App Savvy, the creators of the highly praised Agenda, released their new app Buzz on the iPhone App Store a while ago.

From its reviews and from its description it seemed to be quite a nice app, one that may come in handy for multiple purposes. Just look at what it can do for you:

Buzz is an iPhone dialer, texting & group text messaging app, and contacts app all in one. We guarantee you that Buzz will move into your dock and become your main app for staying in touch. And if you don’t believe us, just read the amazing reviews of Buzz by Apple influencers, bloggers, and customers alike.

And from those reviewers:

Federico Viticci, Macstories:

I’m not typically one that likes to replace Apple’s core iOS apps with third-party alternatives, but Savvy Apps’ latest iPhone app, Buzz, allows me to access my contacts faster than Apple’s own Phone software, and I had to leave a spot for it in my Dock.

Dave Caolo, TUAW:

There are a few thoughtful niceties in the app. Tapping a contact set up as an email or FaceTime session asks you to confirm your intention before placing the call, so you won’t place accidental phone calls. Also, there’s a list of pre-written text messages to choose from, like “Running Late. See you soon.” and “On my way.” Combine that with a group text message to send a lengthy message to the whole gang with little effort.

I love useful utilities and Buzz Contacts is one. Since I pretty much only call the people in my family group, I’ve replaced the phone app in my iPhone’s Dock with Buzz Contacts. It’s definitely worth a try at $0.99.

Leanna Lofte, iMore:

Using one app for your favorite, frequently used contacts and one for everyone else can get annoying and confusing, so Buzz Contacts has also included a full list of all your contacts and a dialer so that you can stop using Apple’s native Contacts app if you wish. In fact, Buzz Contacts’ dialer is better than Apple’s, because once you start entering a number, it will pop up contacts that match what you’ve entered so far.

The clean, simply UI of Buzz Contacts has won me over and I’ve already replaced Apple’s native Phone app with Buzz Contacts on my dock.

J. Glenn Künzler, MacTrast:

For a mere $0.99, I cannot recommend this app highly enough. Download this app. It’s one of the most useful, time-saving, and handy apps I’ve ever loaded onto my iPhone ($0.99, App Store link).

I hate the app.

There’s a feel to it that just isn’t right. It doesn’t feel well made, and the fact that I have to use almost 20 minutes setting it up correctly is ridiculous. UI, UX, performance - they all feel badly executed.

I’ll stick to Dialvetica.

This is just awkward, Microsoft. Awkward.

Source: Daring Fireball.

Lukas Mathis on ignore the code:

Of course, it’s not assured that this is the end of webOS. Maybe open-sourcing it will be the best thing that ever happened to webOS.7 But maybe it just means that HP doesn’t care anymore, and that webOS won’t receive much attention anymore. This would be unfortunate, because webOS is one of the few current mobile operating systems that are actually a joy to use. It’s been hurt by HP’s incompetent management, rather than any egregious faults of its own.

The least we can do now is to keep its best ideas alive, even if webOS itself won’t make it.

I love webOS. I have never used it, but I love the look of it, its great concepts and its innovation. It is very unfortunate that HP got a hold of Palm instead of someone more competent.

Mathis makes many great points as to why it’s sad that webOS is slowly dying, and why its ideas must live on elsewhere. A must read for anyone interested in mobile operating systems.

Via Adam Hyland on Twitter.

I was first introduced to RSS via a blog that I visited many years ago. It recommended Google Reader for its readers, so that they more easily could keep up with their updates. At the time I wasn’t as geeky and as familiar with the internet as I am now. After I’d seen Google Reader’s website I chose not to come back in a long time.

Why?

Really Simple Syndication didn’t seem so really simple to me at the time.

A couple years later, I read something about NetNewsWire on Daring Fireball, a site I just recently had discovered. I had just gotten my first MacBook Pro, and was notably more geeky than the first time I had seen Google Reader.

When I went to the site to set up a new account I was surprised to see that I had been here before, and didn’t really need to do anything else than enter my login details in NetNewsWire. From this point and on, RSS was indeed really simple. I just clicked the blue RSS button in Safari’s tab or the orange one on a website, and NetNewsWire automatically added it to Google Reader.

That was it.

When I got my iPhone, I found that NetNewsWire existed here as well. Google Reader suddenly seemed genius to me, because I could sync all my read and unread articles between the two as I wanted. When I also discovered Instapaper, the function of RSS seemed much clearer and more purposeful to me. I could finally have a decent and understandable use case for it.

That was 2008.

My first encounter with RSS was in 2005.

It took three years for it to stick. Granted, I didn’t give it a fair shot the first time, but that’s not the point. The point is that it took more than a day, week or month for it to stick.

Whether it’s me or my mother, my aunt or my brother, it wouldn’t stick without us wanting it. It wouldn’t stick without an effort from us.

That’s why there is no more RSS support in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Really Simple Syndication.

Yeah right.

Source: Dan Frakes: Mountain Lion: Hands on With Mail.

BJ McGeever on iMessage and Messages for OS X:

Someone iMessages you on your phone, to your phone number, while you’re on your Mac and you want to continue the conversation — too bad. If you send them a message from your Mac, it will show up in a different conversation on their phone. If you reply to them from your phone, it won’t show up on your Mac. Not everyone will know your phone number, and not everyone will know your email address associated with iMessage.

He’s right. Most people I know own an iPhone, iPad, Mac or an iPod. If they don’t have any of those devices, I’d almost be surprised. That’s how strong of a position Apple have in my life.

Unfortunately, almost no one of these people are aware of iMessage’s excistence. Thus, they don’t know to send messages to email addresses. And thus, they wonder what the hell is going on when there’s a “mail” amongst their SMS messages.

Unless Apple manage to remove the need for phone numbers entirely (highly unlikely), they’ll have to find a way for iCloud to sync messages you get on your iPhone to your Mac and iPad (more likely).

iCloud, iMessage, all of the news in Mountain Lion and iOS 5 all lead Apple’s ecosystem to a better place - but there is, for me, no doubt that there still is a long way to go.

Source: KuraFire. Via Oliver Reichenstein’s retweet.

For many years I’ve been reluctant to read almost anything beyond a couple of pages. Though I love writing, my love for reading dampened over the years along with my decreasing amount of spare time.

Additionally I’ve been struggling for a long time to keep up with homework and test preparations. Both these tasks require huge amounts of reading. They do, however, not contain the quality one can encounter in ’real’ books. They are not books written with passion, rather by duty.

All the badly written and boring factual books I’ve read the last year discouraged me from reading in my spare time. I lost my entire interest in reading. For a while I thought I’d never find pleasure in it again. Whether it was written about James Bond or about Keeping It Straight, books seemed gray and boring to me.

School and their horrible factual books crushed my love for books, and the brilliance of masterpieces like Harry Potter or No Country For Old Men seemed deleted from my mind.

The 15th of January 2012 I quite suddenly decided to purchase all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, and start reading them one by one. I concluded that it was going to be a long term project, and my estimate and goal to finish them all in a year.

Around twenty days later I’m realising my conclusion was far from the reality. I surprised myself by finishing both Casino Royale and Live and Let Die in only ten days. By the time you read this I have started reading Moonraker, and I may even have finished it.

Somehow my forgotten love for reading sprung out as I opened Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel. Never have I read in such pace, with such passion and with such interest. Never have I felt like I’ve learned so much just by looking at some text. I was even enjoying it at the same time.

I know I’m late to the game, but I just realised: books are awesome.

The picture tells the tale of comments. Both why some want them, and why some don’t. I’ll just leave it at that.

Source: The Verge: “Zynga CEO responds to copycat accusations from Nimblebit and others”