Archive for the ‘Web Apps’ Category
Kazaa has been in the news for what seems to be the last decade, but over the weekend they have launched a new strategy. Kazaa has gone legit! For a long time users have been steering clear of this p2p giant, because of malware, viruses, or legal issues, plus the fact that the RIAA was frequently chasing clueless Kazaa users.
Kazaa is now a paid platform and specifically a subscription based service. That means unlimited downloads for a monthly fee, complete with the blessing of the major labels.
The subscription fee is $19.98 per month, and files are DRM-wrapped. That means PC-only playback, and no iPod, iPhone, or mobile device portability, a serious disadvantage against MP3 competitors. And, according to Brilliant, the songs disappear once the subscription lapses.
This kind of service is not going to be heavily adopted in the current music market. If this product was launched 3 years ago then maybe they would have had a chance to gain some subscribers and market share, but at the moment NO CHANCE!
Undoubtedly, the internet will define our generation along with global warming and obesity. It’s the only invention that allows billions of pieces of information to be transferred across the globe every single second of every single day. If it were to one day vanish, the business world would crumble, banks would be shut, power systems and networks would falter and more importantly, you wouldn’t be able to read the latest posts here on Crenk.
Despite the internet’s numerous ways of entertaining and enlightening us it also has limitations when it comes to keeping things fresh. After an hour or so of browsing I seem to come up against a brick wall whereby I become enthralled with boredom and can’t find anything else to read, watch or listen to. That’s where glue comes in.
It’s a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox and it only takes a few minutes to install and get up and running. Basically, it’s a toolbar that allows you to see what your friends are reading, doing or watching. If they like something they glue it up on their toolbar. The same goes for you. Then, everyone in your network and indeed beyond will be able to see your favourite sites and videos and enjoy them.
I like glue because of its simplicity. They could have gone down another route altogether but they didn’t. The idea and how it works is all easy-peasy which is what counts in the world of Web 2.0. it works on the same principal of Twitter (not everyone enjoys surfing through profile pages anymore) by giving you little shots of info.
One drawback is that it can get a bit annoying constantly receiving updates from your friends. However, all you have to do is close it for a while as you enjoy a spot of surfing. 8/10
Screenjelly is perhaps the easiest screen recorder you'll ever use.
There are a lot of applications that claim to be the leader in capturing and recording your screen. Well I’m not making that claim with Screenjelly, but I will say it’s the easiest I’ve ever used.
Why?
Well unlike most other free screen capture applications, you don’t need to create a profile or sign up for an account. You also don’t need to download anything or log-in for access, you simply go to the site and start the process. The ease of use is a welcomed approach for new users who are not familiar with existing screen recording applications. There is little barrier into the service and users do not get mired down with having to check their emails to authorize emails and other such necessities when creating a new account.
Screenjelly also has a close relationship with Twitter, where you can easily share your recordings directly with your followers, and instantly get feedback. It’s pretty tempting if you’re looking at doing something quick. There are no screen share capabilities to pass it on to someone else, there’s not meeting function for chat function to share with other users, this is just purely setup to record what’s on your screen and the audio being sent via your microphone.
Sixty years ago a fuzzy image of two guy names Neil and Buzz crackled onto TVs around the world with the famous line “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind”. Every television station seems to be going berserk showing anything remotely related to the event such as nostalgic summaries, conspiracy theories, sci-fi, interviews and documentaries. Here on Crenk however, we like to give you stuff that’s worth your time. Have you ever wondered just what the Russians and the Americans and everyone else in the International Space Station gets up to? Well now you can watch it all live.
NASA TV have set up streaming cameras in the space station that run continuously, streaming it all back down to earth onto your screen. I watched it for a few moments as a NASA technician repaired the US toilet. Apparently, it stopped working and the US astronauts had to ask the Russians if they could use their toilet. Good thing they said ‘yes’ too.
The video and sound quality are superb, keeping in mind that their being streamed from space. There is also a running commentary telling you what each astronaut is up to and why he/she is doing that. They also alternate to different positions around the Space Stations. For example, I seen a Russian chowing down on some space food, an American fixing a loo and two Canadians floating around talking to someone at home about their day.
If you’re into all that space stuff then this is worth a go. You can also get an app for Windows Sidebar in Vista that streams it onto your desk top. NASA TV is also worth a peek if you just want to see where your tax dollars end up. To have a look, click here. 7/10
Data storage has become a very big issue in this current information age and DataNest is a new tool that wants to grab a share of that huge market. DataNest is a unique solution to a common problem: Reliable online data storage. DataNest provides high quality data hosting built for teams, bloggers, music enthusiast and artists, photographers, churches and social groups, and individuals.
Key Features include:
- Share files upto 150mb
- Upload multiple files at once
- 2GB free storage
- Group collaboration
- Music sharing widget
- Share multiple files and folders
So, you need a website – and a free one at that. Edicy is an option – a good one if you’re not to tech savvy and just need something knocked up quickly with no fuss or bother.
Basically you go to their site and start to make your website by signing up. Pretty straight forward. After just putting in an e-mail address you are brought to the website editor which is as easy as stealing pie from a window sill. Basically, it looks like your site and all you do is insert text, images and other special functions exactly where you want them. Along the menu bar of your site you can ad more pages and there is even a nice introduction article there for you.
However, it is extremely basic. FreeWebs are basic but they still offer you some good features. With Edicy the best you can hope for is a no-frills page to tell people who you are and what you do. You have to use templates provided by them (or risk the peril of trying to use their HTML system). They’re not providing anything worthwhile and are coming into a crowded market. FreeWebs has millions of customers; Edicy have just over 70,000. They won’t be able to compete and should have gone into a more refined niche.
All things considered, it’s a good page if you want to give people directions to you store or just have a small bio. If you’re looking for a website that in anyway stretches beyond the year 1998, go elsewhere. 4/10
Online dating is a huge market online and today I wanted to introduce yet another player to the game, Luuvee.com. Luuvee is a UK based paid online dating service in which users pay £4.50 per month to go through their huge database and hopefully find their love match.
Currently Luuvee is offering one month free if you signup now, but I don’t really understand why this site is technologically better than the leaders in the market, like Match.com and Plentyoffish? Previously we have profile dating sites like Smooch and BuddyFetch, but I cant see Luuvee gaining market share unless they come up with a brilliant piece of technology or become a free dating site and make their revenues from advertising.
What Luuvee say about Luuvee:
We made Luuvee to give people a choice – between the expensive, intimidating, scientific sites and the free sites that offer little in the way of quality people. We made Luuvee to fill that rather large void – oh and to help people have fun. After all, isn’t that what dating should be all about?
I guess they are right and that it is what its all about, however I don’t think can expect to make any money from this service. I simply dont understand why they didn’t put the site into private beta to build up the database and then launch the site for free, probably with some advertising in the footer, then introduce paid options once they have market share and a decent size database!
SweetFM is a new MAC only client that allows users to stream music from Last.fm. SweetFM is an open source project which can be found in the Google code section. This means that anyone can download it for free and you no longer have to pay $29.00 for a license key to use the application.
SweetFM has a great design with many great features including Apple Remote and Apple Keyboard media key compatibility, extensive integration with iTunes, and deep support for your Last.fm stations. SweetFM is a Universal Binary (compatible with Intel and PowerPC Macs) and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Download SweetFM here.
Opera 10 Beta 2 was released earlier today by the Opera development team.The changelog lists many changes for this release especially for the Opera user interface, mail, chat and news, display and scripting, security and network. The Windows changelog alone lists more than 100 items that have been added, changed or fixed in Opera 10 Beta 2.
Many users in the Opera forum are reporting problems with the new beta release. The developers are actually warning users stating that it “may have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations”. That’s not very encouraging and it is therefor suggested to try the web browser in a test environment and not in a productive environment to ensure that it is working without problems.
Opera 10 Beta 2 can be downloaded directly from the Opera homepage for all supported operating systems. The changelogs are available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Bookofcooks.com is just another one of those cool finds on the internet that we’re reviewing here on Crenk lately. These ‘finds’ of ours are useful and insightful – serving a purpose to some if not all people. For example, seathound.com was reviewed here yesterday. That had a bigger market than bookofcooks.com which is, in comparison, rather limited.
I logged in and put my critic hat on. But then I took it off because this was just too easy to review. It serves a purpose. A small one that might come in handy if the yellow pages have spontaneously combusted and every restaurant within a 12 mile radius of your house has “Closed for Renovation”. Basically, if you’re in need of a cook for an event or just want a simple birthday cake whipped up you type in your location. Simple right?
So for example, New York. From this I got … sweet nothing. That stupid map just kept flickering around showing me smiling people in Orlando wearing chef costumes. After a while, I got the thing to work having signed out then back in and was greeted by an indistinguishable list of cooks, caterers and chefs. I was like ‘what use is this?’
I could have swam to Shetland Island near Scotland, found a cook from the rural population, and swam home again with a roasted wild boar on my back by the time bookofcooks.com would have found me a chef called ‘Sandy’ in Orlando. Except, wait, I wanted a chef in NEW YORK!
If you’re a cook, I wouldn’t bother advertising your services here. Just stick to the local flyers or a simple website. You could spend an hour of your time setting up a profile, uploading pics and references only to have someone 200 miles away ask you to cook for them.
I truly wish I had something good to say about this. It’s not like I enjoy slating websites. This could have been good had they developed it right but its just to time consuming, complicated and troublesome to ever be used in an emergency.
Really and truly, this is utterly useless. If you want a chef in your area and the yellow pages has turned to ash, every food business is now populated by shirtless men lifting RSJs and every cook book in the land doesn’t have the right dish…use Google. 3/10
Ever been dying to go to a concert, football match or F1 Grand Prix but the most plausible thing happened and you went to buy the tickets two seconds too late. Despair and anger (mostly towards yourself). The only chance you stand now is going on a mission to hunt down someone who has tickets (that may or may not be genuine) and pay two weeks wages for them.
Fear not – seathound.com has the answer. It’s a pretty basic idea and that’s why I love it. Ask any businessman/entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that tackling everyday, well-known problems is the way to make millions in this world.
Seat Hound will locate dozens of tickets for sale. Some are on eBay, others are on independent ticket sales sites – but who cares where you get them? The point is that you’re going!
I typed in ‘U2’ to check it out. I was greeted by dozens of search results from their upcoming gig in Croke Park here in Dublin to events as far away as October in Phoenix. The guys at Seat Hound have clearly done their work. Even small artists that you wouldn’t hear of everyday are listed. This is a great service that I fully intend to use – a lot!
It also saves you money as it displays the ticket prices right next to one another so you can get the best one. Seat Hound will also be so kind as to tell you where the ticket is in relation to the stage, pitch or track etc…. so you won’t need to bring the binoculars.
One bad thing that I will say about it however (and I really am nit picking here) is that it is US focused. While you can still find gigs all over the world – the homepage is dominated by the stripes and the stars. A UK or European version wouldn’t go amiss. 9/10
If you have one or several websites (business or personal) hosted on some place, and have a certain dependancy with these sites you would know that constant feeling of having to check these sites’ availability it is not quite comfortable. But there’s someone that can do all that work for you: Howsthe.com.
Howsthe will notify you by mail, RSS or even SMS, if some of your sites are down. This is a beta web app and there are some restrictions, the main one: you can only have three web sites for monitoring with a single account. But also, within each account and each monitored website you can have 3 different e-mails and 3 different phone numbers to be alerted by SMS.
You can also check the Howsthe Blog (only one entry so far) to be alert of any news with this web app.
