Initially, having an App Store on the Mac looks like the beginning of the end of the “open” environment of OS X. But if the App Store on Mac proves to be successful (despite the fact that it currently has an open environment for installing apps), it actually seems more likely for iOS to be opened up as well. If the App Store is a draw for developers on the Mac, then it’s unlikely that most developers would abandon the store on iOS even if it became an open environment as well.
Just a thought.
each day I attempt
to understand more and more
non-coffee drinkers
“Tweet it, tweet it, kids with A.D.D can read it.”
The geekiest of Apple geeks listen to financial conference calls. Starts at 2pm.
PlainText – Dropbox text editing is yet another text app that recently found it’s way onto the App Store. Dropbox1 syncing might not seem like a big enough deal to put in the name of an app, but it might just be the new killer feature.
PlainText presents you the option to pick a “Linked Folder” to place in Dropbox that it will use for syncing all your text documents. Any new files or folders you create in the app utilize this as if it were the root directory. Your text is now shared with all your Dropbox accessible devices. But what makes it really shine? Folder sharing.
For a while I’ve wanted to have a text service to share notes with my fiancé. We could share a single SimpleNote account, but we’d be sharing lots of unnecessary notes that aren’t relevant to both of us. With PlainText and Dropbox this is really simple. All we had to do was make a shared folder and store it under each of our directories that are linked to PlainText.
Now we have a folder to put our shared text files. Any changes we make get synced with each other seamlessly. In the rare event that file collisions occur, Dropbox is already set to handle things smoothly. We can freely share and collaborate with wedding plans, grocery lists, notes full of <3<3<3's and :D :D :D's. What's more, we could each have similar shared folders with any of our friends, groups, teams from work, etc. This becomes a wildly valuable way to share information.
Dropbox folder sharing is an incredible low-level feature, and I think apps that use Dropbox for syncing data are going to see a huge value added bonus from this kind of functionality.
Counter is a simple iPhone web app I’ve made for a simple task, counting. It mimics the old hand counters used for counting crowds at events. If you want to check it out just visit chuckskoda.com/counter from an iPhone or iPod Touch to give it a go. Not sure it has very wide appeal, but if you need it, I hope it comes in handy.
This is the coolest ‘music’ app I’ve seen on any iOS device so far. The possibilities are endless!
Steamy mini-tornadoes on a lake in Wisconsin. Where was the double rainbow guy when this was recorded!?
Here’s something fun I woke up to this morning. It’s a new cutout animation music video for Jeremy Messersmith’s Tatooine that chronicles the entire original Star Wars Trilogy.
This mockup looks like a great direction for iChat to me. I’ve been really frustrated with the crazy non-unified-ness of iChat. Having multiple contact lists for every service is insanity.
The recently completed census of marine life uncovers some remarkable new species. The oceans are home to some of the most amazing creatures.
Update: The pictures seem to have been taken down.
Update 2: They’re back.