Coda is Panic's legendary Mac app for editing HTML and other web files, and today Panic has announced the followup to Coda, called (surprise) Coda 2. As you might expect, the hugemongous feature list over on the Coda site has web developers frothed up into a frenzy of anticipation. In addition to the usual suspects like a better editor, UI improvements, and compatibility with FTP, iCloud, and other services, Coda 2 will also include a built-in MySQL editor, code-folding to get code you don't need to see out of the way, and an active path bar to let you find any file you need right away. It looks like the premiere tool for working with web code -- Coda 2 -- will be available on May 24.
And that's not all. Panic is also releasing Diet Coda for the iPad on the App Store that day as well. Diet Coda is a version of the editor engineered for the iPad itself, and not only brings the best of Coda's features to Apple's tablet, but also works with a Coda 2 installation for "AirPreview": Make changes in Coda 2, see them live on your iPad right away. Diet Coda will be $9.99.
Smartphones may function as music players, cameras and grocery lists, but the calling experience they provide remains the same as their bolted-to-the-wall counterparts.
Sidecar wants to change that by making smartphone capabilities part of phone calls.
The app, which launched for iOS and Android on Tuesday, makes it easy for users share live video, photos, locations and contacts during voice conversations.
While it’s already possible to send a photo or contact while talking on the phone, with Sidecar, it only takes a couple of taps. When a call participant lifts the phone from his or her ear to look at the extra content, the phone automatically switches to speakerphone in order to avoid an awkward break.
Making calls through Sidecar is free whether the person you’re dialing has the app or not, but you can only use the extra functions if the other person has downloaded it as well. If not, he or she receives a text message prompt to do so after you hang up.
The startup plans to eventually charge for some communication services such as long-distance, but its grand scheme is a bit broader.
Over the last five years or so, the revenue that mobile network operators bring in from voice calls has been tanking. Sidecar wants reverse the trend by making phone calls cool again.
“Long-term,” CEO Rob Williams tells Mashable, “our goal is to define calling experience that reclaims the declining voice revenue for the industry.”
Would you make more voice calls if you could easily share content during them? Let us know in the comments.
GitHub, the version tracking and collaboration platform for developers, has proven quite popular, especially with the open source crowd. There's been one glaring issue with the dev hub, though -- lack of an easy to use Windows client. Sure, app creators could sync their changes though command line tools and SSH, but Mac devs have had a slick desktop app to call their own for sometime. Now Microsoft users get the same benefits, including the ability to merge branches and roll back changes, wrapped in pretty Metro-friendly package. You'll find more info and a download link at the source.
GitHub uses the git distributed version control system originally created by Linus Torvalds to help manage Linux's development as its backbone. It provides project hosting, bug tracking, and more, all wrapped up in a powerful Web interface. GitHub's most important feature is perhaps its trivial ability to fork projects. It takes just a few clicks to create your own version of a project to hack on and develop. Thanks to these features, GitHub has become the go-to place for collaborative open source software development. It's the home of projects such as Ruby on Rails and Node.js.
However, one developer community has found GitHub harder to use than others. Though the situation has improved, git and Windows are not the best of friends. After all, git was developed for Linux; Windows isn't anything like Linux. But that's where GitHub's new application, GitHub for Windows, comes in. GitHub for Windows provides a simple way to install and start using git on Windows, along with neat integration with GitHub's hosting and forking infrastructure.
The application, released on Monday, is an attractive, Metro-styled application. In addition to the GitHub for Windows application itself, it includes a self-contained version of git, the bash command-line shell, and the posh-git extension for PowerShell. You don't even have to manage any of these individual pieces yourself. The application uses a ClickOnce installer so it keeps all the bits and pieces up-to-date automatically.
Pinterest is a photo sharing social network that allows users to create and manage various categorized image collections in a “bulletin board” style fashion. Users can “pin” photos into categories they create based off their own personal interests. Pinterest helps people all over the world connect through their own like-minded interests, such as travel, culture, fashion, cuisine, and photography.
Who uses Pinterest?
The average Pinterest user is female between the ages of 24-54
Over 90% of Pinterest users are female*
33% of users are between the ages of 35-54*
50% of Pinterest users are parents
Pinterest users are extremely active:
12 million unique monthly visitors*
2.2 million of those users post daily*
How are consumers using Pinterest?**
Expressing themselves
Reminding themselves
Learning and exploring topics
Searching for and discovering new things
Why is Pinterest beneficial for SEO?
It is no secret that search engines are using social media interaction as a measure of search authority within their algorithms. Since users can share “pins” on both Facebook and Twitter, there is an obvious benefit from an SEO point of view. Listed below are additional SEO benefits from Pinterest:
Picture captions are completely optimizable, and “pins” can be indexed in search engine page results. See the example below of Google generating a Pinterest link to a photo of Alaska when a user input the keyword “Alaska.”
Each image can contain links to send traffic to appropriate parts of the website.
Following and supporting popular bloggers and websites across the web can increase your visibility and search authority- ultimately increasing the chances of high profile web sources featuring your brand on their websites.
Things brands should be aware of:
Blatant self promotion is frowned upon, and ultimately will not be the most effective utilization of the site. The most successful Pinterest profiles are those that interact with the community and “pin” items from other community members as well. As mentioned earlier, brands can support the target community by following influential people in the category, and ‘pinning’ photos from people have interests that align well with your brand.
The Travel Channel does a fantastic job of connecting to people’s emotional ties to travel, such as the culture, food, and activities in addition to highlighting its traditional offering—suggesting destinations. The key lesson here is do not solely feature your company’s latest product and service—ensure there are additional boards that feature secondary categories associated with your brand, thereby creating more of a connection with the consumer.
It is important to supply engaging imagery to maximize results.
If your brand decides to use Pinterest, Pinterest sharing buttons should be added to all applicable content.
Providing that your brand actively participates in the Pinterest community, the site can be a great way to build social presence, gain search authority, and increase overall visibility for the brand.
We discuss a number of web services designed to keep you productive, but when you have a half-dozen different web and storage apps to keep track of they can take more time than they save. That's where Hojoki comes in. The service connects to all of your productivity tools and collects your updates, code revisions, new files, comments, and more into one feed that you can monitor in one place. More »
Earlier this week, Google introduced Knowledge Graph, the company's new search technology that understands "things not strings" and adds rich and relevant details about your query in the sidebar of your search results. Here are five great things you can now do with a quick Google search. More »
The litany of exciting MakerFaire products continues with MaKey MaKey, a device that turns anything capable of conducting electricity into a controller. Developed by MIT Media Lab students Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, you simply run a bulldog clip from the board to an object and hold a connecting wire in your hand. Connecting over USB, it's entirely programming-free, but if you find your interest piqued, you can flip the board over to use the Arduino module baked into the hardware. It's already surpassed its original $25,000 Kickstarter goal and when the run begins, you'll be able to pick up everything you need for just $35 -- but if you can't wait that long, head on down to the Bay Area this weekend.
We've recently spent a fair amount of time talking about cloud syncing solutions for PCs and mobile devices. In addition to syncing files and data across multiple devices, these services also provide as much off-site backup as most home users need. But power users and businesses often need more control than the typical cloud sync service can offer—whether it’s over what data is backed up and how, which users can use the service, how that data is secured both in transmission and at rest, or any combination of those flavors of control.
For users and system administrators who are less worried about syncing and more worried about keeping their data safe, a cloud backup solution could be the answer, and among cloud backup solutions, CrashPlan is one of the most competitive, both in features and in pricing. For consumers and small businesses, CrashPlan offers a range of versatile and highly configurable products that can back up client data to CrashPlan's cloud servers without requiring users to pay for and maintain their own file servers or network-attached storage devices. Larger businesses and enterprises can also back data up to CrashPlan's cloud, but are given the added option of creating their own on-site backup servers, which should calm security hawks distrustful of using other companies' servers to store important or sensitive data.
Though the details sometimes differ, all versions of CrashPlan operate in the same basic way: using client software installed on the computer you want to back up, you specify what files you'd like to back up and where you'd like to back them up to. All versions of CrashPlan can use CrashPlan's hosted servers, but other versions can also back up to locally hosted CrashPlan servers, external drives, or even other client computers. Once backed up, you can use the client to restore files and folders to your system.
Enthusiasm for so-called “second screen” apps has seemingly reached a tipping point.
The presence of smartphones or tablets while watching TV is nearly ubiquitous, and networks, award shows and startups are among those trying to capitalize on viewer’s propensity for simultaneous social engagement.
GetGlue, one of the most popular second-screen apps, sits at the center of this trend. Recently, the service temporarily crashed during the premiere of Game of Thrones as users clamored to check in and discuss the show.
Last week at Mashable Connect, I had a chance to catch up with GetGlue COO Fraser Kelton, who has had a front row seat to the social tv trend over the past four years. Kelton says mobile and the second screen is “forcing apps to be very focused on a single experience,” as evidenced by Facebook’s recently acquisition of Instagram.
We also discussed how social TV activity correlates with traditional TV ratings, what makes a show successful in the social space and how players in this space stand to make money. Watch the full interview above.