TaskPaper 2.0 was just released, and it is a cross between outliner and GTD applications, but definitely leaning toward outliner.

It’s very simple, and that’s the point — it’s supposed to get out of the way. I like the variety of keyboard commands it has. It is certainly worth looking at.

Faruk Ates explains what iPhone Twitter applications have wrong, and why he still uses the mobile Twitter web page: it’s about speed and tweet density.

He’s right. I’ve given up on dedicated Twitter applications, for exactly these reasons: the mobile Twitter page is faster than dedicated applications, and shows more tweets at a time. I’ve looked at Tweetsville and Tweetie, but I don’t see anything that makes me want to use them; in fact, the iChat-style tweet bubbles, because they take up useful space and aren’t all that attractive to me, are a reason not to use them rather than a feature.

The New York Times interviewed Sol Sender, designer of the Obama campaign’s logo.

It is certainly well designed, but I am uneasy with political logos.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Both Engadget and Gizmodo have published their Blackberry Storm reviews.

Engadget’s review

Gizmodo’s review

Joshua Topolsky on the Storm’s OS:

The difference in 4.7 is not a paradigmatic shift away from this approach, rather, the company has added touch and multitouch functionality to take the place of trackball movements. What this means is that unlike the iPhone, which is most certainly the closest competitor on the market to this phone, the Storm’s UI is not custom built for touch navigation — touch navigation is added after the fact. Things which flow naturally on an iPhone — flicking through lists, scrolling for a contact, moving around in a webpage or looking through photos — feel inelegant and uncomfortable on the Storm.

And on its screen and keyboard:

The slant from RIM’s PR on the Storm is that the new clickable touchscreen delivers another high caliber typist’s dream to their roster — but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather than the click making things easier, it actually makes them more difficult. As you press down to engage a “key,” you’re required to release before moving to another, which means that you can only type so quickly. In our tests, we were constantly frustrated by the staggering, laggy movement when trying to type with any speed. You have to let the click depress before you can strike another character, and that makes for a stuttery input process.

Gizmodo makes similar complaints about the keyboard, pointing out that although the screen depresses, providing some tactile feeling, it is irrelevant when using the keyboard because you still don’t know what key you’re pressing. So the end result is that it takes more effort to type on the screen, with no benefit, because it provides no more feedback than the iPhone screen does.

In fact, both reviewers note that the Storm’s key highlighting is much less effective than the iPhone’s method, making the key grow in size above your finger.

Elliot Jay Stocks on becoming a member of the Sidebar ad network :

I actually think the adverts have added value to the site. For instance, during a conversation with some friends about e-commerce, I recommended FoxyCart. A few days later, I recommended the service to another friend. Where did I first hear about FoxyCart? From the advert in my sidebar! What more proof could I ask for about the relevance of these ads to myself and my peers? ”

Macworld’s Aayush Arya uses Google’s new voice recognition search application, and they like it a lot.

I downloaded it last night, and I like it. It works really, really well. Its voice recognition is quite good, getting all of the basic search queries correct, and the results are excellent. For example, besides searching for the standard movie showtimes, I tried searching for “weather forecast,” “Thai food,” and “oil change.”

All worked exactly as I expected. “Weather forecast” brought up current and weekly local weather conditions; “Thai food” brought up a list of close Thai restaurants; and “oil change” listed local oil change shops.

This isn’t going to be useful all of the time, obviously — but when driving in an area I am not familiar with, and it is more convenient just to bring the phone up to my ear rather than type in searches in Google Maps, this is going to be incredibly useful.

It’s especially useful for allowing friends and family to search for things who are unfamiliar with the iPhone. Rather than try to explain Google Maps to them while I am driving (whose UI is — unfortunately — unintuitive), I can hand my iPhone to them, tell them to touch the “G” icon in the dock, and then just say what we’re looking for. That’s much easier.

But Arya is right. Google’s voice recognition is so good, it begs to be implemented system-wide. Lack of voice recognition is my biggest complaint, and building this (or Apple’s own voice recognition technology) into the iPhone would immediately make it a better phone.

I like Arya’s suggestion in how it should work, too:

How about this: If you bring the phone up to your ear while you’re on the home screen and a call isn’t in progress, it should immediately activate voice recognition and dial the contact or number you speak into it.

If you’ve been trying to find a way to reduce your number of followers on Twitter, Magpie is here to help you out. Magpie is a Twitter ad network, which uses your account to send adverts.

I think Jina Bolton’s policy is best:

Yeah, I’m pretty much going to unfollow anyone that uses [Magpie].

The new Star Trek trailer is going around the web today, but I don’t want to point that one out (although it is worth watching). I want to point out the teaser trailer, which is dark, close-up shots of the U.S.S. Enterprise being built, overlaid with audio from our own space exploration.

The teaser trailer, more than the full-length trailer which is accompanying Quantum of Solace, is incredibly powerful. I am a sucker for Star Trek: The Next Generation because of how overwhelmingly hopeful and philosophical it is. As a kid watching the Next Generation, I couldn’t help but imagine space, the future, and what is possible.

The J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek teaser trailer has that same feel. As the camera moves upward along the ship and reveals it to be the U.S.S. Enterprise, and the voice-over declares, “Space: the final frontier,” I get the same feeling I did as a child. I can’t wait to see this film.

Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, two great products, are merging.

When I started using MailBuild, I wondered why they weren’t built in to each other. I’m glad they will be soon.

(Via Sean Sperte.)

I am not sure how I missed this, but toward the end of October, Tap Tap Tap published a detailed look at their Where To marketing.

The results are clear — for a good application like Where To, advertising in relevant areas, like Macworld magazine and Daring Fireball, works really well.

I’d like to see more online marketing from iPhone developers, especially in creating wonderful websites for their products, rather than relying on their App Store page.

Andy Finnell argues that by pricing their applications at 99¢, developers are undervaluing their applications and thus hurting themselves and the nascent iPhone platform. He thinks developers would be better off by increasing their prices.

It’s a smart point. The App Store is still developing, and the current pricing trends are going to solidify soon. Besides the harms Finnell highlights, the most fundamental problem I see in having such low prices is it discourages measured, long term and dedicated development, and encourages quick, cheap-and-dirty development, the opposite of what we see on the Mac.

In that sense, too, I hope application prices shift upwards. I am willing to pay for quality applications, and I think most people are.

Apple should do a few things to help this happen, though. The first is to build in a refund system. Currently there isn’t an official way to refund an application, and that makes it less likely for a customer to try out a more expensive application.

Second is the developers need the option of doing demos. This is another limiting factor — it’s risky to buy a moderately-priced or expensive application, because unless the customer has used it on another iPhone, they don’t have much of an idea how good it is.

No refund option and demos may be fine for 99¢ applications, but that becomes a real issue when most applications costs more than $5. Without these two features, the App Store is not as sustainable as it should be, and quality development is less likely.

I love the details in this simple application. Watch the transitions between views in the short video.

(Via Sean Sperte.)

Sometimes I decide to browse the archives of weblogs I really love to see if I’ve missed anything, and last night I looked through Shawn Blanc’s. I found a lovely interview with Cameron Hunt, of Cameron i/o. This is one of those interviews I just love to stumble upon.

I love their discussion of design. One thing that is clear from Cameron’s comments and his website is just how much thought he puts into his site’s design. It is an exceedingly simple layout, but that’s what is so great — their is nothing superfluous, and it looks outstanding.

Dan Benjamin put together an excellent guide for preparing your Mac for sale.

This moves AppleTV from “nice to have” to “holy shit, I need this yesterday.”