Instapaper Gets an Awesome Feature for iOS and an Android Version

Instapaper is one of my most used apps on my iPhone and iPad, and it continually gets better and better.

A couple days ago, it was updated with a really great new feature, background update locations. The feature only works on iPhones and 3G/4G equipped iPads (because of those devices enhanced geolocation abilities). What it does is allow you to set up several geofences — say, home and work — and Instapaper will download any new articles when arriving and leaving those areas.

It’s useful for just about anyone, as your article list is pretty much always ready. I imagine train or bus commuters will really love this feature.

Already it makes me wish I had gone with the 3G/4G enabled iPad this last time (something I likely would have gotten had the carriers been seriously talking about shared data plans at the time).

But this isn’t the only news for Instapaper.

Instapaper for Android

Last night, The Verge published their exclusive on Instapaper for Android. Instapaper for Android is blessed by Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, but is developed by Mobelux. The two had a working relationship when Marco was at Tumblr, and with Marco focusing most of his time on iOS, I think it makes sense to contract out Instapaper for Android.

It looks like a solid 1.0 release, with a few shortcomings from the iOS version. I’d expect a lot of those will be resolved with time.

The Verge also has a little interview with Marco about the Android version. What I liked from that is that even though Instapaper’s roots are on the iPhone, Marco says his main focus is first on tablets, then smartphones. It’s also worth noting that Instapaper for Android does have separate UI’s for smartphones and tablets.

Instapaper for Android is $2.99 and is available on Google Play, and will be available soon on the Amazon Android Appstore and the NOOK market.

Quotebook 2

I've loved Quotebook on my iPhone since its debut. It's a well-designed app for capturing, organizing, and sharing memorable quotes. I've used it to capture both famous quotes and even profound things friends have said.

Today, Lickability (love their logo) released Quotebook 2. After nearly nine months of work, Quotebook has come to the iPad and supports iCloud sync. It is absolutely gorgeous, and if you have a penchant for quotes, you need Quotebook in your arsenal.

Apple Starts 'Free App of the Week'

Late last week, Apple started a free App of the Week promotion in the App Store, much like their long-running free Song of the Week for the iTunes Music Store.

They kicked off with a game, Cut the Rope: Experiments(App Store link). I grabbed it because I had remembered a friend speaking highly of the original Cut the Rope.

Later, when on my iPad, I saw Cut the Rope: Experiments HD(App Store Link) was being offered as the free app for iPad. I almost passed on downloading it because I didn’t want to maintain two levels of progress on different devices.

Then I noticed both versions featured iCloud sync. Bingo. This is how gaming should be done on iOS. Now, I can casually play a couple levels on my iPhone, and later pick up on my iPad, with all my scores and progress synced via iCloud.

Another perk of iCloud integration? Should I ever need to delete the app (let’s say if a serious bug crept up), I could choose to leave the save data in iCloud. Reinstall the app and all my progress is still there.

I’ve greatly enjoyed Apple’s inaugural picks for the section of the App Store. And they’ve made me realize how games should start integrating iCloud for saving progress.

Facebook Camera

Just saw on Twitter (insert irony here) that Facebook just launched Facebook Camera on the iPhone. It features filters and such like this other little app called Instagram — which Facebook recently acquired for $1 billion.

Incredibly bizarre.

Coda 2 and Diet Coda

Panic has released the long-awaited update to Coda on the Mac — Coda 2, and an all new iPad companion cleverly named Diet Coda. Both apps are 50% off today only. If you get Coda from the Mac App Store, iCloud will keep your projects in sync (highly recommended). If you do any coding for a site, Coda 2 and Diet Coda should be in your utility belt.

Lightroom 4 Comes to the Mac App Store

Adobe has released Lightroom 4 on the Mac App Store. Not only is this Adobe's first foray into releasing a truly professional app on the Mac App Store, but it is also their first foray into a non-archaic installation process.

Update on 2012-05-10 20:06 by Chris De Jabet

I’d be remiss if I didn’t follow-up with some caveats to buying Lightroom 4 on the Mac App Store. Head over to The Loop, where Jim Dalrymple lays them out.

Wolfenstein 3D Classic Free for a Limited Time

Wolfenstein 3D Classic is free for a limited time for iOS, in honor of the game’s 20th anniversary. It has 60-levels, and fits in 19 MB. 19 MB was about half of the hard drive on the Mac Classic my parents owned in 1992.

Get it on the App Store.

Cards Updated for Mother's Day

The best kind of app is the one that does one thing really well. When Apple released its Cards app for making physical cards to physically send to someone, I thought it was kind of neat, but I may not have a need for it.

Well, as I was on the road traveling for Easter, I remembered that I forgot to send my Grandmother a birthday card, and I didn’t have time nor opportunity to buy one to send then. So, when my family and I stopped to get out and stretch our legs, I snapped a picture of my boy real quick on my iPhone, dropped it into the Cards app, wrote something nice, and tapped the buy button.

It cost $2.99 to send a custom card, including postage, to my Grandmother. And I did it all in the span of three minutes just off I-29. Often, cards at Hallmark cost more than three bucks and don’t offer that level of personalization. Also, a couple days later, I received a push notification on my phone telling me the card was out for delivery to my Grandma’s house.

Well, today Cards was updated with some new designs for Mother’s Day. I’m already planning to use it for the occasion. Cards is a free app from Apple on the App Store.

¶ Byword for iOS | Review

If there is one genre of app that I have more than my fair share of, it’s text editors. Since launching techēse, I have been seeking the perfect writing environment that gives me the least resistance to getting words written. I started with OS X’s TextEdit, and eventually found myself doing my long form writing in TextMate after I began writing in Markdown.

TextMate worked for a time. It is very much a coding environment. And even though Markdown is a syntax that relates to code, it is very much a writer’s syntax versus a coder’s syntax. TextMate is great for coding. But it has never satiated the writer in me.

I started using Byword just about a year ago on my Mac, when it added Markdown syntax highlighting and declared its focus to be the best Markdown editor for writers — which it most definitely is. In fact, nearly every article here has been written in Byword.

Byword is great on the Mac. But often I want to write on my iPad, and even sometimes, though rarely, on my iPhone. I’ve used Dropbox to sync and either Elements or iA Writer, which are both fine writing apps. But I have long wished for Byword on my iOS devices.

Today, the wait is over. Byword for iOS is here.

I’ve been beta testing Byword for iOS since early December last year. It’s a universal app with iCloud and Dropbox support.

Byword for iOS also has a handy keyboard accessory which shows word and character counts (tap it to switch between the two or show both simultaneously). The accessory can also. Be swiped to show quick cursor arrows and common syntax used when writing in Markdown. There are two different parts of the accessory for Markdown, pictured below.

Byword Keyboard Accessory

Byword also allows you to preview Markdown, export as HTML, send as an email, and print. It also includes TextExpander support.

Byword for iOS doesn’t yet have the dark theme like the Mac version, but it is coming in a future update.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the update to the Mac version, which now has iCloud integration. iCloud on the Mac is still pretty clunky when it comes to setting up files to be synced. That’s definitely a limitation of OS X Lion, which should be alleviated this summer by OS X Mountain Lion’s revamp of the Open/Save dialog.

First, on the Mac, you have to save the file locally. Then, while the file is open in Byword, you click the File menu and then click Move to iCloud. Once the file is in iCloud, everything becomes pretty seamless. Setting up a file within iCloud on iOS is straightforward. Just click the + button from the file list and give it a name.

In fact, you can have the same iCloud file open on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, then type on one device and watch it appear on the other two a moment later. It really feels like magic.

Byword for iOS is a fantastic, well-designed app that gets out of your way and let’s you write. It also has the best Markdown-optimized keyboard accessory I have seen on iOS yet, making it hands-down the best tool for a writer using Markdown.

If you are a serious writer, you need Byword.

Byword for iOS is being introduced at $2.99 $4.99 on the iOS App Store, and Byword for Mac is $9.99 on the Mac App Store.

P.S. This entire review was mainly written on the iPad, with a little bit on the iPhone and Mac, kept in sync the entire time with iCloud.

¶ Clear | Review

I really like lists. Seriously, it’s an OCD obsession, one I believe was passed down from my mother, who is the Queen of 3M Sticky Notes. I sort of picked up that tendency to plaster my desk with sticky notes, even though the clutter created by the act is incredibly annoying to a person who likes to keep things tidy (another OCD obsession).

Ever since I got an iPhone, I have been trying to find a great to-do app to take care of lists of things to do. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Apple released Reminders with iOS 5 because of it’s ability to write once, yet have my lists available across my three devices. And for the most part, it works pretty well.

Though Reminders falls short in two areas:

1. On the Mac, they are currently shoved into iCal, which actually makes it quite difficult to deal with things if you keep multiple lists (this is fixed in Mountain Lion this summer, thank goodness).
2. It’s really hard to sort items in Reminders by priority. It takes many taps, and, even then, you sometimes aren’t able to put the top priority item at the top of the lists.

Because of this, I find myself really using Reminders for items that either need an alarm or location alert. I’ve been using sticky notes for my daily to-do lists again. And my desk has been cluttered because of it, which annoys and distracts me.

Enter Clear by Realmac Software, Milen, and Imending, Inc., released last week. Clear is a new to-do list app for the iPhone that is re-imagined around gestures, instead of check-boxes and buttons.

To start a new list, you just pull down slightly or pinch apart between two existing lists, and type a name. Need to move the list up or down amongst other lists? Just tap and drag to where you need it.

Tap into list, and you are presented with a nice inspirational quote. Pull down slightly to add a new item, and type. Items are limited to holding 30 characters, encouraging brevity. Just like with lists, items can be added by pulling down again, or pinching apart between a couple items. Reordering works the same, too.

Reordering is where the good stuff happens. Put the important stuff at the top, and the less important stuff at the bottom. A visual gradient is applied between the list items to give a sense of priority, much like a heat map (which is, appropriately, the name of the default theme).

Swipe an item to the right to mark it as done, and it grays out and move below the last item of the list with a strike through it. If you decide you don’t need an item anymore, swipe to the left to delete it. As you mark items as complete, you get a progressive tone that is reminiscent of an old NES game about a plumber. When all items are complete, pull up to clear you list with a triumphant jingle to go along with it.

I have found that my favorite things about Clear are how fast I can add items and how easy it is to determine priority at a glance. It has pretty much taken over as my go-to place to jot down items as they hit me. It’s also earned a prominent spot on my iPhone — it sits right next to Twitterrific, so I am sure to see it often and tap into it.

I have one thing I would love for Clear to add in an update, and that is syncing with my iCloud Reminders. I love Clear’s interface, but it would be great if creating a new list in Clear made the change in Reminders across my devices. Then, if I do need an alarm of geolocation alert, I can switch to Reminders and add that, but I can use Clear as my main way to view and act on items.

I highly recommend giving Clear a shot for simplifying your daily tasks. It’s on the App Store for 99¢.