Do you often find yourself bookmarking pages then plain forgetting about them? It happens to me all the time, as I’m left with a stack of websites I’ve mostly forgotten about in my bookmarks menu whenever I open it. And by now I’m afraid to see how much has piled up in my Instapaper account as well. I’d delete all these bookmarks but many still seem to be relevant, like a snippet of code or a forum post I’d have trouble googling in the future. It’d be nice if there was a way I could avoid forgetting about them without going through each one by one.
Enter Elephant, a simple little app by Julian Meinold. As the title of this post implies, it’s like a StumbleUpon for your bookmarks. The interface couldn’t get any simpler. There is one button. Click on it and Elephant randomly opens up one of your Safari bookmarks in a new window. The developer describes it as being like randomly zapping through TV channels. The app might even be a bit too simple, as you can’t filter certain folders and Safari is the only browser supported. Nevertheless, I’ve found it useful for digging up old memories. It’s only a 25K download so give Elephant a try and see what you find hidden within your bookmarks. Download it here.
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If you happen to be a Mac user that’s suffering from the organizational condition known as “cluttered desktop” then boy, is this the app for you. If you happen to be a Mac user that has an insatiable lust for eye-candy, then boy, is this the app for you.
I’ve seen this before on Windows, and on the Mac it’s just as mind-blowing. BumpTop is the desktop reinvented, so they say; in a nutshell, BumpTop transforms your desktop to make it more like an actual desktop, 3D et al. Aside from the “floor”, which would be the traditional “desktop” portion of BumpTop, there are four additional walls. Icons can be tossed around like real objects, pinned onto the walls, or even stacked on one another. Icons can be piled according to type, and you can enlarge (or shrink) icons based on their relative importance. BumpTop isn’t just eye-candy: it serves purpose in both uncluttering your desktop and increasing your productivity. Watch the screencast below to get the gist of what I’m talking about. Read the rest of this entry »
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Whomever first said the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” never took font into account. There are literally thousands of fonts in existence, spreading over a multitude of typefaces and alphabets—it’s no debate that typography should be considered an art form in it’s own right, and many graphics designers and typographers would agree. The folks at I Love Typography seem to think so; they’ve created an iPhone game that’s aimed to sharpen our font know-how.
And it even includes Comic Sans! Don't let this stop you from purchasing this app.
The Font Game [$0.99] is a straightforward game of multiple choice where the player is given font samples and is quizzed on their ability to correctly identify them. A total of 30 questions are asked, your score is tallied and your results are given to you at the end. Simple enough, right? Well despite the simplistic gameplay, The Font Game’s library of 657 font samples is sure to challenge even the most seasoned of graphic designers. In fact, the three levels of difficulty are aptly named: Somewhat Difficult, Rather Difficult, and Exceedingly Difficult.
Once finished you can optionally tweet your score or send it to the scoreboard—The Font Game is timed so that the Hall of Fame is headed with the highest scores in the quickest times. If you’re really good there’s even a WordPress plugin to display your score on your blog.
The best part about TFG is that it shows you the correct answers at the end in a convenient list; I’ve found this to be especially useful for learning about fonts that I would have otherwise never heard of. And English typefaces aren’t all there is: I’ve stumbled across Symbol (Wingdings!) and Japanese typefaces as well. This elegantly designed game also sports a landscape mode, though you can’t make your answer selections in it, unfortunately. Hopefully this will be added later in an update.
For $0.99 this game definitely lives up to its price and I would recommend it to any self-respecting graphic designer out there. You can see a few screenshots from the app in the gallery below.
[iTunes link]
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The reviews have been trickling in, most of them quite positive. There’s one thing that pretty much everyone agrees on: Snow Leopard’s price point makes it an easy, obvious upgrade. Read what they have to say about Snow Leopard below:
- Ars Technica – John Siracusa “This time around, Apple goes light on the glitz in favor of some heavy work under the hood.”
- Associated Press – Peter Svensson “Snow Leopard will likely be a no-brainer upgrade, given the low price”
- Chicago Sun Times – Andy Ihnatko “A speedy no-brainer upgrade”
- CNET – Jason Parker “With a ton of technological improvements, Snow Leopard is worth the $29 upgrade fee”
- Computerworld – Michael DeAgonia “Apple’s Snow Leopard opens door to a fab future”
- Engadget – Joshua Topolski “If you’re a Leopard user you have virtually no reason to skip over 10.6“
- Gizmodo - Brian Lam “Lightened and enlightened”
- InfoWorld – Tom Yager “Perfection, refined”
- MacFixIt – Topher Kessler “As far as my recommendation goes, I’d say go for it and install the new OS”
- Macworld – Jason Snell “Mac OS X 10.6 upgrade adds Exchange support and a host of tweaks”
- New York Times – David Pogue “Apple’s sleek upgrade”
- PC World – Randall C. Kennedy “Snow Leopard is a pale imitation of Windows 7″
- SlashGear – Vincent Nguyen “At $29 it’s frankly a no-brain decision for OS X Leopard users”
- The Apple Blog – Darrell Etherington “a nice collection of system refinements and improvements”
- USA Today – Edward C. Baig “Many of Snow Leopard’s refinements are subtle”
- Wall Street Journal – Walt Mossberg “Apple changes Leopard’s spots”
- Wired – Brian X. Chen “the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers”
Did I miss any? If you want your review on this list, leave a comment with the web address and I’ll add it as quickly as I can.
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