10 Seconds of Fame for Theodolite Creator Craig Hunter

A beautiful app gets it's 10 seconds of fame during Apple's Keynote this past October 22nd. You can read Craig Hunter's reaction to the awesomeness here. If you're an architect or engineer, this app is for you!

I imagine every developer sees these videos and hopes their app shows up; I know I always have. But in this case, something felt different. In addition to the usual feel-good stuff Apple always shows, they were demonstrating serious uses of the iPad, in settings ranging from medical to industrial, to hard-core sports and the outdoors. A couple minutes into the video, I was shocked to see my signature app, Theodolite HD, being used atop the Great Wall of China as an iPad user surveys the mountain scenery and architecture around him. Wow!

Theodolite (iPhone, iPod touch) and Theodolite HD (iPad, iPad mini) are augmented reality navigation apps that overlay information about position, altitude, bearing, inclination, range, and other geographical data on the device's live camera image, creating a sophisticated viewfinder (the name "theodolite" comes from a centuries-old surveying instrument that has become a "go-to" device for all types of land, sea, air, and space measurements; Lewis and Clark famously took one along while exploring the American West).

Tweetbot 3.0: Still My Favorite Twitter Client

If you're up to date with iOS 7 and a huge twitter user, once again, Tapbots comes through with a gorgeous twitter client in Tweetbot 3.0. Download it now while it's on sale for $2.99! I'm just glad twitter hasn't bought them yet and ripped into its soul! =) MacStories Federico Viticci on Tweetbot 3.0:

And here’s where Tapbots’ new skills are revealed: when you tap, a tweet turns dark gray and the drawer folds down from “behind” the tweet and into the timeline with a delightful 3D transition that I still can’t stop looking at.

For me, Tweetbot’s feature set is still unparallaled and the additions that have been brought to version 3.0 make the app even faster and more reliable when it comes to loading timeline gaps, opening web views, or using the URL scheme. Tweetbot 3 is the most powerful Twitter client I have on my iPhone.

Shawn Blanc has a beautiful video review too. Check it out! Here's his review.

Tweetbot 3 for iPhone from Tapbots on Vimeo.

Transfer Cash via Square for Free

I've find myself at dinner on more than one occasion, semi-embarrassed, without cash, out of all places at a cash-only restaurant requiring a temporary loan. I don't know about you but I simply don't carry that much cash on my person these days. Repaying that short-term loan can be awkward when it comes to writing a check and / or finding a far away ATM which always leads to dark alleys plus the extra charges so I try to avoid that as much as possible. I don't know too many friends that have used Wells Fargo or Chase's application to send and receive cash because not too people actually bank at the same place and when it comes to credit unions, forget about it.

For all those awkward moments, we now have Square Cash. It's a free service (no hidden charges) that allow individuals to send and receive cash via e-mail. Yup, seriously. Money is transferred via one debit card to another up to increments of $250 on a weekly basis but with a simple verification of identity, you can send up to $2500 a week! No password or account setup is required and the app is available on either iOS or Android. Deposits happen fast within one to two days but Square is promising faster service in the near future.

The only caveat is that you have to trust Square to handle your transaction. So if anything, make sure your e-mail account password is a tad bit more secure when using the service but either than that, Square has had an awesome track record with their merchant business in detecting fraud through strong security measures and close human and machine monitoring. Start e-mailing cash today!

Square Cash is the quickest, simplest method I’ve seen for sending money from one person to another.

via Walt Mossberg for Wall Street Journal

A Daunting Task for the Would Be Microsoft CEO

It's Monday and with that, we have an awesome read by Mr. Jean-Louis Gassée on his Monday Note depicting the reality that faces Microsoft's new CEO.

To put it even more succinctly: the iPhone did it.

He also lists a few important bullet points for the next CEO. I'm excited to see where the future lies. I still remember waiting in line for Windows 95!

via Monday Note

iPhone 5s / iOS 7 Tips & Tricks

Whether you've bought the new iPhone 5s or merely upgraded to the redesigned iOS 7, Apple has published a Tips and Tricks page with a wide array of well, tips and tricks. Take a peak!

I personally enjoy the built in level built right into the Compass app. Just swipe left.

via Apple

1Password Updated to v4... on sale too!

The amazing password generator and vault program by Agilebits, 1Password, received an update to  version 4 this morning!  It's offered on the Mac App Store and if you bought it in 2013, you're also entitled to the free awesome update!  It's a huge upgrade redesign to the already award-winning password software and if you've been missing out, get it while it's 20% off!  You might have heard me saying that 2013 has been dubbed as the year of the password hackers so this is the best way to generate that 16 character-symbol-number-ascii password that you can't remember and store it now!

What’s new?

Everything. Yes, really. From an entirely new interface to the return of Wi-Fi Sync for those who don’t want their data in the cloud, 1Password 4 for Mac has over 90 new features that allow “security” and “convenience” to coexist in the same sentence without tearing a rift in the space-time continuum. Check out the highlights:

• Completely redesigned interface - crafted by Dan V Peterson with Mavericks and simplicity in mind
• Multiple and Shared Vaults - create separate vaults to share with business or family members that each get their own sync preferences and locations (take 1Password > New Demo Vault for a quick spin!)
• 1Password mini - a full-featured menubar utility with vault search, item details, vault switching, window anchor options, and more
• All-new extension with Opera support - the front-end for our JavaScript extension and 1Password mini is now built on Cocoa, giving you a unified experience across every browser
• Shared Items - if sharing an entire vault is overkill, you can share individual items (Logins, Secure Notes, memberships) with another person via email or obfuscated iMessage, just like iOS! If your recipient makes changes and shares the item back to you, 1Password will update your existing item
• 256-bit Authenticated Encryption, PBKDF2 with HMAC-SHA512, and other major security enhancement - 1Password not only keeps your data private, but also tamper-proof. This forestalls many attacks that haven’t even been dreamt of yet
• Wi-Fi Sync is back - many of our customers asked for a way to sync with 1Password 4 for iPhone and iPad but keep their data out of The Cloud, and we delivered
• iCloud sync - naturally
• Favorites - also just like iOS, quick access to your most important and frequently used items
• Third-party App Integration - You can choose to enable support for Alfred, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver, allowing you to quickly search and open Logins from the Mac’s great productivity utilities

Check out our brand new Mac site to see all the ways 1Password can make staying secure more convenient. Grab 1Password 4 in the Mac App Store today, and here on our website soon!

It's great that they have been able to take advantage of iCloud sync too.  Way to go Agilebits!

via Agilebits

Thinking About Everyone

Not only do Apple's engineers think about everything, the try to accommodate everyone as well. Simply amazing. http://youtu.be/EZ_nyIwep0k

Great Sleuthing by Ars Tehcnica on the Artificial Note 3 Benchmarks

Once again, Samsung inflates their numbers by artificial boosting their devices and going so far to as trick the applications running the tests to max itself out. Caught in the act again.

Above is a picture of Geekbench and of Stealthbench, which is identical to Geekbench in every way except for a different package name. With Geekbench, System Monitor shows the CPU is locked into 2.3 GHz mode and all cores are active, but in Stealthbench, the CPU is allowed to idle, shut off cores, and switch power modes, the same way it does in any other app. We have successfully disabled the special benchmark mode.

"Geekbench" is a popular benchmarking app, so the Note is programmed to give it special treatment. It has never heard of "Stealthbench," though, so despite being the exact same app, it does not get the special benchmark boost. The Note will run this benchmark like 99.99999 percent of the other apps on the device. The next step then, is to run the two benchmarks and compare the CPU's benchmark mode with non-benchmark mode.

The file we ended up with is called "DVFSHelper.java," and it contains a hard-coded list of every package that is affected by the special CPU boosting mode. According to this file, the function is used exclusively for benchmarks, and it seems to cover all the popular ones. There's Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack, GFXBench, and even some of Samsung's own benchmarks. The two functions applied to this list seem to be "PACKAGES_FOR_BOOST_ALL_ADJUSTMENT," which is no doubt the CPU booster, and "PACKAGES_FOR_LCD_FRAME_RATE_ADJUSTMENT," which makes it sound like the phone is also altering the display frame rate.

via Ars Technica

Vesper Sync Coming Soon

As stated, it's coming. Maybe in a year, most likely in a few months and this is BIG news!  But the biggest question remains.  Which service will Vesper and the team take advantage of?  We've seen the troubles with iCloud and the popular app Yojimbo outlines in complete detail why they ultimately chose not to support Apple's Cloud software package.

That said, we’re going to make an exception, quite possibly just this once, and announce what we’re working on next for Vesper: Sync.

note: I haven't updated to the latest iteration due to the face that its exclusive for iOS 7.  Other than that, I love it!  If you haven't read the blog on the history of it's design process, do it now.  It's a great read.

via Daring Fireball

Selling your stuff?

From everyday's hassle free Gazelle to sometimes can be creepy craigslist, everyone is all about getting the bets bang for their used item. As new entrant to the market, Sold is here to make it that much easier for us all. Check them out! They just released an app for Android and has had an iOS app since their launch in April.

Sold. Launch Film from Sold. on Vimeo.

If you missed it a couple of months ago, Techcrunch first reported Sold back in April here.

update: the first item I put up on Sold was a pair of Tokidoki Sol Republic Headphones that retail for $120 and the offer I got was $53.  Seems reasonable for a "no hassle" sale, but I'm thinking that it's utility is worth more.  It's actually unopened as well.  Once you receive an offer, in my case 72 hours later, you have 24 hours to accept and being the transfer.  I have 12 left to decide.

Ghost is a Go!

Today mark's the public release of Ghost: Just a Blogging Platform. After months of hard work, you can sign up and try it out for yourself. I'm excited to migrate and go full-time for this website.

Ghost 0.3 comes with the full, gorgeous Markdown editor which so many of you have been excited about using. It has a stunning post management interface, it has a simple set of settings which allow you to configure your blog, and it comes with a clean and simple personal blogging theme called Casper.

and from their Kickstarter:

Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customizable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even (gasp) fun to do. It's simple, elegant, and designed so that you can spend less time messing with making your blog work - and more time blogging.

Watermarking

I haven't solved my post processing / editing workflow problem yet and keep on delaying.  I've come up with reasons such as, I don't have my new MacBook Pro Retina Display w/ Haswell yet or I don't have my new iMac setup or my home cloud server isn't setup the way I want it, but nonetheless, I'm falling way behind.  Yesterday when I posted a couple of images, I thought about watermarking.  I know that you can use either Adobe's Lightroom or Apple's Aperture photo editing software, but because I don't have a computer to install these applications on (another excuse), I was left to find something minimal.  And I'm glad that I did. I stumbled up Photobulk by Eltima Software.  They are having a 20% off sale right now on the Mac App Store or you can download a free demo from their website.  Takes seconds and the results were as expected.  The biggest draw to me was that it was drag and drop.  You can even set multiple presets and bulk edit your pictures.  At the sale price of $7.99, it's a no brainer.  And no, I was not paid to post this article.

http://youtu.be/uZnZnyo8qbg

Free Apps on iTunes Store today!

A bunch of apps on the iTunes store have gone free! Both The Verge and 9to5mac have listed them all but here are my favorites.  

Day One - a beautiful journaling app for iOS also available for $9.99 on Mac.  

Over - add text with a beautiful selection of fonts and artwork to your pictures then and only then do they become Facebook worthy =) 

Barefoot World Atlas - a great map with animations and world facts just like what we could have used in 7th grade geography joust! 

and of course the $19.99 app Traktor DJ either the iPhone or iPad for free!