iBeacon

The news I've been waiting for, for a long time.

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/4-use-cases-for-ibeacon-the-most-exciting-tech-you-havent-heard-of/

Batch Image Scaling

With Sizzle Pig you can have a blueprint of how you want your images resized or cropped and then upload an entire directory of images and they will be done.

Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website, but more like a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter.

The Cyclops Cap

This is an interesting concept, but it looks too bulky. And if I want to change caps, I have to buy a different one.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cyclops-cap

My praps for caps is much simpler and does not have these problems. Plus it's only $1 for two praps. The Cyclops Cap is going for $85.

CAPTCHAs Are Broken

An ingenious artificial intelligence algorithm can solve most captchas.

From TheNextWeb:

A fledgling startup called Vicarious claims to have developed a piece of artificial intelligence software that can crack up to 90 percent of CAPTCHAs – including reCAPTCHA – offered by Google, Yahoo and PayPal, among others.

Smartphone Arduino Shield

From TC:

Your smartphone is packed with tons of sensors — many of them the same types of sensors that you might want to strap on to an Arduino by way of a shield. It's got Bluetooth. It's got WiFi. It's got gyroscopes, and accelerometers, and a touchscreen that can emulate all sorts of keypads and display types. Why not let your smartphone share those capabilities with your Arduino, effectively allowing it to provide the prototyping functionality of dozens of different shields? That's the idea behind 1sheeld.

Very cool for prototyping future hardware projects.

CardFlight: App Dev Payments

CardFlight provides an SDK for app developers to incorporate payments into their apps.

From TC review: 

While other companies like Square and PayPal have provided businesses with the ability to collect payments with mobile credit card readers, businesses are reliant on the provider's apps to process those payments. CardFlight provides its clients with card readers, and also gives them an SDK to build payment processing into their own branded apps.
CardFlight has SDKs available for both iOS and Android platforms, and connects with 23 different payment processors. The company's gateway also allows clients to connect apps with their own internal CRM, inventory management, fulfillment, and reporting and analytics tools.

ScreenHero: Modern Screen Sharing

With ScreenHero two people can work together on the same document with two different cursors.

TC review

Mixing Designs With Friends

Studio is an app with which you can mix and remix pictures or designs with your buddies. There is even talk about remixing with branded designs. 

TC Excerpt:

On Studio, you can remix other people's designs by swapping out the base photo with one of your own, and then re-share the design.
There are controls for just about anything, with options to rotate and crop the photo, add filters, adjust brightness and saturation, as well as adding the aforementioned text, borders and designs.
For example, my sister could share a photo of herself on the beach with a special border and the text "Hang Ten." I could then remix that photo and place the same border and text on a picture of my 10 toes hanging over the edge of a surfboard.

WordPress Developer Tools

A nice short list of developer tools who are using WordPress.

http://www.sitepoint.com/wordpress-developer-tools/

Moqups Are Great Mockups

A very cool tool for doing quick and pretty mock ups.

Moqups

Review

Best Responsive Table

Here is some awesome response code for table data that looks great on PC, table, or phone. Very great work indeed.

FooTable

FooTable Review

Demos

LastPass

LastPass.com is the last password manager you'll ever need.

Capture Phone Screens 4 Testing

Now you can capture the screens a user is seeing on your site, just like you can do today with regular PC browsers. This is good for improving your site by collecting visual feedback from all your users. 

Watchsend.com

TC Review

Whether the app is in beta or live, Watchsend users can specify exactly what pages they want to record, which are then encrypted and secured in its data base. All recordings come with screen annotations of taps, swipes and presses, as well as a timeline of the user's actions. App developers can then go in and view them, using very specific search terms to navigate the vast number of videos collected.

Pics.io: Collaborative Browser-based Photo Editor

I'm not sure how good this is, considering that there are other online photo editors. One key difference may be that Pics.io enables team members to work together in editing photos.

TC review

Kevo: The Smartest Lock Ever

Kevo has to be the smartest lock I've ever heard about. It works with your Bluetooth 4.0 smartphone but you don't touch the lock with your phone to open/lock it. You just tap your finger against it and it will sense your identity via your phone.

TC review

Floobits: Collaborative Code Editor

Now you can work simultaneously on the same code with another developer, known as pair programming. Floobits is different in that it is not necessarily browser-based (like Madeye.io) but rather has a plug-in for whatever code editor you currently use.

TC review

Privy Manages Ads on Networks

Use Privy to manage all your running and scheduled sales and ads on various social networks, like Facebook.

Here is an excerpt from Techcrunch:

Afterwards, they can then use Privy by entering their "chalkboard specials" — the limited-time offers they run for a specific time frame, plus a photo and description of each. Marketing teams can do this as the offers come up, or they can load them up to a year in advance if they're better organized and prepared. Privy then automates the distribution of those campaigns to the various services and sites the company uses.

From an online dashboard, businesses can see at a glance which sites are driving customers, and drill down into customer info, data on redemptions, reviews, claims, and more. Customer data can also be both imported and exported to Mailchimp and Constant Contact and CSV, to allow for more personalized targeting of the audience segments.

Froont: Responsive Design Editor

You really need to check out Froont and get a free account. It is an online drag-n-drop website designer that will output responsive design html/css.

It has a very cool slider with which you can instantly see what the site will look like on different size screens.

Plus its all done online so there's no install or download.

Froont.com

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/froont/

StreetFight: Hyperlocal Biz News

An interesting blog about local SMBs. Here is one entry about thoughts on self-service ad platforms:

Over the past decade, self-serve advertising platforms have been seen as a potential lynchpin for creating successful hyperlocal business models —potentially bringing down the cost of merchant acquisition and management to the point where serious profit can be made by aggregating smaller-sized SMB ad insertions. But self-serve is easier proposed than done. And many companies have found that while their self-serve platform works just fine, many small business owners require the kind of high-touch hand-holding that only a real-life salesperson can provide.

MyAds: Self-Serve Ad Platform

Self-service advertising platform for the Rubicon Project.

Summary from Programmable Web:

The MyAds API allows users to develop applications that create and manage their MyAds advertising campaigns. Through the API users can gain access to campaigns, accounts, performance and more.MyAds is a self service ad platform that lets users build and customize ads to reach new customers. The API uses SOAP protocol and responses are formatted in XML.

The Rubicon Project

In contrast to a small company, if you are a premium publisher or large company wanting to explore what ad revenue you could be making and use the right technology to sell and trade your advertising space, then look no further than The Rubicon Project. In their own words, here is a summary:

The Rubicon Project is the leading technology company automating the buying and selling of advertising globally. REVV, the industry's largest independent technology platform is used by more than 500 of the world's premium publishers to transact with more than 100,000 advertisers across a massive marketplace that powers more than 180 billion ad trades per month.

ShinyAds: Self-Serve Ad Platform

White-label, self-server ad platform for smaller advertisers and publishers.

If you are a small company and want to offer your customers a nice interface for them to place an ad on your app/website, ShinyAds.com may be able to help. From a developer's perspective, here is a summary of what can be done:

The REST based Shiny Ads API allows developers to integate operations into their own applications. Shiny Ads provides a self-serve advertising platform that allows publishers to control the ad purchase process by directly offering an ad purchase system to their advertisers. With the API, online publishers can manage their self-serve advertising offering as well as be notified of events such as new orders. Responses are formatted in either XML or JSON. Full documentation is not publicly available.

GetStartUpTools Dot Com

A new convergence of startups and Internet companies has come together to provide other early-stage companies with the tools required to get up and running quickly, and most importantly, cheaply. It's sort of like a Humble Indie Bundle, except instead of gaming,GetStartupTools.com offers software from Wave, Box, MailChimp, Zendesk, Uberflip and General Assembly that most brand new internet companies would need or at least appreciate.

GetStartupTools.com

AllJoyn Is My Personal Cloud

Imagine walking into a new room and, like Harry Potter, being able to control all the devices in there with a few gestures. But (because you are a Muggle) instead of a wand, you use your smartphone. Developed by Qualcomm, AllJoynis an open source peer-to-peer software designed to give manufacturers and developers the framework to seamlessly connect a wide range of devices, appliances and mobile apps.

TC review

AllJoyn.org

Fade In Images

Cool javascript trick used by Pinterest for fading in images after they finish loading. This one relies on using Embed.ly

http://embed.ly/docs/tutorials/background

Social Network Data Heaven

If you have social network data anywhere, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. and you want to archive it and search it, then ThinkUp.com is the way to go.

Here is a snippet that better explains it:

ThinkUp, the social media management tool that matters most, hits version 1.0 today. It lets you store all your social activity from networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in a database you control and search, sort and analyze it. If you have a Web server that can run a PHP application, you can take control of your social network data. Ever wanted to search for a tweet more than a couple days old? Don't bother with Twitter search. ThinkUp is the only way.

ThinkUp lets you archive all your social network activity. It's free and open-source, so it's a totally extensible platform with a growing community of developers. You can search, browse, publish, analyze and visualize your content and data in all kinds of ways. Under the terms of service of your social networks, they can delete everything you've created without warning. ThinkUp lets you own your content. This isn't a review; this is a public service announcement. Go get it.

CDN For ALL Your Stuff

Regardless, CSS, Javascript, and so on, you can probably find a reference at this Content Delivery Network: http://cdnjs.com/

LESS Compilers

So if you are using LESS to code your CSS, you must know about these compilers:

For Windows: http://wearekiss.com/simpless

For Mac: http://incident57.com/less/

You can also reference the javascript less.js file in your code from a CDN like: http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/less.js/1.3.3/less.min.js

Best 3D Canvas Javascript Library

Threejs is the best library I've seen for drawing 3D objects within the HTML5 Canvas element. The examples shown at http://threejs.org/ are amazing. There's a very nice intro to Three.js at https://learnable.com. You can even make games with it.

FontSquirrel Fonts & Converter

If you ever need to look for monospaced fonts and others, look at FontSquirrel.com

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/style/Monospaced

If you ever need to convert any font file to another, for example ttf to eot, woff, or svg go to

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/tools/webfont-generator

Best Wholesale SMS Provider

The best and most affordable SMS provider I have ever seen. Nexmo. International reach. All inbound SMS are free. Outbound SMS are 0.0071 USD in USA.

What's more impressive is that with their API hitting your server, you can have as many and unique SMS SHORTCODES as you want. They are also integrated into AppFog so that is very cool.

MIT App Inventor

There's a new generation of mobile app programmers and they are using the MIT App Inventor. Here is a story about all this:

http://readwrite.com/2013/05/02/this-is-what-the-next-generation-of-programmers-looks-like

CashFly: Shortens Links and Pays You

CashFly.com wants to pay for using their service to shorten URLs. Anytime you share a link and someone clicks it, you get paid. It's like a Bit.ly service that pays you.

WSJ review

Fabric Printing

SpoonFlower.com offers custom printing on fabrics. Your designs on fabric.

TC review

Niice: An Even Nicer Design Search Engine

Niice.co is yet an even better search engine for finding great design stuff. For example, I want to find "pink" stuff.

TheNextWeb review

Psddd: Dribbble Has It

You can find that freebie design you are looking for at Dribbble.com. Trouble is it is buried somewhere there and Dribbble doesn't have the search tools to find it. So here comes Psddd.co to help.

TheNextWeb review

An API for Email Marketing

Who would have thought that email marketing services needed an API for developers to use in integrating a great email marketing service into any website, whether small or large? Sendicate is introducing such an API and their pricing is very affordable. I wonder what interesting email marketing campaigns we'll soon see showing up in our in-boxes. 

TC Review

Software-based Networking

Forget about investing millions of dollars on building out your big network for that next big idea. Now you can use Pertino to build out your network with little to no hardware. The entire network runs in the cloud. So what's your next big idea that needs that great big network?

TC Review

WP Engine: Viral WordPress Protection

If you are running Word Press and feel that your site will crash if it goes viral, then look into WP Engine to provide your hosting.

WPEngine.com

AppSumo review

Very Cool Colorpicker

One of the best color pickers I've seen.

http://color.hailpixel.com

The Next Web review

Quipio: Yet Another Textagram

I recently bumped into Boldomatic.com and here comes a very similar service that lets you further customize your text and shoot it out to all your social networks.

Quipio

TC review

Vine: Share Short Videos

With the Vine mobile app you can share 6-second videos with your friends.

Photojojo review

Albumatic: Collaborative Albums Creation

You and your friends can create albums of photos at any casual event. Share them with others, even with non-friends or those who didn't get the chance of being at the event. Other services have come and gone, but it seems Albumatic may have an edge on usability. 

So now parents can share photos of their kids' sporting events. Wedding guests and the wedding couple can cherish the photos of everyone at their event.

I imagine Albumatic's business plan may include selling photo prints.

Albumatic.com

TC review

SaberBlast: Automating Marketing Alliances

It might be difficult for a small start-up to make an alliance with a big company that may have an interest in placing some ads on the start-ups website. SaberBlast intends to make this easier for all parties involved. 

SaberBlast

TC review

Boldomatic: Like a Textagram

Cool new feature. Put in any text, and you get a nice big letter billboard with a nice background color to boldly display in your social network feeds. It's like making your comments stand out in your feeds in a billboard style sort of way.

Boldomatic

TC review

Embed Instagram Anywhere

SnapWidget.com allows you to include a free widget on your website that displays Instagram pics based on usernames or hashtags. Very cool.

Swish Helps Launch New Products

Swish seeks to help launch new products by providing an ecommerce marketplace to showcase and to sell your new product. Once you receive a quota of orders, you fulfill the orders by sending the entire product inventory to Swish who then fulfills each order for you. Thus, the little guy doesn't need to worry about how to fulfill his orders should his product go viral suddenly. Bad thing is that Swish takes a 35% cut.

TC Review

Modern.IE Helps You Test

modern.IE consists of a number of free tools and resources, including a scanner that checks for common problems that may make a site incompatible with modern and legacy versions of IE. The scanner, Gavin noted, checks a given page to find common compatibility problems with the libraries and frameworks the developer used. It then recommends fixes and provides developers with information about which version of a given framework like jQuery offers the best compatibility.

TC review

Pond5 Stock Media

Here is good source of stock video and photography. Yup, video. They have some awesome clips you may be able to use. I've seen some for $20. They have updated the site and it's easier to find stuff.

Pond5.com

VinylMint, Make Beautiful Music Together

Taking the notion of online collaboration to a whole new level, VinylMint has created a cloud-based solution for musicians to jam and record in real time.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/02/vinylmint-online-music-recording/#aIVsc5aW6xA3r4wm.99 

Play My Tone

This is an app that makes creating music as easy as listening to it. Listening to music nowadays is almost universally effortless. But creating it? That's not so easy. Solving that problem is the idea behind Play My Tone, a social music maker that mixes, personalizes, and shares your musical creations.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/02/play-my-tone-announcement/#0ufCZpCQl7Mcszrl.99 

Tubifi Stock Footage

Tubifi wants to make it easier to make great videos by using lots of stock footage. But stock footage is only part of the service. With a vital social feature, Tubifi also plans to connect video makers to the marketers that need them. The other big feature of the service is online editing, which allows users to take the stock video they buy and edit it from their web browsers.
Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/02/tubifi-stock-footage/#ZQJk4LwhTfLgUOA7.99 

Almond+ Is A Modern Router

Here is the most advanced router for the consumer available today. It's a router with a touchscreen and only costs $99. It is going to rock my world as soon as I can get one. I would love to make a mobile app that communicates with it.

TC review

The Almond+

Here is a book to help you learn about its protocol Zigbee and Z-wave.

Create n Share Website Mashups

NewHive provides easy tools for making collages of websites to share. It can grab any media to produce beautiful and thoughtful art.

TC Review

NewHive wants to pioneer what co-founder Zach Verdin calls "slow social media". He describes it as "Creating something meaningful that takes more time and thought than just sharing an image. It has more emotional impact on the people creating it and the people consuming it."

Headless Browsers

If you're reading this article, you most likely know what a browser is. Now take away the GUI, and you have what's called a headless browser. Headless browsers can do all of the same things that normal browsers do, but faster. They're great for automating and testing web pages programmatically. There are a number of headless browsers in existence, and PhantomJS is the best.

In other words, the server can now act as the web user. The server-side can interact with any website  from the point of view of a site visitor. The server can submit data, click links, wait for results, and process the results. Very powerful stuff indeed. This is a step beyond web scraping.

Here is an excellent example of what you can do with a headless browser: UpstreamCommerce.com crawls your competitors' websites to compare your pricings to theirs. They may be using some other technology, but certainly using a headless browser would be one way to do it.

Real-time Node Frameworks

The Node crowd is pretty DIY, so many Node developers eschew using frameworks beyond Express. Express gives you the most control, but requires the most development overhead. You have to setup and tie together everything all by yourself - and there is a lot of stuff to tie together. Furthermore, getting everything to play nicely with eachother is much more painful than you'd think. 

Frameworks will tie everything together for you, and will ensure each piece fits the equation properly - so I recommend using a framework if you want to hit the ground running with the least amount of hassle. Conversely, I recommend choosing Express if you're savvy and want maximal control, or (as we'll see) you want cross-platform code (including mobile).

Here are some more recent ones:

NowJS

Firebase

Google search

And here is a more realistic view of the current frameworks.

Modern Web Scraping

Web scrapers are pieces of software which programmatically visit web pages and extract data from them. Web scraping is a bit of a controversial topic due to issues of content duplication. Instead, most web site owners prefer that their data be accessed by publicly available APIs. Unfortunately, many sites provide lackluster APIs, or none at all. This forces many developers to turn to web scraping. This article will teach you how to implement your own web scraper in Node.js.

Other tools are:

Jsdom

Cheerio

PhantomJS
Other Related Projects

Super Javascript Languages

I don't know which one is leading at the moment. I know both CoffeeScript and TypeScript are supported by Node.js, so that's a good thing. Dart is apparently a Google thing. TypeScript is also supported from within Visual Studio, so you know Microsoft is backing it up.

CoffeeScript

TypeScript

Dart

Two excellent editors that support these languages, as well as Nodejs, are Sublime, and WebStorm. Here's a favorable review of Sublime.

Artiphon Touch Sound Instrument

Guitar lovers out there, there's a new electronic musical instrument you may want to keep you ears on, the Artiphon.

Techcrunch says:

This CES has been a surprisingly musical. Aside from the usual headphones and speakers, we've already seen a number of electronic musical instruments including the Artiphon Instrument 1, a well-made electronic guitar analog with a pressure sensitive fretboard.

Unlike the Jamstik, the Instrument 1 doesn't have real strings but instead you play on the raised ridges on a pressure sensitive surface. The iPhone receives MIDI input from the device and you can even plug it into a computer.

The Instrument 1 is made of hardwood and can be played like a guitar, banjo, bass (by tapping on the strings), or even a fiddle. It should cost under $1,000 and will be made in and around Nashville by the creator, Mike Butera.

We spent a few moments playing the instrument on stage at CES 2013.

Best Responsive Web Framework?

Some people think so. Check out Foundation.

Review

Image Placeholders for Wireframing

Wireframing a website and need temporary image placeholders until you get the real images?

http://placehold.it/

http://imsky.github.com/holder/?js

Solutions For Responsive Images

Which responsive images solution should you use?

Here is a third party device detection:

https://deviceatlas.com/