Thanks to today’s sponsors: Pzizz, the critically acclaimed nap enhancer and creativity booster, Candybar, the excellent, juicy iconset tool, EarthDesk, the Earth-starring dynamic desktop, Cha-Ching, the personal finance manager with style, csstux, for the best dressed sites on the web, and macZOT!, for daily deals on Mac software.
With the final round of voting coming in just a few days, our six remaining contestants have naturally been quite busy coming up with new stuf to show off to voters.
Atmosphere (New)
Cameron has just posted some screenshots on how weather forecasting might work in Atmosphere, which you can check in in this post. It’s a sidebar-like display showing thumbnail views of upcoming weather in the week. Hey, I’d personally love to see a little slider for fast forwarding the weather through the day or week, but this definitely works. (Maybe fastforwarding as an alternative method of viewing forecasts?) Also in the blog post is a new Atmosphere preference pane mockup which integrates a Coverflow type view for selecting scenery with a more standard Aqua interface for other preferences.
Cookbook
Michael’s been pretty busy, as he shows in this blog post. What’s new for Cookbook? Some visualizations of how community features might work. Think iTunes Music Store for recipes, with easy downloading, submitting, and rating of your favorites. He’s also come up with a sort of all-in-one screenshot displaying most of Cookbook’s main features, which I think is a great idea for the finals:
Whistler
From what I’ve seen, complexity has been one of Whistler’s big challenges and most common criticism. Richard addresses that in this post, unveiling a simplified UI for those who just want to boot the app and start whistling.
Hijack
With Hijack’s regular interface already mocked up, as well as fantastic videos for its “training mode” and full-screen feature, Kevin’s focused his efforts this time around on a logo. Say hello to Hijack, the “jack of all threads”:
And, perhaps taking a cue from recently eliminated Russell, he’s also set up a Cafe Press t-shirt shop for the hardcore Hijack fans.
Blossom
I’ve always been a bit curious how you would easily and without much annoyance set Blossom’s feed/neglect settings for individual websites. Dan’s really fleshed out how this process might work in a series of mockups in his latest post, and I have to say, I am very impressed. Be sure to check this one out to get a better feel for his idea.
Portal
Portal is probably one of the most complicated ideas remaining, in terms of end-user interaction. The fact is, it attempts to do a lot of things, and in a variety of situations. So Farzad’s come up with a series of posts (Part 1 and Part 2) that attempt to give voters a better idea of how to use Portal. Check them out for a very comprehensive description of how it works.
