If looks could kill

Version 1 of Path wasn’t ugly by any means, but the new Path is positively breathtaking. Little things like the timestamp indicator that floats into view while you scroll through your friends’ activity, and then fades away again when you stop moving, work perfectly. In fact, the small animations when you call up controls, and other bits of visual candy offered by the app all add up to an incredibly pleasurable browsing experience. I mention this up front because it’s that sense of pleasure that is Path’s single-biggest improvement in terms of convincing users to stick around and engage.

Path 2.0 succeeds immediately, without even scratching the surface, by having a surface worth coming back for, time and time again. It’s image-heavy, but not just a straightforward waterfall of pictures; comments and activities notes break up the stream, but never threaten to take over and make browsing paths a text-heavy endeavour.

More friends, but no overload

Path has also upped the max size of your circle, allowing you to add up to 150 friends instead of just 50. It’s a smart change; opening things up altogether would take away Path’s defining feature, taking away its ability to cut through the noise of sites like Twitter and Facebook and offer users a less noisy social networking experience.

The friends limit also makes its similarities to Facebook’s new Timeline feature more apparent. You can pick a cover image, just like in Timeline, and activity presents itself in a time-organized stream very similar to how it does on Facebook. Unlike with FB’s Timeline, however, Path isn’t strewn with apps, updates from relative strangers and other detritus. Its limited circles and limited activity types (location, check-ins with friends, music, simple status messages and photos) makes it so that your stream will stay clean, while still also providing plenty of opportunity for interaction.

Simple

Navigation is handled using the new swipe left/swipe right type interface that has become very popular since first appearing in apps like Twitter, and more recently, Facebook. It’s a good fit, letting you access your own settings and activity with a swipe of one finger to the right, and checking in on friends (plus finding more) with a swipe to the left.

You can add new contacts from your own address book, from Facebook or by inviting them, or by searching for them by name. A Twitter account tie-in would be nice, but for this kind of sharing (closer friends, relatives) I think the options are effective as is.

Areas where it might be too simple include the lack of a landscape navigation mode, which I think could add a lot in terms of making picture viewing more flexible, especially for landscape shots. The app also cries out for an iPad version, where it’s easy to see the interface being even more of a pleasure to navigate. I wouldn’t be surprised if all these options were in the pipeline, however, so it may just be a matter of time before we see them addressed.

The Path to greatness

From checking out who has seen which photos and sharing simple feedback via icons, to letting people know the music you’re playing right now through direct integration with your iPod app, Path no longer feels like a closed book where not much goes on. Instead, it comes across as a much, much more enjoyable version of Facebook, with an interface worthy of design awards and sharing options that actually let a user feel like a simple set of advertising data to be mined. The only time you’ll run into any commerce in the app is when you use the built-in camera, which presents you with live filters, four of which are available as paid upgrades through in-app purchases at $0.99 a piece.

If Path sticks to this kind of freemium setup, as founder Dave Morin suggested it would in conversation with our own Colleen Taylor, while also keeping the base product this appealing and easy to use, I think it will become a shining example of how you can turn a so-so idea into a great one through intelligent redesign.

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Jeff Verkoeyen, the lead engineer on the Facebook iPad app project during its eight months of development, wrote a blog post Monday (via TechCrunch) explaining a bit about the app’s trajectory and how it prompted his decision to leave Facebook for Google.

The iPad app that TechCrunch revealed to the world back in July has actually been “feature-complete” and essentially ready for release since May, when it was originally intended to launch. After that deadline passed, its unveiling was pushed back and repeatedly delayed throughout the summer, for “reasons [Verkoeyen] won’t go into details” about.

Those reasons, according to TechCrunch, have to do with the rocky relationship between Apple and Facebook. The two had a somewhat public row over Facebook integration with Apple’s music social networking service Ping, and deep integration with iOS 5 was also reportedly planned and then scrapped. Both had to do with terms proposed by Facebook that Apple reportedly couldn’t swallow.

Facebook’s official app on the iPad would be great for both companies. Facebook would get more access to a growing mobile market, an area where it still doesn’t dominate nearly as much as either Google or Apple, and Apple would get another marquee app that would no doubt be a huge hit with iOS users. But even if the troubles between the two companies that have kept the Facebook iPad app out of the App Store until now are resolved, it seems unlikely that we’ll see a release soon, since the app would now have to be revised according to all the changes the social network has undergone in recent months.

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Round 1: Sign-up

I was sort of hoping that Photovine would allow me to just sign in using my Google credentials, but maybe because Slide operates like an independent startup within Google, that’s not the case. Signing up is fairly easy though. It consists of just one screen, where you enter your name and email address, choose a username, and password, and optionally supply your phone number if you want to speed along the friend-finding process.

Instagram also features just one screen for sign-up. Enter your email, username, password and optionally a phone number to get started. The two are nearly identical, actually, with the only difference being that Instagram prompts you to choose a profile photo as well, although this is also actually optional.

Advantage: This is nearly too close to call, but I’m going to give it to Instagram. The photo profile prompt should mean that more people join with a profile that’s at least somewhat identifiable to people looking for contacts.

Round 2: Network and activity

This is unfair for Photovine, which just opened up membership to the general public today, but it’s worth noting that even after a month of beta use, I still only have three contacts on either Twitter, Facebook or in my address book, and I travel in early adopter circles. Even among the people I knew that I could find to follow, there wasn’t any content shared yet.

Compared to Instagram, which has 150 million photos shared as of the beginning of this month, and more than 7 million users, that’s not good. It means Photovine has a steep hill to climb, since most won’t require two social photo sharing networks that are pretty similar overall.

Advantage: Instagram. If you’re new to photo-sharing and want to go where your friends are most likely to be, there’s no question the older service is the better choice, unfair as that may be.

Round 3: Taking photos

Photovine uses a custom photo-taking interface that adds some visual flair to the standard iOS camera app, and allows you to switch between front and back cameras, choose whether the flash is on, off or set to auto, and grab photos from your on-device library if you’d rather share one you already took.

Instagram also uses a custom interface, but one that is more visually minimal. It also offers the ability to switch between cameras, set the flash, and get photos from your library. Instagram also allows you to custom-crop your photos to fit its square publishing format, while Photovine crops automatically. This might be either an advantage or an annoyance depending on your perspective.

Advantage: Photovine. For me personally, the autocrop gets it right far more often than it gets it wrong, which outweighs the extra step required with Instagram for every shot.

Round 4: Special features

Like the Badger app I recently covered, Photovine groups images around topics, called “vines.” You can add an image to a vine after you take it and before you upload it to Photovine, and you can either search for existing vines or create your own. You can then browse vines from the app’s main screen using the relevant icon on the bottom navigation bar. From the Vines tab, you can check Fresh or Popular vines, and see Vines you choose to “Watch” (or follow, in other words).

At this point, most will be familiar with Instagram’s special feature: the ability to add filters to your photos. This also happens right after you take or select an image, and Instagram has been pretty good about adding more selection as time passes. The filters are a pretty good way of making washed out or otherwise deficient mobile phone photos visually striking and interesting.

Advantage: This is another category that might depend on your personal preference, but I’m liking the vines concept so far. It makes browsing photos a little less haphazard, and because it really creates a small select group that goes beyond your own personal network, it also embraces a more playful side of social sharing.

Decision

Based purely on how it works, looks and feels, I’m going to have to give this one to Photovine. It really is a great product with a lot of promise, and unlike something like Color, it adds an element to mobile photo-sharing that actually enhances the experience. Once it grows its network, the vines concept should work even better. That’s not to say it will necessarily be able to take Instagram’s crown; the older app has a big lead, and the differences between the two are actually very minimal besides the vines concept, which may not be enough to sway some on its own. Still, it’s nice to see some decent options pop up in mobile photo networking apps.

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Asymco's chart of Apple's cash hoard following the company's Q3 2011 earnings

Here’s what some of the most vocal are saying about what Apple should do with its mound of cash.

• Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi in the Wall Street Journal called it ”a level of cash that’s preposterous by any metric.” He says Apple should either buy back shares of its stock or issue a dividend.
• Over at Fortune, Philip Elmer-DeWitt argues against such a movie and warns “don’t be fooled” by those Wall Street analysts howling about Apple paying a dividend. “What these men want done is for Apple to give the money to ‘the stockholders,’” he writes. “What they don’t say is that they are the stockholders. Institutions own more than 70% of Apple’s shares and would be the primary beneficiaries of any buyback or dividend.”
• Daily Finance suggested Apple could buy a company with its hoard of cash. DF didn’t suggest any company in particular should be targeted. But it did point out that “[w]ith a market cap in excess of $360 billion, it could easily use its stock as currency” to make an even larger acquisition.
• Other eyebrow-raising suggestions thrown out there include Apple getting into the TV or gaming business, or snapping up Facebook, Hulu, or Netflix.

If the past is a predictor of the future, Apple is likely to do nothing drastic. This is not the first time the company has come under fire for its conservative spending ways. At a shareholder meeting last year, Jobs was peppered with questions regarding his plans for the money (he joked he was going to “throw a toga party” with it) but he answered very directly about how Apple think about its cash on hand: namely that it provides “security and flexibility.”

“When you take risks, it’s like jumping up in the air, and it’s nice to know the ground will be there when you land,” he said at the time. “We run our company conservatively from a financial point of view because you never know what opportunity is around the corner … We’re very fortunate that if we needed to acquire something we could write a check for it and not have to borrow money.”

With the ongoing war in the mobile industry over intellectual property taking place right now, that attitude is proving awfully prescient. Earlier this month Apple was able to put down $2.6 billion as part of a consortium that bought Nortel’s mobile patent portfolio, an amount that’s relatively tiny compared with the rest of the cash Apple’s got stashed away.

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Google+ is already popular, and it isn’t yet showing any signs of slowing down. If you’re already in, or if you’re eagerly awaiting an invite, there are a few ways you can improve the experience when accessing Google’s new social network from Mac and iOS devices.

Mac

Create a Google+ Mac app with Fluid. Earlier this week I talked about the newest version of Fluid, which lets you create full-screen web apps for Lion using specific websites. Even if you don’t have Lion, Fluid is a great way to create a Google+ application that looks and feels more like a native Mac app than a website. You can even grab a nice Google+ icon to use with your Fluid app, like this one from deviantart user KillaAaron.

Better interaction with bookmarklets and extensions. You can change how Google+ looks and how it behaves with custom extensions for Chrome and other browsers. Go2Web20 has a great list of some of the best tools out there. One of the best is a +1 extension that lets you save any web page you come across to your +1 list in Google+, but that specific link on the Go2Web20 site is currently broken, so check out this similar option from the Chrome web store instead. If you’re not using Chrome, you can grab this bookmarklet for +1 recommendations that should work with most other browsers.

Import your iPhoto albums with Picasa for Mac. You’ve got a lot of iPhoto events, and now you want to share those photos on Google+, which actually has a great photo viewer. Apple has built Facebook support into iPhoto, but obviously there’s no direct method for getting that content to Google+. But with Picasa’s free native Mac app, you can import your iPhoto content and share it to your Picasa Web Albums right from your desktop. Depending on your sharing choices, the pictures will be visible in your Google+ galleries.

iOS

Use third-party Picasa apps to upload your photos. There’s no instant upload for iPhones and iPads as there is for Android devices. But you can get your photos from your mobile to your Google+ account without having to upload to a computer first. Just choose one of the available iOS Picasa photo uploading tools, like Web Albums, and then upload the pic you want to share to a public gallery on Picasa. Once you’ve done that, navigate to the photo in the Google+ mobile browser app and comment on the photo to share it to your stream.

Bookmarklets for sharing. For sharing sites and saving content to your +1 list, bookmarklets that work with mobile Safari are your best bet. The one I mentioned above should work for your iOS devices, too.

Share from desktop to mobile. You can use Google+ as a handy way to quickly share links between your desktop and mobile devices, by adding an email address that you have registered on your smartphone to one of your sharing circles on Google+. So, for instance, you could create an iPhone reading list and re-share interesting links in your Google stream to a specific circle called “for iPhone” that just contains your own email address, or you could set up a circle with the email addresses of your coworkers or project team for easy forwarding of interesting links and notes.

Google+ will likely improve as it iterates, and it will offer even more avantages for Mac and iOS users, especially when (and if) Apple approves the official Google+ iOS application. But even at this early stage, I’ve found that it enriches my computing experience on any Apple platform. Any advice you can add based on your own use of Google+?

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Apple Support Communities offers more than just a fairly standard discussion board. It centers on product-specific communities, which are themselves divided into sub-communities depending on the type of support you’re looking for. The site surfaces the most recent content, is based around more of a question-asking model like Quora, a popular social Q&A site, and provides status incentives to help encourage community members to assist their fellow users.

The redesign seems aimed at making support more accessible for new users, and at incorporating more social features to make it easier to give feedback and follow discussions. For example, users can now “Like” any post made in community threads, and you can follow individual communities using a bookmark feature, or by signing up to receive email notifications of new replies. Users can also customize which community feeds appear on their home page quickly and easily using links posted throughout the site.

There’s also a new incentive system that borrows from the recent popularity of gamification. Users can choose which are the most helpful answers, which awards five points to a user, and Apple will sometimes single out a “correct” answer, which grants an additional 10 points. Earning points increases your level, which tops out at level 10 (80,000 points). Apple hasn’t yet revealed what specific privileges are unlocked at each level.

Apple previewed the new site in August last year, but hadn’t made mention of any progress until the new version went live this weekend. My early impressions are that this might be Apple’s most successful foray into social networking yet, or at least the best-designed one. Anyone else agree?

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Previous evidence regarding an iOS Photo Stream feature, which came by way of earlier digging through iOS 4.3 code, appeared back in January. Basically, the system seems to work by allowing users to create publicly viewable albums which will automatically update on other users’ devices, so long as those devices are subscribed to and have the proper permissions to view the stream.

The new discovery shows the system is largely already in place throughout iOS, with Apple likely only needing to flick a switch to turn it on in the next major update of its mobile software platform. It also shows that Photo Streams should be available to third-party apps, and that apps will also potentially be able to publish directly to shared Streams, building into iOS a system-wide, photo-sharing social network that may compete with the likes of Instagram, Path and Color. In fact, if Apple makes social photo sharing available to all, built-in and easy to use, those apps may have a hard time staying afloat. HDR photo apps aren’t exactly burning up the charts since Apple baked that into iOS 4.1, for example.

Apple is also thought to be working on a major revision of its MobileMe cloud services package. The new MobileMe is rumored to be free, and include a number of social networking features, including a “Find my Friends” Google Latitude-type service. It could be that Photo Stream hasn’t yet been released because it ties in tightly with an overhauled MobileMe, so both services need to launch at the same time. In fact, it’s almost a lock that photos shared this way would be stored in the cloud (device-to-device always-on sharing isn’t practical in terms of battery life), but whether or not it would fall under the brand umbrella of MobileMe specifically is another question altogether.

iOS needs to deliver something big to jumpstart iPhone growth in the wake of Android competition, especially if Apple isn’t planning on unveiling new hardware in June (something I still think is unlikely). Built-in, system-wide social sharing features that turn iOS ownership into social network membership is precisely the kind of thing that could shake up the market, especially if Apple makes the smart move and provides such features free for all device owners.

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According to Peter Farago of Flurry, social games can now be considered real competitors to television viewing, comprising “a daily audience of more than 19 million who spend over 22 minutes per day using these apps.” Comparing that group to television viewing audiences puts social gamers somewhere between Sunday Night Football and Dancing with the Stars, and about 4 million “viewers” away from the top-rated America Idol.

Farago is quick to point out that Flurry only measures around 20 percent of the 250,000 apps currently available for the iOS platform, and since Flurry only measures social networking and gaming apps, it’s likely the true size of the gaming “audience” is much larger. According to 148Apps.biz, the number of games currently found in the App Store is around 40,000.

However, it should be pointed out that planting crops in FarmVille and watching football are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For that matter, those 22 minutes a day are arguably just as likely “saved” minutes that might be lost waiting in line, between classes, or on break at work. A dedicated television audience really is a different beast altogether.

The idea that advertisers might be better off spending their money in apps than on television is, as yet, far from proven, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good indicator that we might be on that path.

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An interesting patent of Apple’s relating to a social networking app surfaced recently. Dubbed iGroups, the app aims to solve the pitfalls of traditional social networks, like Facebook, that require users be a member before being able to participate. Instead, iGroups creates a virtual social network based on proximity.

To set the scene, imagine a casual weekend enjoying drinks at a bar. Your device would be able to detect others nearby and allow for easy communication by the tools already built into your device: SMS, email or by phone. If you’re a Mac user, you could loosely term this as Bonjour for your iPhone.

A Network Of Proximity

The idea of a network based on proximity is intriguing considering the technology built into mobile devices that can help facilitate this. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, for instance, both allow for discovering new devices that are within range. But the problem arises when a user leaves. If they are out of range, they are excluded from the network.

iGroups attempts to solve this issue when it first detects other users. At this point, the devices exchange a token (or handshake, if you will). These tokens are tagged. If there happens to be a trusted source at this venue, for example, like a wireless access point or perhaps a website setup for this purpose, devices can exchange tokens with it. Before this gets too technical, let’s agree to call the trusted source “Wilma.”

This accomplishes two important things. The first is that Wilma can match or correlate tokens to determine groups and their members. When my device approaches and exchanges tokens, Wilma now knows what group I’m part of and similarly, I’ll know other group members that have checked in with Wilma. This process allows the network to grow by allowing its users to infer other users through this daisy chain process. Further, tokens can be exchanged through a variety of mechanisms: Wi-Fi if available, Bluetooth if desired or even 3G. By supporting all of these, it becomes much easier to visualize a realistic image of the network and prevents the network from being stifled because users are not exchanging tokens by just one method that not all devices may support.

The second important goal that this serves is solving the issue of users leaving range and thus losing the whole social networking aspect. If a user interacts with Wilma either at the event or afterwards (through something similar to MobileMe, perhaps), the user can see the entire group. Even if they are just uploading exchanged between Fred and their self, the inferring process described earlier will allow the rest of the network to be recreated. As Fred moves on and continues to exchange tokens, even after our user has left, they are still connected to the same event and will appear as part of the group. Mac users? Think of this as being similar to Smart Folders. The group “knows” who its members are by this process of exchanging tokens, even if not all of the users are present at the same time.

It’s worthwhile to mention that any sort of implementation of such a technology would of course be completely optional and protect the privacy of users if they did not wish to participate. Further, the patent sheds light on the fact that the tokens themselves do not contain information that would identify any particular user or device. Merely the tokens act as a way to tag an association with a specific group.

Still, the idea of creating these virtual social networks on the iPhone is appealing. In some regards, there are applications on the market that attempt to deliver similar functionality, like Loopt. However, as mentioned earlier, these solutions still require users to have an account with them which can be problematic if you meet someone and want to exchange information but they are not a member of Facebook or LinkedIn. Instead of waiting for them to sign up and register a profile, iGroups solves the whole problem faster.

This definitely isn’t Apple’s first foray into patents on social interactions, but none of them have seen the light of day. With rumors of iPhone 4.0 around the corner, however, perhaps there is a substantial social component waiting to be unveiled. What do you think about the potential of iGroups?

I downloaded the demo of the 1.0 release and ran it through its paces. The demo lets you have all the functionality of the full version, but you’re limited to running three different services or accounts. Which, honestly, isn’t much of a limitation for many users, myself included.

All Your Services, One Place

Socialite covers all the major bases, including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. That would be enough for me, but it also will log you into Digg and Google Reader, or let you track RSS feeds yourself manually. For many people I know, opening Socialite first thing in the morning would clear their to-do list for the day.

Facebook integration lets you access status updates and photo albums, both yours and those of your friends. You can upload photos and update your status, but inbox access is still not a part of the deal, until Facebook opens that up to the API. Twitter gives you access to your timeline, mentions, and direct messages, and allows you to view your lists and lists you subscribe to. You can’t create new lists or modify them in this version of Socialite. Flickr includes contacts photos, but also Interestingness, which is one of my favorite parts of Flickr, so I’m glad it’s included.

Many Features, One Simple UI

None of these services share the same UI in their native formats. That’s why Socialite’s interface is so impressive. It manages to make the process of working with multiple services in the same shell incredibly intuitive and relatively painless. Well-designed icons, and consistent function placement across the board help make this happen.

Best of all, if you’d rather just deal with things as one big mess, you can work with updates from all your services at once in the macro view “Unread” menu, and all of the appropriate actions for each separate service still appears in the options section for each. And clicking on any update automatically brings up the quick input field related to that service.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None?

Socialite is a great program, and well designed, but it can’t take the place of Tweetie on my Mac. The problem is that since starting to use Twitter, I’ve become less and less dependent on other social networks I belong to. Facebook I can check twice a day really, if I feel like it, and Flickr is something I never really used to begin with. No matter how well Socialite does Twitter, Tweetie still does it better, and with a much smaller memory footprint.

Still, if you like to frequent many social sites, and especially if you’re a Google Reader user, Socialite could be the perfect program to help keep things organized and nicely aggregated in one convenient location.

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Apple has a history of either buying apps or boldly copying features from developers and including them in OS X. So what borrowed features could we see next in OS X?

Software companies frequently acquire other technologies to speed up development of their own platforms, and Apple is certainly no stranger to acquisitions. Cover Flow, LogicPro, Shake, DVD Studio Pro, and several other high-profile apps and features all arrived on Apple desktops via acquisitions. iTunes is probably the most well known of those acquisitions — formerly known as SoundJam MP from a company called Casady & Greene, which Apple bought in 2000.

But Apple has also borrowed its fair share of features from other developers without acquiring the company. OS X’s Dashboard feature is thought by many to be a complete rip-off of an older software package called Konfabulator from Arlo Rose (now owned by Yahoo, called Yahoo Widgets).

With Apple’s next operating system, code-named Snow Leopard, rumors have surfaced that the OS will implement screen recording features using Quicktime. This capability has long been left to third-party developer apps such as Snapz Pro, SceenFlow, and iShowYou. Time will tell how well (if at all) Apple actually implements such a feature, but if it does, it’s just another one on a long list. More than a few developers are probably already stewing over the fact that Apple introduced minor editing and sharing capability into Quicktime X at WWDC.

So what could Apple add next?

Though the recent rumor of Apple acquiring Twitter was laughable in my mind, it got me thinking. Apple doesn’t need to buy Twitter, but it could easily borrow a few features from other developers and add Twitter connectivity into OS X on a few levels.

First the obvious. Apple already bundles iChat with every Mac. It’s easy to use and already offers integration with AIM and Jabber, so why not add Twitter into the mix as well? It’s a good-looking app, has shortcuts available via the menu bar, integrates with OS X’s Mail application, and more.

Safari140 Plugin

Because Apple controls the most popular browser on the Mac platform, Safari, it could also integrate URL-shortening and “Tweet This” -style features into iChat and Safari, making it the most complete Twitter client for Mac users. Oh, by the way, the ability to “Tweet This” in Safari is already available via Safari 140, a plugin from David Watanabe.

It’s clear that social networking is here to stay, and Apple has a great opportunity to add many social networking features into their apps, and the OS itself. The only questions are will Apple do it, and from whom might it creatively “borrow” features?

What features do you think Apple should add next?

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GyPSii brings GPS-fueled social networking to the iPhone, but do we really need to sign up for yet another network?

Any effective social-network connoisseur will already have a bevy of accounts to frequently check. Aside from the regulars — Facebook, Twitter, and so on — there’s already a stack of networks I’ve tried and duly abandoned, including fading giant MySpace and location-centric services Dopplr and Brightkite.

GyPSii is a social-networking app for the iPhone which, similar to Loopt and Brightkite, is based around your mobile lifestyle. The app makes use of the iPhone’s GPS, camera, and on-the-go connectivity.

Navigating GyPSii

Due to the immense wealth of features and functions on offer, the app is split between several sections which, in turn, are separated into an array of sub-categories and menus.

With such a large selection of sections, categories, menus and buttons, the app will prove overwhelming for first-time users. There’s no tutorial or first-time guide either, so attempting to get acquainted feels like being blindfolded and thrown into the ocean for a game of Marco Polo with several friends who insist on whispering.

The general idea behind the app — and the service — seems to be based around tagging places you visit, ideally with images, staying in touch with friends in the vicinity, and making new friends. There’s no clarity of purpose that GyPSii boils down to, though, so it ends up being a blur of user-enriched maps and traditional social networking.

The News section, for example, features a compose message button and drop pin button, alongside sub-categories for recent events, friends in the area, local places and messages or invites. For one section to be jammed with so many different options suggests that the developers just kept jamming ideas in there, not knowing when to stop.

People & Places

Moving on from the aforementioned mess of options, buttons and pages — delving deeper into the app, it’s clear that GyPSii’s true potential rests in the People and Places sections. These areas of the app give you access to locations and individuals (friends and strangers) in your vicinity.

The People section brings up a list of other folk in your local area. It’s an enjoyable and almost voyeuristic way of window-shopping through the locals, incognito, picking and choosing who to make friends with.

The Places section is similar in that it grabs a listing of nearby venues, buildings and locations that other GyPSii users have tagged. The problem is that the list comes across as a slapdash random catalogue of questionable curiosities. There’s no quality control, and it’s certainly not comprehensive, meaning that apps like Locly end up proving more useful in the long run.

Having said that, iPhone owners with a sense of adventure may have fun with GyPSii’s People and Places sections. Assuming there’s an active GyPSii community in the vicinity, it could present some exciting options, particularly useful if you’re on vacation, or even moving to a new city and looking for new friends or places to go.

Summing Up

Using GyPSii, I can’t shake the feeling that, despite the app’s wealth of location-centric features, the service itself is somewhat redundant.

The obvious, but no less insightful, comparison is Facebook. With Facebook’s massive hive-like installed user-base, the first hurdle for any new GyPSii user seems to be convincing friends and contacts to download the app and register an account. And that’s all before getting to grips with the GyPSii app and platform, which is buggy at worst and crawls along like a confused baby at best. The app, like the online service, feels cluttered: For first-time users, it’s an overwhelming mess of menus.

There are alternatives, too: Brightkite and Loopt, which, while they may have slightly different feature-sets than GyPSii, are polished and have a higher penetration in terms of frequent social networkers.

Despite GyPSii’s best efforts to create a formidable service, the app isn’t up to spec, and the service feels redundant — as such, this is an app to avoid.

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I recently received my brand new Mac mini in the mail, and, as it always is when I get a package from Apple, it was a joyous occasion. For once, I didn’t have to find someplace to cram a huge box, since the packaging is size-appropriate for such a small desktop.

My afternoon the day it arrived was spent going through the extremely satisfying computer-lover’s ritual of setting up a new machine. I didn’t do an automatic set-up using one of my existing machines, because the mini was going to be used primarily as an HTPC, and as such I wanted it specially tailored for such a narrow focus. I wanted to devote as much of the 4 GB of RAM, 2.26GHz processor, and 120 GB HD to media playback as was possible, so I skipped a lot of my usual software installs and went with the basics.

Essential Software

The basics included the latest version of Perian, the all-in-one codec solution for Quicktime, and VLC for when that wasn’t enough; Firefox for browsing and YouTube viewing; LineIn, for audio pass-through from my TV to my speakers; and Rowmote Helper, for use with Rowmote for the iPhone, a great supplementary remote application for the Mac. I also installed Logitech Harmony remote software to go with the brand new Logitech Harmony 550 universal remote bought specifically to compliment the new mini. I’m still debating whether or not to also put Hotspot Shield on the machine so that I can watch Hulu outside of the U.S.

Media Storage

I decided to make my iTunes library resident on the Mac mini’s own internal HD, since I don’t like waiting for the drive to spin for music to start up. I also don’t like the extra time it takes to add music from another source, owing to the extra copy time to the USB-attached drive. My extensive video library, however (all backups of DVDs I own, honest) would be impossible to fit on the measly 120 GB HD, so that would have to stay on the external drive. I may yet invest in a drive with Firewire 800 connectivity to make this an even more practical solution and cut down on playback hiccups.

Connectivity and Calibration

For connection, I was forced to use the included Mini-DVI to DVI adapter, in combination with a DVI-D to HDMI cable. My audio goes out to speakers, so luckily no audio connection to the TV was required. I still think it’s pretty ridiculous that no HDMI out is included in a machine otherwise so perfectly suited to the HTPC role. As mentioned in my earlier post on why I was buying a Mac mini in the first place, I also run TOSLiNK to mini-TOSLiNK cable from my TV to the mini’s mic/input port. I still have four empty USB slots since I use Bluetooth-connected control devices.

It took some fiddling with the display settings, but now I’m more than satisfied with the playback of both standard and high definition video files via the Mac mini. Blacks are still not as crisp or clear as I would like them to be, but that’s probably more of a problem with my somewhat older Samsung 32-inch LCD flatscreen than with the computer.

Playback

Video playback, both streaming and downloaded, offered no problems, and the GeForce 9400M has no problems with full 1080p video, although my TV technically only supports a max resolution of 1360×768, so 1080p is downscaled. Even gaming performance (I briefly installed Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy for testing purposes) seems to compare favorably with my iMac (20-inch, mid-2008 with 4GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 2600 HD).

Verdict

I wouldn’t use it as my primary DVD player, because the mini’s drive produces a lot of noise when it spins, but my Xbox 360 or PS3 can easily fulfill that role. Other than that one minor complaint, and the lack of a true HDMI-out solution, I’m already very much attached to my new piece of Apple hardware. In fact, I’m not sure how I got by without it in the first place. I just hope my iMac doesn’t languish in neglect while I lavish attention on its new younger brother.

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Today, Tweetie got a major update, which not only brings stream position memory on launch and refresh, but a long list of other improvements as well. Version 1.2 of the software brings lots of integration with outside apps and services, for instance, including Instapaper, Twitpic.com for pictures, and StockTwits linking.

Usability improvements abound, including an optional landscape typing mode, a launch tweets number setting, a public timeline, persistent drafts across relaunches, cached avatar, location aware radius control, and image compression control. The GUI gets a boost as well, with a refined version of the app’s simple theme.

My only minor complaints are that landscape mode has to be turned on in the Settings panel for the app, and doesn’t activate automatically on screen rotation, and that there’s no way to turn off the app’s ability to remember your place in the tweet stream, an option which I’m personally not crazy about.

Still, if Tweetie was not your iPhone app of choice, it definitely should be now. On top of the new improvements, it already supported multiple accounts, following, unfollowing, favorites, and fully functional Twitter search, which meant I could say goodbye to the completely capable, but uneccesary Summizer app. Also, Tweetie 1.2 comes with PEE, which makes it priceless.

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With Fluid, you also get some neat extras like built-in Greasemonkey-powered user scripting, the ability to use URL pattern matching to create browsing whitelists and blacklists, auto-software updates of the base application framework, custom site application icons either based on the site’s favicon or an icon you specify, a JavaScript API for showing Dock badges, Growl notifications, Dock menu items, and more. There’s even a built-in plug-in which allows you to browse the web with CoverFlow or iPhoto-like thumbnail previews for links on the current page (which is fully customizable).

Todd decided to take some of the power of Fluid and build a new, standalone browser called Cruz, which is designed to enhance your browser experience of the social web. The foundation for this new social browser is the ability to build web browsing panes or panels alongside a central browser window. Links in these panes can then be configured to open in the main window (or within a new tab in that main window), letting you explore topics, news or items as they come across your radar. Take, for example, this configuration that I threw together:

On the left is Twitter Search (which I have configured, via Cruz, to default to the Mobile Stafari version), on the right is the mobile version of Twitter with my central browser pane in the middle. In that screen shot, I noticed that @panache found an interesting new toy to play with and used the Twitter Search pane to look for other mentions of it while checking out the primary link. When you move your mouse near the top of either pane, you will see that you have full navigation controls that allow you to reset the pane back to the primary page or wander off to other sites for further investigation (i.e. do quick Google search).

Cruz will also remember your settings and currently displayed sites when you quit, letting you come back right where you started.

The application is still in early development (version 0.1) so it is still a bit rough around the edges. One feature — the ability to automatically generate web page previews alongside Google search results — consistently crashed in my tests, but that is probably due to the number of default search results I let Google return. Since the real power of Cruz is “under the hood”, I can see where one could configure a very powerful setup with some some spiffy Greasemonkey scripts that would allow content in one pane to trigger content in another to make for an even more dynamic information-gathering experience.

Todd provides some walkthroughs on his site to get you started, and the 3MB download is available now (10.5 only).

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