular graphs below track your progress on individual category budgets. This is awesome for helping you make decisions about whether or not you can afford to go out or stay in. Simply check your budget and decide if you have enough of your monthly allowance left.

Analysis

Whether or not you’re interested in setting up a budget, it’s always cool to be able to track your history of financial transactions in graphical form. Simple visualizations really help you wrap your mind around complex data to spot trends and areas of interest.

Under the analysis section iMoneyPad Pro has a number of reporting options. You can view category comparisons and daily transaction histories in either bar or pie charts. You can also compare your six month income vs. expenses.

Analysis

Each chart is interactive and can be tapped and dragged around to view more information. The data is also shown in a list format below the chart.

Automator

The Automator helps ease repetitive tasks by allowing you to setup transactions that you would frequently enter in manually. Under this section there is two screens: activities and schedules.

Automator

Activities are a bit like a template for a transaction. So if you get paid the same amount for certain jobs or frequently order the same meal for lunch, you can enter the amounts of these transactions here and add them to your history as needed.

Schedules are for recurring transactions that come occur regularly such as bills. These run automatically on the intervals you set up so you don’t have to spend time entering them in every month.

The Verdict

iMoneyPad Pro is an awesome app. The interface is classy and fun to use and it has most of the features that you need to track your transactions and setup budgets. It’s not immediately apparent how to use the app when you first launch it but hitting the little “i” button on any screen will pop up a little tutorial showing you how that feature works. This is an awesome feature and really helps you get the most out of your money.

iMoneyPad Pro is a completely offline solution, which is both a pro and a con depending on what type of user you are. If you’re afraid of putting your personal transaction information online, this app is an awesome budgeting solution.

However, I’m personally an avid Mint.com user. I have all my various accounts entered into Mint and track them both in the web interface and through the iPhone app. The major benefits for Mint are that it is both completely free and completely automated. Instead of taking the time to enter in a transaction every time you buy a sandwich, Mint hooks up to your bank account and records this information automatically.

Because I’m used to the effortless budgeting and expense tracking of Mint, iMoneyPad Pro seemed like a lot of work. However, I know several people that will either never sign up for a Mint account or have signed up and just didn’t agree with the automated nature of the app. For this audience, iMoneyPad Pro is perfect.

Unfortunately, though I loved using iMoneyPadPro, I think its major downfall is definitely the price. On one hand, it does have a ton of really great functionality wrapped into a solid interface. Further, getting on track financially is well worth a measly $10. On the other hand, Jumsoft Money offers much of the same functionality, syncs with a Mac desktop app, and the iPhone app is completely free; a hard combination to beat!

Jumsoft Money

Conclusion

To sum up, iMoneyPad Pro is an excellent application with plenty of power and a slick UI. You can easily track both income and expenses, setup broad reaching and/or targeted budgets and analyze your financial data with attractive charts.

The major downfalls are the lack of an option for tracking transactions automatically, the hefty price tag and the lack of a companion desktop application.

Despite these issues, I can still definitely recommend the app to anyone who has tried Mint.com and Jumsoft Money but is still looking for an app that suits their particular needs better. Leave a comment below and let us know what financial tracking applications you use and how they stack up to iMoneyPad Pro.

25 Apps for the Side of Your Bed

You wake up to the sound of a buzzing alarm clock and hit the snooze for a few more minutes of sleep before sitting up and checking out the day’s weather. Then in the evening you navigate back to your bed in the dark with a light from your pocket before curling up with a good book to ease you into a dreamy state. As your spouse falls asleep and begins to snore a sound is emitted that causes him/her to stir and move into a position where the snoring ceases. The next morning you rise feeling refreshed and log your sleep hours, viewing your statistics for the week.

The narrative above might conjure up a visual image of a nightstand cluttered with various household objects and electronics, but the 25 apps below can make this story a reality through the use of only one device: your iPhone!

Alarm Clocks

Alarm Clock 4

Sleep and wake up with your favorite music. Alarm Clock 4 combines all functions in one application! Multiple themes, editable functions and of course a flashlight!

Price: $0.99

Alarm Clock 4

Alarm!

“Alarm! is a beautiful alarm clock with useful features. You can set alarms, organize them and even share with other Alarm! users.”

Price: Free

Alarm!

Alarm Clock Free

“Alarm Clock Free turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a beautiful digital clock and alarm clock for free! ”

Price: Free

Alarm!

Radio Alarm – MP3/Radio/Nature Sound Alarm + Sleep Timer

“Using Radio Alarm, you can start your day feeling good by waking up to the sound of your favorite music (iPod MP3), radio channel, or nature.”

Price: Free

Radio Alarm – MP3/Radio/Nature Sound Alarm + Sleep Timer!

All-in-1 Clock – Alarm Weather Talking Time Clock

“Your dream all-in-1 clock now available with realtime detailed local area weather and talking time.”

Price: $0.99

All-in-1 Clock – Alarm Weather Talking Time Clock

iHome+Sleep

“At first glance, iHome+Sleep is a full screen clock that includes weather, iPod controls, and your choice of custom photo backgrounds. But there’s much more… iHome+Sleep allows users to define multiple sets of bedtime and wakeup settings such as alarms, wake & sleep music, social updates, personal reminders, and much more. Users can manage virtually any sleep lifestyle, which can be empowering, and fun.”

Price: Free

iHome+Sleep

Sleep Phase wakeup clock

“An alarm clock that monitors and analyzes your sleep cycle and wakes you up in the lightest sleep phase, making you feel rested and relaxed. This is done by utilizing your devices microphone or accelerometer to sense your subtle movements when you are asleep.”

Price: $0.99

Sleep Phase wakeup clock

Reading

Stanza

“Read books on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad! Lexcycle Stanza brings the digital book revolution to your pocket with a reading interface that is unrivaled in its clarity and ease of use. With over 4 million downloads around the world, Stanza has become an iPhone phenomenon, and is featured as one of the top three Apple favorites in their “App Store Turns 1″ celebration.”

Price: Free

Stanza

Kindle

“The Kindle app is optimized for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, providing users the ability to read Kindle books using a beautiful, easy-to-use interface. You can discover and read over 630,000* books in the Kindle Store, including the latest best sellers and new releases.”

Price: Free

Kindle

Barnes & Noble NOOK for iPhone

“Our app offers unique, unbeatable features, including our exclusive LendMe technology that lets you share eBooks with friends; our safe and secure eBooks Lifetime Library keeps your eBooks accessible anytime, anywhere no matter what device you own; our vast eBookstore includes free books as well as the ability to sample any eBook free at anytime.”

Price: Free

NOOK

iBooks

“iBooks is an amazing way to download and read books. iBooks includes the iBookstore, where you can download the latest best-selling books or your favorite classics – day or night. Browse your library on a beautiful bookshelf, tap a book to open it, flip through pages with a swipe or a tap, and bookmark or add notes to your favorite passages.”

Price: Free

iBooks

A Story Before Bed – Personalized Children’s Picture Books

“A Story Before Bed lets parents, grandparents, and anyone with a special child in their lives record audio and video of themselves reading a children’s book into their webcam right in their web browser. Children can watch these recordings anytime they like.”

Price: Free

A Story Before Bed

Classics

“Escape into some of the greatest stories ever written. Experience digital reading in a way that is so natural, and so obvious, it just feels right. It begins with a collection of over a dozen hand-picked, literary masterpieces…”

Price: $2.99

Classics

SleepAid – Soundscapes

“SleepAid helps you sleep. Mask unwanted sounds in your environment with a selection of relaxing, neutral audio tracks. Continuous sound without melody or lyrics promotes better sleeping conditions.”

Price: $1.99

Sound Machines

SleepAid – Soundscapes

Easy Relax Ultimate

” Unlike other ambient noise applications, Easy Relax takes full advantage of the sound power of iPhone with which you can make your own relax themes by mixing background music with several ambient noises and configure volume level, interval, random factor, playback speed independently.”

Price: $2.99

Easy Relax Ultimate

Flashlights

Flashlight

“Flashlight uses the LED light on iPhone 4 and fills your screen with bright white light to illuminate your world when you find yourself in a dark spot or concert. Includes fully customizable special effects including: Strobe Light, Trippy, S.O.S., Yin-Yang, Holiday Lights and more!”

Price: Free

Flashlight

Brightest Flashlight Pro

“Brightest Flashlight Pro is a great flashlight that offers you the brightest flashlight settings for your iPhone, iPhone 4 LED, iPod and iPad! Very Handy for night time illumination. Use Brightest Flashlight Pro not only as a Flashlight, but as a night light and reading lamp as well!”

Price: $0.99

Brightest Flashlight Pro

iHandy Flashlight Pro

“iHandy Flashlight is more than just a convenient flashlight. It’s actually your ultimate lighting gadget that serves as numerous purposes.”

Price: $0.99

iHandy Flashlight Pro

Weather

The Weather Channel

“The Weather Channel takes your weather experience to the next level with full screen maps, pollen forecasts, and more.”

Price: Free

The Weather Channel

Outside – Visual Weather Forecast

“Outside is a visual weather forecast with custom push notifications like you’ve never seen before. Outside combines current weather and local forecasts with custom push notifications. Look out the window and see what the weather is like through stunning visuals. Swipe the days to see the forecasts, or setup and receive alerts when the weather is just right.”

Price: $2.99

Outside – Visual Weather Forecast

PocketWeather – #1 Weather App

“Get worldwide weather reports directly to your iPhone/iPod Touch anytime! PocketWeather is the most powerful weather tracking solution for iPhone/iPod Touch, featuring a robust weather engine wrapped with a stylish, simple to use user interface.”

Price: $2.99

PocketWeather – #1 Weather App

Emo Weather

“Listen to music about relationships and breakups? Straight jet black hair covering at least one eye? Sensitive and misunderstood? Do any of these characteristics describe you or someone you know? Then this app is for you!”

Price: $0.99

Emo Weather

The Weather

“The Weather lets you do what you’ve always wanted to with your weather app – see things your way. Want the barometric pressure RIGHT NEXT TO the the temperature? Fine with us. With The Weather, that choice is yours to make. Customization means you can put whatever bit of data wherever you want on the page.”

Price: $0.99

The Weather

WeatherBug Elite

“WeatherBug Elite is the premier source for truly live, local weather – providing users access to the largest network of professional weather stations in the US and thousands of locations around the world.”

Price: $0.99

WeatherBug Elite

Miscellaneous

myZeo (Sleep Viewer)

“The Zeo Personal Sleep Coach is the first science-based product and service that tracks your sleep data and helps you improve it (like Nike+ or RunKeeper for your sleep). myZeo (Sleep Viewer) is an app to help you visualize your progress.”

Price: Free

myZeo (Sleep Viewer)

Snore Stopper

“Does your spouse’s snoring wake you up every night? With this application, that’s history! This program detects snoring (you can adjust the sensitivity) and stops it by emitting a sound that disturbs the snorer in his sleep.”

Price: $0.99

Snore Stopper

What’s On Your Night Stand?

I hope these twenty-five apps have provided you with a few extra utilities for your nightstand. Leave a comment below and let us know what apps you use as your start or end your day!

How to Write a Press Release

It used to be that you picked up a newspaper and noticed the headlines and knew there was something interesting to be learned that day. Press releases were the lifeblood of any newspaper worth its ink and the companies who issued them were judged by the amount of free publicity they could garner for their clients.

Nowadays not much has changed except perhaps the medium by which press releases are distributed. They continue to appear in newspapers, but they are also making big headlines online.

As the competition heats up to get your message out, there are a few things to consider before you begin writing your release.

What’s the story morning glory?

Do you have an angle you can use? What’s the unique selling proposition (USP) of your piece? Editors get hundreds of press releases on their desks each day. Your job is to ensure the one you send stands out from the rest. Even a simple announcement like a new product launch can be made to sound BIG if you have the right words and angle you can apply to it.

No USP? How about trying to use some emotional selling points (ESP)? Perhaps the product was created after a lot of trial and error, poor funding, and innumerable obstacles which had to be overcome. Craft your story around these points. What will get more publicity – news about the launch of a new funeral home or about the story of the owner who died while trying to build it? Be daring and different, but never fake or false. Don’t create a story where none exists.

How to write a press release

Your headline needs to be compelling. It’s what draws the reader in and makes him read on. Go through your competitors’ headlines. How can you be different? Study headlines that have received a lot of publicity. How can you emulate them? Just remember to keep all headlines short and tight.

Subheadings are great in that they give you space to add to your heading and build up drama without giving away the actual content.

Your content also needs to start with a strong lead paragraph. Forget the conventional – XYZ announced today – unless the business you are writing for is in fact extremely conventional. Always include the 5 Ws within the first two paragraphs: who, what, when, why, where. Make it so that if the editor/journalist was reading only the first paragraph, he’ll have the entire gist of the story.

Get quotes. People love to hear what others have said about a product or service they are interested in. A good quote can capture audience interest – a great quote can make it memorable. A quote can be from an expert in the industry, from the company management, or even from a customer, depending on the direction you want your press release to take.

How to format a press release

It’s one thing to know how to write a press release. Now that you’ve written your draft, it’s time to format it. The first rule to remember for press releases is to keep them short – one page is great, two pages are okay, but three pages are just too long.

Start by using the title “For Immediate Release” at the top of your page. Include the date and your complete contact details. If you are unsure of a format, MS Word has plenty to select from. If your company has a letterhead, you can type it on that.

If you are attaching documents or a photograph to substantiate your news, be sure to mention that.

Also be certain to clearly indicate the person you’ll be sending it to – often excellent releases can be mislaid just because they were addressed to the wrong person.

End with a couple of sentences about the company, business, person, or service the press release is about. This paragraph is referred to as the “boilerplate” and is usually standard text that can be used over and over again in all your related press releases. It is usually placed before you add “# # #,” which signifies the end of the release.

You can also place a single line to say: “if you’d like more information, please call Ms Smith at 555-12-124 or visit us online at www.site.com” before the boilerplate or after the “# # #.”

Before you email or fax your release, review it once again and ensure you have done the following:

Avoided using hyped-up, over inflated phrases like: breaking news, the best, most unique, one and only etc.
Avoided writing in first person singular (I) or plural (We). Always stick to a neutral third party voice.
Used plain English, not technical jargon.
Not exceeded one and a half pages, even if you feel you have much more to say.
Stuck to one main point and one or two sub-points if necessary, but no more than that.
Kept the most important information right at the beginning.
Included a live contact whom the journalist can get in touch with for more information.
Proofread your release and edited any mistakes.

Press release distribution

And finally, don’t shy away from sending it out to the right sources. Online, there are a number of free and paid press release distribution sites such as PR Web , 24-7, and PR.com to name a few. Offline, try to source those contacts who will help you get your release to the right desk. A few persistent phone calls might be in order. And then sit back and enjoy the publicity your releases get for you.