I have just discovered via a tweet of someone I’m following the Microsoft will open a café in Paris to celebrate the launch of Windows 7 in Europe which is due in just a few short weeks. The café will remain open for a few weeks after launch and customers will be able to play around with tonnes of Microsoft goodies such as XBOXs, Mobile Devices, Zunes and PCs.
However, they won’t be able to buy any of them as the café will serve only snacks and drinks.
Cheekily, the poster on the window to the café which is currently undergoing construction says (and I finally use that ‘D’ in French after all!) “The Windows Cafe will open its doors on October 22. Don’t hesitate to browse the web on the sidewalk in the meantime.”
I love to work outside. There is nothing more appealing to me during a work day than an opportunity to take my laptop and work in the back garden or in the park. Relaxation, quietness and fresh air. But of course there is one fatal flaw in this seemingly perfect plan and that is the sun. It causes a glare on the screen leaving me with a suntan and strained vision.
However, I have found a product that will stop this glare on ANY laptop and it’s called the Laptop UNV which is available here. Basically, It’s a thin contraption that is fixed to the lid of your laptop. It fits all 10” to 17” laptops. You can open it up to form a protective shield from the sun as shown.
Yes you may look a little daft sitting on a park bench with your hands dipped into a mysterious black box but at least you’ll be able to read up on the latest happenings at Crenk!
I’m a writer – perhaps not a good one but it’s what I fill out on my tax returns year after year. As with all writer I read, write and read some more. Learning new words is one for the tricks of the trade but, to be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered. ‘Word a day’ calendars were a cool novelty but have died – and carrying around an oxford dictionary with you isn’t exactly practical now is it?
However, I have found a solution to my literary conundrum – Artwiculate. To put it simply, it’s a word a day calander for Twitter. You follow the Artwiculate account and use their word (in context) within one or more of your tweets. If your tweet is good enough, it will get picked up by them and earn you points (which are purely for status within the ranks of Artwiculate).
I think this is a cool way to learn new words. For example, did you know Mellifluous means smooth and flowing like honey; normally used to describe a sound or voice?
Finding a good place for free music these days is by no means easy. In fact, it’s rather difficult. Governments and ISPs are starting to clamp down with Pirate Bay being made an example of. Often, while good, torrents moody and when they’re not set up correctly (which can be hit or miss) they are awfully slow!
iZaria is a start-up music site that allows you to listen to music and download top songs for free. You don’t have to download any software like you do with Vuze or Limewire and you can listen to the songs before you press download.
I searched for Oasis and I got back dozens of songs such as ‘Little by little’, ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and ‘Half the world Away’. I created a play list using their simple ‘Create a Playlist’ feature – obviously, and I downloaded them onto my iPod to give it a test run; it worked perfectly!
While it can be a bit tedious at time because some lesser known bands are not well represented on the site, it’s great for those interested in the big names.
It’s all very simple to use and I can see it having a bright future as people don’t want to download bulky software to in turn download songs – we just want the music!
Seeing as Crenk is a start-up review site, it occurred to us during our day of endless pondering that many of you may be interested in working for a start-up. But getting in with one can be tough. By their very nature start-ups are small and have a tight knit staff; normally friends who spotted a gap in the market or had a great idea.
Staruply is basically a job site that serves only to advertise jobs in start-ups where YOU can apply for them. Many of the jobs are for things like PR, development and editing. The homepage has the most recent jobs posted by start-ups looking for staff. This list of jobs gives you basic information such as if it is telecommute, fulltime and the salary.
Start-ups can also post jobs for free by using the ‘Post’ option along the top of the site.
Given the recession, many are out of work but have loads of marketable skills. With thousands of people turning to the internet for employment, you better be quick about applying.
In summary: This is a very useful site for the young glossy-eyed graduates and experienced professionals alike.
I don’t mean to sound in sensitive or anything, but what doesn’t give you cancer these days? It seems staying at home in a sealed bubble is about the only thing – and even then I’m sure they’ll find something.
Now, it appears that motorcyclists are in the firing line because of a high amount of EMF coming from their hogs. For those of you who don’t know what an EMF is – it’s an Electro Magnetic Field. Just watch Oceans 13 and it’ll explain everything in a horrible British accent.
Randall Dale Chipkar has invented a kind of shield that is to be inserted into the seat of the rider’s motorcycle to ‘shield’ them from these nasty EMFs. In a book he wrote he researched motorcyclists who had caught cancers such as Prostate cancer and bone cancer.
“All of these riders had extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation shooting up from their motorcycle seats into their lower torso”, Chipkar says. “Some readings were 100 times higher than what can be considered as acceptable exposure.”
From what I can see it’s just a piece of tin foil, but then it is marketed to give the rider ‘Peace of Mind’, and it may or may not stop EMFs.
Divine is a clever little tool that allows you to make WordPress pages using your pre-made Photoshop works, allowing you unlimited customization right down to the smallest details. All this can be done with minimal knowledge of site creation assuming you know how to use Photoshop but that’s a separate issue.
Yes, you are only as good as your Photoshop template. You see, the idea behind this is to design the perfect visual template within Photoshop then to upload it to Divine, adding all the interchangeable information within Divine. It works surprisingly well and at the moment it is absolutely free however because of this they have limited the number of functions.
It’s clear that a lot of effort has been put into the project and the example that have been put up look great. Ease of use is the key term here, the website not only offers a simple tutorial to Divines use but it has a guide to installing wordpress.
I’m impressed, with features including Built-in FTP-client, Supports for all Photoshop filters and Encoding support the internet could be well on its way to being neater and more stylish, well in terms of WordPress websites anyway and I think we can all agree that’s a good thing.
Yes indeed Crenk readers, we have another Twitter web app to tell y’all about. It’s called Twesent. Basically, it takes the normal tweet and turns it into a virtual present for your pals!
You got to Twesent.com and follow the instructions. Then, you select what present you want to send to the people you’re following. For example, I decided to buy a few friends a pint of beer each, what with me being Irish and the hilarity of living up to a stereotype.
So after I selected the pint of beer I continue to sign in with my twitter username and password and select who to send it too. I had fifty free credits and I believe three pints of beer cost me 24 credits. You can but more credits if you wish using PayPal for a small price.
This is cool tool to know about for when a friend’s birthday rolls around or indeed as a very half-hearted apology to you significant other. Or, you know, just for the laugh!
The Internet moves at a staggering pace. In a single day it gains more news, blogs and twitters than you could read in a lifetime. Fads come and go over night and it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep track of what is relevant. This is where Twittorati comes in.
From the guys who brought us Technorati, one of the top blog search engines on the net, Twittorati aims to sift the gibberish from junk, tracking tweets from the highest authority bloggers and posting them in a way that’s meaningful and easy to follow.
It’s all about ‘authority’ and what determines a blogs authority is the number of unique blogs that link to that blog. The technology for this is the same as Technorati. In fact Twittorati incorporates blogs from the Technorati Top 100 and promises to include “many more of the web’s most influential voices.”
It’s certainly a good idea but after a brief look on the website I couldn’t actually find I was genuinely interested. Sure it’s all convenient, at any time at anytime I”m only a few clicks away from the highest authority blogs and tweets on the net but therein lies the problem.
There are no rare gems, no cult hits and no must know info-bites. Having a high authority does not mean it’s a good blog. Take a quick look at the front page, how much of that do you actually care about? Very little I bet. Well it’s not all bad and it really depends on how much you care about tweets in general.
It seems like these days you can’t go anywhere without tripping over a multitude of Twitter Apps, all of them struggling against each other vying for attention of the masses. Much like the people who use twitter. Well now it’s the turn of Filetwt.
It’s all very simple and convenient. Just put in your Twitter name and password, type in a description then upload a file. A link to that file will be posted on your twitter account.
Filetwt is a tool of convenience as it wouldn’t take too much effort to find one of the many other file uploading websites and then manually post the link to twitter yourself. That way you could have files larger than 20 megs. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more well known uploading websites added a Tweet option.
According to the website if you sign up you can get Private Tweets, faster file uploads, updates and stuff. Personally I try not to sign up for anything if I don’t have to and the upload speed seems reasonable enough.
I have just discovered via a tweet of someone I’m following the Microsoft will open a café in Paris to celebrate the launch of Windows 7 in Europe which is due in just a few short weeks. The café will remain open for a few weeks after launch and customers will be able to play around with tonnes of Microsoft goodies such as XBOXs, Mobile Devices, Zunes and PCs.
Finding a good place for free music these days is by no means easy. In fact, it’s rather difficult. Governments and ISPs are starting to 
Yes indeed Crenk readers, we have another 
