INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Wi-Fi password sticker on your router Snap
Cute sweater in a store window display Snap
Cool gift idea for mom Snap.If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you probably also use your iPhone camera to take photos of the
things you want to remember & maybe even more often than you use Notes to write things down
If your mental notes are more visual in nature, then you may want give the new app Collections a go instead of relying only on your Camera
Roll.
I know, I know…isn&t visual bookmarking already handled by Pinterest
Well, okay, sure
You can go that route.
But using Pinterest feels heavy
There a vast collection of images to explore and search
A Home feed of new stuff to look at
(Why, Pinterest, are you showing me spider tattoos Why)
A feed of notifications to check in on
(Where I get to write back to people things like, &hi, you&re messaging the wrong Sarah Perez
I don&t know you.& Ugh, too often
Stupid common name.)
Collections is just a little app for you to use.
It not overwrought
Its simple interface just helps you to better organize those photos you&ve snapped for inspiration, ideas, mental notes, or whatever else
you may need to refer back to & like clothes you like, restaurants you passed by and want to try later, art or design ideas, the best photos
of your dog, events you want to go to, screenshots, gift ideas, travel inspiration, or really anything else you could think of.
But unlike
saving these things to the Camera Roll, where they quickly get lost into a feed of photos, Collections lets you write down little details &
like the vendor or price, or your notes
For example, &Great gift for mom
Shop owner says it also comes in blue
Having a summer sale in 2 weeks.&
While your collections are largely meant just for you, if you ever want to share them, you can use
iCloud to do so & friends and family won&t have to sign up for a new service to view your shares, just download the app
You can also share them to social media, iMessage, email, messaging apps, and elsewhere, if you choose.
If you prefer to keep your
collections private, you can turn off iCloud syncing during setup to keep them saved to local storage only.
On iPad, the app is even better
because it supports drag-and-drop & meaning you drag images from other apps to your collections.
The app was designed by a team of two
indie developers, Emile Bennett and Dave Roberts, based in Chamonix, France and Liverpool, U.K., respectively
Bennett had previously launched a budgeting app called Pennies, but built Collections because it something he wanted for himself.
&I often
find myself in clothes shops just ‘window shopping&
I&ll find a shirt, or a pair of shoes, or yet another over-priced GoreTex outdoor jacket & I&ve got a bit of a thing about them…I have too
many! & and I think &yeah I like this, but I&m not going to buy it now, I&ll pick it up another time,'& he tells TechCrunch.
&So I&d take a
few photos, the item, the tag, maybe me wearing it and also maybe the shop front so I remember where it is
I&d always think ‘it in my photo stream, I&ll remember it later.& But, of course, that doesn&t happen as the photos just get lost down in
your stream, and even if I did find and remember the photos, there no context around them,& he says.
He tried Evernote and Notes to keep
tracking of these things, but found Evernote was too bloated and Notes was too text-centric
He also feels Pinterest is too focused on discovery and public sharing to be used for collecting your own private inspirations.
One of the
best things about Collections, in my opinion, is that there no sign-up
Radical idea, right Bennett is sick of it, too.
&I&m really passionate about not forcing people to sign up to my apps & I want your data to
be yours, I don&t want you to have to sign up to a new service just to use this app,& he says
&I think we&re all getting a bit of &sign-up fatigue& these days
Most apps do it because it the way they make their money & they give you the app for free, make you sign up to use it, collect your data,
and then use that data to make their money
That really against my ethos,& says Bennett.
Instead, Collections is a $2.99 download.
Hey people, this is the kind of app development we
should be encouraging.
Bennett gave me a few promo codes to try out the app with friends, but I forgot about that, and purchased it.
So here
you go, first come, first served:
M77J6T7WLHWJ
N3X9APPT9THE
KNJMTXMY6FFJ
TRT4E77MTR4H
Promo codes are just free downloads
It not a scheme to make money, cynics
I just like this app and figured I&d share
