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Archive for February, 2009

Upload Files To Multiple Hosts At Once With Gazup

So you want to upload a file. For that, you can either head over to a file host like rapidshare, megaupload, mediafire, zshare OR head over to Gazup.com to upload the file to ALL of them at once!

gazupGazup is a file mirroring site that uploads your file to multiple hosts. Once you upload a file to Gazup, it quickly mirrors that file to multiple hosts, namely 9 of them: Rapidshare, Megaupload, Netload, zShare, FileFactory, HidMyAss, Badongo, MediaFire and Upload Box.

Once the file is mirrored, which does’t take long, you get a download page where all the mirror links are given. This download page is a permanent one so you can share its link with others. You can upload files of any format and max file size is 400Mb (Depends on the hosts you select). You can also upload files by URL, 5 at a time.

There are no daily limits or restrictions. Their service is free but registering gives you certain benefits such as a private control panel, management of uploaded files etc.

[Gazup]

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is a young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

Don’t Get Sued… Use Tunerec

TunerecWith the RIAA already suing teenagers for downloading pirated music, it’s time you move to the safer side and try another alternative. And yes, that ‘other’ alternative can be free and legal.

Tunerec is a web based service, that ‘records’ songs off  internet radio streams and then tags them all for your convenience.  Since it has to ‘record’ the streams first, it takes some time to save them in your database. But the patience is eventually rewarded. It has an iTunes like interface, where you can search for artists, songs and albums; Make playlists and also share them with friends.

Although I don’t understand why it has to ‘record’ songs for each user, and not just once for all its users, it probably doesn’t take much time as the number of songs i had last week jumped a whopping 100K this week, taking the total, as of now, to 1 Million.

It may not have all the songs you want, and likely demands patience even for those it has, the audio quality is commendable with very less buffering interuptions. As for the ‘legal’ thing you may be wondering about, the site mentions that it is completely legal and RWW also notes that Tunerec “ has worked out an agreement with the Swedish songwriters association STIM and the musicians (or at least the labels) get paid for every every song played on the service. ”

You can also invite your friends to the service and share your playlists with them.

Tunerec is currently in currently in closed beta but i was able to get into the service right away after i signed up. People living in Europe have a better option than Tunerec and that is Spotify. But sadly, Spotify is only available in Europe and will take some time untill it opens up to the U.S and rest of the world. Untill then, you have Tunerec. If you don’t like it, go buy your own CDs ;)

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

Zemanta Now Available on Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and ScribeFire

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

In less than a year, Zemanta has made a name for itself in the blogosphere. By becoming the premier add-on to the FireFox browser, bloggers now had access to an amazing set of tools to provide further depth to their posts. With hundreds of thousands of downloads, it seemed like a surefire winner, and there was little doubt that Zemanta has room to expand, but where and when?

Zemanta late last year supported another FireFox add-on called ScribeFire, a simple blogging tool that opened up in your browser without having to log into any other site or leave the page you are on. This allowed for amazingly quick posting to the blog of your choice, but also provided the same depth that you had available to you from within most popular blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad.

Recently it was announced that Zemanta has made another move towards mass market exposure, it has integrated with Gmail and Yahoo Mail, offering users of those mail clients the ability to attached related articles, pictures, and keywords to their emails that the recipients might need to fully understand the topic. I personally can’t imagine a better mass exposure opportunity than attaching yourself to two of the largest mail clients on the internet today.

Zemanta is a key tool that I recommend all bloggers install, but now with mail enhancements, I’m happy to see them growing. I’ve always been a big supporter of their efforts as it’s nice to see innovative ways to breathe life into a long standing medium like blogging.

It’s apparent that Zemanta will continue to offer what it always has; by offering photo suggestions, article suggestions, and keyword suggestions, as you type, updating every 300 words, there is bound to be another leap into further integration.

Perhaps a jump into an office platform for document and presentation creation, like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. Only time will tell!

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Front Page of Digg Impossible? Try HYPick For Better Results

Often, users of Digg comment how they enjoy some of the content, but that readers notice that the same individuals get their

HYPick Logo

HYPick Logo

stories on the front page time and time again. Users that try their hardest to get their stories on the front page fail more often than not, leaving many to wonder if the site is truly leveraging the wisdom of the crowds or if the system is being gamed.

I won’t get into that discussion, you can find plenty of content on that if you search. What I do want to focus on is an alternative to the Digg’s, Reddits, and other supposed community news sites. Enter HYPick, from the creative mind of social media strategist, Oren Todoros. His vision of truly representing the wide swath of internet users is visualized with this social news site that heavily encourages it’s users to HYPE their favorite stories and articles.

On HYPick there’s no specialized voting system, or fancy magic attached to stories, it’s purely at the  mercy of the community. Articles with the most activity are ranked higher. So as users come and go, read and comment, links and pass on, the article gains momentum as something the community feels should be read by others.

No good vote, bad vote system, just real people participation!

There is no doubt that the passions of the community will have a voice. Many would call this a level playing field, that will remain to be seen. For now the HYPick community is alive and well and already gaining momentum.

The Purpose

Putting power into the hands of the users has been what most community news sites have been after. Accomplishment is iffy at best, but no one can deny the current reign of those sites that have dominated this arena for several years. HYPick’s unique approach will truly test the vision that Oren and his team have put together.

In order to make HYPick the next attractive playground for user submitted news stories, they have integrated two HYPick specialized widgets for their users.

The first:

HYPick Reader

HYPick Reader

The reader widget which can be placed on the right side of your site. It provides easy access for your readers to see what is being ranked and spoken about on HYPick, but also gives you the ability to quickly jump to the post of interest.

I can even appreciate how the posts can also show imagery when they appear on this list. HYPick did a great job with this widget ensuring that users of their service will always have instant connectivity to the happenings in the community. Detail wise I’m not too sure if there are limitations to the articles listed on this widget, whether they are selected as highly ranked posts rated by the community, or if any post that is put to the community is automatically listed here. Still, HYPick wants to make sure that the community is always involved.

Of note the widget is customizeable to a point, but again, it shows HYPicks dedication to the opinion of its readers!

The second HYPick add-on is this:

HYPick Website Button

HYPick Website Button

In it’s continued effort to ensure that readers and users alike are constantly connected to the community, you can integrate the HYPick icon onto your site, similar to what Digg and Reddit due with their icons. This will notify readers that your post can be placed on the community site for involvement by all. The icon is set up to be unobtrusive yet functional in its duty.

Overall the entire system seems pretty sound. It’s a new playing in the user submitted news community, but it also provides a platform for those that are frustrated about their lack of appearance on the front page of some of the major players. Now I can’t personally vouch for these individuals, I don’t know what their content is, but HYPick seems to be an open forum for a wide variety of possibilities in the news community. I look forward to seeing what this player can do!

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Microsoft Songsmith Provides Musical Mockeries!

In the words of John Cougar Mellencamp, both the commerical for Microsoft Songsmith and the number of parody tunes that have been released “hurt so good.”

The Songsmith commercial caused a ripple of laughter when the painful commercial made its rounds on the internet. Viewers lamented on the lack of acting as well as the blatent use of an Apple laptop throughout the entire promotion. You can vew the entire promotion here.

Recently, several Songsmith parodies of popular songs have been released using the Songsmith application.Both TechCrunch and This Week in Tech (TWiT) covered these interesting adaptions that almost appear to come from a bizarro world.

Here is “Roxanne” by The Police via Songsmith.

If you’d like to see other tunes mutilated by this Microsoft inception, visit the the article posted over on TechCrunch. Prepare to laugh, cry, or a mixture of both!

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