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During my morning surf, these three apps popped up as something I might want to consider:

Week Calendar: A strange name, because this iPhone app seems anything but weak (get it? That’s a pun). It seems to provide a better iCal-like UI than the default calendar app on the iPhone and integrates with Google Calendar, where I keep all of my personal scheduling. Speaking of calendar apps, I’m looking forward to testing out Fantastical and/or Today for the Mac. I’m currently using calendar bar, but that doesn’t give you the option to add events to your calendar.

Shine looks like a weather app that actually has a useful interface. The default weather app on the iPhone doesn’t give me enough information and the Weather Channel App takes too damn long to load. Here’s hoping that Shine will be a weather app worth checking every morning.

UpdateBar: Because I definitely need another way to update my Twitter and Facebook accounts. UpdateBar gives me that right from the ever-popular menu bar.

Color Demo from Color Labs, Inc. on Vimeo.

It’s been interesting to read all the reaction to Color that came out yesterday. I find it silly that people are complaining about the $41 million. Look, if you can get someone to give you $41 million and you’re not doing anything illegal or duping them, then good for you. No one should begrudge your ability to pitch an idea. Does this signal as start-up bubble? Probably yes, but again, that’s the way of the world — there’s going to be winners and losers.

Now, if you want to complain about the user experience and say the app looks like a turd and you don’t know how to use it, that’s cool and apparently Color has heard you loud and clear.

However, their answer to the problem — cripple the app when no one’s around — seems odd to me (when I first read it, I thought it was a joke) and I’m really curious to see how they implement it. The first thing I do when I buy a new app is open it and use it (in some cases it may be the only time I use it). Will Color allow me to do that? Will it have some sort of welcome function that says, “this is how you’ll use Color in the future, but right now you can’t?”

Who knows? It will be interesting to see. Color is trying something completely new with this app and taking the idea of social in different and potentially weird directions. One question they’re trying to figure out is, “How far away is close?” Solving this will go a long way toward making the app more useful. Although if close isn’t close at all, Color becomes Instagram without the filters.

One thing I think Color should implement right ways is the ability to select photos from your color stream during an event, trip, meal, whatever and group them into shareable collages that can be posted to other social feeds. One of the things that makes Instagram so successful is the ability to share something unique across the social graph. My friends and family love the Instagram photos that show up on my Facebook page and a Color-powered collage of a family vacation would be even more popular.

I don’t know how they’ll answer these questions or whether the concept is going to work. But, Color is doing something new and different and for that, I give them credit.