Adrian’s app of the month is Tweetbot – an iPhone Twitter client. Adrian explains why you should bother ditching your old Twitter app for this one:
“I’ve been through plenty of Twitter clients, and Tweetbot is definitely the most stable Twitter client out and the only one to really support Lists. Lists are such a terrific and under-adopted Twitter tool. (Read Sean Clark’s great post on the power of Twitter Lists if you don’t yet use them.) Following the several thousand people I do, I use lists (public and private) to follow the people I really care about and don’t want to miss, and whose insightful tweets would otherwise get lost in my overall stream. Tweetbot has a great interface too, with interesting triple-tap features allowing you to quickly reply to tweets and swipe right to pull the thread of a conversation. There are two customisable buttons to allow you to build an interface that suits your use of Twitter. As of Monday 9th May, Tweetbot is £1.19 in the App Store. Let’s hope they’re working on the iPad version!”
Anders’ app of the month is VLC Player – the video player you wish came native with your OS:
“VLC is by no means new, but it’s still the best free media player out there. With hundreds – if not thousands – of codecs, pretty much any obscure video format can be played. VLC Player is also multi-format; I have it installed on my Macs, my Acer Revo Linux Box and even that crusty old Windows laptop I have yet to get rid of. I’m an MPEG man myself but for those interested in more open source solutions (such as OGG) this player is just the job. VLC isn’t anything too remarkable, it behaves exactly as you’d expect a media player to work, but that’s why it’s so great. There’s no configuration or codec downloading to do (a long way from Media Player) and it isn’t picky about file names (unlike QuickTime). If you want to watch all your video files on one player with ease, get VLC now.”
Nina’s app of the month is Shopstyle – a quick and easy to way to find the clothing you want from a range of great brands:
“Embracing the fact that I am the only girl in the office, I’ve made ShopStyle my app of the month. ShopStyle brings all the top clothing brands together in one place, enabling you to search lots of retailers you may not have considered previously. ShopStyle also lets you refine your search by lots of factors, making hunting for that specific item of clothing quick and easy. Other than the beginning of The First 65 (of course), my obsession for May has been finding amazing wedding shoes, and ShopStyle has made the process really simple and painless – love it!”
James’s app of the month is MindNode – easy mind-mapping for your Mac:
“MindNode is a ridiculously simple mind mapping tool that lets you quickly develop site plans and flow diagrams. It’s great to be able to sit with a client and in no time at all start putting together a site map – it immediately gives you a sense of the new site’s size and structure, as well as helping to visualise potential navigation solutions. The best bit of all is that the standard version of MindNode is free from the App Store! There’s also a pro version of MindNode available for £11.99 which adds a few extra features including sharing and file linking.”
Chris’s app of the month is Skitch – a screen-grabbing, doodling, sharing thing that’s great for giving instructions, demonstrating errors, and loads more:
“Skitch is screen-grabbing software with built-in editing and uploading power. Nothing particularly jaw-dropping about that, but you know an app is definite keeper when you keep finding new uses for it – and Skitch definitely falls into that category.
Scenario One: I’m trying to demonstrate an error message to a support desk. Perhaps they can’t recreate it. I can quickly grab the screen, use the simple arrow tool to point towards the error message and other elements I think are related. Click upload, get the instant link, and paste it into a support thread.
Scenario Two: A client can’t remember how change the featured products in their e-commerce store. Rather than have a painful “up a bit, down a bit, left a bit” conversation, I fire up Skitch, take screenshots, use the arrows and text tools to highlight what to do, and email the client the links to these ‘Skitches’.
Skitch has a range of plans, from free to pro. Choose one to suit you at skitch.com.”
Tom’s app of the month is Prompt – an ssh client for iPad:
“Prompt, written by the clever people at Panic, is an ssh client for iPad that enables me to log into our servers/desktops and fix issues, amend configurations or just code for a bit of fun! There aren’t many ssh clients (ssh means “secure Shell”, and it helps you to write the sort of code – see below – that non-techy people would probably associate with The Matrix – Ed) on the market, but Prompt does all the basics with a pleasantly intuitive interface. Gets round the issue of no Vim on the iPad nicely.”
So there we have it – that’s our six apps for May.
Found one of these apps useful? Use a better app that does the same thing? Found a completely unrelated app that we must download immediately? Let us know in the comments.
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments