Twee.li is an application which allows you to use it as a normal Twitter app but also gives you the ability to instantly chat with your followers. Tweet.li is completely free but still has some cons.
Tweet.li, developed in Adobe AIR, comes as an idea to replace TinyChat and other similar web apps which you can use in your browser but easily share the chat rooms to your Twitter timeline and invite followers; including also the possibility to login using your Twitter account name.
But even though the idea sounds great there are a few cons so far: To use it with your followers, they must use Tweet.li as well, no other option available; also the application stability and performance are not actually the best, since it takes a few moments for the timeline to update.
Even though I enjoy saying “Twitter is not a chat room”, there are some exceptions and there are even more number of users who actually use it for chatting.
Nuclear apocalypse is inevitable, right? Okay, maybe not, but if it were true, wouldn’t it be beneficial to have an iPhone app that could detail your personal radiation exposure. Thanks to a concerned radiologist out of Canada, Dr Mark Baerlocher, and Tidal Pool Software, the reality of such an iPhone app is real.
The application taps into normal exposures to radiation to give you a detailed report of where you stand. Are you glowing green in the dark or have you not been radiated enough? The iPhone application takes measurements from X-rays and CT scans for example. With the simple input of personal information based on your own situation, the application will let you know where you stand and if you are at risk. While not free, this $3.00 application might be worth your money if you’re prone to getting medical tests and are exposed to high levels of radiation.
A bonus to this application is the graph it will create to inform you if you are at risk of cancer based on the amount of radiation you’ve been exposed to. So is this worth it? Entirely up to you. Suffice to say that if you’re consistently going in for procedures or exposed to radiation for any period of time, it would be wise to get the facts, and perhaps check with a doctor.
Reading the Bible, for those who are interested can be difficult in some regards. The most obvious being that the thing is huge with thousands of years worth of literature crammed in one binding, not exactly making it a pocket-sized reader.
iBible is a web app which makes reading and referencing the Bible easy.
Basically, because it’s all so simple and plain; consisting mostly of buttons for each chapter and the rest being text, loading it on any device connected to the internet is quick and easy. This makes it suitable for PC users as well as when you’re on the go such as on a mobile phone using GPRS Internet, a PSP or iPhone.
It’s available in several languages including English, French, German and Polish. The home screen is where you select you language and the screens after this whittle your choice down from Testament, to books, to chapters such as the one I read; Genesis 6.
Bookmash is a program that allows you to view, download and store films, mp3s and pictures from some of the web’s favourite sources. This program is similar to others reviewed here on Crenk such as Vuze only it supports song and pictures as well.
The program allows you to browse pictures on Flickr, videos on YouTube and a host of other websites such as Metacafe and Last fm. You can then choose to download these songs onto your computer using the easy interface and controls.
It beats using outdated programs whereby entering every specific URL and details were required. Now, Bookmash does all the work for you.
It can also be synced with your existing preferences such as Downloading RSS feeds like podcasts or news and can be linked in with Digg, the popular bookmarking tool.
Upon getting the program myself for the purpose of this review, I was downloading videos and pictures that were all optimised in the search results to meet my demands, unlike other similar programs that just throw dozens of results at you 1% related to your search-phrase
However, there are some draw backs. At first, there is a learning curve that one needs to overcome. This is mainly due to the amount of options you have which is a blessing in disguise.
Version 0.21 added a welcome page which is handy for getting the ball rolling, but more intriguingly it introduced Bookmash to the world stage by giving the user the ability to choose from 13 different international languages.
All in all a good piece of kit that allows you to have everything in the one place. Not essential but useful for those who enjoy organisation to the extreme.
Groucho Marx was an American comedian and film star born in 1890. Despite his devotion to the stage one of his most famous quotes was “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read!” Well, he was right up until dBelement decided to release the ‘Reader’ for the iPhone.
This app allows you to read books ranging from new releases to some of the all time classics such as Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. DBelement say “Discover new books, re-read some of the classics, and enjoy the convenience of having Reader’s Public Library at your fingertips”. Reader has a one touch page turning option allowing easy usability and a good, simple interface that allows you to browse through your titles and download more to add to your digital literary collection.
It also has an arsenal of helpful features such as a search facility so you can find that book you always wanted and digital bookmarks so you can stop reading and come back to it another time. DBelement have described their latest app as a “revolutionary application” that “will inspire a new generation of readers”. They may be slightly exaggerating with the whole new ‘generation of readers’ thing, but at least I guess now you can red inside a dog with that powerful iPhone backlight.
Ten years ago, who would have thought that most of our work would depend on the internet? The internet allows us to have easy access to our files, anywhere, anytime. We chat face to face with friends, meet clients virtually, process payments in a flash and much more. The internet is huge and you can’t get enough of it. It has no end.
While on the topic of the internet, you can call the current scenario, the Web 2.0 revolution, the next dot com boom. Web apps are torrenting the internet with their numbers and new ones pop-up everyday.
Today, I will talk about the latest additions to the pool, of course; the ones you probably don’t know about.
With the help of Prezi you can create maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings and present in a nonlinear way. Move beyond the slide, it only takes 5 minutes to learn how to use Prezi.
With Wix, you can create stunning flash websites for free, all from your internet browser! It offers you a simple powerful online platform to make flash websites, MySpace layouts and more. No downloads or programming needed.
NiceTranslator is a fast, easy to use online translator designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. It is ajax powered, so you get the translations on the fly!
Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. You get a very easy to use photo editor that lets you add photo effects, custom text or speech bubbles and much more.
WobZip is an online tool which lets you uncompress compressed files online. It supports many formats including the major ones as Zip, RAR, 7Z, Gzip, TAR, ISO etc…
Create an invitation in seconds, add entries from mobile, twitter, email, iCal, gCal or Outlooks. And of course, send them with ease from withing the app.
Fliggo is an out-of-the-box, all-in-one, solution for creating your own video website. It can be a video blog, a YouTube-like community or a private site for your company or family.
SlideRocket is an online, flash based tool for creating slides and presentations. It brings together a complete package of online slide making with features such as an intuitive interface, themes, flickr integration and much more
Ziddu is a new free file hosting solution with features such as unlimited storage space, fast uploads and downloads, file management, a sharing community a referral program and the ability to earn money with your downloads.
YoutubeReloaded creates an embeddable playlist of YouTube videos that can be added to any website. Simply choose a playlist type to create your free youtube playlist.
FriendPaste is a an online tool where you can paste code snippets of many different languages to share with friends. It sports and intuitive interface with support for syntax highlighting.
Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys. With a great user interface, Survs is currently in private beta, though a single request fetched us an invitation.
With SendPhotos Mobile, Web and PC you can upload photos, edit them, create photos albums and share them online with whoever you want. Also available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.
BackupURL creates instant cached copies of web pages. The content of a web page stays the same while you share the link provided. The cached page can also be used for referencing or even mirroring data. The cached page will always be online (html,css,images) no matter whether the original site is up or down.
CC Betty organizes your message and its contents – photos, addresses, documents, links – and create a mailspace where everyone can track replies, view and add content. You just CC your messages to her!
Make your emails pop with signatures that reflect your personality and change with every email you send! Create signatures with your twitter status, flickr photos, blog entries, youtube stream and much more, all realtime.
Twe2 is a service which sends you your twitter replies, direct messages and custom searches that you specify free to your mobile as SMS. Available in more than 230 countries.
Markkit is a web2.0 text highlighter. Drag’n’Drop the markkit yellow pen into your browser toolbar. Whenever you want to highlight text in a web page, click on the markkit bookmarklet.
So which ones are your favorites? Discuss in the comments, and dont forget to give it a digg
(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.
There aren’t very many social media applications yet on the iPhones that are based around social news or social bookmarking. Digg has a an unofficial app which is much improved than the last unofficial app that was in the iTunes App Store which is no longer available. Delicious has quite a few apps that are decent but lack a few important features. Disappointingly, StumbleUpon doesn’t have any applications and neither does Mixx or Yahoo! Buzz.
Reddit is currently leading with three apps to make the mobile experience much more enjoyable. One of theirs is an official app from the Reddit creators themselves. Will Digg be releasing an official app soon?
I’ve taken the liberty to do a review of the three Reddit apps and Digg app that are in the iTune App Store. I am in no way associated with any of these apps, know any of the owners, or am promoting any of them in any fashion. This is merely a review from an avid Reddit and Digg user with a love for social news and social media.
Shovel is an app that provides top stories from the social news website Digg.com in a native application. Browse the front page stories, or delve deeper into an array of topics and subtopics of interest.
Personal Review:
Shovel is a great application for viewing Digg.com content easily on the iPhone. Overall, the design and interface is pretty clean and simple. It gives you a variety of topics and listings to select to view so you can access all of the content on Digg.com. You can view:
Popular Stories
Top Stories
Movers & Shakers
Brand New Stories
All listings are applicable to any category or sub-category in Digg.com. If you select a Digg story you can then scroll down the commentary to see what people are saying, who’s replied, how many votes each comment has received, etc. After that, you can click further to view the story live on the Web. Which is nice about it is that it doesn’t load Safari as a separate app to view the content so there’s no back-and-forth between the apps.
Unfortunately, what you cannot participate in digging, burying, or commenting through this application. The developer disclaims, “Now we’ve gotten the message loud and clear that the one thing that would turn this 3.5 star app (currently 3 stars) into a 5 star one is the interactivity of the original Digg site. You guys (and gals) want to be able to Digg, comment, and bury, and who can blame you? Right now, however, there is no way to do this using the legitimate Digg APIs, and quite frankly, it makes us sad. I’ve been trying to court the help of Digg in making this app all that it can be, and if you want to help that along, you should drop them a line yourselves requesting the same!”
Another drawback is that you cannot personalize this application because there is no way to login. Therefore you can’t weed out content you don’t want to see, view your account profile, see your friend’s submissions, etc.
In doing some research the Shovel app used to be named “Diggerific”. Apparently, they have changed the name of it and redid the UI just a bit as you can tell from the video review of Diggerific below:
Overview
Pros
Easy to use
Clean interface
Ability to access all Digg content
Cons
Free of charge
Can’t Digg, comment, or bury content
No Digg account profile/community features or functionality
The official Reddit iPhone app. Never be bored again. With this app, you’ll only be a tap (or shake) away from the most interesting stuff on the web.
All of your favorite Reddit functionality is here: view the hottest, newest, top, and most controversial stories of the moment, explore, individual subreddits, vote, comment, share, and save links for later. The entire commenting system has been optimized for the iPhone app so you won’t have any trouble contributing to an epic pun thread.
Save time by never having to reload the Reddit homepage. You can even use handy next/previous navigation to move between websites without going back to the main list. And those sites work in portrait and widescreen modes too.
It’s never been easier to be entertained. Just shake your iPhone to enter “serendipity mode” where you’ll be served a random, interesting site. Pro-tip: Turn on “play sound on shake” for a special treat with every jostle — the iPhone is an elegant phone for a more sophisticated age.
And if you’re feeling the economic downturn (what are you doing with an iPhone?) there’s a tree, ad-supported version to come.
Personal Review:
The Official Reddit application is pretty cool. You can input your username and password so that you can vote and comment on stories. Initially, you come to the Reddit homepage. Along the top you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Top”, and “Controversial” stories. When selecting a story, there is an overlay on the footer that allows you to upvote/downvote the story, go to the comments section of the story, save the story, and email the link.
Three subreddits will fit on the bottom bar overlay that you can quickly navigate to. You can edit the subreddits with the ones you want to use the most, but you only have a small selection of subreddit’s to swap out with. Those subreddits are:
Programming
Funny
Science
Tech
World News
Entertainment
Business
Comics
Gaming
Best Of
Economics
Cappuccino
It is the most expensive application but I feel it’s the cleanest and easiest to use. Unfortunately, you can’t browse all subreddits and there’s no search function. Nor is there a function to view your account’s saves, karma points, submissions, comments, etc.
I would recommend this app to anyone looking to quickly and easily view Reddit news, vote, and participate in the more popular subreddits. The free Reddit app doesn’t allow for this.
Overview
Pros
Easily vote on stories from the actual story page
Save links to view/read later
Comment participation
Customization of footer subreddits
Cons
Most expensive Reddit app
Not a wide-range of subreddits to customize on your footer
The Reddit application allows users to view the stories from www.reddit.com without having to deal with loading massive webpages. It displays the stories in a nice table view, providing details about each submission, and allows the user to easily view the submitted content. The ability to vote on a submission is currently being added.
Personal Review:
This app is very bare bones with very limited functionality. If you’re looking to vote on stories or participate in the comments this app isn’t for you. If you’re just looking to read “Hot” news from a select few subreddits then this is a good app for the cost of nothing. The included subreddits to choose from are:
reddit.com
bacon
politics
pics
WTF
funny
technology
programming
The nice thing about it is that it’s open source and the developer leaves it open for people to add on what they want to it. Hopefully, in the future, this will be a great application for Reddit.
Satellite 2.0 is now available and brings a host of improvement to the mobile Reddit experience.
Change in this version includes:
Greatly improved performance
New, Controversial, and Top views are available for all subreddits
An overlay displaying the full article title and comments count shows while loading an article
The subreddit list is reorderable
A beautiful new icon and splash screen have been added
New lower pricing.
Satellite is a full-featured client for Reddit.com, a social link aggregation site. With Satellite, you can browse links appearing on the front page or drill down into the Subreddits you are subscribed to. When viewing an article you can vote the link up or down, save it to your Reddit account, or share the link with others. With the click of a button, you can shift into commenting mode to browse comments or post your own back to the Reddit page about the link. The interface provides a substantially more streamlined experience over the mobile Reddit site and incorprates the unique capabilities of the iPhone to make your day to day Reddit’ing much more fun.
Additional Satellite features include:
Shake the app at any time to explore random content from Reddit
Next/previous buttons are available at the screen edges to move through content without returning to list view
Full portrait/landscape modes, including upside down. Great for handing the phone across the dinner table to share your discoveries!
Returns to the content you were browsing at start-up. Pick up right where you left off when that call came in.
Highly addictive content discovery available anywhere, at any time!
Personal Review:
This app is definitely worth the 99 cents. After entering in your login information you can view ALL of your subscribed subreddits. It also gives you an option to edit your subreddits for your account. After selecting a subreddit you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Controversial”, and “Top” categories in the footer bar. Once selecting a story, it takes you to the story and overlays the story title, submitter, and point count. At the bottom footer you can choose to vote, go to comments, save the link, or email the link. Again though, there’s no search feature with this app either.
This app is a lot like the official iReddit app except it’s more personalized. You can also view your saved Reddits on your account to follow up on how your saves and submissions are doing.
Following our recent review of Zentact, we spoke to the team behind the service. Read on for insights from Jared Brandt, John Sampson and Eric Marcoullier about their previous work with MyBlogLog, a hint of what’s to come with new service Gnip, and what makes them and their fab social networking tool tick.
What is the Zentact philosophy?
(Jared) We are creating a product that integrates into already existing work flows, helping our users build better relationships. We do this without any BS. (Eric would say the our product will make the baby jesus cry…)
Sharing information with your contacts is something that Mr. Marcoullier seems to be a fan of! What makes Zentact different to other content sharing websites?
(Jared) Social networks are a lot of work for traditionally very little payoff. CRM tools are worse.
(Eric) Zentact aims to flip that on its ear and provide loads of tangible results for little ongoing effort.
(Jared) Typical content sharing websites and apps have focused on the user always remembering whom to share with. We are trying, in effect, to whisper in the user’s ear and suggest whom they can share this with in a meaningful way – we make sure you share what matters. We will be adding more social aspects in the near future as well.
How has the web 2.0 landscape changed since the coneption and subsequent selling of MyBlogLog to now and the work you’re doing with Zentact?
(John) MyBlogLog allowed users to create profiles that traveled with them where they surfed, adding value to both the mybloglog member and website owner. More Web 2.0 apps today are leveraging this concept, be it scripts, widgets, and even in browsers. The value that is created by individual apps and even apps created mashing APIs together is significant.
Some commentators have said that they’d like Facebook integration, in particular to help when tagging – is this something you and the team are looking into?
(Jared) We will be integrating in with Facebook to help with both tagging, tracking last connection and posting to the wall.
Will you be looking to include integration with other social networking services – if so what is the liklihood of this happening before Zentact comes out of Beta?
(Jared) We are in a private beta now and working on launching our public beta. We will likely integrate with other social networking services and other communication platforms before leaving beta. We are also listening to our users – feedback will help lead the way.
What is really exciting you on the web (Zentact aside)?
(Jared) Gnip
(John) Apple app store
I would argue that 2008 has been the year of Twitter and that it will become more mainstream in 2009 – what do you think will be the big social media development in the next 12 months?
(Jared) We think that there will be a big movement towards information – instead of just data. More products will become contextual.
What has been the main challenge for Zentact since you founded the company?
(Jared) Our number one challenge has been to prioritize features since, as a team, we have many features we want to do quickly.
And what has been the achievement that has made you most happy?
(Jared) We have gotten feedback from users ranging for “wow” to “Zentact helped me close a deal”. This feedback is what makes us tick!
What are the next key milestones you’ll be looking to meet?
( Jared) Public beta and our IE version.
What can we expect from Zentact in 2009?
(Jared) A killer product that will seamlessly improve your life.
To try Zentact for yourself, we have a few private invites to test the private beta, which you lucky boys and girls can get here.
Mac users rejoice, the new version of Evernote has just been released. Version 1.1.4 can be updated from the “Check for Updates” command from the Evenote menu.
For a break down of what this version brings to you, read the release notes.
Evernote is an effective way of making sure you never forget your ideas. With the ability to catch your ideas no matter where they are, a napkin, online, a street sign, a window posting, capture it all with Evernote. Evernote also links across your laptop, your desktop and your mobile so you are never far from the inspiration you seek.
Groucho Marx was an American comedian and film star born in 1890. Despite his devotion to the stage one of his most famous quotes was “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read!” Well, he was right up until dBelement decided to release the ‘
(at the time of writing)
Following our recent review of Zentact, we spoke to the team behind the service. Read on for insights from Jared Brandt, John Sampson and Eric Marcoullier about their previous work with MyBlogLog, a hint of what’s to come with new service Gnip, and what makes them and their fab social networking tool tick.
