Archive for: tool

Stupid Tool Of The Week: Wand to Kill Swine Flu

h1n1 If you’ve rode the bus, gone shopping or just been in a public area then the chances are you’ve touched the dreaded H1N1 virus. It was probably just some guy sneezing and then hundreds of people touched the same handrail as him. I guess that’s how it spreads. Then, you went home and turned on the family PC and typed out a blog post or just surfed. Now it’s all over the keyboard and mouse. Oh God! We’re doomed!

Not really, because at the end of the day it’s just like the normal flu and 99% of those infected can’t tell the difference and can simply ride it out in bed for a week or so.

However, a new UV germ killing wand has been released and claims it can massacre any H1N1 germs living on a surface. Well, 98% of them anyway. When it’s held a few inches over countertops and other surfaces it kills pretty much any germ living on there or renders them incapable of multiplying. It costs $70 from Hammacher and Schlemmer. Here’s what they said on the product page:

“Also capable of killing MRSA, mold, and dust mites, the UV-C light penetrates viral and bacterial membranes and destroys their DNA, rendering the microorganisms incapable of reproduction and survival. Unlike liquid disinfectants, UV-C light can sanitize keyboards, upholstered furniture, cell phones, or any delicate surface that harbors germs.”

Some may say this is exploiting the fears of millions – but then they’ll probably buy the thing.

Talon: Free Screen Capture Tool

Aviary has just launched Screen Capture Talon that can let you capture any webpage from any browser, by simply putting Aviary.com/ in front of the URL. You can capture a page at different resolutions or to only capture a portion of the page as well.

After capturing the page, you can edit it, add simple markup to it and save it to your desktop.

webpage-capture

Compete Launches New Interface for its Properties

As we mentioned a few days ago Compete was releasing a new user interface on the 15th of April. The time has come and here is what the new interface looks like.

compete-new-user-interface-logo

The interface has had a huge makeover, in which now combines all of Compete’s business elements in a much simplier way. All of Compete’s solutions can be now found in a simple hearder bar, which offers everything from Analytics to Keyword tools. The analytics tools has a much cleaner and easy to user interface, but Compete is still trying to push Pro accounts as much as possible.

Overall the feel of the site is much better than before, and with the cleaner finish the usability of the site increases. I just wish my traffic would increase!

20 Twitter Applications Everyone Should Be Using

Twitter is growing all over the world and thousands of people are joining on a daily basis. I thought we would put together a quick list of our top 20 Twitter applications.

Twitter Toolbar – Downloading this free toolbar gives you instant access to Twitter.  You can use the toolbar to access online Twitter tools, check your Twitter stats, post your updates and more.  Versions are available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Twitoria – This simple application lets you quickly find out which of your followers has not been actively tweeting.  Easily sort through your network of followers and purge the inactive users.

Monitter – Get a live streaming view at what Twitter users in your location are saying about you or your small business.  Simply insert keywords you would like to search for and the surrounding area you would liked monitored.

Bubble Tweet – This unique application lets you post a short video message that pops up on your Twitter profile in a bubble shaped player.  You can personally introduce yourself and/or your business to anyone who visits your profile.

Twitter Gallery – A collection of free backround themes for your Twitter account.  You can use the one click installation or manually install them yourself.  Lots of nice designs and colors to choose from.

Tweepler – Simplify the way you manage your Twitter followers.  Tweepler enables you to easily sort through new followers and accept them or ignore them on one simple screen.  They have made accepting followers easier by giving the Tweepler user the followers stats and last 3 tweets in one screen view.  This will save you time by eliminating the need to visit each individual follower’s profiles.

Twit This – Allow visitors to your blog or website to easily post Twitter messages about you or your business.  Post the TwitThis button to your website or blog pages with the instructions and coding provided on their site.

StockTwits – Follow and join into conversations with traders and investors.  An active community of investors are sharing their views on current market conditions and recent news happenings. You can quickly see what others are saying about investments in your portfolio.

HelloTxt – Update your status to several social networking sites in one simple step.  You can choose from over 35 social sites to post to including Twitter.

TwitterFox – This Firefox extension is one of my personal favorites.  You can post Twitter updates without visiting the Twitter site each time.  A small icon is added to the bottom of your Firefox status bar.  The icon opens to reveal your friend’s most current updates.  You can add your updates from that dialog box, even for multiple Twitter accounts.

Future Tweets – Do you have something to promote on Twitter tomorrow but are afraid of forgetting to do it?  With FutureTweets, you can schedule your tweet ahead of time for a specific date and time.  Even schedule reoccuring tweets to post daily, monthly, even yearly.

TwitPic – Share your favorite pictures on Twitter.  This would be a good way to introduce your new product to your network of followers.

twtQpon – Create exclusive coupons for your business services or products and share them with your Twitter followers.

Tweetburner – This site is designed to help you track your tweets.  With Tweetburner you can shorten URLs and track the clicks your tweets accumulate.

Tweetbeep – Just like Google Alerts, Tweetbeep tracks Twitter conversations that mention you, your business or your products and services.  Alerts are sent to you via email.

Twitter Counter – Proudly display the number of Twitter followers on your business blog or website.  Add the badge to your site and invite customers to follow you on Twitter.

Group Tweet – This app enables all employees within your company to post updates which can be privately viewed only by your group of approved members.

Twitter Safe – This free service protects your years of hard work building your community of followers.  This one click backup will restore your network of followers in the event that your list is compromised.

Twitxr – Post product pictures and updates from your mobile phone directly to Twitter.

Track This – This app enables tracking of any UPS, USPS, FedEx or DHL shipment.  Updates are sent to your Twitter account direct messages whenever your package changes location.

JumboURL: The Worlds Second Ever URL Extending Service

There are so many url shortening websites on the web these days and more and more are popping up every day. Today I was using stumbleupon when I was bored for a couple of minutes and came across a bit of a different take on url shortening. JumboURL is the complete opposite to url shortening, its a url extending service.

JumboURL claims to be the second website of its kind on the net and I’m surprised it wasn’t the first. I’m not entirely too sure what the point is of this service. Why would you be looking to extend you url? Anyways, its an interesting service and decent site to check out.

MySocialButtons: Find Social Networking Buttons and Icons for Your Blog or Site

Have you ever spent a lot of time searching around the Internet to find the perfect social media button that can be added to your site? Well stop searching and head over to MySocialButtons. MySocialButtons does what it says on the can and offers free social networking icons and buttons to download. Buttons include TTwitter, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon and come in various different colours, styles and sizes.

TorrentZen: The Live Bittorrent Search Engine

Have you ever struggled to find the torrents you are looking for? This means that you have to travel to 10 different sites until you find something that vaguely looks like the right torrent! TorrentZen aims to come to your rescue. TorrentZen is a live bittorrent search engine that brings the results of some of your favourite bittorrent search engines.

TorrentZen works in the same way as other torrent tracks but instead of actually hosting pages with the results, they provide a link to those pages on other search engines. Therefore TorrentZen functions in the same basic way as a meta search engine.

torrentzen-website-logo

26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About

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.

So, without further ado…

TinyChat

tinychat

With TinyChat you can create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Chat rooms are disposable and can be created within seconds.

KeepHD

keephd

With KeepHD, you can download the high defintion version of youtube videos and also fetch the FLVs and 3GPs for your mobiles.

Prezi

prezi

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.

Wix

wix

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.

Nice Translator

nice-translator

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!

Task Five

task-five

A to-do list with a twist. It streamlines tasks in an elegant calendar view

Pizap

pizap

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.

whspr!

whspr

Need to receive a message by email, but can’t (or don’t want to) give out your email address? whspr! gives you a URL to share instead.

WobZip

wobzip

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…

Anyvite

anyvite

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

fliggo

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.

Yidio

yidio

Yidio combines over 200 million videos and offers one of the largest video search engines on the Web.

SlideRocket

sliderocket

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

ziddu

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.

Mufin

mufin

Mufin is your music discovery engine, that will let you easily discover new music among millions of tracks. With the sound that you dig!

YouTube Reloaded

youtube-reloaded

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

friendpaste

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

survs

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.

SendPhotos

sendphotos

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

backup-url

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.

RapidStack

rapidstack

Rapidstack is a realtime Rapidshare link searcher. It scans the links before they are displayed as results and only working links are displayed.

CC:Betty

ccbetty

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!

Sigpad

sigpad

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.

FeedWeaver

feedweaver

Create your own RSS feed by combiningRSS feeds from your favorite websites, and use filters to choose what you want in it!

Twe2

twe2

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

markkit

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.

HHTimesheet: Web Based Time and Expense Tracking Software

HHTimesheet is a new web based time and expense tracking software solution. HHTimesheet is aimed to increase your visibility over the health of your projects and facilitate the budget estimation and cost control.

Features of HHTimesheet include tracking time and log expenses, timesheet approval, iphone support, reporting and it all being web based.

HHTimesheet is very simple to use and has a great interface. Currently HHTimesheet is offering a free 30 day trial and then it is only $0.70 per weekly timesheet. Additionally they have an option of contacting them direct and actually purchase the tool as a piece of software and hosting it on your own dedicated server.

hhtimesheet

Produle: Create Flash Based Applications Online for Free

produle-logoProdule is a software as a service (hosted) solution which allows users to create flash based applications online and then distribute them. Produle has some great features and benefits including no installation, automatic updates, global availability, cross-platform (works under PC, Mac and Linux). Moreover users can design and publish flash apps with no time consuming compilation or uploading, it’s just instant.

Produle can be used for a wide range of projects including widgets, banners, promos, animations, product guides, data apps, presentations, user interfaces for web services and any other possible interactive web content. Since the applications will have no persistent produle branding, they can be fully customized to suit your needs.

Produle is a great tool for new flash developers because of it easy of use. However, options don’t seem to be as interactive as other widget tools in the market at the moment such as Sprout Builder.

produle-home-page

Top 5 Multi-Search Tools for Find The Best Torrents

Previously here on Crenk we have talked about the top torrent trackers on the web and this time I want to outline the top 5 multi-search torrent tools.

NowTorrents. Searches up to twelve sites at once. I like the file type tabs and health indicator, and they offer a Firefox and IE compatible search plugin.

uSniff. I wrote about uSniff before, and I use it quite often. I don’t really search a lot of different sites, usually just Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and they’re both supported (along with six others). The interface is clean and responds quickly – the search box throws some people off, though. I don’t understand why, it’s giant, orange, and says “search” on it. They also have a search plugin for IE and Firefox.

ScrapeTorrent. Offers a nice preference page and searches nine sites at once. Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and Demonoid are included, and they’re my go-to sites anyways. I approve!

Speckly. I hate the way it displays results: gobs and gobs of text, Google style, and all on one page. There aren’t any sorting options, though you can at least view by file type.

Torrentz. Technically it searches multiple sites, but you’ll get a general results page first. Clicking one of the results will take you to a listing of all the individual torrents. I find it an annoying process, and don’t use Torrentz as a result.

Lovely Charts: Best Web Based Tool For Flowcharts and Wireframes

Lovely Charts is a slick new web-based tool for creating flowcharts and wireframes. Features you’d expect from a similar desktop app come standard: copy-paste, undo up to 20 steps, and pan/zoom all work the way you’re used to. Objects snap into place, and the basic drawing tools are all there. The only drawback? You can only save one chart at a time until you upgrade to the pro version. Depending on your needs, though, the 18 euro for 6 months might be worth it to you.

The advantages of having a web-based wireframe app are obvious if you’re a designer who works from home and an office. You can access your stuff from anywhere, and let collaborators work on it if need be. Lovely Charts also comes pre-stocked with some network diagram symbols and wireframe templates that could save you a lot of time. You might want to wait to buy until they implement a few more export formats. JPG and PNG are currently supported, with more on the way.