Crenk » Web Apps

Twitter: Tweetmeme Official Follow Button

Steven Finch — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:26:23 +0000

Twitter is currently one of the most popular social networking sites in the world and growing fast. I have always wanted to add a simple button which would let users follow me on Twitter. Before now it hasnt been possible, but Tweetmeme have release a Follow Button that is brilliant.

The Standard Button

For the basic follow button please copy and paste the source code below into your site, remembering to replace yourtwitterusername with your actual twitter username.

Changing the size of the button – Compact Button

The Compact Button

We also offer a compact version of the TweetMeme Follow button, with the same options as the larger button.

The Square Button

We also offer a square version of the TweetMeme Follow button, you also need to remember to include the size of the square in pixels to set the size of the square button. If you do not add a size this will default to 32px by 32px.

StumbleUpon Launch Official Chrome Extension: Download Here

Steven Finch — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:37:39 +0000

StumbleUpon has just launched their official Google Chrome Extension.

In their official post about the release, StumbleUpon has this to say:

“We’ve also heard some claim the Chrome extension is no different from web stumbling. Actually, Stumbling via the Chrome extension is quite different from web stumbling in a number of important ways. For one, you can receive shares directly in Chromebar; for another, you can add your own discoveries. Also, frame-breaking sites do not remove the Chrome extension; and the overall Stumbling experience is faster and more responsive. Good stuff, huh?”

True, submitting new stumbles and receiving shares is a big part of the experience — but it just feels to me like “something” is missing.

Strings: Letting you Know What Your Friends Have Purchased, Listened Too or Watched Online

Steven Finch — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:54:22 +0000

Strings is a new startup that aims to help users filter meaningful content across the web. After heading to the Strings site and signing up you are able to download their software for either PC or Mac. Once the software is downloaded you are able to add Trackers to your site, Trackers make it easy to curate everything from the songs you play, to movies you watch, and products you buy.

Strings also has a great sharing option in which you can see what your friends have been purchasing, playing or watching.

Im all for filtering tools that run through the huge amount of internet content and break it down so it only provides you with something that is useful. However, Strings just seems to be a little too complicated and not really well explained. I can see my Dad for example logging on and using this service, cause it just doesnt simplify itself. Its a shame because the design and idea behind the site is pretty sound, its just the execution.

Top 5 New Twitter Tools For Your Blog or Website

Steven Finch — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:38:20 +0000

TweetSuite – A Twitter-WordPress integration plugin that includes server-side TweetBacks, ReTweet-This buttons, digg-like Tweet-This Button, automatic tweeting of new posts and some widgets.

Twitter Feed – Posts your blog updates to your twitter account. Login to twitterfeed using your OpenID, provide the URL for your blog RSS feed, and how often to post to Twitter.

TweetMeme button – Aasily allows your blog posts to be retweeted.

Twitter Tools – This wordpress plugin creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

DiggDigg- An awesome tool that displays social buttons on your website/blog.

Phonebooth: Free Web Based Phone System for Startups and Freelancers

Steven Finch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:11:54 +0000

Google Voice has been successful in the USA, but they havent really branched out the service to other countries. Google Voice is a great option for your personal phone needs, but it might not be professional enough for freelancers and small business owners. Phonebooth is a new web based phone system that could be a great alternative to Google Voice.

With Phonebooth users receive a free local phone number in which they can give out to their customers and clients. Calls made to your Phonebooth number are automatically routed to your private numbers, until you pick up.

Phonebooth offers an automated voice tree system so callers can press keypad numbers to reach the desired department (even if the only staff member in every department is you). It’s a handy way to sort your incoming phone calls so you can prioritize them in order of importance.

The free version of Phonebooth also comes with 200 minutes of free inbound calling and a contact widget for your web site. The free service will also transcribe up to 50 voicemails to email or text, along with an audio file so you have a permanent record of the call.

Impressively, all these features are free with Phonebooth’s basic package. If you need something with more oomph, $20 a month will also get you conference calling, detailed call records, 24-hour tech support, and unlimited local and nationwide calling.

AnalyzePal: Free Analytics Tool For PayPal

Steven Finch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:46:04 +0000

AnalyzePal is a free Adobe-AIR application that provides an easy way to measure your PayPal sales, performance & customer tracking.

It doesn’t require any PayPal username-pass or API information as AnalyzePal works in an offline way with the transaction logs that can be downloaded from PayPal.

The application displays a snapshot of your last 3 months activities with charts or you can view the revenue for any given period.

AnalyzePal is also great for browsing past transactions quickly as it works offline.

Besides the free version, it has paid & more-featured versions that can filter data by customers, countries, etc.

Microsoft MSN Video: Watch Free TV In UK Without Downloading Any Software

Steven Finch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:59:31 +0000

Microsoft has just launched their new MSN video player in the UK. The video on demand service competes directly with recently-launched SeeSaw in offering a range of commercial TV shows for viewers to watch for free in their browser. The service is monetised using 30-second preroll ads.

Unlike SeeSaw, Microsoft appears to have done deals with independent TV production companies as opposed to TV stations. As a result, MSN Video Player can’t claim to have a full range of Channel 4 or 5 shows, but what it does have is certainly presented in a much more appealing way than SeeSaw.

Vimeo Launches Video Stats Suite

Steven Finch — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:53:10 +0000

Vimeo is one of the major players in the online consumer video space. Vimeo has just recently rolled out a suite of advanced analytics features dubbed Vimeo Plus Stats. Currently the new stats package is only available to Vimeo Plus users.

With Plus Stats you can track plays, loads, finishes, comments and likes for all of the videos uploaded on your account over any time period you define. You can break down plays and loads by country, and you can see how many embed loads and plays occur at each domain — Tumblr or Facebook, for example. You can even break it down by high definition and standard definition to see what quality your viewers are choosing to watch.

All that data can be exported to a spreadsheet file, too. Vimeo has been tracking the data for months, but not for its entire lifespan.

We’ve embedded Vimeo’s Stats demo video below, but the site has also posted a detailed interactive demo of the new features that you can get with Plus Stats. You obviously don’t need to be a Plus member to try it. Vimeo Plus memberships cost either $60 per year or $10 per month and include other perks like unlimited HD uploading, HD embeds, more customization and privacy and an ad-free experience.

AnyClip: Quote Database for Movie Fanatics

Steven Finch — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:24:46 +0000

Many of you have probably had a moment where you wanted to quote a favorite line from a movie, but couldn’t quite get the wording right. A site called AnyClip can help.

AnyClip provides a growing directory of movies in which the user can search for a specific movie and find a list of major scenes and the lines in them. Or you could just type in the quote, and AnyClip will bring up related dialogue. Then, if you’re looking at a scene that you really like, you can also click on a tag and see scenes that have the same tag. And if that scene spurs you to think, “Boy, I really want to watch that movie again,” AnyClip has links for buying or renting the movie from retailers like iTunes.

AnyClip now has 5,000 quotes and tags from 2,000 of the top-growing films, and it plans to add another 3,000 by the end of the next quarter.

Snowtape: Listen and Record From Online Radio Stations for Free

Steven Finch — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:30:13 +0000

Snowtape is a new Max OS X application that lets you easily find, listen to and record from online radio stations.

It’s like the combination radio/tape deck of the future! If you were fortunate enough to come of age in the age of the mp3, then just think of Snowtape as the awesome “record” button that iTunes doesn’t have.

Snowtape doesn’t just play and record, though. It also lets you name, tag and add album art to your recorded audio files, so they’ll fit right in with iTunes or your iPod. It has other perks, too, like the ability to schedule a recording using iCal, in case you’re worried about missing a favorite radio show. Snowtape makes discovering new favorites easier, too, by building in a directory of stations, and allowing users to add their own stations to the list.

If you need more proof that Snowtape is a really well-thought-out app, check out the integrated editing feature that lets you trim the beginning and end of your recordings. There’s even a companion iPhone app!

Big Fish Games Release New Facebook Game: My Tribe

Steven Finch — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:15:55 +0000

It has been announced by Big Fish Games that they are releasing their second Facebook game, My Tribe.

My Tribe is a game that’s similar to the popular iPhone/iPod Touch game virtual villagers, in that each of the people in the tribe have individual statistics and personalities, and grow in age over time. They may be rebellious and not listen to your orders when you’re not playing the game, and this adds a dimension that makes the game different from games like Restaurant City or Cafe World, where your workers are pretty much brainless as they follow your orders.

“With a player’s guidance, tribespeople develop areas of specialty – for example, construction – to help them accomplish larger tasks like building a ship or a storehouse. They grow from child to youth to adult, learn new skills, have children of their own, and eventually become respected elders. And because gameplay is continuous – your tribe is living, learning, fishing, eating and surviving even when your computer is turned off – it’s especially important for players to check in regularly on the tribe’s progress.”

The social elements come in the fact that players can travel to friends’ islands and help their friends with creating customized clothing and accessories, building shelter, providing food, and making scientific discoveries, all to gain levels and cash.

Stock Tweet App Tracks Twitter Stock Discussions Easily

Steven Finch — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:30:33 +0000

Stock traders are among the many groups of people who have taken up Twitter as a way to discuss their interests. They’ve even developed their own shorthand; a stock symbol is typically prefaced with a dollar sign, such as $MSFT, and tweets that discuss stocks often end with two dollar signs.

Stock Tweet App has taken these conventions and used them to build a custom interface for viewing Twitter with a scrolling live stream of all stock-related tweets. Alternatively, you can use the Custom Stock List option to type in the symbol for a few stocks you’re interested in tracking, and only tweets concerning those stocks will be shown.

Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging

Steven Finch — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:23:42 +0000

Tumblr is a very simple blogging platform in which users can make a blog in minutes. Tumblr is the perfect tool for users who want to have a blog with photos, videos, and other content embedded, but simply hasn’t got the time or the will to struggle with a complex blogging platform.

How is this working out for them? Well, according to the neat infographic which they’ve sent us (see below), their traffic and user base is growing fast, and they’ve recently hit some major milestones.

FourSquare X: Can I Play FourSquare on My Laptop

Steven Finch — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:48:20 +0000

Until very recently there was no way to play Foursquare unless you had an iPhone or similar. Now there is a slick new app called FoursquareX that lets you play the popular geolocation game FourSquare on a MacBook, iMac, or similar.

FoursquareX has the ability to track your friends as they check in at different places, but if you have a mobile computer like a MacBook Pro, you’ll be able to check in, track other checkins, and play the game as you move around.

To get started, you need to start out by getting a Foursquare account, which you can do by going to the company’s Web site at PlayFoursquare.com. If you have an iPhone, Android phone or Palm phone, grab the app too: it’s pretty darn fun.

Now grab the FoursquareX application and start it up.

Sex is Banned from Bing (in Middle East)

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:05:57 +0000

Microsoft’s search engine Bing, that offers 41 different languages, just removed and banned from the Arabic language search any sexual related term.

A very complete report made from Open Net Initiative where they describe about the words that have been tested in Arabic and English languages from Bing. Here’s a summary:

You are probably thinking that since the religion that prevails in most of the countries in Middle East is Islamic (and some variations), it could sound normal that Microsoft was obligated to remove sexual and explicit content; but the restriction also applies for other countries like India, Turkey, Thailand, China, Malaysia and Singapore.

There’s always going to be a lot of discussion regarding to sexual content available on the internet, restricting content over the web, religions involved, etc. etc. But someone actually starts thinking if any of these measures actually solves anything? Banning these words would prevent from any kid to access some of unrated material?

Android Now Includes Scribble Searches

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:36:19 +0000

“Yeah I don’t feel like scrolling down my contact list, I just want to scribble a letter and let the phone do the rest”. I guess that was the original idea when they’ve started developing the Android gesture search.

And the functionality is as simple as that, just scribble a letter in your Google phone and Android will recognize the letter as an input, and you’ll get the result. Here’s a little sample:

This feature will be available on Android 2.0 or higher. And the gesture search will work not only with contacts, but you can find applications, bookmarks, music, etc.

Also the system has some interesting features:

If you type a letter that looks like a different letter, the search result will consider both possible letters.
The system is prepared to learn from every time you search, and your selection will appear jump to the top of the list the next time you try the same search.

Best Website Thumbnail Creators

Steven Finch — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:24:27 +0000

There are a lot of website developers and owners out there who have been looking for a simple script or web app that will allow them to create website thumbnails. Here are the 2 best website thumbnail creators that we could find. These thumbnail creators both have free options but they also have a paid version.

Thumbalizr -Thumbalizr has a great free service that plugins into their API so everything can be completely automated. In terms of their paid option you would be look at 19.99 Euro for the all bells and whistles version.

Websnapr -Websnapr has a free service that allows upto 100,000 snapshot impressions per month. After that you will have to take a look at their paid service. For their full premium service it only costs $45 per month to start.

Create a “Who is Online” Widget

Steven Finch — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:31:31 +0000

TutorialZine has written a tutorial and shown us how to create a “Who is online” widget with PHP, MySQL and jQuery. It will display the number of visitors, currently viewing your site, and it will even be able to detect the country your visitors are from and display it in a slide out panel.

Having access to real time data on your site userbase is a dream to any webmaster. Tools like Google Analytics give a great perspective on your site’s reach, but lack the real time feel a simple widget like this can provide.

ReBuzzThis: Link Aggregator for Google Buzz

Steven Finch — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:07:37 +0000

TweetMeme has become an amazing success in the world of Twitter link aggregation and their retweet buttons seem to be on nearly ever website on the web. Today there was a launch on a new product ReBuzzThis. ReBuzzThis aims to do the same as TweetMeme but for Google Buzz.

Currently ReBuzzThis has a lot of work to do, but I could really see this working. Im frankly quite surprised that Tweetmeme hasnt already purchased a new domain and launch a vertical product for Google Buzz.

The posts that get ReBuzzed the most shoot up the homepage just like on TweetMeme with ReTweets. Except that TweetMeme tries to count all retweets, not just those done through its buttons. ReBuzzThis seems to only count Rebuzzes done through its site and buttons, so it is not really capturing the most Buzzed about articles and posts.

But it may be onto something. One of the top feature requests on Google Buzz is a Rebuzz button. So we may see an official version of ReBuzzThis come out on Google Buzz itself.

Picmeleo: Embed an Image Editor Into Your Website or Blog for Free

Steven Finch — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:01:52 +0000

Picmeleo is a new Finnish photo startup that has been developing a photo editing tool.

The tool itself is sort of an external application that companies providing services online can add on top of their own service, instead of having to come up with their own tool.

The team at Picmeleo have made it amazingly simple for publishers to embed the editor into their websites, all you need to do is paste a simple code. However, I dont really see the point of adding this editor to your site. Publishers arent able to make any more revenues from adding the picture editor to their site, it just keeps the user on the site longer.

Track Airplanes in Real-Time with Casper

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:00:53 +0000

I was sceptical when I first heard about this new web app. The ability to track airplanes in real-time? Surely it would only track a handful, have plenty of bugs and not live up to expectation at all. I was wring.

Casper, which is set up as a demo on the website, shows you the movements of all airplanes coming and going from Schiphol airport in the Netherlands and flights over Dutch airspace. However, the program can be calibrated for any airport using an ADS-B receiver which can be bought from many hobby shops and online. The program will then interpret this information and display all flights relating to that airport. You could do this yourself at home.

The program is really light weight as it uses Google Maps to run and works really well. This is definitely a great app for all aviation enthusiasts and those interested in a little bit of fun.

SimpleFit: Get Fit with This Easy Info Web App

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:18:29 +0000

The Internet has pretty much revolutionised fitness and healthy living. It has both busted many myths and crated some. With all the crosswinds of information available, an inevitable vortex has been created leading to a lot of confusion. Most people don’t know how many carbohydrates they should take in or why. Well SimpleFit is a new web app which aims to change all that in a simple, minimalistic way.

Firstly, you tell the app what kind of routine you’re looking for and in put some information about yourself. It will then churn out a fitness plan which is quite basic at the start and increases in its difficulty as the weeks and months progress. You can see a sample one below.

You are encouraged to log into the service to record your achievements and workouts and also to see what lies ahead for you the next day. All of your results and stats are recorded on the site and can be viewed in numerous forms such as graphically below.

For anyone trying other fitness apps which don’t seem to be working out, you should give SimpleFit a go to see if simplicity works for you.

Recurly: Set Up a Paid Subscription Service for Your Site

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:57:16 +0000

Over the past year or so, there has been much talk about paid subscriptions coming into effect for some of the bigger websites. Undoubtedly, this will begin to work its way down the scale. Hopefully this will improve web content and keep some faith in media which democracies rely on. So, what if your website needs a subscription service to keep afloat?

Well you could spend thousands of dollars getting in developers to set one up for you or you could use Recurly. This is a service which will enable your users to subscribe to your blog, pay their fee each month and thus have access. There is no need for your to manage or oversee anything once it’s set up as Recurly will handle all new subscriptions, fees, payments, outstanding bills and customer support.

You can also either embed the service seamlessly on your site using their API or have your subscription redirect to their site.

It is free for the first fifty subscribers and after that you can either pay a flat monthly fee or give Recurly a small percentage of your revenue intake. For bigger publications, the flat fee will work out best. So if you’re looking for a way to set up a paid subscription for your blog or website in just a few minutes, check out Recurly here.

ECwid: Create an eStore in Minutes!

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:16:56 +0000

ECwid is a web app which allows you to easily create your own store which you can integrate within your website in minutes. Basically, it’s like Amazon Associates (mostly because it’s powered by Amazon) except this has much better easy-to-use tools installed and is also easier to use for novice users when it comes to integrating your ecommerce store within your website.

Once you have created an account you just select what products you would like in your store, tailor the layout and colour scheme to your tastes and then click ‘Finish’. You’ll then be given HTML coding which you can copy and paste into a page on your website to embed the store. This will then act as your very own store on your website as though your developed and integrated it yourself.

The program also allows you to track invoicing, customers, accounts and other such important data to see how your store is getting on and how it can be improved.

Citrify: Spice up Your Photos Without PhotoShop

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:31:50 +0000

It can take months, even years to learn how to use Photoshop properly. And all most of us want to do is edit the holiday photos to reduce sun glare or fix some red-eye. Pretty basic stuff by Photoshop standards.

Well now there is a cool web app called Citrify which acts as an online Photoshop alternative and it allows you to digitally enhance photographs on both a basic and advanced level.

As you can see above in some of the pictures, you can massively change skin tones, reduce glare and shine and even make photos look more ‘artsy’, just as you would with Photoshop. I found this web app surprisingly easy to use and very quick at processing the images as compared to other services which leave you waiting for ages for changes to load.

You can also get creative with your pictures by adding and removing elements or changing colours of certain areas like the mans skin was turned green in the picture above.

If you just need a quick brush up tool for your photos then you should check out Citrify.