In the last article I described how neat Homescreen.me is and how it is a great service for iOS productivity nerds by motivating them in the curation and selection of their favorite apps. 

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Thank you for all your submissions, you truly are very talented, all of you.

The decision was very tough and very suffered, but at the end I managed to select a winner.

So here it goes:

Oliver Long from Essex, UK

Enjoy your Invite...

For all of you that didn't won, I will assure you that more contest are about to come and that I will personally invite you once Dribbble offers a new wave of Invites.

Keep up the great work!

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It's contest time again here at Sorted Pixels!

A couple of post earlier I talked about Dribbble the WIP sharing network for designers, developers and other creatives.

Many of you asked for an invitation to the exclusive service and now Sorted Pixels is offering you the chance to showcast your work, giving away a special Dribbble Invitation!

Here's how to enter the contest:

• Follow @Nervo on Twitter, if you haven't already
• Design a new logo* for Sorted Pixels and be featured on this blog 
• Share it on Twitter and include the hashtags #Sorted_Pixels and #dribbble in your tweet so that it can be easily found
• Have fun

Start dribblin' folks.

*Please don't steal others designs.

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My productivity workflow is all centered on the use of my devices - iPhone, iPad.

When iOs first came out I was delighted for the possibility to create folders on my Homescreen, in this way I could easly unclutter my apps organization and create a more productive way to categorize my apps following my needs.

When I finally ended polishing my apps order I felt the urge to share what I had done with the rest of the world, at the same time I would have loved too see what other people had come up with and see if I would have remained surprised by their work.

Then Homescreen.me came out.

"Homescreen is a nifty little web app that lets you share your iOS devices' homescreens with the world. When you sign up with an account, you get your own profile page similar to twitter or Facebook. Just upload your homescreens and give out the URL to your friends."

And it was great.

Here is how I have my iPhone 4 apps organized:

NotifyMe2 makes sure I don’t forget anything important during the day with it’s cloud sync push notifications.Instapaper makes my morning route to work easier by letting me read trough all the un-read interesting articles I find during my moring Reeder scrobbling routine.

Recently I’ve downloaded Elements, it’s a text-Editor which offers Dropbox syncing, so that I can take notes wherever I am. I’m quite a big fan of this app.

For Photography I usually start using Camera+ and then edit the photos with other Apps such as Picture Show, Mill Color, Lo-Mob, Pic-Tone and so on… Sometimes I publish them directly with Instagram.

iFIles is my File System App of choice.I like to create folders to better organize my apps.In the homescreen I created three main folders: Photography, Work Utilities and Social.

In work utilities I have placed MindNode, a wonderful mind mapping app and Cloudette, a CloudApp client available for free on iPhone that I use to quickly share screenshots and links from my mac to my device.

In the second page I've used Emoji to categorize the Apps in a more intuitive and original way.

Now I'm asking YOU to show off you apple devices Homescreens for a chance to win an invite to Homescreen.me!

Do this by sending me (@Nervo) your Apple device homescreen on Twitter or by simply follow me (@Nervo) and Retweet THIS following message:

Sorted Pixels ( http://ow.ly/35rXK ) Giveaway: Win an Invite to homescreen.me. Retweet and Follow @Nervo for a chance to win one!

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Dropbox is a text editor by Second Gear Software that stores your notes in Dropbox, so that you’ll can view, edit and share txt files no matter the device you’re using, creating them directly from your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. 

Wherever they are, Elements can work for you.

It features Create, View and edit text files on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch all Cloud based.

Elements stores all its data in a subfolder on your personal Dropbox account so you can access it via your device featuring an autosaving/Offline support.

Elements features also a great function named "Scratchpad" giving you the ability to flesh out ideas or store random bits of information.

You can email files as an attachment, sort file listings by name or modified date, customize the look of the text editor to fit your workflow and offers a TextExpander touch support.

Elements is a must have for freelance writers wanting to write your next article, students with a book report due or professionals on-the-go who needs access to their notes wherever they are.

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If you work in marketing you're most probably familiar with the term "curation". Curation is the most important part of online marketing that no one is talking about. With the rise of inbound marketing, content has become front and center in the minds of marketers. This focus on content as an important marketing tactic creates two extremely important problems.

Content creation is difficult. Having the time and skill to create relevant and interesting content is difficult for marketers who are already overloaded with daily tasks. The second major problem with the rise of content marketing is noise. Because content marketing has been proven to be a key ingredient in successful online marketing, more and more businesses are creating content. With this increase in the volume of content, it is becoming harder and harder for marketers’ content to reach new prospects.

Curated.by helps you in this process, archive and organize tweets in collections directly from your Twitter Stream.

See the full gallery on Posterous

It's actually still in a closed beta but it is already setting the standard for this kind of online marketing platform. Curated.by offers you a Chrome extension giving you the ability to curate tweets and create bundles directly from Twitter itself.

The "bundler" interfaces is very intuitive and allows you to check your streams, lists, mentions and favorites so that you can archive them and organize them easily.

Sorted Pixels is giving away TWO Invites for the closed Beta of Curated.by.

For a chance to win them retweet THIS message and follow @Nervo on Twitter:

"Sorted Pixels (http://ow.ly/2TWfs ) Giveaway: Win an invite for Curated.by. Retweet and Follow @Nervo for a chance to win."

Giveaway ends next Friday.

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"This isn't really something new. These so called bio-alarm clocks have been around for years and work very well, but they usually come with a hefty $200 price tag. I realized that the iPhone has all the components needed, and decided to make an alarm clock that works exactly the same, but sell it for a dollar or two instead."Maciek Drejak, the programmer behind the application, says. 

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With the thingsVisualizer you can turn your toDo-Lists into timeline charts. There will follow more visualizations. Right now it is in a very early state.

How to use:

1. Download the Zip-File below
2. Unpack and put it in your things-storage folder
   (User/Library/Application Support/Cultured Code/Things/)
3. Start using flash-player or drop it on your browser
4. Select an area from the first dropdown
5. Select a project from the second dropdown
6. Then drag tags from the first box into the second
7. Press update

So far the system is visualizing one row for each tag and shows only todos with a due-date. There will be more options in a later version.

Download thingsVisualizer v0.1 

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"Dribbble is show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives. Share sneak peeks of your work as “shots” — small screenshots of the designs and applications you’re working on."

Dribbble is a whole new way to share your work, it's already viral and people simply love it. The high quality works uploaded on the website creates huge motivation in designers and creatives to simply get better and better.

How it works: you simply grab a screenshot, not bigger than 300x400 px, and uploaded to the website. End.

See the full gallery on Posterous

You instantly gain feedback by the best designers out there, that will help you obtain the best out from your designs.

Dribbble is Invitation only, and I hope it stays like this, because in this way the quality of the work viewable on the website will remain on the actual high standards.

You can use two great Dribble Clients from your iPhone and iPad, Dunk and Dribbbits. They are both flawless piece of software that need to be instantly checked out.

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Inbox2 is a premium connected lifestyle application that brings communication - and the people you communicate with - into a single, synchronized application that is accessible everywhere. The innovative email platform allows you to plug-in your existing email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Exchange) or any custom IMAP/POP3 accounts and social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Hyves, Yammer, Twitter) in one application.

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Tip from: Tuaw.com

1) You need to have Dropbox up and running on every Mac with which you want to use the same Things library. If you're not currently a Dropbox user, it's free for up to 2 GB of storage and you can sign up here. 

2) Of course, you'll also need to have Things installed on each Mac. The Things license is for a single user, not for a single machine. If you don't currently own Things, there's a free trial available for download so you can give it (and this sync method) a try. Now you're ready to start syncing.

3) On the first Mac (for example, a desktop machine), create a Library folder on Dropbox. You do this by opening the Dropbox folder on your Mac and creating a new folder named Library.

4) Now you need to find the Things database. It's in the currently logged-in user's Library > Application Support > Cultured Code folder. In there, you'll find a Things folder containing a backup folder and the Database.xml file, and you want to move the full Things folder to that Dropbox Library folder you just created. Delete the Things folder in the Cultured Code folder. 

5) On the second (or more) machine(s), delete the Things folder. 

6) Finally, on all of the machines, you'll need to create a symbolic link to the Dropbox Things folder, so that when Things looks for the database file, it will actually go to the Dropbox Things folder you created. A symlink is superficially similar to a Mac OS X alias, but with a UNIX flavor; some applications that won't honor an alias to a directory path will behave better when a symlink is used.

Just enter

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Library/Things ~/Library/Application\ Support/Cultured\ Code/Things

into the command line in Terminal, or copy the above line and paste it into Terminal. As discussed above, creating an alias in Finder will not work; you'll have to do this in Terminal.

There are some caveats to this sync method. First, you should never run Things on all of the machines at the same time. Instead, always quit Things when leaving a machine to ensure that the database is properly closed. Second, syncing Things with iCal from numerous Macs can cause some problems resulting in duplicate iCal to-dos. Finally, realize that you'll still have to sync up your iPhone to one of your Macs in order to keep it up to date.

While this may seem like a roundabout way of keeping Things synced on more than one Mac, it's actually quite straightforward and works very well. Until Cultured Code builds global syncing into future versions of Things, this is a good workaround.

Via Tuaw.com

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The main advantage of using a tablet outside of creativity purpose is to ease out the strain on your wrist by doing repetitive tasks and gain more precision.

It is a well known fact that a continuous mouse use can cause the carpal tunnel syndrome causing much pain and may even lead to surgery to cure it.

So, besides the graphic and creative benefits, there are a lot's of reasons to use a Tablet outside of Photoshop (i.e.).

Tablets are both PC and Mac compatible, so you can just plug and play them in your USB port and start using them whether you are at work using a pc or at home using your Macbook. Tablet pens have no cables attached, so you can be free to move without constraints, plus no batteries make Tablets Eco Friendly. The absolute positioning of a tablet offers also a great help. The canvas of the tablet brings you a 1:1 representation of your desktop, so that you can easily jump from one corner of your desktop to another just by moving the pen to the place where you need to go without the "lifting-dragging-lifting-dragging" procedure you are used with a mouse, and this is a little time saver, but just think about all the times you do this with a mouse...

With the recent Wacom Bamboo, the tablet has become also a trackpad, just like the ones available on Macbook's, bringing multitouch features also on Windows, or enhancing the experience on your Mac.

So why don't you give it a try, it will need some days of practice to masterit, but then you will throw your Mouse away since it will have become useless.

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I'm not a big fan of Mind Mapping, maybe because I never got really in to it or usually because my thoughts are quite well defined and I never had the need to write them down, but many professionals out there love this method.

MindNode, comes to the rescue of those who need an assisted and well organized mind mapping software. It comes in three versions one for Mac, for iPhone, and iPad.

It's main features are:

Image and Visual File Links, Cross Connections and Folding.

Extending this abilities to your portable devices:

• Create and edit new nodes directly on the canvas.
• Freely rearrange your thoughts.
• Search and view nodes in outline view.
• Export your mind maps as FreeMind documents, OPML outlines, text outlines and PNG images.
• Import and export documents from MindNode Pro (Mac desktop application).
• Well designed multitouch interaction.
• Automatically expanding work space.
• Full Cut, Copy & Paste support.
• Multiple main nodes on one canvas.
• Fullscreen mode support in landscape mode.

MindNode is recommended if you embrace the mind mapping method since it's cheap, well crafted and fully supported.

http://www.mindnode.com/

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Nowadays, we all continue to use passwords, and remembering them all has become quite a nightmare with the passing of the years. Writing them down on paper isn't the best solution as you can well imagine. For this reason I present you 1Password.

1Password is a password manager for Mac and probably one of the best 3d party Apps out there. It saves all your logins, credit card numbers and codes, registration inputs all in one great safe folder in the App, giving you quick access to them all trough a Master Password.

All passwords and logins are well organized and stored automatically or manually. It can Save also Software Licenses, Secret Notes and many other important stuff you don't want to forget.

1Password works in two distinct ways, you can either manage your passwords manually or via a browser extension. The second is probably the best way to gather all the full potential of this App. All you have to do is, once prompted a Login or a Registration Form, click on the 1Password Extension Icon and it will automatically fill the required forms for you.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Plus, every time you create a new login for a new Website, 1Password will automatically detect it and ask you if you wish to store it in your database.

But it doesn't stop here. 1Password offers an iPhone and an iPad version of it, syncing your logins and passwords with your handheld devices, offering you it's memory power on the go.

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We Transfer ( https://www.wetransfer.com/ )is the simple and easy way to send big files to everyone. It's free and sends up to 2 GB files, it doesn't require no registration and the file is available to download for 2 weeks, all of course private and secure. 

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Google Wave ( wave.google.com/ )has been out there for a while now. The hype was huge at the beginning but then, silence, it was just like a passing wave.

But why forget about this google service when it's features could help your workflow?

I for instance don't mind using Google Wave sometimes for Project Management, but for some reason it just doesn't fit my work habits.

I found though sometimes enormously helpful to share the work status for, i.e., a website with the client, making him know step by step what we were discussing about, design choices, code optimization, in this way the client builded up trust because of the transparency  we showed working for his project.

But is this always useful? The answer is: it depends on the client. 

In my experience showing the work progress to the client, sometimes helps, catching projecting mistakes that we missed speaking with the client at the start of the work phase and making the client do instant corrections. But the rest of the time, the clients are just too invasive, making simple tasks take ages because of the continuous corrections and changes from the client. If you are able to fee these un-planned changes, then go on, bring your customers in your workflow and share with them all the steps of it.

Google Wave can be a great tool for managing projects for clients if used wisely.

Invite your client to the Wave: Share your work with your client if he has Google Wave, so that he can see your progress and make instant corrections if they don't fit with his original ideas for the project. This could be an instant time saver as well as a great time loser.

Open Separate Waves For Each Client For each Client open separated Waves: pened And invite your team workers, in this way you can discuss, comment, share the progress, ask, answer all in real time, without sending out hundreds of email and organizing time wasting meetings.

Archive and keep only fundamental Conversations: pened Archive, Inbox, Active projects, Quick Actions, separate waves as I showed in a previous article for desktop organization. Delete all that isn't fundamental for the project. Eliminate the Noise and keep focused on what's important.

Share! Share your progress trough text, photos, screenshots and videos. All your files will keep stored on Google's Servers so you will not have to worry of free space on your hard drive or eMail size limitations. Just remember to delete all that isn't fundamental or becomes useless.

Maybe the world is not ready to abandon the eMails and embrace new systems, but I truly recommend the use of Google Wave for project management. Let me know what you think about it.

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CloudApp allows you to share images, links, music, videos and files. Here is how it works: choose a file, drag it to the menubar and let us take care of the rest. We provide you with a short link automatically copied to your clipboard that you can use to share your upload with co-workers and friends.

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