Musikki is a new musician directory which combines information from YouTube, Last.fm and more. On a typical Musikki page you can find music vides, tour dates, maps for tour dates, bio, twitter conversations, discography and more.
Musikki seems like a pretty good idea, but it feels like a cheap version of Last.fm at the moment. It needs to be a little more than just a simple music directory / search tool.
If typing “Artist Name” and “Band” into Google is way too much effort for you, it might behoove you to check out Musikki, a search engine especially for bands.Although simple — and still in the beta stage — Musikki is an odd delight to use: Simply search for a band to surface videos, tweets containing the band’s name, Last.fm events, bio, discography and photos.
Also — and this is probably the coolest part — the service suggests similar or related artists. A search for “Total Slacker” reminded me of the existence of Philip Seymour Hoffman (the band), which I promptly downloaded.
One can also share band search results via Facebook and Twitter.
Again, Musikki is nothing fancy at present, and still appears to have some bugs — a search for “Man Man” delivered The Tallest Man on Earth’s discography — but it’s definitely an amusing way to cruise for music.
There are a number of problems people can have with their eyesight. They might be colorblind and so have trouble viewing certain sites. They could be legally blind and so unable to see anything, instead using a reader to help them navigate the web. Or, they could just have vision problems or “old eyes”, their sight deteriorating over time.
Whatever the case, if you are one of these people you might be wanting to make your computer a little more user friendly. Here are a couple of handy tools to help you along.
Are you tired of having to squint your eyes at the computer screen? Do you find yourself unable to turn the font size up high enough? This Firefox addon allows you to zoom in and out of sites either globally, or on a per-page basis. You are able to override the default of the site on text only and full page formats, and change foreground and background colors to your specifications.
Whether you have poor eyesight or difficulty focusing on text, this program for Windows can really help you. It isolates text and restructures it in an easier to view format that will keep you concentrating and reducing eye strain. It can be applied to compatible Windows applications such as Word, Notepad, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.
URL’s are hard to read at the best of times, but when you have trouble with your vision it is especially difficult. The address bar can be increased, however, using this nifty little add on. It is compatible with the latest version of Firefox, and there is no configuration needed. Just download it and enjoy the larger URL bar.
Are you making a website and you want to make sure colorblind users are able to view it? Vischeck is an excellent program that simulates colorblindness in various forms, showing you want sites and images look like for someone who cannot properly process certain tones and shades.
This is a default format override addon for Firefox. It allows you to choose the layout, background color, font color and size of text and images. They have a manual select feature for simplified versions of the same text, as well.
Conclusion
You don’t have to strain your eyes or avoid certain sites. These tools are great for increasing the readability of any web page. What are some of the tools you use? Let us know in the comments.
Annie is a geeky blogger for Direct Sight, the premiere supplier of cheap glasses based in the UK.
Social sharing applications are starting to get more intriguing as new startups formulate novel ways of letting people interact and display their interests. While Facebook and Twitter are terrific ways for bachelor’s or masters degree students to keep in touch with their friends and family, they’re not as interactive as other services when it comes to sharing. Many people are interested in what their peers are looking at, which is why social bookmarking platforms like Stumbleupon, Delicious and Reddit have become so popular. However the makers of Pinterest have taken this idea a step further by creating a visual bookmarking site that allows users to categorize web content by image.
What is Pinterest?
In a nutshell, Pinterest is a digital mind map that allows users to submit photos of products and places they find and like online. Once you’ve signed up and logged in, you can edit your profile to include interests and other information about yourself. Currently an invite-only service, those interested in signing up can request an invite either directly from Pinterest or from a Pinterest member. At present Pinterest is run by a seven person team, so resources are limited. However they are to refine the service before opening it up to the public.
How Pinterest is Different
Pinterest is fairly underground at the moment, but it’s attracted a lot of interest already from tech-savvy users and critics alike. Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest gives you a number of options when it comes to discovering new content. A user can create collections of different items that they like, and other users can choose to either follow that collection or follow the likes of the person that posted them. Items posted on Pinterest can also be commented on by users, giving each collection a forum or community feel that’s lacking in Twitter.
Design and Layout
The design of Pinterest is similar to Google+ in many respects. The layout of the site strips away decorative elements and lets content speak for itself. It’s clean, simple and attractive, and is extremely fast and responsive in everyday usage. Every image post supports comment threads which you can expand by clicking on its tab. Likewise, the manner in which Pinterest is designed makes planning for events or compiling shopping lists easy and intuitive. Basically, Pinterest is a digital cork board that can be rearranged by using the built-in search capabilities to bring up new images.
Final Thoughts
Pinterest is a highly visual way of allowing users to find things that interest them in the quickest manner possible. These days, the web is moving away from search and opting for discovery instead. Thus, expect services like Pinterest to garner more interest from casual web surfers as they learn what such visual discovery tools can bring to the table. While Pinterest attracted an overwhelmingly female following at the outset, it’s catching on with techies and other demographics as well thanks to its innovative concept and design. You’ll no doubt be hearing more about Pinterest in the coming months.
Yahoo has decided to finally open up their Yahoo! Mail service into other markets with new languages. The international expansion will include 27 new markets and 22 new languages. This means that Yahoo! Mail is in more than 70 markets and 46 languages worldwide.
Ten new languages in Asia, including eight new languages in India alone.
Twelve new languages in Europe, including Serbian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Croatian.
Several new markets around the globe, including South Africa, Belgium, Austria and Portugal.
It is easy to become distracted from a project or task when working online. The Internet is a digital playground for anyone, from children to seniors, with everything you could want right there, a click away.
Checking email, chatting with friends, looking at amusing blogs, playing flash games or MMORPGs – there are endless opportunities to procrastinate. That really takes a chunk out of your productivity.
One of the most crucial elements of time management is staying on track. Every day, we waste time and money playing online when we should be focusing on work. When that work is of a creative nature, you are even more prone to coming across something way too interesting not to lose focus – an impulse that has to be fought and fought hard, especially when a deadline is looming.
But that doesn’t mean there is no hope. You can increase your productivity and work without the distractions (or at least as many), using these three tips and a couple of helpful tools.
1. Use Distraction Management Tools
The Internet has more than just interesting things to make you lose focus. It also has tools to help you potentially combat that and get more from your day. Many of them are even free and so can save you money while you use them.
It would be really great if we were able to use sheer force of will to keep us off of those sites that tempt us. But that just isn’t the way it works, unfortunately. The draw of funny cat pictures and YouTube clips can just be too much for us, and we find ourselves thinking, “Just a few minutes won’t hurt.”
But then an hour passes, and we go into panic mode. It is better to just block those sites that take up the most of our time, and LeechBlock does that. You download it as a Firefox attachment, then put in the blocked domains of your choice and the times that they should be locked out. That includes a time limit to block them out, such as a certain number of minutes per hour.
This extension does essentially the same thing, but for Google Chrome users. It limits the amount of time you spend on time-waster websites that you have listed yourself.
You can configure it more actively by deciding if you want a whole domain blocked or just certain areas, setting time limits for certain activities and more. You just set the amount of time, and once that has been used up you are done – it locks you out for the rest of the day.
Remember the Milk is a simple to-do list program that consists of dozens of options (online to-do list, task management, calendars, etc) and syncs up with your smartphone, PDA, tablet and other software. You set tasks on the program, it syncs with everything you register, and then it reminds you when something has to be done.
As you go through your day you tick things off your list. It even has an RSS feed tracker, a Gmail attachment and more. You will be amazed at how easy keeping a list is holding you accountable for yourself during the day.
Schedule Your Work
Setting a deadline is a great way of getting yourself on the right track and staying there. It sets a time when something needs to be started or done, and so you can just go through the motions. For example, say you have to finish a concept design for a website you have been commissioned for.
You might give yourself until the end of the week at 3 p.m. to have that concept design completed and sent out to the client.
Just make sure that your schedule is a realistic one and that everything in your day fits into it. Too many people keep separate schedules for work and home life, and then it gets thrown off when one thing intersects with the other.
Share Your Progress
Finally, hold yourself accountable by sharing your goals and progress with someone else. This could be another designer, a partner or just your client.
Make sure to show the different steps as you go along, so they can watch you making progress and you have someone to answer to. Another set of eyes can really go a long way toward making you work like you are supposed to. That is an opportunity that isn’t often afforded to freelancers or people who work from home.
Conclusion
Don’t allow distractions to keep you down. But also, don’t allow the project to become the distraction itself. Make deadlines, use tools to keep you on track and share your progress. All of this will allow you to spend the correct amount of time on each project and meet your deadlines as you are supposed to.
Just imagine, never having to ask for another extension!
Jennifer Moline writes about freelancing, small business and design for the PsPrint Blog. PsPrint is an online printing solutions company, which you can follow on Twitter.
Springloops is a great management tool for web developers which received an awesome new user interface today. They have also added a powerful ticketing system within Springloops 2.0. However, the best two additions are GIT Support and you can get a completely free account. Springloops has many different pricing plans that increase with space and also how many users and projects you use on the platform.
There are some great PDF to Word converters out there. PDF to Word Converter Facebook edition allows users to convert from PDF documents to Word document inside Facebook. Users are able to upload files after logging in to Facebook and the software will do the rest.
PDF to Word Converter is completely free and just requires a Facebook profile.
Click here to check out the Facebook converter applications.
Spotify announced a new API platform for publisher a few days ago, which will give users a lot of great new applications to find and recommend new music. The new version of Spotify with the applications is yet to launch as official release, but if you want to test out the new application you can do so already.
All you need to do is select from these beta clients:
The Washington Post has been working on one of the most advanced news reader applications for Facebook. Here is the Social Reader for Facebook! The social reader is a fully interactive news reader application for Facebook. It brings all worlds best news stories into one place.
It is very rare to see Google advertising any of their products on TV. However, they have decided that this is a necessary tool when trying to promote their Google+ social network.
For Google+ Google is trying to push the motto: “Sharing, but like real life. That’s a plus.”
Again, Musikki is nothing fancy at present, and still appears to have some bugs — a search for “Man Man” delivered The Tallest Man on Earth’s discography — but it’s definitely an amusing way to cruise for music.
