Website Grader is a really good tool to benchmark your site on some SEO best practices. I was just grading a client of mine this morning, thinking how it would be good to keep a history of their progress when it hit me.
What i do now is take a screenshot of the grade, using the Evernote screenshot feature and automatically it is dated so i can use Evernote to keep track of our progress (or lack thereof).
I’ve had a few weeks to try out many of the apps on the iTunes store, and although it’s not even a month into the release of the 3G iPhone there is already some outstanding products available, many of which are free:
Google Maps (built in)
The best feature in maps is that you can search for anything. If i search for “Sushi” gmaps will search and drop pushpins on the map for any results matching your search criteria. You can drill down to results, get phone numbers, addresses and using the built in GPS get directions from your current location. This has already saved my ass on a couple of occasions!
Airme (free)
If you are a Flickr user, and love your meta data – this is the app for you. I actually bought mobileflickr for $2.99 before i found this one, but i’m going to use this instead. Airme will allow you to take photos, and then automatically upload them to your flickr site for you. Again, the magic comes from the GPS integration. Airme automatically tags your photo with your local weather (temp / sky conditions) and plots your photo on your flickr map.
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Google Reader / Google Talk (free)
These are actually web apps, but with all their ajaxy goodness they feel more like native apps. I spend about an hour each day commuting on a train to/from work and being able to access all my feeds in Google Reader is like having my own custom newspaper. I also like that alot of the features have been carried over from the desktop web app (i.e sharing / share with notes / stars). The implementation of Google Talk is really solid too, only problem i find with gTalk is that alot of people sign into their gmail and walk away from the computer but still show as ‘available’ – so it can be frustrating trying to connect with your contacts occasionally. Also, due to the limitations with the iPhone SDK & the fact these are web apps if you leave safari you will be logged out.
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Texas Hold’em (not free)
Really REALLY well done game. All the touch gestures feel right (double tap to check, tap drag & throw your cards to fold etc…). The graphic quality is probably one of the best i’ve seen so far. One cool little feature is if you tap your dealt cards, you will see a colored ‘hand strength’ meter. I’ve actually found this a handy tool for a beginner like myself…for example pocket 2’s a beginner would likely make the mistake to bet hard when in fact it’s a really weak hand. Other cool things: LAN multiplayer support, stats (keeps track of your best hands / win % etc) & it will save your games making it great for even burning 3 mins waiting in line at the grocery store. The only negative i have is that you can’t listen to your tunes while you’re playing, which you could do with the old ipod version.
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Remote (free)
There has been alot of buzz around this one. Right now i live in a 700 sq/ft condo, so i don’t have much use for it however this would be amazing for a house party or backyard BBQ. With Remote you can control iTunes or AppleTV over wifi from your iPhone. This way you don’t have to leave the party action to skip a track / pause etc…awesome.
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Facebook (Free)
The thing that is most impressive about the Facebook app is the attention to detail. There is alot of functionality crammed into this app but the beauty of the UI is they don’t expose it to you all at once & overwhelm you, it’s like peeling the layers off an onion. I continue to find cool things i didn’t realize it could do. It actually even supports Facebook chat, although i’m not sure if anybody really uses that, and it has the same limitations as Google Talk when you leave the app. Just a really solid translation of a web app -> iPhone.
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Truphone (free)
Apple does not allow apps which support VoIP over cellular data (edge/3G) however if you are on wifi you can using Truphone. I used this when i was in New York state for a friends wedding a few weeks ago to dodge roaming charges and it worked great. Just hop on free hotel wifi and you’re good to go. When you sign up they give you $4.00 to get you started. Rates are pretty decent @ about $0.06/min for landlines/mobiles in Canada/US. One nice thing is that for the person at the other end the call display still shows your iPhone #.
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Urbanspoon (free)
Merlin Mann called this app “almost useful” last week on Macbreak Weekly and i see where he’s coming from, but it’s probably one of the first apps i show people when i’m demo’ing the phones features cuz it’s just so damn cool. I am going to Hawaii for 2 weeks and am going to try it out while we’re there. Urbanspoon finds your location using the built in GPS, and then builds a slot machine style list of neighbourhoods, types of cuisine & cost level ($/$$/$$$/$$$$). You can lock certain dials on the slot machine, for example maybe you are certain you want Italian food, but don’t care what neighbourhood or cost. Then you simply shake the iphone (so silly, but so cool) and it will return a restaurant matching that criteria. You can then drill down and see ratings, address & phone number with links to Google Maps if you want to get yourself a table.
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Twinkle (free)
I used Twitteriffic when i first got my iphone as that is what i use on the desktop, but i found it started crashing alot so i tried Twinkle (which i used on my old jailbroken ipod touch). The selling feature of Twinkle is that it uses GPS to show you Tweeters who are nearby, which is surprisingly interesting even though they are complete strangers. Also supports picture tweets.
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There’s got to be a better way…Apple, please develop some sort of web based method for iTunes customers to manage their podcast subscriptions. I would envision something along the lines of “Google Reader meets del.icio.us” from a functionality perspective then sync it with my iTunes subscriptions at home automatically. Stop making me send myself emails to remind myself to subscribe to a podcast i found 8 hours earlier!
Who’s with me?!
Note: I’m not 100% certain if this works in previous versions of OSX, but it definitely works in Leopard. It can be hard to catch typos in your own writing. Your eyes tend to glaze over from looking your own text after awhile, so it can be helpful to have another set of eyes.
Having said that – In the absence of a proofreader, having your text read to you is really helpful for catching things. Here’s how to set it up, go into system preferences & then the speech / text to speech area. Create a hotkey (i used CTRL+Shift+S) and you can then simply highlight text in any application and have it read to you using your hotkey.
So let’s say your planning a family vacation. You’ve booked your rental car, your flights, your hotel and a bunch of activities. If you’re like me you probably haven’t had much fun keeping track of all this stuff. Once you get more than a few seperate confirmation emails for your bookings it becomes a bit annoying to manage. That’s where tripit.com comes in. I read about tripit last week on Techcrunch, and thought it sounded interesting enough that i should give it a try using my upcoming honeymoon to Hawaii.
Start by booking your travel online as you already do today, and all you need to do then is forward your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com. It matches the email address with the one you used to register and basically takes all your confirmation emails, and automatically extracts the important information and presents it in a attractive,easy to use interface. As i’m writing this, tripit already has a pretty extensive list of travel sites that they support to which they are adding & improving constantly. A minute or so later, you’ll receive an email from tripit letting you know they have received your confirmation email and it is ready for you to view on the site.
It’s all in the details
As they say, it’s all in the details and this is where tripit clinched it for me. Tripit automatically provides directions between multiple destinations using Google Maps, local weather & travel guides for the area(s) you are visiting. The travel guides are pretty weak right now as that feature is still under construction but i think it should be more useful 6-12 months from now.
The other thing i love is the iphone / ipod touch interface they developed at http://m.tripit.com. I definitely will be bringing my ipod touch along for the trip so knowing that i can jump on wifi and have up to date access to my itinerary if needed is great piece of mind. You can also subscribe to your itinerary in Google Calendar or iCal on your mac.
Share your itinerary with family & friends
If you have family or friends that you want to make sure can reach you while you are travelling, you can share your itinerary with them and they can goto your tripit page and see where you are, or find the phone number of the hotel if they need to reach you. The only drawback i can mention right now is that we booked a couple of bed & breakfasts not using major travel portals, and tripit was unable to import those confirmation emails. Not really the end of the world anyways, because you can manually add those parts of your trip.
All in all, a great useful web app. I highly recommend you check out tripit for your next vacation or business trip!
Inspired by one of my favorite podcasts, Macbreak Weekly, i’m going to try to post a new pick each Friday. This week my pick is a great piece of software called Jing Project. There are a tonne of video / image screencap software tools out there that i have tried – Skitch, iShowU, ScreenFlow, dockdrop – the list goes on. The problem is i have my screenshot app, and my screencast app which is somewhat cumbersome and sharing my content is a little tricky sometimes, particularly for video.
This is where Jing comes in. Jing solves the problem of being able to show people what you are seeing and/or doing on your computer very quickly. It’s insanely easy to use, on the mac you invoke Jing by pressing SHIFT+Apple+1 which brings up a cropping mask that you can move & size to the area of your screen you wish to capture. Then it’s just a matter of picking your format – image or video.
Jing can then automatically upload the content to a destination of your choice (i.e Flickr for images) and a nice little touch is it will even put the URL of your content on your clipboard so you don’t have to go find it yourself. Now you just share that link with co-workers / friends / family and the whole process can take seconds quite literally. Did i mention it’s free?
