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Microsoft’s recently released Windows 8 brought one of the most drastic changes to user interface design that many of us have ever seen. Doing away (for the most part) with traditional UI elements, Windows 8 emphasizes text and colors in a “natively digital” way that’s unique, at the very least. It’s exciting to see Microsoft try something totally new, and fun to see developers making new PC apps again.
Interestingly, the Windows 8 design (formerly known as Metro, now referred to as Modern UI or Windows 8 UI by Microsoft) has already started influencing web apps. It wasn’t surprising to see Microsoft’s own Outlook.com and Skydrive sport the new UI design. What is surprising is how many new web apps we’ve come across with Windows 8-inspired designs, including the PDF editor PDFZen and Fotor, a simple photo editing app. The Metro design translates well to the web, and with so many PC users making the switch to Windows 8, we wouldn’t be surprised to see more apps sporting similar designs.
Problem is, everyone doesn’t like the Windows 8 design. What’s your opinion of Windows 8′s design, and are you looking forward to seeing more apps sport the clean font+color only design?
We’d like to say a big thanks to our October Web.AppStorm weekly sponsors. We’ve had a number of great apps sponsor our site so far, and we’re very excited to be featuring them. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.
If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!
Projecturf 4
The new Projecturf has been completely redesigned to make it better than ever. It is designed to help you work together with your team better, with a stream of updates and a redesigned sidebar to help you find everything easier. It also helps you see your own stuff easier, including tasks, tickets, and events, and lets you manage your own personal tasks unrelated to projects. That way, you can keep track of your own tasks, notes, contacts, and events on your own, as well as keep up with everything that’s going on with your team.
Sprout Social
With Facebook and Twitter sending many brands more traffic than Google search, having a great social media strategy is more important than ever. That’s why your team needs Sprout Social. It gives you one place to manage all of your social network accounts, so you can schedule and publish updates on all of them, together. It’ll even automatically find the best time to send our your updates, with collision detection to make sure you don’t repeat yourself.
Resource Guru
Resource Guru is the fast and simple way to schedule people, equipment, and other resources online. Resource Guru helps companies become more efficient and profitable, and it’s getting a great response from the creative agency world and beyond. Everything you need to track can be tracked in Resource Guru, as you can add custom fields and use them to filter through your calendar. It’s your one-stop-shop for everything you need to schedule and track in your business.
Bidsketch
Need an easier way to send proposals to clients? Bidsketch is a great app that lets you create, track, customize, and design beautiful client proposals. It’ll cut down the time it takes you to create proposals to just a few minutes. You’ll be able to see if and when your client opens a proposal, and can even check your client engagement and see how long clients viewed your proposal. It’s everything you could want from an advanced proposal app.
And a special thanks to you, our Web.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We hope you continue to find our articles interesting and helpful!
We’re excited to let you know about the latest addition to the Tuts+ family — Crafttuts+!
Crafttuts+ is focused on teaching everything crafty — fundamental craft skills, decorations, ceramics, crochet, jewellery-making, embroidery, candles, paper-craft, knitting, woodwork, printmaking, as well as how to market, sell, and promote your craft work.
Whether you’ve never even wondered about your crafty side, or consider yourself an expert, we’ve got you covered! Keep reading to learn a little bit more about what we’ll be offering on the site…
Our sponsor this week is Hello Scheduling, an online employment scheduling app. Hello Scheduling makes it incredibly easy for businesses to schedule their employees.
Managing a schedule can be complex enough for your own self, but it can be terribly confusing when you’re managing a team. That’s why Hello Scheduling lets you reschedule employee time in a click, change employee shifts easily, and more. You can use it to communicate with your staff by sending an email or text message right from your Hello Scheduling dashboard. Then, when it comes time to make reports, Hello Scheduling helps you stay compliant with labor laws, lets you create payroll reports, and more.
Hello Scheduling will help your business avoid getting calls from employees about when they work, by letting them access their schedules anywhere. Even if your employees don’t use computers, you can print out their Hello Scheduling schedule for them. You can also export your data in CSV format, so you’ll never lose your schedule. Here’s a quick look at more of the features Hello Scheduling includes:
Hello Scheduling is trusted by businesses from Subway to Residence Inn. From small businesses to large organizations, it’s a tool that can keep your team’s time managed easily.
Go Get It!
If your business needs a better way to schedule your employees’ time, you should give Hello Scheduling a try and see if it’s the app you’ve been needing. You can signup for a free 14 day trial of Hello Scheduling, then choose the plan that works best for your business starting at $19/month. With that, you’ll be well on your way to keeping track of your team’s scheduling without all the hassle.
We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in October. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows, or iPad apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!
Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!
Evernote released a new beta Mac app today, which has many of us trying out Evernote again. Evernote has been extremely successful, being easily the best known notes app on any platform. You can snap pictures on your phone, write out a store list, store a PDF eBook, and jot down some important class notes, all in the same app. Thanks to Evernote’s OCR-powered search, you can find anything you’ve saved in seconds.
Evernote’s free by default, but it limits you to 60Mb of uploads per month on free accounts. If you’re uploading pictures and scans every day, you’d hit that limit pretty quick, but otherwise, you’d be hard pressed to hit the limit. The pro upgrade gives some other features, such as searching inside PDFs and an ad-free interface, but for the most part, you can get much of Evernote’s power without ever upgrading.
We know many of our readers are Evernote fans, so we’re curious: did you upgrade to Evernote Pro? What made you decide to pay for the upgrade? We’d love to hear your thoughts below!
Twitter is a social network a lot of us use on a daily basis. I could easily Facebook, because Twitter is the network for me. However, its recent activity has not gone unnoticed and the San Francisco-based company has recieved a lot of controversial attention over its practice with developers.
In this article, we’re going to explore some of the recent attention Twitter has been getting and looking at what it means for us, the users and consumers of third-party apps. (more…)
In the middle of last month, Google and Samsung announced the Chromebook “for everyone”, a $249 device running Google’s Chrome OS. The Chromebook is nothing new, and it’s a project that I’ve always been fond of in concept.
The new Chromebook has already launched online and in retail stores, and is quite possibly set to see some success as the holiday season nears. Let’s take a look at the state of the Chromebook as we reach the end of the year. (more…)
Google’s one of the best companies about adding features to their apps over time. The changes aren’t always welcome, of course, especially when they change things we like about their apps. Sometimes, though, it’s fun to be reminded of the best advantage of web apps: they can get new features without you ever having to install an update. When the new features improve your life, that’s very nice.
Today, Google added a new compose pane to Gmail that lets you compose emails in a floating pane much like the Gmail chat window. They also tweaked the research pane in Google Docs, a newer feature that makes it easy to research while you’re, say, writing an essay. Let’s take a look. (more…)
Our sponsor this week is Bidsketch, a great app that lets you create, track, customize, and design beautiful client proposals. It’ll cut down the time it takes you to create proposals to just a few minutes.
With Bidsketch, you can reate beautiful proposals in half the time. Easily mix and match content, fees, and designs to create persuasive proposals in minutes. You can use Bidsketch’s premade professional templates, or use the templates that are proven to work for your business with your own custom HTML template. Then, once you’ve sent out proposals, you can easily get detailed analytics about them straight from Bidsketch. You’ll be able to see if and when your client opens a proposal, and can even check your client engagement and see how long clients viewed your proposal. It’s everything you could want from an advanced proposal app.
Bidsketch integrates with other web apps you already use, such as FreshBooks and Highrise, so you can work efficiently with all of your data ready to use in proposals. Numbers of freelancers and teams already use Bidsketch, and on average see 18% more clients sign when they receive a Bidsketch proposal. That’s why you should give it a try.
Go Get It!
Ready to start saving time and seeing more clients signup with Bidsketch? You can signup for a free 14 day trial. Then, you can choose the plan that works best for your team, starting at $19 per month.
