Daily

Basic paper planner

Although many people have made the leap from paper planners to electronic ones, paper planners still have a lot going for them. It's faster to write something down than to type it on a tiny smartphone keyboard, and when your schedule is in a binder instead of on a device, you never have to worry about your battery dying. Daily Planner for Excel is a basic planner template that lets users create and print planner pages. It's nothing fancy, but it works just fine if you need a simple way to create your planner.

The template opened without … Read more

Pulse News, an elegant mobile reader

Pulse News gives you all the news from your favorite Web sites laid out in an intuitive interface. News sites are laid out vertically so you can swipe up and down to the latest news from all sites quickly, or you can swipe horizontally to read more stories from the same site. Each story heading has the headline and an included graphic, making for a more elegant approach than other news readers that show only text links. Touching a story heading gives you either a text-based summary, a mobile-optimized version for easy reading, or a way to view the story … Read more

LivingSocial eying $1 billion IPO, report says

Daily-deals provider LivingSocial could be nearing an initial public offering, Reuters is reporting.

Citing anonymous sources, Reuters says LivingSocial is currently in talks with investment banks to launch an IPO valued at $1 billion. The news service's sources say that at a $1 billion IPO, LivingSocial's valuation would range between $10 billion and $15 billion.

Earlier this month, daily-deals market leader Groupon announced its own IPO plans that could see the company raise $750 million on a valuation of between $15 billion and $20 billion.

Those moves toward an IPO aren't all that surprising. As of late, … Read more

Dear Diary

Journaling is a great idea, whether you're keeping track of your daily goings-on at work or recording your most intimate thoughts. My Daily Digital Journal is a portable program that makes keeping a journal fun, easy, and secure. We can imagine anyone from tweens to executives using this program.

The journal's interface is plain and intuitive, resembling a mini word processor. There's a formatting toolbar across the top, and the program comes with a full complement of formatting features. You can change the font style and color, set the background color, and create bulleted lists. You can … Read more

But, wait--Amazon has daily deals now too!

Whatever anyone can do, Amazon can do, too. Groupon is filing for an IPO and creating new jobs for salespeople in just about every city on earth; Google Offers debuted this week; and I hear there might even be a few other daily deal services out there. So naturally, Amazon wants in on the action. The company that offers... well, everything, is now offering offers as well through AmazonLocal.

The service seems to follow the same model as those of rivals like Groupon, where subscribers to a daily e-mail can purchase a voucher that offers savings on local goods and … Read more

Google rolls out rival to Groupon in Portland, Ore.

PORTLAND, Ore.--Google Offers launched its answer to Groupon today exclusively in Portland, Ore., with its first deal for--you guessed it--a coffee shop. Perhaps owing to the highly caffeinated culture here, some people who snapped up the "Offer of the Day" raced over to Floyd's Coffee Shop only to discover that the coupon can't be redeemed until tomorrow.

"Within 10 minutes of the deal going live, someone was in the shop to redeem the offer," Jack Inglis, co-owner of Floyd's, said in a phone interview.

On the cash register at Floyd's in … Read more

Google unveils mobile payments, coupon service

Google today introduced Google Wallet and Google Offers at an event in New York City.

The company says it plans to bring all parts of the retail experience together to make "tomorrow's best shopping experience," said Google Vice President of Commerce for Stephanie Tilenius.

The services will combine coupons and discounts and payments at the time people buy things through their phone.

Together the services will work like this: Coupons for items you buy regularly will pop up on your phone, or an item that the store you're shopping at is out of will pop up … Read more

The 404 825: Where the damage is done so I guess I'll be leaving (podcast)

Our buddy Peter Ha is back on the show to tell us what's new over at The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper. Unfortunately, halfway through the show we find out that Macho Man Randy Savage passed away today, so RIP to one of our favorite WWF athlete. To get us back in good spirits for the rest of the episode, Jeff and Peter make a Twitter wager, and the loser has to...well, you'll have to listen to find out what's going to happen when Peter gets to 4,000.

The 404 Digest for Episode 825

Creepy dude installs a streaming camera in a Starbucks bathroom. Playboy for iPad skirts Apple's nudity rules with Web trickery. Add Peter Ha on Twitter so Jeff can pejazzle his future.

Episode 825 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS VideoRead more

Top photography apps for iPhone

For the past couple of years, I have been writing the iPhone apps of the week in this space. But we've decided that instead of the same old app rundown, we're going to do something a little different. Starting this week, we're going to be putting together three apps that fulfill a specific theme. We're going to try to introduce one or two new apps and put them alongside older classics in the category. This way, you will be able to compare new apps with older ones, and also, find out about apps in the category that you may not have seen before.

This week's apps revolve around your iPhone's camera capabilities. The first one is a popular app for snapping old-school photos, the second lets you take photos that make objects appear miniature, and the third is a newer app for chronicling gradual changes in your appearance.

Hipstamatic ($1.99) is an extremely popular app that turns your iPhone's digital camera into an old-school single-shot camera of the past to give your images that grainy, washed-out (in a good way) retro look. The interface is a bit confusing at first, but you'll soon figure out how to switch among different types of retro film, different types of lenses, and even effects for different types of flashes. You can switch between each of the different variables with a swipe of your finger, with dramatically different results depending on the combination you choose before taking your snapshot.… Read more

Take a photo once a day

Everyday is an app designed to make it easy to snap a photo every day to chronicle how your look changes over time. Made popular by various bloggers and other photography types, the concept is you snap a picture of yourself everyday, then after a significant amount of time (6 months? One year?), you can show a movie of gradual changes to your appearance.

With the Everyday app, most of the work is done for you. You can set up reminders so that you get a push notification to take today's picture. After you take your first picture the … Read more