ipod

What's better than having every song you've ever purchased available wherever you are, without worrying about an expensive MP3 player getting stolen?

I've had my music library on my iPhone and iPad for some time now, but I find it cumbersome to listen to music on one of those devices, and I don't like taking them with me for a run, or setting them somewhere they might get stolen (like at a party, plugged into a stereo or sound system).

And I'm not going to buy a brand-new iPod mini or iPod touch just to play some tunes from time to time.

Enter the iPod mini—The best little MP3 player I've ever held (the click wheel was perfect, the texture was smooth, and the size was just right for my hands).

I just bought one for $20 from eBay (a 6GB silver edition), and the battery was dead. Plus it only held half my iTunes library. So, I wanted more storage space, and a longer-lasting battery (10 minutes of listening to music is rather boring).

Or... "Best Practices of In-App Web Browsers"

Being the usability nut that I am, I have decided that my goal of making a perfect in-app browser for various iPhone apps is an impossible task. But, judging from what I've been able to do so far, and from many different Web View examples I've seen from around the web, there are some basics that every in-app browser should get right.

I'll start by showing the in-app browser in two very well-known iPhone apps: Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook's Browser

Twitter's Browser

Fundamentally, and functionally, these two in-app browsers are the same. And, after looking at maybe a few hundred other browsers, It seems like the list of essential features of a usable in-app browser are:

Every once in a while, I see a demo for an app that I truly believe will be a game-changing app for a certain field. This video is definitely like that, for the iPad and for DJs. Could you imagine ditching your laptop in favor of an iPad—not just out of convenience, but because the iPad actually does a primary computing function better than your laptop?

One can only hope for interesting and refreshing apps in every field (I'm personally waiting on Coda for the iPad...).

In the past year, I have seen more and more mobile visitors to some of the websites I maintain, and the lion's share of those mobile visitors are using Safari on the iPhone or iPod Touch. A few of the sites receive more than 5% of their visits from such devices. For those sites, I thought it would be fitting to give them a little better mobile treatment, optimizing the layout for the iPhone.