Sweet App: Favs

Between Twitter and my RSS feeds I come across a lot of things I want to bookmark for future reference. Some are articles to read for later but some are actionable items (like check out such and such app). And so I’ve established this habit where I “favorite” or “like” something as my way of bookmarking it. I also “like” most articles in Instapaper if they’re something I want to link to later.

Favs (pronounced fayves, I presume) is a nifty little Mac app that collects all your “favorites” and “likes” and into one place. It’s interface is not unlike an RSS reader, and it pulls your favorites from nearly 20 different services.

The app was in public beta for a while and so I’ve been kicking the tires on it for the past several weeks and like it quite a bit. It hit the Mac App Store just a few days ago — it’s polished and useful and definitely worth 5 bucks.

For a more in-depth review, check out Federico Viticci’s article.

Favs is $5 on the Mac App Store.

Sweet App: QuickShot

QuickShot is like DropVox but for images.

I found this iPhone app by spying on David Barnard’s Home screen. You use QuickShot to take a photo and it will then upload the image to Dropbox for you. It uploads in the background too, so you just snap a pic and close the app.

David explained how he uses the app to take pictures of all his tax-deductible, business expense receipts when on the go. When I read that, I thought to myself, what an extremely clever idea.

I keep my business receipts in Yojimbo, and so I’ve set up a folder action on my QuickShot Dropbox folder to run the below AppleScript. What the AppleScript does is: when I take a photo of a receipt using QuickShot the image will be tossed into Yojimbo with the tags “receipt” and “viaDropbox” and then the original image is deleted from my Dropbox folder.1

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
    repeat with x from 1 to the count of these_items
        set theFile to item x of these_items
        set theTags to {"receipt", "viaDropbox"}
        try
            tell application "Yojimbo"
                set newItem to (import theFile)
                add tags theTags to newItem
            end tell
        end try
    end repeat
    tell application "Finder"
        delete these_items
    end tell
end adding folder items to

QuickShot is universal and just $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Sweet App: Goodfoot for iPhone

Goodfoot is an iPhone app that helps you find cool, nearby places. And it does so by using the Gowalla API in one of the most clever ways I’ve seen.

I came across this app while doing research and preparation for our Creatiplicty episode with Trent Walton.

Goodfoot works by taking the most popular spots on Gowalla and then sorting them by distance (walking, biking, or driving distance) from where you currently are. Then it removes all the non-interesting spots from the list (such as big-brand locations, doctors offices, grocery stores, etc.) and does a pretty good job at only showing you worthwhile locations.

As you’re looking at each location Goodfoot has its own built-in Awesometer®. Goodfoot’s Awesometrics System rates the likelihood of that location being awesome by looking at how many total check-ins the location has compared to how many of those check-ins are unique. So, for example, a place with 100 check-ins from 100 unique people is probably a tourist hotspot and thus not that awesome (unless you think gift shops are awesome). A place with 100 check-ins from 20 people is clearly a local favorite and thus more likely to be awesome.

Once you find a spot that you want to go to, you can view that site in Gowalla or use Google Maps to get the exact location and directions.

Goodfoot is just a buck in the App Store and works wherever Gowalla users have been.

Sweet App: Airfoil for Mac

I heard about Airfoil via Twitter one day when I was wishing out loud that I could play the music from my Rdio desktop app through my home stereo which is connected to my Apple TV.

By default, I can only play music in my iTunes library through the Apple TV. Therefore, if I am listening to Rdio or Pandora while working in my office, I have to play the music through the laptop speakers. But that is where Airfoil comes in.

Airfoil acts like a middleman for my audio and video by taking the audio from any source and send it to any speaker on your network. It certainly has many more use-case scenarios, but this is what I use it for and I am quite happy with it.

Moreover, Airfoil has its own EQ. This truly seals the deal for making it perfect companion to Rdio because Rdio does not have any way to adjust EQ. Even if you’re only using Airfoil to listen to Rdio on your laptop, it’s practically worth it to get a perfect EQ setting anyway.

I even adjusted my Keyboard Maestro macro for launching Rdio to now launch Airfoil first, wait a couple seconds, and then launch Rdio so that Airfoil can have the slight head start it needs in order to hijack the Rdio audio.

Sweet App: Hues for Mac

This Sweet App review is the first in a new type of post I’ll be writing for the site: short, mini-reviews of apps that come across my path. I’ve had it in my head that the only valid software reviews I shall ever publish to shawnblanc.net are ones which exceed 3,000 words. Moreover, I shall only write about apps which have become an integral part of my day-to-day computing life.

Well, that’s baloney. What about the apps I like but which don’t change my life? What about the apps I want to talk about but don’t have 3,000 words for? The weekly Sweet App review is the answer to these conundrums. Enjoy.

Hues

Hues is a simple and useful color finding tool for your Mac. I came across this app when its developer, Zach Waugh, emailed me to let me know about it.

I like Hues because it has the familiarity of the built-in OS X color-picker tool, yet it with a few special modifications of its own:

• It gives you the HEX, RGP, and HSL values for any color you pick. Since I design live in a browser having a light-weight app that helps me find colors and their HEX values is super helpful. I’m embarrassed to admit that used to launch Photoshop for the sole purpose of finding a color I liked and copying its HEX value. Needless to say, Hues is much more economical for that purpose than Photoshop is.
• It has 5 rows for saved swatches instead of one. (Update: news to me is that if you click and drag the little dot underneath the swatch palette you can adjust how many rows of saved swatches are visible.)
• In the app’s preferences you have the ability to remove any of the color pickers from the toolbar that you don’t use. I, for instance, only ever use the color wheel, so I removed the Sliders, the Palettes, and the Crayons.
• It works, looks, and feels just like the native color picker, just better.

Hues is $3 in the Mac App Store.