I recently helped beta test Martin Nguyen’s Gestimer ($2.99) so I was pleased to hear how well it’s been doing on the Mac App Store. Gestimer offers a pull-to-set quick reminder utility that sits in your menu bar. Pull down the icon a little or a lot to set a delayed notification; swing left and right for greater control. It’s easy to use and perfect for timing eggs or remembering to get back on task when you went all “but but 5 more minutes, I’ll be with you then”. The app design is lovely.

Dennis Vogel sent over a copy of Index Card 4 for me to play with. It’s an iPad app aimed at organizing story ideas although it can easily be used for anyone who is working on structured projects. You dash down key topics on note cards, then create stacks from them and organize them on a virtual corkboard. When the muse hits, expand those ideas with notes and images and when you’re ready to share, export to PDFs/Text. The app is currently on sale at $2.99 for a limited time. I found it easy-to-use and charmingly designed.

Nick Roberts tells me that my Undocumented Swift Functions post got a nice mention in the iOS Bytes podcast. He writes, “spread the word about iOS-Bytes and keep the iOS development community up to date”

Parse recently updated their apps APIs. Details at their blog.

My Gourmet Cookbook is 40% off between July 1 and July 6 at InformIT. Use coupon code JULY4TH (case sensitive). And don’t forget, the second edition of Playground Secrets and Power Tips is up on iTunes. Like the blog? Please buy a book!