Archive for: review
Netbooks are becoming more popular because they’re more portable than the very portable laptop and have all the working power into the bargain. Plus they pack more punch than even the best of smart phones. Here we have what I think are the best three netbooks for their tasks.
Home
Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Netbook
This is a great little curvy computer running the most popular of OS among netbooks – Windows XP. It has 1GB of RAM which is into laptop territory and is great 
for surfing the internet and taking care of all those tasks. The reason why this is the best netbook for the home is because of the price. At just $299 it’s a fine purchase to make to fill the gap when someone else is using the family PC or you just want to relax in bed and check you e-mail or RSS. It also doesn’t look and feel cheap like other netbooks for the same price. It can run for over five hours playing video and using software so it’s ideal for entertainment and heavy usage.
School
Asus Eee PC
This one is slightly more bulky than the one mentioned above but it packs more of a punch and it has an extended battery life for those long cramming sessions. The keyboard is also much better for typing on than the DELL.
It has 1GB of RAM but a 1.66GHz processor while running XP.
It weighs 3.4 pounds which isn’t too bad when you compare it to the laptop you could have been lugging around between classes. It looks good and ticks all the right boxes for students. The price tag of $400 isn’t to bad either.
Work
HP Mini 5101
This small netbook is definitely the way to go for work and business. It stylish and discreet with a minimalistic design and has sharper angles than th
e other too. Again, it has 1GB of RAM and a 1.66GHx processor doing all the work for you. It’s really sturdy and solidly built however I don’t like how it lost its Express Card slot which was on the previous model.
Nonetheless, the 160Gb hard drive is more than enough to hold any projects (no matter how big) until you make it back to the office and the 10” display is the perfect screen for working on them along with the comfortable keyboard and track pad.
For ultimate gaming laptops, click here.
Netbooks are becoming cooler by the day. I you’re going on holidays, on a journey or just need something light that can get the job done then a netbook is your best bet. However, they have their drawbacks – namely that they run an outdated OS, have bad graphics and are slow.
However, HP is looking to change all of that with their Mini 311 seen here in the picture. Basically, they have amped up the graphics and all of the other innards so that they’re approaching laptop specs (see list below). What’s more, it will soon begin to ship with Windows 7 instead of the current OS on the system – XP.
One bad bit is that you have to pay extra for a white lid and for a netbook, the price is already steep enough at the $400 mark.
Specs:
RAM: 1GB
OS: XP (soon to be Win7)
Hard Drive: 160GB
Processor: Intel 1.6GHz
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What do you think about the HP Mini 311?
Knowing what users do on your site can be extremely helpful. Why? Simply, because it gives you the opportunity to optimize your pages so that the premium features and advertisements get the very best attention.
ClickTale is a program for websites that records what users do on your website. Basically, it gives you back a video of just what they’re up to showing you where they pause, click, read and ultimately leave your site. This program can help you fix problems with your page to keep users on it longer.
There are four different membership levels. The most basic is ‘Free’ which is recommended for small-time bloggers. This will show you what 400 random users have been up to and give you somewhat of an idea of how to improve your site. However, the real goodies come as you progress up into Bronze, Silver and Gold.
With these membership programs you get a heat map which shows you the most active parts of your webpage, recordings of thousands of visitors and customer support via telephone.
This is a great piece of kit to for any website to have whether your visitor numbers are soaring or floundering. It’s always good to know where you can improve. So whether you blog or own a cool start-up, ClickTale is for you.
Ever been on a buddy’s computer, at work or just in a very low-tech situation? Yet you still want to chat with your friends on your IM service of choice, or perhaps even chat with friends across all the popular IM services at the same time!? Well Meebo is a cool app that I found that will let you do just that.
It’s entirely web-based so it requires no download. All you have to do is go to the homepage and sign in. It will then detect your current friends on what ever service you decide to use and you can start chatting to them using the messaging window (which is basic but what do you expect?).
It supports several IM services such as MSN, GTalk, AIM and Yahoo IM. And it’s not only for instant messaging. Meebo also carries some of the popular social networking sites such as FaceBook and MySpace.
When you’re actually using it everything is simple and easy to use. It’s no problem at all to get to grips with – which is handy seeing as you’ll likely only use it a few times as a back-up. To summarise, a great web app that will come in handy for the power user but I fear a little outdated for most situations given the amount of mobile tech we have.
So the summer is nearly over and you’re wondering what to do. Sure, it’s not long now until big yellow busses start pulling up outside houses to cart kids all over the US back to school and as such the summer is over and the monotony of life kicks back in for a cold winter. However, there is one app that could appeal to your adventurous side before that too is shut away until next July – it’s called iYunque and it offers advice for, and indeed a virtual experience of the only rainforest in the US – El Yunque.
The main feature of this app is giving advice. There are maps, photographs, warnings and local information about the rainforest that will help you stay on track, literally. The maps are detailed and up to date with all the popular tourist and adventure routes taken today in the rain forest. The maps also point out good places to get a good view and nice places to take a little break and how to get to the area if you have to travel first.
Because it’s a rainforest it also offers a few words of warning about travelling alone into the forest and about the wildlife in there.
The virtual tour feature is also really cool for those who can’t make it. It allows you to tap on the map and it gives you information of that area and some pictures.
iYunque is available for download right here.
The camera app that came with the iPhone is quite good. You get all of your basic features but nothing is really shines up to a glistening finish nor does it seem like Apple wants to improve on it. An app development company called CodeGoo seen a gap in the market and decided to make their new iPhone camera app called Camera Genius (well the name says it all really).
It is based more so on taking the right picture rather than just upping the specs of the camera. Take for example their feature called the “Rule of Thirds”. Basically, this feature divides the screen up into nine sections with three horizontal lines and three vertical ones. This technique is used by professional photographers to offset their subject slightly but it’s made really easy in this app.
The zoom feature is also better than the one that comes standard with the phone as it is more refined. Other cool things about this app include sound recorder which recognises a pre-defined noise to take the picture, Big Button which lets you tap anywhere on the screen to take the picture instead of fumbling for the small capture button and anti-shake (well, you figure that one out for yourself).
A cool app for those who are constantly snapping pictures on their iPhone but want more out of 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.
Even though there is a global recession closing businesses, putting people out of work and somehow still giving top bankers big bonuses, companies still have bills to pay. The most widely used way to pay bills is via the tried and tested paper way. A bill comes in, it’s circulated and approved by all those necessary before being shipped down to accounting where it can sit for weeks before it is paid.
That’s assuming that it makes it that far. Anyone who ever worked in a big company will tell you that invoices and bills seem to grow their own legs and go walkies quite a lot, often unnoticed until an angry supplier calls up.
Bill.com looks to change all that. The company, which has just raised 17 million dollars, takes the whole thing digital. When a paper bill comes into a company, they fax it to a special number and when an e-mail bill comes in they e-mail it to a special address. Then, when they log into Bill.com they will all be there in digitised form. Then all the managers who need to sign off on the bill can simply click ‘Approve’. The bill is then set to a status where by accounting will take control. They can then pay the bill via transfer and all is done and dusted.
Many companies report that Bill.com has halved the amount of man time it used to take in paying bills. This is because everything is all in one place where everyone can approve or pay the bill at a time that suites them. This way, a bill doesn’t become stuck at a managers desk for days because he/she is busy, leaving others waiting around to sign. It also dramatically reduced the chances of the bill getting lost or misconstrued.
This is a great web tool for any medium or large business where bills seem to eat up too much company time.
Netbooks are taking the market by storm. While they haven’t overtaken the laptop or notebook in many areas including sales they are ideal for family environments where each person has a netbook for e-mail, internet etc… and perhaps one central computer when you need performance and reliability. Syncing and even using those net-books with a Windows OS can be annoying because the screen is small and there isn’t a lot of RAM to keep you ticking over.
This is where Jolicloud comes in. It’s a new OS designed especially for netbooks. The desktop OS is designed like the main screen of a smart-phone with large icons taking you to your main programs and websites such as Twitter, Google, RSS feeds, E-mail and Skype. This is a great feature. Think about it. On a netbook you haven’t got a lot of things that need to be done. Just basic things so you might as well have them all up on the home screen along with some great search tools and tabs.
The netbook is based around the app idea. You can run a number of apps right on the desktop even if they are web based. For example, Wikipedia and Gmail are all available to open on the desktop. Twitter and Facebook are also available for your social needs. The interactivity and smart-phone feel of Jolicloud makes it so much better than what others would have left it at.
It’s also very easy to install and is designed to be installed on Netbooks with limited performance capabilities. The layout and the themes look great. Its basic but has great colours and is finished nicely. All in all, this is a great OS filled a gap in the market and I’m sure that many will flock to it. 8/10
Sixty years ago a fuzzy image of two guy names Neil and Buzz crackled onto TVs around the world with the famous line “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind”. Every television station seems to be going berserk showing anything remotely related to the event such as nostalgic summaries, conspiracy theories, sci-fi, interviews and documentaries. Here on Crenk however, we like to give you stuff that’s worth your time. Have you ever wondered just what the Russians and the Americans and everyone else in the International Space Station gets up to? Well now you can watch it all live.
NASA TV have set up streaming cameras in the space station that run continuously, streaming it all back down to earth onto your screen. I watched it for a few moments as a NASA technician repaired the US toilet. Apparently, it stopped working and the US astronauts had to ask the Russians if they could use their toilet. Good thing they said ‘yes’ too.
The video and sound quality are superb, keeping in mind that their being streamed from space. There is also a running commentary telling you what each astronaut is up to and why he/she is doing that. They also alternate to different positions around the Space Stations. For example, I seen a Russian chowing down on some space food, an American fixing a loo and two Canadians floating around talking to someone at home about their day.
If you’re into all that space stuff then this is worth a go. You can also get an app for Windows Sidebar in Vista that streams it onto your desk top. NASA TV is also worth a peek if you just want to see where your tax dollars end up. To have a look, click here. 7/10
Bookofcooks.com is just another one of those cool finds on the internet that we’re reviewing here on Crenk lately. These ‘finds’ of ours are useful and insightful – serving a purpose to some if not all people. For example, seathound.com was reviewed here yesterday. That had a bigger market than bookofcooks.com which is, in comparison, rather limited.
I logged in and put my critic hat on. But then I took it off because this was just too easy to review. It serves a purpose. A small one that might come in handy if the yellow pages have spontaneously combusted and every restaurant within a 12 mile radius of your house has “Closed for Renovation”. Basically, if you’re in need of a cook for an event or just want a simple birthday cake whipped up you type in your location. Simple right?
So for example, New York. From this I got … sweet nothing. That stupid map just kept flickering around showing me smiling people in Orlando wearing chef costumes. After a while, I got the thing to work having signed out then back in and was greeted by an indistinguishable list of cooks, caterers and chefs. I was like ‘what use is this?’
I could have swam to Shetland Island near Scotland, found a cook from the rural population, and swam home again with a roasted wild boar on my back by the time bookofcooks.com would have found me a chef called ‘Sandy’ in Orlando. Except, wait, I wanted a chef in NEW YORK!
If you’re a cook, I wouldn’t bother advertising your services here. Just stick to the local flyers or a simple website. You could spend an hour of your time setting up a profile, uploading pics and references only to have someone 200 miles away ask you to cook for them.
I truly wish I had something good to say about this. It’s not like I enjoy slating websites. This could have been good had they developed it right but its just to time consuming, complicated and troublesome to ever be used in an emergency.
Really and truly, this is utterly useless. If you want a chef in your area and the yellow pages has turned to ash, every food business is now populated by shirtless men lifting RSJs and every cook book in the land doesn’t have the right dish…use Google. 3/10
Twitter has taken off like a Chinese Firework in the last few months. It wasn’t long before other started to cash in by creating their own Twitter using sites with a twist. For example, we reviewed Trazzler in June and a host of other twitter inspired sites.
Now we have TwiPho.net . Upon seeing the URL, I assumed it was twitter on your phone and I didn’t really see the originality of it all. Then I jumped on in and discovered it was Twitter Photo. Basically, this is a platform whereby people can submit their photos (usually taken at events, news stories etc on mobile phones) and submit them to the service.
Then when a user goes on (such as me) and types in say … Michael Jackson, I’ll be shown the latest Photo Tweets like hundreds of people gathered around the Millennium Stadium in the UK holding candles. Developed by Mark Goddard, it’s still in the Beta phase and as such operates on a small scale in comparison to its older brother.
Where as in Twitter tweets come in on the second, tweets only come by on a specific subject such as Chuck Norris or Dog every few minutes (or even hours depending on how specific you search terms is).
I can’t see it catching on as photos don’t have the same simplicity adored by fans of Twitter. However, it’s a cool website with easy-to-use functions. It serves a purpose – the Flickr of Twitter.
for surfing the internet and taking care of all those tasks. The reason why this is the best netbook for the home is because of the price. At just $299 it’s a fine purchase to make to fill the gap when someone else is using the family PC or you just want to relax in bed and check you e-mail or RSS. It also doesn’t look and feel cheap like other netbooks for the same price. It can run for over five hours playing video and using software so it’s ideal for entertainment and heavy usage.
Asus Eee PC
e other too. Again, it has 1GB of RAM and a 1.66GHx processor doing all the work for you. It’s really sturdy and solidly built however I don’t like how it lost its Express Card slot which was on the previous model.
