Free posts

There is a plethora of various photo apps around, both for taking pictures and for sharing them on social networks. But Instagram is an excellent solution for both, and it's elegant enough to make you reconsider your current workflow. Personally, I've just been taking pictures with the standard camera app and uploading them with the official Twitter app. But Instagram adds the ability to make your photos artistic with a wide number of filters, add location and social network data to them in the app itself, then share them with any number of social networks, from simple stuff like Twitter and Facebook to more complicated connections like Flickr and even Tumblr.

The app is completely free, too, and they're planning to keep it that way. There may be add-ons for filters in the future (or, I presume, some advertising on the actual Web pages created by the pictures), but how awesome that a great app and service like this appreciates the value of free.

Like I said, you probably already have a workflow for taking and sharing pictures from your iPhone, but Instagram is good enough to make you give it a shot anyway. It's a free download and is available on the App Store right now.

Are you a Mac user who is excited about Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 devices? Or a Mac user who is being forced against your will to put away your iPhone and use the company-supplied Windows Phone 7 phone (and forgive me if that one sounds redundant)?

Well, you're in luck. As promised, Microsoft has issued a beta version of Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac. This software allows you to sync certain selected content with not only "WinPho7" devices, but Microsoft Zune media players as well.

The download is available here -- according to the notes you'll be able to "Sync music, photos, videos and podcasts from your existing iTunes and iPhoto libraries to your Windows Phone 7." Rock on, WinPho fans!

[via Mac Rumors]

Like a few commercial television networks before it, PBS has launched an iPad app designed to stream the network's content to your iPad on demand. PBS for iPad is available for free right now on the App Store, and it has full streams of lots of classic shows. There's some new content as well -- Circus is a show that's been created just for the iPad app itself. But there's also some Masterpiece Theater and Julia Child in there, as well as other well-known standbys of the government run and donation-supported broadcasting network.

The app also has schedule information about what's on TV, as well as a DVR-style feature that will let you resume shows when you pause them while watching. There's no iPhone or iPod touch version yet, but a (slightly different) version will arrive on those devices later this year.

Looks like a great app, and you can't argue with the price of getting all that content on the iPad completely for free. At the risk of sounding like a pledge drive, we'll say that if you enjoy the app here in the US, maybe look into giving your local affiliate a nice donation in return.

Apple's favorite software vendor has just released a preview of a new content creation and publishing tool called Project ROME. Project ROME is an Adobe AIR application that can either be run as a Web app in your browser or downloaded and installed on your local machine.

Project ROME is mix of old-school desktop publishing, graphical editing, animation and content publishing. You can create everything from business cards, to newsletters or even full websites within the tool and then publish the content to your favorite social networking site or to an Adobe hosted account. It comes with a lots of built-in templates, or you can create your own and share them through Adobe.

The new app can run on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher or on Windows. For now the preview is free, but it looks like Adobe plans to charge for the app at some point. Adobe has created both a home and business edition and a second version for education. Check out the videos in the second half of the post for a preview and grab it to try out for yourself at Adobe.

[via Macworld]

This is a fascinating little stat that echoes a few anecdotal statements I've heard before. Nielsenwire is claiming that a full 32% of iPad owners have never actually downloaded an app on the device, with another 5% only downloading free apps. That's a pretty crazy figure when you think about it -- with all of the functionality offered by third-party software on the iPad, almost a third of users have never, ever taken advantage of any of it. And I've heard similar things from developers in the past -- that a surprising amount of their users have either never downloaded an app on their iPhones at all, or have only ever downloaded free, jailbroken, or pirated apps.

With the news yesterday of the Mac App Store coming, you wonder if we'll start seeing this same thing happen on traditional computers -- lots of users who only stick with the default features, and never explore any farther into what their devices can do for them. In a way, it's disappointing that these folks aren't taking full advantage of what the iPad can actually do. But then again, it makes those customer satisfaction stats all the more impressive -- 91% of users love their iPads, and only 68% of them have downloaded apps for it. That 23% in the middle must be really easy to please.

Update, October 25th: If you agree that the 32% number sounds high, you're right -- Nielsen has updated their stats and said a big mistake was made. Turns out the number is much closer to 9%. Still significant, but not nearly as surprising. The original article above remains here for posterity.

[via MacStories]

• Square Enix has dropped the price on retro titles Final Fantasy I and II. The games were originally released at US$8.99, but to celebrate more widespread localization, the apps have dropped down to $3.99. Great games, nice price.
• ESPN's Scorecenter XL app for the iPad has gone completely free. The app provides news and scores from around the sporting world -- it was $4.99, but the network has apparently decided to go free for good.
• And Firemint is putting its Real Racing title on sale for the iPhone next week -- as of September 30, the app will be available for just $2.99. That's a rare occurrence for them. It's the first time this game has ever gone on sale, probably because the title has been so popular. It offers a quality racing experience, with full Game Center integration.