There has been a lot of talk recently about the new Retweet site that has launched and it has the killer domain Retweet.com. Retweet is a direct competitor to the dominant Tweetmeme, which tracks what the most popular links are on Twitter.
Retweet went live last week and has received a lot of press but for the wrong reasons. Retweet seems to have just completely copied not just the basic site design from Tweetmeme, but also the code with relation to the Retweet buttons. Im a firm believer that innovation is key to a strong technology company, however im not too sure that Retweet has even thought about this.
With a domain name like Retweet. com I would have thought that the first idea would be to start a service similar to Tweetmeme, but to also add a killer domain shortening service to the site. Retweet is a great domain in which im sure Twitter would want to be associated with. Is this such a stupid idea?
Adobe has been trying to move a lot of people over from the cheap version of Photoshop onto their online version. Yesterday Adobe announced that they were adding the ability for users to upload videos to Photoshop, the company’s web based image editing and sharing service.
Adobe isn’t the first company to add video to a site that was primarily designed for images. But while Flickr limits videos to 90 seconds, Adobe is allowing users to upload videos up to 200MB through a web browser, or up to 2GB through an Adobe AIR uploader. Users can upload files in “most major file formats” and you can view them from Photoshop.com or share them with other users.
Photoshop.com users will get 2GB of free video storage.
Adobe has also rolled out the ability to create Group Albums that let you collaborate on photo albums with other users.
Intense Debate may have been acquired by Automattic (the people behind WordPress), but Disqus remains the blogosphere’s favorite comment networking service. Not content to rest on their laurels, they’re rolling out a slew of new features with Disqus 3 next week.
Now all I need is a white label version of Disqus, and I just might use it on my blogs.
NextWorth who is a leading player in consumer electronics trade-in and incentivized recycling programs, is announcing a new trade-in service for all mobiles. It has been reported that the average person purchases a new phone every 12 months with more than one hundred million working phones becoming unused every year. NextWorth is helping consumers keep the environment clean, reduce electronic waste, and make money at the same time.
NextWorth accepts mobile phones from every carrier and manufacturer, and after the trade-in value is determined the consumer can opt to have a check sent via mail or paid via Paypal. If the phone itself doesn’t hold any value at the time of trade-in then NextWorth will still provide free shipping to customers and disposes of the device through responsible recycling practices.
It’s the night before that big trip to visit relatives, an important meeting abroad or just before you go on holiday. You’re all packed, the taxi is ordered for early the next morning and you’re determined that you will not be late for the airport. All the while you wonder ‘Will the plane be late?’
Most likely. How late? Well nobody really knows. I’m pretty sure that pilots have a conspiracy going to make us all late. They have 500mph on the throttle yet your cruising speed always seems to be 340mph. FlightCaster.com is a new start-up site that aims to predict how late your flight will be; if at all.
There have been services like this before but the difference with FlightCaster is that they don’t just rely on what the airlines say. They take into account numerous other factors such as the weather reports and the average on time rate of that airline and the particular route. Its also dead easy to use. All they need is a piece of flight info such as a flight number and it’ll tell you all you want (or don’t want) to know.
This is a cool little web app that will come in handy. Or it could just make you more depressed as you use an internet terminal at the airport. All the same, I really hope that they release an app for mobile phones for the business people who travel every week. This one deserves to succeed.
Spotify is undoubtedly one of the fastest growing music and entertainment services on the internet today. And as with all good services they have decided that it’s time for more Apps. They recently announced that they would be releasing an App for android devices similar to those for the iPhones.
This would allow users to access their Spotify accounts easily from their android devices. However, they have a competitor.
“I can’t believe it’s not Spotify” has just launched and is taking on a lot of users as they wait for the official app to be released. It packs much of the same features as what we expect in the official version but lacks in one – offline playback. However, the developers say that this may come later if it continues to grow in popularity.
While I can’t see this app lasting as people tend to veer towards products with an official stamp on them, I can definitely see its use at the present. The developers deserve their time in the limelight because they plugged a gap in the market. But soon the official app will push them out with no really effort.
Flickr, owned and run by Yahoo is the YouTube of photography. If I ever fancied a change in wallpaper I’d go to Flickr and enter in phrases such as ’forest’ or ’ocean’. I would get back loads of professional photographs taken all over the world that looked stunning on my desktop. However, in getting those results I would always be annoyed at the amount of page surfing through the results I would have to do in order to find the right one. Scrolling down through the lot got on my nerves too.
Now, Flicker must have read one of my five million angry e-mails and changed how your search results are displayed. Instead of having a long list of images with all the information about it to the side such as name, photographer, tags and a description, everything has been streamlined.
The updated search results show a load of small images right the way across and down the screen with just the users name under it in small writing. This is a much better way of searching for images and way less stressful given the sheer amount of images on Flicker.
I am also very impressed with the quality of the thumb nails shown. With other services such as ‘Image Search’ on Yahoo! or Google the images are fuzzy and have tons of useless information surrounding them.
A picture speaks a thousand words. Well a screenshot speaks ten thousand. Sometimes the only way to get across what you mean is to send someone a screenshot of the problem. Or maybe you want to capture a cool shot of a video game or you are making a step-by-step tutorial on how to do something on a computer. IOJ is without a doubt the web’s best screenshot service.
You go to their website (IOJ.com) and download the software. They have a Windows version and a Mac version which is nice considering the amount of Mac users is growing rapidly.
Having installed the software correctly all you have to do is press the ‘Print Screen’ key on your keyboard and a little window will pop up with some options. You can either take a ‘Full Screenshot’ or a ‘Region Screenshot’. If you select region screenshot the screen will go grey and you can select the area you want to shoot using the mouse.
You can also capture a video of what your doing on you computer by clicking ‘Capture Video’ after pressing the ‘Print Screen’ button. Both the screenshots and the videos are in very high quality.
Once you have taken the screenshot or video you will be given a link to the file in the IOJ server where you can download the image, as seen below. Simple.
This is a great tool – one which I use for all the screenshots in my articles here at Crenk.com. Its worth you while having even if you just use it the occasional time.
Spotify has of course been in the news a lot lately. However, the Spotify service is still only available to users in certain countries, such as UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France. Thus if your based in the USA the Spotify service is currently not available for you to use, until now.
A few people have been reporting that they have used the following steps to get a Spotify account when they are based in the USA.
1) go to http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
2) enter the following URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
3) Create your account, for UK postcode – check http://www.postcodesearch.org.uk/
Advertisements on the TV and in newspapers from supermarkets are constantly telling us that they’re cheaper than the next guy offering “1,000 cheapest prices” etc… However, how do you really know that you’re getting a bargain on the whole shopping list all together. Well, very soon you’ll be able to find out using Grocio.
It launched a Beta on Monday in Tulsa in which supermarkets and shops submitted pricelists and coupons to the site. When users enter in their shopping list the grocery search engine does its magic and gives you the cheapest store for your shopping list. On top of that money saving idea, they will also give you coupons that you can print out and use in the store.
I can see this being a hit nationwide so long as the big stores keep submitting their price lists. Some see it a healthy competition, others see it as promotion while others see it as the end to small businesses. If the pricelists stop coming then Grocio will go down the tubes.
Gerard Buckley owns the site and is hopeful for its future. He couldn’t have picked a better time to launch such a site as people look to buy in bulk, shop around and ultimately save money.
Silicon Alley Insider has reporting that Mint.com has raised another $14 million in Series C funding.
DAG Ventures led the round; Founder’s Fund and existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and Sherpalo also participated.
Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer declined to disclose Mint’s valuation, but says, “it is a decidedly up round.”
He adds: Mint.com is the leading online personal finance tool, now with 1.4m registered users. Mint is tracking over $175 billion in transactions, $47 billion in assets and has identified $300 million in potential savings for its users. Revenues are undisclosed, but are up 8x year over year.
Now that we have a sampling of about 2% of online US households, we’ve also been seeing some interesting economic trends. This data, particularly at the merchant level, has attracted considerable press interest as of late.
Other sites such as Venturebeat, Paidcontent and Techcrunch also reported the news. However, since Mint is already in Series C funding will they ever be in any other market apart from the USA? Currently here in the UK we have a few Mint competitors, but no one has really grabbed the marketshare.
You either hate or love 4Chan, the popular English forum that is based on the Japanese 2Ch forum. 4Chan offers a variety of topic areas that include Japanese culture, entertainment, creative and a large 18+ section. One interesting aspect is that 4Chan allows anonymous users to participate fully in the forum which includes creating new threads.
A click on any board will load a huge page that contains hundreds of images and comments about those images from users from all over the world. 4Chan has sparked lots of controversy in the past due to its anything goes attitude. The site rules state that only adults are allowed to view the site’s contents and that it is illegal to post post content that is illegal in the United States.
4Chan Cleaner is a userscript that removes some of the elements on the 4Chan website. This includes advertisement but also a better layout of all the posts and images on each 4chan forum.
4Chan Inline Image Expander is a second userscript that makes it easier to expand images on the main forum page. A simple click on the image will load its full size directly in the forum without loading a new page. A second click on the same image will display the image thumbnail again.
Both userscripts require the Firefox web browser and the Firefox add-on Greasemonkey or a compatible web browser that can load userscripts as well.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the new Retweet site that has launched and it has the killer domain Retweet.com. Retweet is a direct competitor to the dominant Tweetmeme, which tracks what the most popular links are on Twitter.
It’s the night before that big trip to visit relatives, an important meeting abroad or just before you go on holiday. You’re all packed, the taxi is ordered for early the next morning and you’re determined that you will not be late for the airport. All the while you wonder ‘Will the plane be late?’
Spotify is undoubtedly one of the fastest growing music and entertainment services on the internet today. And as with all good services they have decided that it’s time for more Apps. They recently announced that they would be releasing an App for android devices 
Flickr, owned and run by Yahoo is the YouTube of photography. If I ever fancied a change in wallpaper I’d go to Flickr and enter in phrases such as ’forest’ or ’ocean’. I would get back loads of professional photographs taken all over the world that looked stunning on my desktop. However, in getting those results I would always be annoyed at the amount of page surfing through the results I would have to do in order to find the right one. Scrolling down through the lot got on my nerves too.
A picture speaks a thousand words. Well a screenshot speaks ten thousand. Sometimes the only way to get across what you mean is to send someone a screenshot of the problem. Or maybe you want to capture a cool shot of a video game or you are making a step-by-step tutorial on how to do something on a computer. IOJ is without a doubt the web’s best screenshot service.
Spotify has of course been in the news a lot lately. However, the Spotify service is still only available to users in certain countries, such as UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France. Thus if your based in the USA the Spotify service is currently not available for you to use, until now.
Advertisements on the TV and in newspapers from supermarkets are constantly telling us that they’re cheaper than the next guy offering “1,000 cheapest prices” etc… However, how do you really know that you’re getting a bargain on the whole shopping list all together. Well, very soon you’ll be able to find out using 
