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Readernaut is a fun fun fun social networking service, focused on book lovers. It does some simple things and it does them well: it helps you add books to your inventory, track your reading progress and share it with your friends. You can also add comments, reviews and quotes to the books, visible to everyone.

What’s very special about Readernaut is its minimal, functional design. It uses icons to signify actions and is very simple and fun to use (well, apart from some thingies or two, but those are to be expected, as it is still in beta).

Some of its interface highlights:

You can find the rest of my screenies in my Quicksnapper arsenal. I especially love the above ultra simple, ultra cute contact / feedback form at the bottom of the page. Well played.

All in all, Readernaut has all the features to succeed: it’s simple, it’s pleasant, and it actually gives you motivation to read (to show off to your equally nerd friends, most likely). I’m sure we’ll talk about it further this year.

I love Readernaut, and so should you.

…that’s me.

On a related note, I hope you have a blastin’ holiday. I hope I will too.

Best wishes, y’all.

Hey wait, haven’t I blogged about Just Watch the Sky in the past? No? Shame on me.

Just Watch the Sky is a fun, fun, inspirational project that glorifies lyrics by making (typographic) art out of them. You can also listen to the respective song in the embedded player. Very cool.

Some of my favourite works are:

Eventhough it’s not as updated anymore, I still use it all the time to browse through some impressive typography and well suited colour palettes and get inspiration.

Just by looking at one of those, millions of ideas come. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the link to the original creator (I’m really ashamed about this), so if you see this post and you’re the daddy of this, please drop me a line.

So pwetty.

I recently found a UX blog with a twist that I actually like: that’s UXBooth.com. The nice people in there give their opinion on sites, using simple language and their experience to point out the obvious faults, while offering free advice to people on how to improve their sites. I like the fact that the whole thing does not resemble a blog entry but a mini brainstorming session with the guys - very effective.

While the overall design of the site is what I call Web 2.1 hippie-hypey (I’m not harsh, it’s not bad, I like it), I really liked the way they’re presenting their individual opinions - coloured strips, different colour for different author, and a nice author image tag. See for yourself:

Simple, pleasant and effective.

Good job, guys!

As every web worker I know, I already have a collection of screenshots scattered around my iMac HD. I never felt quite good about it, really; I needed a way to gather all inspiring bits from here and there to a single system, simple and trusty enough to make me use it all the time.

So far, I’ve tried stuff like Skitch (I hate the non-Apple interface, so ugly), a combination of Snapz Pro X and Flickr, a combination of some random Firefox add-on and a trusty folder in my Finder, Curio (which is a great alternative to Microsoft OneNote but kinda of an overkill for this job).

Nothing really felt right. What I really wanted was something like iPhoto, but for screenshots.

And then the fine folks at Realmac software went ahead and released the public beta of LittleSnapper. Let there be light!

Easy screenshots through shortcuts, websnaps (full web site archives actually), built-in browser, DOM targeting (this is COOL), organize photos through collections and smart folders, tagging, rating… What more could a poor designer ask?

Well, some simple stuff:

• Tags autocomplete. That’s a must.
• Some way to view untagged stuff. I tried creating a smart folder for this, but there was no option for “tag is empty”, so…
• An easy way to share through e-mail and upload to my service of choice. Like, one-click easy.
• The option to copy LittleSnapper tags to Spotlight comments. My PIM of choice, Together, already has that and it’s way convenient.
• Small but an annoyance: LittleSnapper icon, please stop jumping up and down when I’m saving a websnap, thank you very much.

Give me those and I’m sold, Realmac.

I really think that even in version 1.0, LittleSnapper is the absolute screenshot tool for every web designer who happens to work on a Mac. And it has a decent jingle to it that makes you use it again and again - always a factor of oomph for every Mac app.

Try it now, people!