Crenk » web

Going Backpacking? Then CouchSurf!

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:39:21 +0000

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Roasalia de Castro

This famous quote and many others like it inspire hundreds of thousands of people to buy a big backpack, a pair of Levis jeans and hit the road every single year between college and ‘life’. Yet, sleeping in a bus stations isn’t too appealing. And seeing as this is a technology site I thought I’d offer a solution – CouchSurfing.

Couch Surfing basically means living life to the fullest and recharging your batteries on people’s couches. And now there is a social network by the same name that is dedicated to finding you a place to lay your head down at night. They now have more than one million members who are travelers and hosts willing to let you spend the night on their couch. All you have to do is take out your iPhone while you’re on the coach to Budapest, do a little search and give whoever lives there a call to see if you can do a spot of couch surfing. Easy.

The site covers in excess of 55,000 cities in over 230 countries all over the world so no matter where you’re going you’ll find somewhere.

Screenjelly Records Your Screen

Luis Sandoval — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:00:32 +0000

Screenjelly is perhaps the easiest screen recorder you'll ever use.

There are a lot of applications that claim to be the leader in capturing and recording your screen. Well I’m not making that claim with Screenjelly, but I will say it’s the easiest I’ve ever used.

Why?

Well unlike most other free screen capture applications, you don’t need to create a profile or sign up for an account. You also don’t need to download anything or log-in for access, you simply go to the site and start the process. The ease of use is a welcomed approach for new users who are not familiar with existing screen recording applications. There is little barrier into the service and users do not get mired down with having to check their emails to authorize emails and other such necessities when creating a new account.

Screenjelly also has a close relationship with Twitter, where you can easily share your recordings directly with your followers, and instantly get feedback. It’s pretty tempting if you’re looking at doing something quick. There are no screen share capabilities to pass it on to someone else, there’s not meeting function for chat function to share with other users, this is just purely setup to record what’s on your screen and the audio being sent via your microphone.

Destroy Twitter: Minimal Memory Twitter Application for Mac, Windows and Linux

Steven Finch — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:37:38 +0000

DestroyTwitter is a compact though robust Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR. It consists of a series of canvases that constantly update to keep tweets up-to-date using notifications that appear when a new tweet arrives. DestroyTwitter uses a minimal amount of memory compared to its AIR-based alternatives without sacrificing functionality and performance. As a result, it can easily run in the background as an automated process.

Destroy Twitter was developed in a similar way as Tweetdeck, with only having one guy come up with the idea and then develop the whole project. Jonnie Hallman is the designer and programmer behind Destroy Twitter, and he has definitely developed a lightweight Twitter client that is both very slick in design and functionality.

I have been playing around with Destroy Twitter and it is a great service that can just run in the background and not take up too much CPU usage. I think Destroy Twitter has a great interface with a nice slide action between replies, direct messages and other windows. It is easy to see why this product is used by a huge amount of the twitterati

You can download Destroy Twitter here.

Crenk Launches New Web Apps Directory. Help Us Build It!

Steven Finch — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:57:18 +0000

Here at Crenk we have just added a new directory to our site. The directory is for web applications. Every few days we will be adding more and more sites to the directory. Each site in the directory has a brief description and a linkback to their site. We have broken down the directory into 19 different categories including music, photo, mobile, search, bittorrent and more.

To start the directory we have added only 13 of the most popular websites around, but stay tuned for more coming very soon.

If you have a website you would like to see added to the directory, just head over to the directory and at the bottom of every page you will see a suggest a link option, just click on that and suggest something for us to add. Help us build the best web apps directory on the web.

Google Chrome Releases New Beta

Steven Finch — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:02:56 +0000

Google has just release Chrome (its internet browser) to the world in beta stage. If you are interested in testing out this new browser then head here to download.

So, what does a Google Chrome beta bring? Speed, and lots of it. According to Google, it’s 25 percent faster than the stable build of Chrome, which is nothing short of amazing given that Chrome is already blazing fast.

Other new features are form autofill, full page zooming and autoscroll, as well as a way to get a side-by-side view by dragging out tabs to the side of the browser window, which you can see in the amazingly short video below.

JumboURL: The Worlds Second Ever URL Extending Service

Steven Finch — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:48:43 +0000

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.

Organise Your iPhone and iPod Touch Apps into Folders

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:23:44 +0000

No I know what most of you are thinking, why the hell isn’t this an iPhone app or why hasn’t Apple done this already, well they should have! The Next Web is reporting on a new app that is really going to help.

It’s an awesome app in Cydia called “Categories” which lets you organise your apps into folders. The app provides an array of different icons you can use, you can easily rename folders via the app and adding/removing apps is relatively easy. However, this is not available in the app store and you need to have your iPhone jailbroken.

Currently, on my iPod touch I have over 5 pages worth of applications that I use on a monthly basis. At the moment I’m having so much trouble keep track of the apps and actually arranging them so they can be easily used and organised. Apple needs to come up with an app like this, either that or they need to be able to arrange your apps directly in iTunes.

One limitation: the app doesn’t recognise iPhone web apps only genuinely local apps.

As I noted above, this is only for Jailbroken iPhones. Other features which Cydia (jailbroken app database) brings is copy & paste, 5 apps in the dock amongst hundreds of others.

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

Keshav Khera — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:25:53 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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 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

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

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 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 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

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 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 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

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

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

CC:Betty

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

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

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

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 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.

iPhone App Reviews for Social Media News

Jordan Kasteler — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:16:14 +0000

There aren’t very many social media applications yet on the iPhones that are based around social news or social bookmarking. Digg has a an unofficial app which is much improved than the last unofficial app that was in the iTunes App Store which is no longer available. Delicious has quite a few apps that are decent but lack a few important features. Disappointingly, StumbleUpon doesn’t have any applications and neither does Mixx or Yahoo! Buzz.

Reddit is currently leading with three apps to make the mobile experience much more enjoyable. One of theirs is an official app from the Reddit creators themselves. Will Digg be releasing an official app soon?

I’ve taken the liberty to do a review of the three Reddit apps and Digg app that are in the iTune App Store. I am in no way associated with any of these apps, know any of the owners, or am promoting any of them in any fashion. This is merely a review from an avid Reddit and Digg user with a love for social news and social media.

Shovel – Digg App

Author: Scott Fitzhugh

Price: Free

Ratings: 147 Reviews – (at the time of writing)

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/d5yqhu

iTunes Description:

Shovel is an app that provides top stories from the social news website Digg.com in a native application. Browse the front page stories, or delve deeper into an array of topics and subtopics of interest.

Personal Review:

Shovel is a great application for viewing Digg.com content easily on the iPhone. Overall, the design and interface is pretty clean and simple. It gives you a variety of topics and listings to select to view so you can access all of the content on Digg.com. You can view:

Popular Stories
Top Stories
Movers & Shakers
Brand New Stories

All listings are applicable to any category or sub-category in Digg.com. If you select a Digg story you can then scroll down the commentary to see what people are saying, who’s replied, how many votes each comment has received, etc. After that, you can click further to view the story live on the Web. Which is nice about it is that it doesn’t load Safari as a separate app to view the content so there’s no back-and-forth between the apps.

Unfortunately, what you cannot participate in digging, burying, or commenting through this application. The developer disclaims, “Now we’ve gotten the message loud and clear that the one thing that would turn this 3.5 star app (currently 3 stars) into a 5 star one is the interactivity of the original Digg site. You guys (and gals) want to be able to Digg, comment, and bury, and who can blame you? Right now, however, there is no way to do this using the legitimate Digg APIs, and quite frankly, it makes us sad. I’ve been trying to court the help of Digg in making this app all that it can be, and if you want to help that along, you should drop them a line yourselves requesting the same!”

Another drawback is that you cannot personalize this application because there is no way to login. Therefore you can’t weed out content you don’t want to see, view your account profile, see your friend’s submissions, etc.

In doing some research the Shovel app used to be named “Diggerific”. Apparently, they have changed the name of it and redid the UI just a bit as you can tell from the video review of Diggerific below:

Overview

Pros

Easy to use
Clean interface
Ability to access all Digg content

Cons

Free of charge
Can’t Digg, comment, or bury content
No Digg account profile/community features or functionality

iReddit

Author: CondeNet

Price: $1.99

Ratings: 41 Reviews (at the time of writing)

Feedback Contact: http://getsatisfaction.com/reddit/products/reddit_ireddit

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/ce6tt2

iTunes Description:

The official Reddit iPhone app. Never be bored again. With this app, you’ll only be a tap (or shake) away from the most interesting stuff on the web.

All of your favorite Reddit functionality is here: view the hottest, newest, top, and most controversial stories of the moment, explore, individual subreddits, vote, comment, share, and save links for later. The entire commenting system has been optimized for the iPhone app so you won’t have any trouble contributing to an epic pun thread.

Save time by never having to reload the Reddit homepage. You can even use handy next/previous navigation to move between websites without going back to the main list. And those sites work in portrait and widescreen modes too.

It’s never been easier to be entertained. Just shake your iPhone to enter “serendipity mode” where you’ll be served a random, interesting site. Pro-tip: Turn on “play sound on shake” for a special treat with every jostle — the iPhone is an elegant phone for a more sophisticated age.

And if you’re feeling the economic downturn (what are you doing with an iPhone?) there’s a tree, ad-supported version to come.

Personal Review:

The Official Reddit application is pretty cool. You can input your username and password so that you can vote and comment on stories. Initially, you come to the Reddit homepage. Along the top you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Top”, and “Controversial” stories. When selecting a story, there is an overlay on the footer that allows you to upvote/downvote the story, go to the comments section of the story, save the story, and email the link.

Three subreddits will fit on the bottom bar overlay that you can quickly navigate to. You can edit the subreddits with the ones you want to use the most, but you only have a small selection of subreddit’s to swap out with. Those subreddits are:

Programming
Funny
Science
Tech
World News
Entertainment
Business
Comics
Gaming
Best Of
Economics
Cappuccino

It is the most expensive application but I feel it’s the cleanest and easiest to use. Unfortunately, you can’t browse all subreddits and there’s no search function. Nor is there a function to view your account’s saves, karma points, submissions, comments, etc.

I would recommend this app to anyone looking to quickly and easily view Reddit news, vote, and participate in the more popular subreddits. The free Reddit app doesn’t allow for this.

Overview

Pros

Easily vote on stories from the actual story page
Save links to view/read later
Comment participation
Customization of footer subreddits

Cons

Most expensive Reddit app
Not a wide-range of subreddits to customize on your footer
Can’t browse all subreddits
No search functionality
No personal account status functionality

Open Source Reddit

Author: Joseph Pintozzi

Price: Free

Ratings: 10 Reviews (at the time of writing)

Feedback Contact: reddit@pintozzi.com

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/cpjzvj

iTunes Description:

The Reddit application allows users to view the stories from www.reddit.com without having to deal with loading massive webpages. It displays the stories in a nice table view, providing details about each submission, and allows the user to easily view the submitted content. The ability to vote on a submission is currently being added.

Personal Review:

This app is very bare bones with very limited functionality. If you’re looking to vote on stories or participate in the comments this app isn’t for you. If you’re just looking to read “Hot” news from a select few subreddits then this is a good app for the cost of nothing. The included subreddits to choose from are:

reddit.com
bacon
politics
pics
WTF
funny
technology
programming

The nice thing about it is that it’s open source and the developer leaves it open for people to add on what they want to it. Hopefully, in the future, this will be a great application for Reddit.

Overview

Pros

Open Source
Free

Cons

No commenting
No voting
Can’t browse all subreddits
No search functionality
No personal account status functionality

Satellite Reddit

Author: 3Cube Technologies

Price: $0.99

Ratings: 8 Reviews – (at the time of writing)

Feedback Contact: satellite@3cubetechnologies.com or http://twitter.com/3cube

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/cx8eec

iTunes Description:

Satellite 2.0 is now available and brings a host of improvement to the mobile Reddit experience.

Change in this version includes:

Greatly improved performance
New, Controversial, and Top views are available for all subreddits
An overlay displaying the full article title and comments count shows while loading an article
The subreddit list is reorderable
A beautiful new icon and splash screen have been added
New lower pricing.

Satellite is a full-featured client for Reddit.com, a social link aggregation site. With Satellite, you can browse links appearing on the front page or drill down into the Subreddits you are subscribed to. When viewing an article you can vote the link up or down, save it to your Reddit account, or share the link with others. With the click of a button, you can shift into commenting mode to browse comments or post your own back to the Reddit page about the link. The interface provides a substantially more streamlined experience over the mobile Reddit site and incorprates the unique capabilities of the iPhone to make your day to day Reddit’ing much more fun.

Additional Satellite features include:

Shake the app at any time to explore random content from Reddit
Next/previous buttons are available at the screen edges to move through content without returning to list view
Full portrait/landscape modes, including upside down. Great for handing the phone across the dinner table to share your discoveries!
Returns to the content you were browsing at start-up. Pick up right where you left off when that call came in.
Highly addictive content discovery available anywhere, at any time!

Personal Review:

This app is definitely worth the 99 cents. After entering in your login information you can view ALL of your subscribed subreddits. It also gives you an option to edit your subreddits for your account. After selecting a subreddit you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Controversial”, and “Top” categories in the footer bar. Once selecting a story, it takes you to the story and overlays the story title, submitter, and point count. At the bottom footer you can choose to vote, go to comments, save the link, or email the link. Again though, there’s no search feature with this app either.

This app is a lot like the official iReddit app except it’s more personalized. You can also view your saved Reddits on your account to follow up on how your saves and submissions are doing.

Overview

Pros

Personalized
Nice User-Interface
Good functionality for voting and commenting
All Reddit content accessible through this app

Cons

Isn’t free
Can’t see your karma points
No search functionality

HAPPY BROWSING WITH THESE SOCIAL MEDIA APPS!

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.

HHTimesheet: Web Based Time and Expense Tracking Software

Steven Finch — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:00:18 +0000

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.

Produle: Create Flash Based Applications Online for Free

Steven Finch — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:57:13 +0000

Produle 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.

Cmune: Great 3D Browser-based Multiplayer 3D Shooter Game

Steven Finch — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:57:22 +0000

The other day I came across a great new multiplayer 3D shooter game. The site is Cmune and they claim to have the first browser-based multiplayer 3D shooter built to be social.

Cmune allows users to play a 3D paintball shooter game within any web browser. Additionally you can play the game in either Windows, Mac or even within Facebook. The game itself is very simple, a user needs to just download a small plugin and then they can create or join in on a game. Paradise paintball has very simple controls and is easy to use and graphics are ok but nothing out of this world.

When the site first opens you are able to choose which game you want to join or even able to create a game and play against your friends. Cmune is a great time waster!!

FriendorFollow.com: Who Are You Following on Twitter but Their Not Following You Back

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:52:22 +0000

I came across a very interesting Twitter application today that is called FriendorFollow. FriendorFollow allows you to type in your Twitter username and then lets you know who you are following on Twitter, but who’s not following you. The idea is very simple but Im just a huge fan of the design. Check it out!

Don’t Get Sued… Use Tunerec

Keshav Khera — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:53:30 +0000

With the RIAA already suing teenagers for downloading pirated music, it’s time you move to the safer side and try another alternative. And yes, that ‘other’ alternative can be free and legal.

Tunerec is a web based service, that ‘records’ songs off internet radio streams and then tags them all for your convenience. Since it has to ‘record’ the streams first, it takes some time to save them in your database. But the patience is eventually rewarded. It has an iTunes like interface, where you can search for artists, songs and albums; Make playlists and also share them with friends.

Although I don’t understand why it has to ‘record’ songs for each user, and not just once for all its users, it probably doesn’t take much time as the number of songs i had last week jumped a whopping 100K this week, taking the total, as of now, to 1 Million.

It may not have all the songs you want, and likely demands patience even for those it has, the audio quality is commendable with very less buffering interuptions. As for the ‘legal’ thing you may be wondering about, the site mentions that it is completely legal and RWW also notes that Tunerec “ has worked out an agreement with the Swedish songwriters association STIM and the musicians (or at least the labels) get paid for every every song played on the service. ”

You can also invite your friends to the service and share your playlists with them.

Tunerec is currently in currently in closed beta but i was able to get into the service right away after i signed up. People living in Europe have a better option than Tunerec and that is Spotify. But sadly, Spotify is only available in Europe and will take some time untill it opens up to the U.S and rest of the world. Untill then, you have Tunerec. If you don’t like it, go buy your own CDs

(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.

Lovely Charts: Best Web Based Tool For Flowcharts and Wireframes

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:03:05 +0000

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.

Timecamp: Keep Track of Your Employees Time

Steven Finch — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:23:17 +0000

Are you an employee looking to keep track of your employees time? Are you trying to work out how to best optimise the time of your employees, because they are your largest overhead? Well introducing Timecamp. Timecamp is a new tracking tool that seems to be very similar to Basecamp but for employee tracking. It’s like history book or google analytics, but works with people’s time. Increase team productivity, eliminate “time killers”, get more done and stay focused.

The service seems very straight forward and also seems to be a relatively new startup. Im not so keen on it being so closely based to Basecamp, but it is a simply idea with a simple solution. Currently the have a free pricing for individual users, but also a $8 per month pricing for any other additional users you want to add to the system.

If you have used Timecamp it would be great to hear your feedback.

Join The Crenk Community

Steven Finch — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:19:22 +0000

Join the Crenk community!

Twitter – Crenk Account – follow us

Subscribe to Crenk – via our RSS feed

Here at Crenk we are looking to build the community and discussions around web startups. If you have any questions or suggestions please get in touch.

Stimator: Real Website Valuation Estimator

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:32:34 +0000

Stimator is a real-time website value estimator that aims to deliver the most accurate economical value that a website could worth by collecting important data from different sources as well as market places.

There are six major factors involved in the calculation:

Top Level Domain – Stimator take in account the strength of a TLD.
Financial - It uses Yahoo Finance to get all data needed to perform the variations of the financial market.
Real Sells – The service was built to delivery real results (at least the most possible ones). The math used to determinate a website value was study using real website sells such as: Sedo, Sitepoint Marketplace etc.
Web Factors – Stimator collects information from the website itself and from several major sources during the calculation stages before presenting the final estimated result.
Estimation - The calculations are made to give what is called the “economic value”.
Observations - The main mission is to avaliate domains and sub-domains. After each calculation, Stimator presents a report with the main relevant factors that it can extract from the examination. This factors will give the users an idea of how the site is performing.

Using Stimator Crenk is worth $17,351 which is kind of a realistic valuation. Anyone interested in offering me that much for the site?

Twitter Client Marketshare, Which Do You Use?

Steven Finch — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:21:45 +0000

TwitStat’s current top 10 list is below, showing ranking and % of users posting from each service today. Note that where users made use of multiple methods, all were counted. The list is constantly changing, and the Top 100 can be found here.

1 Web – 29.57%

2 TweetDeck – 10.58%

3 Twitterfeed – 5.54%

4 Twhirl – 4.92 %

5 Twitterrific – 3.79 %

6 Tweetie – 3.65%

7 Text – 3.40 %

8 Mobile web 3.00 %

9 TwitterFon – 2.96 %

10 TwitPic – 2.94 %

Nurture: Social Bookmarking Icon Pack for Free

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:28:55 +0000

Over at Tutorial9 and Smashing Mag they have just released a new icon pack for everyone. This Free Icon Pack is for use in your personal and commercial projects, and can be used without attribution. It may not be redistributed.

Nurture is a Social Bookmark Icon Pack. The set includes 10 icons featuring the logos of popular social bookmarking sites. Nurture includes 512×512, 256×256, 128×128, and 64×64 icons in .png format.

Download Here for Free.

Top Money Making MMO Games of 2008

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:49:51 +0000

Over at GigaOM they have put together a great list of the top 10 money making MMO games of 2008.

1. World of Warcraft, launched 2004
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG; client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Monthly subscription, retails sales, prepaid cards (in Asia)
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $500 million-plus

2. Fantasy Westward Journey, launched 2004
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Prepaid cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

3. Maple Story, launched 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG for kids, client install with 2D graphics
Revenue sources: Microtransactions, prepaid cards, international licensing
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

4. Shanda (company, includes Legend of Mir and World of Legend series), launched 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5 graphics
Revenue sources: Prepaid cards, virtual item sales, freemium subscriptions
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

5. Lineage I and Lineage II , launched 1998 and 2003
Genre/Platform: Asian MMORPG, client install with 2.5 graphics (Lineage) and 3D graphics (Lineage II)
Revenue sources: Subscription, prepaid cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $150-$500 million

6. Runescape
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG for kids, web-based with 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Premium subscription, prepaid cards, real-world advertising
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

7. Club Penguin, launched 2006
Genre/Platform: Virtual world for kids, web-based 2.5D graphics
Revenue sources: Premium subscriptions, prepaid game cards
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

8. Lord of the Ring Online
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

9. Warhammer Online
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

10. Age of Conan
Genre/Platform: Western MMORPG, client install with 3D graphics
Revenue sources: Subscription, retail sales
DFC estimated 2008 revenue: $50-$150 million

Top 25 Web Celebrities of 2009 According to Forbes

Steven Finch — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:46:47 +0000

At number one, we have “The Queen of Mean” himself herself, Perez Hilton.

Let’s run through the rest of the list…

#1 Perez Hilton

#2 Michael Arrington

#3 Kevin Rose

#4 Frank Warren

#5 Cory Doctorow

#6 Pete Cashmore

#7 Beppe Grillo

#8 Heather Armstrong

#9 Guy Kawasaki

#10 Jason Calacanis

#11 Robert Scoble

#12 Will Leitch

#13 Jeff Jarvis

#14 Wil Wheaton

#15 Nate Silver

#16 Om Malik

#17 Matt Drudge

#18 Owen Thomas

#19 Dave Winer

#20 Seth Godin

#21 Brian Lam

#22 Mark Frauenfelder

#23 Steve Rubel

#24 John Dvorak

#25 Leo Laporte

Mixturtle: Music Streaming Search Engine That Has Brilliant UI

Steven Finch — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:59:30 +0000

A couple of days ago we put together a great list of the Worlds top 10 free music streaming service. We received a comment that post that lead us to another music streaming service that I thought was worth a review, MixTurtle. MixTurtle is a great music streaming search engine very similar to Seeqpod.

MixTurtle lets users search for a song and then it provides instant results. Then users can play the single track or add it to a playlist. I couldn’t work out for a while how to view the playlist correctly, but all you need to do is right click anywhere on the page and it brings up the playlist you have created. I would suggest that MixTurtle work a bit more on this feature and really make it more predominant.

In terms of the overall design and layout of the site, I think it has great potential. I think it will be easy for them to add sponsored search results into the engine which will be a lot better to look at than display advertising. However, if they are going to go down the display route, it would be advisable to add the display add to the top of the site and have it rotate every couple of minutes.

Overall this is a great site with a lot of potential. It would be adviseable to add a business model sooner rather than later, because im sure their server costs are quite high. In terms of the user point of view, this is a great site! Simple, easy to use and give you with the results in seconds, brilliant!

Crenk Interviews… Zentact

matt — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:00:13 +0000

Following our recent review of Zentact, we spoke to the team behind the service. Read on for insights from Jared Brandt, John Sampson and Eric Marcoullier about their previous work with MyBlogLog, a hint of what’s to come with new service Gnip, and what makes them and their fab social networking tool tick.

What is the Zentact philosophy?
(Jared) We are creating a product that integrates into already existing work flows, helping our users build better relationships. We do this without any BS. (Eric would say the our product will make the baby jesus cry…)

Sharing information with your contacts is something that Mr. Marcoullier seems to be a fan of! What makes Zentact different to other content sharing websites?

(Jared) Social networks are a lot of work for traditionally very little payoff. CRM tools are worse.

(Eric) Zentact aims to flip that on its ear and provide loads of tangible results for little ongoing effort.

(Jared) Typical content sharing websites and apps have focused on the user always remembering whom to share with. We are trying, in effect, to whisper in the user’s ear and suggest whom they can share this with in a meaningful way – we make sure you share what matters. We will be adding more social aspects in the near future as well.

How has the web 2.0 landscape changed since the coneption and subsequent selling of MyBlogLog to now and the work you’re doing with Zentact?

(John) MyBlogLog allowed users to create profiles that traveled with them where they surfed, adding value to both the mybloglog member and website owner. More Web 2.0 apps today are leveraging this concept, be it scripts, widgets, and even in browsers. The value that is created by individual apps and even apps created mashing APIs together is significant.

Some commentators have said that they’d like Facebook integration, in particular to help when tagging – is this something you and the team are looking into?

(Jared) We will be integrating in with Facebook to help with both tagging, tracking last connection and posting to the wall.

Will you be looking to include integration with other social networking services – if so what is the liklihood of this happening before Zentact comes out of Beta?

(Jared) We are in a private beta now and working on launching our public beta. We will likely integrate with other social networking services and other communication platforms before leaving beta. We are also listening to our users – feedback will help lead the way.

What is really exciting you on the web (Zentact aside)?
(Jared) Gnip
(John) Apple app store

I would argue that 2008 has been the year of Twitter and that it will become more mainstream in 2009 – what do you think will be the big social media development in the next 12 months?

(Jared) We think that there will be a big movement towards information – instead of just data. More products will become contextual.

What has been the main challenge for Zentact since you founded the company?

(Jared) Our number one challenge has been to prioritize features since, as a team, we have many features we want to do quickly.

And what has been the achievement that has made you most happy?

(Jared) We have gotten feedback from users ranging for “wow” to “Zentact helped me close a deal”. This feedback is what makes us tick!

What are the next key milestones you’ll be looking to meet?

( Jared) Public beta and our IE version.

What can we expect from Zentact in 2009?

(Jared) A killer product that will seamlessly improve your life.

To try Zentact for yourself, we have a few private invites to test the private beta, which you lucky boys and girls can get here.