This week he's made two consecutive and interesting posts that show what it's been like to be a software developer during the first few days of the Store's operation.
In one post, he complains about the review process imposed on not just every app, but every update to every app that gets submitted to the Store. Things are not being reviewed fast enough, he says: "If Apple can't guarantee a maximum 24 hour review process, they should drop it."
In the second, Fraser reveals that Exposure has been downloaded an average of 3,200 times per day since the Store opened. It already has more users than FlickrExport for Aperture, a much older and better-established product.
"These are crazy numbers," he says. His point is simple: the iPhone as a platform is going to be huge. In fact, it's going to be "Apple's mainstream platform for 2012 and beyond." Now there's a prediction.
It seems like only yesterday I was writing about Exposure, the iPhone native Flickr browser, in a rather circumspect manner. Now that the App Store is out I took Exposure (available in a free version and a premium version) for a spin and I really liked what I saw.
Before we go any further I should point out that I love browsing Flickr and have always found Flickr's mobile site to be a bit lacking (that's a nice way of saying it sucks). Exposure lets you do everything you can do on Flickr's website and more. The neatest feature, and the creepiest, is the 'Near Me' button. Press it, and through the magic of Core Location, Exposure will show you all the photos on Flickr that were taken near your current location.
Check out the gallery for a full tour of this great iPhone app.
Satta van Daal is a talented stencil artist from Germany, now living in Australia. His canvas? A vast array of old Macs: from SEs to LCs to PowerBook 100s. He decorates them with everything from vignettes of Steve and Woz to carefully recreating the look of Susan Kare's original one-bit Mac icon set.
If you live in southeast Australia, and have an old Mac you're willing to let go of, he might turn it into his next work of art.
He plans on showing his art in an expo titled iPaint MyMac later this year in Melbourne, and hopefully Sydney soon after. You may like his t-shirts, too.
Are you tired of being distracted by the internet? Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Earth could all be considered "distractions" or "time wasters." So, if you're looking to get some work done without physically un-pluging from the internet then Freedom might be what you need.
Freedom allows you to set a time limit for internet access. For instance, if I need to set aside 30 minutes for a project that doesn't require internet access, I could tell Freedom to block internet access for those 30 minutes, Freedom will then disable WiFi and ethernet access for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes are over your WiFi and ethernet access will be restored.
We've looked at applications like Photonic, a Flickr client which removes the web from "web 2.0" (the web navigation, anyway) and offers a smooth desktop experience for browsing photos. It seemed likely that we'd see a similar application which would bring a blitzkrieg of media from similar sites to your desktop. Hey, look at that, we were right: Web2 Delight is here to help you while away the hours trolling YouTube, Veoh, blip.tv and your favorite photo sites for something worth all of the time you invested looking.
Web2 Delight makes it simple to search and save content, with saved searches, multiple and scheduled downloads, export capability and slideshow functionality. You can browse photos as thumbnails, lists or combination views. There's even a Cover Flow view, which I think should be put to good use making Flickr flip books. The software, of course, allows you to stream video previews before opting to download that horrifically long clip which you'll subject in-laws and co-workers to later ... watching their face intently to make them feel uncomfortable if they don't laugh, of course. And now it's on your iPod and you can share it with perfect strangers.
It's a great interface, though, and makes browsing these sites very smooth. I obviously have issues with some of the more tedious bits of content which I've personally been subjected to, but that's not the fault of this software. Web2 Delight is every bit as brilliant (or mundane) as the media you dig up with it, which I suppose means that the ultimate responsibility lies with you. Of course, f you're already losing an hour or more a day to sites like YouTube and Veoh, well, this might just get you back enough time to mow the lawn. And -- after downloading the demo and uncovering all that extra time -- you can spend the twenty bucks you won't be paying the kid next door on registering the software ($19.95).
I mentioned an update to Acorn yesterday, which got me to poking around with the app. I noticed the release notes had something about Flickr Export moving from one menu to another, but I couldn't find it. I turned to Google and quickly found the Flickr Export Plugin for Acorn by Coding Robots. This free plugin, pictured above, lets you export a picture from Acorn directly to Flickr, Yahoo!'s photo sharing site. It also lets you tag your picture, set a title and description, and tell Flickr who can view your photo.
I'm often impressed by the photos I get out of my little iPhone. It's not a pro-level DSLR for sure, but for quick, off-the-cuff snapshots, it does a very good job.
I'm not alone in my belief. Computerworld's analysis of current Flickr Data shows that the iPhone is their most popular camera phone. Part of that is the novelty of the iPhone, undoubtedly. Owners continue to relish any excuse to whip them out.
The other is ease of posting a photo to Flickr. Once you've added your special Flickr email address to your contact list, sharing a photo is a snap. Tap it once, tap "Email photo," enter the first few letters of your Flickr email address and hit Send. Done.
While we're on the subject, I'll offer my tip for taking decent iPhone photos. Unlike nearly every other camera ever made, the iPhone exposes an image when the "shutter button" is released, not depressed. With that in mind, here's the three step process I follow
Press and hold the "shutter button"
Compose the shot
Release
The tendency is to compose the shot and then tap the button, often resulting in blur. Try this method and watch the results.
The guys over at the Google Mac blog have dropped a new little open source application called Visigami, which serves as a more "interesting" and "fun" way to browse and play around with images online. Basically, after installing the app, you can then pull in pics from Picasa, Google Images, or Flickr (iPhoto is just a suggestion so far), and then search, animate, zoom in or out on them, and even turn them right into a screensaver.
It's a pretty neat little application -- not exactly the kind of thing that anyone has probably been hoping for (it seems more fun than utilitarian), but if you find yourself often browsing photos online, this definitely seems like a more fun way to do it. And it's one more reason to praise all the great developers working on our platform -- it's little apps like this that make the Mac user experience so much better.
FlickrExport is my favorite iPhoto plugin (and it would be my favorite Aperture plugin too, if I used Aperture), though I will admit that it is the only iPhoto plugin I use. Developer Fraser Speirs has been dropping hints for awhile about the next version of FlickrExport, and now it is available... in beta form that is.
New to FlickrExport 3 are:
A big focus on groups. You can add pictures to multiple groups, create 'group actions,' and it even displays the group rules (i.e. it will tell you if there is a limit to the number of pictures you can upload per day, if the group is moderated, and so on.)
Auto-completion of tags (which are downloaded from Flickr)
A much better way to upload photosets, allowing you to organize the pictures in the sets before they are uploaded
Geotaging, with the ability to create presets, as well as fetch latitude and longitude from Google Earth
The FlickrExport 3 beta is available for both Aperture 2 and iPhoto. Keep in mind that when FlickrExport 3 leaves beta it won't be freeware, though pricing isn't set as of yet.
Dockdrop isn't necessarily something new to Mac OS X, but it's a simple and a cool application none-the-less. Dockdrop allows you to drop files on top of it and perform an action. You can use the following protocols to send files: FTP, Flickr, WebDAV, or SCP. Dockdrop reminds me of the "droplets" that you can create in Panic's Transmit FTP application (and is pretty much the same). I tested the FTP and Flickr upload functions and they both worked seamlessly.
Dockdrop works with both Mac OS X "Tiger" (10.4) and "Leopard" (10.5). You can download Dockdrop for free from the developer's website.
The last time that we took a look at Flickr upload utility Photonic, it was still in beta. Photonic's developer Barton Springs Software has just released Photonic 1.0 -- a major step up from the beta.
In addition to the various bug fixes, Photonic also received the following features:
The ability to add favorites and photosets
New option to send FlickrMail to the owner of a picture via a contextual menu on photos in a stream
New option to go to the photo's page is now a contextual menu
Drag and drop images to the application icon or to the source list to add the image to your upload queue
Double click now zooms in on image rather than going to Flickr
Set favorites on Flickr now
New tabbed preferences window
New preference for the number of concurrent downloads (previous default was 3)
Possibly the best new feature that has been implemented for 1.0 is the full screen preview. You can now see your (or your friends) Flickr photos full-screen; this is really handy for when you want to show off a set of pictures. Photonic is available as a trial download from the developer's website, and it's currently purchaseable at a special price of $20 until March 15th.
An increasing number of people are storing their whole digital lives online through services like YouTube, Flickr and .Mac. For those Mac users that use Flickr and want to move their photos with a couple clicks in iPhoto, there are a few options including Flickr Uploadr and FlickrExport. Well, here comes a new member to the group of iPhoto-Flickr plug-ins -- Free Flickr eXporter (or FFXporter).
This plug-in, like many of the others, allows you to upload photos from your iPhoto library with a couple clicks. You can also add them to different sets or create a new set right from the export window, set the privacy levels, and resize the picture to your specifications. The only thing that you cannot do from the plug-in is add a description to the photo; however, once the picture(s) are uploaded, it takes you to a Flickr page to fill in this information. Overall, this is an excellent iPhoto to Flickr plug-in if you don't want a paid plug-in.
FFXporter is available as a free download from the developers website.
I am, admittedly, a fan of desktop apps that keep me from having to wade through immense websites, especially when said desktop apps are significantly better looking than said websites. Photonic, which was just released as an open beta, is one such application. It brings beauty and class to Flickr and, at least for me, makes it more enjoyable.
We covered another cool Flickr app recently called FlickrFinder, which I fell in love with for its simplicity. Photonic raises the bar by adding an uploader that is as good or better than Flickr's own Flickr Uploadr, and decidedly more Mac-like. Meanwhile, the alluring interface and a dash of Core Animation make it a pleasure to use.
My raving aside, it's definitely still a beta. I had a few strange problems with the upload date that resulted in an image getting lost in the pile, and fairly frequently entire streams came up as "currently unavailable" pages. But I'll put up with a lot of growing pains for a tool this cool.
I love Flickr, Yahoo's photo sharing site, and I find myself posting every picture I take on it. Today I decided to whip up a blog post (for my personal blog) highlighting my favorite pictures of the year in my Flickrstream. I first tried looking over my pictures on Flickr itself, but it soon became clear that a desktop client would make this task much more pleasant.
Enter FlickrFinder, which isn't even a 1.0 piece of software but this clever little app shows lots of promise. Basically, FlickrFinder lets you access Flickr from your desktop using an interface that is the spitting image of the Finder (if you hate the Finder you won't find much to like about FlickrFinder). You can look at pictures based on tags, in groups, or by contacts amongst other criteria.
FlickrFinder isn't fully baked yet, but given its price (free) it is well worth a look. I wonder how development on Exposure is coming along...
There are plenty of ways to get pictures from your Mac up to Flickr; among them the 'official' and free tool, Flickr Uploadr, which is now being revised to version 3. The second beta version of v3 is out for download. This uploader is an open-source project, so anyone interested in the source code can download that along with the compiled app.
New in v3 of the uploader tool is the capability of tagging, sorting and setting permissions on multiple photos prior to the upload to Flickr, along with a preflight resize to reduce data transfer and help keep you under your upload threshold. The beta currently has a menu display problem under Leopard but seems to be otherwise functional and speedy (Christina noted that it's dramatically faster than the web-based upload tool). Get those turkey pictures online!
Most of you will have heard of Fraser Speirs. He's the developer behind FlickrExport and now Exposure for iPhone.
It seems like only yesterday I was 
Are you tired of being distracted by the internet? 
We've 
I'm often impressed by the photos I get out of my little iPhone. It's not a pro-level DSLR for sure, but for quick, off-the-cuff snapshots, it does a very good job.
Dockdrop isn't necessarily something new to Mac OS X, but it's a simple and a cool application none-the-less. Dockdrop allows you to drop files on top of it and perform an action. You can use the following protocols to send files: FTP, Flickr, WebDAV, or SCP. Dockdrop reminds me of the "droplets" that you can create in 
The last time that we 
An increasing number of people are storing their whole digital lives online through services like 
I am, admittedly, a fan of desktop apps that keep me from having to wade through immense websites, especially when said desktop apps are significantly better looking than said websites. 
I love 
There are 
