Textflow is a Swedish start-up developing a product for people who collaborate on Microsoft Word documents. They have released the first incarnation of their desktop AIR application, there is also an online version powered by Flex.

I must admit when I first started the application I was a little lost as to what it was for. It isn’t a word processor. I got asked to drag a Word document onto the application. Firstly I was on a Mac so I didn’t readily have a MS Word document to hand. Then there was no new menu item or icon, or on closer inspection any text tools like you would expect any word processor to have. On an initial inspection you could not do a lot with the app.

The site says:

Collaboration has never been this easy. Parallel word processing helps you produce text faster and use feedback better. To see TextFlow in action, watch the 1 minute video presentation and don’t forget to sign up for the beta

So I watched the video and read the associated blog post. So if you to work on multiple copies of the same Word document separately between users you can drag them all into Textflow and it will guide you into making the correct document merges. Sounds simple enough and it does a good job.

You can try it out online first or you can download a set of test Word documents that you can play with on the AIR version.

It makes light work of analysing many word documents and highlighting the results, something that would take an age by hand on large documents.

The feedback / bug submitting side of Textflow is another well thought out concept. It will take a screenshot of the app and send any associated session data along with it. There are also three questions already in the text area for you to answer, guiding the user for more accurate feedback.

Looking at the company information on Crunchbase, it looks like they are working on possibly integrating with Google docs and the export of other formats.

Design Eye

The introduction vide is a good idea and much needed given the slight initial confusion. I would like it if they had the tutorial blog posts condensed into an initial ‘getting to know Textflow‘ introduction that would guide new users if required.

The actual compositing window is really well coded and kind of works how you would expect. Although the whole app looks like it could do with a good designers input to give it a bit of life in the way of a new theme and colours. Just looks and feels a little dull.

Technical Eye

The TextFlow AIR‘ application is built using Adobe Flex 3 including custom component work in ActionScript 3.

Tagged with: productivity, social

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Bad me a bit of a long period without an update. Well I have been preparing my presentation for Max Europe so that’s my excuse! If your heading over to Milan make sure you say hi.

Anyway back on with business. Scoop is an Adobe AIR powered RSS reader that integrates with Google reader. What makes “this app”;http://www.scoop.uk.com a little special is that you can integrate with multiple Google Reader accounts. I personally use multiple reader accounts so having a capable offline / online AIR application is great.

Scoop is an RSS Feed Reader with offline/online Google Reader syncronization built in. Keep track of multiple google reader accounts simultaneously.
Read, tag and star your scoops/posts on the train and Scoop will syncronize your changes with Google when you’re back online.

The developer Nick Kuh has done a great job on this beta version. When started the AIR application takes you through adding your Google Reader accounts into what Scoop terms ‘profiles’. Within the main UI you can then switch between these profiles.

Lots of the Google Reader functionality is currently not present in Scoop. For example when adding a star to a feed item, there is no way to just view your starred items. I would like to see another tree item for starred items and also visually star the feed in it’s list so you could easily scan the tree.

Nick has outlined some new featured that will be arriving in future releases. They include mark all as read (you can do this already by scrolling through your posts
but there’s no button at the mo) and an integrated search feature.

Design Eye

Nice simple looking app that looks quite standard Flex. I’m not sold on the 3d flip effect between the edit and main panels, a nice quick smooth transition would suffice. The tree view on the left is clear with nice iconography.

The offline functionality is nice and fast. There is an offline / online visual indicator although a red dot in the left corner of the app window needs to communicate itself better using a larger more descriptive icon or textual description. That said it does remind you of the last sync time.

Technical Eye

Built using Adobe Flex 3 and AIR 1.0. The panel that shows the feed item detail is a HTML component powered by the AIR wekit engine and styled using CSS.

Tagged with: google reader, productivity, rss

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This Adobe AIR application is going to be a very useful tool if you develop AIR apps yourself. Called the Application Descriptor Manager ADM for short it is basically a nice GUI that helps write your descriptor file for your AIR application.

ADM is an AIR application descriptor file manager. It’s a tool aimed at AIR application developers who want better control over their applications’ descriptor XML file by providing them a nice GUI to edit the properties and icons of their little child. You can think of it as a design view for your descriptor files.

Those of you who have built an AIR application know that you can set many things in the descriptor file while trying to remember what you can and can’t write. The author David Deraedt, who used to be a translator for O’Reilly in France, has done a great job of designing an app and GUI to make this job just that little bit more painless.

You can save the file after your done and David has thoughtfully given an option to write a backup copy of your original ADM file just in case. Each option has a short help tooltip to guide you and the image icons options are a great time saver. Before saving the file you can get an actual XML file preview so you get that warm fuzzy feeling without the headache!

See the video below (YouTube):

Design eye

Love the Adobe inspired logo! The ADM AIR app is the usual Flex form affair but given the audience fully acceptable. The layout is clear and the use of tabs certainly help break down a complex series of options.

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flex 3 and the AIR API’s.

Tagged with: developer, productivity

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Kronos is another time tracker application in Adobe AIR. However this one is small, neat and standalone unlike Compuccino which connects to your Basecamp account. So that makes Kronos useful for many tasks.

Kronos lets you track the time you spend working on your projects. The application also shows you the money you earn, live. Flexible, Kronos can run multiple timers at the same time. You could for example track the work of a whole team if you wanted to.

The concept is simple, you create a set of Projects, set the charge rate per hour then when you start work on that particular project hit start. This starts the clock for that active project. You can have multiple projects running at one time. I’m sure there are people who require such a tool.

Now this is an early beta version and the developer would like you to feedback with any tips and suggestions or even bugs.

Firstly I when creating a new project it would be useful to show the open view where you can readily type the project name and charge rate. I found clicking on the project bar to be tricky and sometimes unresponsive, you have to double click.

Also for future the ability to change the currency symbol like dollar or Sterling.

Design eye

The iconography is nice and the app is clearly laid out. To help with making the project bars appear to be clickable changing the cursor to a hand on mouse over could be effective.

Maybe having a more visual clue as to what projects are running using a different bar background in association with the symbol? Also to cut down on the number of clicks a start and stop button on each row that becomes active on the bar mouse over?

Overall nice design & typography.

Technical eye

This is built using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript which would explain the double click difficulty encountered previously. The author is utilizing the Mootool JavaScript framework that appears alot in HTML based AIR apps of late.

Tagged with: productivity

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Compuccino Time Track is an Adobe AIR application for tracking time spent on projects. In their words:

compuccino time track is a time tracking Adobe AIR application that brings together people, projects, tasks and time. The time for each activity can be measured, no matter if you are on- or offline. The ability to run multiple timers caters for a lot of flexibility thus making it possible to switch between tasks easily. The recorded times can be submitted to project management software Basecamp with a single click.

This AIR application is designed to work in harmony with 37Signal’s Basecamp project management tool. When you start the app for the first time it asks you for your login credentials and a list of task areas.

Once logged in you can add a new timer by choosing the client and task from the drop down lists. These are pulled straight from the Basecamp account.

As you add timers they are displayed in the list, where you can clear and submit multiple timers that you have stored from within the app. This list can be hidden from view if required and times can be sent directly to your Basecamp account with a single click.

Design eye

The UI is well designed and visually appealing with the two most prominent features being the start / stop button and time display. I’m liking the subtle gloss highlight on the timer display even if it is very web 2.0 design trend.

The settings screen can sometimes get overlooked from a design aspect but the Compuccino settings menu is clean and thoughtfully laid out, nice fade and out too.

Technical eye

Built using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. They are using the MooTools JavaScript library to provide additional functionality and animation.

Tagged with: productivity

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Yammer was the winner of this years TechCrunch50. It’s basically like Twitter for work and inter company communications. Launched by former PayPal COO David Sacks it was initially used within Geni.com.

The idea is that you can invite work colleagues to join your network, it uses the host domain name of the email address you started the group with as that group’s name. The limiting factor is that only people who have an email address of the same hostname will be allowed to join in.

The Adobe AIR desktop client for Yammer is one of a host of apps using their API. Others include an iPhone and blackberry apps. I’m starting to see more of this clustering of apps for new startups, it’s great to see Adobe AIR being used towards more of the corporate market.

Yammer makes no secret of the blatant UX and design elements from Twitter, so it’s no surprise that the Yammer AIR client is very similar to the Twitter clients built on the AIR platform. You can do the usual following of people within your organisation and interestingly there is also threading. Some of the options just open up a new window in your browser to then access the site, profiles for instance. I’m not sure if this is an AIR client issue or a lacking API.

Interestingly in the settings menu you can add extra accounts, something that would be ultra useful in many Twitter clients. The update refresh rate is set at 30 seconds by default and there is no mention of request time limits like Twitter. The settings menu also contains options for how the alerting works, default font sizing and colour scheme.

Design eye

The colour scheme is nice and the logo looks good on the app and in the dock. As mentioned above you can alter the colour scheme. This would be a really good opportunity to allow an organization to produce it’s own colour theme and possibly upload a custom logo?

The UI is clean but can’t help noticing a striking similarity to Tweetdeck in that when you mouse over a posts avatar you get four buttons for replying, following, viewing the thread and profile. Hmmm.

When updating the icon on the top bar actually rotates which is a nice visual indicator that there is some activity.

There is some inconsistency in some of the wording. When you mouse over the reply link in a post the tooltip displays ‘reply to this update’ yet if you mouse over the button inside the avatar the tooltip says ‘reply to this message’. It’s a small thing but your users will notice, be consistent and concise.

I’m not sure if Yammer has the same 140 chars limit that Twitter has as no indication is given, the input box just keeps on growing. Bizarrely there is no send or submit button? Can we have one please?

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flex 3 and the Yammer API. The Yammer AIR client uses oAuth for it’s authentication.

Tagged with: productivity

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Daniel Dura has released an AIR application called Moderator. It allows you to moderate your Wordpress blog comments direct from your desktop using Adobe AIR.

This is a very early release but the feature list already looks impressive. Dock and system tray icons show the number of unmoderated comments. You can accept, delete or mark as spam the comments directly in the app. If the user has a Gravatar then this get’s shown next to the awaiting comment.

Via the setting button, you get to control the polling interval between 1 and 60 minutes. There is also update functionality built into the AIR app for future updates.

To get this working you will need to be running a Wordpress install of version 2.6+ and have AIR version 1.1. The download is supplied in a ZIP file that contains the required Wordpress plugin and associated AIR badge installers.

So simply install the Wordpress plugin in the usual way, head on over to your settings tab and then go to the Moderator tab to install the AIR app from the installer badge. I did have a problem with the SWFObject JavaScript code used to place Flash content on the Wordpress admin panel page and this is related to the Flash player 10 release and should be solved soon. It’s worth saying that this is unrelated to Daniel’s work with Moderator. If you too have problems you can get the direct URL to the AIR install out of the page code.

Design eye

Nice looking app and an inspired logo that looks great sat at home in my dock. Looks to have the same base skin as Tweetdeck and there is nothing wrong with that.

I liked the inclusion of the Gravatar’s and the number of comments in the dock or systray is a nice concept so that you can still keep an eye it in the background.

Technical eye

This is obviously a little different to the normal AIR apps we see on RefreshingApps.com. You must have the pre-requisite of a 2.6+ version of Wordpress and the plugin code. But this is built using Adobe Flex 3 and some nice PHP to power the comment data from the AIR app.

Tagged with: productivity, fun

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Flaivor is an Adobe AIR application for watching quality web videos on your desktop. Flaivor is a project by the folks over at Hatchling a 3d animation an interactive media company.

The first thing you notice about Flaivor is it’s small size on your desktop. The second will be the polished UI graphics, I especially like the faux turned metal switches and sliders.

The UI is simple and easy to navigate around. A list of video sources on the web are in the left panel, playback controls on the bottom and list of videos to play on the right. There is also a fullscreen option with playback controls.

The video sources used as the power behind this app are not the usual YouTube. The include some of the best short animations and cartoons, I ended up watching lots of videos with this app.

This version of Flaivor allows you to save your favourites into the ‘my videos’ selection on the left panel. You can also drag and drop any FLV videos from your machine directly on the playback window.

Design eye

Really nice attention to detail on the graphics and transitions in this AIR app. It’s about time we have more oldskool metal interfaces in apps again. I really liked the visual change when the buttons were depressed, the sliders are also clear but interesting.

The rollover effect and transition on the right hand panel is slick, but why doesn’t the left hand panel get the same treatment? It gets no rollover or selection notification so your constantly wondering what you have selected.

The panel animations when you start or close the app are a really nice way to finish off the AIR app.

Technical eye

Would you think that a UI of this design would be built using Flash? Well your wrong it’s in fact Adobe Flex 3. Another proof that not all Flex apps look the same. Nice work.

Tagged with: video, fun

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Twibble, what a great name. Anyway back to business, Twibble is yet another Adobe AIR Twitter client that’s an addition to the existing lineup of services from Twibble. Basically Twibble is a service that adds location based info to your Tweeting:

Twitter is a great service to stay connected with your friends. With Twibble you can tell your friends what are you doing, and where you are!

The Twibble lineup, including Mobile application, is built around their API where you can get geocoded twitter timelines mainly in KML format. After reading all of the intro stuff on the site I was quite excited by the prospect of an AIR app, thinking integrated 3d rotating globe showing where my fellow Twitterers were sending their message.

Well there was nothing like that, the AIR client is basically just like any other AIR Twitter client with a few additions. There is a set of six icons to the right of each tweet. You can switch to see an individuals Twitter timeline or jump back to your own quite easily. There is also a button to see a users Tweets in Google maps, unfortunately in the latest version I reviewed this opened up Google maps in my browser then failed to load in the file from Twibble. I also tried the Java mobile version, but that kept crashing in my N95 8GB.

You do get the location underneath a Tweet which is not always visible in other Twitter clients. Oh what some people write for their location made me laugh eg. ‘the back of the class’ @drewm.

Design eye

It’s not a bad looking application with fairly small footprint. Hidden in one of the top icons is a 3d style card view, different but not idea for viewing Tweets as only one is visible at a time and the animation is clunky.

Some of the iconography is not immediately clear which means your hovering over them awaiting the tooltip to see what the function is. This problem was handled well by Snippage reviewed a few days ago, by using a context help bar that appears under the heading.

Technical eye

Twibble uses it’s own API and the Twitter API to get data for the app. The application as far as I can tell is built using Adobe Flex 3 with ActionScript 3.

Tagged with: twitter

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Bookmash is an Adobe AIR application mashup for video, music, photos and social news. It takes a different approach to many of the mashups you see and the more you get into this application the more detail you find. One of Bookmash main points is that it is translated into 13 languages. I’m sure that is the most I have come across in an AIR application to date.

The concept is to search across all of the five media types (or any subset) which then gets results back and displays them on a virtual wall for you to browse. Rolling over one of the wall tiles display a tooltip for that item, selecting it then zooms you into the wall tile displaying the detailed view.

You have the ability to bookmark any of the items you find. Being built in AIR naturally saves your bookmarks locally. Not only is this a link to the data but gives you the opportunity to view that bookmark offline if you need to. You can optionally share a bookmark with the many social sharing sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Technorati.

Content comes from a number of sources with more planned in future releases. Video comes from Youtube,
Dailymotion and Metacafe while audio is provided by APIs from LastFM and Seeqpod. Images come from Flickr with Picasa support coming online soon. Together with social news from Digg and the ability to search for users on the major social networking sites.

Download is a big part of Bookmash, by default it creates a download directory inside your users directory on your host system. It’s here that download data is stored. Once downloaded video and music can be played while offline, which is what I’m doing now while on the train! I’m not sure of the legal implications of downloading music, but as the FAQ’s state neither Bookmash or Seeqpod are responsible for what you download through this app.

There is a lot of hidden features in this app which vary depending upon the media you are viewing. Some of the UX and design is quite poor in the detail screen, but that is something that can be worked on. It a good app for showing the possibilities of mashups on the AIR platform. The only problem I had with this app was that it didn’t want to quit on my Mac. I seem to have this with certain apps and it could be a bit of an AIR runtime bug, more research needed by me on that one.

Design eye

I like the 3d wall display as the main entry point into the AIR app. At first I wasn’t too sure how you moved it so I would recommend a visual indicator or a change in the cursor to reflect this. A nice touch could be keyboard integration using the arrow keys to slide the wall.

The menu I also found really tricky to use. It’s a self opening and closing accordion, which are not the easiest of UI elements to use anyway. It was very hit and miss at selecting the option you wanted. Hiding it out of the main visual area is good and adds to the initial visual impact.

Everything else is displayed in a modal window over the top of the wall using grey very Flex like panels. The layouts vary alot and there are many times where the content just doesn’t fit which forces scrollbars. A nice Flex skin and more user focused consistent layout would make this so much more enjoyable to use.

Technical eye

Bookmash AIR application is built using Adobe Flex 3 to mash up the numerous API and data feeds from the sites mentioned above. Load data storage is handled by the AIR runtime for local saving of your downloads.

Tagged with: fun, music, video, social

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