PEOPLE



Person of the Year: Nick Woodman

At a time where the world is moviing towards mobile camera photography, It comes as a surprise that GoPro's standalone professional video cameras helped it file the most successful tech IPO in the last 20 years. This year, the 12 year old startup, went more social with its videos.

They started their own little platform to share some amazing videos shot by the Go-Pro camera. They really are brilliant! Watch what happens when a Lion grabs a GoPro in his mouth, or when a dirt biker travels through some of the most dangerous paths in the Himalyas, or simply the breathtaking shots of an active volcano. Also GoPro introduced a 4K recorder this year. Another reason to rejoice for Pro videographers.

GoPro's success can be largely attributed to one man, Nick Woodman. The founder and CEO of GoPro. The idea of GoPro came to Woodman when he was surfing in Australia. where he saw that Amateur photographers like woodman himself had a tough time finding quality professional equipment at affordable rates. The original cameras were just point-and-shoot 35mm film cameras.

Of the 11 Million devices that GoPro's sold so far, about 2.8 million were sold in 2014. That combined with a fairly successful media upstart, makes every reason for Nick Woodman to be in the limelight this year and his vision of affordable Pro cameras is something to be highly reverred. It's only a beginning of something big and the CEO has lots of work to do but It's the strongest beginning we've seen so far. Woodman is undoubtedly the Person of the Year.

SOFTWARE

Best Mobile Apps 2014

Over the year, we've seen extremely powerful mobile apps. It's been a big year for automation, podcast and photography applications. Moreover, there's a constant realisation of the fact that the touch-screen's a powerful tool, not just meant for fancy little tricks, with the right UI it opens up a world of possibilities, some times even better than how a traditional PC does them. Moreover, Material Design on Android and extensibility and continuity on iOS, have opened up more options for App Developers and Designers to make truly incredible apps. So, Here are the best mobile applications of this year.

Best Mobile Apps 2014

WORKFLOW

Developer: DeskConnect
Automation has always been a powerful tool but has always been restricted to tech nerds. However, tools like IFTTT always tend to put this in some lime light. The latest addition to this list is a strong contender to eventually make it mainstream. It's the ideal app. It's super easy and accessible to the non-nerds and the nerds get to make some powerful workflows.

Workflow even features a gallery of great workflows which include Creating a GIF, Saving to PDF or Cross sharing a photo across all social network. It's these completely relatable tasks that make Workflow an app for everyone. Workflow makes a nuclear weapon out of it's share sheet, So that power users rejoice with some really cool tricks!

Every Automation App I download, has a problem, there's a lot it can do but there's little that's discernible, and there are even fewer ways of figuring out how to make the most out of the app. Most apps come with the label of "you can do the world with it", rather than "here's what you can do with it" which is a problem here, because most people need a kickstart to start using these apps to their benefit. Which is where Workflow works for me. It's got a gallery of workflows which give you a properly shaped workflow which you just have to run to see how it works. Making it much more easier for the non-developers and non-tech-savvy to work out ways to make the most of the app.

Automation apps are generally akin to swiss knifes and Workflow is no different but for the first time, we have an app telling us definitively as to what we can do with it!

Overcast

Developer: Marco Arment
Good Podcast apps are hard to find, there are just so many of them and all of them have a different take on podcasts. But is their take better? Overcast by Marco Arment is an highly opinionated take on Podcasts by the popular developer. And it is indeed better than the others in many ways. The social recommendations are great, they're effective if you're following podcasters. Then the voice boost and speed effects are very effective. Overcast does this incredible job of removing the long pauses, it does save a lot of time. Overcast is a well designed, alternative to the default iOS app for Podcasts and a must have for regular podcasters.



Endless: Simple World Discovery

Developer: Studio March
I'm always up for a random wikipedia article, imparting some valuable knowledge. That's part of the reason I enjoy Quizzing. Endless, an app by Amit Jain and his team at Studio March is an iOS app that serves just that, and with Great design. It's a surprise that Endless hasn't been covered by many tech blogs. Endless is something that I've been using ever since I got the app and it is indeed a powerhouse of information and for $0.99, the price isn't steep either.



Hyperlapse

Developer: Instagram
Not only does Hyperlapse shoot amazing time-lapse videos, its a great video stabiliser as well. Hyperlapse by Instagram is a great app. It shoots time lapse videos better than the default camera app and the video stabiliser (a sort of hidden feature) is an extremely handy tool for those who don't have an iPhone 6. Also, Hyperlapse is brilliantly designed. It's easy to use and has some neat tricks, up its sleeve. It is often seen that startups fail to come up with a better Product 2.0 after a hugely successful first product. (Look no further than Instagram's current owners, Facebook), this doesn't seem to be the case with Instagram. It's their second product and they've nailed this one too!



Yahoo News Digest

Developer: Yahoo
Somewhat Inspired by Nick Alanso's Summly which Yahoo bought last year, (Alanso also happens to be in charge of the iOS app) the Yahoo News Digest is an innovative app, that delivers you news every morning and evening. This is the perfect news app for someone concerned about the global news. The content it delivers is handpicked and concise. The stories also contain snippets from Wikipedia, Map informations and curated tweets on the subject. Yahoo News Digest also one an Apple Design Award this year for its great UI animations and brilliant page design. News Digest is the first app I use every morning, it's similar to reading your morning newspaper, only it's much more tech savvy.

Best iPad Apps 2014

iPad until last year was regarded as an content consumption device, meant only for minor content creation, nothing serious. An year later things have changed drastically. In fact, this year I was hard pressed to find a consumption app for the best of the year list. 2014 was all about content creation for the iPad. Adobe came up with a slew of apps for creating videos, illustrations and other creative content and frankly all of them were great in some aspect or another. Then there was Pythonista, a controversial yet powerful python interpreter for the iPad.

The iPad itself got a massive spec bump this year, arguably Apple's best mobile device for 2014, the Air 2 featured a dedicated 8 core GPU and about tri-core SoC in A8X, something which upcoming games and graphic applications would love to use.

Own an iPad and want to make the most out of it? Have a look at our handpicked selection of the best iPad apps for 2014. These apps have pushed the boundaries of the iPad App scenario and are definitely worth trying.

Best iPad App

Pixelmator

Developer: Pixelmator Team
Pixelmator is perhaps the most powerful image editing tool I've seen on an iPad. The retouching here are extremely powerful. You can even open PSDs, with layers! Its the complete Pixelmator as is available on OS X but with an iPad UI and it has Handoff compatibility so, users can switch from working on Mac to iPad without any delay.

Editorial

Developer: Omz-Software (Ole Zorn)
Does the iPad have a markdown editing app? Yes, it does! Its from the guy who built Pythonista. Editorial is a phenomenal markdown editor and Workflow automation tool. Again, it's automation and probably not for everyone, but its serves a very direct purpose here. Editorial was released first in 2013 but relevant updates in 2014 put it back into the limelight. If you have an iPad, and you are into markdown or even web writing, There's just no way you can miss this app.




Storehouse

Developer: Storehouse
Storehouse's simple story publishing application makes it an uncanny creation tool on the iPad. Moreover, Storehouse, as a Social network for storytelling is brilliant. It's got great stories to showcase and they're best viewed on an iPad! Storehouse is brilliantly designed, the UI animations, the fluid interface and an ad free experience make Storehouse a premium, powerful tool that's just flawless.




Incredible Numbers by Professor Ian Stewart

Developer: Touch Press
Coming from the creators of Molecules, and Xe Elements. Incredible Numbers aims to do to mathematics what touch press did to Chemistry about four years ago. It is the kind of education app that makes you cherish owning an iPad, brilliantly designed, completely interactive and educating. The app even has an Enigma Machine built in, i'll pay anything to have that! Incredible Numbers is a must have education app for just about anyone. Don't love maths? You'll change your mind after using the app.



Adobe Illustrator Line

Developer: Adobe
Adobe came up with a slew of creation apps for its Creative Cloud suite this year. But the one that stuck with me most was the Illustrator Line app. It makes making perspective, isometric or simple line drawings easy to make. It's a deceptively simple tool to use. Again, Illustrator Line is one app, that amateurs can tinker easily and those who are into professional perspective drawings and sorts, its a gold mine. You can draw panoramic views of cities with effortless ease, if you get a hang of this app. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a simple and powerful graphics tool.


Best Mobile Games 2014



Monument Valley

Developer: Ustwo
Monument Valley is an addictive piece of art. Its got a story, the graphics are mind bending, and the gameplay is flawless. There's little you can complain about Monument Valley. Except for the fact that it contains just about 20 levels only. You just can't get enough of it. Its challenging but not in a way that is frustrating (something that Flappy Bird and its Clones have succeeded in).

Threes

Developer: Sirvo
Threes wins in so many ways that it's clones don't. It's the number matching game with a personality. First and foremost, threes has an extremely sturdy gameplay, it's extremely hard to find loopholes here, something that makes the game even more fun and challenging. Then, there's the awesome soundtrack, even the numbers are like characters, they have voices, expressions and they subtlety with which they convey their message is applaudable. Believe it or not, Threes is best played with all the sounds on! It's hard to not like the little monsters that have numbers printed on them.




Sailor's Dream

Developer: Simogo
Games with great stories are hard to come by but Simogo seems to have a knack for telling great stories in the form of games. Their last game, Device 6 was a gem. This one's nothing less either. Brilliant story, Beautiful Graphics and the elegant serif font! Sailor's Dream has all the makings of a classic. It's the kind of game that I'll play all through a Sunday morning. Also the kind of game that deserves to be paid upfront, $4.99 on Sailor's Dream is worth it.




Leo's Fortune

Developer: 1337 & Senri
You are to hunt down the cunning thief that stole your gold. Sounds familiar? Sure does. Leo's Fortune is the traditional take on the platform adventure game genre. But with amazing graphics and a fresh gameplay that'll make you love the central character here. Something that's common about this year's best games is the fact that they have brilliant soundtracks. Leo's Fortunes isn't behind. Leo's Fortune is worth a buy. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.


Crossy Road

Developer: Hipster Whale
From great Screenplay games to something more mainstream, Crossy Road is a simple and addictive road. You just have to make the chicken cross the road! It's freemium and its done in a good way. There are beautiful characters that you can choose from and its fun to play with them. The bottomline here is, Its an addictive game that isn't frustrating. It's the kind of blockbuster movie which is actually enjoyable. So why did the chicken cross the road?

BEST DESKTOP APPS 2014

Cinemagraph Pro

Developer: Flixing Photos Inc.
Cinema graph Pro is the closest you can get to Harry Potter style moving images. Cinema graph Pro lets you create Flixels, which are essentially moving images, somewhere between a video and an image. They are much more interesting than still images but are extremely light weight in comparison to a video.

Users can edit RAW videos to be rendered as flixels, by selecting positions of a video to be trimmed and then further masked out to select only a specific part of the video to be moving whereas everything else remains as a still frame. The results are some extremely amazing and light weight cinema graphs, which feel as though they came straight out of the Harry Potter series.

Cinemagraph Pro is not only based on an innovative idea but an extremely easy app to use. For it's out of the box approach to images and a sturdy application, Cinemagraph Pro is our desktop app of the year.

Sketch 3


Developer: Bohemian Coding
The Apple design resources for the watch kit include a bunch of PSD files, the files are accompanied by something different too. They are sketch templates. This is something to be proud of. Sketch 3, the UI design tool by Bohemian Coding has become extremely successful in a very short time.

With it's easy to use bezier curves, great guide lines, and more importantly the UI templates that make UI making an easy process, Sketch is fast becoming the startup standard for UI design.

Sketch is also great had handling vector images. The bezier curves in the software are some of the best vector graphics tools that I've seen. You can even do page layout design here.After using Sketch 3 for about a week, It was hard to switch back to photoshop, for UI design. It is something that you don't want to miss as a UI or graphic designer.

PODCASTS TO LISTEN | 2014

Serial

Narrated by Sarah Koenig.
The Serial Podcast is a real life murder mystery told as a periodical in audio format. Serial's basically an advertisement for podcasts. Its a representation of how a podcast's periodical format can be used for powerful story telling. Serial is innovative and gripping. The story is itself very engaging. Koenig's narration is flawless. The soundtrack's pretty good too. It's the best from Podcasts, I've seen this year.

Vector Cast

How does technology impact human lives? That's the question Rene Ritchie, Dave Wiskus, Georgia Dow and Guy English tackle every week in Vector's Season 2. Starting as a weekly show where Ritchie would interview an expert in a particular field of technology every week, Vector's season 1 was a bit off target. But in Season 2, Vector features a much better set of hosts and is a much more enjoyable podcasting experience. It's one of the best tech podcasts that you can listen too.




The Record

The Record is a talk show about Mac developer community, talking about the time before the iPhone. An innovative idea, hosted by Brent Simmons, Chris Parrish, includes some of the most note-worthy guests like Luke Adamson, John Nack and Gas Mueller. Its worth listening to, if you are willing to take the road down the memory lane.




HARDWARE



MOBILE PHONE OF THE YEAR

iPhone 6

The iPhone 6 is the best overall phone you can buy in the market at the moment. There's effectively no learning curve to use it. iOS 8 itself has a wide variety of Apps and Games and a lot of them are exclusive to iOS, Moreover the UX on an iPhone app is far better than its Android / Windows Phone counter parts. Then there are the upgraded hardware that the iPhone 6 provides which make the phone extremely powerful.

A word for camera here, iPhone 6 has an immensely powerful camera lens making it equivalent to point and shoot cameras, and then there are the updates that photos have got with iOS8 which include manual exposure and RAW image edits possible. The iPhone 6 is one step closer to being a full fledged professional camera inside a phone.

In my opinion , The iPhone 6 is the ideal iPhone, it's neither too large (iPhone 6 Plus) and nor too small (iPhone 4s). Also, the black screen plate of the space grey colour ensures that the content is the front and centre of the screen, and that the hardware fades away.


Moto X 2014

If you are looking for more customisability or for some are hooked to open source operating systems only or are looking something cheaper than the entry level iPhone, you might as well look at an Android phone. Last year, when choosing the best Android phone on the market, Google gave a tough competition with its Nexus 5 to the brilliant previous generation Moto X but this year's there's just one phone through and through that wins title of the best Android phone, the Moto X 2014 Edition.

Its the same customisable Moto X from last year, but with better internals, larger display and better speakers and an improved design. The new Moto X does feel a lot more premium than the old one. The new metal grips are a great addition. And then there's the whole thing about Lollipop's redesign. Motorola's implementation of the software is relatively free from bloatware and external skins, something which neither Samsung nor HTC have done away with yet.

Moto X's 5.2” screen is just big enough to not look disproportionately large, giving it an edge over the company's collaborative phone with Google, the Nexus 6. If you are looking for an Android phone under $500, Moto X is just the right choice for you, Look nowhere else.


Best Product 2014

iMac with Retina 5K Display

You really don't want to be looking at an iMac with Retina 5K Display, longer than a few seconds. The display on this product is so beautiful, it makes any display you own, instantly deplorable. Apple's playing the inventor here. The 5K display has an unprecedentedly large resolution, making for a beautiful display. The iMac with Retina 5K Display breaks all the barriers of technology, even inventing new hardware in the process. The Gorgeous Display, combined with great internals and a powerful OS, makes the iMac with Retina Display the best computing experience in recent times.

A major advantage of the 5K display is for video editors, who can edit 4K video in full resolution on their iMac and still have space left for frames and effects. For Photographers, its a great tool to see the full the detail of their images. Animators and Graphic Designers will also find that the 5K display is incredibly helpful to them.


EMERGING TECHNOLOGY



INTERNET STARTUP OF THE YEAR 2014


Storehouse is a visual story telling platform. It allows its users to have create a simple webpage with options to add videos, photos and text. What's striking about Storehouse is that users get to spend a lot more time telling a story, instead of tinkering with the webpage design. Further remarkable is Storehouse's story curation. This is something that ensures that you always get a good story to read. It's a social media platform of sorts, without the woes of an endless stream of follower/following crap or unwanted advertisements.

Storehouse begun as an iPad app. It even won the coveted Apple Design Award this year. Later this year, they even introduced the iPhone app, which was again a brilliant experience. Storehouse is a modern day internet startup and comes without the baggage of a desktop website.

QUADCOPTERS

Quadcopters have been around for ages, but this year Quadcopters gained a lot more mainstream importance. In fact, people are even gifting them as Christmas gifts these days. But Quadcopters have a long road to cover, they may be highly evolved but still aren't out of their shells as far as the consumer space is concerned.

A quadcopter is basically a rotorcraft. It's flight is generated by the four rotors fixed to it. Unlike most helicopters, a quadcopter uses two sets of identical fixed pitched propellers; two clockwise & the other two anti-clockwise.

Earlier this year we saw Amazon announce Prime Air. A first of its kind, Air Delivery service which uses a quadcopter to carry your package. It was followed by a Mumbai Cafe using a quadcopter for delivering Pizzas. Having said that, Unmanned Package Delivery by Drones is in early stages. It still not something ready for the consumer, and a lot of things need to be taken into consideration here. 
 Another use of the Quadcopters is for aerial surveillance. 2014 saw the Delhi Police use the popular Parrot A.R. Drone for aerial surveillance, on certain locations. That's some success for the Quadcopters, if they are able to make a difference in the city's crime rate, nothing better!

But these are commercial uses, if there's one possibility that excites me as a consumer, it is that of using Quadcopters for aerial photography. Beautiful Aerial shots have some exciting possibilities.

Its still early days for Quadcopters but 2014 gave them the kickstart they needed to make it into our lives. I'm Looking forward to seeing a lot more quadcopters in 2015.
Download the December Edition of mvdit tech book, featuring the best of 2014 and other discussions on the popular trends of the year. We also look at the people who mattered, technologies that worked or failed and the ones emerging to be big next. The eZine gives you a concise way of reading through the month's happenings. Get a Copy Now!