Extra Future

Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.

Blog Archives

Tag: apps

  • The Evolution of the YouTube Progress Bar (2005-2025)

    Over on Kottke there’s a fun visual history of the YouTube progress bar. From the comments: the design evolution of iTunes.

  • Introducing TapMeasure – Occipital’s new measurement / room CAD generation tool

    TapMeasure is a whole new way to build a 3D model of any room in a few seconds. It works with Apple’s new ARKit framework, and adds Occipital’s special sauce to provide artwork alignment, quick measurements, and the aforementioned generation of (SketchUp-compatible) CAD files. It’s free, and will ship as soon as iOS 11 drops later today.

    See [the website at tapmeasure.io][tapmeasure].

    For my part, I got to push some iOS code to this one! As well as helping out with some of the graphic design and UX, I was also able to design and edit the tutorial videos and the launch trailer embedded above. We have the luxury of one of the most seasoned computer vision teams in the world here, and I think it shows.

    [tapmeasure]: https://tapmeasure.io “TapMeasure”

  • Knock

    [Knock twice on your iPhone to unlock your Mac.][link] $3.99 on the App Store, and a really nice site that commits one major sin: Hijacking the user’s scroll momentum to guide them through the sections. This is happening a lot these days.

    We did some demos of this at Occipital for the [Structure Sensor website][structure], based (as I assume Knock’s is) on Apple’s animation-heavy [Mac Pro site][mac]. It *looked* really cool, but in the end it never “felt” right. After demoing it to a friend of mine his only feedback was “Just let me scroll.” It’s good advice.

    [link]: http://www.knocktounlock.com/ “Faster and safer than typing a password. Just Knock. For iPhone + Mac.”
    [mac]: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ “Apple – Mac Pro”
    [structure]: http://structure.io “The Structure Sensor”

  • Panic Releases Status Board

    Remember when we all lost our shit over Panic’s awesome in-house status board? [Well they released it on the App Store today.][link] $10.

    You can even [create your own data sources by following this doc][docs]. I’m sure the docs will be available as a non-PDF soon enough.

    [link]: http://panic.com/statusboard/ “Status Board”
    [docs]: http://panic.com/statusboard/docs/diy_tutorial.pdf “Tutorial PDF”

  • Introducing Twitov

    [Twitov is a generative text bot that takes your Twitter history file and uses it to make new Tweets based on your own personality.][link] It’s free, all you need is your Twitter history file.

    [link]: http://twitov.extrafuture.com/ “Twitov”

    Twitov is an Extra Future 6-hour project that ballooned into a week-long one. Whoops. Previous ExFu 6-hour Projects include [Kove][kove] (a community-editable Choose Your Own Adventure Game), [Liblr][liblr] (Something like Mad Libs for Twitter), and [Kreskin][kreskin] (An app that generates album covers for fictional bands based on real Flickr images, Wikipedia, and famous quotes).

    [kove]: http://kove.extrafuture.com “Kove”
    [liblr]: http://liblr.com “Liblr”
    [kreskin]: http://kreskin.extrafuture.com “Kreskin”

  • Aptus

    Sounds like a good deal to me:

    >[“Aptus is a dedicated browser that lets you preview, edit and screenshot your responsive site at any size from mobile through to large desktop.”][link]

    Just $2.99 of your Earth dollars.

    [link]: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aptus/id510487565?mt=12 “Mac App Store – Aptus”

  • Instapaper for Android

    [“Finally.”][link]

    I use a fairly cheap Android phone, because I don’t want to give ATT or Verizon any of my money, and I hate cell phone contracts. Instapaper was one of the apps I use everyday that was really hampered by the lack of a native client. Looks like that’s fixed, now.

    The interesting thing here is that Marco Arment, Instapaper’s founder/developer, didn’t code the Android app himself. He hired an Android development house to do it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more iOS-only apps go this way if it works out for him.

    [link]: http://instapaper.mobelux.com/ “Instapaper for Android”

  • Coda 2 Released, 50% off Today Only

    I’ve been using Coda 1 every day for 5 years to do my job. [Coda 2 is great][link], already, and couldn’t be more worth the price ($49.99 today!)

    If you’re a fan of the alternative CSS syntax [LESS][less], there’s already [a Coda 2 syntax extension for you][ext].

    [link]: http://www.panic.com/coda/ “Coda 2”
    [ext]: https://github.com/bbpaulwelsh/Coda-2-LESS-mode “Coda 2 LESS Mode”
    [less]: http://lesscss.org/ “LESS”

  • Coda 2

    [Panic finally announces version 2.0 of Coda. Available May 24th, 2012.][link]

    I’ve been using Coda 1.x every day as my primary tool for web development since 2007. To say I’m excited about this is an understatement. As you might expect, the product website is gorgeous, innovative, and informative.

    Hint: Type the backslash key to make the full video pop to the front.

    Also: Woah. This is like all CSS3 transforms on a video element.

    [link]: http://www.panic.com/coda/ “Coda 2”

  • PNGPress

    [PNGPress, my PNG image compressor for Mac OS X, is available on the Mac App Store worldwide.][link]

    >Good developers know that making images for the web is a constant battle between quality and file size. Great developers use PNGPress.

    Try it and see for yourself. Here are some promo codes:

    WHW94KHHE6A4
    TNEMH4JKHP3M
    HXJEMTHHPLHW
    3XFE7AWMYJMX
    6ALNJWWWYJJ4

    [link]: http://extrafuture.com/code/pngpress/ “PNGPress | A PNG Optimizer for Mac OS X”