Recently, I compiled a list of games & apps my daughter love to play on her iPad. Here is the list of 30 iPhone & iPad apps you can consider as gifts for your kids for the Holidays.

Here is the list (not in any particular order):

Note: (*) indicates apps for both iPad and iPhone.

1. ABC Food ($1.99) (*) — My daughter loves playing around with the foods, peel them, cut them and watch the video. There are over 150 photos and videos on more than 70 delicious foods.
2. Alpha Writer ($4.99) (*) — Montessorium’s Alpha Writer is an interesting and engaging fun app for kids. It will help your kid learn to read, write and spell phonetically, while composing words and creating stories.
3. Intro to Letters ($4.99) (*) — My Daughter loves tracing through the letters.
4. Intro to Math ($4.99) (*) — Another great app from Montessorium, pretty much in the lines of Intro to Letters.
5. AphaTots ($0.99) (iPad) — Another fun app for your kid learning the English Alphabets with lots of fun stuffs while she learns.
6. Little Red Riding Hood ($0.99) (*) — My daughter loves this 3D interactive fable, performed by the Bean Bag Kids. Pea, Pinto, Cocoa, Jack and Vanilla have made a show for your kid. Complete with beautiful scenes of this classic bed time story, it is told in an absolutely new way, that will amaze babies, toddlers, kids and parents.
7. Cookie Doodle ($0.99) (*) — My daughter loves baking cookies through this app. She would fancy-play treating us to various cookies and would promptly help herself to her cookies.
8. Frogger Decades ($0.99) (*) — My daughter loves this game, perhaps because of the frog. In general, she loves animals of all sorts. The idea of winning don’t really matter to her but just jumping through the obstacles is what really gets her excited.
9. Grolly’s Animal Adventures (Free, In-App $3.99) (iPad) — The free version gives you one chapter but you’ll feel guilty depriving your kid of the full fun. The In-App purchase of $3.99 is worth it. Another app with animals and my daughter went tapping all over it.
10. Hickory Dickory Dock ($2.99) (*) — Anything to do with Rhymes, with well-done graphics is sure to get a kid’s attention. Hickory Dickory Dock is another of my daughter’s regular app. No, she have no clue on how to read a clock.
11. iTubeList (Free) (*) — Youtube is a gem for Videos for your kid but there are lots of videos which are not suited for her. The Youtube App that comes with your devices will lead them to those videos which you want to avoid. iTubeList is an app that helps you curate videos for your kid. It comes pre-loaded with some great videos for your kid.
12. JibJab Jr. Books (Free, Subscription) (iPad) — Highly interactive and interesting fun app for your kid. The app is free and comes with one book built in for your kid to try it out. You can subscribe to its monthly release of new books or buy each book separately and let your kid take part in the story.
13. Kids Song Machine 2 – Around the World ($2.99) (*) — My daughter loves this colorful, fun app. It offers an interactive tour through the most beautiful places in the world that will delight your kid.
14. Let’s Create! Pottery ($4.99) (*) — Not really a kid’s app per se but my daughter can keep herself delighted playing and making pots. She’s yet to learn to burn it after the clay work.
15. Make it Pop ($1.99) (*) — Anything that pops, burst are interesting to kids and this one is not an exception. Your kid can learn shapes, letters, colors, and numbers while popping bubbles, balloons, fireworks and popcorn.
16. Peekabo (Free) (*) — How can a Kids App list be complete without a Peekabo. A simple, easy and fun app for your kid.
17. Racing Penguin, Flying ($0.99) (*) — My daughter beat the free version in one of her early attempts and I had to buy her the full version. She loves helping the Penguin get across without being eaten. However, the levels have become tad difficult and she can’t get past many levels. Anyway, she does not really care about winning, she just loves to play.
18. Smoody ($0.99) (iPad) — She can’t get past much but she just loves slicing and cutting through. Nice game.
19. Solipskier ($0.99) (*) — It was not really meant for her but she somehow likes it. She loves it, though I have never seen her succeeding in the major Hurdle Jump.
20. Sprinkle: Water Splashing fire fighting fun! ($1.99) (*) — Another interesting game, where it needs thinking and motor skills. Fun game for your kid.
21. SPY Mouse ($2.99) (iPad) — My daughter loves Tom & Jerry. So, it was rather natural for her to like this game. Show your kid the first initial steps and let her take it away.
22. Talking Ben, Tom and Gina (Free, In-App Purchases) — She loves all the talking Ben series – Talking Ben the Dog, Talking Tom & Ben News, Talking Tom Cat, Talking Tom Cat 2 and Talking Gina.
23. Where’s my Water? ($0.99) (*) — A little complex but she just loves muddling for the water to pass through. I’m not sure she even get past through any more levels further.
24. Bord ($0.99) (*) — Let your kid run wild with the chalks, let them draw whatever their finger swipes and taps.
25. Kids Can Drive ($0.99) (*) — Kids love to drive and this app is a fun to drive, honk, change wheels.
26. Toontastic (Free, In-App Purchases) (iPad) — A fun app for the family, play with your kid, create stories and let your kid have fun doing it along with you.
27. Phone for Kids (Free) (*) — Well, kids love the phone and this is a fun app for your kid.
28. Real Animals HD ($4.99) (*) — Awesome collection of very interactive animals. Your kid will love both the Zoo and the World options. You can also download the free version, try it first and then buy the in-app purchase.
29. FlickPig ($0.99) (*) — Help your kid get started with the Pigs racing down the tracks collecting coins, fruits and what not. Let her learn how to flip the pig on top of another to get more collectibles and avoid obstacles. She will love those snorting pigs.
30. Egg Punch (Free) (*) — She’ll love this funny looking chick inside an egg bouncing around obstacles trying to get through the holes. Teach her to collect the feathers and bounce of rabbits.

Which are your kid’s favorite apps? What good ones have I missed? Add them in the comments, it might be useful for other parents.

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30 iPad/iPhone apps you can gift your kids for the Holidays

There are over half a million Apps in the App Store and to be sincere 80% of them suck at design. The days of throwing up just any app and hoping it to sell thousands of copies are officially over. The App store has become a place where mature businesses with mature marketing plans succeed.

One way to stand out amongst the sea of apps is to have great design.

What does this mean for you?

As a designer, this phenomenon has created a new demand for designers for Mobile apps. Developers are always on the look out for great iPhone App Design and and frankly, app designers are hard to find as there are not many out there. The opportunity is there to be taken for designers that are ready to go into this niche.

As a developer, you know good mobile app designers are hard to find. The ones that understand the user interface of the iPhone and know what kind of elements to put together. You know you need a good design but have no idea how to design an app.

The App Design Vault was put together to help you scale over these hurdles.

How to Jump Start The Process Of Getting Great App Design

The Vault was setup to help you do the following.

1) To help you as a designer carve a profitable niche for yourself. To help you expand your product offering and start getting more revenue from your freelance efforts.

2) To help you as a developer acquire great design for your apps without having to fire up Photoshop yourself. To help your make your app stand out and sell more copies.

It is a collection of iPhone App Design themes and iPad App Design themes. They will help you jump start the design process of your app or your client’s app.

You are free to use them on an unlimited number of your own apps or on your client’s apps.

Limited Time Offer For Inspired Mag Readers

For a limited time only (Until the 12th of December), you can get 4 themes for the price of one as a special deal for Inspired Mag readers. 4 themes normally sell for $280, but you get them all for $70.

Here are screenshots of the 4 themes you get for that price.

Social Boo – Facebook, Twitter, Fourquare is within reach

You can use this to design your Facebook and Twitter apps and make it look amazing.

The theme has 4 screens. A list of social updates. Another screen for the user profile, a splash screen and an icon. Included in the theme are also design elements like Buttons, Progress bars etc. Buy this theme along with 4 others for $70

PodRadio – Multimedia design on Steroids

PodRadio is a Multimedia App Theme. Do you need designs for an App that plays audio or video? PodRadio has you sorted. There is a screen with a list of Album titles, a detail screen with red glowing player controls. Fast forward, Rewind, Play, Pause, the works.

The app has a nice leather navigation bar that makes your app look classy. You can also use this navigation bar in any other apps you have. Buy this theme along with 4 others for $70

Foody – Classy Recipe design

Recipe apps sell well on the App store. That is why Top Chefs like Jamie Oliver are coming out with their own apps too. Foody has a brown leather feel to it. It takes its inspiration from the the Find My Friends app from Apple.

This goes to prove that you can take these design concepts and use them for any kind of app.

Foody has a screen with a list of dishes, a detail screen with a list of ingredients and a framed image for the dishes. Buy this theme along with 4 others for $70

PhotoPad – iPad PhotoBooks with a Twitter Interface.

Do you like the cool interface on the Twitter iPad App? Well, it so happens that you can use the interface for almost any kind of iPad app.

PhotoPad is the proof. It can be used to design a Photo-book app for weddings, baby photos and holidays. You get Photoshop files and the Xcode project included in the bundle. Buy this theme along with 4 others for $70

Here are some of the benefits you get from purchasing this bundle.

Saves You Time
You can fire up Photoshop with the .PSD files you get with each theme and you already have a starting point for your designs. If you don’t want to use Photoshop because you are a developer, open up the sample XCode project with the design files and tweak your app to your heart’s content.

Saves You Money
At the price of $70 for a bundle of four themes, your risk is greatly reduced and you have a lifetime guarantee. Try out the themes and there is no time limit on when you can ask for your money back.

Helps You Sell More Apps
As I said earlier, with a custom design, your potential buyers see you as professional contender and will want to download your apps. You can also give you users a unique experience so they can tell others about your app.

Get the Special Deal Bundle – Only for a limited time

Each theme in the bundle is sold for $70 separately, which amounts to $280 in total. As a special discount for Inspired Mag readers, you can get all themes in the bundle for $70.

The bundle is only available until the 12th of December, 2011 so if you think it is for you, go ahead and download it now.

Also, App Design Vault offers a lifetime money back guarantee on this deal. That’s right! If you buy it and don’t like it, you can come back to the Vault in 4 years and still get your money back.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

iPhone App Design – How To Get Started In this New Niche

As you may know by now, Inspired Magazine is a sucker for data visualization. That’s why we invited Tony Shin – a social media ninja and creative design samurai – to curate the weekly dose of infographics. If you like them as much as we do check out some of the older editions and follow Tony on Twitter and Facebook as well!

1. Steve Jobs By The Numbers

This week, Apple’s visionary and one of the tech industry’s finest innovators, Steve Jobs, passed away at the age of 56. His legacy will not be forgotten. To the future generations who don’t know who he is or what he has accomplished, this infographic by iSmashPhone is perfect. It highlights the timeline of Steve Jobs’ career along with his accomplishments and as well as some struggles that made him who he was at Apple. The tech industry will never be the same. Condolences to his family and those at Apple.

2. iPhone 5 and the Apple Fanboy/Fangirl Syndrome

First of all, the correction is obviously 4s. This is part 2 of Paid Viewpoint’s 3 part series of the new iPhone. It highlights the DNA of the iPhone owners in the late 2011 along with some must-have features and spec that they envisioned the “iPhone 5″ to come with. Well, though seemingly outdated, it’s nice to see the guesses and wants of what the people would like to have in the “iPhone 5″. I thought the syndromes of the fanboy & fangirl were pretty hilarious. In fact, dead on. For those of you who purchased the iPhone 4 already, are you willing to pay for the upgraded 4s? Or perhaps sleep on the thought for about 6 months and hope that Apple gets back on the usual life cycle of the product and release the “iPhone 5″ in March (if they do)? As a owner of an iPhone 4, I have yet to make a decision. However, the more I keep watching the persuasive videos of the the iPhone 4s on Apple’s website, the more I’m tempted to pre-order the phone.

3. Patent Evil

All this Apple talk keeps making me think about tech industries and what sort of advancements they’ve made in the past several years. What stands out to me most about tech industries, are patents. Why? Well MBA Online illustrates this infographic that reminds me of how dirty and low some of the largest tech companies have gone on a patenting software frenzy and in turn, the lawsuits that seem to fill news feed all across the world. As much as it makes me sick, I can’t complain. I don’t know the first thing about patents, but I know it’s come to a point where the second I see a headline about a patent lawsuit, I turn away.

4. The Reddit Invasion

Yes, I consider myself an Internet nerd. I’m only of those people who look at Imgurs all night and laugh by myself. Yes, by myself. Where’s the best site for an Internet geek to look at imgurs? Reddit. This graphic by Sortable lays out the history behind Reddit, how far along they’ve come along with illustrating the different types of Redditors and also exploring the different sorts of content on Reddit. It’s very ‘Reddit-esque’. Absolutely love it.

5. Myths about College Sports

Though a bit off topic, I could not help by find the illustrations and aesthetics of this graphic absolutely amazing and dead on. Online Masters Degree designed this graphic to highlight myths about college sports, while touching upon different subject areas that college sports more or less affect. The aesthetics of this graphic are amazing. This varsity-like graphic explains the myths behind how much money the schools and student athletes are really getting. One interesting fact: The myth behind how ‘college sports pay for themselves’ is no where near the truth. “Half of top sports schools rely on at least $9 million in subsidies from the school and government to balance their budgets, fees largely paid by students and taxpayers.” This caught me off guard. I’m a huge fan of college sports and my initial thought was that the revenue generated from the sports took care of it all, and more. I stand corrected.

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Infographics of The Week #12

This is a post by Xavier Veyrat – Entrepreneur, graphic designer, UI & UX designer – Co-founder of Hot Apps Factory and creator of App Cooker.

I would like to thank Inspired Magazine for letting us write our first article and let us share what we learned from 1 year and a half of hard work on App Cooker. I think we have some interesting points to share so let’s get started! Most of this knowledge comes from the Human Interface Guidelines, Apple’s introduction to iPhone videos, our sweat and some common sense.

There are two reasons for you to make an Application: for fun or for business. If your App is made for fun, just do it and don’t read this post. If it’s the other and you want to maximize your chances to make a living from your Apps, this is for you.

Be old-fashioned, don’t be foolish

Before getting hardcore on the design, the code and the communication, have a look at the type of application you want to do. Basically, we think there are two big categories: games and the others. If it is not a game, have a look at your competition, it is called “benchmarking”. Type the keywords of your idea in the App Store and have a look at the results. If you are serious about your idea, buy the apps of the competition. Even if you think you have the best idea out there, there are tons of brilliant people just like you who already have the idea or are currently working on the subject. Use them for a day or two, look at their functionality and pick up the top three. Then go to their App Store page and look at their reviews, this is where you can find some gold nuggets that might change the face of your App. You can use  Discovr Apps which has a great way of letting you discover similar apps (it isn’t perfect but much better than what the App Store provides). Another search on Google to find “work in progress” could also save you a lot of time.

Games are another world. If you want to benchmark similar games to your idea, you must have a solid bank account and this long process might affect the originality of your game. If you have a great concept for a game, the only way to stand out in this overcrowded category is to be original. Try to resist looking too hard at what’s already out there. This might unintentionally influence your direction and stifle your imagination and creativity. After this preliminary work, comes the most important moment in the life of your project, this is where you will have to confront the idea to the actual App.

The Idea VS the App

Having the idea is great but as soon as you get it, you start thinking that “this” would be nice to have and “that” feature would be awesome. The key thing here is to remember that you are going to make an App for a mobile device. That means a limited memory. That means you can’t do everything you want, which means you have to narrow the scope of your App to its core functions. We have seen a lot of developers and designers starting their ideas coding or drawing inside Photoshop and this is wrong, really wrong. Spend some time to define and refine your idea and you will reach the end of your project sooner.

So how do you select what’s in and what’s out? Well, this is where common sense and gut feelings start to play a role. With the exact same idea, you might find numerous ways of doing the App because the key features selected may not be the same from one team to another. This is the human factor. A great way to be sure that you manage to define your App idea correctly is to describe it in this form: “Differentiation” “Solution” for “Audience”. For example, “an easy to use” “photo editor” for “photographers”. This Application Definition Statement is the most important thing you have to do when your start an iOS project. Once you have clearly defined it, stick to it and ignore all the features that doesn’t fit to it.

Why should you start this awesome iPhone or iPad project?

Now that you have a clear idea of your App you are ready to code right? Nope, not yet… There is one more step to do before getting in the design and code process, it is the business model. How many developers have started an App and when they arrive on the App Store they are lost when it comes to set the price and their categories? Often they end up doing this part in seconds because they want to see their app on the store, trashing all their hard work in seconds.

Before everything, think about your business model and test some scenarios to evaluate the revenue generated from hard sales or a free App with in app purchase. There is an App for that called Price Cooker that can help you do the maths in a neat way. Don’t underestimate this part, changing from a paid app to a free app with in app purchase is not 1 hour of coding, but more like 1 week (in the best case scenario). Estimate the time you need to do the App, PAY yourself and look at the sales volume you will need to cover everything. When it comes to pricing, I am one of the believers that unless your company name is Rovio and you can sell millions of copies at $0.99, you should price your App higher than this. That way you will still have scope for promotion and more than anything it gives an indication of the quality of your App. There are countless Apps with nothing inside at $0.99 and customers are starting to realise that.

Do it the right way

When you get your idea clearly defined as well as your business model, it is now time to get your hands dirty. Here are some basic rules that may drive the way you work on your project.

• The design process should be 60 to 70% of the development time.
• Communicate about your App as soon as you get a Beta and get people involved in it.
• Communication is the key to selling your App
• Don’t think you have the best App on the App Store, the best App is the one that sells the most…
• In this shadowy century, standards are higher than ever people only want products they will love.
• Give love with your App, here at the Hot Apps Factory we strongly believe that targeting the heart of our users will always reap greater rewards than targeting their pocket.

As Jobs said during his speech at the Stanford University “stay young, stay foolish” and I would add “share your great ideas with people, you may not have the time to develop all of them”.

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HOW TO: Start “an App For That”

iOSinspires.me was created aiming to be the new best friend of every designer who’s putting efforts in creating new and inspiring iOS applications for iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. With the progress of mobile platforms, we entered a new era where basic functionality and originality of an application itself isn’t enough to attract a big following. Therefore, developers must have a very unique and attractive design. If you’re dealing with iOS and trying to make your way among numerous App Store competitors, iOSinspires.me is a great starting point for you.

Here you can find large number of app icons and app interfaces that can inspire you to create your own for your iOS project. iOSinspires.me hosts as well a gallery of app websites, so if you have your own app with a dedicated website, you can submit it as well, and the staff behind iOSinspires.me will do their best to promote your site.

Here are some of their top picks:

Icons

Awaken

Awaken is the popular Mac OS X alarm clock and sleep timer that’s now available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Commodore 64

Kiloo and Manomio bring back the best selling personal computer of all time: the one and only officially licensed Commodore 64 for your iPhone and iPod Touch! This version provides an authentic reproduction 8 original games.

Voices 2

Ever wish you could change your voice to something more fun? Well, now you can with Voices!

Interfaces

Awesome Note iPad

Awesome Note is an innovative note taking application and to-do manager that allow you to combine notes with to-do flexibility.

Project Noah

Project Noah is an award-winning mobile application that helps nature lovers discover local wildlife and aspiring citizen scientists contribute to current research projects.

Billings Touch

Billings Touch takes the Apple Design Award winning time tracking and invoicing experience from the Mac and puts it in your pocket.

Websites

Lighty Website

Lighty is the most easy to use LED flashlight app. Lighty does one thing: ON and OFF (automatically set to ON when launched).

The Daily Website

Superstash Website

Superstash is an enhanced web browser allows you to quickly take screenshots of any image or page on the web, annotate it, instantly share with friends and colleagues, or file it for future reference.

Resources

If you need help with a certain task in progress of designing your iOS app, the Resources page should be your next destination. There you’ll find various resources like icons, tutorials, wallpapers, GUI elements etc.

iPhone 4 GUI (Retina)

This PSD is formatted for Apple’s retina display at 326 dpi and includes the majority of elements in iOS 4.3.

Glyphicons

Combine 3D Geometric Shapes and Flowing Lines for a Sleek iPhone Ad

Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame will guide you through the most popular icons, interfaces and websites. Here are some apps that are currently at our Hall of Fame.

Top 3 Icons

Twitterrific

Thermo

Clock Pro HD

Top 3 Interfaces

Thermo

Hunting Calendar

Dring

Top 3 Websites

Tapmates

Hunting Calendar

Barista

Last, but not least, every once in a while they host special giveaways, where visitors can enrich their iOS device with various paid applications.

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Meet iOSInspiresMe – iOS Design Inspiration and Resources

This is a guest post by Gijsbert Koren – graphic designer & founder at Mooze Design. They design mobile applications, websites and visual identities.

When you are designing an iPhone app and for what ever reason, you are not able or going to design your own tab bar icons, try these free icon sets to make your app look good! It’s for free, legal and some of them look incredible!

1. Glyphish

Most of you will know the Glyphish icon set by Joseph Wain. The set is really broad and balanced. Joseph used crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to finance the development of the icons and part of them are available for free and if you want retina sized icons, you can have them all for just $25!

2. PixelPress Icons

PixelPress has made a very beautiful set of 51 icons. The icons have a bit more detail than the Glyphish icons.

3. Default Icon

A back to basics set is available from Default Icon. The set contains 173 icons and they are all for free!

4. iPhone Toolbar Icons

The Working Group has made a nice set of 160 icons. The icons are very useful for classic utility apps.

5. App-bits tab bar icons

A small set of 64 bold icons.

Next to these iPhone icon sets, there are of course a lot of icon sets designed for other purposes that can be tweaked for use on iPhone.

If you are looking for fast success in 640-816 exams then join today to explore complete 642-437 resources and pass 640-553 certification on first try. A person can choose 646-578 & 642-974 for his easiness.

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5 Essential Icon Sets for iPhone Applications

Jason Amunwa is a marketing Macgyver, with experience creating innovative campaign strategies, designing creative executions across multiple channels, and most of the stuff that happens in-between, for brands big and small.

It’s probably safe to say that touchscreens as a method of interacting with the web aren’t going away. In fact, it appears quite the opposite: most new smartphones have one now, Google’s making their own tablet, and I think ol’ Steve Jobs has managed to shift a couple…million.

Therefore I think now is a good time for us designers to take a step back from all the glassy smoothness of these devices and ponder the implications of this radically new way of interacting with our online environment. Below, I’ve jotted down a few thoughts on design practices that we’ll likely be seeing a lot more of as site owners begin reorganizing and redesigning to welcome our touchy-feely visitors. You’re welcome!

Things are going to get bigger

Unless you're like this guy, you probably can't press just one pixel

Imagine for a minute how many pixels you could fit on the tip of your fingers – that’s approximately the number of times less accurate touchscreen users are, compared with the single-pixel precision of mice. This is one of the fundamental differences between these two input methods that radically affects how we must design our user interfaces.

Buttons, links and other interactive elements must now be large enough to be easily pressed on the first try. Typography will therefore also need to expand in line with the rest of the interface, or else look dwarvish by comparison. The spread of copy & paste functions among smartphones (starting with Android, and recently arriving at some of the lesser known handsets) will also require larger typography, in order to be comfortable.

“But what about fixed widths and the fold?” echoes your agonized cry. “All these supersized elements and text will push everything down!”. Well, a peculiar quirk of touchscreens’ very nature means bye bye worrying about these – but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Dropdown and gimme 20

Breaking News: In touchscreen-land, the “hover” state doesn’t exist – there is either no contact at all, or contact with a fingertip. Some more advanced touchscreens register variable amounts of pressure from a finger, but these are far from being in widespread use for the time being. The primary triggering mechanism for that staple navigation element – the dropdown menu – is simply not viable for touchscreen users, meaning that for all its ‘magical’-ness, you can’t easily navigate many websites’ content on the iPad or indeed any other touchscreen device. How, then, can we compensate for this in our UI designs? Some ideas:

• “Pop-opens“: hidden menus that appear after a long press on a UI element – kind of like a ‘sticky’ dropdown menu
• “Drag-opens”: sliding menus that the user manually pulls open like a drawer, to access the info or elements within. These are nice, because return users can drag it partially open to only reveal the info/element that is needed, thus saving screen space overall.
• More focused navigational structure: the spread of touchscreen devices may force website owners to ask themselves what’s really important to have in their top-level navigation, and which pages can be consolidated, to trim down the number of sub-pages they need to cram into hidden menu tabs
• Drag & drop, and easing behaviors: since we’re increasingly able to manipulate digital objects in much the same way as physical ones, users will expect them to behave similarly in the digital space - our hunter-gatherer instinct is in full effect as we physically sift through objects that have either been read or are not relevant, in order to reveal the valuable info.
• Contextual navigation: do all your users really need the ability to jump from one end of your website to the other at all times? Perhaps a more dynamic navigation element that adapts to suit the context of their location within your website is a better use of the screen real-estate, instead of inflexibly offering the same static set of choices regardless of their current page.

I multitouch myself

Multitouch is truly a fork in the road for website owners that won’t happen for a while, but will happen eventually as the technology becomes more pervasive. Consider this: mouse users have just a single point of interaction, whereas touchscreen users can have between 1 and 21 points of contact with the screen, depending on their flexibility (and degree of perversion).

Apple is forging ahead with user interfaces for octopi - can YOU afford to be left behind?

Granted, until multitouch becomes a standard feature across all touchscreen devices, any UI functions that take advantage of it will have to be luxuries, but it’s worth considering how much it potentially speeds up a user’s interactions with your website, and the interesting possibilities it opens up to designers.

Interaction via gestures is also an avenue to be aware of, e.g. flipping through a series of consecutive pages using a swipe of the hand. We see these types of gestures built into the operating systems of touchscreen devices, but how long before websites begin to take advantage of them?

The fold, and liquid vs fixed widths

Remember when I said forget about the fold and fixed widths? If you replied ‘yes’, then you’re obviously ignoring me. Forget about them. Mice were built for the vertically-emphasized nature of the web – scroll wheels and the pushing/pulling action of vertical scrolling were more natural with mice, therefore web interfaces evolved to emphasize vertical movement. In addition, the web was primarily consumed by desktop PCs and laptops, with their comparably standardized screen resolutions.

Bruce once said about liquid web layouts "Be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup."He also beat wholesale ass.

Things are different now – with the rapid rise of web-capable smartphones, it’s like the wild west out there. Not only do the screen sizes differ across each handset manufacturer, but recent phones can display in either portrait or landscape modes! The upshot is that there are now too many possible screen resolutions for us to feasibly pick a reliable fixed width, and one solution is to adopt liquid layouts that conform to whatever sized screen the user is viewing our pages with.

An alternative is to start using *gasp* horizontal scrolling in web design, allowing touchscreen users to flip through information from left-to-right in much the same way as with a book. Heresy, I know, but hey, it’s a new world we’re living in, folks.

You put your right hand in, your right hand out…

Between 70 and 90% of the world’s population is right-handed, meaning that those with tablet computers are likely going to be holding the device with their left hand. It’s therefore entirely possible that we will see a shift in sidebar navigation placement from the left to the right, for quicker access than reaching all the way across the screen. Just sayin’.

In Conclusion

Touchscreens and the mobile web just made designers’ lives a lot more complicated, BUT it’ll be our creativity and ingenuity that sets the standards of the next generation of touchscreen and gesture-driven user interfaces. That’s like, some crazy Minority Report stuff – how cool is that?

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The Tangible Web: Thoughts on Designing Websites for Touchscreens

This series is supported by Appboy – the most popular social outlet for mobile app lovers. Find out more about Appboy and be sure to check out their blog.

There are dozens of social media services available with hundreds of apps to support them. Figuring out just which apps might be useful can be a challenge.

Hopefully I can help. I’m not a Social Media guru, but Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs are a part of my job on a daily basis. With only a couple of exceptions, I use all of the apps I’ve listed here on a regular basis, depending on what I’m working on or looking for.

Official Apps

When it comes to mass social media sites, there are really only three that I connect to on a regular basis, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Each of these services offers an official iPhone app and for the most part they’re pretty good at doing what the service was originally created to do.

Facebook – Free

The official Facebook app provides easy access to your Facebook account. The grid interface gives you easy access to key areas that you might be looking to explore. Push notifications let you know when you have new messages or other details. Overall really easy to use and great for managing your primary Facebook account.

Twitter – Free

Tweetie 2 was regarded by many as one of the best twitter clients for iPhone. Well now it’s been bought by Twitter, had a couple of little tweaks made and it’s official. It’s still a great app, with a nice clean interface and easy navigation for one account.

LinkedIn – Free

This is the only app I use for LinkedIn. As soon as you open the app, you can easily see anything that requires your attention (new messages, etc.) that you have not responded to. The app also allows you to easily download contacts from LinkedIn into your address book.

Multi-service & Multi-account Feed Management (Twitter and Others)

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got more than one account, not just for Twitter, but for other services too. In fact, when it comes to Twitter apps, I actually have about a dozen on my phone, some I use more than others.

TweetList for Twitter – $1.99

A simple Twitter client that manages multiple twitter accounts. The clean interface is great and this app is really great for lists, which, in my opinion, is one of the greatest features that’s been added to Twitter.

Seesmic – Free

I don’t use the web or desktop version of Seesmic, but I do find the iPhone app quite handy. It’s great for quickly navigating between several Facebook, Twitter and Ping.fm accounts very easily. It doesn’t get too bogged down in features for each feed, whis is why I like it, it’s very quick and works well.

Brizzly – Free

Brizzly offers a nice simple iPhone app that works nicely with the Brizzly.com web service. I particularly like the “News” tab where stories and trending topics are explained by other Brizzly users.

HootSuite for iPhone – $2.99

HootSuite is my go-to web app for Twitter account management. The iPhone app gives me access to all of my tabs and feeds from the web version (I have over 30 columns/feeds) in an easy to sort through fashion. A lite version is available for free if you’re just looking to try it out.

Handy Apps for Facebook

For me, Twitter is mostly about information sharing and written content. Facebook is where I share more media content with Friends and Families. It’s also a repository of contact information.

VideoUp for Facebook – $0.99

It does what is says – allows you to upload video content to Facebook from your phone. Of course this only works for the iPhone 3Gs.

SmartSync for Facebook – $4.99

Sync all of your friend’s information to your address book, including profile pictures. Keeping your contacts up to date just got easier.

Facebook PixSter – $0.99

Easily upload pictures to your Facebook account. That’s it.

Blog Management on the Go

Most of the time when you’re writing a new post, you’re probably going to be sitting down in front of your computer. But what about when that great idea strikes and you’re nowhere near your computer? Maybe you just want to check in and moderate comments, or see what other contributors are up to. There are apps for that.

WordPress – Free

The official WordPress app gives you access to any WordPress blogs that you’re a part of. The app does allow publishing directly to the web, however in my experience it is best suited to drafts, particularly with my fumbling fingers. I actually started this post using the app.

TypePad – Free

The official TypePad app, if your blog(s) are on the TypePad Platform. I haven’t used it, but it seems to be well received and get good feedback.

iBlogger – $9.99

As iPhone apps go, this one is on the pricier side. If you’re a serious blogger though, iBlogger gives you the capability to do just about anything with a blog post that you might want. It really is a comprehensive blogging tool for your iPhone.

As ever, there are limits to how many apps we can include. I know there are more great ones out there, and would love to hear your thoughts on which apps you use for your social media management. If I’ve helped you find even one app that will help you, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.

header photo Martin Cooper – Inventor of the Mobile Phone – by Mark Berry

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14 iPhone Apps to Help Manage Your Social Media Accounts on the Go

Hot off the heels of Steve Jobs’ scathing post regarding Apple’s decision to keep flash off of the iPhone OS come reports that the Cupertino fruit company may be facing an inquiry from either the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission. In this week’s re-cap we look at this story and other happenings from the last week in mobile tech.

Apple Facing Anti-Trust

In the most recent version of the Apple developer agreement for the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0, Apple has explicitly stated that all apps built for the new OS must be constructed using the C programming language or one of the variants (C++, Objective C). This means that those developers who had planned to develop their apps using another language they are familiar with and then leverage one of the many tools out there to help translate that code into multiple formats to allow cross platform app creation are not likely going to be able to include iPhone or iPad in their list of devices.

It is this new language in the developer agreement that has prompted the talks of an investigation. Is Apple in their right to deny developers the option of writing apps in languages other than what the company specifies? We may know soon enough. According to the New York Post, the FTC and the Department of Justice are presently negotiating which of the two will be leading an anti-trust inquiry into the current situation. For more details, check out the coverage from the following sources:

• cnet news
• New York Times Blog
• PC Magazine
• Newsweek Blog

The Wizard of Apps

While Apple has gone to one extreme and limited app development to just one programming language, Nokia has gone to the other extreme, creating their own app wizard that will effectively allow just about anyone to create an app. The Ovi App Wizard allows a user to create a mobile application with their Twitter, Facebook, Blog or really any other RSS feed and then publish the app to the Ovi store.

Nokia is way behind the game in terms of apps available for their smartphones, and while this may be a way to substantially increase the number of apps, it certainly doesn’t seem like a step towards improving the quality of content.

Yes I’m a Board Game Geek!

While this may not be that exciting to all of you, it certainly ranks in the top stories from the mobile world for me. One of the best games I’ve ever played is coming to the iPhone. No, I’m not talking about a game that I used to play on the computer or something from some other electronic gaming system. This one holds a special place in my home games cupboard.

If you haven’t heard of it, I highly recommend you purchase Carcassonne. The original version is available in great game stores the world over and soon you’ll be able to purchase it for your iPhone and iPad.

Have You Made Your Reservation?

Millions of others have. OpenTable, the popular online restaurant reservation system has now made over 3 million reservations for mobile device users. While this still isn’t a huge percentage of the total bookings that OpenTable is responsible for (over 24 million), It is an impressive number. With an average check value of $50, the mobile side of OpenTable is responsible for driving over $150 million in revenues to restaurants all over the world. Not bad.

iPhone Shipments Up, But…

The iPhone is certainly hot, with sales of the device in the first quarter up more than 130 percent over the same quarter last year, but the iPhone is still nowhere near number one. When it comes to smartphone sales, the market is still dominated by Nokia, followed by RIM’s BlackBerry devices in the number two spot. The most recent sales figures show that Apple has gained some market share, but obviously apps aren’t everything to the end consumer.

Apple in the Crosshairs

It’s happened before and it will certainly happen again. Apple is being sued for patent infringement. Nokia has announced that it is filing suit for infringement on five of the companies patents that it says Apple is violating with the iPhone and iPad 3G. Apple and Nokia have a history of legal action against one another going back to October of last year. For complete details of this suit and to get a recap of others, check out ZDNet’s coverage here.

That’s all I’ve got for this week, let me know what I’ve missed. Keep up with news throughout the week by following Appboy on Twitter.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

Six Essential Tech News You Might Have Missed

This series is supported by Appboy – the most popular social outlet for mobile app lovers. Find out more about Appboy and be sure to check out their blog.

Keeping up with what’s going on can be tough, especially in an industry that is changing rapidly. I know that’s it’s something I struggle with, so this little bit is my way of trying to keep myself abreast of the mobile space, and hopefully my wading through hundreds of articles every week can help you get perspective without putting in quite as much time. Here are the top 10 mobile industry news items from last week as I see them.

Palm Acquired by HP

Palm’s WebOS, possibly the best mobile operating system, accompanied by a very good phone in the Palm Pre, may live on. Last week a deal was announced that will see HP purchase Palm at a price of $5.70 per share. For the news story, check out the Yahoo Finance coverage. ZDnet provides some perspective on the impact this deal will have on the mobile space.

Apple Acquires Siri

Siri touts itself as the digital personal assistant, currently available for iPhone and iPod touch. The app allows a user to make a speech command and the software then does its best to solve the query, whatever it might be. For Apple, this move means they now have an in house product that is capable of web search and more. The Telegraph and eWeek both provide some additional details. Apple moving into search in this manner will definitely make thing interesting, particularly with rival Google.

iPhone 4G Debacle Continues to Make News

The “discovery” of the iPhone 4G has resulted in yet more news as authorities are now checking into all the details of the series of events that led to the Gizmodo reveal of the device. On one side, the individual who found the phone and turned it over to Gizmodo for $5,000 has been identified and probably regrets ever getting involved. On the other end, Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen had his home raided by authorities who seized equipment. Gizmodo is considering suing the police. Will Apple sue Gizmodo?

HTC Agrees to Pay Microsoft a Royalty for Android Phones

That’s right, in a deal announced last week, handset maker HTC has agreed to pay software giant Microsoft every time an HTC phone with the Android OS is sold. Why would they pay Microsoft when Android is a google product and is open source? Because Linux, the open-source operating system on which Android is based, may infringe on Microsoft Patents. What will this mean for other handset manufacturers who are using Android, will they all require patent agreements to avoid getting sued by Microsoft? Visit The Register for this story and others regarding mobile patent suits, they make for some interesting reading.

Opera Dives Into E-Mail by Purchasing FastMail.fm

Recent statistics from StatCounter suggest that Opera Mini is the number one smartphone browser, with 24.6% of the market. The company is now diving into cloud-based e-mail with their purchase of FastMail.fm.

Android Market Hits 50,000 Apps

Apple’s closest competitor in terms of mobile OS capabilities has achieved a milestone with respect to their app store, the Android Market. With the peek a couple of weeks ago at new phones from Dell, as well as other great handsets running Android, it is possible that Android just might take over iPhone in the long-run, but it could be a long time.

Apple & Flash, Steve Ends the Debate

If there was still any question of whether Adobe’s flash would ever make its way onto the iPhone, it is likely safe to say the answer is no. Last week Jobs posted a note on the Apple website in which he outlined six reasons why Apple has taken issue with Flash. For a breakdown of the post, read this article from PC Magazine.

RIM Provides Sneak Preview of New OS

BlackBerry OS 6 will be the software for the next gen of BlackBerry smartphones. It includes multitouch capabilities, but is still designed to work well on non-touch screen devices. It also includes a WebKit enabled browser, which should improve rendering of websites which didn’t work well on BlackBerry in the past. While the OS is being promoted as more consumer oriented, Internet Evolution suggests it is still business as usual. Check out the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlO8KMv7Bx4&feature=player_embedded

TomTom’s GPS App Store

As Google continues to bring free navigation tools to mobile devices, how do GPS device manufacturers compete? Apparently they create their own apps stores. We’ll know just what that will look like from TomTom towards the end of the year.

Nokia Announces Latest Smartphone

The next phone from Nokia will be the N8, running on the most recent incarnation of the Symbian OS. With some impressive specs, including a 12MP camera that shoots HD video, the hardware is great. What remains to be seen is whether the phone, which will be available in the third quarter of 2010, will be able to compete in the US smartphone market against the iPhone and a host of ever more impressive Android devices. Check out the details as covered by PC Magazine.

That’s it guys, let me know in the comments if we overlooked anything!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

10 Essential Tech Stories You Might Have Missed