How many of us have said “I really should start a journal,” only to find that even the simple task of sitting and writing for a few minutes is too hard to fit into our daily schedule? With Penzu, there aren’t any more excuses — it turns anything with a screen into a synced, secure journal. And right now a Penzu Pro Digital Journal Lifetime Subscription is just $39, a full 58% off the normal price.
You know that feature when you order online from Domino’s that keeps you posted on the process of your order and even tells you which employee has put your pizza in the oven, and who just left the store to bring it to you?
I love that feature, for some reason. I don’t think it makes me some kind of creepy pizza stalker, if that’s even a thing.
But my main issue is that I had to keep my laptop open to stay on top of the whole process. Luckily, however, Domino’s has addressed that one, strangely specific gripe with the latest update to its mobile app.
Amazon is getting more serious about taking a piece of the cloud storage action. Over the holiday weekend, the company released its Amazon Cloud Drive app for iOS, letting you finally access your files in Amazon’s cloud from your iPhone or iPad.
The app competes with the likes of Dropbox by enabling you to view your files anywhere, but falls short in a number of key areas.
So you want to design apps for iOS. Good choice! Of course getting started can be tough, but today’s your lucky day: right now the iOS Designer Bundle is on sale for whatever you want to pay, but only until Midnight. It includes a slew of of lessons and tools that’ll bring you up to ninja level in no time.
The Dark Sky app — famous for its crazy accurate weather predictions that give you down to the minute details on everything — has been updated to version 5.0 today, bringing with it an awesome new design and feature improvements.
Among the most noticeable differences is a new vertical timeline that dispenses weather predictions over the next 24 hours. It’s also adjustable so you can view precipitation, temperature, wind, humidity or the UV index.
The Worldwide Developers Conference brings new opportunities and new threats for indie developers. If you’re lucky, Apple introduces an API that could enhance your app. If you’re unlucky, Apple launches a new feature that renders your app obsolete.
One thing is certain: Whatever Apple announces at the annual conference will mean a lot more work for indie developers just to stay in the game. And since developers can’t charge for updates on the App Store, most of that work will go unrewarded.
Cult of Mac is at WWDC and AltConf, fishing for ProTips. The world’s biggest gathering of Apple developers is a rich hunting ground filled with alpha geeks, experts par excellence. What’s a ProTip? A ProTip is a nugget of knowledge, a little bit of expertise from someone in the know — a pro.
SAN FRANCISCO — Designers can be a picky bunch, always ready to pick apart a colleague’s creation or slap down an idea with some withering snark.
But interaction designer Dave Wiskus is prescribing an attitude adjustment for his fellow creative types, especially those who seem to be engaged in some sort of bitchy competition to come off as the smartest person in the room.
“Just say no to cynicism,” he said Thursday during his talk at AltConf here. “It’s the enemy of everything.” (You’ll also want to avoid irony, sarcasm and passive aggression, which Wiskus called “gateway drugs” that can lead to full-on cynical addiction.)
SAN FRANCISCO — If you watched the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote earlier this week, you’d think it was a big love fest. But there’s a section of the audience sitting there in a cold, cold sweat.
Attendees are mostly software developers, and some of them are very nervous that Apple will announce something that will ruin their business overnight.
“The WWDC keynote is terrifying for developers,” said Josh Michaels, an independent software developer from Portland, Oregon, who runs Jetson Creative. “The uncertainty is the worst part.”
Take ReplayKit in iOS 9, a new feature that records games and app videos without the need for any external cameras or hardware.
Sounds great, unless you are Everyplay or Kamkord, a pair of young companies that raised millions of dollars to record games and app videos in iOS.
“They’re f**ked!” said a game developer at WWDC who asked not to be named.
A social-media campaign hopes to put pressure on Apple to release the Pebble Time smartwatch app for iOS.
The to-do started after an update on the Time’s Kickstarter page yesterday.
BitTorrent’s not just a way to torrent anymore.
Released a couple years ago, BitTorrent Sync proved itself to be a great way to keep your files synced between machines without trusting a service like Dropbox with your data.
And now? BitTorrent Bleep, a serverless chat app, is here to show you you can do without Snapchat or iMessage.
This post is brought to you by Systweak Software, creator of free iOS app Duplicate Photo Fixer.
If your iPhone is short on storage, it’s most likely crammed with pictures and videos — especially if you’re not prone to sorting your photos manually. In fact, photos and videos typically occupy more than 50 percent of storage space on iOS devices, according to Systweak Software. And up to 10 percent of the photos could be duplicates created inadvertently during the simple act of shooting or editing pictures with your iPhone.
Luckily, Systweak Software’s free Duplicate Photos Fixer makes it easy to locate, evaluate and delete duplicate photos. The iOS app is a quick and simple way to recover valuable storage space and organize your photos.
In her songs, Taylor Swift always seems to have the perfect sassy, finger-snapping comeback — and now you can too, courtesy of the new TayText custom keyboard for iOS. Yes, really!
We guess SwiftKey was already taken as a name.
Greg Pabst and his neurologist were trying to get a handle on his adult onset epilepsy when the doctor’s mention of the newly announced Apple Watch gave Pabst an ah-hah moment.
The doctor was discussing tools for Pabst to chart his seizures and send alerts to emergency contacts.
“Then he said, ‘It’s only a matter of time before somebody does that for the Apple Watch,’ ” Pabst, 38, recalled. “Then I thought maybe it should be me.”
Pabst, of Orlando, Fla., and a developer friend quickly went to work creating SeizAlarm, which appeared in the iTunes store for the iPhone last week and is available for the watch, the pre-orders for which begin arriving Friday.
Customer reviews on the App Store are good for business. It’s not just that good reviews can improve your app’s ranking. Reviews have also helped me build a better app.
But with all the fake reviews and haters out there, it’s sometimes hard to see the wood from the trees. The trick is to know exactly which reviews to pay attention to — and the secret is all in your stars.
Sometimes described as “Netflix for pirates,” the video streaming service Popcorn Time is coming to iPhone. The standalone Popcorn Time iOS app will launch imminently — quite possibly as early as today — and will allow users to watch pirated TV shows and movies on the move.
While it won’t be allowed in the App Store for obvious reasons, a workaround means users can install the app without having to jailbreak their handsets first — although, for now, you’ll need to have access to a Windows computer.
Instagram quietly enabled an option today that makes it super-easy to keep track of your favorite accounts.
You can now set up push notifications for whenever a specific account posts a new photo. The timing of the new feature makes perfect sense with the impending release of the Apple Watch.
Chris Toy was an Everquest geek in the early days, playing the addictive open-world video game somewhat obsessively.
It wasn’t slaying the monsters or leveling up that really motivated Toy, but the social aspects of the game.
“I was honestly pretty isolated,” the Hong Kong native told Cult of Mac by phone, “and talking to people via Everquest or World of Warcraft felt better than talking to real people.”
That’s when he realized that being able to text chat with other people wherever they were was the future of messaging, and perhaps even communication itself. Fast-forward to now, and Toy and a high-tech team living in San Francisco have created Bindle, a new group-messaging app designed to create this very same future.
I don’t watch cable TV. I pay a little more each month to purchase stand-alone Internet from my provider. I watch Netflix, Amazon, stream via my PS4, Apple TV and on my iOS devices. I hate commercial TV with a passion.
In 2013, 6.5 percent of American households quit watching cable or satellite TV, instead opting for a streaming-only experience, a 4.5 percent jump over the number of households that cut the cord in 2010. This is an audience that continues to grow.
Now Reuters TV, a fascinating new service from a reputable news outlet, promises to provide mobile TV news via an iOS app. Will other news empires follow suit?
Facebook has been trying to go after Foursquare’s slice of the geolocation pie for a while now, and a new update to Facebook’s iOS app doubles down on that policy, providing Foursquare-style recommendations for places to visit in your area, based upon the suggestion of friends.
Apple has really been upping its game with curated app collections, and today a slew of amazing productivity apps were put on sale as part of a new “Get Productive” roundup in the App Store.
It’s the most impressive collection of app deals we’ve ever seen in the store. Many of the included apps have been discounted by more than 50 percent.
Every once and a while, someone slips a cool emulator past Apple’s App Store guardians in the guise of a seemingly inoffensive app. Well, just in time for Christmas, it’s happened again! Meet Floppy Cloud, an app by developer Kyle Hankinson that is actually a Nintendo and Super Nintendo emulator in disguise.
Can you truly find yourself in a video game? Canadian filmmaker and professor Ramona Pringle thinks so. After her mother got sick and she broke up with her New York boyfriend, she spent a year playing World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
During that time, she found many pearls of wisdom, which she’s condensed into 10 “avatar secrets,” which inform her app-based documentary film of the same name.
Video games are an unlikely place to find wisdom, yet, within them, we can find camaraderie, experience the sting of defeat, and help each other become our best selves. Rather than simple time-wasters, social video games like World of Warcraft and Second Life mirror the human condition.
While Pringle doesn’t log in to WoW much these days, the game had an undeniable impact. “This project very much changed my life, my career and my perspective,” she said during a telephone call with Cult of Mac.
This post is brought to you by IdeaSolutions, creator of AirBrowser.
Would you like to surf the web, watch streaming videos, read newspapers and do everything else you normally do on your Mac browser, in full screen on your TV? Pinch to zoom, swipe, bookmark pages — all using your iOS device as a remote control?
AirBrowser let’s you do all these things. You can get the full desktop browsing experience on your television, with all the sites you visit optimally scaled to fit your TV’s screen size. Read on and watch the AirBrowser video for more info on this easy-to-use app.
The next generation of stock trading is upon us thanks to Robinhood, a new iPhone app that came out this week.
Most brokerages charge between $7 and $10 for individual stock trades, but Robinhood eliminates fees entirely by cutting out the middleman. You’re in charge of your trading, and you don’t have to be well versed in the ways of Wall Street to use the app.
The interface is dead simple, and it makes the possibility of trading stocks a reality for more people than ever before. There’s a pretty huge waitlist right now, so you won’t be able to use it right away. But if you’re interested, claim your spot in line.
Available on: iPhone
Price: Free
Download: App Store
I just recently got into writing in Markdown, a special syntax that lets you easily convert to HTML for publishing on the web. There are several decent Markdown editors out there, but the best one I’ve used has to be Typed, a new app from Realmac Software.
The discreet word count view, keyboard shortcuts, and preview options are all great, but my favorite feature is Zen Mode. Typed goes fullscreen and plays six ambient, soothing music tracks in the background to help you focus. Don’t knock it till you try it.
Realmac is most well known for making Clear, a quality todo app for iOS that’s pretty popular. Typed serves a little more of a niche market, but for those interested in a minimalist, easy to use Markdown editor for the Mac, it’s an excellent choice.
Check out this video walkthrough for a more detailed rundown of the app’s main features.
Available on: Mac
Price: $19.99
Download: Realmac Software
