Archive for the ‘Web Apps’ Category
Well, it’s time. A lot of people have been waiting for this for several months now: Google Wave is releasing 100,000 invitations in the next few days (expected for September 30th) for enlisted participants.
As we’ve discussed before, Google Wave will give users the chance to manipulate the same content at the same time, and displaying the information in real time for the rest of the users. This collaborative environment can be crucial in developers’ teams. Will be something like this:
I know what you are about to say: how do I get an invitation to Google Wave? Well, there’s no guarantee at this point that you may receive one of the 100k that Google’s releasing, but you might get a chance for a second Google Wave (mid-October maybe?):
Dev guys can click here and enlist to receive one of the invitations.
The rest of the mortals can click here.
And yes, if we receive one of those invitations you’ll hear from our experience.
There are so many sites out there that have a stab in the dark to let you know how much your website is worth. Most of these sites dont even get close on the basic metrics let alone of value figure. Today I came across a new website evaluation site that actually gets the basic metrics right, even though the value figure might be a little off.
BizInformation.org is a very simple website idea that valuates any given url. BizInformation presents the value of the site, daily pageviews, daily visitors, website rankings, indexing stats and social media stats. Thus, provide a decent overall look at the key metrics for the sites and then tries to determine the overall value. This seems to be a very simple way of doing it, but also very affective. I was very surprised to see how accurate the service can be in terms of daily pageviews and daily visitors.
Currently BizInformation thinks that Crenk has an overall value of $1.67 million and based on that amount I would even have to consider selling.
Mozilla team is working really hard on brainstorming the idea and design of Firefox 3.7 (currently in 3.5, 3.6 it’s just around the corner). What’s the main idea? Hide the Menu bar and use a very similar look-n-feel of Office 2007/Office 2010 Ribbon.
They are using their Wiki to give us some of the advances made so far, the ideas floating in the air and of course receive feedback from most of the Mozilla lovers (and non-lovers as well, why not?). And here are the ideas that they have so far:
- Embracing Glass: Toolbar and Tabs using Glass. Raised translucent buttons that are slightly glossy to meld with the toolbar. Raised 3D look to achieve tactile “feel”.
- Neutral Tones: Overall neutral color scheme that can transition among platforms. Can remain attractive and slick without fighting for focus from web content.
- Hiding the Menu Bar: Hiding the menubar by default (on Vista/7) allows us to use Glass, free up vertical space and retain platform consistency.
- Page and Tools Buttons: Condense and trim existing menu structure into two buttons “Page” and “Tools”. Similar to Safari and Chrome.
- Combine Stop/Reload: Combine Stop and Reload into one button. Reduces visual “clutter” and combines two buttons that have mutually exclusive functionality.
- Home Button/Tab: Remove “Home” Button from default toolbar. Move functionality to a “Home Tab” containing your homepage.
More info: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Windows_Theme_Revamp/Direction_and_Feedback
Personally I think those are very nice and significant changes. Office, Vista and 7 seems that they are setting the standards of any UI (no surprise there, Windows will still be the world’s main OS for a few years more). But the good news is that Mozilla it is also trying to establish browsers standards, like the “Page and Tools Buttons” that is a common feature in Safari and Chrome.
And also the “Combine Stop/Reload” feature it is something that I’ve been waiting to see in Firefox for a long time. I know, it’s a very tiny thing, but don’t you love having the same functionality in different browsers?
And what are the other changes that you would include?
Shopping around for the best price will now normally mean going online. A flaw in this plan is that people will almost immediately go to either eBay or Amazon – assuming that they offer the lowest prices. While that may be true for some items – it’s cod’s wallop for others. Often, sellers on eBay know that buyers rush to the site for a bargain so the price will go up: supply and demand my friends.
SortPrice is a price comparison site that is completely free to use and it compares the leading retailers and online firms from across America. I found that the sections for clothes and books were compared really well – as were the technology categories although these can be a bit sparse when you’re looking for a particular model.
The layout and design are done in a very simplistic way which is what you want from a purposeful website that is there for one reason and one reason only – to save you money.
I think it’s better than other price comparison sites because it has both online and offline stores listed while others simply assume that online is always the way to go.
iCyte is a tool that allows you to capture web pages and highlight text on them and then save them to your account. It comes in the form of an ad-on for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and it is available here.
It works by saving the webpage and its formatting into a file (or Cyte) which you can then add tags and notes too. When you need to retrieve the file you can open up iCyte in the sidebar of your browser and see all of the Cytes you’ve stored so far.
I found this tool to be especially useful for research and taking notes without printing off dozens of pages. The ability to separate your Cytes into different ‘projects’ makes it easy to use, as does the search function.
For anyone who engages in high amounts of research or just likes a little bit of order among their saved web pages – Cyte is for you.
I’m a writer – perhaps not a good one but it’s what I fill out on my tax returns year after year. As with all writer I read, write and read some more. Learning new words is one for the tricks of the trade but, to be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered. ‘Word a day’ calendars were a cool novelty but have died – and carrying around an oxford dictionary with you isn’t exactly practical now is it?
However, I have found a solution to my literary conundrum – Artwiculate. To put it simply, it’s a word a day calander for Twitter. You follow the Artwiculate account and use their word (in context) within one or more of your tweets. If your tweet is good enough, it will get picked up by them and earn you points (which are purely for status within the ranks of Artwiculate).
I think this is a cool way to learn new words. For example, did you know Mellifluous means smooth and flowing like honey; normally used to describe a sound or voice?
Finding a good place for free music these days is by no means easy. In fact, it’s rather difficult. Governments and ISPs are starting to clamp down with Pirate Bay being made an example of. Often, while good, torrents moody and when they’re not set up correctly (which can be hit or miss) they are awfully slow!
iZaria is a start-up music site that allows you to listen to music and download top songs for free. You don’t have to download any software like you do with Vuze or Limewire and you can listen to the songs before you press download.
I searched for Oasis and I got back dozens of songs such as ‘Little by little’, ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ and ‘Half the world Away’. I created a play list using their simple ‘Create a Playlist’ feature – obviously, and I downloaded them onto my iPod to give it a test run; it worked perfectly!
While it can be a bit tedious at time because some lesser known bands are not well represented on the site, it’s great for those interested in the big names.
It’s all very simple to use and I can see it having a bright future as people don’t want to download bulky software to in turn download songs – we just want the music!
We have been getting a lot of tips lately about startups we need to check out. Today we receive a nice comment to check our Startup Hire a new job board for venture backed startups.
Startup Hire is a very simple job board in which focuses on venture backed startups and allows users to search for jobs either via location, keyword, job title or company. Startup Hire has partnered with some of the leading startup companies so you are bound to find a huge amount of jobs in a variety of areas. This is a great place to start if you are looking for a secure job that has full backing by venture capitalists. However, please remember that venture backed startups arent always 100% secure.
Ubuntu has quickly become one of the best Operating Systems around and with this it has become easier and easier to add applications.
Appnr is a new web based tool where you can search and install applications directly on your Firefox within Ubuntu.
Appnr makes use of the apturl protocol to initiate the installation process. Since apturl was included as a dependency for Firefox since Ubuntu 7.10, if you are using a later version than Gutsy, you can simply click and install applications directly from Appnr.com. For other debian based distro, you will have to install apturl:
sudo apt-get install apturl
The navigation in Appnr is easy. On the left are the categories and the respective applications on the right. There is an “Install” button on every application entry and you just click on it to install the particular application.
Readtwit is a 3-step service that will seamlessly integrates this aggregation power of the people you follow – into your RSS reader.
Readtwit, a new web service by Lionite does one simple thing – it captures weblinks from your Twitter stream and then publishes the content as an RSS feed. You can then use any feed reading application to read it.
- Head over to ReadTwit and hit the ‘Get Fed’ button
- Choose your RSS reader (and if it’s not there click the ‘Get me the feed‘ button and paste the feed into your reader)
Readtwit automatically prevents content duplication caused by retweets. It does that by grouping together similar links that are sent in the same time-frame. Once you’ve set up your RSS feed, you can further tweak Readtwit to prevent (or at least minimize) information overload.
First, you can filter out specific users. This feature will help you keep focused on useful content, as you can set it to not display links by people who post too much (and also exclude yourself, in order to not get back the links you post, as retweets).
Seeing as Crenk is a start-up review site, it occurred to us during our day of endless pondering that many of you may be interested in working for a start-up. But getting in with one can be tough. By their very nature start-ups are small and have a tight knit staff; normally friends who spotted a gap in the market or had a great idea.
Staruply is basically a job site that serves only to advertise jobs in start-ups where YOU can apply for them. Many of the jobs are for things like PR, development and editing. The homepage has the most recent jobs posted by start-ups looking for staff. This list of jobs gives you basic information such as if it is telecommute, fulltime and the salary.
Start-ups can also post jobs for free by using the ‘Post’ option along the top of the site.
Given the recession, many are out of work but have loads of marketable skills. With thousands of people turning to the internet for employment, you better be quick about applying.
In summary: This is a very useful site for the young glossy-eyed graduates and experienced professionals alike.
There are just so many Twitter clients in the market at the moment and Im even finding it hard to keep up. The newest Twitter client is TunesTweeter. TunesTweeter is a web app that lets you show what you are currently listening to in iTunes, and updates your Twitter status with the song and artist.
TunesTweeter seems like an interesting application that adds a nice twist, maybe now someone will also come out with a Last.fm Twitter related client.
