Some Great iOS Apps

I’d like to give props to a handful of iOS apps that I think are exceptional. If you haven’t used any of the following, I highly suggest you check them out.

Instapaper

Instapaper’s “read later” bookmarklet will change (for the better) how you consume content online. The iOS app is exactly what you need to read the content you’ve saved and nothing more. It’s beautifully minimal.

IMDb

Just wow. The developers of this little gem have almost ensured I’ll never visit their website again.

Amazon

I was hooked the first time I made some significant purchases while traveling 80+ mph down I-80. Massive value.

Kayak

This app has tons of use cases, but the flight tracker alone makes it worth its weight in gold. Realtime updates on the status of your flights? Yes, please!

Strategery

An addictive game akin to risk.

iSSH

Best of breed SSH application. Perfect when you’re in a pinch.

Reeder (iPad)

Seriously gorgeous interface for your Google Reader feeds. I literally wait until I’m around my iPad to check my RSS now. It’s that good.

iOctocat

The best way to keep up with open-source activity on GitHub.

Dropbox

I’m sure you already know about Dropbox. Unsurprisingly, their iOS app is great too.

USA Today (iPad)

Even old people would ditch their paper versions of the USA Today if they had this application on hand. Sometimes I check up on the news just to use it.

NPR (iPad)

Peruse and listen to tons of NPR content. So good.

Twitterific (iPad)

Despite the constant Twitter API Errors, this is one of the best feeling Twitter clients I’ve ever used. It takes advantage of the iPad’s form factor in every way.

Google Earth (iPad)

This app is nothing short of amazing. It literally puts the world in your hands as you tap, pinch, and spin the world around with ease. This is future stuff, and we are fortunate to be able to use such technologies.

Sorry for no direct links, but I was too lazy to fetch all the iTunes URLs for the apps. Just run a search in the App Store and you’ll find them with no problem.

Do you have any iOS apps that you absolutely love? Please let me know as I’m always on the lookout for great software.

Rack, and Firebug, and Fuel. Oh Hai!

So there is this really cool Rack middleware written by Simon Jefford which allows you to send arbitrary messages from your Rails controllers & views directly to Firebug’s (or Web Inspector’s) console. It is great for quick debugging. If that possibility excites you, head over to my recently published article on Fuel Your Coding to read all about it.

You may be wondering, what’s up with this Fuel Your Coding stuff? Well, I’ll tell you what’s up.

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve joined the Fuel Network as co-editor of FYC! I’m excited to help improve upon an already awesome blog by cultivating more content on the technologies that I use and love. I won’t be authoring articles there too often, but will be actively seeking and promoting quality contributions (If you’d like an opportunity to write for FYC, please contact me).

What does this mean for my blog? Not too much. Like before, I’ll be writing here as inspiration hits. Which is rarely, hah!

If you enjoy my blog, I highly encourage you to subscribe to FYC’s RSS feed as I’m sure you’ll find future content there very interesting.

Cheers!

Exciting Projects I Watched In February

Another month, another handful of great open-source projects I found on GitHub. Let’s get straight to it, shall we?

SlickGrid – A lightening fast JavaScript grid/spreadsheet. Finding a quality client-side grid tool is tough. This might just be one.

Textmate-Minimap – A minimap plugin for TextMate. So great for those overly sized source documents we all hate to admit we have.
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Exciting Projects I Watched In January

One of my favorite GitHub features is the ability to find and track the progress of projects that interest me. I’ve decided to post the new projects I find each month on this blog since there is a high likelihood that you and I have common interests (Hey, I’m curating something on the internet!).

So I wrote a little script using the GitHub API to track which new projects I watch during each month. I watched 17 new projects in January. They are linked below along with their authors’ descriptions and some commentary of my own:
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Cappuccino On Rails

I’m happy to announce the release of CappuccinoResource (CR), a library dedicated to interfacing between a Cappuccino front-end and a Rails back-end.

CR should feel very familiar to Rails developers. Its interface is akin to ActiveResource and it borrows heavily from the (very good) ObjectiveResource library for the iPhone.

All basic CRUD operations are supported, and you can perform advanced finds with arbitrary parameters. A brief example of fetching a record, modifying it, and saving it:

var post = [Post find:@"42"];
[post setTitle:@"Why X is Better than Y"];
[post save];

Check out the README on the project’s page on GitHub for more details and usage examples.

Live Demo

I also created a demo application which is a simplified clone of OS X’s Address Book. The demo is live on Heroku. Check it out. The source for the demo is also on GitHub.

If you’re a Rails developer waiting for a good opportunity to try out Cappuccino, there’s no better time than now.

If you’re a Cappuccino developer looking for an easy-to-use, powerful back-end for your applications, Rails might be the answer for you.

CR is a young project, but it drives one of my client applications that is production-ready (albeit not deployed), so I believe it is ready for prime time. Please try it and let me know how it goes.

Fork, report issues, et cetera.