Archive for: News
Finding quality articles can be time consuming in today’s era where we are hooked to reading interesting and worthwhile info on topics we like. Regator is such an aggregator portal which searches and provides interesting articles and latest news and happenings in technology, health, entertainment, sports, and latest happenings in business and finance sector, all organized and categorized at one place.
Regator is a portal where you can find links to various interesting article published on web from time to time. So you don’t have to search and keep looking for an hour for something useful and interesting to read. The Site has various categories where you can find articles of that niche and click on the link to read it. Actually regator has a team of few people who work to search these articles from sites and blogs that provide quality content and put them at one place for people to read.
You can even search posts and articles on your favorite reality shows or episodes. There is a ’search’ and even ‘advanced search’ feature for you to search for specific reviews of products like your favorite ‘iPhone’ or cool new ‘Nokia N97’ and you will find tons of posts on it. Also you can register on site and rate the posts you read on regator and the highest rated articles are shown on the front page of regator, just like the other social bookmarkers like Digg. You can personalize a lot on regator including organizing, saving and rating your favorite articles and posts.
Not only does it have article search but also audio and video posts for those who like watching more than reading. If you specifically like reading content from blog, they also have that search category – ‘Blog results’ on front page. Regator has nearly 2 millions posts archived by them till now. Its actually archiving the best of weblogs content and presenting it in a organized and searchable way.
(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Sagar Trapasia from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog.
Comfy news theme is a free news / magazine style theme for WordPress. It looks really clean, stunning and professional. Comfy comes with many features, some of them are basic magazine features such as dropdown navigation, feedburner subscription, advertisement spots, featured entries, ajax tabs, widget-ready, gravatars built-in, and more.
Torrent giant The Pirate Bay has launched an interactive map showing where people are seeding and leeching torrents around the world, with data for every country giving a percentage of users, and how many connections are going through that country.
It’s a Google Maps mash-up, which is already serving up some fascinating data. “In the near future more statistics will be added, such as the type of BitTorrent clients people use, and the average download and upload speeds per region,” claims TorrentFreak, which reported the news.
US music site Jango announced the launch of Jango Music Network (JMN), dubbing it as the world’s largest and most targeted cost-effective ad network for the music vertical.
The current JMN inventory of music sites reach a collective total of 30 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone. JMN also features a unique methodology that maps brand preference to musical taste and uses it to help advertisers target audiences that will be particularly receptive to their brand.
Techcrunch has changed their theme yet again. A few months ago the theme was changed for the 3rd time in a year and I thought it was really moving in the right direction. The navigation was clean, there were a lot more options to find the articles you are looking for, and the theme had some colour and character.
Techcrunch today have launched a new theme which keeps the same navigation principles but totally gets rid of all the character and colour on the page.
Let me know what you think!
Before:
After:
Wired have decided to close Listening Post and Underwire. They are citing a great deal of overlap among Listening Post, Epicenter and Underwire so there is a wisdom to concentrating our fire where it will have the most impact.
Wired have thanks approximately 12 writers who have worked on the blog and it still hasnt been fully confirmed if they will be completely out of a job or not.
This seems to be a very strange move from Wired. It might have just been better to slowly move the Listening post material into another niche instead of just closing down the 40th most linked to blog in the world according to Technorati. I really do think it is a shame because I have been really loving the Listening Posts articles over the last year or so, and if the writers ever need somewhere to write please contact me, because we also have another blog over at RouteNote in which we are always on the look out for writers who can help musicians in the current climate.
Here at Crenk we have just reached the magical 500 subscribers mark on Twitter.
Please follow us: http://twitter.com/crenk
Twitter is a microblogging platform that has been really making some strong improvements in the lats year or so. I’m sure there aren’t too many people who don’t currently know about Twitter (that is if your interested in tech). Twitter is basically a huge IM service in which you can only message 140 characters at once, you also able to follow other people and talk with them directly. It is basically a new type of MSN or Yahoo Messenger.
Google Reader has for a long time been my RSS reader of choice. The design has been simple, easy to use, lots of customisation options, ability to group and more.
Last week Google released a new version of Google Reader and I thought I would take a little time and review it for everyone.
(old)
(new)
Key changes include collapsible navigation, updated look and feel, friends get promoted and more bundle feeds.
Friends get promoted
Shared items have grown up and gotten their own section in the navigation pane. You can collapse this entire section and use the title to see everything your friends have shared, or leave it open to track friends with shared items. (Don’t forget that you can add new friends in “Sharing settings“.)
More bundled feeds!
Previously Google has some default bundles that you could subscribe too, in a variety of areas. Previously this was very limited and there were only about 10 areas. Now they have added huge amounts of bundle feeds for pretty much every major niche. If you go to “Browse for stuff” then you can see bundles.
Collapsible Navigation
Each section of the navigation pane now has its own options menu and minimize/maximize controls. You can collapse each major section of navigation down to one line and focus on only the things you choose to use.
Updated look and feel
The look and feel has changed a lot in this new version of Google Reader. I personally would have liked it if there was an option to return to the old version or at least have a variety of versions. The new version is very neutral, with white and a very light blue being the main colours. However, I find post a lot harder to read in this new version. Recently Gmail received a variety of themes in which users could choose from, I really hope this isn’t too long in coming to Google Reader.
Overall
Overall the changes to Google Reader were needed, except in the case of changing the colour scheme. I think the colour scheme changes are definitely a step backwards, but this can be changed when hopefully they release a themes range to choose from.
Blogs.com owned by Sixapart has launched a new blog directory. The blog directory is very similar to Blogged.com, providing news from the blogosphere for different sectors with an attached blog directory.
Blogs.com has been a great success from launch and has some great traffic already to the site. However, when I look closer at the site it seems they it is very basic and isn’t providing too much insights, so why such high traffic numbers. For one it is very hard to get your content shown on their, so doesn’t show true news from the blogosphere, just selected information. Additionally, I have submitted Crenk three times to their direct and I don’t even think they have referenced my site yet!
The design itself is very limiting and only allows them to show a certain amount of information on every page. Additionally, when it comes to finding more interesting sites in a particular niche, I think this just doesn’t happen at all. It is hard to find their directory and they don’t seem to want to show information from various blogs, just stick to the top blogs that everyone has already heard of.
Profy is probably the first technology related blog I ever read. Since initially launched in September, 2006 Profy has built a loyal readership among startup owners, engineers, bloggers, investors, and general tech-savvy audience.
In the last few months Profy has been having problems keeping its authors, but since then Svetlana Gladkova has taken over the editorial status and the blog seems to be rising again. About three months ago Profy had a redesign and Im really liking the new look, except for the logo change!
Profy release about 3 or so articles per day and these articles are rich in analysis and also hot off the press when related to technology news. I would like to see them get some more authors on board and also incorporate the old green style back into the site. Additionally, they are not promoting the blogging platform they launched about six months ago. However, that all being said, Profy is one of the leading technology blogs on the internet, and it is a must subscribe!
Where do you head to find technology company information? Currently, there are a lot of technology blogs that provide company directories, but I think there are two key players that stand out in this sector and I’m sure their pageviews will sore in the coming months and years. Those two players have to be Crunchbase and Tradevibes.
Crunchbase is the company directory from the superblog Techcrunch. Crunchbase is build on a wiki type system and instead of just writing about companies and collect data, Michael Arrington thought it would be a good idea to actually put it all together and make some more money from it. Crunchbase has a great look about it and it brings together information from some of the most well-known companies. On Crunchbase you can find descriptions of the company, funding information, location and telephone numbers, competitors and staffing information. I would like Crunchbase to find new ways to make money apart from advertising, like a highlighted company feature.
Tradevibes has a bit of a different layout, but essentially it is the same concept with the type of wiki development. Tradevibes provide a similar set of information as Crunchbase but it also has additional features, such as a fantasy exchange game, voting system on companies, and forums. The design on Tradevibes is actually a bit cluttered and there seems to be a lot of products that have simply just been put together to add features, instead of developing something in house that matches the site. For example, the job board in the left column from SimplyHired.
Both of these companies are leading the way in this niche, however there still seems to be a lot of issues in terms of design and integrating information that is actually needed, without information overload. It would also be nice to see integration with several technology blogs to provide news about each of the companies in the database, but so far even this seems to be limited.
Here at Crenk we are keen to help as many startups as possible to get their voices heard. Crenk will now be offering a new form of free advertising.
In the sidebar on every Crenk page we now have some free advertising spots to give away to startups every month. I’m not too sure currently how many spots we will be offering, but will probably be around 6.
Who Can Submit To Get A Free Ad Slot: Any startups (doesn’t matter how big or small)
Slots Available: 6
How Often Do They Change: Monthly. 1st of every month we will have some new startups to try
How to Apply: Send us an email (tips@crenk.com). Subject: Crenk Startup Promotion. Add a link to your startup and a review of approx 50-100 words. Additionally, an Ad that is 125×43
The aim of this promotion is to allow startups some free advertising, while promoting useful services to our readers.
We hope you like this new idea, and we look forward to bring you some great startups you have never heard of.
Crenk Team
