Crenk » Web Apps

Go Squared Release Their New Live Stats Platform in Closed Beta

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:44:29 +0000

Traffic analysis is one of the most important parts of understanding your sites and its readers. Im a firm believer that sites and blogs need to really get to know their audience and offer them whatever they want.

GoSquared has launched their new LiveStats product in which they are trying to combined with their exsiting SellAds and GetSeen products. LiveStats is a real-time traffic monitoring app for small and medium sized websites. If you head over to http://gosquared.com, you can signup and then add your site. Once accepted you will be able to see in real time users visiting your site and their basic information.

Information available includes:

Browser
Country
Operating System
URL
Enterance Source

There are a few additional options, but instead of running through everything I just thought I would add their introduction video:

GIMP: A Great Free Photoshop Alternative

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:21:04 +0000

Photoshop software can be expensive – especially considering that most of us don’t use it that often. Obviously the industry standard is Adobe Photoshop. This program has been a cornerstone in image editing and photography for years now. However, I’d like to share with the Crenk readers a great freeware Photoshop program that’s just as good – if not better because…well… it’s free!

At the minute, GIMP is in version 2.6 and is available to download here.

It has photo enhancement, a fully customizable interface, barrel distortion, digital retouching, great hardware support, numerous file formats and the ability to run on pretty much any OS.

Here are a couple of screenshots from GIMP:

So for all you artists, photographers and inquisitive geeks out there – GIMP.

All My Apps: The Easy Way To Install Software on Your PC or Mac

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:02:26 +0000

Allmyapps makes software installation a breeze. No matter how many applications you need, 1 click is all you need to have all your favorite applications installed on your PC. Allmyapps also keeps your applications safe! Would you need to reinstall your system, Allmyapps takes care of reinstalling all your favorite applications in the blink of an eye.

With Allmyapps, installing software applications has become so easy that you’ll soon find yourself installing a lot of great new applications! Be prepared to enjoy your computer like never before! Allmyapps provides some great application ideas that I have never even heard of, but I’m sure they can make me a lot more product, but on the other side there are a lot of time killers out there!

Firefox 3.7 with Office-like Ribbon?

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:52:03 +0000

Mozilla team is working really hard on brainstorming the idea and design of Firefox 3.7 (currently in 3.5, 3.6 it’s just around the corner). What’s the main idea? Hide the Menu bar and use a very similar look-n-feel of Office 2007/Office 2010 Ribbon.

They are using their Wiki to give us some of the advances made so far, the ideas floating in the air and of course receive feedback from most of the Mozilla lovers (and non-lovers as well, why not?). And here are the ideas that they have so far:

Embracing Glass: Toolbar and Tabs using Glass. Raised translucent buttons that are slightly glossy to meld with the toolbar. Raised 3D look to achieve tactile “feel”.
Neutral Tones: Overall neutral color scheme that can transition among platforms. Can remain attractive and slick without fighting for focus from web content.
Hiding the Menu Bar: Hiding the menubar by default (on Vista/7) allows us to use Glass, free up vertical space and retain platform consistency.
Page and Tools Buttons: Condense and trim existing menu structure into two buttons “Page” and “Tools”. Similar to Safari and Chrome.
Combine Stop/Reload: Combine Stop and Reload into one button. Reduces visual “clutter” and combines two buttons that have mutually exclusive functionality.
Home Button/Tab: Remove “Home” Button from default toolbar. Move functionality to a “Home Tab” containing your homepage.

More info: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Windows_Theme_Revamp/Direction_and_Feedback

Personally I think those are very nice and significant changes. Office, Vista and 7 seems that they are setting the standards of any UI (no surprise there, Windows will still be the world’s main OS for a few years more). But the good news is that Mozilla it is also trying to establish browsers standards, like the “Page and Tools Buttons” that is a common feature in Safari and Chrome.

And also the “Combine Stop/Reload” feature it is something that I’ve been waiting to see in Firefox for a long time. I know, it’s a very tiny thing, but don’t you love having the same functionality in different browsers?

And what are the other changes that you would include?

ReadTwit: Turn Twitter Into an Aggregate RSS Reader or Feed

Steven Finch — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:54:18 +0000

Readtwit is a 3-step service that will seamlessly integrates this aggregation power of the people you follow – into your RSS reader.

Readtwit, a new web service by Lionite does one simple thing – it captures weblinks from your Twitter stream and then publishes the content as an RSS feed. You can then use any feed reading application to read it.

Head over to ReadTwit and hit the ‘Get Fed’ button
Choose your RSS reader (and if it’s not there click the ‘Get me the feed‘ button and paste the feed into your reader)

Readtwit automatically prevents content duplication caused by retweets. It does that by grouping together similar links that are sent in the same time-frame. Once you’ve set up your RSS feed, you can further tweak Readtwit to prevent (or at least minimize) information overload.

First, you can filter out specific users. This feature will help you keep focused on useful content, as you can set it to not display links by people who post too much (and also exclude yourself, in order to not get back the links you post, as retweets).

Top 3 Army Fitness Websites and Apps

Dean — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 21:19:30 +0000

Right, those of you who read my twitter will know that I’ve decided it’s time to get into shape. I’m by no means obese. However I would like to be able to jog for five minutes without needing to stop ten times for ten-minute breaks.

I put some good play lists on my Mp3, dug the tracky bottoms out of the wardrobe (oh, the shame) and put on the stopwatch. Then it dawned on me – I don’t know the first thing about getting fit. Therefore, I did what anyone in their right mind would do – I Googled.

After sifting through dozens of brutal websites, I came across a few military style sites when it clicked – surely, armies across the world must have SOMETHING! This article is a list of the top three Army websites of real world militaries about getting fit. These cool web apps and videos will hopefully have me in ship shape in no time.

1. The Royal Commandos: This section of their website is dedicated to getting you fit in a short space of time in order to gain entry to them. There are tons of videos showing you how to do the exercises properly, what you should eat and what makes a good schedule. Because it’s from one of the world best fighting forces where physical fitness is of top priority during training, you know you’re not getting the wimpy approach. Easy to use and tones of information on there.

2. 62^nd Infantry .com – This is an unofficial website run by the 62^nd Infantry Battalion of the Irish Reserve Defense Forces. It focuses less on interactive features and more on the training side of things, which I liked. There are charts to figure out your BMI, motivation techniques, goals and targets. Although this is aimed at meeting fitness levels to gain entry for training, it can be used by the average Joe to shed the pounds.

3. Canadian Army. This site doesn’t go into to much detail like the previous two sites, but it does give you some good step-by-step instructions and some goals for joining which you can use as personal targets.

Now, I’m off for a jog.

Download Skype 2.8 for Mac Free

Steven Finch — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:01:10 +0000

There has been a lot of news from Skype lately, Skype new headset, Skype Windows and iPhone improvements, and Skype 4.0 release. Just to jump on the bandwagon Skype has now released their 2.8 version for the Mac. This new version brings two totally new and unique features namely Screen sharing and Skype Access.

Screen Sharing is a key new feature in Skype client for the Mac which allows one easily to see/share all or a portion of their desktop with another Skype user during a call. And for those on the move, Skype Access allows them to pay for Wi-Fi hotspots using their credit.

More new features include:

Improved chat management
Quick Add
Mood message chat
Larger profile pictures
Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests
Add notes to contacts

To download this new version of Skype, simply head over to the Skype website.

Unify your Feeds with FeedStitch

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:23:43 +0000

There’s nothing new if I say that the exponential growth from Internet made the data available for all of us a little bit harder to handle; and of course you can feel this consequence directly with your feeds. FeedStitch tries to simplify that by giving you the chance to unify your common feeds into one.

Using this web app it’s very simple, you only need the feeds URL, add them, and create the category. After that, you can visualize the entries directly from one place and as viewing a blog. You don’t even have to register, you can use any of these accounts to login and create your FeedStitch: Gmail, Twitter, Yahoo!, Facebook, AOL and openID.

Using FeedsStitch:

Start adding your feseds.

Complete the category lists and create the feeds group (in this case, I’m creating “System Center”)

Viewing System Center feeds

You can also customize the name of the URL that represents the FeedStich feed group.

For me, I can never have enough time to review and read all my feeds, and this web app sounds like a good way to arrange and optimize your time.

Looking for more Firefox Add-Ons?

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:01:21 +0000

Besides the Firefox Add-On official site, where anyone can download/upload the add-ons and share it with the community; you can also find Mozdev.org where there are over 250 projects related to Mozilla that are actively in motion by several developers in the mission to “establish Mozilla as a viable application development platform”.

Within the site, you will find several very interesting add-ons and plug-ins to use with Mozilla Firefox. Including the Top-50 most viewed and downloaded projects.

On this list you’ll find very, very useful tools that you can install to improve your browsing experience: Integration with Thunderbird, FTP client, autocopy highlighted text, proxy configurations, RSS reader, etc etc.

Again, another open source project that shows a lot of maturity, adding value and constant improvement. Cheers to that

Gazhoo: Business and Financial Documents, Images and Templates

Steven Finch — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:01:04 +0000

Today I came across a very interesting marketplace, Gazhoo. Gazhoo is a marketplace to buy and sell documents, images, templates and more. Gazhoo seems to have everything from venture capital documents to a stock standard business agreement.

Gazhoo is a great marketplace for business professional who don’t have too much experience in the industry but are trying to get something started. Gazhoo allows users to view half of the document for free in a simple window very similar to Docstoc. Once you have viewed the document and made sure it is the one you want, then you are able to purchase at an affordable price from their very simple marketplace. Prices vary depending upon the document, but they start at about $5.00.

So if you are looking for affordable secure documents then head over to Gazhoo. However, make sure you still have them looked over by a lawyer if you are planning on releasing after your own moderations.

Backing up your blog with BlogBackupr

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:43:07 +0000

BlogBackupr it’s a simple and nice web app that automatically backups all your posts in your blog. It represents a very easy way for you to not worry so much about vulnerabilities in the platform, loosing data, accidental deletion, etc.

It works with all blogs that have RSS-feed, that is the minimum requirement. Among the features that you can find in this web app:

Completely free.
No installation required.
Once you register, the backups are performed regularly without requiring your intervention.
You can export and import all those backups whenever you want.
Automatic restore supported for WordPress.org, WordPress.com and Blogger.com
WordPress users include these backups: full posts, comments, pages, categories and media.
You can have backups without giving your WordPress credentials. Will just use the public feed.
CSS file and images from the blog template are also saved.

This is your administration site where you can execute all necessary tasks with the added blogs:

Go ahead, give it a try.

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2

Augusto Alvarez — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:31:27 +0000

As we’ve announced earlier WordPress is releasing the 2.8 version of the platform, and the development team is working on constantly improving this release. That’s why the WordPress 2.8.1 Beta is now available to the public.

The main differences are related in bugs fixing about the previous version. Here are some of them:

Translation of role names fixed
wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
Upload error messages are now correctly reported
Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
Switched back to curl as the default transport
Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload

To see all tickets that were fixed from Beta 1, check this link. I really enjoy watching this kind of transparency in projects, where you can give your feedback, insert about a bug and see the evolution about it: owner, priority, state.

Download WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2.

AutoTweeter: No need to explain this one right?

Augusto Alvarez — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:17:25 +0000

Well yes, the name says it all AutoTweeter is the application that tweets automatically, what did you expect?

Uses a “tweetfile” (like a clean text file) where each line is considered a tweet; so you can set your tweets in this file and schedule the time where each tweet will be published. It is intended to have the usability for “quote of the day”, “joke of the day”, “did you know”; for that you can have different tweetfiles to use at different times of the day.

The configuration and usability is quite simple and intuitive:

Even though this type of application it is not related to the “twitter spirit”, to instantly share your status or information, still will help users that are trying to increase their number of followers and get more publicity by having a tweets constantly published.

Download AutoTweeter.

Google Voice, Get Ready

Augusto Alvarez — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:55:10 +0000

Google keeps up with his strategy to amaze ourselves constantly. Google Voice is a very interesting project that will allow you to receive all of your calls and messages in one number, and apply special rules whenever you receive these phone calls or messages.

Not convinced yet? There is more:

Integration with Gmail contacts and phones.
Recording conversations.
Manage and listen your voice mails. Including forwarding voice mails to other users.
Forward calls or messages to other six phones.
Text and phone calls within the US completely free.
Conference calls up to four members per conference.
You can set up rules to route each call to a specific number. For example, customers call -> automatically routed to my business phone; daughters call -> rings every phone; wife calling -> blocked
Google Voice can even transcript voice mail via e-mail. Yeap, that is right, you dont have time to listen your voice mails? Google Voice can send it that message as an e-mail with 90% accuracy in the transcript.
Service cost? Completely Free.
Availability? Currently available only for GrandCentral customers. But it is expected an official Google statement about general availability of this service.

Here are some videos about the Google Voice usability and features.

Even though we dont have any confirmation about the release of this new feature, get ready because I am sure it is going to change the way you communicate.

Twitter Stats: Tweet once and never again

Augusto Alvarez — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:04:01 +0000

Recently I’ve posted about an interesting stat of the blogsphere: Over 95% of current blogs in Internet are abandoned, and one of the reasons that I’ve mentioned is the existence of Twitter. Well, I guess similar stats always comes in two. A study made from the Harvard Business revealed a lot of stats regarding to Twitter users, including one related to their users and how they abandon twitter.

10% of the Twitter accounts hold the 90% of the tweets available every day, and most of the users that register themselves usually uses one or two tweets and leave the account completely. Here are some other stats from the report:

So, what we can say about this inconsistency in blogs and twitter? People that start a blog and/or a twitter account but they never update it again… well I’m sure that the answer is one thing, perseverance it’s not a quality for most of us. Specially when we have some expectations and we don’t see a quick result, like I mentioned about blogs and how people relate to that as a “financial independance” and rapidly get disappointed.

Do you persevere with your blogs and twitter?

Where Can I Watch The News Online

Steven Finch — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:01:45 +0000

There are so many user generated video sites available on the internet these days, but sometimes you might not want to see user generated content. Thus, I thought I would put together a very quick list of the best places to view the news online as if you were watching it direct from your television at home.

Livestation – Livestation is a free downloadable video players that streams live news, events, shows from some of the world biggest media companies. Livestation includes services like the BBC, CNN, Fox, MTV, Al Jazeera and more. The service is easy to download and it great to use. The player itself can be changed to any size and you are able to add additional news and radio sources that can be found on the Livestation website.

BBC iPlayer – The BBC iPlayer has been around for quite some time now, and even though they got a lot of harsh press at launch they have been quitely improving the service and it actually now isnt that bad. The iPlayer is a great place to head when you are looking for what has been happening from around the world in the last few days. On the iPlayer they have a dedicated section to BBC News in which will keep you up to date with the major headlines.

Hulu – Hulu is a partnership between News Corp and NBC Universal. Hulu is for USA users only at the moment and it allows them to watch their favourite TV shows, movies and of course news programs all for free. Hulu was born when News Corp and NBC werent happy with the revenues they were receiving from YouTube, so they formed a strategic alliance and launched a free online television service that has been growing at a rapid pace. Hulu has a dedicated news section which allows users to view news from major USA sources as well as smaller sources like Cnet.

Top 8 Free Alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

Steven Finch — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:29:22 +0000

Adobe has some of the most expensive and best product solution in the world, but of course they come at a price. Below are the best 8 free solutions that challenge the Adobe Photoshop program.

1. GIMP

GIMP stands for “GNU image manipulation program”, and it is one of the oldest and most well known alternatives to Photoshop in existence. Although it doesn’t quite have all of them, you’ll find most of the features included in Photoshop somewhere in GIMP. GIMP is cross platform and supported by a large community.

If just having the feature set isn’t enough for you, there is an alternative based on GIMP known as GIMPShop. It’s the same as GIMP, except the layout has been structured as close to Photoshop as possible, so anyone making the transition should still feel right at home.

2. Krita

Krita has been lauded for ease of use and won the Akademy Award for Best Application in 2006. Part of the Koffice suite for Linux, Krita is slightly less powerful than both Photoshop and GIMP, but does contain some unique features.

3. Paint.NET

Paint.NET has grown out of a simple replacement for the well known MSPaint into a fully featured open source image editor with a wide support base. You’ll need Windows to run Paint.NET.

4. ChocoFlop

ChocoFlop is a design application designed exclusively for Mac, optimized for Mac architecture. It’s quick and fairly well featured. This program won’t always be free, but until a stable version is released (it’s currently in beta) they are allowing free use. The program works pretty well as is, and if you’re the type who doesn’t mind an occasional bug it’s certainly worth a look.

5. Cinepaint

Cinepaint is designed primarily for video often used to make animated feature films by major studios, but it is also a great image editor capable of high fidelity 32 bit color. Currently there is no stable version for Windows.

6. Pixia

Pixia was originally designed in Japanese but English versions now exist for this rich editor. Although the original focus was on anime/manga, it is a very capable editor in general. Some of the features are a little counter intuitive, but there are plenty of English tutorials available now if you want to give it a shot. The website seems to have changed recently, so be sure to use our link if you don’t want a Japanese error message. Pixia works for Windows.

7. Pixen

Pixen is designed as a pixel artist’s dream, but has expanded into a smooth and well featured overall editor. It’s definitely best at animation though, if that’s your style. Pixen is Mac (10.4x or later) only.

8. Picnik

Picnik is a web based photo editor that has recently taken off due to a partnership with Flickr. It has all the basic features plus a few advanced ones like layers and special effects. It is cross platform since you only need a browser.

Upload Files To Multiple Hosts At Once With Gazup

Keshav Khera — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:49:11 +0000

So you want to upload a file. For that, you can either head over to a file host like rapidshare, megaupload, mediafire, zshare OR head over to Gazup.com to upload the file to ALL of them at once!

Gazup is a file mirroring site that uploads your file to multiple hosts. Once you upload a file to Gazup, it quickly mirrors that file to multiple hosts, namely 9 of them: Rapidshare, Megaupload, Netload, zShare, FileFactory, HidMyAss, Badongo, MediaFire and Upload Box.

Once the file is mirrored, which does’t take long, you get a download page where all the mirror links are given. This download page is a permanent one so you can share its link with others. You can upload files of any format and max file size is 400Mb (Depends on the hosts you select). You can also upload files by URL, 5 at a time.

There are no daily limits or restrictions. Their service is free but registering gives you certain benefits such as a private control panel, management of uploaded files etc.

[Gazup]

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is a young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

10 Best Extensions To Pimp Out Your Web Browser

eva — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:12:44 +0000

Rather than filling your laptop with chunks of programs and your bookmarks with an overload of web based tools only to end up wasting time, why not have all your favorite tools and plug-ins directly in your web browser? Create your own pimped out browser! Colorful tabs, ad-blockers, pagerank, integrated music players, and other goodies. Here are the 10 best Firefox extensions to get pimped out.

Oh yes, and these extensions are of course, for Firefox. So don’t be lame and use IE6,7,8 or whatever.

1. FoxyTunes

Listen to your music directly from the web browser. Skip the hassle of running iTunes, Winamp or any other media player, that will not only take precious RAM but also force you to jump between programs only to skip a track. FoxyTunes extension is your web browser integrated media player, where you can choose audio source and even change skins to pimp out your browser.

2. Colorful tabs

Who said fashion don’t belong online. In the true words of pimping out your web browser – Colorful Tabs extension is a must. Adding color to a normally gray interface will inspire your daily web exploring.

3. Ad Block Plus

For a less ad-attacking web experience. Ad Block Plus lets you disable and hide all advertisements on the site your visiting. Without annoying banners and pop-ups trying to steal your attention, you are with ABP assured a more personal day on the WWW.

4. User Agent Switcher

See directly in your browser how a website is displayed in Explorer, Netscape and other web browsers. A useful tool when creating web sites since all web browser run on different CSS standards.

5. Search Status

Keep a tab on how websites are ranking in PageRank, Alexa and overall ranking. Get additional information concerning back links, indexed pages and much more SEO goodies.

6. FireFtp

A great extension that sets up a FTP function in your browser with which you can access your server accounts and website root directories without having to download, start or buy any FTP programs to your computer. Perfect for anybody owning a website. Good FTP clients are hard and expensive to find. FireFTP is 100 % free and optimal in usability.

7. Google Toolbar

Perhaps not the most pimped out feature but none the less a must-have extension for your web browser. A toolbar with all necessary functions summoned into one thin bar. The best is that you don’t have to return to Google.com every time you need to make a search. Which is like three hundred times every day.

8. SEO Quake

All useful and necessary SEO tools summoned into one extension. Get PageRank, Backlinks, Yahoo links and many other features displayed above the page or underneath search result in Google. Like an extended SearchStatus.

9. Google Preview

Get a preview of the web design on the website you are about to enter. Only one click away, yet we all know how humans fear the unknown. If anything, Google Preview extension will at least add some graphics to a otherwise quite dull SERP.

10. CoolIris

Activate CoolIris from a button in your web browser navigation bar and get thrown into a world where you can search Google in an image and video interface. The web becomes one big slide show.

And an eleventh because I couldn’t help it.

11. Firebug

I just thought of this as I use it a lot. Trying to figure out why something on the page has a funny font size? Especially when editing CSS for my WordPress blog and then going back and forth in my cpanel hosting manager, I can never figure out why some color or font went AWOL. Firebug is there to load at the base of the browser. Jolly goodness!

And there you have it, 10 great extensions for your web browser that will not only optimize your user experience but also allow you to create your own personalized interface. Remember, installations of multiple extension may cause your web browser to slow down. Just A bit.

AppShopper: The Best iPhone and iPod Touch Applications Directory in Town

Steven Finch — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:22:25 +0000

Apple iTunes has always been so popular and with the launch of the iPhone iTunes has gone to the next level. Every single day Apple sells millions of dollars in the iTunes store just for iPhone applications. With so many applications being launched everyday how do you keep up? Additionally, I have always wondering how much money these applications are making developers and which applications are actually popular.

Today I stumbled across a great new site called AppShopper. AppShopper is a huge directory of all iPhone and iPod Touch applications and allows users to search through apps, find out how much they cost, and find out which applications are actually selling.

Additionally on the AppShopper blog they have great insights into applications within the app store and also all kinda of application related news there is. So if you are looking to easily find applications within the App Store, dont head over to iTunes itself, head to AppShopper.

Twitter redesigns interface, still somewhat unstable

Mike Panic — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:14:16 +0000

While going through the RSS feeds this morning, I saw a great write-up on CNET about the interface redesign on Twitter. Great in that, it’s well written and covers all the positive points, but it seems that Twitter has pushed more emphasis on making their web app look pretty as opposed to actually stable.

Here’s a summery of what is new and changed:

Smaller tabs that were on top of the timeline to the right sidebar, where they can occupy more space, making them larger clicking targets. They also moved the following/followers/updates stats to the top of the page and made them larger, so now I can really see how deflated my follower numbers are.
The most important change, in terms of functionality is the addition of AJAX to the “Home” and “@Replies” pages. Their new implementation allows you to refresh the items in your timeline without having to reload the whole page.
New design customizer with this release, which allows you to change the colors on your Twitter profile with the help of a color wheel.

Great, new ways to make it look pretty, but still barely works properly. I’ve been using Twitter on and off for a year now (follow me at twitter.com/mikepanic) and while I did manage to crack 12,000 text messages by subscribing to some major news outlets and having them sent SMS to my cell phone, most of what I’ve found is that it’s just noise, even from people I know in real life. For more than 3 months now I haven’t had tweets coming into my cell, I’m very happy about this and do not miss it one bit. I also rarely go to the official Twitter site, rather I use Twitterific on my Mac to read and update tweets.

What is most frustrating, outside of the noise and constant “read my new blog post” tweets that I myself am guilty of sending is the lack of stability. The service seems to be going down, still, several times a month. How can I stand behind and love an app just because it’s pretty looking when it isn’t stable?

Google Chrome gets first update and more confusing

Mike Panic — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:35:12 +0000

The new web browser that everyone is talking about and not using, Chrome, just got an update to it. This update is kind of unusual though in the fact that you now have a choice of how beta and unstable you want it to be. If you are into trying out new things, reporting bugs and getting fresh updates daily or every few days, this is for you. If you use Chrome on a regular basis though, the update is kind of mandatory as it

fixes bugs with areas including Microsoft’s Silverlight software, tab behavior, video playback with YouTube and other Flash players, and scalable vector graphics, and it suppresses full-text indexing of sites accessed with encrypted Web connections

Cnet News has all the information on how to do the update, to me the killer is you can’t even update from the software itself, you need to go to another website. Then you have to choose which updates you want to receive, Beta or Dev, and then watch as it updates. I have no problem with software being released and not being finished, it happens all the time, but with Google’s track record of keeping apps in beta for years and years, why put so many users through the growing pains of both Dev and Beta versions? Me thinks Chrome should have been a private invite only release like Gmail was originally to get most of the issues flushed out in the first place.

Chrome is nice, it has a lot of cool features and has everyone who uses the internet interested, but as reported earlier, no one is really using it and no one on a Mac can even start to use it. It pains me when major companies rely on the free labor of their own users to finish building and fixing software that shouldn’t be released yet, much less make them jump through hoops to get the update.

Anyone here a die-hard Chrome user yet?

50 Online Applications and Sites That Everyone Should Test Out!

Steven Finch — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:26:31 +0000

Chris Brogan has put together a great list of the top 50 online applications and sites to consider. The list is very indepth and there are really some great tools that everyone should try out.

50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider

Blogging

Blogger – free blogging and hosting.
Movable Type – paid software, needs host.
TypePad – paid blogging and hosting.
WordPress.com – free blogging and hosting.
WordPress.org – free blog software, needs host.
Tumblr – free blogging and hosting.

Microblogging
BrightKite – microblogging, mobile, location.
FriendFeed – microblogging/ aggregator.
Identi.ca – open source microblogging.
Jaiku – microblogging, mobile too.
Posterous – microblogging, and/or sends to other sites.
Pownce – microblogging and file sharing.
Plurk – microblogging and threaded conversations.
Seesmic – video microblogging.
Twitter – microblogging and mobile.
Utterz – microblogging, mobile, video.

Social Bookmarking
Delicious – bookmarking.
Ma.gnolia – enhanced bookmarking.
Sphinn – bookmarking/voting.
StumbleUpon – bookmarking and browsing.

Social News Sites
Digg – social news.
Mixx – social news.
Reddit – social news.

Social Networks
Facebook – general networking.
Flickr – photo and video sharing.
Last.fm – music sharing.
LibraryThing – book lovers.
LinkedIn – professional social networking.
MySpace – general networking.
Ning – white label social network.
Pandora – music sharing.
Yelp – rating restaurants and businesses.

Miscellaneous and Useful
Twitter Search (formerly Summize) – search for what matters to YOU.
Picnik – free online photo editing. Good for avatar pic touchups.
Evernote – online and desktop note syncing/storage.
Upcoming.org – event sharing site (great for finding cool conferences).
Netvibes – web start page (has Ginger social features now, too).
Twingly – blog search.
Compete – web ranking analysis.
AideRSS – rates your blog posts.
Skitch – screen capture tool (mac).

Video Platforms
Blip.tv – video hosting, sharing.
Google Video – video hosting, sharing.
Viddler – video hosting, sharing.
Vimeo – video hosting, sharing.
YouTube – video hosting, sharing.
Mogulus – live video platform.
uStream.tv – live video platform.
BlogTV – live video platform.
ooVoo – live video chat.