Nik Fletcher
Brighton, UK - http://twitter.com/nikf
Despite a background in classical music, Nik works for a small Macintosh software company in sunny Brighton, England. Since joining Download Squad in 2007, he's also spent time writing for Download Squad's sister site TUAW, as well as penning a couple of articles for The Guardian newspaper. Nik also spends a fair amount of time travelling to the US - be it for Macworld, SXSW or just holiday, and makes no secret of his plans to move across the pond at a date yet to be determined.Like almost every other person on the planet, you can follow him on Twitter - he's @nikf.
Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software, web 2.0, Web
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Nov 22nd 2009
It's been a number of months (if not longer) since Yahoo showed any love to its
Upcoming events service. Since acquiring the service in October 2005, the service has seen just one re-design - and few additional features since. However, in a largely-uncovered announcement earlier in the week, Upcoming now offers a new
Jumpstart feature that scans your Pandora, last.fm and iTunes libraries and then follows your favourite artists on the service - alerting you to forthcoming gigs listed on Upcoming.
Whilst other services, including
last.fm, allow you to easily view your favourite artists, it's an interesting addition to the Upcoming service - and hopefully means that Yahoo are now looking at ways to build on a largely unloved product.
Filed under: Palm
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Nov 17th 2009
In early December, Palm is set to launch its App Catalog to showcase third-party applications for its WebOS devices (the Pre and recently-launched Pixie). Whilst the App Catalog may be later to the party compared with Apple's all-conquering
App Store, we're on the lookout for the latest and greatest
WebOS applications for your Pre and Pixie handsets.
So, if you're a WebOS developer working on an application, we want to hear from you! To get in touch with us about your apps, simply drop us a note via our
Tips form -- or send press releases to the address listed on our
About page.
Filed under: OS Updates, Palm, Mobile Minute
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Nov 16th 2009
If you're one of the folks sporting a Palm Pre, it's time to check for updates as you'll want to grab the WebOS 1.3.1 update that dropped over the weekend (at least for Sprint customers in the US).
Whilst there's no new applications, the update (which weighs in at 126MB) packs a tonne of
features and improvements that you'll probably want add, including support for Yahoo! as a synchronization account.
That's not all, either, as PreCentral has discovered a list of extra
undocumented changes that are included in release - and
Facebook have launched an embarrassingly barebones application for the Pre that requires the 1.3.1 update.
If you're elsewhere in the world, the launch of the 1.3.1 update will depend on your carrier - in the UK, where I'm based, O2 are reported to be launching the update towards the end of the month.
[
Via Engadget]
Filed under: Blogging, Commercial, Social Software, iPhone
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Nov 10th 2009
For the last few weeks I've been looking for a suitable RSS reader application for my iPhone. I've found myself frustrated with long-time favourite
NetNewsWire (which currently lacks any of the
Google Reader sharing options) and the Google Reader web UI. Much like every
Twitter client out there, I've bought my fair share of RSS readers for the iPhone and after much testing I have
finally found a new favourite:
Reeder.
Reeder [
iTunes Link] has all the relevant sharing options I've craved in one place - and best of all is stylish as hell. There's plenty of applications with custom user interfaces on the
iPhone - some more successful than others - but Reeder balances the familiar with custom elements, and as a result the interface looks great when browsing (and reading) content.
If I had any complaints about Reeder, it's that the application lacks the ability to view your friends' shared items within the application, but given the sheer style and speed of the application it's a small oversight. If you're looking to pick up a copy of Reeder, the developer has dropped the price to $0.99 until
version 1.1 ships - and
available now on the App Store.
Filed under: Internet, Macintosh, Blogging, Web services, Yahoo!, Shareware, web 2.0
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Nov 6th 2009
Every now and then I find myself working on slides in
Keynote and writing Download Squad posts - and struggling to find a suitable image. Of course,
Flickr is the best way to find images - their clear licencing and
Creative Commons support makes finding images fairly straight forward. However, getting the image into Keynote isn't entirely painless. The workflow of browsing search results, viewing the image and then finding it at a suitable size (if it exists) takes time - however that's where
Viewfinder steps in.
A native Mac OS X application (requiring
Mac OS X Snow Leopard), Viewfinder allows you to search Flickr from the desktop apply filters to show only Creative Commons images, and specify a particular image size. Then, once you select an image you can download the image, set it as your desktop background - and most importantly - send images straight to Keynote for your slides.
If you're a heavy keynote user (or blogger) who frequently needs to find Flickr images for your work Viewfinder is indispensible. I've been testing it since early September and found it an incredibly convenient tool to have at hand. A licence costs £15 (roughly $25) and a free demo is available for you try from the
Viewfinder webpage.
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Oct 19th 2009 {14 comments}
If you're searching for a free alternative for iTunes on Windows, DoubleTwist - the handy media player for Windows and OS X - just became even more attractive with today's launch of version 2.4 that includes support for iPhone and iPod touch syncing.
If you're not familiar with DoubleTwist, it's a company founded by 'DVD Jon' Lech Johansen - who reverse-engineered the encryption in DVDs and the ...
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Oct 10th 2009 {2 comments}
This is definitely one for the developers amongst you, but if you're developing an application in PHP and need to handle the reading of RSS feeds, SimplePie is a god-send. Some folks will point you in the direction of PHP5's built-in SimpleXML module, however it's highly intolerant of malformed XML - and certainly doesn't have any extra features such as caching that you get with SimplePie. If ...
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed)
Oct 10th 2009 {2 comments}
We've covered iPhone Twitter clients to death here on Download Squad, but we simply couldn't help but post about Tweetie 2.0 which launched just yesterday. If you're not familiar with Tweetie - which won an Apple Design Award earlier in the year for version 1 - it's often touted as the best Twitter client for the iPhone platform, and this new version raises the bar in terms of features and ...
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Oct 4th 2009 {7 comments}
Facebook have always worked to make sure that the service is available in as many languages as possible - from French to Føroyskt, Polish to Pirate, the service is available in 70 languages for the site's worldwide audience. Yesterday, however, the Facebook team have rolled out a Latin localisation of the site to help students, noting that "the experience of studying Latin can frequently ...
by Nik Fletcher (RSS feed) Oct 4th 2009 {4 comments}
At the end of August, the NFL decided to institute a number of rules prohibiting the use of social media by teams and referees on match day - as well as rules that banned the media from providing live play-by-play coverage of matches.
As was pointed out at the time, the rules are easily imposed on officially-sanctioned media reps at matches - but what's to stop the average Joe in the stands ...
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
