Do you want to know what apps you use on and off the web, and just how much you use them? Do you want to find new stuff that is useful for the tasks you undertake everyday? Do you want to be introduced to people into the same tools and products as you? Wakoopa can do all of this.

First, all you need to do is sign up and download their tracker program. Now usually I’d run a mile at this, but I couldn’t resist after having had a look at the tools on offer.

Like any data collation software, it takes a few days to get the best results, so it’s worth leaving the program running for a few days and then revisiting your profile and start looking at the graphs…

On your dashboard, you find out the top ten tools you use, how much you use them and what you use them for.

What’s really interesting though, is the ‘recommended’ section, which suggests other tools or services to try based on your overall usage. I was recommended to try Evernote, a service I’ve heard of but not investigated – this is something that appeals to me as it “is a software application that allows users to capture information of various types, including text notes, mobile phone snapshots, printed and handwritten text”. I’ll have to give it a go.

I like the interface, it’s intuitive and not too busy. Each piece of information available is put into a particular type of category and this helps to keep data overload to a minimum. There are also several widgets available, and they even work with the basic WordPress.com blogs, as you’ll see to the side.

This is a great service and something that I would definitely recommend to try if you are fanatical about trying and finding out about new software on the web. You can follow the latest Wakoopa developments on their blog.

Random Posts

Wakoopa: The New Software Social Network originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

What is the Zentact philosophy?
(Jared) We are creating a product that integrates into already existing work flows, helping our users build better relationships. We do this without any BS. (Eric would say the our product will make the baby jesus cry…)

Sharing information with your contacts is something that Mr. Marcoullier seems to be a fan of! What makes Zentact different to other content sharing websites?

(Jared) Social networks are a lot of work for traditionally very little payoff. CRM tools are worse.

(Eric) Zentact aims to flip that on its ear and provide loads of tangible results for little ongoing effort.

(Jared) Typical content sharing websites and apps have focused on the user always remembering whom to share with. We are trying, in effect, to whisper in the user’s ear and suggest whom they can share this with in a meaningful way – we make sure you share what matters. We will be adding more social aspects in the near future as well.

How has the web 2.0 landscape changed since the coneption and subsequent selling of MyBlogLog to now and the work you’re doing with Zentact?

(John) MyBlogLog allowed users to create profiles that traveled with them where they surfed, adding value to both the mybloglog member and website owner. More Web 2.0 apps today are leveraging this concept, be it scripts, widgets, and even in browsers. The value that is created by individual apps and even apps created mashing APIs together is significant.

Some commentators have said that they’d like Facebook integration, in particular to help when tagging – is this something you and the team are looking into?

(Jared) We will be integrating in with Facebook to help with both tagging, tracking last connection and posting to the wall.

Will you be looking to include integration with other social networking services – if so what is the liklihood of this happening before Zentact comes out of Beta?

(Jared) We are in a private beta now and working on launching our public beta. We will likely integrate with other social networking services and other communication platforms before leaving beta. We are also listening to our users – feedback will help lead the way.

What is really exciting you on the web (Zentact aside)?
(Jared) Gnip
(John) Apple app store

I would argue that 2008 has been the year of Twitter and that it will become more mainstream in 2009 – what do you think will be the big social media development in the next 12 months?

(Jared) We think that there will be a big movement towards information – instead of just data. More products will become contextual.

What has been the main challenge for Zentact since you founded the company?

(Jared) Our number one challenge has been to prioritize features since, as a team, we have many features we want to do quickly.

And what has been the achievement that has made you most happy?

(Jared) We have gotten feedback from users ranging for “wow” to “Zentact helped me close a deal”. This feedback is what makes us tick!

What are the next key milestones you’ll be looking to meet?

( Jared) Public beta and our IE version.

What can we expect from Zentact in 2009?

(Jared) A killer product that will seamlessly improve your life.

To try Zentact for yourself, we have a few private invites to test the private beta, which you lucky boys and girls can get here.

Random Posts

Crenk Interviews… Zentact originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

A solution, however, is afoot. Zentact, brought to us by among others, Eric Marcoullier of MyBlogLog fame, aims to collate your contacts into one place and allow you to share bits and pieces as you browse.

After signing up and adding in a few personal details, you can simply import your contacts from Hotmail, LinkedIn, Gmail and Outlook via a CSV address book and after a few seconds, they are on your system.

Next, and I highly recommend this, download the Firefox extension, all will be revealed shortly.

Now, the genius part. Each contact is taggable with their likes and dislikes and when a web page which has tags that match your contacts, if you installed the extension, a smart little box will flash up in the top right hand corner of your screen with the list of contacts who’s interests are relevant to the site. You can then send them a link and be merrily on your way. Remember, social.

Now the one down side to this is that if you have hundreds of contacts, it takes ages to go through them all tagging away. I’d recommend doing it bit by bit, adding tags as you go – this will take longer but does two things:

It lets you see who you will really be sharing with – there’s no point in having 300 contacts if you only ever talk to six of them regularly anyway, which means you can quickly identify those defunct e-mail addresses you’ve not used in years or people who don’t share common interests.

Secondly, it makes the whole process a lot smoother – you may like a tag binge, but frankly I’d rather be spending my time actually looking at what I came to see rather than typing in long lists of keywords, especially ones that are tricky to spell.

Now, it will take a while for you and Zentact to get to know each other, but the more contacts you tag and the more sites sites you send, the better Zentact becomes at recommending what is suitable for whom. This is a great service and especially suitable for anyone who is on a lot of social networks but can’t quite keep up with what is going on with who. Now you can build your relationships easily and stay in touch better.

We are lucky enough to have a handful of guest invites so you can try the private beta version of this site and tell all your friends about, which you can get by clicking here. Incidentally, you can tell your friends about it via Zentact and you can then invite them to join in this most social of networks.

Random Posts

Build Better Relationships with Zentact originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.

According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.

You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.

Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.

Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate  or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.

Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, <em>as mentioned</em> you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look  for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.

Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however,  is the Huffington Post.

With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical,  and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.

Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.

They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.

Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.

Random Posts

Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

It was a week ago today, that Pownce lost it’s bounce. Co-founders Leah Culver and Mike Malone took their team with them to work with the company that acquired Pownce, Six Apart, on a new micro-blogging platform called Motion.

Pownce launched with wild-acclaim, supported by the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, it seemed to have all the necessary features to put it toe to toe with Twitter, photo and video sharing, status updates and a delightful interface. It just never really took off, despite being more stable than Twitter.

What does this mean for other micro-blogging sites?

Twitter, the biggest micro-blogging site thus far, recently shook off a $500 million offer from Facebook. And rightly so. As pointed out by Cnet’s Rafe Needleman, “…when it comes to business philosophies, the companies do not mesh. And I’m not just talking about the well-reported SMS expense that Facebook would take on if it integrated Twitter. More than that, Twitter’s stated revenue plans don’t work for Facebook.”

Twitter, one imagines, see themselves as fighting in the same field as Facebook, but on the other side of the fence. They are competitors, but not competitive.

The likes of Tumblr and YouAre are the main rivals to Twitter’s crown. How will these guys possibly stand up to fight with a company that can brush off a bid of half a billion dollars?

The key thing is to offer user friendly tools, such as sharing photos and videos, which Twitter just doesn’t do at the moment, unless you’re a fan of the tinyurl. Secondly it’s important to make it easy to sign up (box ticked) and to make it easy to encourage your friends to sign up and be a part of the action.

My problem with a lot of the newer micro-blogging services is that they’re falling into the trap of being too customisable. Look at Facebook’s wide ranging apps – how many are actually useful in our day to day lives and make a difference to the way we communicate? Very few. Similarly with Bebo and Myspace – the integration of new and exciting things to put on your page is exciting for a moment, but nothing more.

If Twitter is to be ousted, or at least equalled, competitors will need to find niches that they can cling on to and exploit. I see Tumblr as being a brilliant way to share photos for example – the message boxes are just large enough for a high definition image to be shown clearly, but not at a size that will set your PC into meltdown.

It is this specialisation that will see each service acquire a following and then grow as that group develops a culture unique to them. All these different cultures will eventually begin to intermingle as users being to find each service useful for different things and then telling their friends to join them on xyz.

It comes down to talent in the end however. Six Apart will have known all along that they were really just after the Pownce team, and not their name or platform. The biggest challenge facing all of the micro-blogging services will be to hold onto their key staff, thinkers and doers alike.

Social Networking, at the moment, is a philosophy that is becoming increasingly tangible, but not ingrained in mainstream culture as Facebook currently is, yet.

Random Posts

Pownce-ing On The Opposition originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook