A few weeks ago I was inspired by HackNY (where students design/develop/launch an app in 24 hours) and decided to try and fix a recurring problem I’ve been having with Facebook.I often want to segment my Facebook friends based on what they like (places, bands etc) and message them individually. Instead of posting to my wall and spamming everyone I know about an extra concert ticket I have, I wanted to be able to easily message my friends who “Like” the specific band.

So in 24 hours (not consecutive) I designed and built a simple app that accepts a Facebook login and allows you to search through your Friends likes. The first time you login modern browsers will cache your friends’ likes and save them to your computer for quick access. Logging out, or a manual reset, will empty the cache. The app is all Javascript with no database access, so nothing is being stored on my servers.

24 hours is not a long time, so chances are it’s not perfect, but it was fun to build something quickly that solved a problem. I was hoping to launch it later this week, but wanted to get it live today due to the new Bing Facebook integration and wide discussion around social search.

I’ve deployed it as a website here and a Facebook app here.

GarageBand

GarageBand on the iPad is spectacular. Not only is it the only touch app that doesn’t leave me wishing for the desktop version, but it is the first touch app that is clearly superior to its desktop counterpart. It splits up mixing and recording in the clearest way I’ve seen, takes advantage of multitouch and the smart instruments are actually smart. The best thing I can say about this app is I’m in the process of exporting all my Logic recordings to Garageband so I can start using my iPad as my primary recording device.

Download GarageBand

Screens

Screens lets you login to remote Macs and control them using your iPad. It’s a simple IP based setup with no extra software to install and can remember multiple machines. It also has great multitouch functions to make your Mac feel like a touch device.

Download Screens

Stash Pro

Stash is a password protected library for videos, images, documents and a private browser with separate history from Safari. The app has a decoy library, shortcuts to hide the screen (boss mode) and secret gestures that unlock your private stash. Not a replacement for multiple user accounts in iOS, but the best alternative I’ve found.

Download Stash Pro

Air Display

Air Display lets you use your iPad as a second monitor. It requires an installation of a Mac app to connect to your iPad, but is otherwise will auto connect when you open the app. Great for adding extra real estate when using a laptop.

Download Air Display

iSwifter

Say what you will about battery consumption or playback performance, but there are a LOT of sites that require Flash. And even sites that support iOS often have premium content blocked. iSwifter a basic browser that runs Flash (no bookmarks, multiple windows or even history) but it does that one task well. And when it’s a choice between a laggy version of Flash or nothing, I’ll take Flash anyday.

Download iSwifter

Textastic

While I’m not convinced Textastic is the ultimate code editor for the iPad, it works. It stands out when tweaking CSS or Javascript for a site meant to run on the iPad. It would be difficult to code an entire site in the app, but for editing up files via (s)ftp or dropbox this app let’s you make simple changes on the go.

Download Textastic

Flud

When Pulse was first released I loved it. The interface was different, it was easy to use, but over time I found myself using it less. The interface for Flud is VERY similar, but it’s ability to easily add rss from Google and auto categorizing content by type have won me over. It’s probably is more of a Pulse version 2 than it’s own idea, but better is better.

Download Flud

Zite

Zite is one of my favorite RSS readers two reasons – it’s simple to set up, and customizes your content the more you use it. My problem with TweetMag and FlipBook (both stunning apps) is I spend more time getting the app set up properly than using it. Zite hooks seamlessly to Google Reader and Twitter and automatically creates categories and stories based on what you already follow and groups them automatically.

Download Zite

Air Video

This app requires a little setup, installing a free video server on your mac, but allows you to stream almost any video from your Mac to your iPad. It can play back most videos, even non-supported video formats like FLV. You can have it play back as it encodes or save an encoded version on your Mac for realtime playback later.

Download Air Video

Muji Notebook

Notebook is great for sketching wireframes and taking notes – I rarely use paper for these tasks anymore. The interface is understated (in a good way) an it has a virtual screen that protects the iPad from receiving input from your palm while writing. Unfortunately, the handwriting recognition is terrible, see WritePad for this.

Download Muji Notebook

Sketchbook Pro

This is THE drawing app for the iPad. It has multitouch shortcuts for menus, powerful brushes and pinching / sliding to control the size and transparency of your selected tool. It’s downsides are the lack of a good blending tool and the limit of 5 layers.

Download Sketchbook Pro

Honorable Mentions

Twitter for iPad – This is my favorite Twitter client on any platform. It may not be the most advanced, but it’s the easiest to use and allows you to get through a mass of tweets easier than any other app. It also makes great use of multitouch allowing you to drag on a tweet with two fingers will show a full conversation, or pinch and zoom on a tweet will reveal a users profile. Download Twitter

MyFav.es – Although this is a web based service, it’s a great visual launcher for website bookmarks. Visit MyFav.es

Aweditorium – A new image based music discovery service. Clicking on thumbnails of bands reveals music and videos by the selected artist. It doesn’t make it easy to find a specific artist, but you will stumble onto great new music. Download Aweditorium

Check out LiveView here.

Pinterest is a bookmarking tool, introduced to me by Jenny Bowskill, that operates like a visual pinboard – letting you save images you like and follow people who share your aesthetics. Users set up categories (known as boards) and pin images by clicking a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Unlike some visual collections, a link to the original is always preserved, but a poster image is saved on Pinterest should the original change. The site also functions as a stream of images which you can repin, like or comment on. Pinterest is well thought out, easy to use, and its unique user interface has already been the subject of (accused) imitation by the new Myspace.

Visit my Pinterest profile.

Check out Pinterest here.

While not all of the questions pertain to those of us outside of Silicon Valley, answering some of these questions will be helpful to anyone pitching new ideas/products. I’ve stripped down the survey to include 10 key quesions I plan on asking myself, and my product people at Atlantic Records, before we begin work on new products.

1. What are you going to make?

2. What’s new about what you’re doing?

3. What do you understand about your business that other companies just don’t get?

4. What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn’t exist?

5. How will you make money?

6. Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors?

7. Who do you fear most?

8. Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate?

9. What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.)

10. Please tell us something surprising or amusing that you have discovered.

See the full application, with answers here.

I’m not sure if I’m the standard use case for Twitter, but ultimately Twitter is a replacement for my RSS reader. Google Reader failed for me, it was all business, and Facebook is all fun. I get most of my news from the service, but as a social stream it’s intended to be temporal, and important information can get missed or forgotten.

Enter Packrati.us. This service lets you configure your Twitter account (along with Delicious and Instapaper) to archive links. You can automatically save links that you tweet, favorite or are tweeted to you. You can add tags in delicious based on Twitter hash tags and blacklist certain words. The service is easy to configure and you never have to think about it while continuing to reap the benefits. Highly recommended.

Check out Packrati.us here.

Click here to read the full article.

Click here for free vector icons. Great for getting your idea across without going through the process of creating your own illustrations.

Click here for a vector wireframe kit.

Click here for a robust browser kit with editable form fields and browser bar elements for all major browsers.

Check out What The Font.

To use the site you only have to enter a url, a size, and hit enter. There are shortcuts that allow you to cycle through different sizes, and zoom, but the developers of the app have done a good job of keeping the options minimal and the application simple.

Check out TestSize.com here.