This discussion will focus more on the advantages of having a mobile app for your blog. Later, I will introduce you to few online services that help you generate a mobile app for your blog. Remember, an app for your blog is important because you cannot afford to scare away your blog’s visitor just by pushing a crappy looking mobile design of your blog.

Keeps the readers engrossed

I agree that most readers use RSS feeds, but your updates tend to get lost in between the multiple feed updates. This is when a dedicated app for your blog will keep the readers engaged with your blog only. One can design an app which pushes updates to a reader’s mobile after every new blog update which multiplies the user engagement level with that app.

Increase blog’s visibility

All that you have to do is generate engaging content and then let your app do the rest for you. Options like recommend the app to a friend increases the visibility of your blog if current users start recommending the app to others. This will increase your blog’s visibility among those readers who will stick with you for long.

Another added feature of having an app comes in when your app is listed in various app worlds (like that of Apple, Android and BlackBerry). Users usually tend to search for new apps in such app worlds and if your app is listed then be rest assured that it will be downloaded by many. Remember, after the download it is good content that will prevent the users from uninstalling the app. So, make sure you generate great content.

Give readers the “special” feeling

There are zillions of blogs and soon there will be an equivalent number of apps. This is when you get to do something different in order to keep the readers engaged. How about you give away special content only for those who use your app? Push content which will be visible only to readers who use your app. This will keep your readers engrossed and make them feel special. Remember to make that special content actually special.

Recognize readers for special suggestions

Request reader feedback to improve your blog’s app and, if possible, implement those suggestions. After successful implementation push a message to all the users of the app which will recognize the special contribution of one user. It will surely make the user feel important and increase your credibility in the community.

It is wonderful to see what we can do if we have an app for our mobile readers. It is just a matter of time before having an app for a blog will become as normal as having a custom theme designed for a blog. Just a matter of time. You can choose to flow with the tide or get ahead of it.

Now, let me list a few services that will help you generate an app for your blog. We haven’t tested them all but we can (hopefully) rely on their words. Let us know your view in comments below.

App Maker for Android

I thought that I should start with something android specific as it is the best known mobile platform (or not?) at present. Also, I don’t want to start the Apple vs Android (and if possible add “vs BlackBerry”) war here so please keep such comments away from this article. Coming back to what we were discussing. App Maker for Android creates an Android App for free within minutes. Try them and have fun.

Mippin

Mippin takes your app to the next level and creates one for Android as well as Apple iPhone. Mippin is smart enough to keep your app in sync on both the platforms and uses HTML5 in order to produce an app that fits with almost all platforms.

Conduit

Conduit happens to be one of the most famous services to create mobile apps for various platforms. Conduit creates an app which is compatible with almost every mobile platform and the reviews backing them seem to be very satisfactory.

AppsGeyser

AppsGeyser seems to take the mobile app creation business to a whole new level. After you are done creating your app, AppsGeyser will help you get traffic to your app, help you engage your audience and monetize your blog’s app for the best possible returns. Money well spent.

Shout Em

Shout Em seems to be the big dog in the market. With strong reviews from the likes of Mashable and The Next Web, Shout Em is rolling high on confidence. Their app creation process helps you create apps for iPhone and Android platforms. Also, they will help you push the apps into the respective market places which is surely a plus.

GENWI

GENWI is another big player in the market with reviews from the likes of Forbes. GENWI might charge you for specific services but the value is amazing. GENWI gives you apps for iPad, iPhone and Android. The HTML5 based apps are compatible with almost all platforms and will surely attract the mobile user.

Zubibu

Another famous (and well respected) app developer is Zubibu. They too support the iPhone and Android platforms. Zubibu smartly provides services that not just help you create an app but also analyze the results and improve on them. Zubibu is one of the very few services out their that provide mobile e-commerce solutions which will be an advantage for bloggers who tend create an e-commerce platform.

TapLynx

TapLynx follows a different approach towards the app development market. TapLynx gives away an SDK which can be used by bloggers to create apps in no time. The SDK comes loaded with multiple features that can be used by bloggers to enhance their TapLynx app which will be compatible with iPhone and Android based phones. Later on TapLynx will help you monetize your apps for better returns.

Mother App

Mother App is one of the few in this list that provide a custom app development which helps them focus on clients and their minute needs. Mother App has been in business for over 5 years and they have some really satisfied clients. You will have to get in touch with them in order to get a quote and understand how they will satisfy your requirements.

Phone Gap:Build

Phone Gap is another sleek service that keeps aside SDKs to create apps. They provide the blogger with the liberty to create apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Design your own simple looking app and upload it to Phone Gap. The service will return you with a working app that will work with iPhone, Android, BlackBerry (finally!) and lot of the other platforms. Upload them to the respective app worlds and you are ready to roll.

1. Google Custom Search

Google Custom Search creates a custom search engine for your website. You can tweak it to your heart’s content – it can search your entire website, parts of the website or even multiple websites specified by you! You can also connect your Adsense account to the ads displayed with the search results (free version). The paid version lets you remove ads completely (starting at $100 per year).

Google Custom Search

2. Google Web Fonts

Google Web Fonts is perhaps the best friend for web designers/developers looking to use non-standard fonts in their projects. This fonts’ directory lets you easily implement the CSS @font-face technique.

Google Web Fonts

Google Web Fonts are totally free and can be implemented within minutes. You can either use a plugin or an @import command at the top of the CSS file (and then simply use the font’s name in your stylesheet). For instance:

@import url(‘http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid+Sans’);

#body { font: normal normal normal 14px/20px ‘Droid Sans’, Arial, sans-serif; }

3. Google Adsense/AdWords

If you wish to have advertisements on your website, Google Adsense is the easiest way to start. There are many tutorials that let you get the most of Adsense, as well as numerous plugins that help you implement Adsense in WordPress.

Google AdWords

With AdWords, you can use the Keyword Search to see the trends in search for specific keywords.

4. Goo.gl URL Shortener

WordPress has its own version of URL shortener in the form of WP.me – and this feature has now been very well integrated in Jetpack. However, Google claims its URL shortener is one of a kind! Further more, Google has also released its own URL Shortener API. So if you don’t already use it, it is time you started doing so. To get started, here is an excellent tutorial by Konstantin Kovshenin to help you get started with its integration in WordPress. If you do not wish to code yourself, there are many plugins out there to help you.

Google URL Shortener

5. Feedburner

Who doesn’t know Feedburner? It is a great tool that lets you track your website’s progress, number of subscribers, manage RSS and email subscriptions, apart from setting up and tweaking your blog’s feeds.

Google Feedburner

6. Google Analytics

Everyone uses Analytics – well, almost! Analytics is a wonderful tool when it comes to tracking the progress of your websites, clicks, advertisements, referrers and other related information. You can target specific sections and see what portions of your website are more popular than the rest. For WordPress users, Definitive WordPress Analytics by Joost de Valk is perhaps the most popular plugin for Analytics. If you are not familiar with Analytics, you should consider tutorials by KISSmetrics.

Google Analytics

7. Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer lets you perform experiments to see what works best for your website and how you can boost its performance. In other words, it can be useful in ‘split-testing’ your website.

It is, however, fairly advanced in its operation and if you are looking for a simpler alternative, you should consider the MaxA/B WordPress plugin.

8. Google Libraries API

Google Libraries API contains code frameworks which can be used on many platforms, including WordPress. While the truth behind this claim is anyone’s guess, it is often said that the Google Libraries’ framework is faster than the one that comes packaged with WordPress itself. The easiest way to integrate Google Libraries’ framework is using a plugin, but just in case you are adventurous, you can code it manually along the following lines (I’d personally suggest you use this method in custom extensions/plugins preferably):

<?php

wp_deregister_script(‘jquery’);

wp_register_script(‘jquery’, ‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js’);

wp_enqueue_script(‘query’);

?>

Code Credit: Frederick Townes

Google Libraries API currently supports Chrome Frame, Dojo, Ext Core, jQuery, jQuery UI, MooTools, Prototype, script.aculo.us, SWFObject, Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), and WebFont Loader. You can check its developer guide here.

9. Google Chrome Developer Tools

Google Chrome now accounts for nearly 10% of total browser usage. It comes with its own set of Developer Tools, which is comparable to Firefox’s Firebug. Owing to the browser’s ever-increasing popularity, the extensions offered in Chrome DT are also on the rise.

http://www.youtube.com/v/nOEw9iiopwI

10. Google Project Hosting

Google Project Hosting lets you maintain a project online. It is similar to Github in its mode of operation. You can host projects up to 2 GB in size for free, and it also offers you many features such as subversion, project wikis and issue tracking. From a WordPress user’s perspective, many heavy-weight projects such as Thematic are listed.

Google Project Hosting

11. Google Checkout

Google Checkout is a service similar to Paypal. The best thing about Checkout is its excellent integration with many Google services, such as Adsense and AdWords. On the downside, however, it is not yet available in many countries.

Nevertheless, integrating Google Checkout as an alternative payment solution along side Paypal doesn’t seem to be a bad decision. For WP users, there are many plugins that can help you integrate Google Checkout in your website, such as Simple Google Checkout and LBAK Google Checkout.

12. Google Docs and Chart Tools

Google Docs is a web-based Office suite that lets you edit, create and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms. You can even live-edit documents with multiple users.

Google Docs

Google Docs can be embedded into WordPress too, if you so desire.

Along similar lines, Google Chart Tools let you create interactive charts for your blog.

13. Google Maps

The benefits of Google Maps are not unknown to anyone. You can integrate Google Maps on your blog using multiple plugins, of which the most popular one is MapPress, that lets you integrate Maps on your WP site in an easy manner.

Google Maps

14. YouTube

YouTube is another extremely popular Google service that lets users upload and share videos. From your blog’s perspective, you can easily upload the bulky videos on YouTube and save a considerable amount of bandwidth. With the advent of HTML5, integrating a YouTube video in WordPress is a matter of minutes using embeds – simply enter the URL of the video in a fresh line, and you’re good to go!

However, if you wish to have total control over the embedded video, you may consider using plugins such as TubePress or Viper’s Video Quicktags.

15. Google Reader

Google Reader is a free web-based RSS feed tool. If you wish to blog about stuff from your RSS reading pane, you can add a ‘Send to’ button for your WordPress blog (by default, such mechanism exists for Facebook, Twitter and few other sites, but a WP-powered blog).

Google Reader

You might be tempted to use WordPress’s ‘Press This’ function in Reader too, but sadly, that is not possible because Press This is javascript and Reader will need a full-fledged URL.

In such a case, we will need to post directly to press-this.php

To do so, navigate to ‘Send To’ tab under Settings in Google Reader, and click ‘Create a custom link’. In the URL field, enter the URL to your website, along the following lines:

http://www.sample-website.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=${url}&t=${title}&s=${source}&v=2

Make sure you substitute ‘sample-website’ in the above snippet with the URL of your site.

16. Google Summer of Code

While this is not an extension or an app, Summer of Code offers a wonderful opportunity for young talents to, well, do awesome stuff! WordPress has been a regular participant since 2007, and you can check about its progress on the codex.

To Sum it Up…

As we have seen, Google offers many services (don’t forget GMail) that can be employed to boost our WordPress blogs. Which of these do you use/do not use? Do let me know in the comments!

Even if you scrolled down the list quite carelessly I’m pretty sure you’d have spotted couple of characteristics these designs have in common. Apple inspired designs have always attracted designers and delighted our sight. Lets take have a closer look at traits these designs share.

One page layout

Most of the app developers have a clear goal – popularize or sell their product. And single page landing pages seems to do the job well. Since most of the apps doesn’t offer tons of features and your goal is to call visitors to action there’s really no need for a multi-page layout. In some of the app web designs a nice jQuery accordion slider is implemented which helps to navigate through the page. I find that a nice well-built single landing page is the best choice for iPhone app web design.

Simplicity

One page layout and simplicity – it does make sense, doesn’t it? Like mentioned before, your goal is to sell, so don’t clutter your design with unnecessary elements. A screenshot, list of features and call to action button is basically all you need. A nice background, couple of bold fonts and you’re ready to go. Don’t stuff your visitors head with inessential information and you will get rewarded. One of the things Apple is famous for is simplicity so keep that in mind.

Illustrations

What’s the main thing that you’ll find in almost any iPhone app website? No doubt, it’s a large and sleek iPhone decorating half of the visible area. Features are cool and necessary but we all know that screenshots is what attracts visitors these days. Make sure to offer enough screenshots of the app at work. And no need to limit yourself to screenshots only. Bright and bold illustrations like in the Ben The Bodyguard website will also help to turn visitors into buyers.

Call To Action

This is what your website is about. Making the casual visitor click that shiny button and purchase the product. The default app store button is nice but try a more creative ways? Lots of the designs listed below are using custom buttons with great slogans. You can also find some creative uses of the default button. This is one of the most essential elements of a landing page so make sure to check out some websites if landing pages is something new to you.

1. Crowd Spottr

Beautiful design with trendy details like paper texture in background, sleek large fonts and illustrations. The page is using nice jQuery accordion slider which makes it easy to scan information.

2. piictu

Simple and captivating design with a noticeable and effective call to action button. What I like is the real time stream of pictures from the app.

3. Cero Ideas

Cero Ideas is a mobile content developer and this is their portfolio site. The design is rather rich and supplemented with some attractive illustrations. Each app has it’s own simple section which does what it has to do – describes the product and tells where you can buy one.

4. Weave

A couple of colors, couple of fonts and couple of paragraphs – what more do you need? Weave is an excellent example of minimal yet engaging iPhone app web design.

5. Ben The Bodyguard

Benthebodyguard has a modern, bold and clean design. It has huge headlines, great features descriptions and large call to action buttons. And have you seen the app’s trailer?

6. Photo Stats

Another simple one page layout with smooth slider on the top. Yellowish buttons look awesome on the textured background and call to action button is done neatly. Like piictu Photo Stats App also has a gallery with user generated content.

7. Zootool

Simple yet efficient landing page which justifies it’s purpose. There are several informative screenshots however I believe that the current lightbox solution ain’t so useful.

8. Localmind

Localmind has a bit different, more massive and businesslike design which is characteristic to more popular and business related apps. However the design is still held in pretty simple style and those trademarks doesn’t leave consumer confused.

9. Leaflet

Simple and beautiful just like every Envato website. Minimalistic color scheme, demonstrative screenshots and grid based layout – this website has what it takes for a pleasant and responsive layout.

10. imygarden

imygarden is using a neat grid based layout which contains all the information you would possibly want to know about the app. The textures have been implemented nicely and the content visibility isn’t disturbed.

11. Maad QR

12. Findmytap

13. Money

14. Ecoki

15. Faces

16. Sundance 2010

17. Prayer Engine

18. iVIP

19. 3do

20. Awesome Note

21. Billings Touch

22. Get Galleried

23. Instagallery

24. blip.me

25. Munch 5–a-day

26. Old Booth

27. Pretty Poo

28. Tea Round

29. Firetask

30. plazaa

31. Debty

32. Grillfest

33. Read Me Stories

34. Momento

35. YouSee TV Guide

36. Float

37. Movies Now

38. Camera+

39. Tweetbot

40. Dui Dodger

The iPad was initially met with much skepticism and mocking, but now there is no doubt that this is one of the best, most ingenius gadgets of the 21st century. It’s handy and lightweight, thus it’s so easy to carry around anywhere. This makes us, as designers, more efficient and maybe more creative with our work.

But there are literally thousands of apps available in the Apple Store–how do you separate the treasures from the garbage? Or the ‘needs’ from the ‘wants’? It’s hard to choose applications because the options are many–perhaps too many. Thus, we make things easier for you by coming up with this list, or the top iPad applications for designers and creatives. Here they are:

1. A Digital Drawing Pad

A digital Drawing Pad allows you to draw with your iPad when you need to illustrate something and you don’t have pen and paper on hand. It’s a faster method of drawing, and best of all you can erase them in a click or tap, so you’re saving paper and ink at the same time.

Designers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from a digital drawing pad application. They are great for presentations, design studies, product concept designs, illustrations, storyboards, and more. A digital sketchbook iPad app is a must-have for architects, digital artists, interior designers, students, professionals and entrepreneurs. There are plenty of sketchbook apps for designers to use, such as:

• Adobe Ideas - $5.99

• Sketchbook Pro – $4.99

• Artist’s Touch - $4.99

A great application for painters, artists, or even just for people that are feeling artistic. You can create different effects and rendering from various art mediums such as pencil, oil, watercolor, pastel and more.

2. Quick Sketchpad

Sometimes, you don’t need a heavy application with plenty of features to perform a task. If you need a light and fast app just to illustrate diagrams, a quick map sketch, or fast note taking, there are iPad apps that can do that for you.

• Penultimate – $0.99

• Jot! - Free

• Sketchpad - $0.99

Another lite app that’s designed to create quick notes and fun doodles during class. To create a new page, just tap the page curl on the bottom right corner and it will change papers.

5. Vector Drawing Tool

Vector based illustrations and technical drawings are sometimes needed or preferred over rasterized drawings. Because vector images are mathematically defined rather than pixel-defined, they can be scaled down or enlarged no matter what the size without any loss of quality. Here are some apps for vector drawing capabilities perfect for beginners and pros alike.

• iDraw - $8.99

iDraw has had plenty of rave reviews, often said to be among the best vector-based drawing pads for the iPad. iDraw has all the tools to create technical illustrations and drawings.

• Freeform – $9.99

6. Font Tools

• iFontMaker - $6.99

7. Website Tools

Be updated with your latest stats whenever, wherever you are. There are many different stat updaters for your various accounts: your blogs, social networking sites, Google ads, Youtube videos, just to name a few.

• Ego - $2.99

Ego is a web stats application-in-one that can support Google Analytics, Squarespace, Twitter, Tumblr, Vimeo, FeedBurner and Ember.

• Analytics HD – $6.99

An awesome iPad app for Google Analytics, giving reports of their web traffic, referring URLs and multiple metrics. The app can handle multiple accounts.

This article is here to help you and presents 45+ of the most useful, efficient and awesome apps to keep you on top of the edge every time you use your iPhone – be as productive as possible wherever you go. The apps collected in this article range from advanced bookmarking services to simple photo effect tools. These fantastic apps will help you increase your productivity greatly and get the best from your iPhone. You might ask if you can afford all that? Don’t worry, most of these apps are actually free or at a ridiculously low price for the value you get.

Organizing

These apps will help you to organize your notes, photos, bookmarks and synchronize them across your computer and other compatible devices. The USB flash era is over – DropBox is the new ultimate service for transferring files quickly and efficiently.

1. Evernote (free)

Evernote for iPhone lets you create notes, snap photos, and record voice memos that you can then access any time from your iPhone, computer, or the web.

2. ZooTool ($1.99)

Zootool for iPhone makes it easy to bookmark, organize and share your favorite images, videos, documents and links from all over the web.

3. Dropbox (free)

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your iPhone and iPad and even the Dropbox website! With the Dropbox app, you can take everything that matters to you on the go.

4. inClass (free)

inClass, the amazing student organizer, is here to help you survive school. No matter how complex your school schedule is inClass will help you keep track of all your courses and even alert you before class so that you are never late again. Not only that, but it will help you keep track of your tasks by reminding you that one is due soon, so no more procrastination.

Business

Take your business with you in your phone. These apps will help you track, manage and take care of your finances and business.

1. Mint (free)

Personal finance tools from Mint. Track, budget and manage your money on-the-go. Sign up for a Mint account, add your online banking accounts and access your personal finances — all from your iPhone. Get started for free.

2. Billings Touch (free)

Billings Touch takes the Apple Design Award winning time tracking and invoicing experience from the Mac and puts it in your pocket.

3. Outpost 2 ($19.99)

If you use Basecamp, you use it because you want to be productive. You use it because you want a simple solution to what once was a big problem for you. Now, you can use Basecamp on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad just as you’ve always wanted to.

4. MiniBooks for FreshBooks ($14.99)

MiniBooks puts the popular web invoicing software FreshBooks in the palm of your hand. Manage your clients, send invoices, run timers, and record payments, all while on the go. Plus, MiniBooks fully synchronizes with your FreshBooks account, so you have access to your account even when you’re off the grid. All this for less than FreshBooks’ monthly subscription fee.

5. Scanner Pro ($6.99)

Scanner Pro transforms iPhone into portable scanner in your pocket. It lets you scan multipage documents, email them and even upload to Dropbox, MobileMe iDisk or any other WebDAV enabled server. Evernote integration is there too.

Task Management

To-do lists, RSS readers, project management, brainstorming – keep track of your everyday life in your pocket. These amazing apps will help to get things done right.

1. 42tasks (free)

42tasks is a tasks management and collaboration app, with cloud synchronization. The 42tasks app will boost your productivity. You can organize your to-do lists and tasks, assign them to other people, share projects and view custom reports.

2. Remember The Milk (free)

Take your to-do list anywhere with this feature-packed app; never forget the milk (or anything else) again. Remember The Milk (RTM) for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad connects with the popular online service of the same name. With millions of users worldwide, Remember The Milk is everywhere you are: from mobile to the web to apps including Outlook, iCal, Gmail, Google Calendar, Twitter, and more. Learn more at www.rememberthemilk.com

3. Springpad (free)

Springpad is a free application that lets you quickly and easily save ideas and information you want to remember on the web, on your iPhone and on your iPad.

4. Instapaper ($4.99)

Save web pages for later offline reading, optimized for readability on your iPhone or iPod touch’s screen. Featured by Apple and critically acclaimed by top blogs, newspapers, and magazines.

5. Things ($9.99)

Things is a beautifully focused and amazingly intuitive task manager. Other to-do applications either oversimplify or are too difficult to use. Either way you are not getting stuff done. Things instead has the right balance between ease of use and powerful features.

6. Quickie to Do ($1.99)

Fastest to-do list in the store, perfect for ad-hoc, spur of the moment lists. Simple and efficient, a pleasure to use.

7. LocationMinder ($1.99)

LocationMinder allows you to set reminder alarms that trigger based on location. Even when the app is not running, you will receive the reminders when you reach the area. Designed specifically to work with a new technology in the iPhone 4 for very low power consumption and high accuracy.

8. Wunderlist (free)

Wunderlist makes it downright simple to organize your daily life. Just create a list and start filling it with things that need to be completed. Keep track of your more important tasks with reminders and notifications.

9. Reeder ($2.99)

Google Reader client with dozens of useful features.

10. MobileRSS (free)

MobileRSS is a fully-featured Google Reader client for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. We’ve built a ton of powerful and exclusive features onto an elegant and familiar design platform which makes reading the news fun again. We think you’ll like it! This free version of MobileRSS has ads which can be removed by upgrading to the ad-free MobileRSS

Designer

Are you an author on Envato marketplace or just need quick access to your FTP server? These apps will suit designers, developers and other creatives who just love to paint on their phone.

1. cliqcliq Colors (free)

Colors is an easy-to-use color picker for discovering, converting, and managing colors and palettes.

2. WhatTheFont (free)

Ever seen a great font in a magazine ad, poster, or on the web and wondered what font it is? Whip out your iPhone and snap a photo, and WhatTheFont will identify that font in seconds.

3. Leaflet ($1.99)

Leaflet is an iPhone app designed for Envato marketplace publishers. Keep track of all of your account related information including comments, earnings breakdown, statement list and receive push notifications for both new sales and comments. You can also respond to comments and view individual statement entries all in one beautifully designed interface.

4. FTP On The Go (1,59 €)

An FTP client for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

5. Zen Brush ($2.99)

Zen Brush is an app that allows you to easily enjoy the feeling of using an ink brush to write or to paint. It allows anyone to easily perform fluent strokes while not compromising on the fascinating texture of a real ink brush. Create works that radiate the right atmosphere by choosing the best background template from our large collection.

Photography

Picture can save a thousand words. These apps will help to keep your memorable pictures safe, share them with your friends and enhance them with cool effects right in your phone.

1. Instagram (free)

3.75 Million users love Instagram! It’s a free, fun, and simple way to make and share gorgeous photos on your iPhone.

2. Adobe Photoshop Express (free)

Adobe Photoshop Express software lets you use simple gestures to quickly edit and share photos from your mobile device. Enjoy having your photo and video library right in your hand — without wasting your device’s valuable storage space.

3. Photopod ($0.99)

Take all your photos from Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Tumblr and Dropbox everywhere you go, on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Find the photos you want to see in seconds, edit and crop them or instantly upload the photos you just took with your iPhone to multiple networks without the need to open a new account.

4. PhotoSync ($1.99)

PhotoSync will transform your photo handling forever. It‘s the first app that makes wireless transfer of your photos/videos from or to your computer and other i-Devices – a breeze. PhotoSync also transfers to Dropbox, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, SmugMug and FTP. You need never use a cable again.

5. QuickShot with Dropbox ($0.99)

QuickShot simplifies the process of uploading photos to Dropbox. Every picture you take is immediately uploaded without the need for any additional actions. It has all the familiar camera features found in other apps, plus a few not found anywhere else. Queue multiple photos, upload photos in the background, and access all of the standard camera functionality from QuickShot’s simple interface.

6. Camera Plus (free)

Camera Plus is a free camera app for your iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G and iPod touch to capture photos instantly with some great controls, add cool effects and share them with your Facebook, Twitter or Flickr friends on-the-fly!.

Social

Twitter and Facebook aren’t the only social networks out there. Play photo games, write diary, listen to thousands of mixes straight away from your phone.

1. Piictu (free)

Part photo game, part social camera, piictu is a fun + simple way to talk and play with piics from your mobile phone.

2. Momento ($2.99)

Momento is a unique diary/journal writing application which provides a quick and easy way to privately record moments throughout your day. Connect with popular web services, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Foursquare, Gowalla, YouTube, Vimeo, Digg and Last.fm, to collect and display your online activity as part of your diary.

3. 8tracks Radio (free)

8tracks is handcrafted internet radio — a “social” alternative to Pandora. Featuring hundreds of thousands of mixes created by people who know and love music, the 8tracks iPhone app gives you easy, free and mobile access to the best collection of playlists on the web.

4. Skype (free)

Call, video call and instant message anyone else on Skype for free with Skype for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

5. Path (free)

Path is the simple and private way to share life with close friends & family.

6. GroupMe (free)

Free group messaging with anyone you know. Works on any phone.Now works over data—no text plan required.

7. Spout ($0.99)

Introducing Spout, the newest way to enjoy news, messages, tweets and comments; delivered to your screen as a beautifully rendered up-to-the-second display of social content.

8. Bump (free)

Bump makes sharing with people as simple as bumping two phones together. Just pick what you want to send, then hold your phones and gently bump hands with another Bump user. And now, you can message with your friends who aren’t near you – just add them as a friend inside of Bump and start messaging immediately — it’s kind of like a long-distance “virtual bump”.

Other

All the other fantastic apps that doesn’t fit in any other category. Check out Ben the Bodyguard trailer to find out what I’m talking about.

1. Fast ($1.99)

Fast is an innovative writing system that will save you time when typing your sms, mail, or more generally any text. The feature that differentiates Fast from other writing systems is that Fast learns from what you write, and updates itself by drawing from your vocabulary.

2. Ben the Bodyguard (3,99 €)

Ben protects photos, contacts, passwords and other sensitive stuff on your iPhone or iPod touch. He’s your own personal security expert. Peace of mind on the go with a distinct attitude and opinion. Ben’s guarantee — “Your secrets are safe with me.”

3. Gas Cubby ($4.99)

Gas Cubby is the ultimate tool for tracking gas mileage and vehicle maintenance. Whether you’re a hypermiler, or just want a reminder to change the oil, Gas Cubby will save you money and keep your vehicle operating at its peak.

4. blip.me (free)

blip.me is a fun, useful, and free way to turn your mobile phone into a push-to-talk walkie-talkie.

5. Find My iPhone (free)

Find My iPhone is free for anyone with an iPhone 4, iPad, or 4th generation iPod touch (iOS 4.2 or later required).* Just sign in with your Apple ID on your qualifying device and turn on Find My iPhone to allow you to locate it. Then use the same Apple ID to turn on Find My iPhone on your other iOS 4.2 (or later) devices including iPhone 3G, 3GS, or iPod touch (2nd generation or later). Find My iPhone is also included with a MobileMe subscription.

6. Rowmote Pro ($4.99)

Rowmote Pro is the ultimate wireless remote, trackpad, and keyboard. A gorgeous universal app for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, with everything from a multitouch trackpad to full extended keyboard support, and with no-configuration control of dozens of the best Mac applications, it is a must-have for any home media center or presentation.

7. Free Full Screen Private Browsing (free)

Finally, you can view all your websites privately and in full screen for free. This is the simple, no frills web browser you’ve been waiting for.

8. Where (free)

Join more than 4 million people who rely on Where everyday to answer the question, ‘Where should I go next?’

9. quiQR ($1.99)

quiQR — Real-time QR code reader and creator

1. Related Links

In WordPress you have used various plugins to show related pages to your post, Related Links from Google does the same thing it generate the list of related pages to the current page & display it to the user. Related Links works using Google search, it uses keyword for your title to search your site for related content & display them on your website. Currently this product is in limited to invited users only & you can ask for invitation by sending mail to relatedlinks@google.com

2. Follow Finder

There are many to tools to find followers on Twitter, but very few tools to find users with similar interest. Follow Finder helps you to find users on Twitter, based on similar interest, mutual followers, users with similar followers & users following similar list to help you identify potential Twitter followers you should follow.

3. Browser Size

Browser Size is a really useful tool for web designer & developer, as it helps them to visualize what part of their websites it getting maximum attention from users. You just need to enter your URL & your website will be segmented using a semi-transparent color layer describing users attention to different segment of your website.

4. Page Speed

As website loading time becomes one of the factors in ranking your websites in Google search engine, you need to know how fast your websites loads. There are many tools for doing that but you surely want to consider what Google thinks. Page Speed is such tool recently made available online by Google where you can check the loading time for your website.

5. Aardvark

Last year Google acquired Aardvark, It’s not just question-answer site for professional, but anyone get help here, the best thing about Aardvark is you get answers to most of the questions in few minutes, I have tried it my self & was surprised to see how fast was my questions got answered. Another great feature about Aardvark is it will deliver you answer to your mail or GTalk.

6. Experimental Search

Google Experimental Search have offers three services +1 Button, Keyboard Shortcut & Accessible view. The only problem with all this features is you can’t use them all at once, that is you use this feature one at time.

+1 Button

+1 Button is a kind of recommending Google search results to your friends, so when anyone in your friend searches Google, your recommendation will appear in search results.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This is really useful feature, I think Google should implement it to the normal search results, as it helps users to navigate between searches using keyboard shortcuts.

Accessible View

Accessible view adds to more feature to Keyboard Shortcuts it does everything the Keyboard Shortcuts does in addition to that it help you to navigate from one page to other using keyboard & magnifies the search results as you browse through them.

7. Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is 3D modelling software which helps you to create 3D models easily or you can just download available 3D models from Google 3D warehouse & start editing them

8. Image Swirl

Most of you have used Google Image to find some quality images, but when it come to searching similar images using a standard keyword it get difficult. Image Swirl uses your generic query & group down images related to those queries into different search results, as for example if you are searching for “Design” it will groups images in website design, logo design & graphic design, hence making simpler for user to search for related images with a single query.

9. Art Project

This tool is helpful for artist around the world, as it let them explore museums from around the world & view hundred of art work from the comfort of their home. You can view various paintings in detail & explore various museums.

10. Google Scholar

Want to do some good research? Then forget conventional Google search and use Google Scholar, as it will search for scholarly literature from various sources like

academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories & more so you get more prevalent results & find really things that are really useful.

11.Google In Quotes

Google In Quotes uses Google News to find quotes of political figures. You can search for different keywords & see what have been quoted about it by different political figures.

12. YouTube 3D Video Converter

Create your own 3D videos using YouTube 3D Video converter, its easy & simple you just need to two camera to capture the video & upload them it’s that easy. You can also find the detail guide on here

13. Transit

Using Google Transit you can find about various public transit available in your area, with information about schedules, timing to reach the destination & route the transit systems takes.

14. Google APIs

Want to know about various APIs Google offers, here the periodic table of different APIs offered by Google.

15. Google Apps

Work Smarter with Google Apps as it offers easy communication & sharing data. I have been using Google Apps for more than 2 years now & it has been hassle free operation. The free package is boon to small businesses as it offers 50 free custom emails setup, but after 10 May it’s going to change to 10 users only.

If you have been using any of the above listed products, then do share your experiences on working with them in the comment section.

Blogging Like A Pro Series Parts 1-10:

1. Blogging Like A Pro: Introduction To 10-Part Crash Course
2. Science Of Writing Process: Getting Ready, Set Up Mood & Avoid Distractions
3. In Search For Ultimate Blogging Tools: Writing Simplified Now!
4. How To Find Article Ideas To Write About, Write Sticking Points
5. Do Your Research: How and where to find content
6. Blog Post Formatting, make it easy to read and scan, good examples
7. Power of headlines, Dummy’s guide to copywriting
8. Add Spice To Post – Get Feedback, Entertain Readers With New Approach
9. Taking Blogging To The Next Level: Guest Writers & Management & Scheduling, Proofreading
10. How To Find And Hire The Right People For Your Business
11. Set Up Your Blog & Make Use Of Fresh Tools To Save Time

Google Docs could be a great online alternative and you don’t have to worry about any loss of content because of its regular autosave feature, but if you want any more advanced features since Google Docs is merely a text editor, then you’ll want to consider other options. The major drawback besides a lack of customization is that you don’t have access to your documents if you don’t have an internet connection. If you want to share documents between several users however then Google Docs is great. See this intro video for more information about how to use it:

Before I start my review and share the experiences I’ve had with these editors. Keep in mind that I am a full-time blogger and looking for the most efficient blogging possible. I crop and create images on my own, if I need to do some code editing I do it manually, I enjoy fast writing and WYSIWYG possibilities to create a finished article as quickly as possible. The articles I write are usually quite long and in depth. If your blog is just going to be a place where you share pictures, quick updates about your life and things you find interesting online, your preferences might look much different than mine. However I tried to be as objective as possible and picked out a few blogging editors to feature here which I think are worth taking a look at. Enjoy!

Blogo (Mac)

Price: $25 ( has 21-day trial)

Easily publish text, images, videos, slideshows and more. With a simple, intuitive interface and support for WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, Joomla, and Expression Engine, Blogo is the best way to maintain your blog and spread the word with Twitter, Ping.fm and other supported services.

I tried to blog through Blogo for a while, there are definitely some pros, but also several cons which made writing not as efficient. It’s easy and fast to set up and get going with, just add your blog address, login, password and you’re set. Recommended customization is image size, just head to the preferences and add max image width and height limit.

Image Editing and uploading – Blogo has a built-in image editor which let’s you crop and resize images so you save yourself the hassle of finding another image editor. If your needs are basic, then this editor will be more than enough.Uploading images is very easy, when you’re finished just click a button to upload images automatically to your server, which is a great time saver in comparison to always doing it manually through your blogs dashboard.

What I liked:

• Option to enter full screen mode to avoid distractions
• Easy image, video,audio and quote add an upload
• Live preview screen to see how post would look like published
• Handy web browser bookmarklet
• Intelligent microblogging – you can follow your friends, search on Twitter and share posts with Ping.fm
• Word and character count
• If you need to copy and use some text from other sites, there is a good option to Remove Formatting, handy.

What I disliked:

• Limited advanced customization options
• For me the screen size for body text was too small, but I had no resizing modification options
• Blogo assumed I needed my images aligned with text,which would be handy if I would used small images. Since I used pretty big images this auto feature created more problems for me than it was helpful, but maybe that’s just me
• I didn’t like the default CSS styling Blogo had, but there is no option to change font size, background color and line heights.

Summary

I liked the main window of the Blogo post editor, where all the main features are just a click away. The big downside was the tiny body text field and not being able to customize anything. For the people who want a smart desktop blog editor that does most of the hard work for you, Blogo is a good pick. However if you are picky and really want control over the entire blogging process maybe you need to look for something else.

MarsEdit (Mac)

Price: $39.95 (has 30 day trial)

MarsEdit is a really powerful and feature rich editor, which works with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace, TypePad, Movable Type and dozens more through standard MetaWeblog and AtomPub interfaces. If you use iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom or Flickr libraries, you’ll love MarsEdit, because you’ll be able to insert images into blog post with the click of a button!

If you use any coding editor, then you’ll also enjoy MarsEdit’s integration with BBEdit, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, TextWrangler, and any editor that supports that ODBEditor suite.

While writing a blog post I enjoyed it’s clean layout, though sometimes I missed having some of the one click features you get with a WYSIWYG editor. To keep things minimal and clean MarsEdit put all the formatting options in a dropdown menu. I think it depends on your taste – if you want a very clean interface and do not mind few extra clicks,you’ll enjoy MarsEdit.

Comparing with Blogo MarsEdit has some more text styling customization options – I could change the default font in Rich and HTML editor views and I was able to change background color in HTML view (strangely I couldn’t change the background in the rich editor view which I prefer using). But you can still use WriteRoom there (WriteRoom’s full screen writing environment gets your computer out of the way so that you can focus on your work. The result is a subtle clearing of the mind that helps you write better.)

I found this video showing how to use MarsEdit and some of its great features, check it out:

What I liked:

• Bookmarklet which allows you to blog whatever page you’ve surfed to in your browser—it sends the page to MarsEdit, which opens a new post window with the title, link, and any selected text.
• Clean interface
• Coding editor integration
• Integration with iPhoto, Aperture and Flickr
• Spelling and grammar check

What I disliked:

Really I found just one, but big, drawback for me. MarsEdit features are hidden, making article editing a little bit slower than I would want. For example Rich/HTML view switching can be done with a keyboard shortcut or two clicks Post->Edit Rich Text. While this may sound minor, if you’re not good with remembering or using keyboard shortcuts, the time that it takes you to click every time will slowly add up.

Summary

Well, minimalism lovers will love MarsEdit, because it’s extremely clean and still very powerful. If you’re focusing on images you’ll enjoy different software integration and if you’re an information junkie then the bookmarklet will be very handy for you.

However if you want to make your writing process as efficient as possible you’ll need to remember all the shortcuts MarsEdit has and spend some serious time learning how to use it in a more advanced way.

Ecto (Mac)

Price: $19.95

With ecto you can write and manage entries for your weblog(s). You can compose entries offline and use the extra features ecto offers, such as spellcheck, creating links, attachments, and much more. Ecto is a native Mac OS X application, and offers you a more powerful and easier to use editing interface than your blog’s built in control panel.

Ecto has been the most customizable of all, though it hasn’t got some of the newest, fancy features the other blog editors might have. Most of the features that Ecto doesn’t have aren’t missed, at least by me. I am looking for an editor which does it’s best to aid just the writing process and nothing else and that’s why I think Ecto is the best one for the job.

Watch this video I found on Youtube to learn more, the author is showing some of the best features in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYEXGe0z4N0

What I liked:

• Support for multiple blogs, able to easily switch and browse through them.
• Able to set custom tags for more personalized and native usage to editor
• Clean interface with all the main features right in front of you
• Able to set up fully custom CSS, font, background color to editor you use, if you’re a typography geek like I am, you’ll enjoy full control to customize whatever you like both for Rich and HTML view editors.

What I disliked:

• When I try to insert image in post I always got a popup window with a lot of image customization options. This started to bother me after a while since I don’t need to style the image. I wasn’t able to get rid of it with a “Remember my choice” checkbox somewhere, because there isn’t one.
• Slightly outdated design. While I don’t care a lot about design if there is great functionality, Blogo and MarsEdit had much better interface design than Ecto did. The design isn’t bad, but I would like to see a better one
• Seems to me Ecto hasn’t been updated for a while which might mean that support isn’t really available and you won’t be able to expect any future updates. Just a guess though, but I couldn’t find Ecto on AppStore and their support forum is full of spam.

Summary

There isn’t one ultimate blogging editor for everybody, I just hope after these reviews you’ll have a good insight what’s possible with each one, as for me, Ecto turned out to be the most suitable editor for now, it’s powerful, clean and efficient. In the near future I’d like to see other editors improving with greater customization tools and feature. Everybody has their own expectations and needs from a desktop blog editor and I am sure many of you will be satisfied with one of these picks!

Windows Blogging Editors

Blogjet

Price: $39.95 (has free trial)

The most advanced Windows blog editor and manager. Get the convenience and speed of a native application, and the ability to write posts offline.

When I was previously using Windows, Blogjet was my favorite blogging editor because of it’s clean interface and powerful features. It really has  what any advanced blogger would need. However it’s not free.

See Blogjet’s features in this video. The version that is available is an update of the one in the video. See official tutorial videos on CodingRobots Youtube page.

Some of Blogjet coolest features:

• Auto replace – If you are tired of writing the same thing over and over again, create an Auto Replace rule for it. For example, when you type Scoble, BlogJet can replace it with a link to Robert’s blog.
• Integration with Feed Readers – BlogJet integrates with FeedDemon, RSS Bandit, NewsGator and others for you to be able to blog about something in just a few clicks.
• Flickr and YouTube Support – Your photos on Flickr and videos on YouTube will complement your blog – and now it’s easy to insert them in your posts, as BlogJet supports these services natively.
• Modern Interface – The easy-to-use graphical user interface in BlogJet looks native on Vista and Windows 7. Maybe not a functional feature, but interface matters and in Blogjet you get a beautiful interface.

Windows Live Writer

Price: Free

Windows Live Writer makes it easy for anyone to write articles like a professional blogger. You can create beautiful blog posts, and see what they’ll look like online before you publish them to your blog. Plus, you can publish your posts to any of your favorite blog service providers.

This is the best alternative if you are looking for a free and quality editor, for me it still felt a little bit too feature rich and clumsy, but it’s still a very good choice and it will be easy to learn if you’re used to Windows Office products. I didn’t enjoy all the default fancy effects this editor has. You need to spend some time customizing things right from the beginning.

ScribeFire (Web Browser Extension)

Price: Free

Can be used both on Mac and PC since it’s a browser extension.

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Google Chrome Web browser, Opera Web Browser, and Apple Safari Web browser that allows you to easily post to all of your blogs.

ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to all of your blogs.

You can post to WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Tumblr, Posterous, Xanga, LiveJournal, or any other blog that supports the MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs.
As for me, I didn’t find it too useful just because I only have one WordPress blog and  the ScribeFire environment is pretty similar to WP. I see great use for ScribeFire if you have several different blogs and you need one management system for all of them. This extension makes it easy to switch between these blogs and lets you to do everything in a single environment. For example if you have blogs on WordPress,Blogger and Tumblr it may become challenging to write in all of them and be familiar with each of their interfaces. ScribeFire solves this problem and is a good option if you enjoy a web browser type blogging editor. Ah, and did I mention they added support for Zemanta, a plugin for easily adding related links to an article too?

Check this video showing how to use ScribeFire effectively with Zemanta. For me the problem was that the results it returned weren’t always that relevant to the topic, because I needed good images and very similar articles from my own article base. While Zemanta does a good job, I just still prefer doing it manually so I can be assured of better quality. But hey, I am a huge geek, don’t listen to me.

Innovative writing tools and interesting solutions

While I was searching for different blogging clients I also found a lot of different applications and websites which were dedicated to the writing process. There were also curation/blogging tools that assist you greatly while you write, but let’s start one by one.

Qrait

A realtime curation platform designed to fulfill the needs of content curators and reduce information overload for the rest of us.

Well, Qrait isn’t out yet, but I like where it’s going, especially the content suggestion option. Basically I would use it for my drafting process mainly, letting me easily add videos, related tweets and any other information I would like to collect before I actually started writing. I see it as a management system, with it’s pros and cons. Maybe for you it would be handy just to share some content and be able to create it easily.

Curate.Us

Curate.Us allows you to make both visual clips and formatted quotes from web content that you can post on your blog or web site. Clips are screenshots that provide both back links and trackbacks to the original source. Quotes made with Curate.Us extract relevant passages from any web content, format them, and also provide both back links and trackbacks to the original source. Curate.Us also creates short links that are easy to tweet and email.

Go through it’s self-guided tour of features to learn more about this service:

Features I found interesting:

• Add “clip this story” button to your web site enabling your readers to easily clip and quote your work.
• Curate.Us analytics, you can track where your content is going and how much traffic is returned to your site.
• Curate.Us-enable Your Site – Once you have registered for an account on Curate.Us, you can easily Curate.Us-enable your site. Doing so gives your readers the ability to share your content across the web while giving you the ability to see how and where your content is used.
• You can clip quotes and screenshots with ease now!

Interesting service definitely!

Repost.Us

This service is created by the same people, who created Repost.Us.

Repost.Us is a frictionless instant syndication platform where any publisher’s content can be instantly syndicated to another publisher, blogger, or website with a few clicks and no prior business relationship—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Repost.Us automates content syndication, opening up monetized content exchange to the entire web. Repost.Us guarantees the integrity and security of the story being syndicated. Repost.Us is also search-engine friendly. Because search engines only see content on the original publisher’s site, syndicated copies are seen by search engines crawlers as a link back to the original.

Repost.Us supports four monetization models, and publishers can mix and match to find the exact formula that’s best for them. Publishers can choose from two ad-supported models, paid fee syndication with tiered pricing, or free syndication to increase reach.

I am not sure if this new approach will go wide, but I think this is a legal way to farm content and it doesn’t violate with Google as well! See how it works page, to learn more.

SimpleNote

SimpleNote is an easy way to keep notes, lists, ideas, and more. I included it because of the importance of taking notes, jotting down ideas wherever you go and being able to sync them. There is a lot of third party software that allows you to use this application on iPhone, iPad &iPod touch, Mac OS X, Windows, Android, Palm OS and much more. Read all available options here.

Few of SimpleNote coolest features:

• Sharing and publishing – Keep a shared grocery list with your family or housemates. Or publish some notes from your class or meeting.
• Use a growing variety of extras – Simplenote is an open platform. People are building lots of cool things you can use to extend your experience.
• Instantly search your notes – Type whatever you’re looking for, and your list updates instantly. You’ll never misplace an important thought again.

OmmWriter ( PC and Mac)

Remember in the previous article where I wrote how to set the mood? Well, OmmWriter does a lot to help in this process, forget about everything and just write, even some audio is included! Look at their video for better insight:

OmmWriter Dana is a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.

OmmWriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, vindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration.

If you are a scriptwriter, blogger, journalist, copywriter, poet or just someone who enjoys writing, welcome back to concentrating.

ByWord ($4.99) Mac

If you’re Mac user however my favorite simple writing editor is ByWord with its beautiful default CSS styling, super sleek interface and handy full screen mode. It’s not free however, but for me it was worth the price.

ByWord will be handy if you’re writing a book or a lot of plain text, for bloggers who need to add a lot of links, images and video – you won’t be able to do any of this with ByWord. This software is kind of like what the iPad is to the Amazon Kindle in regards to books – you can read books on the iPad, but you’ll have a much better experience using the Kindle just because you’re not able to do anything…just read.

As for Byword – just write, no fancy options to distract you.

One more site to check out if you own a  Mac, iPad or iPhone is HogbaySoftware.

They have several great apps for the writing process and keeping you organized:

• PlainText – Dropbox text editing for iPad & iPhone
• TaskPaper – Simple to-do lists for Mac & iPhone.
• WriteRoom – Distraction free writing for Mac & iPhone.
• QuickCursor – Your text editor anywhere for Mac.
• SimpleText – Your text synced online for Mac, iPhone, & Web.

Writer For iPad ($0.99)

Have an iPad and want to enjoy a great writing experience? No problem, check this advanced software for Information Architects.

The key to good writing is not that magical glass of Bordeaux, the right kind of tobacco or that groovy background music. The key is focus. What you need to write well is a setting that allows you to fully concentrate on your text and nothing but your text. Many professional writers use SimpleText or Textedit because these are the only writing programs that are totally distraction free. But text editors are not perfect. That’s what Writer is for.

Conclusion

What about you? Which blogging editor do you prefer to use? Maybe you’re using a blogging editor I didn’t showcase here but you feel it’s better than the ones I included? I am open to any suggestions, though I really went through a lot of editors to save time for you and show the best players on the market!

What do you think about some of the simple blogging editors and some of the more innovative solutions showcased here?

You just need to sign up before showing your creative work off to the whole world. In this article we have reviewed 10 best solutions for creating your online portfolio in matter of few minuets.

1. Carbonmade

Carbonmade was established in December 2005 by Dave to manage his and his friend’s online portfolios. Later it was opened for everyone. Carbonmade helps you in managing your online portfolio with variety of tools that allow you to customize the way your work should be presented. It is very effortless to use, as you don’t need to have HTML knowledge for updating portfolio or its theme. Ideal for displaying illustration, photography and videos online, you get custom sub-domain for your portfolio. Carbonmade provides you a personal blank canvas, without any advertisements and other crap stuff, just to show your work to whole world. It provides free as well as pro plans. Free plan allows you to upload 5 projects and 35 images. Pro package costs $12/month and allows you to show 50 projects, 500 images and 10 videos.

2. Krop

Krop is an excellent choice for building resumes and portfolios, which offers simple and elegant template enabling you to manage your work quickly. You can show your work to the whole world with your own personal and unique URL, without any advertisement. It is a professional portfolio solution, not a social networking site where you get comments or likes, these things don’t belong in professional world. You can try Krop for free having limit of 10 images, pro plan costs $9.99/month unlocking image hosting limit.

3. Behance Network

Behance Network is a very well-designed and professional website to showcase your creative work online. You can exhibit images, text, video or audio, you can also embed your projects from Flickr, YouTube or Vimeo having no uploading limit. It is a completely free platform to promote yourself instantly, get exposure and get hired. You can find other creative people to work with, to share tips and media or to get feedback. Behance Network ensures maximum vulnerability on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. Awesome traffic stat is an insurance that your creative work will get seen.

4. PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter is the best choice if you are a photographer interested in building your online portfolio, selling photos, marketing yourself as an accomplished photographer. Over 65,000 photographer worldwide uses PhotoShelter to power their success online, using awesome features of PhotoShelter, like easily searchable photo galleries, secure photo storage, elegant templates and easily searched photo galleries. It helps in selling your images quickly at very reasonable price. You can try it for $1 for 14 days. Other plans start from $9.99 per month up to $49.99 per month depending on the storage space you want.

5. Coroflot

Coroflot is a fast and easy way to get your creative projects online and expose it to the world. Coroflot is used by over 200,000 designers and artists worldwide, hosting more than 1.4 million images of diverse disciplines of creative work like graphic, fashion, interior and textile designing. Coroflot also offers an active job board where you can hire creative people or get hired by multinational organization. Creating portfolio is absolutely free with unlimited file hosting.

6. ViewBook

Viewbook was launched in 2008 to help creative people to present and promote their work with simplicity and creativity. It provides a minimal design without any fancy designing, advertisement or any other distraction so that your images wont lost their beauty and taste. You can make your images private as well as public, choice is yours. You can try Viewbook for free for 30 days, plans starts from $4 per month.

7. deviantART

deviantART is the largest online social network for artists created in August 2000, having 13 million registered members, 100,000 uploads daily and 35 million unique visitors per month. You can configure your online portfolio is matter of minutes, upload or import your images and publish your portfolio. You can use deviantART as a digital place where artists are looking to co-operate and helping each other to improve their artistic skills. You can choose from Basic or Premium Portfolio. Free portfolio offers hosting up to 100 images, provides you advertisement-free domain and easy-to-use interface with no HTML required. Premium portfolio offers unlimited image hosting service, personal domain and password protected access option. It costs $4.95 per month.

8. Jobrary

Jobrary is resume and portfolio builder for designers who want minimum effort for maximum impact. Use just need to have creative projects, Jobrary will make sure that your portfolio looks stylish and modern.

9. SmugMug

SmugMug is one of the best website for showcasing and selling your photos online. You can sell your photos and earn up to 85% of the markup, share on Twitter and Facebook and make your gallery looks hot with full-screen slideshow. You can try this amazing professional service for 14 days for free, then you have to upgrade to pro plans starting from 39.95/year. SmugMug is worth paying as you can earn huge amount by just selling your photos, enjoy pleasure of unlimited storage and traffic, also you get advertisement free space to display your work.

10. Sortfolio

If you are finding talented web designer for your project then you should not overlook Sortfolio as it offers services of best web designers from all over the world. Sortfolio is a hub of creative web designers to interact and get hired, you can find web designer or if you are a web designer and looking for work then you can get listed for free. This service also offer same services for web designers and freelancers as they do for web designers. Sortfolio is a free platform for clients and firms to interact, it is not involved in any kind of financial transaction between them. You can build your own portfolio for maximum exposure.

For business’s, this is fantastic. We’ve seen viral videos on YouTube, Facebook campaigns, foursquare promotions, and so much more. For you though, the small business, freelancer or so on, the thing’s that the big companies are doing aren’t suited for you. What you need to do is successfully integrate your social media and networks into your site, because nowadays, people will spread what they love on these sites, and you need to be there!

Twitter

Twitter is a fantastic resource. Initially it was used by the web community, spreading useful links amongst the community, and it importantly still is, but it has caught on to the whole world. Now celebrities, companies, and everyday people are using it to keep up-to-date with what’s going on. By integrating twitter with your site, you allow people too much more easily follow what YOU are doing, and what is happening on your site.

TweetMeMe

The TweetMeMe button is everywhere. Some of the biggest tech blogs such as Wired, TechCrunch and Mashable use it, and that’s testament to its usefulness. In essence, it lets your readers tell their friends about your article which they’ve enjoyed reading, or found useful, with one single click. It also keeps track of how many times your article has been retweeted with a counter!

TwitterFeed

While TweetMeMe allows your readers to tweet your article, do you really want to have to be clicking that button every time you publish an article as well? If the answer is no, then that is where TwitterFeed fits in for you. It check’s your blog’s RSS feed, and when a new entry is found, it tweets it automatically for you!

Tweet!

Want to show your latest tweets in your blogs sidebar? There are plenty ways to do so, from widgets to writing your own scripts to display them. Tweet! makes its fantastically easy as a lightweight, customisable jQuery plugin. It even has nifty features such as automatic linking, and converting <3 into ♥.

Twitter Icons

You are of course going to want to encourage user to follow you, and what better way to do so than to make use of a fantastic button to attract the reader’s eye to your twitter page. Here is a fantastic roundup of over 100 twitter icons, but there are plenty out there, so if you don’t find something you like, Google is the place to start looking!

Facebook

Facebook has grown massively in recent years. Nearly every teen and younger adult has an account and regularly checks it, sometimes several times a day. This offers a fantastic market of people to spread your site amongst, and with Facebook’s continuing growth, and branching out into all sorts of markets such as gaming, search and advertisement, it is somewhere you want to be.

FBShare

This is much like TweetMeMe except instead of tweeting, it shows you liking the page on Facebook! When someone does this, you are having your link shown to hundreds of this persons friends, increasing the amount of people likely to read your article. Like TweetMeMe, it keeps track of the amount of shared, and is fairly customisable.

Facebook Fan Widget

This widget is intended for your sidebar, and allows users to like your website on Facebook, without having to search for you on Facebook! It shows a like button for your Facebook page, your latest updates, and some of the people who have already liked your page.

FB Connect Comments

Allows your readers to comment on your site using Facebook! Facebook is up there with the most powerful, most used websites of today, so why not harness what it has to offer and get the conversation flowing on your site via Facebook’s accounts, notifications and so on. This widget is powerful, yet easy to set up.

RSS to Facebook

Unlike Twitter, which has TwitterFeed, Facebook doesn’t have anything easily built-in to show your latest blog posts from rss to your Facebook page. Luckily, it is possible and this tutorial shows you exactly how!

Digg

Digg is a fantastic resource for sites that publish articles and news. In essence the public Digg articles that they like. The more times an article is dugg, the higher in the list it becomes. Articles that make it to the front page can benefit from 10′s of thousands of click-throughs; not something to be missed out on!

Digg Button

Much like TweetMeMe, and FBShare, A Digg button will allow your readers to submit your article to Digg.com, and Digg it to raise its popularity. The more people who Digg your article, the more popular it becomes, and the more new visitors you are likely to receive!

Digg Widget

If you produce articles on a regular basis, you may want to show off your article’s on Digg, in your websites sidebar. Digg make this fantastically easy to do this widget generator that allows you to show things like popular articles, upcoming articles and so on in different categories and tabs. It produces a simple piece of code that you simple copy paste into your sidebar!

Google Buzz

Google Buzz is Google’s latest attempt to break into the social networking/media markets. By integrating it into people’s Google mail inbox, it means that it’s there for people to read easily, and is therefore not something to simply brush aside. Big social news sites such as Mashable have adopted it in their social media buttons, so why shouldn’t you?

Show your latest articles in Buzz

Want to show your articles as you publish them in Google Buzz? I know sites like Mashable do so, and I often see some great discussions taking place in Buzz on these articles. If this is something you want to do, then it’s fairly easy. All you need to do is connect your site with Google, and prove that you are the owner of the site.

WP Google Buzz

Again, this is like FBShare, and TweetMeMe, but for Google Buzz. The same standards apply; your readers click it to show your article in the Google Buzz, and likewise, it will keep a count of how many times this happens. Sadly, this is just a Wordpress plugin.

Google Buzz ER

Want your Google Buzz updates to be displayed on your Wordpress website? No problem! This Wordpress plugin makes it simple and easy to do so, and you aren’t just limited to the sidebar. You can place this wherever you want on your website!

Further Options

These are of course, just a few ideas for each platform to get you started. There are many more out there, some that provide support for all platforms. There are social media plugins for WordPress that will allow you to select a multitude of sites to support. You could choose to use a commenting system such a disqus which allows Facebook, twitter and buzz integration. Just remember, keep it clean. While social media integration is key these days, don’t go overboard to the point where the site isn’t yours any more, it’s just a big mash of different social integrations. Realise what you need, and what you don’t, and things will work well for your site!

1. Firefox

Each and every computer user knows about Firefox which is the most used open source web browser having huge amount of extensions and add-ons, there is no need of detailed description for Firefox.

2. Camino.

Camino is another open-source web browser which ensures to provide the best possible browsing experience for Mac OS.

3. OmniWeb

OmniWeb is an other open source browser for Mac OS providing very powerful interface to enhance your browsing experience in as many ways as possible like built-in web shortcuts and unique drag-and-drop tabbed windows.

4. Thunderbird

Thunderbird glorifies your emailing experience with high level of security and privacy.

5. OpenProj

OpenProj is an open source project management solution which can be used in replacement of Microsoft Project.

6. Adium

Adium is specially developed for people who love instant messaging. It supports all major chatting platform including AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail.

7. NeoOffice

NeoOffice is a complete set of office applications mainly including word processing, presentation, drawing and spreadsheet for Mac OS X. It can import, edit and exchange files with other office programs like MS Office.

8. OpenOffice

OpenOffice is an open source office software for Mac OS X offering word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and much more.

9. Disk Inventory X

Disk Inventory X is a disk usage ability which shows the sizes of files and folders in a graphical way.

10 jEdit

jEdit is an open source and extensively used text editor for programmers for Mac OS X, which is written in Java.

11. Celestia

Celestia provides you a great experience of exploring the universe in three dimensions.

12. Stellarium

Stellarium is a free planetarium which shows realistic sky in 3D, exactly same what you see with your eye or any telescope.

13. Jomic

Jomic is an open source application distributed under GPL, which is a strong comic book viewer, stored in PDF, CBZ or CBR. It support various image format like JGP and PNG, it also features two page mode for better reading experience.

14. Stepmania

Stepmania is a rhythm game and dance revolution clone which can be connected to external dance pads.

15. Cocoalicious

Cocoalicious is an excellent open source del.icio.us client for Mac OS X, by using which you can manage your del.icio.us bookmarks from desktop.

16. Plex Media Center

This application reduces the gap between you Home Theater and Mac using a very awesome user interface which links you to your media files. By using Plex you can play diverse audio and video media formats and you can also stream online media.

17. Seashore

Seashore is an open source image editor of Mac OS which features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for text as well as brushes. It also supports multiple layering and alpha channeling.

18. SMARTReporter

SMARTReporter reports about any hard disk failure before it actually happens. It will use Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology to do so; one warning will be enough for you to think about backing up data right then.

19. RSSOwl

RSSOwl is an easy to use and extremely flexible RSS, RDF and Atom news feed reader for Mac OS X.

20. Pixen

Pixen is an advance graphic editor specially designed to facilitate pixel-artists.

21. FreeWRL/FreeX3D

FreeWRL is an open source VRML/X3D browser which fulfils your OS X 3D graphics needs.

22. Scaletron!

Scaletron is an electronic scaling calculator specially designed for graphic and web designers to calculate enlargements and reductions of artwork.

23. ffmpegX

ffmpegX is an open source and powerful Video Transcoder for Mac OS X, which supports huge number of formats for encoding like DVD, SVCD, VOB and more.

24. OpenSong

OpenSong is an open source application developed to manage lyrics, chords, lead sheets, computer projection of your music.

25. iStumbler

You can use iStumbler on your Mac to discover WiFi routers, Bluetooth devices, Airport networks and more.

26. BibDesk

BibDesk is an open source bibliography manager for Mac, which will keep track of your bibliographic information and the associated files or web links.

27. GnuCash

GnuCash is easy to use and free financial accounting software for your personal or small-business use. It includes all major features which any accounting software should have.

28. SimplyBurns

SimplyBurns is an open source and simple CD / DVD burner for Mac OS X.

29. Juice

Juice is developed for a person who wants to listen online audio programs but cannot, due to, whatever may the reason be. Juice allows you to capture and listen to missed podcasts anytime in future.

30.HandBrake

HandBrake is a multi platform and multi threaded video transcoder specially designed of Mac OS X providing excellent output quality.

31. Inkscape

Inkscape is an awesome replacement of Adobe Illustrator which is a vector graphic editor. Features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones and other important features.

32. Cyberduck

Want to browse FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files, Google Docs and Amazon S3? Try Cyberduck which is a splendid open source tool for browsing.

33. Gallery

Gallery is a web-based photo album organizer, helping you to blend photo management smoothly into your own online projects. It is very easy to install and use, it includes resizing, rotating, automatic thumbnails and more.

34. Komodoedit

Komodo Edit is an open source language editor that will help you in writing codes easily. It is a multi-language editor supporting Perl, Python, Tcl, PHP, Ruby and JavaScript. It writes codes faster because of its auto-complete feature, it also provides support for adding third-party libraries.

35. JUnit

JUnit is an extremely useful framework for writing and running automated Java testing.

36. Jext

Jext is an awesome open source code editor written in JAVA. Apart from JAVA, it can edit many other types of source codes for example, source code of XHTML, JSP, PHP, Python Ruby etc.

37. Scintilla

Editing and debugging source codes are basic and fundamental need of any developer, “Scintilla” can help them in doing so. It is a free source code editing application which includes important features like error indicators, syntax styling, code completion and call tips.

38. FullSync

FullSync is n extremely expandable and customizable file synchronization and backup tool, especially made for developers but its basic functionality is very simple which can be used by everyone.

39. Angry IP Scanner

Scanning IP is very crucial for network administrators and other enterprises like banks and government agencies. For this purpose Angry IP Scanner is best choice as it is open-source and cross-platform network scanner specially deigned to scan IP addresses and ports in a very simple and fast way.

40. MUTE

Mute is a peer-to-peer file sharing network that enables us to search and download easily with privacy. It is a fast and native application with no java or python.

41. Apcupsd UPS control software

Apcupsd is software for monitoring power management and controlling most of the APC UPSes. During an event of power failure, this program will inform the user about power failure; hence giving a warning to save important data before system gets shutdown.

42. TV-Browser

TV-Browser is a digital and java-based TV guide which collects daily TV programs from internet and arranges them in a form of a TV guide. It supports a huge amount of skins and plugins, making customization comfortable. Its only purpose is no make TV guides; you cannot watch TV using TV-Browser.

43. MacLibre

MacLibre provides an excellent collection of free software for Mac OS X from categories of Internet, multimedia, Office and other utilities.

44. Moodle

Moodle is an education course management system which can be used by educators to make informative online learning websites.

45. Synergy

Synergy enables you to share a single mouse or keyboard between multiple computers having different operating systems, without any special hardware.

46. Blender

Blender is very handy 3D content creation suite, having all major features required in this kind of software including very sleek interface, awesome animation, UV unwrapping, real-time 3D game creation, Imaging and composing, shading, rendering and modeling.

47. Skim

Skim is a powerful PDF reader and note-taker for OS X, which can be used as an alternative of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

48. AppleJack

AppleJack is an effective troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X which runs in single user mode and it is very user-friendly and easy to use. With this you can troubleshoot your computer even without GUI.

49. PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a Linux New Media Award winning and powerful object-relational database system.

50. MAMP

MAMP is an easy to use program which is used to start and stop the servers. It is a powerful completion of Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X, it is very easy to remove as it do not modify any part of normal Mac OS X.

51. NetBeans

NetBeans is a free and open source program which provides, software developers, an integrated development environment. You will get every needed tool to create website, applications, professional desktop, it also supports C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and Ruby.

52. WineHQ

Windows OS has much bigger library of applications than Mac OS, so if you want to run any Windows applications on your Mac OS X then WineHQ can help you in doing so with ease and flexibility.

In the end we would like to hear your recommendations and suggestions about open-source applications. :)