A collection of the best time-saving apps, tools, and widgets from around the web.

Thinking it through, I realized this category-based naming convention just doesn't align with my basic mental construct of what software is. Organizing items by category makes sense in libraries and bookstores, on restaurant menus, in music and movies—but not apps. An app isn't consumable media. An app is a tool. It helps you perform an action, to do something. Modern programming languages and APIs are verb-based (think MyObject->setName() and and HTTP's GET and POST), and the user interface should be, too. That's when I settled on a verb-based folder system.

A free testing service for mobile developers, managers and testers.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Thing is, designing an iPad app shouldn’t be “just like designing a print product.” It’s not the same design you want to bring to new platforms, it’s the content. Issue-based publishing puts a straitjacket on digital content, freezing it into a big arbitrary block of pages and articles, sealed with print metaphors. This approach privileges print and its design conventions, imposing them on new platforms. And why should that be the case? Looking out five or ten years, will print be the winner among these platforms? Nope. So why should we rely on print’s design conventions and workflows now?

Uses for Pastebot, which I have and rarely use.

Lately, I hardly even open my laptop during the teaching day and mostly use it for heavy emailing and document creation before school and at the end of the day, and for reading, writing, and researching in the evening at home. So, my digital desktop (While always evolving, it’s more consistent than any physical desk space that I use.) has been less Mac OS desktop and more iOS desktop. I was only going to show the first page of apps on my iPod desktop, but as we sat at his December desk, Stephen encouraged me to show all of the pages. View large or full size.

By constantly saving the previous few seconds of video before you hit record, Precorder lets you wait until something interesting happens to start recording, and you'll never miss a precious moment or get stuck with hours of boring video to painstakingly edit down.

PCalc is ideal for scientists, engineers, students, programmers, or indeed anybody looking for a feature-rich calculator for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

When it launched, millions of us grabbed free Gmail addresses, and associated Calendar, Docs, Voice, and other apps followed. But personal domains are cheap, and claiming an @yourname.com address to use with Google Apps is easier than ever. Here's why you should.

The key to good writing is not that magical glass of Bordeaux, the right kind of tobacco or that groovy background music. The key is focus. What you need to write well is a spartan setting that allows you to fully concentrate on your text and nothing but your text. Many professional writers use SimpleText or Textedit because these are the only writing programs that are totally distraction free. But text editors are not perfect. That’s why we made Writer.

The Accidental News Explorer is a new type of news app that celebrates chance encounters and serendipity. Start by searching for a subject. Once you've browsed the suggested articles taken from hundreds of news sources, tap the “related topics” button to discover connected topics, which in turn lead to more articles. Each article leads to new things; the more curious you are, the longer your journey will be. What will you discover?

text editor | file transfer | svn | css | terminal | books | more = whoah.

From Apple’s point of view, iPhone OS and web technologies share equal footing. When you visit their developer site, the Safari Dev Center is prominently displayed. The iPhone gets all the press, but when you click on Safari Dev Center, there’s a ton of great information that explains how to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on an iPhone.

RT @tcarmody: From Book to App: Terrific post by if:book's Bob Stein on "the future of the app" as emergent dominant media form: http:// ...

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