Swipe the Linen

## AARON MAHNKE’S HOME SCREEN ## My home screen is pretty...

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Thu, 31 May 2012 22:45:22 -0400

## AARON MAHNKE’S HOME SCREEN ##

My home screen is pretty boring, to tell you the truth. I’ve got this 5-year old habit of trying my best to keep the original icon order. When a better app comes along that can take the place of an Apple app, I will swap it out. That’s how CalcBot made it onto my home screen. And honestly, if you don’t use CalcBot, you’re missing out. But of the more significant apps on my home screen, here’s my explanations:

Kindle App I read a lot. And I also write a lot. I have two novels available for the Kindle. And so the Kindle app serves a number of roles for me, serving as a test device for book formatting, a place to store odd documents for meetings and such that I need to read, and my library in my pocket. I love the app.

RunKeeper I don’t run. This is for walking. I hate running. And if I’ve not been clear enough, I hate running. But this is a great app for logging my GPS route each morning, keeping a running list of dates with time and distance, and the web interface is a nice touch as well when I need it.

Instacast I’m rocking the older version, and won’t be upgrading to 2.0 anytime soon. This is the app that I use while I take my morning walks (4 miles, about 55 minutes), and it’s full of nearly a hundred unplayed episodes of history-related podcasts that I enjoy. As well as a bunch of shows on the 70 Decibels Network…most of which I am responsible for the podcast logo design. So I’m biased. And I hate running.

TweetBot Can I gush enough about this app? I love every. Single. Thing. About it. But I hate running.

WriteUp Fantastic text editor that syncs with Dropbox. And I designed the app icon, so again, I’m biased.

Drafts Capture stuff before it vanishes. Ideas, tasks, notes, whatever. Drafts if a great way to grab the content before it evaporates, and then allows me to send that text to whatever app I want. And I designed the app icon. Again, biased.

SpellTower Mr. T, and myself, pity the fool who hasn’t played SpellTower. Seriously. Why are you even reading the rest of this paragraph? Just go get it. Trust me.

And I hate running.

Alex Knight's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:01:59 -0400

On my iPhone, Launch Center is my favourite app for quickly accessing most things. Instacast is probably the most used, since I listen to podcasts all day. On my iPad, Tweetbot and Instapaper are two apps I spend most of my time in.

Thanks for sharing, Alex. You win the award for least amount of apps on the home screen thus far.

An Important Announcement

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:06:36 -0400

First of all, thanks to everyone for all of their homescreen submissions. It really means a lot, and last week the site passed 200 followers on Tumblr, which I think is a pretty big milestone for something that was only started two months ago.

When I began the site, I asked several bloggers, podcasters, and writers that I read and enjoyed if they would mind sharing their homescreens. These were people like Shawn Blanc, Myke Hurley, Brett Kelly, Stephen Hackett, Justin Williams, and Lukas Mathis; pretty big names to me, and probably to you if you live in the technology world. After several of them linked to the site, interest exploded, and that’s when the problem began.

The problem is that there are too many submissions. I’ve got a backlog that will take me forever to clear out. And in addition, I’m not convinced that people enjoy the “regular” homescreens more than those of the people I ask specifically.

So I’ve come to a decision: As of right now, I’m not going to accept any more submissions. The only way you’re going to be on Swipe the Linen from now on is if I ask you directly, and all of the homescreens are going to be hand-picked.

I really don’t want to insult anyone by doing this, and for those of you whose homescreens I never reached, I’m sorry. But I think that this is the right way to go, and it’s the decision I’ve come to.

Please let me know what you think.

"There’s something fascinating and voyeuristic about seeing other home screens and sharing your own...."

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 23:52:58 -0500

“There’s something fascinating and voyeuristic about seeing other home screens and sharing your own. Why does it feel so personal? Each time I see a home screen posted, it feels like a peek into the poster’s soul. Is it really? I doubt it, but it’s fun to speculate and make up stories about each person anyway.”

- Will Hopkins

Lukas Mathis' Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:08:05 -0500

I’ve looked at pretty much old iOS podcasting apps. Pocket Casts remains one of the weirdest, but it’s also the best available, and it’s been updated regularly (some updates have even removed a bit of the craziness).

1Password is fantastic, and the best argument for why it should be possible for developers to write plugins for iOS’s Safari.

On many mobile platforms, changing the screen’s brightness or getting to your data usage information is pretty simple. On the iPhone, it’s not, which is why I have David Barnard’s Launch Center on my home screen. Among other things, it allows me to jump directly to different screens of the Settings app.

Permalink to Lukas’ website, Ignore the Code.

Chris Herbert's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:02:02 -0500

Hey guys, I’m Chris Herbert, Editor over at MacStories. My home screen, like others, contains my most-used and precious apps.

Besides the stock Apple ones, I use Instacast to listen to great podcasts from 5by5, 70 Decibels and The Verge. I use AppShopper for iOS (and .com) everyday to do the @MacStoriesDeals posts and am currently testing TouchArcade which works with AppShopper. You guys will love it. Agenda is my Calendar.app replacement and Sparrow (currently beta) is great. Tweetbot for my twitter habit, Instagram for sharing pictures (I recommends an olloclip by the way), and Reeder for RSS. Reminders was a nice addition to iOS 5 especially if you have a 4S with Siri.

Thanks for checking out my home screen!

A Few Swipe the Linen Updates

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:23:42 -0500

A Few Swipe the Linen Updates:

Here are some news tidbits about the site.

Justin Williams' Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:01:00 -0500

Dialvetica: I don’t make that many calls, so I am not really sure why this app has such prominent spot on my home screen. It’s a nice app though.

Camera+: I recently started snapping photos with Camera+ rather than the built-in Camera app solely because of the lightbox feature. It’s nice to be able to snap a few variations of a photo and then pick between them in the app rather than cluttering up my photo library.

Elements: Shameless plug. It’s my app. I use it a lot.

The Social: This is my folder of apps that are social networking related. I think Ia m the only person that is still using Stamped, but I’m OK with that. It’s a really well done app. Instapaper: I can’t imagine I’ll ever replace Instapaper with Safari’s built-in reading list. It’s just too good.

Reference: This is somewhat of a dumping ground for apps related to TV, movies and dictionaries. Not necessarily things I use every day, but stuff that I want quick access to when I need them.

1Password: Essential tool. I couldn’t use a smartphone platform that didn’t have a 1Password client on it.

OmniFocus: OmniFocus has my entire brain in it. It’s the most expensive and most used app on both my iPhone and iPad.

Audio: I shuffle between Spotify, Instacast, Music and TuneIn for my music and spoken word listening interests.

Permalink to Justin’s website.

Brett Kelly's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:02:54 -0500

I’d say my home screen is fairly “average”. The usual suspects are all present: a Twitter client (I love Tweetbot), Mail, Instacast, Reeder, etc. The dock is where I live and die, though. I use the Camera pretty much constantly since I have two small kids and a penchant for making dumb, photo-related Internet jokes. Evernote is where my life lives (naturally) and if I didn’t have OmniFocus, I’d spend most of my time following shiny things. Mail is my primary mode of communication for just about everybody I don’t live physically near, so I need that close at hand.

I have very little love for the Wordpress app, but it’s there as part of an experiment (involving Reeder and Notesy, two apps that I really like a lot) that will soon be over. Apps that deserve a spot on the first screen but don’t currently have one include the venerable 1Password and Instagram.

And, yes, I still have the stock wallpaper. This is because I haven’t really had the time to go hunting for a different one since I got my 4S (but I secretly don’t care, to be honest).

Permalink to Brett’s website.

Stephen Hackett's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:52:37 -0500

My choices are pretty boring. The biggest news is that Launch Center has taken a spot in the Dock, shifting Settings back a screen.

David Barnard's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:50:00 -0500

This morning my home screen was completely different. As I tried to describe it for posting here on Swipe the Linen, I realized there were so many things I didn’t like about it. Rather than make excuses I decided to try completely rearranging it. It’ll likely change again soon, but I’m really liking how it turned out.

Though it seems odd to have 4 photo-related apps on my home screen, I use each in a different way. As great as Camera+ is, I still prefer using the built-in Camera app on most occasions. I’m not sure why, I just do. After taking a few photos, I’ll generally select the best and edit in Camera+. I still use the Photos app quite a bit to text/email photos of my kids to my parents and in-laws.

Then there’s QuickShot. I use it to take photos of receipts since it instantly and automatically uploads to a specified folder in Dropbox (and even does so in the background). After a business lunch or coffee it takes just 2 taps to capture the receipt. Once in Dropbox I never think about it again. I use the transaction data downloaded from my credit card for tax prep, so I never manually enter any data, and the photo is backed up in case I ever get audited.

For now I’m still using Wunderlist for todos, but have a feeling that will be changing soon. In the past I haven’t used lists much and Wunderlist was just a place to drop random stuff I might forget. But over the past few weeks I’ve been getting busier and busier and am feeling a bit constrained by the limitations of Wunderlist. I’ll likely be moving to Things or Omnifocus in the next few weeks.

Editor’s note: Here’s David’s earlier home screen, if you’re interested. And by the way, if you’re not already using David’s app Launch Center to launch commonly used apps and have quick access to things you turn to every day, shame on you.

Shawn Blanc's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:36:44 -0500

I suppose my top three favorite Home screen apps are Instagram, Tweetbot, and Simplenote. Instagram’s a blast, Tweetbot is the best Twitter client out there, and Simplenote is my most important utility app. I use all of these fine apps many times per day.

Thomas Brand's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:40:54 -0500

Hello, my name is Thomas Brand and I write a Newton themed technology blog named Egg Freckles. The limited set of twelve applications I keep on my iPhone’s home screen can be grouped into three separate categories, communication, creation, and entertainment.

Applications like Phone, Mail, Messages, and Twitterrific all allow me to communicate with the rest of the world. I use these applications to stay in touch with friends, make calls for work, send email correspondence, and keep up-to-date with the most interesting people on the internet using Twitter. If it wasn’t for work I would not have included the Phone application on my home screen because I rarely make personal phone calls.

WriteRoom, Dropbox, Instagram, and Duck Duck Go are the applications I use to create and publish Egg Freckles on the go. Everything I write, from blog posts to reminders and grocery lists, are authored in WriteRoom. It keeps track of all of my plain text files and syncs with Dropbox. I use the Dropbox application to publish photos and videos I have taken on my iPhone back to my computer. I favorite the items I use most so I always have access to them even when my phone is not connected to the internet. Instagram is the photo sharing social network all the cool kids seem to be using these days. I try to only share my best iPhone photographs on Instagram, but combined with Twitter, Instagram is a great way to show people what you are up to. Duck Duck Go has been my browser replacement for about a year. I love the fast, reliable, categorized, Duck Duck Go search and ability to send webpages to Twitter or Instapaper with the push of a button.

When I am not messaging or publishing I am most likely working on my reading list, or listening to my favorite music or podcast. Instapaper is the most important application on my iPad, and its high-contrast reading environment is the only way I will read a full length article on my iPhone. Every interesting article I find on the web, through Twitter, or from RSS goes into Instapaper. Fever° has been my RSS reader of choice since I cancelled my Google account and forfeited the chance to use Google Reader. I like how Fever° refreshes my RSS feeds before I launch the app, but it’s hTML interface keeps me looking forward to the day when Reeder can sync with my self hosted Fever° sever. Instacast is the podcasting client Apple should have shipped with iOS. It downloads the latest podcast episodes straight to your iPhone so I don’t have to sync with iTunes. The Music I keep on my 32GB iPhone does not change that much and now that iOS syncs wirelessly with iTunes Match my iPhone is my only iPod.

I want to thank Daniel Wajda for including me on Swipe the Linen. It is a great place to compare your home screen with the home screens of other people you admire, and see all the interesting apps they are using on a regular basis.

Editor’s note: Thanks for the kind words, Thomas.

Jory Raphael's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:14:27 -0500

Most apps are fairly self-explanatory. I love the simplicity and ease of use of Agenda. Notabli is a service I co-founded that’s still in beta (http://notabli.com) and Symbolicons is an apple-touch-icon I made for my http://symbolicons.com website. I keep my most-used apps (and those I want quick access to) on my home screen. 2 of the remaining 3 screens are dedicated to games for my daughter!

David Smith's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:44:32 -0500

Editor’s note: David sent this in to me via email.

I run a very stock setup on my iPhone. The vast majority of the apps I use each day are the built-in Apple ones. This habit largely comes from liking how deeply integrated most of them are with the OS. That may seem a bit funny for someone who makes their living in the App Store, but generally speaking if Apple has built an app to do something I need I’ll use that. The only notable exception to that is with music. I use Pandora rather than iTunes/Music for my daily listening.

The second grouping of apps on my home screen, Instapaper, Reeder & Tweetbot, are how I digest the day’s news. My daily workflow is centered around getting what I’m interested in queued up in Instapaper. I have found Reeder and Tweetbot to be the most efficient tools for that. Both provide one click “Read Later” buttons which let me queue up tons of content with minimal friction. Recently, I’ve moved away from using Instapaper on my iPhone (preferring to read on my Kindle 4) but occasionally it is still nice to have all those articles there waiting.

The last set of apps are ones I wrote for myself. One of the blessings and curses of being an app developer is that if there isn’t an existing app that exactly fits your preferences it is tempting to just create one. I did just that with SimpleGram, Note 2 Self and Simplecasts. These are my preferred Instagram client, GTD ubiquitous capture, and podcast manager respectively. All three are tailored to my exact preferences.

I always run a plain grey background (generated by an app I wrote called Plain Wallpapers). My lock screen rotates through a picture of either my wife or two kids.

Iain Broome's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:21:53 -0500

I’m Iain Broome and I’m an author, copywriter and founder of Write for Your Life.

I have but two strategies when it comes to organising my iPhone home screen. First, I choose the apps that I use the most. That seems to make sense. My other tactic is to keep the bottom right free as that’s where I put my big fat thumb when I do my swiping.

Mark H. Anbinder's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:01:16 -0500

Editor’s note: Mark sent this in to me via email.

Mostly, I find myself navigating from app to app by double-pressing the home button and choosing from recent apps. When I haven’t used an app recently, I swipe left and tap the first few letters of the app name in the search box. So, my home screen has several default apps, and a few apps I want to be able to get to FAST.

TripIt is one of those apps that, when you need it, you need it NOW. Whether it’s flight status or airline contact info when something’s going wrong, or hotel confirmation numbers, I like knowing that the info is just a couple of taps away. WeatherBug Elite fits into the same category; I like to be able to get there quickly.

TweetList is up front because it’s the Twitter app that offers the best combination of picture support, hashtag and mention capabilities, and list management and display. Its biggest drawback is that it lacks notifications, so I keep Echofon running in the background to let me know when someone mentions, retweets, DMs, or adds me.

The image is a waterfall shot from Watkins Glen State Park in Central New York. If you haven’t visited this park and walked its extensive gorge trails, you should.

Myke Hurley's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:28:11 -0500

Hey, I’m Myke Hurley, Co-founder, host and producer of the 70Decibels Podcast network and here is my current home screen.

A couple of my favourite apps are; Tweetbot, which is a twitter client and probably the best app ever made, Instacast (which is hidden in a folder in my dock), the only way to listen to Podcasts on iOS and Simplenote, my favourite notes app on iOS—my life is stored in that app.

If you would like to hear me talk more about all of the apps on my home screen and why they are placed where they are, I have spoken about this in two of my shows recently. You can find these here and here.

Thanks!

Nathaniel Mott's Home Screen

satiricalwisdom-deactivated2012 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:59:28 -0500

This is Nathaniel Mott’s (Twitter) home screen. I’ve been reading his site for a while now, and lately it’s been better than ever, featuring articles about writing and much more.

I’ll let him take it from here:

Many of the apps I love have been talked about to death, so I think I’m going to talk a bit about iBooks. It’s one of my favorite apps because the recent update really brought some great typefaces, and the dark theme is great for when I want to read in bed without disturbing my fiancé. iBooks is really all that I need; I’ve been reading more books lately, but I have no interest in carrying or storing physical books, so iBooks allows me to read without any of the annoyances.