This morning, popular audio platform SoundCloud is debuting its brand-new HTML5 widget which will now be offered in beta format alongside its current Flash widget, but will eventually replace it. The completely redesigned widget allows SoundCloud users to embed their recordings and uploads on their blog or website, view information about the sound, its creator, the likes, comments and plays, and easily share the sound to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Also, it just looks way, way better.

SoundCloud says the new widget was redesigned to encourage more interactivity around the sound itself and with the listener comments. The timed comments are now more usable on this version of the widget, at the request of SoundCloud users. Before, they would pop up over the track as conversation bubbles. In the new widget, they appear beneath the track in a much more readable format.

This first public beta includes the social sharing options noted above, but subsequent versions will include even more social elements. When you click the share button on the top-right, Facebook (Likes), Twitter and Google+ are featured, but smaller icons for Tumblr, Facebook (Share), Reddit, StumbleUpon, and email are available below. The link and embed code are also provided.

Because the widget is now built on top of HTML5 technology, SoundCloud will be able to add more features at a faster pace going forward, the company says.At some point in the future, this new widget will replace the Flash version entirely.

The HTML5 widget is already live on some Sony Music artists’ pages, including Britney Spears and Big Time Rush, as well as on the Tumblr for Wattpad, a social network for readers and writers.

Below are screenshots (not embeds) of the old Flash widget (top) and the new one (below).

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

I found Quiet today. I’ve used plenty of these “distraction-free” apps that cover your desktop and other windows before, but mostly just for screencasting. Command-option clicking the icon of the app that I wanted to focus on has generally been enough for me, but Quiet takes it a few very useful steps further.

When invoked, Quiet can not only focus on windows or applications, it can also silence Skype, iChat, Adium, Growl notifications and bouncing Dock icons. There are times when those things are absolutely necessary to my work, but there are certainly times when I want to scream every time one of the aforementioned notifications disturbs me.

Quiet can, of course, hide the desktop and other windows using blackout, wallpaper or a blur feature (requires some extra system resources). It can also perform this action on just one space or on all spaces, and on a single app or all apps (just hide the desktop). Focusing on one space is handy if you want to be able to access multiple applications hassle-free but still maintain a “quiet” work environment just by flipping between desktops. Quiet can even hide its own menubar icon and run silently; less ideal if you tend to forget hotkeys, but a very nice feature to have.

I would like the ability to define a background color or custom wallpaper (it currently uses whatever is set for the space, which is workable). Beyond that, the available options are perfectly suited to my tastes.

Most of this can be accomplished with AppleScript, of course, but for .99 on the Mac App Store, Quiet makes it utterly convenient to “go dark” temporarily. Nicely done.

Related posts:

1. App review: Launchpad-Control
2. App Review: CodeRunner
3. App Review: Byword

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at App Review: Quiet

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

Join us as we take a look at how Mou takes a unique approach to Markdown editing and how it may be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

In Search of Perfection

I was a latecomer to the Markdown craze. This wasn’t so much the fault of the syntax, which I quite enjoy, so much as it was the shortage of tools available to infuse Markdown into my own personal workflow.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a million Markdown text editors, but none of them have really grabbed my attention and held it. No matter what I tried, I usually wound up back in WriteRoom’s wonderful fullscreen mode writing in plain old HTML.

When I thought about what I really wanted in a markdown editor, I found that I had a bit of a plurality regarding the situation. I like my plain text editing, yet I want to see the end result as well. For this reason, I really liked some of the online editors like those from Jon Combe and Ctrlshift.net because they have this awesome daul window interface but I’m not a fan of doing all my work in the browser where an unexpected crash can kill hours of hard work.

Long story short, I had very specific requirements for a Markdown app and literally nothing on the market seemed to fit. That is until Jeffrey Way of NetTuts+ fame recommended that I try Mou. Finally, I had found what I was looking for.

Meet Mou

Mou

Mou bills itself as “the Markdown editor for web developers”, and though I still use it for writing, this emphasis might be exactly why I like it so much.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Mou has that nice splitscreen view that I liked so much in the web-based editors. All of the editing is done in the left panel and the right panel automatically updates to show you the ultimate output. To someone that isn’t familiar with web writing, this may seem like a seriously screwed up and roundabout way to write, but I simply love it.

Menu Shortcuts

The layout is fully flexible, meaning the two panels can be adjusted by dragging the little dividing line. There are also some quick menu shortcuts for setting up specific ratios and even an option for a stacked view.

Markdown and Text Editing

Complete Markdown Syntax Support

If you’re familiar with the Markdown syntax, you’ll be happy to know that Mou offers full support with the awesome addition of syntax highlighting. You’re free to use HTML, simple text, Markdown or any combination of the three as you write. It’s a completely flexible working environment that allows you to work the way you want.

The menu provides a few quick shortcuts for common actions like inserting images and links, bolding or emphasizing, and even selecting an entire word or line. Another especially helpful addition is the auto-complete function that pops up when you hit escape. It’s nice that this feature isn’t intrusive, it’s only there when you want it to be.

Auto complete

Once you’re done with your work you can either copy the contents to your clipboard as HTML or export it as an HTML document with optional CSS.

Full Screen and Themes

Fullscreen writing fans rejoice, Mou has a Lion style fullscreen mode that helps you focus entirely on the task at hand. For the design conscious users there’s also a theme system that allows you to customize your experience. You can choose from the handful of slick built-in themes or create your own via a simple text document where you enter custom colors.

Mou Themes

Worth a Download?

You can already tell by now that I love this app. I’ve been thinking for quite a while that I’d like to use Markdown more but none of the products really resonated with me, that is until I tried Mou.

This app is the perfect combination of simple and powerful, structured and flexible. I wrote this very article in Mou and have indeed performed all of my other work this week in the app. What better endorsement can I give than to say that I’m using it over the dozen other text editing apps on my Mac?

That being said, keep in mind that Mou hasn’t yet hit 1.0. It’s always tricky to review a beta app as if it were a finished product, because it’s admittedly not. However, I don’t really have any major problems. Mou seems very polished and is absolutely worth downloading and using in your work today.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you’ve tried several Markdown editors but still felt that they were coming up short in the areas that mattered most, it’s time to check out Mou.

The split screen workflow is exactly what myself and others have been looking for in a native Mac solution and there isn’t another app that implements this idea in a more solid and functional manner.

Give it a shot and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

Shire Reports Revenue Growth
Zacks.com
The decrease royalty revenue was primarily due to 57% fall in 3TC and Zeffix royalties (.3 million), partially offset by 27% and 56% rise in Adderall XR (.9 million) and Fosrenol (.9 million) royalties respectively. …

and more »

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

The gang at Twelve South, the company responsible for iPhone cases like the BookBook and stands for the iPad and MacBook Pro, has just unveiled their newest creation, an ingenious iPad/iPhone charger that seamlessly connects to a standard MacBook Air or MacBook Pro AC adapter.

Twelve South sent us a sample unit, dubbed the PlugBug and we’re in love.

It’s a simple idea with a winning premise of helping frequent travelers or those cramped for outlet space eliminate the need to carry a MacBook charger and a separate charger for a phone or iPad.

Here’s how it works: Attach the PlugBug to the normal duck cover on any MagSafe power brick (which includes the MacBook, MacBook Pro and Macbook Air). The PlugBug contains a two prong outlet and its own powered 10w USB port. What this means is that you can charge your iPhone or iPad without having to plug it into your laptop, all while also charging your laptop battery.

Why is this better than just using the USB port on your Mac to charge your device? Well, the reason is twofold:

First: That takes up an extra USB port. If you are using a MacBook Air, that might mean the device has to vie for space with other components.

Second: It can take a lot more time to charge an iPad via your MacBook or MacBook Pro than through a wall connection. In fact, if your USB port isn’t powered, charging the iPad can take a ton of time.

Third: For business travelers, this eliminates the need to pack the external phone or iPad charger alongside the laptop charger.

At .95, this is a slick and relatively cheap device. It also doubles as a standard iPad charger — and considering Apple sells those for .99 (granted, the Apple model also includes a 6′ extension cord), we think this is a good deal.

What I really like about this device is that it is styled to match the look and feel of the regular Apple adapter. Aside from its red cover, you would think this was a regular Apple dongle. It fits on the power port without adding much bulk, and the extra functionality of a powered USB port is great.

More About: accessories, plugbug, twelve south, viral-video-of-day

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

But this review isn’t about Google Reader, but an application that is very similar to it and yet offers a ton more features — Reeder for the iPhone. For those of you that don’t know, Reeder has been around for a couple of years now and I have used it on the iPhone for a long time. It’s a great app to use to browse the news and save for later reading when you are on a bigger screen.

Setting Up Reeder

There isn’t a whole lot of set up when it comes to Reeder, because that mainly happens in Google Reader. If you have a Google account you can get access to Google Reader. From there you can then subscribe to the different news websites that you are wanting to read.

Once you have all your news feeds in Google Reader, you have basically done everything you need to do, because when you are in Reeder, all you have to do is log in with your Google Account credentials and then it will pull all your data from Google Reader. You don’t have to do anything else to get started.

Reading Your Feeds

As we all know, reading on the iPhone is not the most ideal way to read if we had a choice. But at the same time, it still is a decent option. Reeder provides you with a variety of solutions when it comes to reading your articles on the iPhone.

View of folders and articles

When you pull up a news story to read in Reeder, you will see a slimmed down version of what the actual story would look like on the web. But no need to worry, you still get the whole article and just about everything you need to know what is going on in the story. You just don’t get the glitz and glamour of the regular site.

There are still more options to read your articles. You have the option of looking at the mobile website for the article that you are reading if you so choose. But say you are in a hurry and you want to just glance through your news feed and want to read the interesting ones later. There are a nice group of services that you can use to save articles for later. For example, you can use Instapaper, Read It Later, Evernote, Delicious, Pinboard and Zootool. These are all great services for saving and reading your interesting articles later. Personally, I use Instapaper, but you really can’t go wrong with any of the options.

Screenshot of an article in Reeder and on the web

Syncing and Sharing

In this day and age, syncing and sharing are two key features that separate an average app from a solid app. There is no point if you can’t sync and share now days, especially in an app like Reeder. Fortunately, it does these two things very well. Reeder keeps your feeds in sync with Google Reader as well as Reeder for iPad and the Mac. So if you mark an article as read, star it, etc, all those changes will be made in Google Reader as well and vice versa.

Syncing and sharing services

You have the standard ways to share your articles as well. Articles can be emailed, tweeted, or shared on Facebook. The services I mentioned earlier for saving articles can also be used to share if you so choose.

Why Choose Reeder?

There are a good handful of iPhone apps to use to read your news from Google Reader. So why should you choose Reeder and why is it so popular?

First, it is easy to set up, plus it’s very clean and polished. You look at some of the other apps out there to read your Google Reader articles and there is so much going on within the app. For me, I just want something that works and is clean. I don’t need all the extra bells and whistles that I will never use.

Secondly, there is a Mac and iPad app. This means I can read my news feeds on any of my devices and just use Reeder and everything stays in sync.

Conclusion

Overall, Reeder is hands down, one of the best Google Reader apps out there for the iPhone. Reading on the iPhone is not the best, and Reeder does a good job of helping alleviate that problem by giving you great reading views and lots of sharing services for later reading.

The only thing that makes me a little nervous about endorsing this app is the price. It costs .99 for the iPhone. To the casual reader, this price may be too high, but for one who uses their iPhone a lot to glance at their Google Reader feed, the .99 is well worth the price. For me, it comes down to the old adage, “What you pay for, is what you get.” And let me tell you, you get a solid reading experience with this app.

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

The new-look Gmail that Google accidentally told us about last week is now rolling out to all users.

The changes, officially announced in a blog post Tuesday, allow Gmail users much more control over the look of the service. You can drag sidebars around to your preferred size and width, choose from a wider selection of high-resolution background pictures, and decide whether you want lots of email on your screen or more white space between mails. (Your choice of email density is between “Comfortable,” “Cozy” and “Compact.”)

Heavy Gmail users will also be pleased to learn that there’s a new search function — that is, you can now access Advanced Search by clicking on the search bar. Conversations have been condensed, and profile pictures added.

These are more features than Google offered in its sneak peek of the new Gmail, which started in July. Here’s the video about the new features Google mistakenly made public last week:

For now, at least, the new features will be opt-in — and not all of us will be able to access them immediately. “If you like what you see, over the next few days you’ll be able to switch to the new look by clicking on Switch to the new look in the bottom-right of Gmail,” writes Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell.

So do you like what you see? Will you be switching? Or is Google messing around too much with a good thing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

More About: gmail, Google, Top Stories, trending

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

The iPhone version is pretty much the same as its iPad cousin, with the same multitouch and smart instruments, eight tracks of editing layers and audio export capabilities. But Apple has taken the opportunity to refine the product with some new tools and features, too.

Smart instruments gain custom chord support, so that you can make your own to strum. This allows seasoned musical pros to get off the beaten path and produce some pleasant and more unique sounds, and amateurs like me to do terrible things that no one should be forced to listen to. You can also change time signatures to 3/4 and 6/8, change the key of your currently active song and export to iTunes as AAC or AIFF format. There’s also an Arpeggiator (tones in a chord played in rapid succession, not all at once) option for the Smart Keyboard.

All the new tools seem designed to provide more fun for the experienced set, while maintaining the low barrier for entry that makes GarageBand such a generally appealing app to begin with.

My initial unskilled hands-on reveals a product that doesn’t lose much appeal compared to the iPad version, though the smaller screen might feel a little more cramped to some. Apple does a good job of simplifying control interfaces, however, to avoid making the on-screen space feel claustrophobic.

If you’ve been left out of the iOS GarageBand party before now because you didn’t own an iPad, now’s the time to add your voice to the chorus, even if you can’t carry a tune or even keep time to save your life. Note that you’ll need a device at least capable of running iOS 5 to use the app, even though the software requirements actually only need iOS 4.3 or higher.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Mobile Q3: the fight for OS domination continues
• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

Gmail has started rolling out its snappy new interface to the world at large (if you don’t see it yet, you’ll eventually see a “Switch to the new look” link in the bottom-right of Gmail), and it’s a serious overhaul of the look and feel of Gmail. Here’s what you can expect: More »

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader

Microsoft-owned Skype is releasing a new version of its SkypeKit, which allows Skype calls, instant messaging, video chat and other features to be integrated by developers into consumer electronics. As Skype writes in its announcement today, the company opened up SkypeKit to the public in June to ‘accelerate Skype’s presence in the consumer electronics industry.’ Today, Skype is releasingthe Developer Preview of SkypeKit 4.02, which extends funcionaluty include desktop applications.

Developers can integrate Skype into their Windows, Mac and Linux desktop applications via SkypeKit for Desktop, which adds native Skype functionality directly into partner applications or via the Skype Desktop API, which allows developers to extend the functionality of Skype for Windows, Skype for Mac and Skype for Linux.

For the first time, Skype is releasing Video APIs to the new SkypeKit for Desktop. These Video APIs will allow developers to add video calling to desktop apps. For now, Chris Andrews, Senior Business Development Manager at Skype says the the API only supports one-on-one video calling but group chat is on the roadmap.

Andrews says that potential products using the API could focus on specific Skype desktop apps for kids, or seniors. He adds that some partners who are using the Video APIs are focused on distance learning and telemedicine opportunities. For, now, there are no plans for a mobile API, he says.

Skype is also officially announcing its App Directory, which was soft launched in August. Skype has sorted both consumer apps and business apps that have been built of its APIs into groups by genre (call recording, video, desktop sharing etc.), and featured the top downloaded free and paid apps, top rated apps and the newest apps across the board and by genre.

For each app, Skype provides a landing page that gives more information about the application, release date, star rating and comments, features, requirements, screenshots and more. You can choose to download the app, and Skype will take you to the developer’s landing page. Skype users can also search for apps by cost, language, keywords, OS and more.

Andrews says the focus of the app directory is discovery for developers and the company will do more promotion around the app directory and third-party apps in the future.

Jon’s starred items in Google Reader