Archive for March, 2009
Group decisions are a pain. Some project management sites offer voting or other setups for making semi-democratic decisions in a group setting, but most of the time this need is overlooked. If it’s not overlooked, like with MS Project, it’s buried in the tools list somewhere.
While not specifically project-targeted, DecideAlready is a very specific tool meant to do one thing: facilitate group decision making. It seeks to eliminate most of the chaos, lack of participation, and pointless discussion that group decisions (via meetings) usually entail.
Gone are the days of “reply all” email threads that go on for three days with fifteen participants and eight different conversation threads embedded in them. At least, that’s what DecideAlready hopes.
I couldn’t agree with them more, myself. Conference calls aren’t any better. Ten minute calls to “make a decision” always end up being half an hour or more. That’s just how the game is played. DecideAlready has some good and simple mechanics that get the job done.
First, the instigator creates a question, a list of possible answers, and a list of peers to send it to. The app takes over from there, sending the query to the list so they can click through to choose an answer. This is the simple version—no frills, no muss.
The next step up is the “ranked” version which lets answers be prioritized so that ranked answers can be given (this one first, then this one, then that one). More complex questions can be group-answered in this manner, so when the question of whether coffee, a cold water cooler, or Danish rolls are most important at the next meeting is asked…
The Advanced version has sliders where ranks can be based on criteria and moderated in this way. For extremely complex issues, this might be the way to go.
Overall, DecideAlready is a good tool that fills a specific task. It probably won’t replace management meetings, or the excuses offered to have them, but at least it can make the meetings more productive. One thing it can’t do is provide catering…
Foursquare hit the streets running at this weekend’s SXSW. It not only allows your mobile to connect to Twitter (and therefore your followers), but it ads a few things that Twitter doesn’t have. Namely the ability to (actually) find your Twitter friends when in the same place at the same time, in real life.
Instead of ambiguous “I’m at Nino’s Pizza” or “I’m over by the fountain at Seaworld” directions, how about a map?
Foursquare was built by the guys who made Dodgeball, that now-dead Google app that became quite the underground hit. Basically, Foursquare works with Google Maps and Twitter, together.
First, you tell the app where you are (text/SMS to 50500) and then post shouts based on your location and what you’re doing. Looking for friends or places to meet is easy (thanks to Google Maps, which auto-centers on where you 50500′d). All of the friends near you (who’re using Foursquare) can be seen on the map too.
The other half of Foursquare is the “game.” Every time you check in, you earn points. Interesting check-ins (like check-ins with details) gives you badges. Points eventually ad up to extra features that unlock as you use the app.
It’s a fresh and innovative approach to Twitter-finding, for sure. I suspect that it’s users will be limited in number (since it’s appeal is rather narrow), but cult-like zealots in their fanaticism for it.
Twitter users, especially those who keep multiple accounts for various uses, will want to see this one. Maybe you have one account for business, one to promote a website as a feed blaster, and one for personal use. Maybe you have several accounts, one for each website? In any case, you’ll be very interested in EasyTweets.
This is more than just a browser plug-in or a quick-swap method to go from one account to the next. This tool is for power users that really push Twitter as far as it will go, but don’t like the restrictions a downloadable app entails.
EasyTweets is Web-based and very powerfully versatile. It’s not often we come across tools like this that are actually useful—beyond the usual. It offers multiple account management, alerts when your brand is mentioned on Twitter, post-scheduled messages, RSS feed auto-posting, trend monitoring, Tweet-to-email conversions, and more.
This is a great tool if you’re into Twitter as more than just a way to blast the occasional comment about McDonald’s or whether Brittany’s new hair is in style. Beyond managing multiple Twitter accounts, the real power of this tool comes from it’s ability to auto-post and pre-post items.
Like a blog, EasyTweets allows you to post things and set a publish date for them, so they’ll automatically be sent at a specific time. Auto-posting is also extremely valuable, as you can plug RSS feeds in so that when they update, the post is automatically sent. So maybe you have a blog and a Twitter account to match it as a “post blaster.” Well, now it’s automated for you so you don’t have to bother doing both jobs.
The trend monitoring and graphing is also extremely useful if you have a niche or semi-niche blog or website. You can track how often your brand is mentioned on Twitter, get notices when (and where) it’s mentioned, and see how your niche is building.
Another great tool, especially for the obsessive Tweeters, is the SMS or email alerts you can have sent to you when any (or specific) accounts receive tweets from their network or when your brand is mentioned—as part of the above tracking. For smart phone users, this could be highly useful.
Again, it’s not often that we see truly useful tools for social networking sites like Twitter. These tools either blatantly fall into the “yet another browser plug-in” category or the “I use Twitter for spamming” genre. It’s only rarely that they fall into the “holy crap, that’s actually useful” group.
EasyTweets is one of that last bunch: useful, even for non-marketing types.
Personal blogs are more than a bunch of words put together. A good personal blog reflects your identity, your personality and individualism and a factor of great importace here is the design. It is the first thing that the viewer notices, before making any presumptions about you or your personality. So a good design is necessary to leave a good and long lasting impression on the visitor.
To help you out with the design, we at Crenk have put together 17 new wordpress themes that we believe, will rock your personal blog. Read on.
Creative Art
Theme Info | Demo
Masinop
Theme Info | Demo
Nouice
Theme Info | Demo
Scruffy
Theme Info | Demo
Vigilance
Theme Info | Demo
Simply
Theme Info | Demo
WGrey
Theme Info | Demo
Simple Pro
Theme Info | Demo
Simple Changes
Theme Info | Demo
Reviews Theme
Theme Info | Demo
ProudBlack
Theme Info | Demo
Modicus Remix
Theme Info | Demo
Modern
Theme Info | Demo
LightWeight
Theme Info | Demo
IAMWW W2 DnD
Theme Info | Demo
Bright Spring
Theme Info | Demo
Elegance
Theme Info | Demo
So that ends the list. I hope you liked it, if that’s so, show me some love and Digg it 
(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.
Let’s be honest for a minute. We all may not have rigged our neighbors bathroom with a shower spy cam, and we may not have binoculars powerful enough to let us see topless alien sunbathers on Mars.
But we’re all voyeurs. And we’re all competitive.
That’s why scripted realty shows like “The Bachelor” rake in big-time cash for the networks. We like to judge attractive people in a setting where we can’t be judged in return. (Hey, sometimes we’re wearing our fat pants and haven’t showered yet). CanDoBetter.com understands our not-so-secret urges, and successfully (and innocently) preys on these insecurities online.
CanDoBetter does just what it says: It lets you judge randomly generated couples from user-submitted pics. Of course, you can also press your luck with ogling mob and see whether you can do better in this mock relationship – or your virtual match deserves a better mate. If voters feel two users are the perfect match, they can fittingly choose this option, too. If you’re as old as me, you might remember an predecessor: HotorNot!
By registering on the site (it’s free), you can view your own stats, it’s just like a virtual baseball card! You can even manage multiple photos and get widgets to post on your blog or website. You can also easily hook up through Facebook.
So whether you simply like passing shallow judgments on others or you think you’re pretty hot stuff, check out CanDoBetter. Because right now, you can’t.
Why Did I Start VOIS? Why Did We Launch The First Social Sourcing Site Now?
There are a lot of bad websites out there. A lot.
Websites with 8-bit graphics seemingly ripped from Atari games, with laughable copy errors that immediately diminish credibility, and with such awful usability that you need a Dr. Phil intervention to calm down after surfing through the third-rate portals.
This is one reason I co-founded VOIS.com (pronounced VOICE), or Virtual Outsourcing is Social. Not only can VOIS’ collaborative approach to completing projects produce superior results – from slickly branded and intuitive websites to fun, traffic-churning widgets – but it can also make it more affordable for businesses.
Don’t get me wrong; this is not the business owners’ faults. As a blogger for a major food website, I can say first hand that these are good people with the best of intentions. But just because someone knows how to make donuts, pizza or surfboards, it doesn’t mean they should know how to create a compelling online storefront. And hiring expensive firms on retainer often isn’t a workable business model for small and medium-sized businesses, or even larger firms that don’t have the bandwidth to handle their current business needs.
That’s why VOIS seeks to connect clients with expert Web professionals – from designers to developers and copywriters – to work on a project basis. What separates us from other business match-making platforms is that we allow and encourage the clients and talent to get to know each other first by exploring robust online profiles and messaging back and forth.
Click-and-mortar, web-driven start-ups have also had to change their game plan, and VOIS was developed for these businesses, too. With start-up capital tougher and tougher to attract, it’s no longer feasible for someone to hire developer and a CTO, build an infrastructure from scratch, then roll out and ramp up a product. I’ve met many people who 
have burned through $500,000 before looking at a more cost-efficient way of doing things.
And I really feel VOIS is that new way of doing things. We’re keeping VOIS wide open in terms of the scope of projects we accommodate – no niche focus or specialized tunnel vision. This will help us attract more users and offer truly turnkey solutions for our users.
So as the VOIS community grows, fueled by this added interpersonal dimension, I look forward at seeing some truly amazing work forged through the power of online collaboration. In other words, no more bad websites, or half-completed start-ups that could have been the next big thing.
In fact, I think VOIS is the next big thing.
3banana is a Silicon Valley startup that just appeared on the market, launching a new note-taking application (called 3banana Notes) for the Android, the iPhone, and small-device Web use.
The application is free and works by synchronizing with an online notebook so you can save information you want to save quickly and easily from your phone. This allows free access online, whether you have your phone with your or not.
The app has a wireless synch-up and allows for social media sharing. Think of it as Twitter for your iPhone, but with a few more uses. Notes can be shared or kept private, as you prefer, and on an individual basis. So if you’re wanting to jot down that next great American novel idea you came up with, you can keep that to yourself, but if you’re wanting to see if anyone is up for coffee on the corner of Johnson and Main, you can broadcast that to your friends.
Andreas Schobel, the co-founder of 3banana and its CTO, says, “…the 3banana note taking app helps you catch those ideas before they escape. 3banana also makes it easy to share your notes with friends—rather than being lost forever, that idea in your notes can be the beginning of an online conversation.”
This seems like a great idea and one that could catch on quickly. Especially since it will work on so many platforms of portable phone. More universal apps like this are needed, in my opinion, to stop the trend of “it’s all about the iPhone.” Not that I don’t like iPhones, I just want to see more competition so the technology will improve faster.
Probably the sum-up from Steve Brown, the CEO and other co-founder of 3banana, does it best: “In the information-rich and fast-paced world today, the challenge is to get information from the brain in your head, into the brain in your pocket, and connected to the brainpower in the Internet cloud. We streamlined and simplified our note taking app so that users could quickly jot down a thought or tag a photo on their Android smart phone with as few keystrokes as possible, and then synch and share those notes wirelessly and effortlessly.”
Basically, it works like this: the 3banana software stays synched with their online service so that photos and notes on the smart phone can be immediately stored and kept online. At the same time, websites, online notes, and other Internet-based information can also be kept through a browser interface. Synchs in Twitter-like feeds with friends and colleagues can also be set up so that it creates an “always on” cloud for data sharing.
Shared notes can be linked with Twitter or Facebook for wide broadcasts or can be kept inside 3banana for easier and more private sharing and discussion.
3banana is currently available for download from the Google Android App Market free of charge.
Ten years ago, who would have thought that most of our work would depend on the internet? The internet allows us to have easy access to our files, anywhere, anytime. We chat face to face with friends, meet clients virtually, process payments in a flash and much more. The internet is huge and you can’t get enough of it. It has no end.
While on the topic of the internet, you can call the current scenario, the Web 2.0 revolution, the next dot com boom. Web apps are torrenting the internet with their numbers and new ones pop-up everyday.
Today, I will talk about the latest additions to the pool, of course; the ones you probably don’t know about.
So, without further ado…
With TinyChat you can create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Chat rooms are disposable and can be created within seconds.
With KeepHD, you can download the high defintion version of youtube videos and also fetch the FLVs and 3GPs for your mobiles.
With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way. Move beyond the slide, it only takes 5 minutes to learn how to use Prezi.
With Wix, you can create stunning flash websites for free, all from your internet browser! It offers you a simple powerful online platform to make flash websites, MySpace layouts and more. No downloads or programming needed.
NiceTranslator is a fast, easy to use online translator designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. It is ajax powered, so you get the translations on the fly!
A to-do list with a twist. It streamlines tasks in an elegant calendar view
Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. You get a very easy to use photo editor that lets you add photo effects, custom text or speech bubbles and much more.
Need to receive a message by email, but can’t (or don’t want to) give out your email address? whspr! gives you a URL to share instead.
WobZip is an online tool which lets you uncompress compressed files online. It supports many formats including the major ones as Zip, RAR, 7Z, Gzip, TAR, ISO etc…
Create an invitation in seconds, add entries from mobile, twitter, email, iCal, gCal or Outlooks. And of course, send them with ease from withing the app.
Fliggo is an out-of-the-box, all-in-one, solution for creating your own video website. It can be a video blog, a YouTube-like community or a private site for your company or family.
Yidio combines over 200 million videos and offers one of the largest video search engines on the Web.
SlideRocket is an online, flash based tool for creating slides and presentations. It brings together a complete package of online slide making with features such as an intuitive interface, themes, flickr integration and much more
Ziddu is a new free file hosting solution with features such as unlimited storage space, fast uploads and downloads, file management, a sharing community a referral program and the ability to earn money with your downloads.
Mufin is your music discovery engine, that will let you easily discover new music among millions of tracks. With the sound that you dig!
YoutubeReloaded creates an embeddable playlist of YouTube videos that can be added to any website. Simply choose a playlist type to create your free youtube playlist.
FriendPaste is a an online tool where you can paste code snippets of many different languages to share with friends. It sports and intuitive interface with support for syntax highlighting.
Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys. With a great user interface, Survs is currently in private beta, though a single request fetched us an invitation.
With SendPhotos Mobile, Web and PC you can upload photos, edit them, create photos albums and share them online with whoever you want. Also available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.
BackupURL creates instant cached copies of web pages. The content of a web page stays the same while you share the link provided. The cached page can also be used for referencing or even mirroring data. The cached page will always be online (html,css,images) no matter whether the original site is up or down.
Rapidstack is a realtime Rapidshare link searcher. It scans the links before they are displayed as results and only working links are displayed.
CC Betty organizes your message and its contents – photos, addresses, documents, links – and create a mailspace where everyone can track replies, view and add content. You just CC your messages to her!
Make your emails pop with signatures that reflect your personality and change with every email you send! Create signatures with your twitter status, flickr photos, blog entries, youtube stream and much more, all realtime.
Create your own RSS feed by combiningRSS feeds from your favorite websites, and use filters to choose what you want in it!
Twe2 is a service which sends you your twitter replies, direct messages and custom searches that you specify free to your mobile as SMS. Available in more than 230 countries.
Markkit is a web2.0 text highlighter. Drag’n’Drop the markkit yellow pen into your browser toolbar. Whenever you want to highlight text in a web page, click on the markkit bookmarklet.
So which ones are your favorites? Discuss in the comments, and dont forget to give it a digg 
(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.
There aren’t very many social media applications yet on the iPhones that are based around social news or social bookmarking. Digg has a an unofficial app which is much improved than the last unofficial app that was in the iTunes App Store which is no longer available. Delicious has quite a few apps that are decent but lack a few important features. Disappointingly, StumbleUpon doesn’t have any applications and neither does Mixx or Yahoo! Buzz.
Reddit is currently leading with three apps to make the mobile experience much more enjoyable. One of theirs is an official app from the Reddit creators themselves. Will Digg be releasing an official app soon?
I’ve taken the liberty to do a review of the three Reddit apps and Digg app that are in the iTune App Store. I am in no way associated with any of these apps, know any of the owners, or am promoting any of them in any fashion. This is merely a review from an avid Reddit and Digg user with a love for social news and social media.
Shovel – Digg App
Author: Scott Fitzhugh
Price: Free
Ratings: 147 Reviews – 
(at the time of writing)
iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/d5yqhu
iTunes Description:
Shovel is an app that provides top stories from the social news website Digg.com in a native application. Browse the front page stories, or delve deeper into an array of topics and subtopics of interest.
Personal Review:
Shovel is a great application for viewing Digg.com content easily on the iPhone. Overall, the design and interface is pretty clean and simple. It gives you a variety of topics and listings to select to view so you can access all of the content on Digg.com. You can view:
- Popular Stories
- Top Stories
- Movers & Shakers
- Brand New Stories
All listings are applicable to any category or sub-category in Digg.com. If you select a Digg story you can then scroll down the commentary to see what people are saying, who’s replied, how many votes each comment has received, etc. After that, you can click further to view the story live on the Web. Which is nice about it is that it doesn’t load Safari as a separate app to view the content so there’s no back-and-forth between the apps.
Unfortunately, what you cannot participate in digging, burying, or commenting through this application. The developer disclaims, “Now we’ve gotten the message loud and clear that the one thing that would turn this 3.5 star app (currently 3 stars) into a 5 star one is the interactivity of the original Digg site. You guys (and gals) want to be able to Digg, comment, and bury, and who can blame you? Right now, however, there is no way to do this using the legitimate Digg APIs, and quite frankly, it makes us sad. I’ve been trying to court the help of Digg in making this app all that it can be, and if you want to help that along, you should drop them a line yourselves requesting the same!”
Another drawback is that you cannot personalize this application because there is no way to login. Therefore you can’t weed out content you don’t want to see, view your account profile, see your friend’s submissions, etc.
In doing some research the Shovel app used to be named “Diggerific”. Apparently, they have changed the name of it and redid the UI just a bit as you can tell from the video review of Diggerific below:
Overview
Pros
- Easy to use
- Clean interface
- Ability to access all Digg content
Cons
- Free of charge
- Can’t Digg, comment, or bury content
- No Digg account profile/community features or functionality
iReddit
Author: CondeNet
Price: $1.99
Ratings: 41 Reviews 
(at the time of writing)
Feedback Contact: http://getsatisfaction.com/reddit/products/reddit_ireddit
iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/ce6tt2
iTunes Description:
The official Reddit iPhone app. Never be bored again. With this app, you’ll only be a tap (or shake) away from the most interesting stuff on the web.
All of your favorite Reddit functionality is here: view the hottest, newest, top, and most controversial stories of the moment, explore, individual subreddits, vote, comment, share, and save links for later. The entire commenting system has been optimized for the iPhone app so you won’t have any trouble contributing to an epic pun thread.
Save time by never having to reload the Reddit homepage. You can even use handy next/previous navigation to move between websites without going back to the main list. And those sites work in portrait and widescreen modes too.
It’s never been easier to be entertained. Just shake your iPhone to enter “serendipity mode” where you’ll be served a random, interesting site. Pro-tip: Turn on “play sound on shake” for a special treat with every jostle — the iPhone is an elegant phone for a more sophisticated age.
And if you’re feeling the economic downturn (what are you doing with an iPhone?) there’s a tree, ad-supported version to come.
Personal Review:
The Official Reddit application is pretty cool. You can input your username and password so that you can vote and comment on stories. Initially, you come to the Reddit homepage. Along the top you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Top”, and “Controversial” stories. When selecting a story, there is an overlay on the footer that allows you to upvote/downvote the story, go to the comments section of the story, save the story, and email the link.
Three subreddits will fit on the bottom bar overlay that you can quickly navigate to. You can edit the subreddits with the ones you want to use the most, but you only have a small selection of subreddit’s to swap out with. Those subreddits are:
- Programming
- Funny
- Science
- Tech
- World News
- Entertainment
- Business
- Comics
- Gaming
- Best Of
- Economics
- Cappuccino
It is the most expensive application but I feel it’s the cleanest and easiest to use. Unfortunately, you can’t browse all subreddits and there’s no search function. Nor is there a function to view your account’s saves, karma points, submissions, comments, etc.
I would recommend this app to anyone looking to quickly and easily view Reddit news, vote, and participate in the more popular subreddits. The free Reddit app doesn’t allow for this.
Overview
Pros
- Easily vote on stories from the actual story page
- Save links to view/read later
- Comment participation
- Customization of footer subreddits
Cons
- Most expensive Reddit app
- Not a wide-range of subreddits to customize on your footer
- Can’t browse all subreddits
- No search functionality
- No personal account status functionality
Open Source Reddit
Author: Joseph Pintozzi
Price: Free
Ratings: 10 Reviews (at the time of writing)
Feedback Contact: reddit@pintozzi.com
iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/cpjzvj
iTunes Description:
The Reddit application allows users to view the stories from www.reddit.com without having to deal with loading massive webpages. It displays the stories in a nice table view, providing details about each submission, and allows the user to easily view the submitted content. The ability to vote on a submission is currently being added.
Personal Review:
This app is very bare bones with very limited functionality. If you’re looking to vote on stories or participate in the comments this app isn’t for you. If you’re just looking to read “Hot” news from a select few subreddits then this is a good app for the cost of nothing. The included subreddits to choose from are:
- reddit.com
- bacon
- politics
- pics
- WTF
- funny
- technology
- programming
The nice thing about it is that it’s open source and the developer leaves it open for people to add on what they want to it. Hopefully, in the future, this will be a great application for Reddit.
Overview
Pros
Cons
- No commenting
- No voting
- Can’t browse all subreddits
- No search functionality
- No personal account status functionality
Satellite Reddit
Author: 3Cube Technologies
Price: $0.99
Ratings: 8 Reviews – (at the time of writing)
Feedback Contact: satellite@3cubetechnologies.com or http://twitter.com/3cube
iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/cx8eec
iTunes Description:
Satellite 2.0 is now available and brings a host of improvement to the mobile Reddit experience.
Change in this version includes:
- Greatly improved performance
- New, Controversial, and Top views are available for all subreddits
- An overlay displaying the full article title and comments count shows while loading an article
- The subreddit list is reorderable
- A beautiful new icon and splash screen have been added
- New lower pricing.
Satellite is a full-featured client for Reddit.com, a social link aggregation site. With Satellite, you can browse links appearing on the front page or drill down into the Subreddits you are subscribed to. When viewing an article you can vote the link up or down, save it to your Reddit account, or share the link with others. With the click of a button, you can shift into commenting mode to browse comments or post your own back to the Reddit page about the link. The interface provides a substantially more streamlined experience over the mobile Reddit site and incorprates the unique capabilities of the iPhone to make your day to day Reddit’ing much more fun.
Additional Satellite features include:
- Shake the app at any time to explore random content from Reddit
- Next/previous buttons are available at the screen edges to move through content without returning to list view
- Full portrait/landscape modes, including upside down. Great for handing the phone across the dinner table to share your discoveries!
- Returns to the content you were browsing at start-up. Pick up right where you left off when that call came in.
- Highly addictive content discovery available anywhere, at any time!
Personal Review:
This app is definitely worth the 99 cents. After entering in your login information you can view ALL of your subscribed subreddits. It also gives you an option to edit your subreddits for your account. After selecting a subreddit you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Controversial”, and “Top” categories in the footer bar. Once selecting a story, it takes you to the story and overlays the story title, submitter, and point count. At the bottom footer you can choose to vote, go to comments, save the link, or email the link. Again though, there’s no search feature with this app either.
This app is a lot like the official iReddit app except it’s more personalized. You can also view your saved Reddits on your account to follow up on how your saves and submissions are doing.
Overview
Pros
- Personalized
- Nice User-Interface
- Good functionality for voting and commenting
- All Reddit content accessible through this app
Cons
- Isn’t free
- Can’t see your karma points
- No search functionality
HAPPY BROWSING WITH THESE SOCIAL MEDIA APPS!
