MetaLab has just released their latest product, Flow. Flow is a simple tool for managing and delegating tasks. Flow is trying to solve the common problem of task management and to-do lists.
Flow provides users with the ability to create a task, you enter a name, a due date, any contacts you’d like to delegate the task to, and relevant tags. Tasks can be grouped into projects, and team members can append attachments and comments to each task.
I have been looking for a task and to-do list manager like this for a very long time, and my initial thoughts were that Flow could take over this market. However, they wont, because of the price = Flow offers a 14 day free trial, and then runs $10 a month or $99 a year. I really wish Google would come up with a service like this, because they would be the only ones to offer it out to the masses for free.
This chart by Michael DeGusta provides a great illustratation of why the New York Times paywall is going to fail. I know there are a lot of reports that people are willing to pay for news, but Im not sure they are happy to pay this much.
In the chart you will notice annual prices from a variety of services in different sectors. All of these services allow users to access via the web and across multiple devices.
For instance, I used Rhapsody’s $14.99 plan which allows 3 devices (e.g. iPhone & iPad), as opposed to their $9.99 plan that allows only one. I think that’s a fair apples-to-apples comparison of how much different providers are asking for full access. Though in case there was any doubt how out of line The Times’ pricing is, even their “NYTimes.com + Tablet App” (i.e. no phone app access) is still 25% higher than the Wall Street Journal’s all access plan.
I’ve also added the explicit names of each subscription plan below for more clarity, as well as corrected the annual Dropbox price.
Screen Media Ventures who normally is just a film distributor has launched a new movie streaming business at Popcornflix.com. Currently there are over 1,500 movies available on the service with pre-roll, spot ads and banner ads.
“We’ll do some original releases, but we don’t see ourselves competing with the programmers or studios.”
From my point of view it is great to see another free movie streaming service, however this legitimate service has a very poor design and looks quite similar to a lot of the illegal sites all across the web. It is expected that there will be a lot of advertising on free streaming services, but advertising in the middle of movies is just a little too annoying.
Wynsors World of Shoes has partnered with One iota for a fully transactional Facebook shop.
Wynsors.com has been growing a lot lately and a Facebook mobile shop was roadmapped on their expansion plans. Powered by One iota’s MESH technology platform, both commerce solutions are fully integrated with Wynsors’ existing ecommerce platform and have been launched within six weeks of the initial project launch.
Launching in April, the advanced site has advanced ‘application-like’ features, such as a collapsible menu structure, easy picture navigation and interactive promotional pages.
“One iota was the natural choice for this project – the team’s customer-centric approach has meant that our expectations have been met every step of the way. Their ability to take us live within six weeks is testament to their expertise and the strength of their technology platform.”
Pingdom have just launched their API to the public. The Pingdom REST API is currently in beta and will remain there for a few weeks while public testing.
The API gives Pingdom users full access to their accounts via the API.
The new Pingdom API at a glance
It’s a RESTful API.
It uses JSON-formatted responses.
You can access all your monitoring results and monitoring history.
You can read, write and modify all your settings.
You can add and remove things like checks and contacts.
Basically, anything you can do in the Pingdom control panel, you can do via the API.
Google has announced that Google Voice has been integrated with Sprint. Sprint customers can use their existing Sprint mobile number as their Google Voice number and have it ring multiple other phones simultaneously.
Customers can now answers Sprint phone call on their office, home or even through Gmail via Google Voice. Calls from Gmail and text messages sent from google.com/voice will also display your Sprint number.
iLounge has reported that Apple is planning on releasing the new MobileMe serice next month. It has been rumoured that the new MobileMe will unveil a new cloud based service allowing users to store their music, photos, and other content for access from any of a number of Internet-connected devices.
The source claims that Apple is suggesting that users sign up for a 60 day trial to bridge the gap between the current version and the new version. The source also indicates that Apple plans to support the existing MobileMe service for the next year.
We haven’t reported about Digg since its ill-fated redesign and since then things seem to have gone from bad to worse. There are lots of reports this morning that Founder Kevin Rose has departed Digg and will only stay on its board of directors.
There has been a mass exodus at Digg since its redesign and this has really pushed Reddit into a great position in social news.
The world of online music is always changing. There are great new startups popping up every day. However, its getting more difficult for musicians and bands to stand out from the crowd. Here is an amazing list of the top 100 sites all musicians should know about and use.
Musician Social Sites
HitSquad
It is like Digg for musicians, you can submit articles, vote on articles and good stuff gets to the frontpage.
Recording Questions
It’s like Yahoo! Answers but for musicians, ask questions and someone might answer you to help out.
Musician Forums
GearSlutz
A forum for talking about gear with people who like gear. Great place for people who need info on hardware topics.
DubStep Forum
Not just for people who like DubStep because the production category has some great posts that would apply to musicians from all styles (link points to Production category).
IDMForums
Another forum that has a good production section with lots of great topics for musicians to scan through.
Harmony Central Forums
Very popular forum for musicians with some great categories for individual instruments.
Future Producers
Music producers forum, very popular and good topics.
Pingdom
The world of online music is always changing. There are great new startups popping up every day. However, its getting more difficult for musicians and bands to stand out from the crowd. Here is an 
