Creative Use of Instagram API

CanvasPop.com uses Instagram's API to provide canvas prints of a user's instagram photos. Very nice and one to emulate.

Best Free Icon Sets

This guy from Germany,  Oliver Twardowski, has produced some of the all-time best and free icon sets I have ever seen.

Free Icon Sets

Map of Site Visitors

Free. Get a map on your site of all your visitors worldwide.

ClustrMaps.com

Mixel: Can't Wait 2 C What U Made!

With Mixel, your friends and the world is waiting to see what you made. Take any images from anywhere, mix'em, and you get a "mixel".

Mixel.cc

Become An Artist With Mixel's Remixable iPad Collage App

OneDrum Keeps The Beat For Office Docs

Sitepoint.com writes:

Having trouble getting your clients to use Google Docs? I know the feeling. My clients work a lot in MS Office, and many are too scared to try Google Docs, think it's too much of a hassle, or can't access it from restricted corporate networks. The result is outdated documents, endless change-merging—you name it. It seems I'm always searching my emails looking for the latest version of whatever they've sent me.

Finally, there's a solution. oneDrum, released this week, is a peer-to-peer coauthoring platform like Google Docs, based entirely in Microsoft Office.

It offers:

• automatic syncing of shared folders and files, so everyone always has the latest version on their computer
• complete version history, so you can roll back to a previous version of the file at any time
• real-time editing of documents (on PC, coming soon to Mac)
• and end to confusion between system and application keystrokes and clipboards
• all over a peer-to-peer desktop application.

Oh, and it's free.

Boxbe Manages Inboxes

I recently emailed a friend of mine and noticed I got a bounce back but it was of a different kind. The subject line said Action Requested and the body had this message:

Please add yourself to my Guest List so your messages will be delivered to my Inbox. Use the link below.

So I clicked the link and got directed to Boxbe.com, at which point I had to complete a CAPTCHA in order to deliver my original message to my friend. Lo and behold I had discovered an auto-CAPTCHA system for all of my email inboxes so I can stop all the nonsense spam. This is awesome stuff.

Lemon Slice Your Online Receipts

How would you like to organize all those online receipts you have stored away somewhere as emails? Well now there are at least two competitors in this space trying to get you to use their service to organize all your receipts stuck in Gmail, Yahoo, etc. 

Lemon.com

Slice

TC review of Lemon

TC review of Slice

Scan Photos/Art With iPhone

Cool. Now there's an app to help you quickly scan printed photos or even art, by just using your iPhone. That'll save some time.

The ShoeBox App

TC review

Modern Client Web Development

This is the new way to program all those fancy, nimble web interfaces cropping up all over the web. In a nutshell you need to use an MVC framework for all client-side web applications. With Spline you will be able to store all your data with models and whenever any change occurs to that data, both the view (HTML) and the server-side with be automatically notified and updated. CoffeeScript enables you to make javascript code sing and dance.

Use Spine.js

Use CoffeeScript

Get this book: Javascript Web Applications by Alex MacCaw

UPDATE: Better to look at Knockoutjs, Angularjs, Ember.js

Cool Image Overlays

Thinglink has some neat options for image overlays that display further info, videos, or where to buy what is shown in the image. This is just another service trying to monetize online images. Big gotcha is that users who share the images will also copy the script tags along with the image source. They are also into "printable NFC-enabled images".

TC review

New Guitar 3.0 Update!

Now there's a demo video of the new Gibson Firebird X Guitar. I just wish I knew more about guitars to really appreciate this new technology.

TC video

NFC 2.0 - No Additional Hardware

The next version of near-field communication NFC 2.0 is being pioneered by Tagattitude and is based on inaudible super-sonic signals.

TC review

Digital Toy Blocks

We've all played with blocks as kids. Today our kids play with computers. Now Sifteo.com has combined blocks with computers to produce interactive blocks. Each block has a tiny screen, senses other similar blocks, and produce sounds via a nearby computer. Because of their dynamic screens, as opposed to static faces, limitless games can be created with downloadable apps. Now our kids don't have an excuse for not playing with boring blocks.

David Pogue's review

Animated Mobile Alerts

This company has created alerts and notifications for your smartphone that show animation or videos, with sound, to alert you about incoming stuff. Pretty cool.

Pops

TC review

Check-In Hardware

Because NFC's are not embedded on all phones yet, this company decided to take matters into its own hands. It created a piece of hardware through which users can tap on with their smartphones and the whole check-in/check-out process is initiated. Pretty cool.

Tagtile.com

TC review

New Guitar 3.0

I don't know much about guitars, although I do play some classical guitar. This new Gibson guitar seems to be a new breed. It's feature list boasts 20 new features which are a bit too technical musically for me to understand.

Gibson Firebird X

TC review

iPad And Real Objects

Here's a neat iPad app that interacts with real objects. In this case the objects are Disney Cars objects with some kind of embedded chips that identify themselves to an iPad. As a child plays with the objects, the iPad detects their movement and appropriately interacts with sounds, scenes, etc. 

This begs the question....what other types of objects could interact with an iPad to produce some kind of valuable experience. Say for example in the health and fitness industry you have different objects such as heart rate monitors and pedometers. What kind of services would be useful if an iPad knew what object you had? If you placed your heart monitor on the iPad, it could display some neat graphs of your heart's activity. Whereas if you placed the pedometer on the iPad, it could display your activity in terms of steps or miles, or even a map of your just completed walking path.

Disney's Appmates Turn The iPad Into An Interactive Playmat

The Internet of Things

Some profound thoughts about the future internet of things, a world where trillions of objects are connected to the internet.

This is a world where people make the things you would make if you were left to invent stuff on your own. It is a world where people strap domestic digital cameras to weather balloons in order to photograph space, a world where people attach bubble machines to Arduinos and connect them to the web so that when it sees a keyword on Twitter, it blows bubbles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15018894

Need Lyrics?

How about viewing lyrics in real time as you listen to any song on your mp3 player? That's the promise of an upcoming API from MusixMatch.com and from TuneWiki.com.

TC Review

Turn Anything Into A Biz Card

For now, any t-shirt can be turned into a business card. Just take a photo of your t-shirt and email it to Capturio. Anyone who sees you in the same t-shirt can snap a pic and email again to Capturio, which will then match the pic to your t-shirt and return your contact info to that person. So now it doesn't seem like QR Codes are even necessary.

Springwise Review