SnailMailr is a cool web app that basically allows you to send normal postage mail via the internet. It works by you filling out details such as your address, the address you want the letter posted to and writing your letter. You can send a letter with four pages for $1 anywhere in the United States. Each subsequent page costs you and extra $0.15. Also, for an extra $0.15 you can remove their logo which is printed on the envelope as show.
There is no need to register an you pay the balance via PayPal. It costs more to send letters internationally. You can send letters no matter where you’re located. In many cases, it’ll work out cheaper if you’re posting to the US and you live elsewhere!
For the last year or so we’ve all be yammering one about the Google phone. It appears as though every Android device that has been released – the media flock to it looking for evidence of the Google.
Google have now announced that they will be launching a proper, pure, Google branded phone. It won’t carry the manufacturer brand or have the OS tinkered with. No. This is going to be Google’s version of the iPhone – 100% Google just the the iPhone is 100% Apple.
What can we expect?
I’ve given this some though and asides from the obvious high-speed internet access etc… I think the Google phone will be putting more of an emphasis on communication than the iPhone has – which is largely an organisational and app tool. Adequate video calling, perhaps? Most definitely it will be fully integrated with Google Voice for users in the US. Dare I say it; maybe even a mobile version of Google Wave? (at least then Wave would have a purpose).
What would you like on the upcoming Google phone?
Back in 2006 before the average Joe on the street had a smart phone – we all used our cell phones to check our e-mails, Flickr, news, weather and other such services. The main port of call for this was Yahoo Go – a mobile client released by Yahoo!
However, Yahoo! have just announced that Go is to suffer the same fate as GeoCities did last month – it’ll be leaving us. Come January 12th next year, when you turn on Yahoo! Go on your mobile you’ll get an error message.
Undoubtedly this is because of the competition from more powerful apps and platforms such as those on the iPhone.
However I think this might be slightly pre-mature because the app is still being sold on phones as you read this. Perhaps Yahoo! are trying to push us into the smart phone market?
I remember when 80MB hard drives were are really big thing and now Hitachi is coming out with a very sleek 2TB hard drive which is part of their SimpleDrive family.
I also thought the price of this hard drive was going to be quite expensive, but then it turns out its only $250.
So what do you think if the design and the actual size of this drive for the money?
If you’ve rode the bus, gone shopping or just been in a public area then the chances are you’ve touched the dreaded H1N1 virus. It was probably just some guy sneezing and then hundreds of people touched the same handrail as him. I guess that’s how it spreads. Then, you went home and turned on the family PC and typed out a blog post or just surfed. Now it’s all over the keyboard and mouse. Oh God! We’re doomed!
Not really, because at the end of the day it’s just like the normal flu and 99% of those infected can’t tell the difference and can simply ride it out in bed for a week or so.
However, a new UV germ killing wand has been released and claims it can massacre any H1N1 germs living on a surface. Well, 98% of them anyway. When it’s held a few inches over countertops and other surfaces it kills pretty much any germ living on there or renders them incapable of multiplying. It costs $70 from Hammacher and Schlemmer. Here’s what they said on the product page:
“Also capable of killing MRSA, mold, and dust mites, the UV-C light penetrates viral and bacterial membranes and destroys their DNA, rendering the microorganisms incapable of reproduction and survival. Unlike liquid disinfectants, UV-C light can sanitize keyboards, upholstered furniture, cell phones, or any delicate surface that harbors germs.”
Some may say this is exploiting the fears of millions – but then they’ll probably buy the thing.
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The folks behind TIME magazine at TIME Inc. have just launched their new technology website dubbed Techland. The new website has many old faces from TIME on its masthead including their Tech editor Lev Grossman who’ll be a regular contributor.
They’ll cover the more ‘user orientated’ area of the market with much of their categories revolving around products and less about news. These categories include Gadgets, Gaming, Culture and Videos.
Overall, it looks like a good website from a reliable bunch however the design is a little sloppy and I’d imagine they’ll be tidying things up a bit as the site grows. The ties with TIME are still evident with many of their information pages such as ‘Contact Us’ leading directly to TIME’s customer services page.
The Samsung Slate Netbook is definitely one of the best netbooks I’ve seen on the market so far for three main reasons.
The Price
It’s only $299 and that isn’t bad at all for a netbook from Samsung. Especially when you take into account what this netbook has to offer. This price is well within reach for students and home owners alike so I can see this being a popular Christmas present.
Looks
I think you already know what I’m going to say. It’s the slate blue casing isn’t it? It just looks fantastic with the white keyboard and base. It’s not shiny, rather it has a matt finish and rounded corners. Stunning.
The Specs
It has 1Gb of ram and a 1.66Ghz processor. The screen has a matt finish to avoid glare and it has a 160 Gb hard drive. Windows XP SP3 is also installed when the netbook ships. The six hour battery life may also be something that attracts you to this model.
Definitely a netbook that you should consider wrapping up and putting under the tree this year.
The big news this morning is that the Pirate Bay is closing down their torrent tracker for good. After launching the torrent tracker back in 2003 it quickly became one of the worlds largest Bittorrent trackers on the Internet, with some 25 million peers using the service. The Pirate Bay was launched by a few friends in Sweden and was never supposed to turn into a business, and never really did (probably the ultimate open source project).
Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.
“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.
Additionally, Torrentfreak has learned that The Pirate Bay operators are talking to other Bittorrent site ownwers to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can easily replace traditional torrent files.
There are still other services for users who dont want to go trackerless just yet, which include OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent.
Its really sad to see the end of this famous tracker, however times change and technology moves on, and all credit to The Pirate Bay team for trying to push the move even quicker.
Tweeting is now done mostly by third-party apps on mobile devices and on PCs It’s now becoming a rarity to tweet via the actual webpage. It’s becoming even more of a rarity to tweet via SMS as apps become more available even for the most basic of Java enabled mobile phones.
However, these apps for basic mobile phones don’t always offer the chance to tweet photos which is something we tweeters do quite a bit. So for the first time on Twitter ever, the ability to tweet via MMS is coming to the UK.
The service will allow those on the Orange network to send a snap to 86444 and have it appear on their Twitter timeline. It’s only available to Orange customers as the popular mobile network owns a photo sharing website called Snapshot which will host the pictures and tweet out a link.
The only alternative to this (and it’s what I do when I’m out and about) is to e-mail a picture from your mobile phone which can be done easily once you set up your e-mail right and have an account on a service such as twitpic.com.
There’s a lot to be said of the games from our past. I’m just as big a fan of the modern day gaming systems as anyone else, but sometimes we just want to play the classics and by now some of our older systems have collected too much dust, or they just don’t work like they should. So teaming up for a game of Contra, or picking up a game of Spy Hunter just isn’t feasible.
What if it was possible to dust those cartridges off, pop them into an updated gaming system and pick up where your elementary inner child left off. Check out the Retro Mini X Handheld gaming system that does just that. The site claims it’s the “Gameboy that never was,” for all of us that hold the classics near and dear to our heart. Not into the 2.4 inch LED screen? No worries, the handheld system comes with A/V connectors so that you can play on your TV.
For the small price of $50, you get the handheld system, two controllers, and a zapper for those classics like Hogan’s Alley and the infamous Duck Hunt. While the system does not come with any games, that’s why it’s important to dig out those boxes and get those games ready for the wee hours of the night that you’re sure to spend playing these classics again.
If you’re a music junkie like I am, chances are you have multiple mp3 players lying around, probably a ton of music on your computer, external drives, and/or stored off-site in cloud storage somewhere. Music for me defines who I am and is attached to a lot of my memories. While some people tie their memories to sights, sounds, and smells, I’ve always tied my memories to music. Which is why when something new makes it easier for me access my music and listen to what I want to when I need to, then I’m all for it.
There’s a web application that I’ve just been introduced to called JukeFly. The concept of Juke Fly is simple, if not multifaceted. For starters it’s a great way to search music. The interface allows you to find your music, but not just the audio, it will pull video from YouTube and a variety of other sources to give you a complete look at the music you’re looking for. It also pulls album covers, lyrics, group information, and other extras that make for an interesting experience. So as a search I was able to find a lot of what I was looking for, and see extras that I have never seen before like live performances, behind the scenes extras, and yes, even other people covering the music. I found this to be an interesting extra to just searching and playing music.
Add on top of that layer the ability to play YOUR music from just about anywhere as long as the main computer you’re pulling from is one and has an online connection. So if you’re traveling and accessing another computer, or if you don’t want to carry your music with you on your laptop, you can simply install the small installer that comes with JukeFly, go through the settings, and that’s it. It will read your music folders, pull the necessary data and you can listen to your music library from wherever you are.
There are some other options out there that offer music search and remote access, so perhaps this is not something entirely new, but I found the interface easy to use, and had a fun enough time finding some old music I had not heard in awhile. Have you used Juke Fly? Maybe you know of another alternative, let me know!
