The-Electric-Daily

CODA is an all in one web development tool that RULES!!!  It includes a text editor for code, style editor for CSS, FTP, a terminal, browser preview & built in reference books.  It is collaborative, intuitive and even has that well designed Mac UI.  (It won the Apple Design Award back in 2007) I recently tested it out with their 15 day free trial and not only was it fun and easy to use, it sped up my workflow by at least 50%.  Even at a step price tag of $99, it is totally worth it and I highly recommend it.

Simply put, Spotify RULES!!!  Watch the video and see why.  Spotify is an online web service where you can listen to a seemingly infinite amount of songs from their servers (with 10,000 more added each day), listen to your songs locally (similar to iTunes), star your favorite music, share on FB & Twitter, connect with your friends by dragging and dropping songs into their inbox & even collaborating on virtual mix tapes and these are just off the top of my head.  I love it but I have heard mixed reviews from different people, saying

“why do I need this service? I’ve got this and that etc…”

I would answer that with this

“Spotify is a ton of music all in one place, available anywhere, all while being socially integrated, making listening to music from just about any artist virtually effortless and sharing all of that with your friends even more so, basically it’s the best of all services rolled up into one.”

I would also say,

“stop resisting change and embrace new technology/web services and enjoy the music.  While your at it, connect with me and share what you are listening to & while you are at that drop your archaic Yahoo or Hotmail account, and get with Gmail already.”

With every new online web service or application, there is always a resistance from the public (with criticism surely to follow) and I understand that not everyone is an early adopter or excited by new technology and developments on the web.  If that were the case, everyone would have that Gmail account, but I digress.  The creativity and technology out there on the web is amazing, with new apps and services popping up daily and it is a shame to not take advantage.

Spotify is in Beta and you have to request an invite here,  but it only took them a few hours to respond to my request and I was up and running in a matter of minutes.  Another option is to give a shout out to your friends asking if they have invites to spare.  Premiums services offer no advertising and mobile features, allowing you to take it anywhere.

Spotify creds:

Seth Hall

@middle8media

Applist.me is best described from their website.

Applist.me allows you to share a list of all your iPhone and iPad applications with your friends, your colleagues and your family. Nothing more, nothing less

You simply download the app, sync it with your current apps in iTunes, check the apps you want to share and then sync to their servers.  They provide a short link and you share away.  Pretty simple but awesome.

Here is what I am rockin’ these days.

M8M App List

Just in case you missed last weeks post about Sparrow you can read it here. and…as a reminder, here are tips and tricks that improve the overall experience of the app.

Mail clients are a dime a dozen these days.  It seems that every day there is a new Gmail extension or app, a new way to experience Gmail in your browser or on your desktop.  I have tried several of these over the years, looking for that perfect email experience, but after many trails and errors, I always went back to Mac Mail, because I love all things Apple and staying Mac native when possible, seems to work best for me.  Well that was then.  Don’t get me wrong, I still love Mac Mail, I just don’t use it anymore.  I started feeling the weight of that “heavy email client” and I wanted something lighter, something simpler, something like Tweetie Mac App (now Twitter for Mac).

Sidenote: Atebits, the genius behind Tweetie, set the standard for Twitter clients, both on Mac and iOS, so much so that other devs started copying them, so much so that, to an extent, Apple copied them with the new and improved Mac Mail for OSX Lion, so much so that Twitter done went and hired Loren Brichter as an official developer.  Man talk about having your finger on the Twitter pulse.  In the process of hiring him, Twitter excelled with the official Mac App but destroyed the official iOS app.

Continued Digression: During the whole #dickbar fiasco and after horrible updates and bugs, I ditched Twitter iOS for the amazing Tweetbot by Tapbots

Anyway, a few weeks ago I came across a Gmail Mac App called Sparrow – the new mail for mac.  I read about it on blogs and saw it in the Mac App store on sale for $10.  Upon visiting their website I noticed they offered a free version that had a few “limitations” (one account, ad-supported and the “Sent with Sparrow” tag at the end of every email).  As I perused, I noticed excellent design and UI, it looked simple, it looked easy, it looked Mac native…it looked like Tweetie..aka…now Twitter.  It looked awesome!!!  So… I decided to take a leap of faith and make the switch.  (which some of you may know, can take a while with setting up accounts, synching mail, contacts, labels etc…)  First of all, it was free.  Second, I route all of my email accounts through my main Gmail account, so the one account “limitation” was no big deal.  Third, the ads were unobtrusive (I actually found myself clicking a few of them).  And last, since I love the app, I am happy to promote the devs with the “Sent with Sparrow” tag.  Win, Win, Win!!!  Sweet!!!

I won’t go into the details of the app.  I encourage you to give it a try for yourself.  I will say that Sparrow is perfect for my email needs and the switch proved worthy and does so everyday.  It has breathed new life into the daily task that is emails and that is a big deal. Thanks Sparrow.  Thanks for making my workday better.

P.S. – Sparrow has a great blog with tips and trick to help you get started.  Enjoy!!!

This is amazingly sweet & absolutely beautiful.  Happy birthday Frank!!!

If you are a regular reader of The Electric-Daily then you know that we love Instagram.  You then also know that we love our Macs and Apple products across the board.  Well, when I came across Carousel by Mobelux just last week, I found a new favorite app.  Carousel is simply the best way to experience Instagram on your Mac. This beautifully designed app allows you to view your photo feed, view the most popular photo feed, like & comment on photos, as well as view your profile and the profiles of others, all in a simple and fun design.  Though my favorite features are the ability to drag and drop to save full size photos to your desktop, preview full size photos by pressing the spacebar and the option to save any photo straight to iPhoto.  A 15 day free trial is available here and it is available in the Mac App Store for $4.99.  Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Bonus: under preferences in the menu bar you can customize the appearance of the app, “nothing special” “no big deal” you say?… well it is a big deal when each customization is of Wes Anderson influence.

Today I downloaded a 14 day free trail of the Mac OSX 10.6 app Fantasical by Flexibits.  Within a few minutes, this app has proved to be Fantastic indeed.  The design and ease of use feels native to Mac OSX, so much so that I am hoping for something like this to be part of the new iCal with the release of Lion. Fantasical lives in your menu bar and can be accessed with a keystroke of your choice or by clicking the menu bar icon.  Once open, tasks are easily added with “Natural Language Input”, meaning if you type Wednesday or Tomorrow, your new task/event is automatically added to the corresponding word.   Pretty sweet!!  Another great feature is the simple yet wonderful full app search, making any item accessible in seconds.  Fantasical supports iCal, Outlook, & Entourage, as well as Google & Yahoo! Calendars (simply add them to iCal and presto).  The interface is beautifully designed, easy to use and just plain fun.  A 14 day free trial is available, after which it can be purchased from within the app for 14.99.

Is this app something you have been looking for?  Does it feel a void in your Mac’s iCal?  If you so, give it a try and let us know how it feels to be Fantastical.