Best of AppStorm in November

iBooks, Kindle or Nook? Battle of the E-Reader Apps

The war of electronic reading devices is at its peak and has taken a strange turn not seen in many other rivalries. Even if you give in and buy an iOS device instead of an Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble Nook, you can still be a patron to these companies by using their free iPhone or iPad apps.

Below we’ll take a quick look at the three big names in book reading: iBooks, Kindle and Nook. I’ll give you my opinion of each based on a number of comparable factors like interface, features and shopping experience so you can decide which is best for you.

90 Awesome iOS Apps for Freelancers

Freelancers are constantly on the move. Not being tied to a specific office often leads to working anywhere we have an Internet connection. What better way to manage your freelance business on the move than with your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad?

Below you’ll find over 90 apps that will empower you as a freelancer to get more done when you’re away from your computer. Whether you’re a designer, writer, consultant or anything else, you’ll find tons of helpful tools.

Express for WordPress: It’s WordPress Made Simple

Have you been disappointed with the WordPress app and wanted more flexible ways to publish to your WordPress blog on the go? Thanks to the new Express for WordPress app and the WooTumblog plugin from WooThemes, you can now quickly publish a variety of content to your WordPress blog from your iOS device.

Express for WordPress is a new app designed to let you post anything you want to your WordPress-powered blog from your iPhone. One major problem of blogging apps is that most of us don’t want to write long, detailed posts from a cramped screen. Micro-blogging solutions such as Tumblr let you create shorter posts featuring an image, link, or quote, but WordPress sites are typically filled with longer posts. WooThemes is aiming to change that by making it easy to post simpler content to WordPress.

Dropbox-Powered iPhone Text Editors

Dropbox is one of the best free tools to ever hit the Mac. Much more than a simple backup utility, people use Dropbox in all sorts of different ways, from hosting entire websites to sharing files with classmates.

The Dropbox API makes it possible for developers to integrate Dropbox functionality into their own apps. The most popular use of this technology we’re seeing on the iPhone is a recent crop of Dropbox-compatible note-taking applications. These apps allow you to create notes on your iPhone and then access them on any computer or mobile device where you have Dropbox installed. Below we’ll take a brief look at a few of these Dropbox note apps so you can decide which is best for you.

Is the iPhone Ruining Film and Photography?

The web has become saturated with surprisingly high quality content created entirely on iPhones. Never before has a device that contains a camera merely as a secondary feature so impacted the worlds of photography and cinematography.

The question is, are these industries better or worse with the arrival of the iPhone? Is this device improving the digital world by putting multimedia-based art forms into the hands of the masses or is it critically cheapening decades of hard work from serious professionals? Let’s discuss.

10 Fantastic Lightweight CMSes You Should Try

Sometimes less is more. When it comes to content management systems there’s a huge selection of feature rich, powerful and incredibly complicated options, but what about the lightweight jobs? Many of today’s popular CMSes are overkill for small, basic tasks where the extra frills just aren’t needed.

Here are 10 fantastic lightweight CMSes that’ll get the job done without the extra bloat.

10 Kick Ass Adobe AIR Apps You Should Try

Remember Adobe AIR? With advancements in HTML5 and even Silverlight, AIR seems to have been left in the back of our minds-at least here at Web.AppStorm. Adobe AIR has some pretty great apps, however, that are still rocking the AIR space and even leading their respective areas (like Twitter).

We’ve pulled together 10 kick ass Adobe AIR apps you should definitely try if you haven’t already. Take a look!

Quick and Easy Sites With ThemeForest and PageLime

One of the many awesome aspects of ThemeForest is the affordability of such amazing templates and themes. However, I quickly noticed many of my items’ buyers expected my hourly rates for content customization to be little more than the item price itself—which was just not possible.

Thanks to some really great lightweight CMSes, which we rounded up in our 10 Fantastic Lightweight CMSes You Should Try post, I can easily provide many of my buyers with an easily editable website in very little time and at a very low cost.

In today’s how-to, I’ll walk you through the simple steps of setting up a ThemeForest template with the easy to use CMS PageLime.

Keep an Eye on Your Holiday Packages With These 8 Apps

The holiday season is upon us and, holiday season or not, you’ll probably want to keep an eye on your packages—inbound and outbound. While many online retailers have greatly improved their package tracking integration over the years, there’s still easier ways to watch your in-transit package’s status.

Checkout these great web apps for tracking your package’s every move.

Increase Your Site’s Speed & Security With CloudFlare

No matter how big or small, your website can always expect at least some activity from spammers if appropriate measures are not in place. This can significantly decrease productivity for you as a webmaster or developer and sometimes more extreme methods are needed to combat these online threats.

Enter, CloudFlare. CloudFlare acts as a proxy between your visitors and your website – ensuring security and the fairly successful prevention of spam as well as decreasing load times greatly. Read on to see how to setup CloudFlare for your site.

OpenOffice vs. Office 2011: Rooting for the Underdog

Happy birthday, OpenOffice. Believe it or not, it’s been ten years since the mighty “other” productivity suite—the open-source uncle of Microsoft’s ‘Monopoloffice’—began the slow fight for recognition. How far we’ve come.

At the end of the day, the question has always been whether or not OpenOffice is able to sufficiently replace Microsoft Office. Has it reached this stage today? Read on to find out…

Mac Design Software: 20 Vector, Bitmap, and Web Design Apps

“The Mac is geared towards creatives.” That’s what you hear most often when a discussion turns to the benefits of operating systems. But what exactly are those fantastic apps that appeal to us creative folks?

Read on for a showdown of the essential Mac design software – whether it’s for the web, bitmap, or vector design (and I’ve thrown a few apps for developers in for good measure too!)

The 27? Apple Cinema Display: Is It Worth $999?

Right now, Apple sells only one computer monitor – the 27? LED Cinema Display. It specs out (we’ll get into that in a bit) very well and comes in at a beefy $999. In the day of bigger and bigger displays and cheaper and cheaper prices, Apple goes against the flow here a bit by staying at a higher price point.

The question is, do you get what you pay for?

Mac Software and Web Apps: 60 Awesome Desktop Clients

Web apps have flooded the application market in the recent years, and rightly so, since they offer synchronized access to your information and content from any computer you access them from.

Today we’re going to take a look at 60 awesome Mac software clients that act as a companion to your favourite web apps. Whether you’re an avid photographer, a Google nut, or a die-hard tweeter, we’ll have something that can make your web app experience better than ever!

Sparrow: A Gorgeous Gmail Client for Mac

Mail.app is fabulous, fast, and dependable for every-day email communication needs. But now that many of us use Gmail for personal and professional use instead of an IMAP or POP account, Mail isn’t necessarily the perfect solution any more.

How awesome would it be to have a native Gmail client that goes above and beyond the competition? Read on to find out how close the newest Mac Gmail client, Sparrow, comes to fulfilling your dreams of email nirvana.