Sometimes, it’s even the simplest interfaces that are the hardest to build - when you have a huge amount of features and only a limited amount of space on the screen, it can be challenging to cut features out, or hide them elsewhere in the app (yet still have them be accessible). We’ve created a collection of 15 applications that have done an astonishing job of uncluttering the interface and leaving a beautiful, simple design that’s a joy to use.

Tweetbot

Tweetbot by app designers Tapbots is an iPhone app that makes tweeting easier, and has clever shortcuts for viewing entire conversations and for favouriting tweets.

Hipmunk

Hipmunk aims to take the agony out of booking a flight online by displaying flight search results in a much simpler, easier to understand way.

Square

Square allows you to take credit card payments on your iPhone or iPad, easily.

New York Times Skimmer

Skimmer by the New York Times is a different interface for browsing through news, predominantly designed for tablets. As it’s name suggests, it makes skimming through news stories easy and fun.

Batch

Batch is a new iPhone app which makes uploading and sharing photos through Facebook & Twitter a breeze.

TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is a task management app that makes adding and crossing off tasks simple. It’s perfect for people that like their to-do applications minimal and unfussy, but still beautiful.

Greplin

While Google handles searching the web, Greplin aims to help you search through your life. The app connects to your email accounts, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, and lets you search everything all in one go. Despite it’s complexity, the interface has been kept beautifully simple and elegant.

Oink

Oink is the newest iPhone app from Digg founder Kevin Rose.  Instead of rating places, Oink allows you to rate the things inside - everything from the best coffee in a café to the best films on at the cinema. The interface is uncluttered and sophisticated, and it’s beautiful design feels natural and intuitive to use.

Calvetica

Calvetica is an iPhone calendar app that aims to provide a minimalist way to organise your life. It’s clearly had a lot of attention, design-wise, but it’s also simple and easy to use, whether you’re drilling down to specific events or just quickly glancing at it - it’s simplicity gives you the information you need, and nothing else.

Flipboard

Flipboard is an iPad app that turns RSS feeds into easy-to-browse articles, like a digital magazine. The interface is both beautiful and intuitive, which makes the whole experience fun.

Stypi

Stypi is an online document editor, similar to Google Docs, which allows multiple people to all work on writing the same document at the same time. It’s a fairly complicated idea, but it’s been executed perfectly here - following the Apple philosophy, Stypi “just works”.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management tool which has both a web interface and an HTML 5 mobile optimized site. Both interfaces work perfectly for the medium they’re on - it’s always easy to navigate around and view calendars, timelines and tasks and clearly a lot of thought has been put into usability.

Twitter for iPad

Twitter’s official iPad app looks simple, but hides a wealth of features and shortcuts. Selecting a tweet and sliding down with two fingers, for example, reveals the whole conversation. It’s a brilliant example of a stunningly elegant user interface.

Reeder

Reeder for iPad makes RSS feeds easier to browse through and has clearly focused on making a simple, beautiful and usable app. Scanning through articles and blog posts is very intuitive and the design of the content is easy to read, with plenty of white space.

Things

Things for iPad is a task management app that allows you to tag tasks, add them to particular projects and archive old tasks in a logbook. Despite having quite a few features for power users and fans of “getting things done”, the interface keeps things simple - only showing you what you need and never cluttering up the screen with unnecessary distractions.

Are there any user interfaces that you think deserve a mention? Let us know in the comments.

About the author

Alex writes for printing experts Print Express, who specialise in postcards, business cards and flyer printing.

Other Beautiful User Interfaces?

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Write guest posts for KnowTeBook

If you’re a writer and know a lot about app design, mobile marketing, social networks …… or owning a small business, you can give great advices on branding, marketing, productivity, dealing with clients (and other related topics), or you can write ‘how-to’ posts, please get in contact with Sebastian.

Triggers

if this then that

The this part of a task is the Trigger. Some example Triggers are “if I’m tagged in a photo on Facebook” or “if I tweet on Twitter.”

Actions

if this then that

The that part of a task is the Action. Some example Actions are “then send me a text message” or “then create a status message on Facebook.”

Channels

How it works?

you input one of the sides of your rectangle and you can calculate the width Wth – short side – or length Lth – long side – getting the right proportion for your design. Use the integer function INT to round the calculation if required.

At the bottom of the calculator are the mode switchers where you can select the proportion you want to calculate:

• 4:3 Video and photography standard. Musical perfect fourth.
• 16:9 HD and widescreen standard.
• 3:2 Photography standard. Musical perfect fifth.

How can be used?

As a graphic designer you like to have some kind of logic or numeric coherence in the structures that you are working on, where the elements in the layout have relation between each other sharing a common proportion. Erik thinks this helps to create coherence, harmony and order in any design foundations. You can download the app at itunes.
Send in your suggestions for great time-saving apps to make life easier.

The internet powerhouse used a recent press conference to introduce the world to Google Wallet, a new offering that aims to bridge the gap between online and offline commerce. Despite not even having an official launch date, the upcoming product is already generating a lot of talk and controversy in the process. In this article, we will examine the potential impact Google Wallet could have on the mobile marketing sector.

How it works

A Revolution in Mobile Shopping

Google Wallet is being designed as a mobile app that lets consumers securely make purchases right from their handsets. It will basically transform the consumer’s mobile device into a universal credit card as it allows purchases to be made with a Citi MasterCard credit card or Google Prepaid Card, both of which can be stored in the handset. According to the internet giant, the app will support other popular payment options in the near future. With Google Wallet, consumers will be able to make purchases in a matter of entering a simple PIN number and a few taps on their mobile display, creating a degree of convenience that did not exist for many users before.

Google Wallet Product Launch

Opportunities for Mobile Marketers

Brands are excited about Google Wallet, and its all because of the shining potential Google’s upcoming payment service has to offer. Marketers can take advantage in two ways, starting with the search company’s Groupon competitor Google Offers. A user can take any of the deals a business pushes through Offers and have them automatically synced to Wallet so they are easily accessible. Marketers can also “tap” into the apps potential by joining Google’s SingleTap partner program, which already includes well known brands such as Bloomingdales, Subway, and Toys R Us. The benefit here is being able to create innovative incentive programs that help brands reward users for their loyalty, which is great for strengthening relationships.

What is your mobile strategy?

We have learned that Google’s cutting edge mobile payment service is driven by a technology known as NFC. Short for Near Field Communication, NFC is a new form of wireless technology that allows devices within a certain range of one another to swap data. The future of Google Wallet will likely depend on the adoption of this technology among mobile makers. Although Sprint, who is allowing Google Wallet to be used on its Nexus S 4G, is currently using NFC chips in some of its phones, the search company itself projects that only 50% of smartphones will have this technology by 2014, meaning half of the user population will not have access to the functionality.

For the above reason and the fact that PayPal has filed a lawsuit against Google over basing its design on stolen mobile payment secrets, it may be wise for mobile marketers to see how this one develops before jumping on the Wallet bandwagon.

About the author

Nan King, a tech geek and environmentalist at heart, is an advocate of business email marketing strategies that encompass the use of an email marketing company which is permission based.

Using mobile wallet or work in mobile marketing?

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Write guest posts for KnowTeBook

If you’re a writer and know a lot about mobile design, mobile apps, mobile marketing …… or owning a small business, you can give great advices on branding, marketing, productivity, dealing with clients (and other related topics), or you can write ‘how-to’ posts, please get in contact with Sebastian.

1. Create mobile or local value within 3 minutes

Realize the environment of using mobile phone. People are in the subways to work, waiting for the bus or just spending some time at home on it. In each case they amount of time online on mobile devices is much lower than on a desktop computer. You need to create a value to the user withing the first 3 minutes. If not - you lost, because the reader didnt have enough time to consume your product or service or is not satisfied with it at all, so he comes never back to you again. Provide value! The next app from the competition ist just 2 seconds and clicks away! How to provide value? Try innovative or cost effective products. Try something new, like location based services (for example friend-finder, or like facebook places).

2. Styling for mobile devices

The style of mobile phones are an important issue. When you have decided that you need to embrace the mobile, you need to consider the diverse eco system of your mobile application. You are deciding to have one of the fastest growing segments on web and you need to know the mobile eco system. It has many browsers, screen sizes, connection speeds etc. these days, Android system is gaining popularity. You should try to think in a bigger picture. You should have a good visual consistency, minimized scrolling and a web page transitions maintained with the desktop site.

3. Set A Default Zoom for mobile devices

You may want to consider to get rid of any extra white space. For example, if your site is cantered and has white space on the left and right sides, visitor will likely want to zoom in to see things more clearly

4. Resizing Images

If you have a small screen, it also means a small size for readers. You should try to avoid any kind of heavy loaded images. Instead, resize the images on a web browser. You need to optimize your images and links. Every mobile person will appreciate that as it makes them easy to zoom in for reading or watching

5. Automatic detection of mobile devices

Typing is something that many people tend to avoid. There are various methods of automatic mobile detection and some of them include User agent detection and a so called “DEviceAtlas”, which are very effective. They supply information of the capabilities of many devices.

6. Think about navigation

Your website may include headers and footers like a regular website, but when any one surfs your website through a mobile, all this does not matter. Try to avoid all things that may not be of much interest to the readers. Eliminate all kinds of unnecessary links to destinations, as they do not have much mobile priority. On the other hand, try to add something that may be interesting to the viewers. E.g you could add a ‘search’ form on the header or you could also add contact information on top rather than bottom, depending on your service

7. Easy to find link to full content version

How many times does it happen that your readers might not find the main information they were looking for, when they are browsing through the mobile version? So, it is good to add a ‘Full Site’ button on the footer so that they can have a glimpse of all features on your website.

8. Shorten your links

Nobody likes to type in long complicated links into a mobile browser. In times of twitter, shorten your links using services like bit.ly.

9. Consider Text And Spacing

Keep in mind the behaviour of mobile users on your web site. If links appear close together, they may be to difficult for users to click on the correct one with a mobile device. Also, small text does not suit well on a mobile device. Keep these things in mind when optimizing your site for mobile users.

10. Measuring Mobile audience

If you know the percentage of the mobile audience that you have, it makes your work much easier. You will see what your readers prefer and how they navigate. You know the popularity of pages and and where you need to work on. For knowing that, you need to get closer to the audience and listen to them and track their behaviour.

Mobile Tools and Strategies

I’ve been doing some research on the best tools for your mobile friendly version and find the following very useful to implement in your communication strategy:

11. Mobify

This is a perfect theme for your website that gives you complete control over mobile site along with CSS. You also get some tools that help in managing all kinds of advertising of your websites.

12. WP Touch

This theme for wordpress helps you in showing your contents in a beautiful way and increases the page loading. Its design was inspired by Apple’s app store design specs. The importance of this application is that it does not interfere with your regular web themes. It beautifully transforms a Wordpress blog in to web application experience when you view it from iPhone, iPod, NAdroid and Blackberry touch.

13. MoFuse

This has become very famous. Over 23.000 blogs are using it for their mobile versions. MoFuse lets you easily create your contents, promote and build it and lets you track your own audience. The more visitors you get, the more it helps you in generating more sales and increasing income. Some of the big brands are like Mash able and Read write web are using it.

14. Mippin Mobilizer

This tool helps you to mobilise your site. You must follow some steps in order to mobilise your website. You also get full control towards your branding and logo. Hence, this makes it possible to monetize your mobile site. As your site is mobile, then surely it will be generating more and more visitors and in turn it will give you much more profit. There are advertising tools for your mobile site to increase your income.

15. Wirenode

Almost 40,000 mobile web pages hosted in Wirenode and among them are some famous brands such as Ford and Reebok. It only takes about 5 minutes to get a mobile version of your site up and running, and gives you features such as mobile widgets, mobile polls, RSS mobilization and forms.

16. WP Tap

WPtap offers a comprehensive mobile Wordpress theme for your website. WPtap provide mobile themes and plugins that can directly convert your website into a WordPress-application experience when viewed from the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android Smartphone and Blackberry touch-based. It comes completely with all the features for a standard WordPress blog: search, login, category, tags, archives, photos & more. In addition, WPtap also offers many customization features through a user-friendly panel Wordpress admin.

17. Mobisite Galore

With mobiSiteGalore allows you to easily build, publish & share a complete a mobile website that is guaranteed to work well on many mobile phones. The design template is owned by mobiSiteGalore and allows you to fully customize the colours, fonts and layout on the page to create a unique view of a mobile version of your site.

18. Zinadoo

Zinadoo allows you to create a mobile version of your website in just a few minutes. With Zinadoo you can also optimize your site for Google Mobile with keywords and tags. You can also make use of their special mobile widgets.

19. MobilePress

MobilePress is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to change your blog into a mobile friendly blog when viewed on mobile devices. MobilePress also allows you to create custom mobile themes for different handheld devices and mobile browsers like Opera Mini, iPhone and Windows Mobile.

20. Showcases of mobile friendly websites

Below is a set of examples or showcase of websites with a mobile version that might give you inspiration

• 15 Beautiful Examples of Mobile Website Design Done Right
• 35 Beautiful iPhone App Website Designs
• Showcase of 20 Mobile-Friendly Popular Design Blogs
• 60 Mobile Web Design Showcase
• 40+ Best Mobile Website Designs

Have more tips, tools or strategies?

Go ahead and join the discussion! If you liked this post, why not subscribing to KnowTeBook.com or check out our Facebook or Twitter page?

Write guest posts for KnowTeBook

If you’re a writer and know a lot about design, coding, …… or owning a small business, you can give great advices on branding, marketing, productivity, dealing with clients (and other related topics), or you can write ‘how-to’ posts, please get in contact with Sebastian.

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Google has just launched a new aspect of its Google Maps product called Latitude. It’s a social layer that goes over Google Maps to show your location information in real time. If you think Google is already creepy with the amount of data they have about you, you’re going to hate this.

using a cellphone display light for a product shoot from Jann Lipka on Vimeo.

You may at first write this off as a gimmick, but just realizing you always have that little light source with you can spark you to find ways to use it.

How it works

1. Notify people when you go live
2. Shoot with almost no delay
3. Chat with your viewers while broadcasting

How To Make it iPhone Ready

Embed the following script into the header of your website:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
// Intersquash.com - iPhoneize your website.
// Just insert this between the <head> tags of your website.
var agent = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var iphone = ((agent.indexOf('iphone'))!=-1);
if (iphone) {
window.location = "http://intersquash.com/feed/07d3f976";
}
//-->
</script>

See the results

See the difference using the iPhone ready RSS Feed by Knowtebook.

Before

After