We’ve all heard or Bit.ly, TinyURL and the rest. All of them shorten URLs so they can be discreet and fit places (like in the restrictive Twitter posting area). But what about the opposite end of the scale. What about huge URLs? And I mean HUGE.
HugeUrl.com is a website that takes you average sized link and makes it really big. I’m still yet to come up with a good use for it other than to annoy friends and for your own individuality.
I was planning on posting a link here to the Crenk Twitter account or something but when I got the link lengthened at hugeURL.com it was over forty lines long which I though was a bit much to have on the homepage.
Another similar service which I found was http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/ who offer the worlds longest e-mail addresses. Apparently they’re so long that some software and online forms won’t accept them and “people have a hard time typing in your e-mail address” – obviously.
So Christmas is coming – or so the advertisers would have us believe. Still, it can’t be a bad time to get the office e-cards out of the way I suppose. For the past few years a popular services has ruled the internet Christmas card market – and this year it’s back again.
ElfYourself lets you embed the head of yourself, a friend, family member or co-worker on the tiny body of and elf in scenes such as Crazy Dancing and Hip-Hop Elfs.
However, it has also linked up with Twitter and Facebook so you can share your creations online with your buddies and even distribute hilarious ones among your network via connecting with friends on Facebook or simply tweeting your card.
So what are you waiting for – get over there and Elf Yourself.
Mozillas Firefox Bookmarking Add-Ons make browsing on-line faster, more organized, and more convenient. While there are hundreds of free Bookmarks Add-ons to choose from through Mozillas AMO website, only a handful of them have received a coveted Recommended rating. Features vary wildly, and though some are a slight improvement over Internet Explorers Favorites, others succeed at being both simple and sophisticated.
If you just want to take the bookmarks names off the Bookmarks Toolbar to allow for more bookmarks to appear, Smart Bookmarks Bar 1.4.3 is an okay option. Its straightforward, but doesn’t give you much in the way additional functionality. Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar 4.0 does just what it says. As you get too many Bookmarks for one row, additional rows will appear. Of course as you add more and more bookmarks, you wont have much space left on your screen.
Xmarks 3.3.2 is popular because it synchronizes your bookmarks and passwords and allows you to access and update them on each computer you keep. Plus it supports Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer and Safari. One slightly worrisome feature of Xmarks is that it captures all of your Google searches (and other search engines) so it can interject websites into your Search results (they call this their “discovery service”). Just like Google, it keeps a history of websites that you visit, so security is a concern. Although Xmarks says its encrypted, it doesn’t seem impossible for its server to get hacked and all of a sudden have all of your passwords for sale to the highest bidder on the net.
The best feature of samfind Bookmarks Bar 2.0.3 is how fast it gets you to the sites you visit most often. Its totally customizable, and starts you off with some of the most popular websites already configured. Bookmarks are organized by Topics and its easy to add websites, even letting you drop and drag sites you want to add right from the address bar. You can position the samfind Toolbar where you want it, and you can select the look of websites on the Bar as icons, icons and text, or text. You can also change samfind’s layout to fit several times as many websites as you normally could, saving valuable screen space.
Shareaholic 1.9 supports over 60 social sites, allowing you to choose your favorite social services and access them from a single drop down menu. This add-on is tightly focused on bookmarking/sharing, blogging/publishing, as well as emailing, and link shortening. You can have instant access to shared web pages with the websites in these categories. In this respect it is similar to some of the other add-ons mentioned, although with fewer numbers of websites to interact with.
Mozillas Recommended Bookmarks Toolbars are all free downloads, and they offer a variety of features that will appeal to virtually any level of web browser. Once installed, they can all make repeated visits to the Internet a whole lot quicker and a lot less cluttered. Now if we could only find our car keys
For at least two years now there’s been huge speculation and anticipation for the Beatles library to be released on iTunes, and in all this time, with as many teases, it just has not happened. Much to our disappointment we seek out their music elsewhere, having to find a library that has all of the music with the sound quality that can best define the music that defined a generation.
Well in a way, Apple and The Beatles have come together, but it’s not something you can download direct onto your iPod. Instead it’s the Beatles inside an apple. Get the picture?
This this USB stick is filled with the entire Beatles library including all the remastered goodness of the fab four’s Stereo Box Set, including 14 albums in lossless FLAC and 320 Kbps MP3 formats, 13 mini-documentary films, replicated UK album art, rare photos, and expanded liner notes. All of this put onto a 16GB stick for your listening and portable enjoyment.
The green apple is an interesting way to bring the two biggest names in media together, but there’s a limited run folks. Only 30,000 of these babies were made, so if you want it, you better act fast. The cost is $280 and comes out on December 8th, 2009. Sure it’s more expensive then the box set itself, but for collectors this is a dream, and honestly, how cool is the apple idea?
Okay, okay, not that cool, but the content is priceless.
This is quite a weird app I must say – make your own cereal. Interesting. Mojamix are a company that allow you to make your own cereal or trail mix from cereal flakes, dried fruits, nuts and seeds. Basically, you go to www.mojamix.com and click ‘Mix-It’. Customize your cereal and place and order for a bag which should be delivered to you within a few days.
Another thing I liked about this is that when you’re actually mixing your cereal the list of ingredients and the price are listed to the right of the screen so you don’t go overboard. They also offer nutrition facts about each ingredient (best to steer clear of ‘Chocolate Chomp’ I guess).
I think this is a really cool service especially those who like their cereal a certain way and are always trying to get some more dried fruit or nuts out of the box.
You can also buy gift certificates for other people who you know to be cereal maniacs. Imagine Christmas morning when they open a gift certificate for 50 pounds of cereal. Who wouldn’t be dead pleased?
There is a day not long ago when we said, the future will be here. And in that day long ago we saw amazing things in the future, self lacing shoes, hoverboards, flying cars even, but while none of that may have happened what we do have is iPhones. Sure you may know of the iPhone, held an iPhone, and maybe you’re one of the millions of people worldwide that own an iPhone, but now the future has indeed arrived; your iPhone is now capable of starting your car.
Thanks to a little iPhone app called Viper SmartStart, you simply get the SmartStart system installed into your car ($300-$500), and the iPhone app will do the rest. Using a GSM signal you’re able to not only start your car, but also lock and unlock your doors, open your trunk and a few other additions without ever needing your keys again.
The website says you can literally start your car from just about anywhere. Not sure what the actual “anywhere” means, but it’s good to know in those times when I can’t remember where I parked my car, or when you want to distract someone as you run for your life. In any case, below you’ll find some demos for the actual product.
It’s not a hoverboard and it’s not a flying car, but if you can add self driving from your iPhone ala James Bond, then we can forgive the lack of said advancements. One thing is for sure, it makes your iPhone that much more valuable to thieves. Now they take your iPhone and your car. Saddle up my friend, it’s going to be a long walk.
Online communities have since been known as tribes. Thanks to Seth Godin’s famous book of the same title, it’s forced us to think of our online networks and communities in a unique light. Much like primitive tribes of earlier times, we’ve now formed digital tribes where we’ve found comfort in connections with people of similar interests, habits, hobbies, and histories. The tribes we belong to have a simple connectivity of communication that we long to maintain, enter Gigatribes.
The concept of communicating with your tribe is easy to see in networks such as Twitter, Facebook, or even LinkedIn. What if you wanted to share files in a local depository where all of your tribe can have access to? Or what if you only wanted to share with certain members of the tribe? Gigatribes allows you to build your community, much like any other social network, but now you’re able to share large files seamlessly and with out problems.
But there is a problem. How is this different from DropBox? Or maybe ZumoBox? Or any other of the hundreds of file sharing sites. In looking at the application itself I didn’t see anything that really stood out to make this the go to community file sharing network out there.
What it’ll come down to is comfort level and ease of use for your needs. DropBox and Zumobox both have mobile apps that give you access to your files on the go. No such app was found for Gigatribes which already puts this network at a disadvantage.
It has been a very big day in acquisitions for both Google and Accel partners. Google has announced that they have acquired Admob and Gizmo5. Admob is a mobile advertising network in which cost Google $750 million.
AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:
Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.
AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.
After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:
*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.
*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.
*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.
*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.
Im very surprised that Admob sold out to Google on this occassion. I know that $750 million is not an average sum of money, but with Googles track record of advertising products that aren’t Adsense is pretty terrible. Back in February 2007 Google purchased Adscape, which still hasn’t really taken their in-game advertising product to the next level. Additionally, Google killed Feedburner’s very profitable advertising network and replaced it directly with a much worse product for the type of market, Google Adsense. Accel partners won out big on this acquisition as they and Sequoia Capital were the early investors.
Gizmo5 Acquisition:
Gizmo5 was the other company in which Google purchased today, but for only around $30 million in cash. Gizmo5 is a VOIP infrastructure. In previous months Gizmo5 was in talks with Skype about a potential sale, mainly because Skype was having big issues with their current infrastructure. This is a very interested move for Google, I’m not entirely sure why they purchased VOIP infrastructure. The only possible solution is that they are thinking about tying it in with their current Google Voice offering.
EA purchase Playfish:
After lengthy negotiations, Electronic Arts closed it’s anticipated acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for $275 million in cash. An additional $25 million in stock will be set aside for retaining the top talent at the startup, and another $100 million in earnouts are part of the deal as well if the business hits certain milestones. This has no reaffirmed how lucrative this market current is. I would not be surprised to see a Zynga IPO or Playdom acquistion in the first half of 2010.
Gdgt.com is a user generated site, which is kind of like Wikipedia in many regards, that caters for gadgets and electronics reviews. Basically, users log in and add reviews for tech items they own. Other users can then update or edit that review with their own opinion and thoughts.
There is also a questions section normally on the homepage called the ‘Big Debate’ where users ask questions related to tech products. The community is also alive and kicking. When you ask a question you needn’t bother logging off to check back later – just wait five minutes.
Most of the comments made there about products are sensible and well thought out. I didn’t find one comment from some idiot complaining that Blackberries are better than iPhones (nut jobs).
Connection with fellow enthusiasts is also a good feature that I liked as you can follow their own reviews and edits.
Signing up is easy and of course free. So if you fancy venting about your new purchase or want some solid advice about what to buy – and when, head on over to gdgt.com.
The fight against piracy has been ongoing in Europe since late last year when countries such as the Netherlands started to ban Pirate Bay. In Ireland, the main ISP Eircom, limited internet access to just 20 minutes per day for any of their customers found using the service and the owners of Pirate Bay were wanted men in the Scandinavian countries.
However, it appears as though the Danes are now “throwing in the towel”.
The main reason for this is the lack of adequate evidence which they can use to prosecute. Because, in terms of the law, the internet and the piracy associated with it are fairly new, there are no constraining laws which make it easy to prosecute. As it stands now, if the defendants don’t actually admit to having being organisers in piracy then they’re free to go.
To be honest, I’m still waiting to see if there will ever be a real prosecution and take down of a main service – anywhere.
Having external hard drives has become one of the most common requirements for most of us, and if you were thinking that your portable hard drive didn’t combine with your desk nor your wallet, Brinell is giving you a new touch of class for you HD.
They have designed some really cool and elegant covers that will definitely class-up your portable devices. The Purestorage line is made of leather, wood, carbon fiber and even stainless steel. Having all those components you can easily confuse it with your wallet, cigar box or some other items.
The actual hard drives that include this series contain capacities of 160GB and 500GB, with 1.8 and 2.5 inches. And the cost goes from €189 and €229. It shouldn’t surprise you, having excellent built quality comes with a little bit of cost.
Photoshop software can be expensive – especially considering that most of us don’t use it that often. Obviously the industry standard is Adobe Photoshop. This program has been a cornerstone in image editing and photography for years now. However, I’d like to share with the Crenk readers a great freeware Photoshop program that’s just as good – if not better because…well… it’s free!
At the minute, GIMP is in version 2.6 and is available to download here.
It has photo enhancement, a fully customizable interface, barrel distortion, digital retouching, great hardware support, numerous file formats and the ability to run on pretty much any OS.
Here are a couple of screenshots from GIMP:
So for all you artists, photographers and inquisitive geeks out there – GIMP.
We’ve all heard or Bit.ly, TinyURL and the rest. All of them shorten URLs so they can be discreet and fit places (like in the restrictive Twitter posting area). But what about the opposite end of the scale. What about huge URLs? And I mean HUGE.
