There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like Google Documents and Zoho Writer, to the more sophisticated like Basecamp. In the end each of them appeal to different markets, different segments of the industry and each of them function differently. So with those options we choose one that best fits our needs and we run with it. But what if there was a sexier option, something with real personality, but still maintaining all the same functionality?
Now there is. Introducing WIPspace, the creative collaboration tool that offers up multiple levels of engagement in a sleek, sexy, yet functional package. The image blow is a visual diagram of all the things WIPspace is capable of.
You feeling it yet? There’s real fire under this engine, and the multitude of offerings it has makes it a very robust package. Working on projects or movies, this space allows you to fully interact with off-site teams, and engage the client all at the same time.
Be sure to watch the videos and test drive it. Let us know what you think and how it compares with Basecamp or some of the other collaboration tools out there.
It’s not uncommon for us here at Crenk to come across web applications that do the same thing, the only differences are that some might do it better or worse than another. In this case, the team has come across a very interesting music listening application called TubeRadio.
Once again for the music lover in all of us, this just astounds me. Now it does not have the capability to tap into your own stored music, but as powerful as this search engine is, this could very well replace my Pandora or Last.Fm efforts, even if only for a little while. TubeRadio calls itself the Youtube for music. After you see the video below, you’ll know what I mean.
So what do you think? They search is amazing and very thorough. I’m surprised at how music it can find, and even more so by how seamless the integration of listening and/or watching your music can be. During the video the speaker mentions it being like your personal MTV. Yeah, MTV, from when it used to actually play music.
My experience with TubeRadio has been a good one. I’ve found what I want to listen to, it streams everything smoothly with little problem. In my opinion the only thing really missing is the ability to tap into my own music, but I can overlook that for now since I’m lining up some great music of my own, and of other recommended playlists.
Search has become a hot topic for the past year. Bing, Google, Yahoo, and others have fought for dominance and in this battle, users have been introduced to a bevy of innovations in their searches. The concept of search is nice, type in a few words, or phrases and find content directly related to your query. Some searches are more successful than others all the while introducing users to content across hundreds of thousands of pages. Still, most users will not go past the first two or three pages at most.
SurfCanyon strives to change the user’s search experience and focus not just on getting content, but becoming a tool for discovery. Much like a tool we spoke about some time ago, Worio, SurfCanyon attaches itself to your browser of choice and adds a target tab that allows for further discover of related content right from your normal search. The reason behind such an app is the fact that sometimes your content is not where you expect it. I with users not typically going past page 3, SurfCanyon will pull related content together for you and place it right under all the links you see on the first page.
You don’t just get deeper results, but as seen below you can dig even deeper into your results. This provides a real drill down experience for search discovery. This immersive search experience might be something you’ve been longing for. There’s lots of results to search through and the concept is to provide you answers for even the most complicated of queries.
Our friends over at TorrentFreak have put together an amazing list of Pirate Bay alternatives in a variety of areas. Here is the basic list.
Full Pirate Bay Alternatives
The only full Pirate Bay alternatives are sites that index torrent files, are open to everyone and also have a working tracker. Unfortunately, there are only a few sites out there that offer this full package -there are four of them below. We decided to include Demonoid here because it tracks many public torrents.
Torrent indexers are sites that have a searchable directory of torrent files, but don’t host a (public) tracker of their own. Mininova has a tracker, but they only allow ‘featured’ torrents uploaded through their content distribution service. The most used torrent indexers are:
BitTorrent meta-search engines are yet another brand of torrent sites. They don’t have a tracker and don’t host any torrent files on their servers. Instead they search for and link to torrents hosted on third party sites.
Most of the larger private trackers require an invite to join, but there are always a few that allow new members. Below are four of these (open) private trackers and more can be found on Btracs.
Torrent indexers and meta-search engines can be used to find torrents, but none of them will be of much use without a stable BitTorrent tracker. Standalone BitTorrent trackers are much needed, they handle the communication between downloaders but don’t index any torrents themselves.
The last category of Pirate Bay alternatives are the do-it-yourself projects. By using the three ingredients below The Pirate Bay can be easily rebuilt. It might take a few hours, but then the path to world domination is clear.
Google, the mother of all search engines has a filetype:torrent search command that allows you to find torrent files scattered across the Internet. Don’t tell the MPAA and RIAA.
If you are a geek blogger like me, you would know that the having a good ranking within the most important search engines it is a big deal if you are trying to promote your blog. KPMRS (Keyword Position Monitoring Report Service) can help you with that by monitoring constantly the page rank you have with Google, Yahoo and Bing.
How to use it is very simple, you don’t even have to be registered to receive any result, you can query and get some instant results about your site and a special keyword. The free registration can also give you: Email Alerts (when position changes or when a competitor has passed you); weekly reports; and monitor for Google’s Page Rank and Alexa.
Here’s a query about my blog with a keyword that I know I have a good ranking about it:
It is pretty cool to have these results and see the differences between the search engines; and of course will be very helpful to you if you are setting up your business to evaluate the status of popularity.
There has been a lot of talk recently about Bing and what amounts of traffic and growth it has been seeing. Other blogs such as the Inquisitr have been talking about how Bing has been bringing in more traffic than Yahoo. I just wanted to run through my first impressions of Bing and the results they have sent to Crenk.
Bing is very much the same as Live.com and I really think this is a marketing ploy from Microsoft than any major changes. The search engine still delivers poor results in comparison to Google and Yahoo. However, they are now adding channel specific search engines. For example if im looking for flights Bing works this out and then delivers me to the flight specific search engine within Bing. Thus, doing search this way provides more specific advertising opportunities and deliverys more detailed results that Google just cant compete with.
With regards to results from Bing to Crenk it has been very minimal. Bing has sent Crenk 171 pageviews, while Yahoo sent 1,629 and Google 60,195 in the same period. Thus, Bing has a huge amount of work to do to bring itself up to where it needs to be.
Alternative search engines seem to be popping up everywhere lately. Oneriot is yet another alt search engine but this one seems to actually provide some useful results. Like most other search engines Oneriot provides basic search results in a basic format. However, unlike other search engines, they prioritise their information based on its current popularity within their community. Popular results are a great idea, cause on Google I’m sick of seeing search results that are sold old they are now just obsolete.
Oneriot pushes our revelant, fresh, friendly and search results with real time energy. When using Oneriot you might notice that there is a search result above the others and this is because of their pulsing service. Pulsing is what they define as a search results that is getting buzz right now. The more real time buzz you get the higher on search results those articles will be and thus more traffic for your site.
Oneriot is a clean and very user friendly search engine that I expect to be hearing more about in the coming years. Im just a little worried about their current revenue model, cause there doesn’t seem to be one.
I have been wondering for a long time now “what makes a good startup page”? How does an internet user determine what will be their start page and what just doesn’t do it for them? In this article I’m going to run through some of the basic types of startup pages out there today and see what characteristics are good for me and what aren’t.
The first type of startup pages are the ‘add your own modules‘ type of startup pages. About a year and a half ago these types of pages were being developed left right and center, but lately they seem be going into liquidation very fast.
Netvibes - Netvibes is a module based startup page that has been growing from strength to strength recently. They are based in France but have been able to build up traffic worldwide. All modules can be customised in whatever style the user sees fit. Netvibes is the leader in this type of startup page and I every time I head back to their site they seem to have made improvements.
Pageflakes - Pageflakes is a startup page very similar to Netvibes except they don’t have the adoption levels of Netvibes. Pageflakes was acquired by Live Universe about either months ago because they were struggling and running out of liquid funds.
iGoogle - iGoogle is basically the Google version of Netvibes but with the Google search option at the top of the page. iGoogle has very limited themes, but it is simple to integrate with everything Google of course.
These types of startup pages are good for the user because they allow you to place whatever modules you want onto the page, but there is such a thing as information overload. Personally, Im not so sure about these types of sites as startup pages, because they are simply just ugly to look at because everything is a base size module and they just take too long to setup!
The next type of startup pages are the ‘one page aggregators‘. This type of startup page brings together some of the most popular rss feeds from around the internet and puts them all onto one page. Basically it is a rss reader for the lazy.
Popurls - Popurls is the original startup aggregator which brings together some of the best sites in the tech industry. Sites include Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, Metafilter and more. The site has a very simple layout showing the top 10 from each site. Additionally, they have added videos from Youtube and photos from Flickr.
Alltop - Alltop is a new site from Guy Kawasaki (evangelist at Apple), in which he takes the idea of popurls and spreads it to pretty much every time of market. This is basically an rss reader for every type of industry for the most basic of internet users.
Original Signal – Original Signal used to be one of the leaders in this space, but recently they have been losing market share fast. Original Signal covers mainly tech and business topics, but they have seemed to update the service in many years.
These startup pages are great if you just want to have a quick look at one site in the morning and see what is happening around the world on a specific topic. However, they don’t allow users to choose the rss feeds you want to read, this can be done easily by using an rss reader.
Finally the other type of startup page is the simple search engine and 99% of the time its Google. Personally Google is my startup page but mainly because I find it easier to click the home button at the top and then type in my search, instead of typing it into the top of Firefox. Google as a page is so simplistic and it provide immense functionality behind that basic exterior.
Overall, what makes a good startup page? This is probably a different answer for every single person. However, I do think that startup pages need to be simple, have a good search option and allow the user to customise if they wish. As always simplicity and functionality are the keys.
SnappyFingers is a new question and answer search engine that is slowly making waves in the search space. SnappyFingers currently has over 10 million questions in their database and has recently partnered with Kosmix in which you can see Snappy’s results within their searches.
SnappyFingers is a great place to come if you are looking to find the answers to the most basic of questions. Their search box is simple to use and users can just type in a question as if they were saying it out loud. This reminds me a little of Powerset in which was purchased by Microsoft for $100m about six months ago.
In terms of downside I mainly think that all comes from design. The design of SnappyFingers needs a huge amount of work. Currently the SnappyFingers seems to be set onto a fixed width, in which it really needs to be fluid. Additionally, the questions are actually quite hard to read and if the results were show in the same kind of way as Powerset or Google, then it would be much easier to scan the page looking for the answers you require. Finally the sidebar they are using is complete the wrong size for this type of site. A 300px sidebar is not needed, I’m sure 160px would be more than adequate.
I think SnappyFingers has a lot of potential, but I’m really not keen on the design and if I owned the company that would be the first thing I changed. Additionally, I’m not really sure where this company is going and what market they are trying to enter, because I know they are a question and answer search engine, but why would I use SnappyFingers over Yahoo Answers for example?
Bit Torrent search engines have been in the news a lot lately. There have been always issues with sites like the Pirate Bay who find it really hard to get out of the news, and with a blog called TorrentFreak you are now able to track all this new instantly. Below are the top 5 bit torrent trackers if you are looking to get your hands on all the free music, games or movies you can get.
Isohunt.com – If you want to use this tremendous Canadian site, you better use it while you can. Note: any torrent listed as “ISOhunt release” means that it is a file verified by the administrators…a nice feature to help you get authentic torrents, not fake files.)
The Pirate Bay – by readership size, is the most popular torrent search site today. Pirate Bay also has an immense database of 600,000+ torrents, the single largest database available on the web.
Torrentspy.com – March 24, 2008: Torrentspy has voluntarily closed its doors. Instead of conforming to the American court mandates to change their privacy policies, the Torrentspy team has opted instead to cease operations. A sad day for downloaders everywhere.
Torrentscan.com – (a meta-search engine: Torrenscan is a search engine that searches other torrent search engines)
Bitsoup – Bitsoup is a growing favorite amongst P2P downloaders. As the trend towards private torrent sharing continues, you will need to signup and join as a member to participate in the Bitsoup swarm.
P.S. Mininova should probably be in the list, but I thought I would let you find new services than just the biggest.
There’s a lot of sites out there that offer collaboration tools. From the simplified office collaboration tools like Google Documents and Zoho Writer, to the more sophisticated like Basecamp. In the end each of them appeal to different markets, different segments of the industry and each of them function differently. So with those options we choose one that best fits our needs and we run with it. But what if there was a sexier option, something with real personality, but still maintaining all the same functionality?
It’s not uncommon for us here at Crenk to come across web applications that do the same thing, the only differences are that some might do it better or worse than another. In this case, the team has come across a very interesting music listening application called 
If you are a geek blogger like me, you would know that the having a good ranking within the most important search engines it is a big deal if you are trying to promote your blog. 
Netvibes 
Pageflakes 
iGoogle 
Popurls 
Alltop 
SnappyFingers
