For web developers building websites on the latest MacBook Pros, Blind lets you see what your site looks like on a 1x display. Using it is as easy as clicking on a bookmarklet. It’s $2.99 in the Mac App Store.
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Blind, A 1X Web Browser for Retina Displays→
Soulver for iPhone Updated with iCloud Syncing, URL Scheme→
Soulver, my favorite iOS calculator app that isn’t really a calculator (I like another app for that), was updated today on the iPhone to support iCloud syncing, sub-folders, and a URL scheme. iCloud syncing was first brought to Soulver for Mac in December 2012, and now the iPhone app (Soulver for iPad hasn’t been updated yet) should be capable of syncing named documents with its Mac counterpart. If you trust iCloud with your Soulver documents, I guess that this will be a handy addition.
The URL scheme is much more interesting for my workflow. According to the release notes on iTunes, there’s now a URL scheme to launch Soulver, create a new document with text, or even to append text to an existing document. I am already thinking about the possibilities opened up by this feature for integration with apps like Launch Center Pro and Drafts – but I can’t find documentation anywhere. The app does support a soulver:// URL scheme, and hopefully more information will soon be posted on Acqualia’s website.
I’m looking forward to playing with Soulver’s URL scheme and updated preferences (not so much with iCloud sync). Soulver for iPhone is $2.99 on the App Store.
Update 9/1: The guys at Acqualia have posted a URL scheme documentation here. I have already set up a Drafts URL action that lets me quickly type a calculation in Drafts – which is my go-to text capturing tool – and append it as a new line to a specific Soulver document I have called “Calculations”. From Drafts:
soulver://new?text=[[draft]]&title=Calculations
I’m already using this action all the time to launch quick currency conversions in Soulver. Open Drafts, type “2 usd in eur”, and boom – Soulver opens, displaying the result. It’s a nice URL scheme.
The Omni Group Releases OmniKeyMaster Mac App Store License Tool→
From The Omni Group’s blog:
OmniKeyMaster is a simple app that finds App Store copies of Omni apps installed on your Mac, then generates equivalent licenses from our store - for free. This gives Mac App Store customers access to discounted pricing when upgrading from the Standard edition to Professional, or when upgrading from one major version to the next. Another benefit: since they don’t have to wait in an approval queue, our direct releases sometimes get earlier access to new features and bug fixes. OmniKeyMaster lets App Store customers access those builds, as well.
Tools like OmniKeyMaster have become quite common lately, as developers of third-party Mac apps keep struggling with the limitations imposed by Apple on the Mac App Store. Having new versions of apps every time a major upgrade is released isn’t an option for many developers, and they are resorting to workarounds like this to have the best of both worlds: the Mac App Store’s purchase system and the control on your own website and app updates. It’s a trade-off, and, in most cases, the process is quite convoluted.
In The Omni Group’s defense, their Mac App Store license tool seems easy to use and clever in how it finds all App Store copies of Omni apps on a Mac. Apple may not be interested in offering upgrade pricing on the Mac App Store, but developers find a way…or at least a viable workaround.
Twelve South Introduces the GhostStand, A Clear Elevated Stand for Your MacBook→
Twelve South has been busy this year. Their latest new product, following HiRise, is a brand new laptop stand made out of lucite. From the product page:
GhostStand is a transparent, ultra-modern platform– and a brilliant work of art– that elevates MacBook to a more comfortable viewing height. Pair your MacBook with a full-size keyboard and mouse, then set it on GhostStand to enjoy desktop style comfort at home or work. While GhostStand makes it look like your MacBook is floating in midair, two sets of soft silicone rails keep your Mac safely grounded to this affordable lucite stand.
It’s also $34.99, and can alternatively be purchased from the Apple Store online. It would pair well with a lot of Mac accessories, including those famous Harman Kardon SoundSticks. I was under the impression that the interlocking pieces of glass could be separated, making the stand portable, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. This is very much a stationary piece for your desk, designed to look beautiful and give the appearance that your Mac is floating on air.
Have a Chromecast? There’s Now an iOS App For That→
It’s little more than a configuration utility, but Chromecast for iOS (App Store link) lets you set up your newly acquired dongle so that you can connect it to your Wi-Fi network and change your device name and password.
Apple and Education→
Apple recently revamped its Education website with updated sections on iPad and Mac usage in education and a focus on students with special needs and Accessibility. Make sure to check out the Real Stories webpage, which provides several examples of how teachers are using the iPad in the classroom.
AgileBits Teases 1Password 4 For Mac→
Dan Moren, in his preview of 1Password 4 for Mac:
Several of the newest capabilities originated in 1Password 4 for iOS, including the ability to mark your frequently used items as Favorites, support for multiple logins on the same site, and the ability to sync via iCloud. You’ll also find new types of items to supplement existing options, such as driver licenses and reward programs, and you can add custom fields to most items, to store any other information you want. And if you want to share a specific item between the Mac and iOS apps, you can do so by sending it via encrypted iMessage or email.
1Password for Mac received its last big update in 2009 with version 3, and, following the launch of 1Password 4 for iOS, a revamp of the desktop client is long overdue. I’m particularly excited about the Back to the Mac approach – 1Password 4 is one of my favorite and most used iOS apps, and the upcoming Mac app seems to retain much of the mobile counterpart’s functionality, enhancing it with features that make sense on OS X (such as the new browser extension).
Apple will provide its own password generation and sync solution with iCloud Keychain, and that’s great news because it’ll help users have safer logins with minimal effort. However, I want more from my password manager, and I’m looking forward to trying 1Password 4.0.
The Future Of Feed Reading→
And so, could this hypothetical service take all that information, put it into a database, and then find and recommend things for me to read? I think yes. That’d be the easy part. The hard part is if the service could pick out articles for me as well as Pandora can at pick out songs, or as well as Netflix can pick out 4-star movies. Now, wouldn’t that be something?
Services like Feedly, Feedbin, and Feed Wrangler have pretty much nailed the filesystem of news idea of RSS readers (with some unique differences, as Shawn outlines for Feed Wrangler).
The next step is discovery of relevant and personalized news in an RSS-based environment. No one seems to be doing that quite right at this point and there are a lot of services and technologies that may be using RSS in the backend but that are trying different proprietary approaches. Flipboard with magazines and top stories; Zite with algorithms; Feedly with popular feeds; others with lightweight Twitter and Facebook integrations.
My primary concern is that a feature such as the one envisioned by Shawn – which I’d love, by the way – would require a tremendous amount of scale, data, analysis, time, and, ultimately, resources, which I’m not sure an independently developed feed reader could ever have (or pull off properly). But, yes, that sort of news recommendation inside a feed reader would be fantastic.
New Oceanhorn Trailer→
This is the iOS game I have been excited about for months. Recently, the developers announced Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito are composing music for the game. My expectations are extremely high for Oceanhorn.