Archive for: Web Apps
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
