Most of you should have known Fluid by now. With Fluid app, you can create “Site Specific Browsers (SSB)”, basically turning any web apps into a desktop app. Essentially what Fluid does is create a browser that is dedicated to a single application. To read more about Fluid, read my previous review.

The best thing about Fluid in my opinion, is the ability to let you add another app using the Browsa plugin so that both the main web app and the “browsa plugin app” runs side by side.

This is incredibly useful when you mash-up two web apps that compliments each other – with the “browsa plugin app” being an iPhone web app.

To get what I mean, here’s a couple of examples:

Gmail + Google Calendar

I created a Gmail SSB using Fluid, thereafter adding the iPhone’s version of Google Calendar as a browsa plugin that runs on the right side of Gmail. There you have it, Gmail and Google Calendar running side by side! You can send emails and check schedules at the same time.

SUBERNOVA + Google Calendar

SUBERNOVA gives you an iCal link in which you can subscribe to your projects and milestones calendar using Google Calendar or any calendar of your choice. Here’s an SSB that runs SUBERNOVA and Google Calendar side by side.

Gmail + Remember The Milk

If you are a Gmail + RememberTheMilk user, you’ll like this.

Threadsy + Hahlo

Threadsy is my new favourite web application. I can check my MobileMe email, work email (hosted on Google Apps), Twitter and Facebook all in one interface. Sparing me from opening too many browser tabs or desktop apps. This, really simplifies my life, moreover the UI is delicious! If web apps are edible, this surely leaves a sweet after taste.

The only problem I have is that Threadsy doesn’t support Twitter Lists. Hence, running Hahlo beside Theadsy may be a good choice for stranded Twitter users like me.

Seesmic Web + Facebook

The good thing about Seesmic as a Twitter web app is that it lets you split different tweet categories into horizontal panels, eg. mentions, dms, lists etc. This makes it easy to scan through tweets. If you’re a Twitter user but don’t want to miss out on Facebook updates, pop an iPhone optimized version of Facebook to the right of Seesmic!

Google Wave + Google Buzz

Doesn’t mean some people don’t get Google Wave and talks rot about Google Buzz, it makes them any less useful. If you like both of Google’s latest innovation, this is a good match.

I hope you find these tips useful and your imagination running wild by a little. :)

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As you might already know, Google recently gave GTD fans some lovin’ by optimizing Google’s “Tasks” for iPhone and Android. (read more from Google’s Blog)

Wouldn’t it be nice if you can also run Google Tasks on your Mac as a menu bar item with the same sleek interface you see on the iPhone or Android?

If you had read my previous post on the “Fluid” app, you’ll know by now how you can turn web apps into a native desktop app. Using Fluid with Google Tasks means a free GTD native desktop app on your Mac that syncs with the cloud.

Here’s how:

1) Download Fluid app

2) Install and launch Fluid

Type in this URL in the URL field - http://mail.google.com/tasks/iphone

Type any name you want in the Name field.

Create the app!

3) Convert to MenuExtra SSB

Go to the Google Tasks menu after you have successfully created the app, select “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” to put Google Tasks on your menu bar.

Now you have Google Tasks natively on your Mac as a menu bar item!

By the way, this tip is also possible with other web apps, especially if they have an iPhone optimized version:

Remember The Milk

Digg

Have fun!

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As a web designer, I spend a large amount of time on the internet, using lots of web apps like Freshbooks, to send and track estimates and invoices to my clients, SQL Buddy, a much more beautiful alternative to PHPmyAdmin which I have installed on my own hosting server to manage mySQL databases, Google Reader, to keep myself up to date with my favourite news, and the list goes on.

If you’re like me, you will wish that the developers have built the web apps native for Mac OS X, so that your browser won’t be cluttered with too many tabs. I’m not saying that by turning all your web apps into desktop apps won’t clutter up your dock, but at least resource hungry web apps that are AJAX or Flash driven (eg. Picnik or Photoshop Express) won’t consume too much memory for your browser’s liking.

Meet Fluid (Free)

Fluid not only convert your frequently used web apps into desktop apps, or Site Specific Browsers (SSBs), it also does a little more. Take Google Reader or Gmail for example, you’ll be able to see unread counts as a dock badge on your dock icon like this (also applies to Gmail):

If you use Twitter, you can even turn Hahlo.com (a Twitter web app client optimized for iPhone) into a menu item, complete with Growl notifications, watch the video below to see how to do that.

Here’s a couple of web apps I have converted into a Mac OS X native desktop application:

Google Reader

mySQL Database – SQL Buddy

Freshbooks

The possibilities are endless. For instance, I like to manage mySQL databases as a standalone application so that I can put it on my other screen without needing to switch to my browser to manage a database during a development process. If you don’t have dual monitors, switching to a web app is only a matter of Cmd+TAB.

Coupled with QuickSilver, Launchbar or any other application launchers, it’s even easier to launch your frequently used web apps quickly, avid app launcher users will know what I mean.

How does the app work?

Converting a web app into a Mac app is easy, launch Fluid and you’ll be greeted by a user friendly window. Enter the URL of the web app you’re converting, the name of the app, and choose between using the website’s favicon as a dock icon (not recommended as your icon will be blurry), or choose your own icon (highly recommended). If you have an image file eg. png, jpg, gif, bmp, but not sure how to convert it into a Mac icon, go here, or if you don’t mind paying for a native Mac OS X icon convertor, here’s a good looking and functional one.

It’s that easy, the following are more videos to learn more about Fluid (the TinyURL feature is really handy):

The Fluid Thumbnail Plug-in:

Fluid TinyURL Features:

Enjoy!

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If you always find yourself taking screenshots on the web, on your desktop etc, so that you can post the pictures to your blog, you’ll find your desktop often clogged up with fragments of your screenshots. There are also countless reasons why we take screenshots, like annotating screenshots so that you can explain stuff more easily to your clients or friends.

LittleSnapper lets you organize your desktop mess by placing all your screenshots into it’s simple and elegant user interface. LittleSnapper is designed and built by Real Mac Software, who’re also behind RapidWeaver, so expect nothing less than fantastic design and user interface.

Where are your screenshots saved?

If my screenshots are not saved on my desktop, where are they saved? After some investigation, they’re actually stored neatly in your ~username/Library/Application Support/[username].lslibrary.

Any screenshot you delete will be deleted from this [username].lslibrary file.

So think of this little file as your “desktop” which stores all your screenshots in which you can manage them through LittleSnapper’s user interface.

What’s great about LittleSnapper?

- Screenshot management user interface. You can create folders on the left to organize your screenshots. Tagging and rating your screenshots are also possible using the panel on the right.

- Let’s you take full web pages (good for showing your clients work progress)

- Let’s you snap any window (forget about crosshair!)

- Let’s you snap a specific DOM element from any page (much like Safari Web Clips). You can only do this within LittleSnapper’s in-built web browser.

Annotation Tools

When comparing LittleSnapper to Skitch, I find that the annotation design elements for LittleSnapper are alot nicer, more “generic” in a sense that it does not look too “kiddish”. Other than letting you draw squares, circles, lines, arrows, texts, what is most helpful is letting you “highlight” certain portions of the screenshot (see below).

Highlight tool lets you highlight a portion of the screenshot and fades out the rest of the image:

You can also blur out certain portions of the screenshot extremely easily (good for blinding out passwords or other sensitive information you don’t want to share)

Other standard annotation tools

Uploading / Sharing via QuickSnapper, Flickr, SFTP or FTP

You probably know what’s FTP and Flickr by now. There’s also a “QuickSnapper” option where you can upload your screenshots to QuickSnapper.com. RealMacSoftware makes one of the most attractive web application for you to share your screenshots online.

Why no Resize?

LittleSnapper lets you crop your screenshots non-destructively, great, but there are no resize functions! Not sure why this feature is not included as it should be one of the most basic feature that should be included.

Otherwise, another example of an eye pleasing useful app. $39 and you’re a keeper.

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The Evernote Mac app greeted me today with a software update, telling me that it is able to sync files to the cloud. Nice!

Before we began, if you haven’t heard about Evernote, I strongly suggest you try it, here’s an article containing more information about what Evernote is capable of. Basically Evernote lets you create notes which you can access via the web app, desktop app or on your iPhone. Your notes are stored in the cloud, meaning – you can access your notes everywhere. 

If you only have a free account like I do (which is very sufficient in my opinion!), you can only sync images (JPEG/PNG/GIF), audio (MP3/WAV), PDF and digital ink files, not too bad!

Here’s a prompt I got when I tried to attach a non supported file type to the Mac app with my free account. It tells me to upgrade to the Premium account to synchronize any file type. 

How it works? Let’s try PDF syncing to test this new feature.

How do you attach a file (PDF, images, audio) into your Evernote?

- Create a new note

- Drag and drop the file (PDF file for this instance)

- Sync your note

Your PDF on the web app

You’ll see your new PDF as part of your sea of notes.

Your PDF will appear as an attachment on the web app, clicking it will enable you to download it. Unfortunately there’s no way you can view the PDF directly on the web app. But I’m not complaining as I’m always using the Mac and iPhone app.

Your PDF on the iPhone

Fortunately you can view your synchronized PDF right from your iPhone!

Click on the attachment to view the PDF on the note itself.

Great! PDF synchronization to view it on your desktop and on the go. :)

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Want to get reminders through Twitter, email, Jabber, GTalk or your mobile phone?

Remindr does just that. Remindr is one of those clean and simple web app that lets you get reminders of anything you want, and this one does it via a couple of channels.

If you use Twitter daily, this web app is a fun one to consider. Be sure to follow it’s Twitter bot to receive reminders via Twitter. Following the bot will have it automatically follow you back so that it can send you direct messages for your reminders.

The following is Remindr’s web interface. Clean! And lets you speak human language. The time is in your local time so you’ll get timely reminder based on your timezone. I’ve tested it and it works!

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I still remember the old days when I got my first Nokia symbian based phone where I can assign photos to my contacts. The idea was great, but the process was painful.
With the advancement of technology and thoughtful people, this problem was solved by Dan Auclair who made this simple but useful app that takes the pain away from assigning pictures to your contacts using your Facebook’s contacts. Did I mention you can also sync birthdays?

Download AddressBookSync to feed your contacts with pictures now!

Just click “Sync to Address Book”


You can even crop and resize your contact’s picture before syncing

Missing Feature

One thing I find missing from this app is that it doesn’t let you match names by using my contact’s “First Name” although it gives you the option of matching by “Last Name”.

Other than that, a quick and useful app!

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There are countless URL shortening services out there that shortens your URLs, only a handful lets you track clicks. A service that lets you shorten URLs using your own domain name is even harder to find. Shorty is one of the rare gems.


Shorty lets you install your own URL shortening service on your server. Suberapps.com for instance, if I shorten a URL, the shortened URL will look something like this http://suberapps.com/u/37162. Isn’t it cool that you can finally post short URLs on Twitter with a link that reflects your own domain name?

Here’s a number of reasons why hosting your own short URLs is better:

1) More exposure for your site’s domain name
2) Hosting your URLs on external sites means all your URLs will be gone if the service dies
3) More control over the name of the shortened link
4) Track number of clicks

Few ways you can use Shorty:

1) On Twitter, Facebook etc
2) On your blog, if you want to track clicks to certain pages or links on your blog / site
3) Send a link via email and see if the recipient have clicked on the link
4) Use your imagination

The good thing about using Shorty is the many useful features, there are a number of ways you can shorten a URL:

1) Auto

After pasting the link into the URL field, shorty will get the domain’s name (without www or .com, .net) and append it at the end of your domain name. Just type and finish off the rest of address to get your short URL.

2) Keywords

Just type at least one keyword to complete your short URL.

3) Random

The fastest way to use Shorty is using Random. Shorty appends a random number behind your domain name.

Tracking Links

You can easily track number of clicks to your links via the Admin, edit or delete the link(s).

Missing Feature

One thing I find missing from Shorty is the Bookmarklet feature, that lets you easily shorten a link by clicking the bookmark on the bookmark bar. This feature is provided by almost all short URL hosting sites, hopefull they’ll add this on in future updates.

What is required to host Shorty on your site?

1) Your own web server and domain name of course!
2) PHP 4 or higher
3) mySQL 3.23 or higher
Download the package from Shorty’s website to get started.

Hosting short URLs via Wordpress

Alternatively you can also host your own short URLs via a Wordpress plugin, Twitip recently featured a post on that.

Have fun!

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Everyone needs one of these free online file storage / sharing service one of these days to easily send large files to your colleagues, clients or friends.

The biggest gripes with the many big names in online file storage services like YouSendIt, Box.net, is not the amount of space you can store files in your online storage, but the cap on the filesize of the file that you upload at any one time.

Even if you have unlimited amount of storage space like MediaFire for example, having only 100MBs of file transfer limit might not make much sense to most. I have felt “cheated” on several occassions by signing up for an online file storage service thinking that I have so much disk space only to realize later that I can only upload a few MBs each time, until I found Drop Box!

Drop Box

Drop box (Web, Mac & PC) is like an online file storage service on steroids. On top of a:

• 2GB free online storage (paid option – 50GB of storage space @ $9.99/month or $99/year) and
• unlimited file transfer limit (if you use the desktop client) / 350MB (if you use the web app),

you also get a whole lot of other conveniences not seen on other services:

Menu Bar Item

Download the desktop client from Dropbox’s main website. Upon completing installation, you’ll find the Dropbox icon on your menu bar where you’ll see how many percent of your storage space has been used, which files on your Dropbox you’ve made recent changes to:

Dropbox Folder

A “Dropbox” folder will also be created as one of your many folders in your home folder. This means you can drag and drop files into this folder just like any of your normal folders with the advantage of being able to access your files online, on another computer or anywhere else! Installing Dropbox on 2 different computers means you’ll see your files on both computers. I just love how cloud computing integrates with desktop computing

Also, your files are always safe as all data is transferred over SSL and encrypted with AES-256 before storage.:

Copy Link to share file

Here’s the most exciting part, right clicking on any file in your Dropbox enables you to copy the files’ direct link, so that you can send the link to your friends to download that file! Sharing can’t get any easier can it?

Any folders created in the “Photos” folder in Dropbox is a Gallery, right clicking on it will enable you to copy the gallery link and share it with your friends!

My public gallery from one of my folders in the Photos folder called “Pictures from iPhone”:

Drag, Drop and Forget

Just like some of you, I hate uploading huge files using the sometimes clunky web interface, talking about huge files, most free online file storage service don’t even let you upload huge files to start with. Dropbox lets you drag and drop your huge file into your Dropbox folder and immediately uploads it in the background (no filesize limit on file transfer). You’ll see a spinning gear on the Dropbox icon in your menubar indicating that upload is in process. A “tick” indicates that upload is complete. But of course if you like using the web app, you have it too:

Web App (AJAX goodness)

You can also access all your Dropbox files online!

Among many web app features, you can see your recent changes of your Dropbox:

Upload files through the web app:

See and administrate your folders and files:

Undelete files!

Isn’t this the best, all rounded and most thoughtful online file storage service around?

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Mint (live demo here) is a web app that lets you track your website statistics, for stats addicts!

What I love about Mint, as opposed to using Statcounter or Google Analytics is because of it’s beautiful design, lightweight, no ads, lets you install it on your own server (http://www.yourdomain.com/mint/), much like Wordpress. You can also install plugins also known as “Peppermill” to your Mint installation similar to Wordpress’s plugins.

Among the many “peppers (plugins)”, one of which allows you to optimise your mint site so that you can view it comfortably on your iPhone. Perfect for stats addicts on the go!
Mint on iPhone

Other interesting peppers includes an RSS/Atom tracker, outbound links tracker (track hits on any links on your site) etc. See all peppers here.

Widgets are also supported, eg. OS X widget, Google Desktop widget, Yahoo! widget, Windows Vista widget, all are available to enable you to track your site(s) on your desktop. Talking about the fastest and timeliest way to track your site!

OS X widget called Junior Mint Widget

Tracking your site’s stats is a breeze as Mint shows you the most important modules that you’re most likely to be interested about when tracking your site’s statistics, namely Visits, Referrers, Pages and Searches – all at a glance. Yes no more clicking and going to a new page to see each modules.

Your stats user interface, clean and “ad-less”. Simple and elegant.

An overview of your site’s visits.

See your referrers, and how long ago your users clicked them. View by “Repeat” to see which site refers the most visitors to you.

Which page of your site is the most popular.

Track search keywords, web or image.

Mint costs US$30 per license/site and requires your site to have PHP & mySQL support to run it.

If you have multiple subdomains or directories that you want to track individually, your single license can be used for that. But your license for one domain cannot be used on another domain unless you transfer your license.

In a nutshell, you have to buy one license for every domain that you want to track.

Overall, a worthy statistics web app to consider especially if you dislike your web statistics service bloated with too many features or ads.

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