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Don’t Miss the AppStorm Freelancer Bundle: $300+ value for $49!

Whether you’re a longtime Mac user or are planning on switching to the Mac soon, you can always use great apps that help you get your work done quicker and make your day more enjoyable. The Envato team has put together an incredible bundle of some of the very best Mac apps for freelancers and more. The list of included apps reads like a who’s-who of excellent Mac apps:

  • Billings – a beautiful app to keep track of your time and create invoices
  • TextExpander – an app that will help you save time by automatically entering common things you type
  • 1Password – my favorite password tool, which I currently use on my PC
  • LittleSnapper – a great tool to snap and organize your screenshots
  • WriteRoom – the original distraction-free writing app
  • Radium – a great little internet radio player
  • Arq – keeps your computer’s files backed up to Amazon S3
  • Alarms – helps you stay on track with simple to-dos and alarms

In addition to these awesome apps, the bundle also includes three great items from the Envato Marketplaces: the Highlight WordPress theme, Ultimate Client Manager app, and a beautiful Translucent Business Card design. They also included the Rockstar Freelancer eBook from Envato’s founder, Collis Ta’eed.

Best of all, you can get all of this for just $49! It’s easily one of the best software bundle deals I’ve ever seen, and with so much useful stuff, you’re sure to get your value out of it. And, if you just tweet about the giveaway using this link, you can get a free copy of Smashing Magazine’s Successful Freelancing for Web Designers!

The deal only runs for 10 days, so make sure to get it before the end of June! If you’ve even considered getting two of the apps in the bundle, it’s a great deal. The only problem is that all of the apps are for Macs, so if you’re a PC user you’re out of luck. I’m currently brainstorming about doing an awesome bundle for Windows users, so if you have a Windows app that helps you be more productive that you’d like to see featured in a bundle, please let me know!

$ Purchase the Envato AppStorm Freelance Mac App Bundle – $49
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Why Popups, Ad Push Notifications, and Degrading the User Experience is Bad

When you get used to an application just working, it can be a true surprise when it doesn’t work as you expect. Minutes ago, I opened the Plugins page in WordPress on my site. When it loaded, I was stunned to see a popover asking me to upgrade to a new plugin. This was not a standard WordPress notification letting me know an update was available. It was a full popover that was essentially an advertisement for a new service, that took over your whole settings page until you closed the dialog. Talk about a surprise: it was as startling as ad popup windows when browsing the web in the ’90′s.

In WordPress, plugins typically only add a settings page, and potentially a widget on your main dashboard. Otherwise, they don’t change your main WordPress experience unless they’ve been designed to do just that. In this case, the plugin, Yet Another Related Post Plugin, took over the entire WordPress experience in the native WordPress settings page. My initial reaction was to think that my site had been hacked. As soon as I realized where the popup came from, I immediately deactivated the plugin.

As a technology user, and as a writer who tries to decipher technology and explain it to others, I find myself increasingly appreciating clean, consistent user experiences. Users should be able to expect certain things from a platform. They should be able to expect that applications or add-ons to a platform will only affect the things they have been designed for.

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The 100 Best Web Apps

Would you like to find some web apps that would make your life simpler and more productive? I’ve put together an incredibly long roundup of the web apps I think are the very best on Web.AppStorm. The article clocked in at 8,333 words, oddly enough, so there’s plenty there for everyone. If it doesn’t include your favorite app, be sure to leave a comment and share the web apps that make your tech life simpler!

j 100 Web Apps to Rule Them All
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Taking Tech Writing To The Next Level

The internet is an amazing place. I live in a small town in Thailand, and am originally from Knoxville, TN and the Dallas, TX area. Through all the differences between the places I call home, one thing’s the same: the internet. Facebook, Twitter, and chat may be incredibly easy ways to kill time, but for me, they keep me connected to all of the parts of the world I’d like to be in. I’m currently finishing my degree from a college I’ve never actually been to, and have been blessed to work with colleagues around the globe that I’ve never met in person.

I started out writing about technology on my first WordPress.com blog, and then shortly thereafter started writing for Labnol.org, a blog from the talented Amit Angarwal in India. I then began writing for Howtogeek.com, a Virginia based site that’s started by Lowell Heddings with contributers today from around the globe. Then, I started writing for Envato’s AppStorm.net network, which is based in Australia but is about the most global company you could imagine.

This month, I’ve been privileged to take a larger role with the AppStorm.net team, as I’m now the official editor of Web.AppStorm.net. I’ve enjoyed writing about the latest web apps there over the past months, and am very excited about the new opportunities as the editor. We’ve got an amazing team of contributors from around the world, and it’s always comical to look at my Skype list and see the multitude of time zones represented today.

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Win a Copy of “Digging into WordPress 3.1″ from Techinch and AppSumo

When you need to publish anything on the web, WordPress is just about the best solution for building your site. WordPress may have started out as just a standard blog publishing engine, but today, it’s powerful enough to let you create everything from complex real estate sites to an online eBook. Best of all, it’s still simple enough to let you make cute and easy to update Tumblr style blogs.

There’s only one problem: How are you going to figure out how to do all of this on your own? Sure, you could purchase a theme and some plugins, but if you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, you’ll have a much harder time customizing it to your needs. That’s where the excellent Digging into WordPress eBook comes in. This eBook takes you through everything you’ll need to know to understand the basics of building WordPress themes and plugins, and customizing the core software. It’ll even help you learn how to make your site more secure, and more that we covered in our review last year. The latest edition that was just released even covers the latest features of WordPress 3.1, including custom post formats and more. Continue Reading →

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