Cody Fink

1547 posts on MacStories since January 2010

Former MacStories contributor.

[email protected]

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Nebulous Notes for iPad

When I saw Nebulous Notes for the iPad in the App Store, I raised an eyebrow at the reviews. An otherwise solid looking notepad was getting shit ratings because the developer started things off on a good note with an honest, self review. Yes, he gave himself five stars. But I don’t know why people get bent out of shape when the developer openly admitted he’s reviewing himself when there’s shady companies that do this hundreds of times over to game the system. One five star review isn’t going to greatly affect an app ranking in the large scale of things, so kudos to the developer for his strong beliefs in an application he’s put a lot of work into. I think there was good intentions here, even if commenters on the App Store have taken it the wrong way.

So I downloaded the application, and I found Nebulous Notes to be okay as an ideal Dropbox application for taking notes. All the icons are pretty, Dropbox syncing is seamless, and I can lock my contents to keep my work private from users I share the iPad with. With a few improvements, this could be my go-to notes application.

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Survey Favors iPad as a Go-To Device

One of the reasons I read on the iPad so much is because of tools like Instapaper, Reeder, and Times. I think of my Dad every time I use Instapaper, as I imagine the plentiful snippets of articles I send him are immediately dropped into a “do later” folder that never gets checked. His ability to readily read content would be dramatically increased via Instapaper’s web app on his aging Dell, especially if I created a script for it. I haven’t heard from him lately, but I imagine he’s still perusing through Yahoo or MSN news rather than reading the few All Things Digital or Ars Technica gigs I send him.

I used to visit sites every day, but by achieving a workflow with so many wonderful tools that all do different things, I’m able to delegate content for later reading, tackle it now, or share good articles with my friends. You can bookmark and highlight text in a paperback book or a newspaper in real life, but the digital savviness acquired by the iPad (and even the Kindle) have made digital content less disposable than physical paper. Mind blown right? Obviously it should be the other way around. While we’ll elaborate on this some more another time, a recent survey in the United Kingdom has me hoping that people live along the same lines of thinking I do. Digital content is more convenient, accessible, and engaging than paper equivalents.

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Chinese Knockoff Website Impresses with Authorization

Chinese knockoff products have a warm place in my heart for being boldly courageous and amazingly clever at tricking consumers into purchasing their cute ripoff. Some of them are cool, others are annoying, but one particular Chinese website does its best to not only replicate the charm of Apple and the iPhone 4 as reseller, they have a certificate of manliness to prove it.

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iAd “Most Progressive Thing Seen to Date” in Digital Advertising

Quoting Nissan senior manager Chad Jacoby from the LA Times, “What iAd promises is the most progressive thing I’ve seen to date” in digital advertising. North American Unilever media director Rob Master too called it, “a good start,” and is planning to launch a second iAd for the Klondike bar, while noting the success of the Dove soap iAd which resulted in a 20% return rate of viewers who wanted to check out the contents again. Campbell soup, DirectTV, and even General Electric are planning to jump on board. iAd is becoming one of Apple’s most incredible successes, securing $60 million in advertising commitments for 2010.

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SyncMate for Mac

I had held off on reviewing SyncMate for some time now. Though when I finally bit the bullet, I found its unassuming looks mask an application with potential. Not only does SyncMate make syncing my Android phone to my Mac completely pretty easy, I’m able to share files with Macs and Windows PCs on my local network, dump files onto flash drives from specific folders, and keep my flash drive loaded with the latest college documents just in case.

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Safari, Other Browser Extensions Could be Dangerous

The idea here isn’t that you could install a nefarious extension; proposed is a malicious thought that a developer could gain the trust of a large user base, before updating the extension with bad code. Because Safari automatically updates, imagine the potential for wrong doing: nobody is watching.

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