Tools & Toys is a new project by one of my favorite writers, Shawn Blanc. Every item is hand-picked by Shawn to whet the appetite of geeks, coffee drinkers, music lovers, writers and more — in other words, me.
This is one site I'll be reading daily.
Footnotify is a wonderful Safari and Chrome extension that shows a popover for footnoted text when you click on the superscript reference on a site. I highly recommend it.
Shawn Blanc designed a t-shirt and is selling the series for the next week. These look amazing. Count me in. Count yourself in, too.
With Sony getting hacked every other day (or so it seems), and other major players like Sega, Citi, & WordPress also getting hacked, now is a good time to remind everyone to take password security very seriously.
My favorite tool for managing passwords is 1Password. It's available for OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android. By all means, go get this app, or something a heck of a lot like it.
Also, if you have 1Password already, but you're still just using one password within it, it is time to change that. Trust the software, let it make unique passwords for all the sites that you have accounts with. Do it now.
The beauty of 1Password is that I only need to remember one master password. If a site I use becomes compromised, I can rest assured that the password that was scraped cannot be used to log in anywhere else. Then I can just generate a new password for that site.
The only weak link, then, is that master password. Thankfully, AgileBits, the makers of 1Password, handed out some pointers today. It's a long read, and could be a bit difficult to wrap your head around, but if your care about your own online security, you'll give it a read through and apply it to your digital life.
Reeder is my favorite RSS reader for iOS, and it is finally out of beta for the Mac. I've been using the betas for months, and couldn't imagine a better experience across all my devices. The Mac version feels like a hybrid of iOS and OS X, and where that feels a bit out of place on Snow Leopard, I have a feeling it will be right at home on Lion next month.
It's $10, and featured over on the Mac App Store. I also recommend the iPhone/iPod touch version and iPad version.
My favorite image editor, Pixelmator, debuted a sneak preview of their next major release, Pixelmator 2. There is a lot of amazing stuff happening in this release that brings it closer to a Photoshop replacement for many users. At the very least, I think Pixelmator 2 will certainly seal the deal on surpassing Photoshop Elements.
Pixelmator 2 adds a ton of new and improved brushes. The crown jewel among new features looks to be Content-Aware Fill, which is something that the world first saw in Photoshop CS5. Like I said, Pixelmator 2 will probably satisfy most people's need for Photoshop, at a fraction of the price.
Speaking of price, Pixelmator 2 will be a free upgrade for those who have purchased Pixelmator in the Mac App Store. If you owned Pixelmator previous from the pre-Mac App Store era, I would suggest moving over to the Mac App Store version now, as the price is $30 once again for a limited time to encourage folks to get on board with the Pixelmator team's decision to sell only via the Mac App Store. After a little while, the price will return to $60.
Also, if you don't currently have Pixelmator, but think you may want it, it'd be a good idea to pick it up now.
One of my favorite devices I've begun to use in the past year is my Square credit card reader. It allows me to take credit card payments using my iPhone or iPad, without a monthly fee, merchant account, or contract. They simply take 2.75% off each transaction, and the money is usually in my bank account by the next business day. Simple.
I've written about it before.
Today, Square's CEO, Jack Dorsey announced that the Square reader is available today in every Apple Store in the US, and from Apple's online store. Normally, if you get a Square directly by requesting one from their site, it is free. At Apple is costs you $9.95 up front, and then when you create your account you get $10 back. Not bad.
This is a fantastic move for Square, and I hope more folks start using it.
As an added bonus, they just updated the app yesterday, and the iPhone, iPod touch, and Android interfaces now let you factor in sales tax, something that has been available on the iPad for some time. That's a very welcome addition for many small businesses.
If you don't have a Square, get one.
Tweetbot is a new Twitter client that debuted yesterday in the App Store. Rather than write ad nauseum about it, I suggest you read Shawn Blanc's excellent review.
My brief thoughts are:
Tweetbot is two bucks right now for a limited time. I have no idea when it will go up, or by how much. But for two bucks, this is worth having in your arsenal.
I do have to mention one thing though. As much I like Tweetbot, and I think it is as good, or perhaps better than the official Twitter app, I am still sticking with Twitterrific as my main client. I like Twitterrific's unified timeline, the themes, and the interaction. Maybe it's just what I am used to. Though I do love that Twitterrific has a unified experience across the iPhone (and iPod), iPad, and Mac.
Regardless, when I do feel the need to occassionally reach for a backup client, that will now be Tweetbot, instead of Twitter for iPhone.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out Tapbots' very well done video for Tweetbot, which you can watch here.
Marco Arment, maker of the wondeful Instapaper, has a neat litte experiment going on called Preview.fm. You type in a search for music on iTunes, and you get a fast & easy way to preview the whole album. This is much easier & faster than dealing with browsing the iTunes Store, and if you decide you want the songs or albums, there is an easy link that will drop you right into iTunes.
Bookmarked.
I've seen a few of the folks I follow on Twitter get a Verizon iPhone 4 today, and quickly posed the question of what are the must-have apps. Here's my list:
Those are some of my favorites. Enjoy your new iPhone 4.
