Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

When the iPhone 4S was announced, Apple also introduced quite a few other products including Cards, which made everyone tilt their heads slightly to the left and say, “Huh?” It didn’t make a lot of sense to most people, but to me, I got it. I tweeted this right away:

New Cards app for iOS. My mother will buy this today, guaranteed. Make your own greeting cards on your iPhone.

Apple has sold greetings cards for a long time now through iPhoto, but this will take it up to the next step. Get ready to see lots of Apple cards in your mail this holiday season.

Why

As I write this, I’m sitting in front of a cabinet located across from the dining room table. Inside said cabinet are a stack of Thank You cards, blank, that have the same colors as my wedding three years ago. My wife says she’s bad at sending out cards of any type, and those wedding cards are proof of it (although admittedly, I’m accountable for that error as well). With Cards for the iPhone, I think we may stop that trend in its tracks.

We’re told from a young age that we should send out cards to celebrate various occasions, but more often than not, we forget to do it. It’s not that we’re bad people, it’s just that sometimes life gets in the way and we get busy. Running to the store to spend 20 minutes picking out that perfect sentiment on paper can be a bit tricky, and forget all the hassle of buying stamps and getting it mailed. We’ll just send them a quick email to say thanks instead.

Cards streamlines the entire process. Pick out your card, customize it to your liking, fill out the address and pay for it via your iTunes account. For a little over $3 with tax, you can send a fully custom card to your friend or relative, and you don’t have to even visit a Hallmark store.

How It Works

None of this would matter if it was a pain to make those cards, so Apple has made it easy. There are six different categories to choose from, and inside each category are various templates. Maybe you just want to write a quick note and don’t want to deal with adding a picture, or possibly you want to customize the image with a shot taken right at that moment to enshrine the situation. Pick your poison and procede.

Once the image is sized and placed to your liking, then it’s time to edit the text which is just a touch away. Tap on the text to call up the keyboard, then enter whatever you like.

Moving to the Inside

Once you’re done with the cover, tap on one of the remaining two options on the top of the screen, Inside or Envelope. For the inside, just enter in whatever you want and move on to the envelope. The app automatically fills out your information, and then you can pull a contact from your Address Book or just type it in manually, whatever you prefer.

With that, it’s time to buy your card, and that’s pretty easy. Click on the $2.99 price tag in the upper right corner, confirm and enter your iTunes password to get the sale moving.

From here, the info goes to Apple where they print the card themselves and ship it off, all for the $2.99 price tag.

The Results

It took a few days to get things printed up and sent off, but a few days later my mother got a card in the mail that looked exactly like the one I had seen previewed just a few days before on my iPhone. When I opened it up, the card looked like this:

These are letterpressed cards, which means they have cool grooves in the paper for the artwork. Originally I thought this meant that the text itself was also embossed, but it turns out that it’s not. Instead, all of the designs are letterpress, but the text and image are just printed on the card.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t look good, because it looks pretty amazing. The text was a little gray instead of the sharp black I expected, but not so much that it made me mad. It almost matched the muted colors of the card template that I chose, so I wasn’t quite sure if it was accurate or not.

Overall, I was very impressed with the card itself. It’s on thick stock, pressed nicely, and just looks amazing. In another interesting twist, there is no identification on the card anywhere that says it was made by Apple. My wife and I have one of the iPhoto books, and that has Apple branding all over the place. I can’t say that I’m surprised that there’s no branding, but I do think it’s an interesting decision to make.

Final Verdict

I’m not a card guy. I don’t buy them for people very often, and when I do, I don’t tend to spend days or weeks working on them. Cards makes it easy for me to make a card and send it out quickly, taking all the hassle out of picking the card in the first place, and making it a very simple process. That’s what I want in a card, because as a guy, I just don’t want to waste my time finding that perfect sentiment in the aisles of my local Target. Why not just create something myself and really express how I feel?

My mother loves it as well, and I expect to get quite a few cards from her in the coming months. Most of them, I suspect, will star her grandson.

As for you, the question goes like this: Do you need to send greeting cards frequently? And if so, do you want custom ones or do you prefer the process of picking them out? Let us know in the comments.

Whether you are renovating, buying a new home or just redecorating, it is not uncommon to spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours poring over shelter magazines, books, websites and blogs. Not only is interior/exterior design information and photos scattered (and oftentimes costly), it can be utterly overwhelming.

Houzz, which is touted as the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design” by CNN, consolidates everything from finding home improvement professionals in your area to gathering inspiration into Ideabooks, all in just one app.

And that’s not the half of it. Learn more after the jump.

The Basics

Born from the inability to find a consolidated online resource for design when renovating a 1955 house in Palo Alto, California, Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen created Houzz, the holy grail of all things design.

Featuring over 180,000 interior and exterior photos, an incredible network of design professionals, product recommendations, articles by design professionals and sample Ideabooks, Houzz is the most comprehensive interior/exterior design app on the market.

The Features

Setup is as basic as creating an account.

The home screen lets you dive right into Houzz’s endless stream of photos. You may notice that some of the photos have dangling green tags (when you move your phone from side-to-side, activating the iPhone gyroscope, the tags swing). These are for “tagged” products. When you tap on a green tag, a new page will pop up giving you vendor information and links to the vendor’s website if applicable.

Another option you might see at the bottom of the screen while perusing the photo stream is a Professional tab. This tab will open a new page providing profile information on the architect or designer that designed the space.

The other options for utilizing the Houzz app are to browse by the following categories: Photos, Products, Ideabooks and Professionals.

The Photos category is divided up into different sections ranging from Wine Cellar to Powder Room. This category also has a search function, just in case you need something more defined, for example “turquoise bedroom.” Once you determine your specific category, you have the option to narrow your findings by selecting one of the dozens of available metro areas or one of the specified style groupings (Asian, contemporary, eclectic, Mediterranean, modern, traditional and tropical). For a narrower list of results, choose both a style and a metro area.

The Products category is divided into the main general groupings of various home products, all of which include more specific sub-categories.

The Professionals tab is like the Yellow Pages — with the further benefit of a bio or description — of the Houzz app. This category offers the following groupings to choose from: all, architect, general contractor, home media, home staging, interior designer, kitchen & bath, landscape architect, media & blogs, photographer and showroom. Once you tap on any of the professional categories, you can further narrow your search by your closest metro area.

And finally, the Ideabooks. These are the inspiration guides and answers for commonly asked questions for the design world. You may have noticed an Add to Ideabook tab in the upper right hand corner when viewing products or photos. This is exactly as it sounds; an easy to use add function for when you find relevant inspiration or ideas while browsing the Houzz app. Once you tap the add tab, you will be asked to describe why you like the photo, or really any notes you might want to include, and have the choice of which Ideabook to drop the image into.

The Ideabook is a great way to keep track of inspiration for yourself and if you are working with an architect or interior designer, it is even more beneficial as you are able to visually explain your ideas.

There is also a share function at the bottom of every photo or article enabling you to share via Twitter, Facebook and Email.

Findings

Hands down, this is the best app for all interior/exterior related things. Houzz’s database is incomparable, the app is easy to use and the design is comprehensive. My favorite design aspect of the app would have to be the motion-sensitive product tags. I must admit, I found myself shaking my phone from side-to-side just to see the little guys move.

One thing that I wish the Houzz would have is the ability to share Ideabooks. With the sharing functionality available for the products, articles and photos, it would seem natural that an Ideabook could be shared as well.

Overall, this app is a handy tool, and I for one, am glad to have found it.

I prefer applications that provide some sort of syncing service. This is pretty advantageous compared to other apps, since you don’t need to worry about backing anything up in case you restore your iPhone (or if you lose it), and you can use the same information from different devices and even different services. For example, you can use Wunderlist from nearly any device or computer, even a browser, which is a lot more comfortable than just having your tasks on your iPhone.

Considering the advantage of having an app that syncs with any service, here’s a list of approximately 40 apps that have this functionality.

Task Management

File Management & Productivity

Note Taking

Finance

News

Calendars

Browsers

Do You Know Any Other Apps That Sync?

I tried to include most of the apps that provide some syncing functionality in this article. You probably already use at least one of these, but if you know any other app that I might have forgotten, please tell us in the comments!

I’ve talked a little bit about how single-function apps help me manage the different aspects of my life, and how utilities can be extremely beneficial and excel at one key aspect. Dialvetica is one of those apps.

What can Dialvetica do for you? Well, that depends on what you want it to do. The possibilities aren’t quite endless, but this utility is one of the favorite apps that I’ve added to my iPhone. Why? Read on and find out.

Introduction

Dialvetica is made by Mysterious Trousers, a group that also publishes two other apps: Calvetica, the recently redesigned calendar that makes adding entries a snap, and Event Calendar, a simple calendar app that reminds me of the original Calvetica and Agenda, another simple calendaring app.

The premise behind Mysterious Trousers’ apps is simple: do one thing well and look good while you’re doing it. As you may have gathered by the name and icon, Dialvetica’s design takes inspiration from the clean Swiss typeface, Helvetica. We’ll discuss the app’s purpose and take a deeper look at the interface below.

Contacts on Steroids

The easiest way to describe Dialvetica is as a speed-dial/contacts app on steroids. Dialvetica makes it insanely easy to call, text or email anyone in your contacts list with just a few taps of the custom keyboard. Names are organized by how often you contact the person using the app, but scrolling through is made simple and intuitive.

The running Favorites list that the app opens with is easily my favorite feature. Because I use Dialvetica so often, it knows who needs to show up above everyone else in my contacts list, allowing me to skip the alphabetical sorting of Apple’s own Contacts app and get to the people that I would actually like to communicate with quickly.

Dialvetica also has the ability to sort your contacts by company. While this may not be helpful for most people, I imagine that those who have lots of work numbers stored in their iPhone that aren’t called particularly frequently will appear the more powerful search.

Because the Favorites list gets updated each time you use the app, contacts can sometimes jump around unexpectedly. This can cause an issue if you talk to one person more often (for whatever reason) than usual in a week, but would prefer that they slink back to the bottom of the list once you’re done. Just from an observational standpoint, I noticed that the app will sometimes order my contacts in haphazard ways, moving them up and down the list almost arbitrarily.

Don’t mistake that as a heavy criticism; for the most part, the app does an excellent job of ordering the people in your life (and phone).

Interface

It seems odd to harp on an interface for an app that’s designed to be as fast as possible, but there are some excellent things that I feel should be touched upon (as well as a few gripes that need to be aired).

First is the custom keyboard. Instead of using the default iOS keyboard, Dialvetica has a custom flavor that not only serves the benefit of showing more contacts on the screen, but also behaves in a way that makes finding your other contacts a snap.

Say I want to call someone and they don’t show up in the Favorites view. While I could scroll through all of my contacts, it’s easier to just start tapping on letters. Whenever you touch a letter you’ll notice that the key stays lit and works in conjunction with your following inputs. This is because Dialvetica doesn’t search by full name or by consecutive lettering; instead, it searches names based on how often you contact someone and the individual letters that appear.

If I wanted to call Jacob Smith for example, I could type in J, A; O, I; or C, S and Dialvetica would be able to find him. This is handy for those times where you have that friend with an ‘X’ in his or her name, or when you’d like to tap the closest letters possible. At first this is jarring, but eventually it becomes second nature.

Now, besides the excellently-designed custom keyboard, Dialvetica falls flat. The spacing, font-rendering, and color chosen all remind me very heavily of Android. This may not be a bad thing to some people, but to most I believe that “looks like Android” is synonymous with “looks pretty terrible.” If the app weren’t as functional as it is I wouldn’t use it; thankfully, I’m not left looking at the interface for too long.

Saving Space on your Home Screen

For me, a lot of the benefit from Dialvetica is a combination of what it does and how little space it takes up. As I’ve mentioned before, the app is extremely fast, meaning that it doesn’t have a very heavy feel to it. It’s designed to make your life easier, and definitely hits the mark in the speed department.

Where Dialvetica really cemented itself into my workflow is with the space that it freed up on my home screen. I used to leave the Phone and Messaging apps on the Dock of my iPhone within easy reach in case I wanted to send someone a message or contact them in another way. With Dialvetica I’m able to move those two apps to the second screen, shoved into a folder that is only accessed through Dialvetica or notifications.

Is that one extra space worth it to everyone? Maybe, maybe not. I do know that it’s helped me get my Home Screen the way that I want it, and despite my misgivings for the interface the icon really is much nicer than those striped-green default icons that Apple ships.

Customization

Most of the customization for the app comes through use, changing your contacts into a personally-organized list for fast communication. It is also possible, though, to change the way that the app functions through the Settings app/screen on your iPhone.

First, if you find the custom keyboard to be too jarring or cumbersome, you can opt to use the default iOS keyboard. I personally feel that the keyboard is part of the utility in the app, but this comes down to personal preference.

Second, and most importantly, you can change the app’s default behavior when you tap someone’s name. I have a tap set to call the person, as I find that being able to hit one button when I need to call somebody (I rarely call people, so when I do I want it to be as fast as possible) a tremendous help. This can be changed, though, by setting the default behavior to either Text or Email. Dialvetica fits your workflow, not the other way around.

Beyond that, the latest addition added some much-wanted functionality, including support for Google Voice and the ability to import data from an older version, clear calls history, or change default behavior.

Conclusion

So, would I say that Dialvetica is worth the low cost of entry? Absolutely. Not only is it a fast, well-designed (functionally) utility that does everything that it promises, but it also has just enough customization and feels personal enough that I can’t imagine going back to using Apple’s default Contacts app.

If you’d like to save some throughout the day as you call, text, or email someone, Dialvetica is the best place to get started.

No doubt that any of you who have ever had the fortune of travelling by plane have had the confusing experience of locating information on the boarding pass. These things, it seems, were designed by a “small, blind, parakeet” (from Tyler’s post) and finding what you want can be a mission in its self.

Well the guys from Sylion took it upon themselves to solve this issue and quite simply reinvent the boarding pass. Head on past the break to meet Flight Card, and see how their stunning design has influenced the way we fly — forever.

Getting Started

The opening screen you are faced with is your Flight list which shows you your itinerary of Flights. Tapping on the plus button in the top right corner will bring up the Search Flight option to either find your flight by the Flight number, or the route.

Once you’ve found your flight and checked that it is correct, you can add it to your Flight List and you get beautiful view of your boarding pass. On here you see all the information you need for your flight at a glance such as the Terminal and Gate of depature as well as the arrival, rather than being forced to scour that ugly piece of white paper, then find the big ticker board and browse through about 50 flights to see yours.

Design

As you can probably tell by now, this app is no ugly tool. Designed by the awesome Jonatan Castro, this is a real piece of beauty — simple and sublte. Not only is it designed to give you all the information you need at a glance, but it is colour co-ordinated depending on the state of your flight, such as Scheduled or Cancelled. This makes finding out about your flight details not only pleasurable, but essentially effortless.

Functionality

In case you got the wrong impression, this is purely for personal use (currently at least) and is not a complete replacement for your boarding pass. You can’t hand your iPhone over at the gate and expect to be allowed on the flight. However, that’s not the point. This app is aimed at you, and it does a pretty damn good job of it.

The whole process is very easy, from finding your flight to checking your information (tapping on either the Time or the terminal/gate on the screen will alter between your departure and arrival information) and even to sharing your boarding pass via email or SMS. The sharing aspect is actually really useful, allowing you to quickly send a text your mate waiting for you or an email to your driver — a nice touch.

In terms of the backend, Flight Card is powered by FlightStats which is a very powerful service which delivers over 90,000 flights per day on more than 1500 airlines from over 16,000 airports. Essentially, you are going to struggle to find a flight that’s not covered by the service. This is an essential part of the app because if it was hit and miss whether your flight was there, it would render this app almost useless. It would be no good if it only worked part time.

The app is not only useful for those travelling, but can be extremely handy for those wondering where you are or if you have people meeting you upon arrival. With instant updates of delays or cancellations it can be an essential app for anyone even indirectly involved with your flight (I actually had a flight redirected the other day, which was highly irritating, and it would have been made much easier if the person meeting me new had this app and thus would have known of my hour-long delay).

Downsides?

One downside I hear people complaining about is the price — $4.99. You may be thinking that it’s a lot of money for an iPhone app, especially when compared to some of the games you can get for that price, however there is justification. Firstly, this is a very powerful tool that could save you time and significantly more money, but also the service they use (Flightstats) costs money as well which adds to the production costs. I believe its a very reasonable price considering its value.

Conclusion

This app is a very well finished with great design and functionality. If you fly frequently, heck even if you don’t, I would strongly recommend this app to anyone who wants to make the flying experience easier. Flight tracking has never been easier and it’s a sign that our lives can, and will, be made easier by technology.