• Apt Apps: My Favorite Software of 2011

The “Appification” of software is undeniable, not only on mobile platforms like iOS and Android, but within web browsers (themselves software), platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon) on the desktop (Apple and others sell software directly to consumers), and for the cloud (the ultimate client-server arrangement, or so it would seem if you keep up with the tech blogs). As with many aspects of our digital lives, Apple has created an easy-to-understand moniker with the stupefying success of its App Store. 

By necessity, this review of my year in software is quirkier and more customized than any other of the other year-end lists of favorites (books, television, movies). Some of the products I’m mentioning are, indeed, not even new this year! I make no claims of omniscience: I have not researched every category extensively and test-driven the competition. In other words, I’m no Walter Mossberg or David Pogue.

And yet, I have found in conversations with even my geekiest friends that my software preferences seem to be useful. It’s no wonder, given the sheer tonnage of choice confronting the user – more than half a million in Apple’s App Store alone. We all need a little help from our friends.

I myself have accumulated more than 250 apps for my Apple devices, split between iPhone, iPad and Macintosh, and that doesn’t count miscellaneous widgets and hidden apps that I probably don’t even think of as software. 

So, in no particular order, and with no great sense of “BEST”, I offer you this year-end excursion through my software life. Please comment. I mean it.

Productivity

• SCRIVENER. Whether it’s reports for clients, articles and blog posts, or episodic fits of fiction-writing, the cornerstone of my productive life remains writing. A couple of years back, fed up with the inscrutably horrible performance of the inexplicably ubiquitous Word from Microsoft (how CAN it be so bad after all these years, I ask you? – cut and paste function doesn’t work half the time) I went on a crusade to find a better writing solution.
• The result of my search was Scrivener from a small UK developer called Literature and Latte (love that!). This year saw the release of Scrivener 2,2, which is even better, and at $45, a bargain.
• Among the many lovely features in the app is the ability to “gray out” everything but the document you are working on; the tools that group multiple documents within a project and allow easy reorganization, structuring, outlining, and prep for production. There’s lots more: try it, you’ll like it.
• TEXT EDIT. When I write quick documents, I avoid Word by using Apple’s TextEdit, which comes bundled with the Mac and is a legacy from the Apple acquisition of NeXT Computer, which also brought Steve Jobs back to Apple (Sorry, couldn’t resist). 
• EVERNOTE. I discovered Evernote a couple of years back from a tweet by Ann Kirschner, who I worked with when she ran Fathom.com, something to the effect of “how did I manage to function before I discovered Evernote.” She’s right. This darling of the future of cloud-based software makes a LOT of things simpler, simply because it syncs content between my iPhone, iPad and desktop. This is where I keep my running lists (for shopping, books, movies, etc), so they’re always in my pocket. This is where I back up all of my blog posts. This is where I often send (via email) interesting stuff to read later (a small miracle of interoperability, actually). I love Evernote (though, I’m not QUITE so slavish in my devotion to Evernote as Paul Boag, whose post called it “My single most useful application”.)  
• KEYNOTE. I was in the MacWorld audience in 2006 when Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s Power Point-killer, the elegant Keynote presentation package. But I didn’t start using it until this year, largely because of all the wrong reasons (laziness, for sure, but also the comfort level of knowing how to use PPT, horrible as it is, and the network effect of having so many slides available over time to refashion into this week’s deadline-driven presentation). Why did I wait? Keynote is beautiful, easy to use, and creates much more elegant slides. So long as I’m not wedded to various effects (which are fairly cool), I can also easily share PDF versions with clients who may not use Keynote). I also use the iPad version of Keynote, which is a terrific thing to access on trips, at trade shows, and for one-on-one presentations (not so good with groups). 
• iTALK. When I started blogging this year I found myself interviewing, both in person and by phone. I no longer own a voice recording device – and I don’t need one with iTalk, a great iPhone/iPad app from Griffin Technology. With an idiot-proof interface and the ability to port audio files to the desktop, the app is everything I need to capture interviews. I also recorded my physical therapy regimen with the device, which I hook up to speakers in my home gym so that I can keep my back in shape. 
• SQUARESPACE. When I decided to launch a website and blog to support my consulting business, I knew I wanted a set of tools that could be managed simply and professionally by a reasonably tech-friendly bloke (me) without a lot of third-party programming or design support. I settled on a platform called SquareSpace, which has proven to be a godsend. I’ve managed to continuously improve and expand my site, especially the blog, with a minimum of self-training and a bit of interaction with SquareSpace’s excellent tech support team (they often respond to an open ticket within one hour, yes, one hour).
• Set-up was quick, once I secured my domain and linked my hosting provider (Nettica) to the web pages I created in SquareSpace. I love the onboard tutorials, videos, and help tools, the templates and customizable aspects of the site. I know that more mature platforms like WordPress have more choices and more add-on apps, which would probably be advisable were I attempting to make a living as a blogger (good luck). Instead, I’ve forged relationships with sites that amplify my audience (Tribeca, The Wrap, IndieWire, MIP) and minimize my marketing effort.  So, for my purposes, SquareSpace has been a godsend. Plus, it’s hard to beat the pricing.
• MAILCHIMP. Also this year I started sharing my posts in newsletter form, using MailChimp as my toolset.  Again, the platform is simple and easy to use, once you go through the learning curve. For me, the learning curve was steep indeed. Suffice it to say, you need to validate every email address before entering into a spam-sensitive platform like Mail Chimp. I didn’t do enough cleaning up, and I learned the hard way what that means. 
• TUMBLR. I have watched with interest as Tumblr has become a force to be reckoned with by combining a simply toolset and a social platform. I created a Tumblr account in 2007 when the site launched, but so far, I haven’t done much with it, since I’m so focused upon Twitter and my Squarespace site. But I’ve begun using it again, so maybe in 2012 I’ll take a deeper dive. I suspect I’m not using it well, again, for lack of time and focus. 

News & Sharing

I started my career as a journalist, and all journalists are pack-rats, albeit rodents that like to share. Like my idol I.F. Stone, I was an ink-stained wretch who had, for years, file cabinets filled with newpaper and magazine clippings (I love the image of Izzy with his hands full of clippings in the 1973 documentary, “I.F. Stone’s Weekly.” 

Over the years, my assistants dreaded the task of turning my giant pile of clippings into neat, Xeroxable files, to be distributed throughout the organization by interoffice mail. With the migration of print publications to the web and the proliferation of blogs as a legitimate publishing enterprise, content discovery became more centralized within the Web. RSS technologies (really simple syndication) made quick content scans possible via news readers (I used Net News Wire. I now use Google Reader). Soon, my assistants were assembling my recommended reading electronically, and distributing by means of truly humongous PDF files. 

With the arrival of FriendFeed in 2007, I could use a single web-based tool to create my own aggregated RSS feed for distribution to the audience in my little world. I also converted my recommendations, sometimes with comments, into a WordPress blog – functionally, I was tweeting before Twitter, actually.

  

• TWITTER. Today, of course, I tweet every day. It’s a platform made just for me and I really love it. By and large, I use Twitter’s own apps across all platforms (desktop, web, and iOS), though I have accounts on TweetDeck, HootSuite, and a few other platforms. Twitter continues to improve its features and I find it to be reliable. The Twitter accounts I follow probably deliver a third of the content I read and pass along. It’s an amazing and diverse resource, limited only by the amount of time I want to spend clicking and reading. 
• Of course, the problem with Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and other “lifestreaming” sites, is that it’s easy to miss a lot of good stuff, presuming you aren’t staring at the screen all day long. (Note: yes, this was the year of Google+, and yes, I use it. I haven’t found it particularly useful, but like most social apps, you get out what you put in…. maybe in 2012 I’ll take the time. Ditto with Facebook’s much-hyped “Timeline” function.)
• PULSE and ZITE. To solve the problem of “catching up”, I’ve become reliant upon two iPad apps for discovering content. Pulse is, essentially, a better RSS reader, taking your feeds a source like Google Reader and organizing it attractively for the iPad. Even better is Zite. which uses content from RSS. Twitter and Facebook feeds to create a customized magazine which is fun to read and which gets smarter the more you use it (there’s an option bar that lets you tell it what you like, and then delivers more of that). Reading Zite and Pulse every morning gives me the feeling that I’ve caught up on all of my major topics, and maybe discovered a few great posts that I otherwise might have missed. Also, Zite supports Delicious links inside the app (See below).
• SUMMIFY. Summify is a product that leverages your social network to deliver content suggestions via a daily email. Given that I’m supplying the same inputs for Summify as I do Zite, I’m not finding a lot of new content from these emails, but that could change, as I say, were I to invest time. I get a similar email each week from venerable website StumbleUpon which tells me what my friends are recommending. 
• Actually content discovery apps was a big story in 2011 overall, with Flipboard leading the way. It may be better, it may be worse, but I haven’t taken the time to find out. http://flipboard.com/ Ditto with Push 4.0, which leverages the iOS notification function to deliver real-time news (which I learned about only last week from a great post by Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web. Similar products I tried and hated were Editions by AOL and The Daily from NewsCorp.  
• EMAIL NEWSLETTERS. I have to say that a lot of my content discovery still comes from electronic newsletters, essentially summaries of content published by newspapers and websites. Very old school. Yes, newsletters create email clutter (even when you set up a special destination account), but they also provide intelligent curation, something I strive for in my own writing and blogging.  Among the best: SmartBrief, PSFK, Mashable, The Wrap, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline.com, IndieWire, e-marketer, Jason Hirschorn, the New York Times, LA Times, the AP & the Guardian. I stay away from HuffPo, just because there’s so much crap in the feed. Even though many publications offer iPad apps, the only one I consistently use is the NY Times App, as it’s more efficient to use RSS aggregation than to go from app to app to app. 
• Note: On the desktop, I’ve really become addicted to the Chrome Browser, and the “Add This” app, which allows sharing web content across a bunch of different platforms, including all of my faves. 

A Delicious App

1. I would have to say that my “single most useful application” is probably Delicious, the venerable “social bookmarking” website. I use Delicious’s browser-based widgets to save and tag almost every web site, blog post, news story, and item of interest that I encounter on the web – 2,602 and counting in my account.
2. Later, I go back to tagged lists of web links for research on topics for columns, clients, and just general interest. These “playlists” can also be added to posts, which give ongoing life to topics over time if I expect to continue to curate links (For instance, I have over 200 links to “transmedia”, virtually all of which were tagged this year. I suspect the list will continue to grow, as will my interest). 
3. Delicious was bought from Yahoo this year by YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, with the intent of transforming the site, long neglected by Yahoo. They are busy changing the interface and adding social functionality. I hope they don’t screw up its incomparable useability. (Of course, we’ve seen a welter of competitors in the Age of the App, including Read Later and Instapaper. But my existing database in Delicious keeps me from starting over elsewhere). 

On the Couch

I bought my iPad primarily to consume media on the road, with enough connectivity and interaction so that I could leave my laptop at home, which I was able to do. But in 2012, the iPad quickly became my indispensible couch companion. Here are the apps I use the most:

• INTO NOW and GET GLUE. I use IntoNow and GetGlue to tag some (not all) television shows and movies, and share them on my social sites. I find the accumulated databases of these two sites helpful in reviewing the year’s best stuff, as well. (2012 exploded with a lot of different social TV choices, which I reviewed here.)
• IMDB and WIKIPEDIA. I use IMDB and Wikipedia in equal measure to get answers to questions that come up while I’m watching. Wiki² Wikipedia reader for iPad from Germany’s Banana Glue is my preferred app, after trying a lot of lousy ones. (99c). Sometimes I turn to Quora, the digerati’s favorite Q&A site which really took off this year. (More often, I tend to use the site on the desktop when I’m researching a topic.)
• NETFLIX. Of course, with Netflix streaming, I now watch full-screen movies and television frequently, probably more than DVDs, even though I’ve kept my DVD subscription, despite all the consumer rebellion because of the vastly larger content library on the DVD side. (I also watch shows on Hulu, HBO Go, and PBS’s website via my laptop and/or iPad and buy some movie downloads from iTunes, especially for air travel.)

iPad Crashing

Recently, my iPad routine has been severely disrupted by tech problems, not only connectivity, but on my iPad, which seems to crash constantly – certainly much more than it did earlier in the year. Turns out, Apples iOS upgrade seems to be the culprit, forcing the iPad's cornerstone browser app Safari to crash, due to memory problems. 

I’ve turned to Opera Mini as an alternative browser, but that hasn’t helped with the crashes of other apps that leverage the web such as Zite and Pulse. I've included this simply because we are all, every one of us, dependent upon so many variables beyond software to get the stuff we need (and have paid for.)

Content Databases

One of the great categories (for me at least) are database-driven sites for various categories of content. 

• GOODREADS. I use Goodreads to rate and review books because it’s nicely integrated with Facebook and many of my “first-world” friends are members, whose recommendations I often use to guide my own choices. (Reviews of my 2011 favorites have been collected here.)
• Of course, I use the Kindle app and occasionally iBooks to read books directly on my iPhone and iPad.
• SPOTIFY. This year saw the U.S. roll-out of Spotify and I really love it. Unlike Pandora, which I’ve used for years, Spotify allows you to play whole albums, as well as really interesting playlists curated by real people, not algorithms like Pandora. Many’s the time when a Pandora playlist delivered tune after tune that bore no apparent relationship to my search term. Not so with Spotify.  The free version has ads, and only works on your main computer. The paid account also works on mobile, which is pretty great.
• FLIXSTER. I still use Flixster as my main movie rating and review site, again, because it’s well-integrated into Facebook, as well as being co-owned with the excellent movie review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes. But Flixster’s acquisition by Warners as a portal for its movie locker platform UltraViolet is veering the site into a new direction, one that is leading me to cast about for a replacement. If Netflix integrates with Facebook and allows reviews, I’m there, although I’d have to port more than 500 reviews and ratings (ugh). I’ve been checking out the competition – watch this space in 2012 for an update. 

Highly Random and Frequently Used

• WEIGHT WATCHERS. Like many Americans I find it difficult to manage my food consumption, and so this year I’ve turned for the first time to an old fashioned solution with a new-fashioned app: Weight Watchers. Once you open an account and master WW’s arcane “point” system for food, you can track your daily progress online and on very nicely designed apps for iPad and iPhone, which are perfect to keep me aware of what I’m eating. Even with the holidays, I’m down 13 pounds in a month. 
• FOURSQUARE. I went to Foursquare to see what all the fuss was about and stayed, for reasons I’m not quite clear about. I think it has something to do with the clever design of the check-in app, which pits you against real people on your network. Occasionally, I discover somebody I know at a check-in location and can communicate with them. But mostly, I think of it as another way to connect virtually with friends. 
• YELP. I’m told that Foursquare is a threat to Yelp. I hope not, since I depend upon Yelp to help me find physical businesses all the time: restaurants, coffee shops, gas stations – and especially addresses. Mostly on my iPhone. Couldn’t live w/out my Yelp.
• iPHONE CAMERA. I gather I’m supposed to be enamored of photo-enhancing app Instagram and its video enhancement clone Viddy, and I was for a while (especially since I know the founders of Viddy). But I lost interest in the enhancement and have gone back to the regular unenhanced iPhone camera, fuddy-duddy that I am. 

Conclusion

I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m leaving something out, but this post has gone on too long as it is. Suffice it to say, there’s an apt app for every purpose, and I enjoy discovering and using them. Evidently, like most people, I also enjoy discarding them, as most of those I’ve downloaded have been relegated to the last screen because of disuse. 

Won’t you please let me know what you think of my choices, and give me some of yours in the comments below?