Carousel and Open Source
Carousel (our Instagram desktop app for Mac) was conceived, designed, developed and released in an eight week period between client projects. How did we pull it off? By building to our strengths and utilizing available resources. Carousel is the product of hard work by good people that work at Mobelux and hard work by good people that make open source software.
We proudly implemented these open source projects in Carousel and we want to thank all the contributors that made them happen.
- Chameleon. The heart of Carousel. A clean room implementation of UIKit done by the developers over at Iconfactory. This is what displays each photo in each scroll view, allows the pushing & popping of views with a navigation stack and gives us popovers. The inclusion of Chameleon was what allowed us to rapidly develop our design instead of devote hours to hand-rolling an iOS-like framework. I cannot emphasize enough how much time and effort this saved us.
- SDWebImage. It was very important to us that as you scrolled through photos you felt like each photo was developed in front of you as it came into view. SDWebImage allows asynchronous downloading of each photo which allowed us to load photos as you scroll.
- SBJSON. Because parsing data that isn’t a .plist in Objective-C is nuts. Huge help in getting data from the API and dealing with it in a format that doesn’t drive you crazy.
- CocoaFOB. We’ve never written a desktop app before so licensing was a black art. CocoaFOB allowed us to get it done right. (Note that CocoaFOB is not yet mentioned in our about window. In the rush to release I didn’t update our string, but we will be adding it in the next update.)
- Sparkle. Sparkle is a drop-in framework that enables Mac apps to prompt for updates. Huge for installs that don’t end up in the Mac App Store.
- The Instagram API. OK, so this doesn’t technically belong in this post but I wanted to mention that Instagram built a beautiful API and gave us the opportunity to make an app that we wanted to bring to life. If you’re thinking of writing an API for your service take note of how Instagram designed theirs.
In closing, making apps that people love is very difficult. Leaning on a community of talented developers that have done excellent work in a specific area makes any app stronger, and made developing Carousel possible for a company like ours.
Introducing Carousel: The Best Way To Experience Instagram On Your Mac
All of us at Mobelux are huge Instagram fans, and while we love posting photos and checking our feed on the go, we also wanted a way to explore Instagram while we were working throughout the day on our Macs.
So today we’re releasing our first desktop app: Carousel.
Main features.
- Beautiful, vintage presentation aesthetic in a minimal desktop footprint.
- View your feed, popular photos and photos you’ve posted.
- Save photos to your Mac (drag & drop, too.)
- View full resolution photos, even in full screen.
- See likes and comments on photos with the ability to moderate comments.
- Like and comment on photos.
- Full keyboard navigation support.
- Open photos in your browser and copy a photo’s URL.
- See who you follow and who’s following you.
- See photos taken at a location.
- Notifications. Growl and icon badge.
- Four themes. Everything from Tenenbaum to St. Clair.
We’d love for you to take it for a spin. Head over to the Carousel site to learn more and download a 15-day trial!
So proud of the Mobelux team. Go try Carousel out!
Calling all beards
“Include your photo/resume, demo reel links and your willingness to grow your hair/beard starting immediately.” That Lincoln film needs your beards, guys.
(thanks, tessshebaylo.)
Steven Spielberg is filming Lincoln in Richmond, VA this Fall and they’re looking for local extras.
Pros:
- I’ve got the Civil War-era facial hair covered.
Cons:
- I’m not an actor :[
Airpush
Sounds like hell on earth.
What John is referring to is Airpush, and yes, it does sound like hell on earth. But the worst thing about a push ad service is that it’s a cure for a symptom, and the Android app market is sick.
Apparently, Android users aren’t spending money. And it’s not their fault. These are people that thought they were the on the bleeding edge of technology when they got a RAZR for $49. Two years later they go back to the same Verizon store to get their free upgrade and they get the Android deal du jour. They don’t care about apps. They never wanted an Android device. They wanted a phone. Just like they never wanted a Windows Vista. They wanted a computer.
So Airpush comes along and figures, “Hey, these people aren’t spending money. What can we get away with? Force monetize them! Push ads? Fuck it! Can Google stop us from doing it? Nope! Android is Open™! What are the people that download Airpush-enabled apps gonna do about it? Delete the app? Go ahead! They didn’t pay for it anyway!”
And it becomes a numbers game. If, as forecasted by Gartner, there’s going to be 630 million Android handsets out there by 2012 a good portion of those handset owners will download apps. A good portion of that portion won’t deactivate Airpush because they a). won’t care, or b). won’t know how and they’ll keep accidentally tapping ads and you’ll see it on your Mom’s phone and cringe, but it won’t matter. Because this is what Android is. This is what it has become. This is what happens when too many cooks are allowed in the kitchen. They start bringing chainsaws to carve the roast and slathering everything in grease and eventually your restaurant gets known for shitty food.
I hope Google is hungry.
Update. Looks like Google is flaking in and out about rejecting Airpush-enabled apps. I hope for the sake of the platform they affirm a policy to suspend offenders until push ads are removed. (Via Daring Fireball.)
Tumblr founder David Karp photographed on Cary Street for Richmond’s own fuckyeahporchchill.
I don’t even want to know.
Excited to announce Tumblr meetup with David Karp - at Cous Cous, Monday April 18th 8pm.
Featuring DJ Robot E Lee (Aka Phil - Bring On The Tragedy), and photobooth by Karen Seifert Photography.
Sponsored by Dirty Richmond, Rumors, and Neighborhoodr Richmond.
Poster designed by Adam Juresko
Big Tumblr meetup tomorrow night. I hope you guys are ready.
The two year wait was tough, but the OP-1 is just as incredible as I’d hoped it would be.
Uh oh. What should I say?
Dear Tumblr,
I’ve taken Topherchris hostage and I’m not returning him until I see some serious reblog action on this post.
Mandatory racism: another vital part of the Consistent User Experience™.
I’ve decided not to use official Twitter clients until the trend bar is either an option or gone altogether. This situation is exactly why. To be clear, I have no issues with ad-supported software. If Twitter wants to run an ad at the top of the scrollview, Twiterrific-style, I’m all for it. It’s your platform. Monetize away. But the problem with the trend bar implementation is that I’m being subjected to what I find to be the poor taste of millions of mouth-breathing buffoons in my own timeline.
To put it another way, it feels like Twitter put up a Thomas Kinkade in my living room. While many people may truly enjoy the Painter of Light™, I am not one of them.
iPad: The Microwave Oven of Computing
Matthew Guay (via Brian Chen):
The microwave isn’t easier for every cooking task, and perhaps it takes longer to prepare a complicated meal in a microwave. Perhaps no award winning meal will be created in one, unless it’s a special contest for microwave cooking. But it simplified simple cooking, and consumers around the world saw it as a necessary piece of equipment within in years of it becoming popular.
This is a must-read for those of you that still don’t get modern tablet computing. When iPad showed up no one had a clue what to do with it. Within a year it had widespread appeal to an immense audience and had defined clear use cases for its self.
And it happened organically, just like the microwave.
Dear Open Letter Writers
An open letter on today’s searchable Web is nothing more than a trumped up blog post with a salutation and valediction. Everything on a public facing web site is already open whether it is in the form of a letter, blog post or giant image plastered on the front page of Amazon. By formulating an online writing in the form of an open letter, the writer’s goal is obviously to present the content in a more formal manner in hopes that it will be taken more seriously. It’s not. If you want to impact real change within a company, mail the letter via the Postal Service or FedEx. A physical copy of a letter on an executive’s desk shows more conviction than a WordPress permalink.
The next time you think of writing something online and starting it with “Dear $Person” don’t.
I’ve been waiting for someone to write a post on the way I feel about internet open letters because I was too lazy to write it myself. This fits the bill nicely.
Starbucks Rolls Out New Identity
There are no surprises with the new identity — actually, I take that back, I like the introduction of the surprising new bright green on the cup holder, it adds a nice touch of vibrancy — and everything falls in place with the idea of evolution. Nothing is a vast departure from the current materials people encounter at Starbucks, but it certainly feels new and re-energized.
It’s always interesting to see what a heavyweight like Starbucks does with an identity shift. Whether you drink their coffee or not (I don’t) you will most likely be affected by their design sensibilities due to their scale in the American consumer landscape. This is almost akin to McDonalds tweaking the Golden Arches.
I quite like the realignment. And I’m very glad Starbucks decided to realign instead of redesign. It takes maturity to recognize great design elements and showcase them instead of wipe the slate clean and start over.
Brooklynite Mitch Davie uses his non-beer-holding hand to save a fellow baseball fan from Atlanta Braves second baseman Dan Uggla’s errant bat during Friday’s spring-training match-up against the Toronto Blue Jays.Congrats to Red Stripe on scoring the greatest product placement ever.
