Archive for the ‘Web Apps’ Category
It’s a well-known facts that some leading products such as window cleaner or breath freshener are based on some of the most well-known products and items that we have lying around our houses – for hundreds of years. Take for example newspaper and vinegar. The two would seem utterly unrelated yet when you clean a window with the two it sparkles and shines just as it would if you had of forked out $4.50 for window cleaner.
AltUse is a cool website that I found which shows you alternative uses for almost every product you have lying around your house, office, school and back garden. From lemons to aspirin it has it covered.
Each item has it own page where all of the different uses are outlines. Each different use has its own pictures and instructions. You can also submit your own alternative uses to the site by signing up.
The site has other features for each product such as a section for users to rate the alternative use and perhaps even more appealing – how much money you can save by taking the alternative route. Check it out at www.altuse.com .
Many sites such as MegaVideo, Vreel and other offer the ability to watch some of our favourite TV shows and Movies. However, does that time limit put in place by Megavideo bother you? Or how about just wanting to watch it on your iPod? So why not download the videos? Oh yeah, they charge you for that.
Well, here at Crenk we have a quick, easy and FREE way to download videos from sites like Megavideo.
1. Get the video’s URL. Most players offer this next to the embed code for the video etc… or in the address bar in the browser. In Megavideo it’s one of the options along the bottom of the screen.
2. Go to www.clipnabber.com .
3. Enter the space provided at Clip Nabber. Press ‘Nab It!”
4. Then (required for Megavideo only), go back to the video page and right click outside of the video and view the page’s source. Or, click edit in the Browser’s menu and select to view it there. Select all of the code and paste it into the HTML box that appeared in ClipNabber.
5. Press ‘Nab It!” again.
6. Click on the link to download the video.
Now chances are that Clip Nabber has given you a .FLV video which can only be played in Real Player. To convert this into an .mp4 or .avi, use this video converter.
Now you can put the video on your iPod.
The World Wide Web – just where the hell would we be without it? We’d all most likely still be fascinated by ham radios. However, for all of its greatness the Internet has a major downfall in the very area it triumphs – worldwide access to one network. That means people in the US, India, France, Pakistan, Russia and the UK can all read this post and many others like it.
Convey This is a language translator aimed at blogs and company websites that overcomes the language barrier. It’s basically a small button with around a dozen flags and corresponding language names in a drop down menu below it. When you select you desired language from the list, the web page will be instantly translated using one of several popular web translators such as Google Translator
I think this is excellent and it could really increase international traffic to a blog or business site that is showing potential in far away lands. By giving people the option to read in their own language you may just be gaining a reader for life.
And it’s not hard to set up easier. The most novice blogger could have it set up on their site in a matter of minutes. The most complex aspect is entering the HTML code but most platforms such as Blogger allow you to copy and paste it into a widget anyway. Convey This is available here.
Offers.com is the leading coupon and special offers website on the World Wide Web these days – having worked damn hard to get there over the past six years that it has been online. Every single day the upload hundreds of new offers and coupon codes for us consumers to devour and save money on.
Some offers I seen after just a few minutes of browsing could save you up to 50% – not bad for the Christmas shopping!
Recently, they launched a new feature on their website called ‘Locker’. This new feature allows you to store and track offers from certain companies and websites without even having to register. Beside every offer on the website there is a ‘Watch this offer’ button, once you click it the offer is stored in your locker on that computer. However, if you want to have access to your offers from multiple computers or devices it’s recommended that you sign up with just an e-mail address.
Seriously though, if you want to save big bucks online and in retail outlets – Offers.com.
For a long time now Gmail (like nearly every other Google product) has had Google Adsense ads in the sidebar. Have you ever wanted to get rid of these ads from your Gmail? Well now you can by simply adding in two fail-proof sentences into the signature of your emails.
All you need to add is:
I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.
Then your Gmail should look like this:
For a long time now I have been really wanting Mint.com and their personal finance application to get setup within the UK. Unfortunately Mint was acquired last month by Intuit and it doesnt look like I will be getting Mint in the UK any time soon.
There are a couple sites who are looking to become the Mint of the UK, Kublax and Money Dashboard. Money Dashboard is the newest startup which is in Alpha testing and today they have announced they have secured £1 million in funding. These are from the public and private sector and include Par Syndicate, Money Dashboard’s management team and a number of other individuals.
Money Dashboard’s board is quite heavyweight, made up of some of Scotland’s successful businessmen, including chairman Stuart Sinclair, former CEO of Tesco Personal Finance and GE Capital in the UK and China and David Robinson, founder and former CEO of Bright Grey.
It is good to see that Money Dashboard has entered the market and that they have solid backing behind them. However, I was hoping to see a lot more information on their site, plus their site doesnt seem to portray top level security for some reason. Im really looking forward to seeing how they develop in the future.
Ever fancy creating your own Star Wars party? Well GoAnimate is a free, easy-to-use online animator that lets you do that. You can use their online animator to recreate some cool cartoons and shows such as my Star Wars rave below.
There are tones of themes for you to select from and within those themes there are dozens of scenes so you can thoroughly alternate your cartoon and make it really special in comparison to some of the crappy 2D animators out there.
To the left of the scene creation screen there is the library which contains hundreds of people, objects, effects, sound effects, speech bubbles and loads of other cool items ready to be inserted into your scene.
When you click on a person or object you can customize them by changing their size(this allows you to add depth to your scene by making far away objects small etc…) or making them do something as you can see in the screenshot above.
For the most part, this service is free. However, you can buy an online currency called GOBucks to buy extra characters and features which frankly I though were unnecessary and didn’t make my experience any better. So in short, stick with the freebies!
I have to say, GoAnimate is by far the best animation tool online at the minute. It’s free, addicting and it creates good quality cartoons that aren’t obviously the product of some rubbish online animator.
Back in the day a simple notch on the bedpost was enough to track how often you got down and dirty. Well now there is a web app called BedPost that lets you track your sex life.
It’s still in its Beta stages but you can sign up for an invitation. Using the online calendar you enter when you had sex, with who, how good it was and how long it lasted. The idea is that after a few months of tracking you can look back and analyse your results such as what days you most commonly got lucky for and at what time of the day it was.
This is a unique app that’s worth a look by the more ‘active’ of our readers. Check it out here at www.bedposted.com .
Today I came across a very interesting new video news site, which aims to provide news from not just one source but as many as possible. Newsy is the video news service that introduces a topic and then goes through relevant sources to find the best opinions from around the web.
Newsy covers topics such as world news, business news, technology, environment and more. The format of each show is simple, the introduce a basic topic and then search the web for the leading views on that specific topic for the day. Thus, it is kind of a news video aggregator, as it provides the leading sources in one simple place.
Im sure Newsy will become quite a popular site, simply because of how easy it is to see the latest news from multiple sources in one place. However, most users want to see a large number of headings in one simple place and normally the easiest way to do this is text, because there is still a limitation to how much you can fit into a view.
Twitter has become one of the best ways to stay up to date with the news and current ‘Trends’ as they’re called on the service. However, in order to stay informed on one particular subject you have to search for it manually.
TweetAlert is an app that will follow subjects and trends that you have an interest in and when one is tweeted, it will be re-tweeted by your account so you can see it there when you next log in.
It literally takes less than thirty seconds to sign up to a trend using the service by filling in a quick form which you can see above. After that you’ll see the trends and topics on your twitter homepage.
It’s available here: http://code-or-die.com/tweetalert/
The Internet is full of little puzzles, games and downright impossible mazes. Windosill is a cool new game that I found which follows along the same lines.
Basically, the game window is really big and each level – or Windosill- consists of a room or scene of sorts. It’s up to you to find the small cube to place above the exiting door in order to proceed. The first couple of levels are easy but at the minute I’m stuck on the level with the big bird! (If anyone gets past this tell me how!)
You can download the full game but at a small price. Other than that, you can play half of the game on-line for free. You can also download the game whether or not you activate the full thing for ‘better performance’.
Check it out here if you fancy wasting hours…and hours…
Sky Songs is the new music streaming and download service from BSkyB which will be launching on Monday. Sky has been developing this music service for the past nine months and the service seems to be shaping up ok, but there isnt really anything to innovative here!
The Sky Songs service is not free to use, but it does have some decent features which might be useful to a certain type of client.
Sky Songs is web based
For most people services list Spotify aren’t able to be used at work, mainly because it is a downloadable application which most corporate IT departments tend to lock down. However, because Sky Songs is web based it should be a lot more accessible at work, unless your miserable IT department blocks the specific URL.
Sky Songs recommends music
Unlike services like Spotify, Sky Songs has the ability to recommend music too you. Once the Sky Songs interface is loaded you will see playlists created by its team of music journalists They range from introductions to new genres to topical playlists, such as memorial collections for recently deceased celebs. Sky Songs also includes a recommendation engine, powered by Gracenote, which will react to the songs you’re hearing with a decent suggestion of other tracks you might like.
You can mark your own favourites
With Sky Songs you have the ability to build playlists and then mark your favourites with a simple heart icon. Once you’ve picked a few favourites, the service will collate them for you, putting all your favourite artists in one place, as well as your most-loved genres and albums. Think of it as an auto-playlist generator, it’s much quicker than building a list of songs by hand, and means all your favourite sounds are just a couple of clicks away.
Sky Songs integrates with iTunes and Windows Media Player
Sky Songs doesn’t just stream music, you can use it to buy tracks to own too. They’re downloaded as DRM-free MP3 files, and will even drop into the correct place on your computer for iTunes and Windows Media Player to find them.
When you first set up your Sky Songs account, you’ll be asked which music management software you use. From then on, all your downloads will automatically appear in your existing music library, ready to be synced to your iPod, iPhone or MP3 player.
It offers more, for less
This is a biggie, and will certainly be the decider for some people: Spotify is already under pressure from cheaper streaming services, and Sky Songs increases the competition even more. It’s offering unlimited streaming from £6.49 a month which also gives you one £6.49 album or 10 tracks to download and keep. Compare that to Spotify’s £9.99 price tag, with no extras included.
It’s a well-known facts that some leading products such as window cleaner or breath freshener are based on some of the most well-known products and items that we have lying around our houses – for hundreds of years. Take for example newspaper and vinegar. The two would seem utterly unrelated yet when you clean a window with the two it sparkles and shines just as it would if you had of forked out $4.50 for window cleaner.
