My first word processor could not even display lower case letters on the screen. You had to use the control keys to move the cursor around the. To get bold or italic type on a printer you had to insert control characters in the text. In 1984, the Macintosh’s bit-mapped screen revolutionized word processing with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) displays. Then came PostScript and laser printers.

From WordStar, WordPerfect, and Word to MacWrite there have always been plenty of word processing choices.

Word Processing Has Changed

But a lot has changed since those days. Word processors are no longer as central to the computing experience. These days, many people rarely use dedicated word processing software. Some have decided that the text-processing capabilities of their email clients give them everything they need. Others have gone even further and rarely write anything longer than a text message or a tweet – much less anything that needs to be printed and formatted.

However, there are still good reasons to use word processing software. Email and texting are poor places to archive your thoughts. Sometimes you need to create polished, professional documents –in print or online, with complex formatting and fonts. Good word processing software lets you do that, but I wanted to see how well today’s word processors stack up to the new challenges of creating printed and online documents across multiple formats and platforms.

How We Tested Them: Step One

For many years computer users battled to be able to send a file from one computer platform to another and get something that could be read and used. The good news is that compatibility has gotten much better. Mostly you can make that happen today.

In preparing for this article, I sent by email an article containing that I wrote in OpenOffice Writer running on Windows 8 to my wife’s Windows 7 computer. With only the slightest hesitation, her Office 2007 Word opened the file – including a picture. I then saved and emailed that file to my Mac mini running OSX Moutain Lion. Office 2011 on the Mac opened the file without any problems. QuickWord running on my original Kindle Fire also opened the file without any challenges. To finish the quick test, I opened the same file using Google Docs on Firefox running on Xubuntu Linux.

Successfully moving that file moving through all those different platforms shows how well things can go, but it is not always that easy. Including some of the newer uses of word processors - such as creating Web pages and PDFs - things can get a little more complicated.

More-Comprehensive Tests

To look deeper, I decided to test 10 word processors’ ability to create Web pages and work with HTML.

My first test involved typing a ~250-word document using each software package. (I avoided copying and pasting to make sure that I did not introduce extraneous characters. Those extra characters can wreak havoc with how well a word processor converts a document into a simple Web page.) Next, I inserted a JPEG image with a width of 1600 pixels. Finally I created a numbered table with six items and printed each document on my HP6100 Photosmart printer (purchased in the Fall of 2006).

The first test was designed to see the results someone who is not an expert in the software could expect without trying to adjust image size. The results were not pretty.

I was disappointed but not surprised to see the wide spread of image sizes in the printed results. Despite 20 years of word processor progress, you can’t assume that your word processor will consistently print documents or create Web pages that look the way you want them to. Apparently, some modern word processors assume that they know more about what you want to create than you do.

(You may also have noticed that the table lists only nine software packages. Draft, a cloud-based tool described as “version control for writing” is not designed to print directly. It uses Jon Gruber’s Markdown language. I was able to print my Draft document by using a neat $3.99 Mac utility called Marked. For the record the image in the Draft document printed out at 4 inches by 7 inches.)

And that’s just the image size. Trying to use a word processor to create a complete Web page led to even more inconsistent results – with image size and placement all over the map.

Three tries with Word 2013 and I could only create a website with no image. It also took three tries before OpenOffice created a website. Word 365 could only create an iFrame, which is certainly not what I wanted. Pages on the Mac no longer even has an option for HTML. 

Perhaps just as bad, even the ones that were able to create Web pages came up with ones that look wildly different, as you can see in the four screenshots below. 

This one was created with Draft:

This one was built using Google Docs:

The third was produced using Microsoft Office 365:

The final one was developed using Libre Office:

If nothing else, these results should make it clear that while word processors have indeed come a long way, we are still far from being able to expect consistent, repeatable, compatible performance from the various choices on the market. I plan to look at more aspects of the modern word processor in upcoming articles. 

In the meantime, it’s almost enough to restrict all your writing to Twitter.

You can check out the free customer preview edition of the cloud-based Office 365 at Office.com.preview now.

1. ARM Power

What To Like: Works on ARM-based and Intel-powered Windows 8 devices, as well as Windows 7 machines. And Ballmer promised the ARM release is complete, “not a junior version.”

What Not To Like: Won’t work on Windows Vista or Windows XP.

What To Worry About: Office for the Mac will get an update with Office 365 and SkyDrive, but there's no word on when and if Mac users will enjoy all the new features in Windows 365.

2. Touch the Magic

What To Like: Touch controls and finger navigation are far more integrated than ever before. And Office 365 supports pen commands as well.

What Not To Like: Not everything is touch-enabled. A pen? Really?

What To Worry About: All this touch stuff doesn’t do much for traditional computer users.

3. At Home and At Work

What To Like: Ballmer promised Office 365 offers “productivity for people at work and at home, in small business and large business.”

What Not To Like: That’s a lot of masters to serve. And on Monday at least, Microsoft's emphasis was clearly on homemakers and students, with enterprises playing second fiddle.

What To Worry About: To some extent, the needs of various groups simply don’t align all that well - it remains to be seen if everyone will get what they really want.

4. All About Windows 8

What To Like: Office 365 is designed to “embrace the design concepts and principles in Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Metro.”

What Not To Like: If you don’t like Windows 8, you’re not going to like Office 365, either.

What To Worry About: Windows 8’s Metro interface looks great on tablets and smartphones, but may not hold up on giant desktop displays. How will Office 365’s interface look and work on such a variety of platforms?

5. Service First

What To Like: Ballmer said that Office 365 was designed “from the get-go” to be a service first. When you’re streaming it, you can start using it even before the download is complete.

What Not To Like: Not much, except that all features may not function until the stream is complete. And this thing is likely to consume lots of bandwidth.

What To Worry About: Ballmer promised that “you can still buy the software and download it… Office will continue to be a product. That’s not going away - certainly not at this stage of the game.” What did he mean with that last part about "not at this stage..."? 

6. The Cloud Remembers

What To Like: Office 365 is designed to use the cloud to remember what you were doing, what your preferences and favorites are, who you’re working with, and what docs you’re working on whenever you log in.

What Not To Like: The offline capabilities may not be as robust, and depending on whether you’re using a computer or a smartphone, you may not be able to continue the work you were doing.

What To Worry About: While Office 365 may not be as intrusive as Google Now, Microsoft is going to learn an awful lot about you and what you’re working on.

7. Hiding the Ribbon

What To Like: The clean new interface hides the much-maligned ribbon interface by default, but the ribbon is still available when needed. You can even “pin” it if you want to keep it always available.

What Not To Like: Change is always hard. Just when you got used to the ribbon, it’s no longer front and center.

What To Worry About: Even if the new interface is an overall improvement, will you still be able find the commands and functions you want to use?

8. Markup Heaven

What To Like: Vastly improved markup and annotation features make it easier for multiple users to draw directly on documents - either in real-time meetings or during the document editing process.

What Not To Like: Not all the markup processes are the same on all Office apps.

What To Worry About: On the one hand - heavily marked-up, annotated and commented documents can quickly turn into unreadable messes. On the other hand - will anyone actually use pen-based markup tools?

9. There’s a Movie in Your Document

What To Like: In-line multimedia in various Office 365 apps puts videos and images right inside the app.

What Not To Like: Waiting for that stuff to download from the cloud when you actually want to see it.

What To Worry About: Straight text ain’t good enough no more.

10. Everything’s a Platform

What To Like: Office is now a platform, with its own API and app store for programs; the store even supports ratings and prices. And Microsoft promises that enterprises will be able to control access to apps and even maintain their own “stores” of approved and internal choices.

What Not To Like: Office 365 hasn’t been released yet, but nonetheless there aren't many apps in the store yet.

What To Worry About: Initial examples include live Bing Maps and Suggested Appointments. How difficult will it be for third-party developers to create apps, and what will be their incentives? And who gets blamed when the IT department shuts out the apps that users actually want?

11. Save the Cloud

What To Like: Saving documents to the cloud - Microsoft SkyDrive - is now the default, making backup and sharing/collaborating/posting much easier.

What Not To Like: Some people are bound to want those documents when they don’t have Net access.

What To Worry About: Will users remember where they put their documents?

12. Skype Gets Integrated

What To Like: Skype integration adds new ways to communicate with contacts, and includes presence info so users know who is available.

What Not To Like: Not everyone uses Skype.

What To Worry About: Do you really want the loser in the next cubicle loudly video-chatting all day long?

13. Search Speeds Up

What To Like: Faster search capability now includes documents, people, discussions, videos, reports, etc.

What Not To Like: Nothing - search is a good thing.

What To Worry About: Will all those results make it harder to find what you’re actually looking for?

14. Read Mode

What To Like: Word’s new Read Mode employs auto-resizing to make it easier to consume content on devices of various sizes. You can even change the background to suit lighting conditions. It can also embed multimedia for inline play.

What Not To Like: Is this a solution in search of a problem?

What To Worry About: Read Mode also lets you add and view comments with presence enabled, so you can quickly connect with the commenter if they’re available. Suddenly, this doesn’t seem like “reading” any more.

15. Presenters Get a New View

What To Like: In PowerPoint, the new Presenter View combines current and upcoming slides, presentation time and notes to make it easier to see where you are in your presentation.

What Not To Like: PowerPoint is still stuck in the slideshow metaphor. As Scott Fulton points out, we’re rapidly moving to a video world.

What To Worry About: The easier and more powerful that PowerPoint gets, the worse the presentations are that people build with it. Also, how do you get to that Presenter View again?

16. Outlook Catches Up

What To Like: New Outlook features like inline replies, mark-for-followup, previews, connections to social networks, and “People Cards” listing contacts' notes, organizations, memberships, social feeds such as Facebook, Linked In, Yammer and so on.

What Not To Like: A lot of these features still feel like imitations of Google’s Gmail.

What To Worry About: What’s the appropriate role of an email program in 2013?

17. Outlook Goes Social

What To Like: Outlook has new hooks to bring in data from Facebook and LinkedIn, and the program now supports multiple email accounts.

What Not To Like: Outlook also includes a Weather Bar. Yawn.

What To Worry About: In corporate settings, all that social media info could be seen as distracting - or even create compliance issues.

18. Peek at What’s Next

What To Like: Outlook’s new Peeks feature lets you hover over various areas of the screen - the calendar at bottom, for example - to get a quick intereactive look at what’s there.

What Not To Like: How do you “hover” in a touch interface?

What To Worry About: You have to remember to hover to see what’s there.

19. Excel Bulks Up with New Features

What To Like: Excel’s clever Flash Fill feature should save time entering data. Power View pulls together maps, charts, graphs and other data types into a single place, and dynamically updates them all as you change the data. Quick Analysis gives you an instant menu to functions based on the range of cells you've highlighted - without using the Ribbon!

What Not To Like: You'd better check what Flash Fill enters before sending a spreadsheet to your boss. 

What To Worry About: How much of Excel’s power did most users actually take advantage of? Will Office 365 raise or lower that percentage?

20. Radial Goodness

What To Like: OneNote’s new Radial Menu offers a slick and circular way to choose fonts and colors, as well as ways to insert and edit elements such as tables.

What Not To Like: Available only for the OneNote note-taking app - not the core Microsoft Office applications.

What To Worry About: Great for touch users, not necessarily as useful for mouse drivers.

All images by Fredric Paul for ReadWriteWeb.

You can use Kippt to browse and follow users’ public link lists, which can be about anything from iOS development to costume design to bartending. Every list has its own Web address, so you can bookmark it and check back for updates, or you can subscribe by RSS. You can also follow public lists inside Kippt itself, which lets you save links you like to your own lists.

Kippt users can also follow each other, subscribing to all of someone’s lists because they trust that person’s taste. But if your new designer friend - for some inexplicable reason - also maintains a curated list of Justin Bieber videos, you can unsubscribe from that one individually. It’s the same selective subscription model that makes Pinterest work so well, and it’s something Twitter, Facebook and Google+ sorely lack.

Finding & Following

Kippt has a new Discover page for finding interesting lists to follow. It has a curated staff picks section as well as popular and recent lists. The list title is the most prominent info, along with the list maker’s avatar, and below are three example links from the list.

Kippt members now get a bright, clean profile page showing a round picture, short bio, social links and all their public Kippt lists. You can also see which Kippt users a person is following as well as a list of their followers. On this page, you can follow and unfollow this person as well as his or her individual lists.

List pages are simple, with a title and description on the side, as well as the contributor(s). Public Kippt lists can be collaborative, so more than one person can clip things to it. Kippt users can comment on public links, so a list can become a hub for topical conversations.

The list page shows links in chronological order. The title contains the link, and the source can be seen below. The person who clipped the link can add a description, which can be as brief as a note or as involved as a formatted blog post. A Kippt list can be a sort of meta-blog, where the contributor clips interesting things by browser extension, bookmarklet or email and adds a personal reaction.

Your Own Links & Lists

Your home base in your own Kippt account is the inbox view. Since you don’t always have time to decide on a list or clean up a clip, you can just save links to your inbox and organize them later. All your lists, private and public, are shown in the sidebar, with little locks to indicate that a list is private. You can change a list from private to public by editing it, and you can easily share the list out to any other network.

Private lists let you keep track of links all to yourself. This was the core of the service when Kippt first launched. It was an easy tool for people who like to archive things they discover on the Web, and it still is. The new social features of Kippt make it into a community for people who share that passion for digging for Internet treasure.

See also: The Life of Links: An Interview With the Maker of Kippt

If you get in the habit of saving links to Kippt and then using the sharing buttons to send them to Facebook or Twitter, you’ll never lose track of that cool thing you shared when you want to find it again. The new Kippt is also just a great way to find interesting links, even if you don’t create your own lists at all.

Why Use Kippt?

We share links for all kinds of reasons. We want to inform or entertain our friends, and we want to be reliable, trusted sources of enjoyable stuff. Kippt is a community for refining those skills. It’s also a tool for keeping track of the links you like most. And unlike Facebook, Kippt makes it easy to take all your links with you when you leave.

When you share a link on a social network, you’re giving its other users something to do. That’s the most valuable thing in the world to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit and any other site that makes its money by showing ads next to things its users have shared.

Kippt doesn’t want your data. It makes its money by charging a small fee for power-user features. Facebook and its ilk will do whatever they like with your links in order to squeeze more ad revenue out of their sidebars. If you use Kippt, you get to keep your links as they were when you found them, and you can click a button to send them to your Facebook friends if you so desire.

Kippt is also open to integrations with other applications, so hopefully we can look forward to ‘Send to Kippt’ buttons in read-it-later applications, RSS readers or Twitter clients. An indie developer has built an iPhone app called Clippt, and it's available now in the App Store for $2.99.

What's New?

We were underwhelmed with the previous Chromebooks because Chrome OS didn't feel ready to replace other PCs yet, and the cheap hardware didn't help. But Chrome OS improves over time. That's the whole point. Since Google is your system administrator, Chrome OS gets better with age. When Google speeds up its own Web services, your computer gets faster.

That works up to a point. The machine still needs to perform capably. The models released today will live up to the standards of any light-to-moderate user.

VP of Engineering Linus Upson points to four areas in which Google wanted to improve Chrome OS devices from the last generation. The first was speed, which means improving JavaScript and WebKit performance - the OS is a Web browser, remember - and taking full advantage of the hardware's graphics capabilities. "Our goal was to build a delightful product where no one ever said, 'This isn't fast enough,'" Upson says.

The second improvement had to be the touchpad. Unresponsive trackpads cause instant frustration, and the last generation of hardware wasn't good enough to be enjoyable to use. Upson believes the new one is "as good or better than any other one out there." In practice, it's still not as responsive as a MacBook, but it's definitely good enough for this laptop's price point.

Third was more filetypes, and this is a particularly interesting update. Chrome OS can now work on Microsoft Office files natively. You don't have to convert them to Google Docs. It's also better at handling photos, slideshows and offline media, including music, movies and books. As of today, the OS still relies on the "file drawer" for local storage, but in "about six weeks," the new Chrome OS build will use Google Drive as its main file system, with the local disk serving simply as a cache for files you need for offline access.

Finally, Chrome OS needed multitasking. It's no longer a full-screen browser. It's a windowed operating system that feels like any other, but it's actually easier to multitask because all windows are in the same application. For a lifelong user of another desktop operating system, this was the biggest pain point in Chrome OS, and it's solved now.

The Hardware

The Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 is a little gray laptop, which makes you think of Apple for a second. It has a 12.1-inch, 1280x800 display, which puts it right in between the two MacBook Air sizes. It's heavier, though, at 3.3 lbs., and the case is much bigger, but the design has a little bit of a swoop to make it seem smaller. Instead of brushed aluminum, it's plastic. It feels less precious than an Apple device.

It has black chiclet keys, but they don't look or feel like an Apple keyboard. The keys aren't as smooth, and they're slightly bigger. The trackpad is also rougher and smaller. It's not as responsive as an Apple trackpad, but it's not bad at all. I found the Chromebook's hardware to be totally comfortable for a full day's work.

Google's specs give it six hours of battery life under continuous usage. It lasted about four and a half hours in my normal usage tests. It has speedy 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, but it also has a gigabit Ethernet port, and you can step up to a 3G modem, too. It has a much nicer (or at least more Google+ Hangout-optimized) HD webcam than the MacBook Air, two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 memory card slot and a widely compatible display port. The Wi-Fi version is $449, and the 3G version is $549.

The Samsung Chromebox Series 3 (there is no Series 1 or 2) is a similar computer in a small, black desktop package. It has two versatile display ports compatible with HDMI, DVI and VGA. With a little adapter, the Chromebox drove my 27-inch Apple Cinema Display, no problem. It has Wi-Fi, Ethernet and six USB 2.0 ports, and it's Bluetooth 3.0 compatible. It even has a DVI single link output, so you can use it as a media box for your TV. The price is right: It's $329.

Both computers have 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core processor, but Google won't say exactly how fast. The Chromebook is 2.5x faster than the last generation according to Google's own tests, and the Chromebox is 3.5x faster. I thought about clocking it somehow, but I decided not to bother. Who cares? If the computer works, it works. We know this isn't a machine for professional video editors. If it works for its intended audience, the specs don't matter.

Here are the two new Chrome computers next to an iPad for size comparison.

The Experience

Chrome OS works just fine as a standalone system, but it works best if your account is set to sync your Chrome settings. That way, everything about Chrome will be the same for you on any computer, as long as you're logged in. It easily handles multiple accounts, too. If you want your new Chromebook to launch with your entire desktop browser already loaded, make sure you turn on sync in your Chrome settings first.

I had never used Chrome OS before testing these devices. I had used Chrome, though. Chrome is the most popular browser in the world at this point, which secretly gives the new Chrome OS devices a huge install base. Getting started was absurdly easy. I basically entered my Wi-Fi password and Google ID, hit 'Enter,' and I was done. All my bookmarks, passwords, extensions and history filled in before my eyes. I wasn't even logged out of anything.

The default Chrome OS desktop:

Even if they don't use Chrome, there are hundreds of millions of Gmail and Google Docs users whose first Chrome OS experience will be mostly complete from Day One. And it's no big deal to start fresh with a new Google account. Honestly - and this is coming from a lifelong, unwavering Apple-only person - I set my Gmail-using grandma up with a new iPad a couple weeks ago, and this Chromebook would have been easier.

The biggest difference between Chrome OS and the desktop you're used to is that it uses browser-based apps instead of native apps. But frankly, only geeks would care about the difference, and they might not even notice. "The distinction between a Web app and a native app for most people is very blurry if it exists at all," says Caesar Sengupta, director of Chrome OS. I wouldn't go that far, especially on mobile, but in my tests of Chrome OS for the desktop, he's mostly right. The Chrome Web Store even has a section dedicated to apps that work offline now.

The biggest difference between Chrome OS and other desktops is actually an advantage: When I launched Chrome on my Mac after testing the Chromebook, all my new apps were already there.

I use Chrome for work, and my major test case was to see if I could log a day's work for ReadWriteWeb using nothing but the Chromebook. The only thing missing was Skype, although there are at least browser-based apps for Skype IM. Otherwise, I didn't feel the least bit restricted. In fact, the constraints were kind of nice.

Blogging is a good test case for most kinds of text-based office or school work, so if most of what you do on your computer involves typing and making documents, you'll have no problem at all. It's impossible to overstate how much more user-friendly Google Docs is than Microsoft Office, and the best part is that you can now merrily edit your colleagues' Office docs without them ever knowing the difference.

When I needed a clean plain text editor to write my posts in Markdown, I found Just Write in the Chrome Web Store. When I needed to crop and convert images for my posts, I used Aviary. They worked great. I barely even had to learn how to use them, and they both floated right to the top of my simple Chrome Web Store searches for what I needed. They appear in your browser as usual and can be launched from the new tab page, but the icons also show up in the Chrome OS launcher screen.

There are quick-launch icons for the Web, Gmail, Docs and so on in a strip along the bottom of the screen, and there's also a grid view identical to the new Launchpad in Mac OS X. But they're all just different shortcuts to get you to the same places.

Outside of work, there are HTML5-built Chrome apps for light video editing, audio recording and even casual 3D adventure games like Bastion. On the Chromebox, these can run on huge displays without a hiccup. Let's be clear: The software and hardware are not as powerful as on a Mac or many Windows PCs, but these things will smoke your typical netbook.

If you're a hardcore gamer or professional musician, this won't be your main machine. But if your computer use is mostly casual, Chrome OS doesn't lack anything.

The Verdict: Look Out, Windows

Chrome OS is dead simple. It's simpler than a Mac. It's arguably as simple as iOS if not simpler, but it has the true multitasking of a desktop. As intuitive as iOS is, a new user still has a lot to learn. Ask my grandma. But someone who uses Chrome or even just Gmail on the desktop hardly has to learn to use a new Chromebook at all.

The price cuts right across the iPad market. For people who were hesitant to buy an iPad because they thought they might need desktop capabilities, this new Chromebook is right there waiting. It won't replace a Mac, unless you really feel that your Mac is too much computer, but it might convert some first-time buyers. It seems like a lifesaver for students.

For consumers, the Chromebox is pretty strongly positioned as well. It's $150 cheaper than a Mac Mini, and it's faster than many compact Windows PCs in the same price range (although without the spacious internal storage). A Chromebox might make sense as a home PC for people who use Chrome elsewhere.

For enterprises who are tired of fighting with their Windows IT environment, the Chromebox is awfully tempting. You'll read more about that in Joe Brockmeier's review on ReadWriteCloud.

The manufacturers of cheap netbooks should be worried unless they have Chromebooks coming out. Upson says that the goal of Chrome OS is explicitly to "get rid of the annoying bits of Windows." Since Google manages the OS for you, you don't have to fight anymore.

"We've spent so much of our lives fighting with computers," Upson says, "and there are five billion more people coming online. We don't want them wasting their lives fighting with computers."

There will be more big Chrome news this year, too. As far as the OS itself, Upson says "you're going to see improvements every six weeks, and we're far from done." The first six-week update will make Google Drive the primary place to store files in Chrome OS, so that will be a big one to watch for.

But there are more devices on their way, too. Upson says there are more OEM partners coming in this year, as well as "a number of different form factors." We know that tablet-ready versions of Chrome OS have been in the works for years, but let's not get carried away. The point is, Chrome OS is ready for the market.

We've had multimedia messages (MMS) for years, and we're used to static images showing up alongside text messages. Most phones can handle audio and video recordings, too. But those take a long time to send and receive, and they require the recipient to click 'play' to see the message.

Spicing up a text message with an animated GIF is way better, and MyFaceWhen makes it incredibly easy. Wave hello, smile or spin around in circles, and instead of text, a still photo or a poop emoji, your friend will instantly see your animated greeting playing in loop, like a cartoon. 

If you can get over the app's name and somewhat offputting icon, MyFaceWhen is phenomenally easy to use. It launches surprisingly fast, which is crucial if you're trying to record something spontaneously. It launches straight to the camera in video mode, and a big "Record" button sits in the center of the screen. You can flip between the front and back camera as usual.

Record your video and then tap the center of the screen again. You'll see the preview as a video. If you like it, hit the big yellow "SAVE" button, and the app will convert the video into a small GIF in seconds. Then it takes you to a grid view of all the GIFs you've recorded, with the new one shown first. In a couple taps, you can copy it to your clipboard. When you copy it, it even gives you a handy button to switch over to the Messages app. All you have to do is paste a GIF into a text message and send it. Recipients with iPhones and many (but not all) other smartphones will see it pop up in a familiar chat bubble with the animation looping away.

Whether it's hilarious pet antics or just you waving hello, communication by animated GIF makes everybody involved feel warm and fuzzy. If you're in a situation where you need to send video quickly - a sporting event, a momentous occasion, a protest in the streets - GIFs will upload much faster than video files.

And you don't have to send your GIFs via text or iMessage. Since they're copied to the clipboard, you can send them as email or any other GIF-friendly way.

The GIFs produced by MyFaceWhen are quite small and highly compressed, but this is an advantage. They're big enough to get the point across but small enough to send quickly without eating up your data plan.

Other animated GIF apps, like Gifture, go after the Instagram vibe. They let users apply filters, be artsy and share to the Web and social networks. MyFaceWhen is more personal. It expands the range of emotions you can express in an iMessage conversation.

The app is free on the App Store, so it's definitely worth a try.

Engagio's dashboard breaks out articles, sites and other links from all your social networks into separate panels, and lets you reply, share and like straight from there. But the best part of this section is the "context" button.

The button doesn't really have a halo, but it should. It puts an end to that feeling that you're seeing a snippet of something that's relevant to you, but you don't know what it is. If a message part of a larger conversation, click "context," and the whole message expands. This is a great way to discover things that are interesting to people in your networks.

Inbox

Engagio's original component is its inbox. As of today's update, you can now add unlimited, multiple accounts for all of your connected services. Those include the usual social networks, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Foursquare. It also follows conversations centered around blogs, connecting with Tumblr and Disqus, as well as with Hacker News, a popular news aggregator for people in the tech industry. It also connects to your Google contacts, so you can track those email conversations.

There's also a new Chrome extension for Gmail users, which brings some of Engagio's powers into the inbox where millions of people already live. It gets people used to the idea of an inbox for all conversations.

Contacts

The final key component is the contacts section. You can use Engagio for what Mougayar calls a "deep follow," identifying friends from various networks and following their conversations, not just your conversations with each other. By inviting users to connect on Engagio, you're saying, "I like your stuff. Will you join Engagio, so I can see more of where you hang out online?"

This is a fairly intimate connection, as social media connections go, and Engagio is great about handling that. You can follow strangers or friends, but you don't have to reveal personal contact info until later. For example, revealing email addresses to one another is a sort of Engagio right of passage. For those Internet friends who seem to be constant sources of new and amazing things, Engagio provides a way to open up each other's worlds.

Correction: The last paragraph originally stated, "You have to deliberately connect to someone and reveal your email address to them in order to be able to watch each other," which was a slight misunderstanding of the feature.]]> http://readwrite.com/2012/05/15/engagio-gives-the-web-a-context-button http://readwrite.com/2012/05/15/engagio-gives-the-web-a-context-button Product Reviews Tue, 15 May 2012 15:02:00 -0700 Jon Mitchell No one has figured out the right formula for the weather app yet. Phones come stocked with basic forecast apps with cartoony icons, but today's mobile devices have more potential than that. One ambitious effort called Dark Sky recently hit the App Store, and I teamed up with weather guru and former RWW webmaster Jared Smith to test it out.

Dark Sky is a Kickstarter-launched app for iPhone and iPad that zeroes in on the basic use case for a weather app on a mobile device. It uses your current location by default, but you can view the weather anywhere (U.S. only for now). Dark Sky does away with the complex modeling (and guesswork) involved in forecasting the weather and focuses on the question you ask of your phone as you're walking out the door: Is it raining right now, and will it rain soon?

Its UI is totally novel. On the phone, it shows a timeline with a graph of the precipitation over the next hour. Below, in huge text, it says what's happening now and what will happen this hour. A tab at the top reveals a cool, animated radar view that gives a general sense of the precipitation, and you can scroll back and forth in time to see what it predicts for the short term. It's a pretty powerful interface for a quick little phone app. On the iPad, the radar is visible from the main screen.

"For our initial release, we're just focusing on precipitation and getting that right," says Jay LaPorte, one of the creators of Dark Sky.

"Most meteorologists use complicated mathematical models of the weather, which works fairly well over medium intervals, but don't tell you what's going to happen in the short-term." Dark Sky leaves the far-out forecasting to the geeks. "We take a statistical approach that they would find horrifying (in fact, several have emailed us expressing as much), but which works really well for short time-spans: we only try to tell you what the precipitation (if any) will look like for the next hour."

Since the app is all about precipitation, it adds a little entertainment when your skies are clear. "CLEAR SKIES ARE BORING," it says in sunny yellow letters. "Tap here to view a storm in Smicksburg, PA," or wherever else the action is.

For the basic question of whether to bring an umbrella with you, Dark Sky's interface gets everything right. All the right information is presented in all the right places, and the radar view is lovely. But how does Dark Sky do in the field?

Is It Accurate?

Jared and I each tested the app for a few days in our own environments. The "NOW" section was pretty accurate, but the short-term forecasting was uneven. You can even watch the trend lines fluctuate as the app makes its calculations.

We compared the radar images to RadarScope a serious weather radar app that Jared trusts. For simple, slow-moving weather systems, the images were comparable. However, as Jared pointed out, Dark Sky's radar colors are unusual. "I can tell this wasn't designed by meteorologists," he says.

The usual green, yellow, red scale is softened, replaced by a blue-to-violet scale that fits with the app's color schemes but seems to understate severe weather. The radar's prediction model also gets noticeably less realistic as the weather gets more severe.

In fact, it's extreme weather that gave us the most concern. There were serious storms in Minnesota the night we tested, with tornadoes on the ground and everything, and Dark Sky's readout said "NOW: Rain." It's one thing to build the crazy physics of unpredictable, high-velocity storms into the app, which is out of scope for Dark Sky right now. But why not just add the word "Tornado!" Why not put a warning icon on the screen?

"Dark Sky doesn't make any effort to identify and compensate for chaotic storm behavior," LaPorte says. There are no meteorologists on the team. They're just avid programmers going after an everyday use case. "Extreme weather warnings are definitely on our radar (pardon the pun), though, and they tie in perfectly with one of the features we're working on for our 2.0 release: push notifications."

As of now, Dark Sky's interface is wonderful, and its short-term precipitation tracking is worth a try. We do hope that it will incorporate severe weather notifications, even if it doesn't model the prediction of intense storms. Dark Sky concentrates on the right question - "Is it going to rain?" - but people are going to count on weather apps to keep them safe, too.

Dark Sky for iPhone and iPad is $3.99 on the App Store.

Here's the problem with apps: They create too many different ways to do the same thing. When you want to do something basic like write a short note, you have to take another step. "I want to write a note. Okay, which app should I use?" That step takes up time and brainpower, distracting you from what you're trying to do.

And what if the app you want is on another page or buried in a folder? What if you launch one app and then change your mind and decide to use another? The iOS home screen looks like a physical thing, a board with big buttons on it. That makes it intuitive, but it can also be limiting. The "badges-on-a-table" metaphor of iOS can waste a few seconds at a time on these decisions, and those add up.

Fortunately, it's possible for app developers to work around this problem using URLs to create links integrating each other's apps. Greg Pierce, president of the independent iOS app shop Agile Tortoise, loves this challenge. When developing his first app, the popular dictionary Terminology, he worked with Marco Arment to develop the x-callback-url specification. This allowed Instapaper users to look up words in Terminology, and it standardized a way for developers to build all kinds of integrations.

The latest Agile Tortoise app, Drafts for iPhone, solves the badges-on-a-table problem for text, one of the most fundamental ways we use our phones.

Write, Then Act

For an action the length of a note (or a tweet), there's no faster way to get it out than through this app. It launches to a new, blank note each time. Drafts saves your notes in a list, and they can be found quickly with full-text search. As you're writing, you can also check definitions through integration with the iPhone version of Terminology.

"I wanted it to be text-centric, not file-centric," Pierce said. "No filenames or titles, no folders to think about... and also no lists to start with. If I've got something to say, I don't want to have to think about where to put it first."

If you write in Markdown, Drafts has even more goodies. You can preview your formatted notes and copy or email your Markdown as HTML straight from the action menu. And whether you like a monospaced font, serif or sans, or you want different color options, there are a few themes to choose from for Drafts' basic interface to make sure your writing environment is just right.

Now that your note is out of your head, you can relax and decide what to do with it. That's where the action menu comes in. In version 1.0, you can tweet a note with one tap from any of your Twitter accounts. If you don't want to use the built-in iOS 5 Twitter function, you can send it to Tweetbot or the Twitter app. You can email a note or copy it to the clipboard.

Version 1.0.1, which is already under review by Apple, will add sending to the popular task managers OmniFocus and Things. In a few weeks, for version 1.0.2, Drafts will get 'Send to Dropbox,' and that addresses one of the most prominent concerns.

Sending vs. Syncing

There's a crowded world of text editors available for iOS, and syncing has become a requirement. The whole advantage of writing with thumbs on a connected device is that you can sync effortlessly with your computer and pick up from there later. Some apps have incorporated iCloud sync, which saves your work inside the app you used and syncs between, iPhone, iPad and Mac versions.

But Dropbox is the real workhorse: It's cross-platform, it appears in your computer's regular file system and any app can access it. For plain text in particular, Dropbox is key to working flexibly.

I admit, I panicked when I saw that Drafts didn't have Dropbox sync. I would have to keep two text apps on my home screen, so I could paste Drafts notes into Byword and sync them. That seemed inconvenient until I started using it.

I found that I didn't need to sync most of these notes. They were just thoughts I wanted to capture quickly. I could decide what to do with them - if anything - later. It's easy enough to copy and paste them into a more permanent place. But when the 'Send to Dropbox' action arrives in Drafts 1.0.2, it will be even easier. I don't actually want to sync some of my notes, but I'll soon be able to sync the ones I need with one tap.

It Scratches An Itch

"It really was an app I built to scratch an itch," Pierce said. "There were a few of those things, most particularly having a quick and easy way to tweet and/or email without getting bogged down in a timeline or inbox, that drove me to do it. I wanted it to be quick, in-and-out for jotting things down, and give me a decent set of ways to output that text elsewhere."

Pierce was not the only one with that itch. It took him by surprise. "I thought it might be a little too niche to interest a broad audience," he said. "I honestly am somewhat overwhelmed by the attention Drafts has gotten." That's a good problem for an independent developer to have.

You can scratch your itch for $0.99 on the iTunes App Store, and you can check out the other Agile Tortoise apps at agiletortoise.com.

I travel the Internet in fairly Apple-obsessed early-adopter circles, so I went with the stylus I'd seen recommended most often: the Cosmonaut by Studio Neat. Studio Neat made the Glif camera mount, one of the most celebrated iPhone peripherals around, so it seemed like a safe bet.

The Cosmonaut arrived in short order in spartan, Space Race packaging. It's fairly wide to hold like a pen. It's black, grippy and dense, the exact same length as an iPhone. The business end exhibits the capacitive properties the touch screen requires: a soft touch that gives way gradually to pressure, just like a fingertip, but more precise.

I quickly found to my surprise that the stylus is a satisfying cursor for normal iOS activity. Launching apps, tapping around, pull-to-refresh, all the usual finger gestures felt pleasantly precise and snappy with the stylus. That's not its intended use, of course, but it's an enjoyable way to change up one's routine.

Unfortunately, it got frustrating as I tried to use the stylus for its real purpose. I am no gifted draftsman, but I found the stylus rather blunt and imprecise in my drawing forays using Paper. There's no question it was more accurate than the finger. Drawing with a finger on a glass screen feels clumsy and dully painful. But the stylus didn't feel like much of anything.

Since writing is my actual trade, I decided to give handwriting a shot. I was not thrilled with the results. It's very difficult to write small enough using this stylus, but perhaps the wide grip is the problem. There may be better styluses for writing on the iPad, and I'd happily take recommendations.

The Cosmonaut was still vastly better than writing with the tip of my index finger.

"If you see a stylus, they blew it," Steve Jobs once said. Surely that wasn't meant to demean Apple's Newton, a misunderstood but beloved device that paved the way for iOS devices. But after iOS, it was a different world. Apple's second mobile operating system nearly eliminated the friction between the software and the physical human interacting with it. It felt like touching and manipulating the actual pixels. A stylus would just be an inert barrier in between.

I did feel this barrier in my experiments, but I wouldn't say it's the fault of the stylus. My biggest takeaway from the experience is that the iPad itself is the clumsier interface. A stylus is one of the first tools humans ever invented. We have thousands of years of honed experience writing and drawing this way. We feel it with remarkable precision. It's the capacitive glass screen that's the inert barrier.

Writing and drawing depend on physical feedback, and the glass provides none. The abstraction is there when we touch the iPad with our fingers, too. There's no feedback at all, so the software creates illusions of feedback with sounds and images. Those are less compelling with a stylus rather than hands directly on the glass. But don't blame the stylus. A flat slate of glass is not a tactile work environment. It's great for abstract work, but not for real handiwork.

Not yet, anyway. It's too bad those haptic touch feedback rumors didn't pan out for the new iPad. But we know Apple's already thinking about the evolution of the computer as a tool in the hand.

Still, even the most tech-savvy people have to admit it when things work better the old-fashioned way.

I'm working in an empty conference room today, unable to partake in the national pastime of skipping work on baseball's Opening Day. I'm in a cinderblock building where radio reception is next to impossible, and the local radio station that carries Red Sox games, which I can normally access through Stitcher, has a game-long blackout on online streaming in place.

So far, however, that has not been a drag, thanks to MLB At Bat 12, an iPad app I downloaded just before the 1:05 p.m. start of the Red Sox-Tigers game in Detroit. The app is free, although subscriptions that unlock all of the features (including the ability to listen to every Major League Baseball game) run $2.99 a month or $14.99 for the season.

The first inning just ended but it's safe to say I'd pay as much as $2.99 per game, and I consider myself a casual sports fan at best. I'm listening to the call of the game by WEEI's Joe Castiglione and Dave O'Brien with crystal-clear quality. While I'm opting for the hometown coverage, I can also grab the Detroit feed and the Boston feed of a Spanish broadcast of the game.

I'm not going to spring for the $24.99 per month it would cost to watch the game on MLB.TV (I am, after all, supposed to be working). But I caught a few innings of the service's video broadcast of last night's St. Louis-Miami game and would gladly pay the premium if I thought I was going to want to watch a lot of games on the go.

I may also be willing to pay that extra coin if I had already upgraded to iPad 3. The biggest change between At Bat 12 and last year's At Bat 11 is that the newer version is enhanced for iPad 3's enhanced retina display.

Other features of At Bat 12:

• The app and the basic subscription are free. Basic subscribers can watch the game of the day and get access to MLB Gameday, the real-time box score that has also been updated for iPad 3.


• The app let's fans take "live look-ins" to in-progress games, regardless of blackout restrictions.


• The league-wide scoreboards have been redesigned to give better visuals and more up-to-date information.

I'm sold, and given the static-free reception and real-time statistics through two innings, I suspect I'll not only be using this At Bat 12 on the go but at home in lieu of my terrestrial radio.

Oh, and of course...Go Sox!

If any of that sent shivers down your spine, prepare to rejoice. You never have to do that again. Revisu is out of beta and into the wild, and you will be so glad. Instead of vague email comments and countless files in crazy formats, your team can just go to one Web address for the whole process.

Revisu is a dropbox for documents you share with a team. It makes it easy to leave comments and propose changes to a document and track them over many versions. Team members can comments alongside the document or pin a comment to a specific place in it. It's an ideal way to leave comments on a visual design or text document, but it's hardly limited to those use cases.

The makers of Revisu tell an even scarier version of that attachments story. A major U.S. retail chain prints many millions of copies of its newspaper ad insert. The document is designed by a huge committee. Its contents are passed back and forth via email endlessly in horrible and huge Excel files.

When it's time to approve the final design, the whole team gathers in a room with the mockup projected on the wall. When someone in the room suggests a change, the team can't just note it on the projected draft. Someone has to open up the horrible email attachment Excel file again and note it there. In text. In a spreadsheet. Wouldn't we all be better off avoiding that grinding process? Revisu makes it simple.

Revisu understands all your typical file types, including Microsoft Office files, PDFs and images. The team is working on adding more, starting with project files for all the Adobe applications (it's pretty good at Photoshop files already). While Revisu has been big with designers and architects in the beta phase, the team is even talking about adding video capabilities.

Each document has a shareable Web address, so instead of attaching a file to an email, you can just paste in a link. Any file Revisu can understand, it will display in the browser. Gone are the days of incompatible versions of Microsoft Office. Everyone on the team can see the exact same document in their browsers, and all they need is the link.

Yes, Google Docs can do in-line comments and import Microsoft Office files and PDFs. But you can't put comments on the precise part of a design you're discussing. And good luck convincing Google to support Adobe Fireworks files. On the downside, Google Docs does have actual editing capabilities for simple file types like text documents. You can make the changes proposed in the comments, which Revisu can't do. But for design projects in Photoshop, that would be impractical anyway.

It would also be great if the Revisu workflow made it easy for the team to actually download edited versions of the documents in the correct format. The tool is still focused on making and sharing comments, rather than implementing them. But the major pain point for teams - that awful email process - is solved by this centralized place to comment.

You can sign up for Revisu now and see whether it's for you. The basic account is totally free, and there's a great reason for that. Freelancers who use Revisu for client work bring it with them. They say to their next client, or to their employer when they go in-house, "Hey, I use this great tool called Revisu to track revisions. Can we use that?"

The free account allows 10 simultaneous projects and up to 256 MB of storage, plenty of space for a small team. Big organizations can pay for more space. Revisu even integrates with Basecamp to help with project management, and there are more integrations and an API coming soon.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock

Consequently, files of all types live sprawled across our local devices, our email inboxes and several clouds. We need a new layer to the file system that spans across all of these places. The folks at Found are building one, and Mac users can sign up now to try it. Found lets you find, preview, drag and drop files from your computer, your Dropbox and your Google accounts instantly, as though they're all in one place.

What's Wrong With Spotlight?

Many Mac people use Spotlight as a quick way of finding files and applications, rather than browsing through a Finder window. Typing ⌘-Space brings up Spotlight's search box, and then you just start typing. You can find local files pretty quickly this way, but there are a few problems with it.

Spotlight is not great at showing you what a file is or where it is. You just have to go by the file name. But more importantly, it only searches your local disk. Gmail attachments and Google Docs won't appear. Dropbox files will appear if you have the program installed locally, but they still won't display nicely.

Found solves both problems. Apple may eventually fix the previews, but it will probably never go out of its way to help users of Google's cloud. But this is the way we work now. We have files of different kinds spread out in different places, but we need the same access to them all.

How Found Works

Found lets you log into one Dropbox account and as many Gmail and Google Docs accounts as you want, including Google Apps accounts for work. Locally, it searches the folders within your home directory: /Applications, /Desktop, /Documents, /Downloads, /Movies, /Music and /Pictures. It doesn't yet index your entire computer, but it looks in all the places files usually go.

The key to Found is speed. The app indexes your files across all the places they live, so no matter whether they're on your disk or in the cloud, files pop up instantly. Found's magenta arrow icon sits in your menu bar when it's running. To launch or hide Found, double-tap Control-Control. It slides open from the left side of the screen with the cursor in a search box that says, "What are you looking for?"

As soon as you start typing, files begin to appear under the tabs for each of the places you've added to Found. A number on the tab shows at a glance how many results are on your Mac, and in your Gmail, Dropbox and Google Docs.

You can scroll up and down in the list, which shows an icon for the file type, the file's name and location, and how recently it was updated. Highlighting a file instantly pops up a big, useful preview of what it is, even for media files. You can drag and drop the documents right from the Found menu to wherever you're working.

What Found Will Find Next

Found's runway is a $1 million seed round from NEA and Rembrandt Venture Partners. Its co-founders, CEO Stephen Brady and Chief Product Officer Vijay Sundaram, see a big gap in the way our computing platforms work. Found is a pragmatic tool that accepts the reality that the big tech companies will never work seamlessly together. But it also offers an exciting vision of digital work where we can always find and execute the file we're looking for, no matter where it's saved.

Found will come to more systems than the Mac, and it will add more services to search. But it's already quite useful, and the five-person Found team has big plans for it. Mac users who want to try it out can sign up at foundapp.com and follow @found on Twitter. The public release of Found is scheduled for May.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock

I mostly use Facebook to network with writers, artists and people in the arts, so I curated my profile on The Creative Finder with the same imagery. In this updated version of the site, a search for "kittens" brings up both profiles and images containing that keyword.

The Creative Finder also provides a main image-only news feed, which you can sort by recent, popular or "images by me."

Much like on design-focused site Pinterest, users can easily "love" something (on Pinterest, that would be a "repin"), and it will be added to their feed and the public feed. This is one easy way to keep track of the imagery that you enjoy in one single space.

On Facebook, if you're a creative person who wants to save images that you like or are inspired by, there's no real way to do that, unless you download the images or share them directly to your self-curated wall.

For a creative type, it's slightly easier to keep track of images on Pinterest - just repin them to your pinboard. On The Creative Finder, much like on Pinterest, if you find a user whose images you enjoy, you can easily follow their feed.

The Creative Finder provides information on each creative person's portfolio, making it easier to follow and far more contained space-wise than the free-wheeling Facebook, the streamlined Twitter and the image-centric Pinterest.

Case in point: Arlen Schumer's profile shows a complete gallery of her work, along with easy ways to follow, message, visit her website or download the PDF. It also shows news of the artist's latest lectures, a home address and a phone number. A messaging system makes it easy to send a note, keeping it inside this professional network.

Overall, the site is not nearly as busy and fast-paced as Facebook or Twitter. Rather, like a coffee shop where artists hang out, it's slow-paced and easy to chill at. Think quietly flipping through magazines and chatting with folks who come and go throughout the day.

Image via Shutterstock.

Here are five road-tested apps for getting things done on an iPad. It's not meant to be a complete list, but it's meant to be a flexible one. These are tools that are not tied to any particular method of working. They'll help any digital worker stay sane and accomplish things, and you might find that the iPad is a surprisingly nice device to use for them.

Paper - free

This app just came out last night, but it blows away other drawing apps out there because of its clear interface and relative ease of use. If you need to brainstorm in free-form ways or sketch out ideas, this is the way to go.

It's still not the most natural thing in the world to draw on a touchscreen, but this app's brushes are careful and precise. It comes with a free fountain pen, and you can buy more brushes for $1.99 via in-app purchase.

The key to Paper is its natural gestures. You swipe up from the bottom to access your tray of tools, and you can swipe them out of the way for a full-screen, blank canvas to work on.

Paper for the iPad from FiftyThree on Vimeo.

Undoing mistakes is a hard problem for iPad drawing, and Paper nails this. It uses a two-finger "rewind" gesture to let you step back smoothly in your drawing. Just wind it counter-clockwise to undo and clockwise to redo.

If drawing with fingertips still looks weird, there are styluses out there. I've ordered a Cosmonaut stylus by Studio Neat for testing, so look forward to that review if you think you might want a stylus for your iPad.

Byword - $2.99

Byword is a plain-text editor, which is the most flexible way to write. You never have to worry about which version of Microsoft Word the other person has or anything like that. It syncs with Dropbox or iCloud, so you can have access to your documents on any device. You can also export files by email or through the documents folder in iTunes. You can even print from it.

It has a nice custom keyboard that lets you move the cursor around with arrows, a very helpful addition to the iPad's keyboard. It barely has any preferences, which is a good thing. You can choose from a few simple fonts, and you can turn auto-correct and spell-check on and off. But otherwise it's just a place to write.

Byword is great just for notes or drafts, but you can also use Markdown to format your text and produce full-fledged documents. Markdown is simple, human-readable markup that converts easily to HTML. Byword does that conversion automatically. So you can put bold, italics, headers, links and images into your Byword documents, preview them and export them as HTML just by tapping a button.

OmniFocus - $39.99

OmniFocus is serious software (note the price tag). There are clients for the Mac and the iPhone as well, all of which are equally expensive for their categories. But it's an unscientific fact that OmniFocus geeks like the iPad client the best, and you don't need all three to get things done.

Many pixels have been spilt about the uses and benefits of OmniFocus, so I'll be brief. The great thing about OmniFocus is that you can manage every single one of your life's tasks in it. It is, in an extremely basic sense, a "to-do" app, but it's no mere checklist. It allows you to organize your tasks by project and context, so you can keep your chores and your work projects here without mixing them up.

A project might be something like "RWW posts," "Big report for my boss," "Books to read" or "Fixing the car." Contexts are "Work," "Home," "Grocery store" and so on. A task can have a project and a context, so the "Work" context might include several projects. Contexts can even be associated with places, so you can view your tasks on a map.

OmniFocus has a forecast view, so you can see all the various tasks you have coming up, as well as a review mode, so you can check your own progress. Yes, it's a pricey app, but I think of it as an investment in using it. If you invest your time in OmniFocus, it will pay you back in sanity and accomplishment.

MindNode - $9.99

This one is further down the list because it's not retina-ready yet, but it still works great on the new iPad.

MindNode is for "mind mapping," which is a way to outline projects or ideas using tree-like diagrams. You start with a central idea, and you draw branches to ideas that follow. You can color-code them and move them around as you work. It's great for brainstorming or planning with more freedom than a text outline but more structure than a blank page.

MindNote supports a variety of export options. You can save as MindNode or FreeMind mind map formats, as OPML data, as a text outline, as a PDF or as a PNG image. So you can use this app's particular style of outlining but still share it with anyone on your team.

Trello - free (iPhone app)

This is last on the list because it's not iPad-sized, but it actually looks and works surprisingly great on the iPad. Hopefully we'll be able to update this post soon with a full-sized iPad version.

Trello is collaboration software that is totally, completely free. In his extensive review yesterday, Joe Brockmeier said it's "as easy to use as a whiteboard and Post-It notes." That's a pretty helpful way of imagining what Trello does. Every member of the team gets a column, and that person's tasks are a stack of short notes.

You should read Joe's review for the full run-down. But if you work with a team, this is a great way to keep track of who's doing what. You can even use it by yourself for a nice, two-dimensional way of keeping track of a few projects at once.

It's best in the browser. You can get to it through Safari on the iPad, but it's a little too clunky and slow to be useful. But the free iPhone version does the trick on the iPad.

What other apps do you use to work from your iPad? Share them in the comments.

Bean counting has never been our strong suit, which is why we studied our12c and TI instruction manuals like a boss back in the day. As technology progressed, we thought our math skills on the iPhone were still pretty snappy, until we came across the Rechner Calculator.

The uber-sleek design is what draws users in, but it’s by no means the best trick up this app’s code. While most calculator app makers focused on translating the button-bopping experience to the touch screen, the Rechner embraces swipes and gestures to speed up calculation times by up to 200% — given you’ve mastered what flick does what. For instance, users can swipe from left to right to add, or reverse the move to subtract. The truly advanced stuff like dividing and multiplying, unfortunately, is less intuitive and can only be accessed via a drawer in the app. Gripes aside, it’s still a slick piece of nerd swag and well worth the dollar if you still prefer to do the math yourself, rather than beg that cold-hearted Siri to calculate the tip like a toddler.

Buy Now: $.99

The cadre of globetrotting Gear Patrol editors scour the earth discovering and surfacing the best in products, adventure, insight and design.

Enter PostPost. It has been around for a while as a Twitter search engine that actually remembers things that happened more than a couple days ago. But now it has a new feature called the Timeline Topline, which surfaces topics discussed by the most important people in your stream.

The Twitter search page says, in huge letters, "See what's happening right now." It'll show you that, sure. But if you're looking for something more than moments old, good luck. Twitter is working on search, buying start-ups and so forth, but we're still waiting on results. Twitter search can be useful, but it's severely limited. If you use the tools Twitter provides, tweets that are more than few days old fall off the edge of the Earth.

In December, Twitter launched its latest redesign, centered around the "Discover" tab. "Discover" shows trends, hashtags, popular and promoted stuff. It's the ads page. There aren't many compelling reasons to use it for discovering anything, especially considering what kinds of mind-numbing topics tend to trend on Twitter.

PostPost is better than Twitter itself for solving both of these problems. The search, which I've been using for a while, is especially good. It's not just that it finds older content; I think the PostPost algorithm provides more accurate results than Twitter search. Just type in a word, name or hashtag, and the results come back at lightning speed. You can also filter results by '"Everything,' 'Links,' 'Photos' and 'Videos.'

The new "Timeline Topline" feature builds on those algorithmic smarts to surface more topics to explore. It's personalized to you, unlike Twitter's Discover tab. It picks out 150 people who are most relevant to you, mixing people you mention most and people who are popular globally. The Topline displays topics in red, but it also shows via links for the people who are talking about them.

As you can see, not all the topics are clickable. But they're better than #TenAttractivePeopleIFollow, and I know who the people are, so I'm still inclined to see what @fromedome has to say about love.

Why 150? Dunbar's Number, the theoretical limit of the number of people with whom anyone can maintain a relationship. It's the same limit Path imposes on the number of friends.

This is a light discovery tool. It's not the deep-diving Twitter sonar offered by Bottlenose. But I think of PostPost as a more digestible add-on to Twitter that doesn't dispense with the past. It's simple and Twitter-like, it just does things that Twitter, for some strange reason, doesn't do itself.

Image of Henry Rollins' back tattoo via Rawfit

News.me makes iOS apps and email digests that pull in news from your social networks, and Exposé is a remarkable extension of that technology. It lets you quickly jump to the stories likely to matter to you on any site.

News.me is making reactions to the news into a social layer. Lots of services are able to digest your Twitter and Facebook streams and pull out the most popular links, but News.me is doing more with the data. Especially with the new reactions in the iPhone app, News.me provides a bunch of quick signals about what your contacts thought of a story.

The News.me iPhone app is a good place to discover new stories and sources. But I also launch it when I know there's news, because I'll immediately be able to identify which take on the story is the one I need to see.

The new bookmarklet extends that power to the Web as well. If your network is talking about any stories on a site you're visiting, you can reveal them in one click.

Not only is it a handy filter for an avid reader, it's a great reason to convince your friends to use News.me. But they don't even have to; just posting the links on Twitter or Facebook will cause them to show up in your Exposé.

You can find Exposé on the News.me/tools page.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock

"Pixable will be your mobile photo inbox," says CEO Inaki Berenguer. "So people will check their Gmail accounts, then Facebook and then Pixable." Essentially, Pixable wants to become Internet users' photo inbox - a way to see the world "through your friends' eyes."

Pixable gave ReadWriteWeb an exclusive sneak peak at today's new updates, which live for now on new.pixable.com. Pixable made some big changes to the Web version of the site layout, making it more grid-like. Previously, the experience felt closer to clicking on Facebook photo albums. Now users choose feeds from the dropdown menus of Everyone's Photos, Friends Photos and Hashtags.

Pixable connects with users' Facebook and Twitter accounts, and grabs photos from Twitter followers and the Facebook social graph. Interestingly, only 2% of tweets contain media such as photos or videos - so really, Pixable benefits the most from Facebook photos and Instagram images, many of which appear on Facebook.

Photos are the future of communication," says Berenguer, speaking as fast as any New Yorker normally would. "You don't take photos for memories, but rather to communicate with your friends. People are in a restaurant eating a salad, they post it to Twitter. They go to a concert, and they post it to Facebook. It is not that they want to keep a memory for the rest of their life - they want to broadcast their life."

Why Using Pixable as a Photo Inbox Makes More Sense

I decided to test drive the idea of Pixable as a mobile photo inbox. In doing so, I found myself most drawn to the sections "most recent photos," "top of the day," "top of the week" and "top of the month." I had not seen all of these photos in the Facebook news feed, which I usually sort by "top stories" instead of "most recent."

One interesting aspect of the Pixable photo stream: Even if you hide a user from the news feed, their photos will still show up in these categories. So, if you hide some friends from the news feed because you are not interested in seeing lots of images from them, using Pixable to see those same visually oriented friends' images actually makes more sense. In that way, the Facebook news feed could be more useful as a text and article-based feed - and Pixable is where you get a Pinterest-esque layout of only images that you can choose to share out to Facebook or Twitter proper.

Unfortunately, if you decide to tweet an image, you will have to type in the Twitter users' handle - Pixable only tells you that it's "via @pixable." Here's an example of a tweet I tried to send out from artist @ellengreeneart.

"Eighty-five percent of daily users check top of the day," Berenguer tells ReadWriteWeb. In the world of digitalized relationships, this makes sense.

Pixable discovers a user's top photos of the day by determining the number of likes, comments and tags each photo has. So, the more sharing/liking/commenting each photo has, the more relevant it should be to you. As such, Pixable ends up being more about pre-existing signals than happenstance discovery of old friends or lost ties who a user might still be connected to on Facebook or Twitter. Pixable responds to your current digital identity.

Pixable, like any other Internet tool, does not know the intricacies of that particular relationship - it only knows what data a user provides it online. Your online identity is based on what you share. In other words, you are what you share online.

Another Useful Section: My Likes and Comments

Far too often, I hear people say that they jump on Facebook, comment and like a bunch of stuff, and then leave - yet later in the day, they do not remember what they even did on Facebook. There is so much content on this black hole of a social network that sometimes it is hard to remember what actually happened. Kind of like the digital version of a blackout. Pixable organizes all the photos that a user likes and comments on on Facebook under the "My Likes & Comments" section. This is a useful and passive way to quietly gather a visual repository of inspiring images, or just an easier way to keep track of what actually happened during that Facebook spree.

Pixable integrates Twitter photos from eight different repositories, including TwitPic, YFrog, Instagram, YouTube and Vimeo. Depending on how visually oriented your social circle happens to be, they may not be as prevalent in the Pixable photo stream.

"That is why our application is so addictive," proclaims Berenguer. "You have a need to consume photos because they are photos from the people you care about."

That is, if you tell Facebook and Twitter who those people are.

If any of that sent shivers down your spine, prepare to rejoice. You never have to do that again. Revisu is out of beta and into the wild, and you will be so glad.

When I met with the makers of Revisu, they told me an even scarier version of that attachments story. A major U.S. retail chain - whose name I will spare you - prints many millions of copies of its newspaper ad insert. The document is designed by a huge committee. Its contents are passed back and forth via email endlessly in horrible and huge Excel files.

When it's time to approve the final design, the whole team gathers in a room with the mockup projected on the wall. When someone in the room suggests a change, the team can't just note it on the projected draft. Someone has to open up the horrible email attachment Excel file again and note it there. In text. In a spreadsheet. Wouldn't we all be better off avoiding that grinding process? Revisu makes it simple.

Revisu is a dropbox for documents you share with a team. Revisu makes it easy to leave comments and propose changes to a document and track them over many versions. Team members can comments alongside the document or pin a comment to a specific place in it. It's an ideal way to leave comments on a visual design or text document, but it's hardly limited to those use cases.

Revisu understands all your typical file types, including Microsoft Office files, PDFs and images. The team is working on adding more, starting with project files for all the Adobe applications (it's pretty good at Photoshop files already). While Revisu has been big with designers and architects in the beta phase, the team is even talking about adding video capabilities.

Each document has a shareable Web address, so instead of attaching a file to an email, you can just paste in a link. Any file Revisu can understand, it will display in the browser. Gone are the days of incompatible versions of Microsoft Office. Everyone on the team can see the exact same document in their browsers, and all they need is the link.

I hear you, Google Docs users. You can do in-line comments and import Microsoft Office files and PDFs. But you can't put comments on the precise part of a design you're discussing. And good luck convincing Google to support Adobe Fireworks files.

You can sign up for Revisu now and see whether it's for you. The basic account is totally free, and there's a great reason for that. Freelancers who use Revisu for client work bring it with them. They say to their next client, or to their employer when they go in-house, "Hey, I use this great tool called Revisu to track revisions. Can we use that?"

The free account allows 10 simultaneous projects and up to 256 MB of storage, plenty of space for a small team. Big organizations can pay for more space. Revisu even integrates with Basecamp to help with project management, and there are more integrations and an API coming soon.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock