White iPhone 4 To Make Its Debut Feb. 27th? Best Buy May Be Telling

By Cody Fink

The White iPhone 4 was at first rumored to suffer from a series of problems with color, but it was later rumored to be delayed thanks to issues with the camera sensor. As the glass is white, light leakage was affecting the camera sensor. While Apple has kept quiet about the latest White iPhone 4 developments, there were some signs of life in Apple Stores thanks to a 9 to 5 Mac reader spotting a Spring 2011 launch date. Today, MacRumors has a sneak peek at Best Buy’s inventory system (which has been a leaky faucet for numerous tech rumors).

The white iPhone is speculated to have a launch date of February 27th, and the SKUs are identical to the previous white iPhone listings last year before they were pulled. There’s no doubt that there will eventually be a white iPhone, and the question of when may be sooner than later. With a large pool of white iPhones on hand, however, would Apple launch a new series of white iPhone 4s with the next generation iPhone arriving in the Summer on AT&T? Or is this an early indication that Verizon will feature the iPhone 4 for the next year? (And let’s not forget the White iPhone 4 on Verizon snafu.)

[via MacRumors]

TV Show Tracker 2.0 for iPhone: One To Add To Your Homescreen

By Cody Fink

Not having cable, keeping tabs on the shows that appear on cable TV bites because I have to constantly check in on online schedules (all on different networks) just to see when the next episode of House is going to air. What sucks is that when having only Hulu as my prime source of entertainment, December was a month devoid of any content as weekly shows began to grind to a halt. With the exception of Saturday Night Live and a maybe two other shows, I’m paying for nothing. Shows will come back, but when?

We’ve already covered TV Show Tracker on MacStories, but the 2.0 update is worth mentioning since it delivers a much improved interface, a notification system alerting you before or after a show ends, inline video previews of episodes, and quick iTunes links so you can rent those shows quickly from the interface. TV Show Tracker consolidates all of the shows you watch into an instant access panel where you simply search for the popular program you watch and add it to your list of shows. TV Show Tracker displays the artwork for the program’s season, displays previous and upcoming showtimes, and keeps tabs on what episodes you’ve already seen. This is an app to add to your homescreen if you’re at all interested on keeping track of your favorite shows – it’s super convenient to have only the show listings you care about all in one place.

Delivery & Smaller: Object Dock Batch CSS & Javascript Compressors

By Cody Fink

Javascript & CSS developers looking to batch minify their files may already use the command line, but others will prefer an OS X inspired drag & drop solution. These YUI Compressor’s will gobble down your web files and spit them out with a smaller byte footprint, though the choice between these two compressors may be difficult because they’re… very similar. Quickly running through the features, we’ll leave you to decide if Delivery or Smaller will be better for your workflow.

Delivery:

Delivery is the least expensive (free), but provides the fewest options when minimizing your files. Dragging in Javascript & CSS files onto its Object Dock icon, a couple badges emerge notifying you of how many files you’re compressing, along with how much space was saved at the end of the operation. Delivery uses two compression algorithms, and decides between the one that will leave you with the smallest files. While you don’t have a choice for output (there are no preferences), Delivery places the compressed files back in their working directory with .min appended to the file names.

Smaller:

More expensive at $15, Smaller offers a GUI and allows you to compress files to a new location if you desire. As you add files to a graphical queue, you initiate the minify process (and you have the option to obfuscate Javascript as well) manually, but you don’t get a nice badge notifying you like Delivery. We like Smaller though as you can acknowledge the minimize process before committing, and has preferences that allow you to chose the resulting suffix.

Conclusion:

We suggest you give them both a try, and I have to thank our web guru Alessandro Vendruscolo for the rundown. Overall we like Delivery because it’s free and takes less actions to use, while Smaller gives you some additional options that removes the terminal barrier for web designers. You can check out Delivery and Smaller at their respective home-pages for more information.

Wunderlist Review: Untethered Task Management Freedom

By Cody Fink

I attribute Dropbox to a few successful college projects because of how easy it is to collaborate by sharing files. Everyone understood the concept that they can drop a file into a shared folder, and everyone could see it. However, when we get to delegating tasks or making sure everyone is on the same page, e-mail and Facebook messages can only get so much done. Wunderlist is the solution to both free personal and collaborative task management, easily rivaling some of the more common GTD apps available for OS X and other platforms. Intuitive syncing, low barrier of entry, and seamless integration with most of your devices finally delivers a solution to customers who want more than a task list, and want it for free.

The AppSumo Supercharge OS X Bundle Giveaway

By Cody Fink

It might be a brand new year, but that doesn’t mean your brand new Mac has to be left app empty. So we want to supercharge your OS X experience with four applications for a powerful Finder experience, smarter windows, and only the fastest downloader on your side of the MacStories Internet. We’re going to supercharge your Snow Leopard, and all you have to do is enter our giveaway for a chance at one of five bundles.

App Is 2010’s Word Of The Year

By Cody Fink

The American Dialect Society has chosen “app” as 2010’s word of the year, which isn’t surprising considering the media’s focus on all things “apps.” Apple took the phrase and injected it straight into the heart of commercial marketing as they continually aired commercials for both the iPhone and iPad showcasing apps available on the App Store, while Verizon’s Droid Does commercials showcased the “limitless potential” of the Android Marketplace. 2011 will continue this trend as devices like the iPad introduce more powerful gestures, and as the iPhone penetrates Verizon for the first time. If 2010 wasn’t the year of apps, do you think it would have been the year of the iPad? I think so.

[MSNBC via TUAW] Read more

Listings For iPhone Is The Better Way To Browse Craigslist

By Cody Fink

Craigslist is a very weird and scary place depending on what you’re looking for. If it’s not the poor man’s eBay, then it’s definitely somewhere down the alley of sketch-city. The website looks terrible and it’s hard to navigate, listings include everything from broken computer parts to iPhone repair services, and you never know what creepy people you’ll end up meeting in person when its time to exchange goods. What Craigslist needs is a better way to organize and clearly display information.

Listings for the iPhone makes Craigslist easier to navigate while providing tools to help you keep track of items you want to continually check up on. Whether you’re searching for a used MacBook Pro, a new Motorcycle, or looking for a web designer, Listings is a much more intuitive way to search Craigslist.

Flickr For iPhone Now Supports Retina Display, Sharing To Twitter With Flic.kr

By Cody Fink

The latest Flickr update for the iPhone (Version 1.3) delivers some excellent new features for the Flickr community. EXIF data is now preserved across all of your photos (date, time, geo-data), you can batch upload up to five photos, there’s Retina Display support, and you can now share photos to Twitter via the Flic.kr short URL (which I must say, is a very cool looking URL). Your Flickr account just got much more mobile with their native iPhone app, and we recommend you download this update immediately – your eyes will thank you. Flickr’s official app is free on the iTunes App Store.

Translator Free Translates Webpages & Text On The Fly

By Cody Fink

When you run across a piece of text that you can’t translate, do you find yourself in Google Translate, copying & pasting the text, before trying to determine what was exactly said? Why not cut out the middle-man and download Translator Free for OS X? Available on the Mac App Store, Translator Free is a menubar application that allows you to drag and drop websites and text for immediately translation. If you’re visiting our friends at iSpazio for example, you can simply drag the favicon from Google Chrome into the menubar icon, and a new tab will open with the translated page. It’s very cool.

If you’re throwing Chinese insults at me, watch out! Never before have friends on Facebook Chat been caught off guard so quickly now that I suddenly have language-esque superpowers. You can highlight a piece of text, hold your mouse button down, and simply drag it to Translator Free for instant translation. A window will pop-up allowing you to compare the original and translated texts.

Free in the Mac App Store, students, researchers, and anyone coming across foreign text they’re not familiar with can find Translator Free useful without having to go through the web browser. You can catch some great tutorials on Translator Free’s homepage, and download it here on the Mac App Store.

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