I heard about insync on twitter not too long ago.

It caught my attention the fact they sell themselves as a Dropbox killer, I had to try.

Insync (http://insynchq.com) is, like Dropbox, a little program you can install in a mac or pc even if you are not an admin (which for my work laptop is a must) and that has for objective to sync a local folder among your computers, with a copy online… but with a huge difference from services such as Dropbox or SugarSync, or box.net…

First: it is free. But sure, Dropbox is free for a couple of Gigs too, and SugarSync free for 5Gb…

Second: it uses GDrive or Google Docs as storage and online sharing and versioning… so:

They don’t have to host anything, and you pay Google for storage.

The difference with Dropbox is that for instance a 50Gb with Dropbox costs $9.99 per month, and a 20Gb with Google costs $5…. a year!!! or 80Gb for $20 a year!!

• For $200 per year Dropbox gives you 100Gb
• For $100 per year Google gives you 200Gb

For me this is a no brainier. I was already using Google docs, so I switched to insync.

I can edit documents locally or online, I can set up sharing permissions on google docs… it works like charm.

Congratulation guys!! insync rocks.

Now, how is this Philippines based company going to survive?… we will see… maybe Google buys it…

Posted from .

A new travel site called Rome2Rio launches today, the brainchild of two ex-Microsoftemployees, Michael Cameron and Bernard Tschirren. The site’s main innovation? It’s vehicle agnostic, in a way–you tell it you want to go from A to B, and it’ll tell you what combination of car, plane, train, or ferry you need to take.

In that way, it’s more like the “how to get there” in a Lonely Planet guide, points out VentureBeat in its story on the site today. Rather than piece together information from here and there, Rome2Rio aims for the all-inclusive experience of simply reading a paragraph in a guidebook.

And it goes further than that, too–to be truly useful, any travel site needs to let you book flights. Rome2Rio does that, presenting Kayak airfares, which you can click through to purchase flights.

Cameron and Tschirren told VentureBeat that the site is probably most useful in Europe, where the train systems are complicated and have varied pricing. “Hours of travel time and hundred or even thousands of dollars” could be saved, goes the claim.

The site joins the trend of creating technology that would make classic movie plots based on missed connections and poor communication–such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles–obsolete.

(from fast company)

Amazon launched Amazon mp3 cloud drive and cloud player, for the US. You can shop 15 million songs and find bestselling albums from $7.99 every day.  You can explore new releases and find fresh deals daily.

You can download a cloud player and start having fun, or just use the web.

There are several tools where you just enter a twitter handle and you can create a story or news hub.

We have storify (beta) that turns what people post on social media into stories.  Collect the best photos, video, tweets and more to publish them as simple, beautiful stories that can be embedded anywhere.

There is paper.li that creates sort of newspaper with just twitter handles and lists and even Facebook.  A different and nice way to discover new content…  See mine for example: http://paper.li/tokao

I have written several times about Foursquare, Gowalla, and all this check in apps that are more like games and that I find myself using less and less.

At the end of the day if I choose to communicate my position I would do it in two ways:

1. Using Facebook places to let my friends (not my followers) where I am.
2. Using an app to coordinate with people I am meeting with on our locations. This could be via Google latitude (that I don’t use) or, sending an SMS with the location with apps such as i-Finder or Kayak, or even better using Whatsapp

But now there is a new way, Glympse.

This app sends an email or an SMS not just with your coordinates, but it logs in real time your trajectory. You choose the time you want to be broadcasting that to the person or group or people you send the message.

I find it very very cool, just to say: “I’m on my way” and they can check exactly my location and the progress towards destination.

Hour.ly, a New York City startup that matches temporary job seekers and freelancers with prospective gigs and employers online, unveiled two new features and partnerships on Tuesday with Trufina and Tinychat.

Co-founded by Brooke and Lynn Dixon (Left to right, in image below), Hour.ly has been in pre-revenue, beta mode since September 2010. The bootstrapped company’s newest site features should have it generating and sharing revenue in the second quarter of 2011.

Through its partnership with Trufina, Hour.ly will allow temporary job seekers to pay for and run their own identity and criminal background checks, so that employers won’t have to, and so that hiring decisions won’t be delayed. Hour.ly will also enable employers to conduct an in-browser video chat interview with job seekers — through its partnership with Tinychat — rather than requiring them to download and use a service like Skype or Jabber.

Lynn Dixon, EVP of sales and business development at Hour.ly, explained that her company’s early market research found a large number of temporary job seekers online — for example substitue teachers, barristas and cooks who might not require use of this technology at work — do not have existing accounts with (or even familiarity with) standalone video chat services.

Hour.ly started with a focus on temp hiring needs within the hospitality industry, inspired by Ms. Dixon who holds a culinary degree, and worked for a celebrity chef of the NYC fine dining scene, Daniel Boulud, after spending years in media and technology business development.

Among Hour.ly’s 10,000 active users today, she said, 8 percent are employers. Users can create a profile to apply for and get automatically matched with jobs on other sites with listings like Craigslist, or Indeed. Ms. Dixon reported that the greatest demand for qualified workers via Hour.ly, however, is split between tech and web design, hospitality and retail.

Brooke Dixon, the company’s chief technology and executive officer (and Lynn Dixon’s husband) noted that recent economic trends have driven people to seek temporary employment, yet existing job sites [ranging from Monster and CareerBuilder, to Mediabistro and Simply Hired] have not adapted to the quick sales cycle and price sensitivity of this market.

Hour.ly lets job seekers and employers build “dynamic work profiles” and job listings for free. Through Hour.ly, workers and potential employers get matched automatically, based on their location, availability within a range of time, keywords, multiple job functions that a worker would be willing and able to do, rate of pay, and experience.

(from techcrunch)

This website offers you a very cool service (in the US so far).

Room 77 is a site (and iPhone app) that helps you choose the right room in a hotel.

Normally you go online and book a room, and in the same hotel you could have very different room, one facing the sea, one with a building on the site. The idea is to have a database of the best rooms for each hotel… cool isn’t it?

(from readwriteweb)

Lanyrd,  via Twitter, track event sessions and keep up with favorite speakers — at all stages in the conference lifecycle.

Some newlywed couples work to produce an offspring on their honeymoon. Most don’t labor towards birthing a startup. But that’s exactly what British entrepreneurs Natalie Downe and Simon Willison did on their post-nuptial adventure. After traveling in Europe and Africa, the couple caught ill in Casablanca and extended their stay and booked an apartment to recover.

The pair have a shared love for building projects in their spare time — which is why, with all that extra time in a bedroom, they managed to create and release an early build of Lanyrd. Within two hours of its launch, Downe and Willison saw the site generate more than 14,000 visits.

After finding immediate success with social media denizens, the couple applied to Y Combinator’s accelerator program. Lanyrd was accepted and has since relocated to Mountain View, California to complete it. The site remains a largely bootstrapped effort, though the couple did accept the $150,000 in convertible debt offered up by Start Fund.

Willison calls Lanyrd “the IMDb of conferences” — except that its content is crowdsourced. The site asks its users to do the heavy lifting for them by filling in the blanks on each conference: sessions, speakers and content. The incentive? The same as at any conference: self-aggrandizement. Organizers will go to any lengths to promote their events. Speakers want to flesh out their profiles by adding past, present and future engagements. And everyone wants to see useful conference content.

“Conferences are traditionally insufficient for transferring knowledge,” says Willinson. “Longer term, this is about capturing the value of what’s shared.”

Lanyrd’s tie-in with Twitter is ingenious — and almost spooky. Sign in with your Twitter handle, and you’ll automatically be greeted with a smorgasbord of contacts and upcoming conferences, drawn from your Twitter relationships. You may see that Lanyrd knows you spoke at a trade show last month, or that you’re on a panel this fall. The site already lists 6,000 crowdsourced conferences and 30,000 user profiles.

Downe and Willison opted to use Twitter’s social graph — rather than Facebook’s, say — because they believe the “follow” has more aspirational value than the “friend.” You likely already follow the people you’d like to know, the speakers you’d like to see talk. According to Lanyrd, you’ve already composed a list of the thought leaders you’d like to bump into at an upcoming conference. So Lanyard is well positioned to find the sessions of social relevance to you.

Since users are encouraged to add speakers and their Twitter names to sessions, the speaker need not be a Lanyrd user to have a Lanyrd presence. On signing up, you may notice your conference history has already been charted for you by your Twitter followers, organizers or fellow attendees.

Next up, Lanyrd has its sights set on South by Southwest, held in Austin next month. The startup launched its unofficial guide to the show Tuesday to help users find which sessions their Twitter friends are attending, and stay current on slides, videos and notes.

The SXSW tool marks Lanyrd’s first real test at a major conference. At worst, the event will provide a trove of data and real-world experiences that Downe and Willison can use to better determine how to serve users while they’re attending conferences.

Downe and Willison describe the chain of events following their June 2010 nuptials to their present day found status as an unexpected, whirlwind affair. Their story, and their startup, are still in their nascent stages. The couple will graduate from the Y Combinator program in March, and may be forced to return to the UK when their visas expire. But location may matter little to a startup that has successfully leveraged the power of an international hit like Twitter.

Image courtesy of SimonWillison.net

(from mashable)

Newseum is a cool website that will allow you to see the front page of most of the newspapers published on paper.

Record executives and radio DJs may have controlled what made it onto record store shelves in the past, but a web-app called thesixtyone is helping its users decide for themselves what they want to listen to now. With a goal of helping young artists get discovered, thesixtyone has created a way for music lovers to listen to songs by musicians they’ve never heard of before and download those that seem worth listening to again.

If you’re sick of the music on the radio and tired of the tunes you’ve downloaded onto your iPod, it might be time to give thesixtyone a try. Head over to the site – www.thesixtyone.com – and click on the word “ready” to begin. Immediately, a song will begin playing by an artist you’ve most likely never heard of before. If you like the tune, then keep listening and add the song to your playlist. If you hate the song, there’s no hard feelings. Just click the arrow on the right-hand side of the page to start listening to another song by an undiscovered artist. When you find a song you actually enjoy, download it to your hard drive and import it onto your iPod. Musicians who sell their songs on thesixtyone are paid directly without having to give a cut of the proceeds to their record companies or distributors.

Thesixtyone isn’t just a service that allows people to listen to music and sell their songs on the web, either. The web-app also offers an interactive gaming element that lets users recommend songs they like and earn points when other users download or recommend those very same songs. Users can also comment on songs, make friends through the site, and complete “quests” or journeys just for fun. For music aficionados who enjoy being on the cusp of new music trends, thesixtyone is a great web-app.

Practical Uses:

• Find new musicians whose music you enjoy
• Download songs that your friends have never heard before
• Sell your music to fans online
• Earn reputation points for recommending lesser-known songs that users enjoy

Insider Tips:

• Go on “quests” to earn points
• Comment on songs with tips and suggestions for the band
• Scroll through songs until you find one you like
• Download music to your desktop

(via appvita)

Most of the domain names are already taken. For the .com .net and .org, the first ones to appear, any combination of 6 or less characters is nearly gone… so you either buy in the resell market or you use one of the latest released such as .cc or .co or country base such .ly , .es etc…

A great tool to add creativity to your domains is domai.nr

Domainr helps you explore the entire domain name space beyond the ubiquitous—and crowded—.com, .net and .org. Inspired by jish.nu, burri.toand del.icio.us, apologies to Flickr, and a high-five to Dopplr.

Read more about their features.

Posted from .

OpenStudy is a social learning network where students ask questions, give help, and connect with other students studying the same things. Our mission is to make the world one large study group, regardless of school, location, or background.

OpenStudy uses AI recommendation engines to match students, and really real-time technologies to facilitate online interaction. It’s like walking into a library or coffee shop and finding just the right group of students who can help you with what you’re studying right now or someone struggling with a problem who could really use your help…halfway across the globe.

Why use OpenStudy?

Learners

• Get help right now – your study emergency resource, just in time, when you need it.
• Why study alone? – your study network, always there, always on.
• Pay it forward – learn by helping; feel good about helping someone in need.

Educators

• Engage your students – connect with students on their terms using a social learning network.
• Facilitate peer learning – create study groups to help your students learn better.
• Know your students – see who needs help, recognize early signs of trouble.

Getting Started on OpenStudy! from Open Study on Vimeo.

Usabilla offers a fast and simple way to collect feedback in any stage of the design process.
Ask your users simple questions to collect valuable feedback and discover usability issues. Use our One-Click-Tasks to measure task performance. Users simply share their feedback by clicking anywhere on your website, mockup, sketch, or image. Measure time, collect points, and get valuable feedback with notes.

Usabilla – Hassle free usability testing from Paul Veugen on Vimeo.

Skype has had for a while the SkypeIn service where for $18 for 3 months you can have a DID or a fix phone number forwarded to your skype account. This can be very handy if you have a small business and you want to provide a local number for support, or if you live abroad and want your friends/family to dial a local number to reach you via skype.

Well there is a free alternative to SkypeIn, that in fact has more destinations than skype itself: ring2skype

How is that it is free? Well you don’t actually get a number for yourself. You get a unique extension on a number, so people will call to a local number, and they will be asked for your extension, which will forward your call to your skype. Probably Asterisk…

Give it a try. Now I have a local Spanish number. I don’t know if you can get more than one though.

Viber is an iPhone application (Android and Blackberry versions coming soon!) that lets you make free phone calls to other iPhone users that have Viber installed.

When you use Viber, your phone calls to any other Viber user are free, and the sound quality is much better than a regular call. You can call any Viber user, anywhere in the world, for free. All Viber features are 100% FREE and do not require any additional “in application” purchase.

How does it work and why is better than skype (in the case that you are doing iPhone to iPhone calls)?

You don’t need to have a login name. Just your telephone numbers. It scans your address book and find those with viber installed, then you can call them free, well, using part of your data.

Works via wifi or 3g or even gprs. Give it a try!

iPhone photography is a growing medium, akin to Lomography in its cult status and the way it champions light-hearted, lo-fi, everyday shooting and off-beat effects.

Like any good burgeoning artistic movement there are already a bunch of brilliant online resources aimed at iPhone photographers offering great galleries, talent showcases, app reviews, exhibition news and more.

Read on for 10 great sites from around the web that we�ve bookmarked for iPhone Photographers and photo-lovers alike. Your favorite not on this list? Please share any other great iPhotography sites you like in the comments below.

1. Pixels at an Exhibition

This site describes itself as a �gallery of the most beautiful and ground-breaking iPhone art on the web and home to an ever-increasing number of visionary pioneers in the exploration and development of this nascent and vibrant new medium.� With a daily pic to inspire you, easy browsing by category or a tag word cloud, featured artists and exhibition news, iPhotographers will find lots to like on this site.

2. iPhoneogenic

Run by Edgar Cuevas, an iPhotographer in his own right, iPhoneogenic is a lovely site to visit. Described as �a place for highlighting the iPhoneographer,� it offers enlightening interviews with iPhotographers from all over the world that sometimes include interesting how-tos on certain techniques. It�s always a fascinating read.

3. EYE�EM

EYE�EM is about more than just iPhotography � it�s a hub dedicated to mobile photography as a whole, where �creative minds from all over the world unite to share their images and create a unique stream of mutual inspiration and creative expression.� You can browse through pics, follow photographers you like, search by location and tag words, comment on photos, and share images. You can also jump into the fray by creating your own stream.

4. iPhoneography

Glyn Evans� great iPhoneography blog covers iPhone photography and videography with app news and reviews (including great info on app updates), photographer showcases, news from the iPhotography community around the world and more. There�s also a user forum for discussions on the topic where you can post questions and help others with answers.

5. The Best Camera

Chase �the-best-camera-is-the-one-that�s-with-you� Jarvis� worldwide hub for mobile photography is the sister site to the app of the same name, with photos from iPhotographers globally uploaded via the app. Viewing a real-time stream of these images is great fun but you�ll get the most out of this site if you post your own content thanks to the great management and sharing options that are available.

6. Life in LoFi

Life in Lo-Fi is the iPhoneography blog of Marty Yawnick, a freelance graphic designer and iPhotographer. Yawnick offers his readers app news and reviews, links to relevant articles of interest he spots around the web, curated Flickr showcases, some of his personal photography and regular promo code giveaways.

7. iPhoneArt

A relative newcomer, iPhoneArt�s aim is �to build a grassroots mobile art community where professionals, beginners, and developers alike can share and discuss all forms of mobile art.� Despite being in its early days, user-generated content has helped create a huge gallery of more than 6,000 photos. The site includes a �Studio Talk� forum, a robust app review section and the option to sign up to create you own online gallery with a unique username-based URL.

8. The Big Hipstamatic Show

Fans of the titular app should definitely look up its sister-site: The Big Hipstamatic Show. The guys behind Hipstamatic run regular contests for best photos under certain titles. The current contest, for example, is �Fields.� You can view the leaderboard to see the hot contenders or view past entries for a wonderful showcase of iPhotography.

9. iPhone Photo

�Gently� curated by Caleb Kimbrough, iPhone Photo is a very simple site offering an online showcase of what Caleb considers �the best user submitted iPhone photography.� Dating back to July 2009, it�s an eclectic collection with some strong photography.

10. Flickr

No, we haven�t gone mad. We know everyone (and their dog) is well aware of the world�s largest photography site, but besides being a place to upload your own pics, it�s a really good resource for iPhotography inspiration, artist discovery and app research.

Many iPhotographers will name the apps they�ve used for specific photos, giving you an idea of what the different photographic options can produce. Did you know there are more than 30 million iPhone photographs on Flickr? You can browse pics by camera model or head for one of the iPhoto groups � there are tons of them and some amazing photography to enjoy.

(from mashable)

Those who follow me know that I am a fan of Evernote. I use it for capturing stuff I see with my iPhone camera, bookmarks, reference, all my incoming mail (it becomes searchable), my wines, books, notes… everything. Take a look at my blog entries on evernote.

Well, before you go for an Organizing tool such as evernote, you should take a look at the alternative products. This are the more notable I found. I stay with evernote though, as I can use it in the web, on my mac, on my iPhone and on the PCs. It has the best tagging out there and the fact that everything is indexed and searchable (even hand-written photographed notes) makes it the winner.

The best way is to see their videos showing up their products:

Yojimbo

Yojimbo is simple and very nice. Now it has an iPad app and is great for taking stuff to read later, bookmars and puting your pdf’s together.

Here you have an introductory video.

Together

Together also lets you keep everything in one place. Text, documents, images, movies, sounds, web pages and bookmarks can all be dragged to Together for safe keeping, tagged, previewed, collected together in different ways and found again instantly.

Springpad

Springpad is the closest to Evernote.

Evernote

Sure, how to forget evernote…

Here their intro video.

Livescribe Echo Smartpen is what I wish I had during my student times…

I have not played with it but I watch some of the videos they have on their website and looks amazing.

Basically it comes with a special paper notbook, where you write with this special pen. You can draw, write… everything is memorized. Then you have also a play, stop, pause at the bottom of the page to record the sound, so if the algebra teacher is doing something damn complicated and you are coping, it when you click in the physical netbook, you can listen what he said at that particular moment.

This is magic…

Also you connect it to a computer and you have all your notes… wow…

I was checking apps that integrate with Evernote when I found dial2do.
It allows you call a number and create reminders, send texts, listen to and send email, and access your favorite 3rd party services – all while keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.

It is thought for being productive while driving.

Dial2Do Voice2Note is a special service for Evernote users that converts all of your voice/audio notes to searchable, taggable text.

Take a look at the video, looks pretty impressive:

Bump.com allows users to connect online and offline via unique identifiers, including license plates, mobile phones and online profiles.

Ever wanted to tell the driver in front of you that their lights are off? Or maybe you’ve wanted to be the good Samaritan and warn someone that his meter has expired. Perhaps you just find the driver in the adjacent vehicle visually stimulating and are hoping they think the same about you.

These street scenarios face us drivers on a daily basis, but there’s never been an easy or safe way to message another driver or car owner. Enter Bump, a recently launched, private-beta startup (we’ve got invites) that has created a way to message other drivers by using the one unique identifier all drivers have in common: our license plates.
Bump users can message other drivers through voice-automated commands, photo snapshots of license plates and SMS. Bump also includes e-mail support, which you can use by directing your message to State.Plate@bump.com, where state is the two-digit state name abbreviation and plate is the individual’s license plate number.

Bump stores all messages sent to a particular license plate in the system until the plate in question is claimed by the plate owner. If you claim your plate, you can then start to receive messages as voice messages, e-mails or text messages. Of course, this also means that those messages you attempt to send to the hottie in the Audi TT won’t get delivered unless he or she has also claimed their plate on Bump — a clear limitation of the service at launch.

Bump members can also connect their Twitter, Facebook, and eventually Match.com profiles, e-mail accounts and cell phone numbers with their license plate to further complete the loop between the physical world and the digital world.
Eventually Bump will enter AAA’s realm and offer premium services to drives through a member program. Upgrades will include discount offers, special privileges and roadside assistance. The company is also working with rental car companies, sports leagues and fast-food outlets on marketing initiatives to target special offers to members on the road by tapping into existing video cameras. In this capacity, Bump aims to bring Groupon-like discounts to the real world through license plates, which may be a bit too ambitious for privacy-conscious drivers.

The service’s immediate and long-term success will rely on drivers claiming their plates. The challenge, however, is that even without offers directed at individual license plates, Bump’s technology will likely be a bit too intrusive for those who would prefer not to incorporate their license plate as part of their virtual and physical identities.

The license plate may seem like an obvious public identifier, but to those with higher profiles, their license plate number is not exactly information they want to be part of the public domain. For others, their license plate will be a welcome natural identifier to help bridge the gap between their online persona and offline life.

Right now Bump is available as a website and mobile web app, but the company has plans to release an app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry in the near future. Bump is still in private beta, but 250 Mashable readers can start using the service today. Simply enter the invite code “mashable” during the registration process.

Bump has raised $1 million in Series A funding and recently appeared at DEMO in Silicon Valley. The startup is in the process of raising a Series B round that will likely reach $8 million. The startup also recently acquired Platester, a license plate messaging platform, for an undisclosed sum.

(via mashable)

Do you travel often? I do, and I always wonder how much is going to cost me the taxi from the airport to the hotel, always afraid if I would have the right amount or if the taxi is going to try to charge more.

Well take a look at world taxi meter website. It is not for everywhere but might be of help:

Anybody who’s ever managed a project, whether online or off, knows how invaluable a Gantt chart can be.

For project managers looking for a Web-based alternative to the industry standard Microsoft Project for creating Gantt charts, one option might be Gantto, a Y Combinator-funded startup that recently went into private beta.

Gantto offers an intuitive UI for building out and editing Gantt charts, from the most basic to the rather complex. To make things easy for those who have historically used Microsoft Project, Gantto allows you to import project files in XML format.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, Gannt charts are bar-based charts that break down a project’s timeline. They’ve been around for about a century, but it was only with the invention of the personal computer that it became easy to rapidly produce complex Gantt charts. Today, they’re an indispensable part of any project.

Project managers looking to take Gantto for a spin can sign up here.

Looking for social media strategies in twitter I bumped into a couple of funny sites that I would like to share with you:

WHAT THE FUCK IS MY SOCIAL MEDIA “STRATEGY”?

It is like the bullshitr generator that I have mentioned earlier but with “social media” terms.

It is inspired on:

WHAT THE FUCK SHOULD I MAKE FOR DINNER?

Crowdmap is designed and built by the people behind Ushahidi, a platform that was originally built to crowdsource crisis information. As the platform has evolved, so have its uses. Crowdmap allows you to set up your own deployment of Ushahidi without having to install it on your own web server, and it is free.

With Crowdmap you can collect information from cell phones, news and the web, aggregate that information into a single platform and visualize it on a map and timeline.

Nothing to Install

Your site is hosted on our servers, so you have no installation to worry about. Instead, just choose a name and start customizing your site.

Interactive Map

One of the most powerful ways to visualize information is via a map. Choose a location and start plotting reports, information and other data right away.

Dynamic Timeline

Track your reports on the map and over time. You can filter your data by time and then see when things happened and where, as it’s also tied to the map.

“Real Time” Data Tracking

The admin area of Crowdmap has analytical tools for you to make sense of your incoming data in real-time.

There is nice service in the US with cars and an iPhone app.

Their goal is that you’ll use UberCab when you need a car service.

If you want to use it yo can use your iPhone app or SMS to request a black car limo service within a matter of minutes, for about 1.5x the cost of a taxi, with one click iPhone requests, with location based dispatch, with on demand limo service and in app billing – no cash needed.
Take a look at the video. It is quite an idea.

If you’re looking for a one-stop web-based tool for converting media from one format to another Online-Convert supports dozens of conversions including obscure formats often overlooked by other web-based converters.

Give it a try, it is free.

Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.

You can immediately see what people look like, where they’re based, and what they do. You can establish rapport by mentioning shared interests. You can grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more. And you can record thoughts for later by leaving notes.

Imagine relationship management built into your email. For free.

I installed the plugin in Safari, Chrome and it works fine. The problem for me is that most of my contacts don’t have a social life… so the right column is empty, which is still better than to have it with ads.

I used it with google apps.

Give it a try, it is a good idea.

Going out on a trip? Would you like to have a web with all the prepaid phone plans around the word, which, by the way, you can contribute to?

It is there, in a wikimedia way: Pay as you Go

Do you have an iPhone? even an iPhone 4?

Just go to http://jailbreakme.com with safari in your iPhone and slide the bar. Jailbreaking your iPhone now just as easy as this…

Why should you do that?

Well, first now it is legal, you can always restore your iPhone if you prefer, and you get cydia, like an appstore with software you will never find in the apple app store, such as my-wi which converts your iPhone into a wifi hotspot using your 3G, or have voip calls via 3G, or have sms delivery reports, or shortcuts for bluetooth, or you name it.

I’ve seen some people reporting that when they did the JB the had issues with mms and facetime. The same people by restoring and applying the jailbreakme again, fixed the problems.

Did it work for you?

A couple of months ago techcrunch covered Soho OS,describing its offering as a soup-to-nuts “hybrid of Quicken + Zoho + SalesForce”. Today, the company is announcing that it has secured $1 million in funding from The Time. This is on top of the $250K the company had raised in its pre-seed round.

The company has already begun putting the money to good use. As noted in the initial post, “the interface could certainly use a UX overhaul,” and it got one, and a new logo to boot. With a new color scheme, layout and consolidation, the new interface’s look & feel is softer, more pleasant on the eye, and more convenient to use. A definite improvement on the interface we previously reviewed.

Soho OS also beefed up communications features with video chat, SMS, VOIP, voice messaging, as well as improved conference calling and broadcast emails.

I really like where Soho OS is going but would like to see them charging a tiered service fee rather than rely exclusively on cutting commissions off their 3rd party integrated services. There’s no shame in charging your customers kids, especially if you provide them with clear value. Tattoo that please.

(from techcrunch)

Stay.com turns travel planning into a fun and social activity. Have fun discovering some of the best attractions, restaurants and hotels around the world, collect places you find interesting in your own guide and share it with family and friends.

Forget about your already outdated travel books. Stay.com has updated information on thousands of places to visit for your next vacation or business trip.

Simply collect everything you find interesting in your own personal guide. This way you can bring along all the details you need. You can print your guide in a nice compact format which is easy to fold and put in your pocket.

A very cool idea!

• Zenhabits
• PostSecret
• Climate Progress
• HiLobrow
• Hipster Runoff
• Kottke.org
• Cake Wrecks
• The Oatmeal
• S___ My Kids Ruined
• Deadline Hollywood
• Everything Everywhere
• The Sartorialist
• Information Is Beautiful
• The Daily Kitten
• Shorpy
• Apartment Therapy
• Double X
• Strobist
• Roger Ebert’s Journal
• The Awl
• GeekDad
• Engadget
• The Washington Note
• The Consumerist
• Pitchfork

Essential Blogs

• The Daily Wh.at
• TechCrunch
• Gawker
• Politico’s Ben Smith
• Boing Boing

Overrated Blogs

• FAIL Blog
• The Big Lead
• Perez Hilton
• Mashable
• Daily Kos

Read more here.

A group of designers living and working in Barcelona for Herraiz Soto & Co created a family of stickers to personalize the Apple logo on the MacBook with some hair. Clearly, these designers are not business types. If you’re a Mac user (like me) you may relate. The collection is called Stick With Me Baby. I don’t care if you think mustaches are out, these decals are in.

Flowdock is a web based project management tool that helps you keep your team organized and up-to-date with no effort. Similiar tools include yammer, Google wave or SociaWwork.

Flowdock is similar to google wave, with strong focus on tagging. The best way for you to understand how it works it to watch their video:

Nowadays we spend more time surfing the Internet than sleeping. Some of us work hooked in a browser, searching for information and managing it, and believe me, to keep track of relevant information is not an easy task.

Before we use to have cabinets where we stored our papers, now we have bookmarks, and other internet services. We have moved to have an Internet Explorer browser with favorites that are duplicated and useless as we used to just click favorite and forget about it, then 5 years later realize that we have hundreds of bookmarks in the office computer, different bookmarks at home, in our laptop… basically a useless mess.

The idea of this blog entry is to show a set of tools that can help you be organized in this chaotic Internet so you can be more productive.

If you are a bookmark type of guy, then what you need is synchronization. Be aware that syncronization of bookmarks is different depending on the browser you use.

Google Chrome

In the cases of Google Chrome browser if you have a google account, then all your google chrome browsers bookmarks can be synchronized.

So if you have Google Chome in the office and at home, if you add a new bookmark both will be synchronized. The way it is done is via Google Docs. There is a document there with all your bookmarks.

Firefox

If you are a firefox type of guy then you have several plugins that will allow you to sync your bookmarks between firefoxes and the web. The most notable I would say is xmarks (previously known as foxmarks).

Safari

If you use safari then the best way to sync not just between safaris but also with your iPhone, iPad and so, it is using mobileme.

Browser Independent

Delicious in Safari

Now, if you are not married to a specific browser, then I would recommend Delicious. Delicious is a socialbookmarking but you have plugins for all browsers, so if you see a site you like or want to remember you just click on a button and the beauty is that you can access via web o via another button in your browser (no matter which one), plus it is very powerfull because it let you apply tags to your bookmarks (much better than folders) and decide if you want them public or private.

Delicious in Chrome

Delicious in Firefox

Other tools

Bookmarking is OK but not enough. We have been bookmarking for 20 years now. True that now we have synchronization and tagging, which makes life easier, but there are other tools that allow you to:

1. Highlight parts of text of a website or PDF, add notes and share them. You can comment on a specific website or add some notes.
2. Get a copy of the website offline and make it searchable
3. If you don’t have the time to read something, with the click of a button you can add it to a cue of thing you have to read in your computer, iPhone or wherever when you have time.

This things have different tools.

1.- To annotate on websites and PDFs (which is very usefull) you can use:

a.nnotate, just for PDF. It is the pionner (I think). It is free if you don’t use it a look but it looks great. You upload a pdf and you can highlight stuff and add notes. Share, and so.

Lets annotate I discovered lately. It is also for PDF only and it is not as nice as a.nnote but it is free. In a.nnotate you can select text to be highlighted. In letsannotate you create a box with the mouse. It is good to provide comments on PDFs

Webnotes is by far my favorite, and the one I use. When you see a website click on the bookmark you have to add it to your webnotes and voila, you have the website with a top bar that allows you to highlight text, add post it’s, share it… and then you have an organizer where you can organise your websites and PDFs on folders and see the annotations.

2.- If you would like to have a copy offline of your website, Evernote does a great job. Its competitor Springpad might also do it (I have never tested as I am a devoted Evernote user).

With Evernote, if you see a site you want to remember then you click on the Evernote button in your browers (no matter which one you are using) and then you can access your evernote online or in your desktop sofware. If you want the site as you see it click on SHIFT+ the Evernote button (tip). It will be indexed and you can change the name and tag it as you wish.

3.- If you use twitter in your phone or you see a long article you can not read now, then there are a couple of tools that are great for this:

Instapaper (the one I use) has a bookmark you can have in your browser so you basically add the website you are reading or want to read to the cue of sites to read. The nice thing is that it has an iPhone (I don’t know about Android) app where the sites are transformed in text if you wish.

Readitlater is similiar.

Most of all services I mentioned here are free, and if you want more features, space, etc… then you have a pro payed plan.

Which ones I use?

1. Webnotes. Specially to highlight parts of a website I find interesting.
2. Evernote: not a lot for websites but I take photos of all the incoming mail, books, wine, receipts, etc… so they are indexed.
3. Instapaper: if there is something I want to blog about, or I’m in the iPhone and theres is a link in a tweet that I would like to read later. Very handy.

CloudApp allows you to share images, links, music, videos and files. Here is how it works: choose a file, drag it to the menubar and they take care of the rest. Thy provide you with a short link automatically copied to your clipboard that you can use to share your upload with co-workers and friends.

Additionally you can view, track and delete files right from your menubar.

So, any file, you just click on your define shortcut or drag it to the icon and it is uploaded to the cloud. Another shortcut and you have the link to the file that you can send to your friend/family.

Easy, elegant. Give it a try. It is free.

You can have an online dashboard where you see everything you have uploaded.

Forget emailing big files again. Just send the unique URL ;-)

Here a video I found in youtube showing how it works.

Turn your iPhone into a real webcamera and use it to video chat with your family and friends.
With iWebcamera you can use your iPhone as webcamera in applications like Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Youtube and every other webcamera enabled application.

Features

• Turn your iPhone into a real wireless webcamera.
• Two quality options.
• Instant-Pause mode, stop streaming instantly and resume whenever you want without exiting your host application.
• Plug and Play ready, install the drivers and you are ready to go!
• Built-in manual.
• Beautiful Userinterface fully translated in English and German.
• Compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP and Apple’s Leopard and Snow Leopard.

iWebcamera requires an iPhone with at least iPhone OS 3.1, a computer connected to the same network and the installation of the iWebcamera drivers.

Google has a service you might never have heard of: Google Alerts.

Google Alerts are emails sent to you when Google finds new results — such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs — that match your search term. You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Web. For example, people use Google Alerts to:

• find out what is being said about their company or product.
• monitor a developing news story.
• keep up to date on a competitor or industry.
• get the latest news on a celebrity or sports team.
• find out what’s being said about themselves.

Here’s how it works:

1. You enter a query that you’re interested in.
2. Google Alerts checks regularly to see if there are new results for your query.
3. If there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email.

For general queries like [ football ], you can get a summary of the new results every day. For specific topics, like [ cardiovascular atherosclerosis ], you might not get an email every day, but you’ll find out when something new and relevant is published. See more examples of how Google Alerts are used

Snapfinger is the largest online restaurant ordering site with more than 28,000 locations in over 1,600 cities..

Don’t wait in line… Snapfinger is the largest online Restaurant Ordering Site

Snapfinger is the US’s largest most complete restaurant search and remote ordering site for take-out, delivery and catering from your favorite restaurants. More than four years in the making, Snapfinger allows you direct access to the nation’s top restaurant brands through each location’s interactive menu. You can access your favorite restaurants from the web, from your cell phone or from a toll free number.

Five months ago I wrote a post about tools to control your diet. Now I would like to extend on a 125euro gadget that I might buy in the future: withings.

Withings is a body scale that it is connected via wifi to internet. It is a smart body scale, you just step on it and recognizes you, weights you, finds you body fat mass and sends it to your private account at withings. So every morning when you go to the toilet you just weight yourself, and you don’t even have to look… ;-) then your wife and kids. The scale will know who is who.

When you log in you can see all sorts of graphs with you weight through time. They even have an iPhone app.

Take a look to the videos:
Web based control panel:

iPhone app:

Living in the US you can travel around using your own data plan, with you iPhone, iPad, Android or whaterver. In Europe it sucks as everytime you change country you roam.

I was looking for prepaid plans in Spain, Switzerland and France for iPads or just as a USB modem (3G) when I found this:

MAXroam. You can travel with cheap international roaming. It will always be cheaper if you buy a prepaid bundle in the country where you go, but it looks fine.

To consider ;-)

Click here to download the latest Skype beta for windows that comes with a free trial of group video calling. Video call up to four of your friends – all at the same time. Everyone on the callwill be able to see and hear each other.

Note: group video calling currently works with Skype 5.0 Beta for Windows only. Everyone on the call needs this version of Skype, otherwise the group video call won’t work.

The question is, who is going to pay for the service once the trial is over? How is it going to be? Everybody in a conference video call should subscribe? If so…

I see the interest for companies, not individuals. People is used to get skype for free, even with video.

For $99 you can have a unique iPhone cover made of wood (bamboo) that fits your iPhone to the micrometer.

Take a look to their website: grove

These are beautiful, unique and expensive cases to make your iphone a unique piece in harmony with the nature.

You can buy a plain case for $89 or add your own design engraved with laser on the back. You can also choose from a set of artwork they have.

Here a quick list of the products I can’t live without:

Gadgets:

Macbook pro
iPhone 3GS (as soon as the 4G is out… then … ;-) )
Nikon d300 with nikkor 18-200 and  sigma 10-20 (I wish it was a nikon d3s though…)
Fonera2.0n (great concept and community. I have two an convincing friends to join)
IP Camera (pan tilt) wifi
I hesitate about the iPad. I might wait for the second gen (with hopefully a camera for video chats)

Services:

Google apps
Google sync
Zoneedit (to manage dns)
Evernote (my brain basically)
Delicious (and a plugin for chrome)
Dropbox

For the mac (I have tons…):

Google Chrome
BusyCal
AppCleaner
Audiobook builder (to create audiobooks and put them in iTunes)
Backuplist + (to rsync my docs to my webdav)
Copypaste Pro
Mikogo (free app to share desktop with anybody, browsing together and granting control over your machine)
Paparazzi! (to create a snapshot of a website)
ScreenFlick (to make screencasts)
Skype (I use it via Adium)
Adium (all Instant Messengers into one: Skype, Gtalk, yahoo, msn, facebook, aol, etc…)
Proxifier (to put all the apps into a box, then you can tunnel them via ssh into a machine with squid)
1Password (to manage logins and passwords. Syncs with iPhone)

For the iPhone:

Tweetie (in fact for iPhone and mac)
Brightkite (like twitter on steroids: with images, location, notes, checkins)
Facebook
Foursquare, Gowala, Tellmewhere (location based apps. You can use http://check.in to check in at the same time in some of them)
GeeTasks pro
AutoStich (to create panoramas with several photos)
Pixelpipe
1Password
MyWi (use your 3g connection to become a wifi hot spot)
ezShare (remote desktop, VPN and access to network drives like webdav)
IP Vision Pro (to access you Ip cameras)

I don’t have but I wish I have (I am not in the US… that is why):

Google Voice
Mint

Social media has superpowers. Or so goes current tech-wonk opinion on Facebook, Twitter, et. al. From creating a “social Web,” to shaking up e-commerce, to mobilizing people behind a presidential candidate, social media has reached its tentacles into pretty much everything. Except places where there aren’t iThings and high-speed wireless. Ya know, most of the places on earth. Until now.

Facebook co-founder and creator of MyBarackObama.com Chris Hughes aims to make social media matter more with his latest venture, Jumo. He’ll delve into how social media can create offline change at TechCrunch Disrupt, our conference on media and technology, taking place May 24-26, 2010, in New York City. You can get tickets at our early-bird rate if you visit our ticket page. We’re also happy to announce speakers including Meetup Co-founder and CEO, Scott Heiferman –the guy behind 50K weekly meetups — and Gilte Group CEO Susan Lyne. She’s at the helm of a buzzed-about sample-sale startup that’s caused “couture” and “clickthrough” to occur in the same sentence. Some of our latest sponsors include Google, Bing –yes, you read that right — and DataRockIt.

So, back to social media. When I say, “matter more,” I’m paraphrasing a bit. Hughes’ actual wording in an announcement last month was: “leverag[ing] the participatory web to foster long-term engagement with the issues and organizations that are relevant to each individual.” If you visitJumo now, the preview site asks you Hunch-style questions about your preferences such as which do-good cause you’d spend $100 million solving, which language you’d like to learn, and what you’d name your child. (I chose “Grace” over “Crystal.”) At Disrupt, Hughes and Heiferman will discuss how social media can foment positive fallout offline, including in places that aren’t wired and wealthy. (Hughes probably won’t tell us much about Jumo, but we’ll hear some of the inspired thinking behind it, no doubt.) Heiferman’s laudable goal with Meetup is to offer a tool for people anywhere to create communities around any interest. If you want to hear more details on what Hughes and Heiferman are dreaming up with their ventures, you’ll just have to come to Disrupt.

(from techcrunch)

Check it out with this website:

http://zesty.ca/facebook

Then adjust your privacy settings accordingly (in facebook sure).

I have discovered a very interesting website: animoto

Animoto does nice videos from your videos and images automatically. The output is pretty impressive and it is very easy to use. With the free account you get 30 sec videos.

Take a look at the one I just did for my son. It has taken me few minutes to do. Just upload some photos a couple of videos and write a bit of text:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Farm Radio International is a Canadian-based, not-for-profit organization working in direct partnership with approximately 330 radio broadcasters in 39 African countries to fight poverty and food insecurity. Their materials are also available electronically to broadcasters and to rural development organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

What do they do – Their program supports broadcasters in meeting the needs of local small-scale farmers and their families in rural communities, and helps broadcasters build the skills to develop content that responds to local needs.

The Network facilitates an exchange of information that:

• is aimed at increasing food supplies and improving nutrition and health;
• is simple, safe and practical;
• is ecologically sound and environmentally sustainable;
• can be clearly communicated by radio;
• has been proven useful and transferable within the developing world;
• requires only resources ordinarily available to small-scale farmers;
• requires little or no technical help to implement; and
• meets the needs of both women and men.

How they work – Radio is their primary method of communication. We gather and research information about successful, low-cost practices in sustainable agriculture, nutrition, health and community development, and produce radio scripts for our partner-broadcasters and others engaged in rural development. They, in turn, share the information with an audience of millions of farmers and their family members around the world.

How to help – Read about their program, current activities, and challenges facing farmers in Network News. If you want to get involved or have any questions, they’d like to hear from you.

Square is a a platform for iPhones, iPad (they already have a gorgeous app) and Android phones and laptops (in the future) that with a free credit card reader plugged into the headphones jack will allow to accept payments with credit cards. It is super nice app.

I don’t have a business but if I would, I wouldn’t buy a register machine, just an iPad. It will even create a community allowing to see the photos of who buys, etc…

Take a look at their website it is better to understand what it is about.

In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments has moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was born a few days later right next to the old San Francisco US Mint.

Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. We’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010.

The media if flooded with iPad news. Tons of people unboxing, reviewing, and falling in love with the beautiful iPad even if aware of its limitations (no camera, multitasking, closed platform…).

If you want to see how a website would look like in an iPad (because you don’t have one) check this out:

http://ipadpeek.com/

Are you looking for stories? You normally use your list of blogs, youtube and so, and then you might share it in facebook or twitter, or maybe you are bombarded by funny emails on fridays with jokes and so.

If you are the kind of person who likes this friday’s emails, then redux can be a nice tool for you.

Redux is all about delivering personalized entertainment on the web, taps into users’ friends and people that share their interests.

Users just like you post links to entertainment that they like and it instantly appears in the Redux stream.

Sharing on Redux is easy: Explore the web, find something cool, paste the link.

Love cat videos, 80′s cartoons, short films, and hockey fights? They have the channels , created by users just like you.

Just join the channels you like and your specially mixed stream is ready to go. Sit back and enjoy or share your own awesome web finds. Can’t find a channel dedicated to failed American Idol auditions? Create your own and share your love.

What will the neighbors think? That is a difficult question to answer, as it depends upon which design you pick: would you like it to look as if you have acquired a classic car or a racing machine, or perhaps converted your garage entirely to house a horse or have its own little indoor swimming pool?

Garages are notoriously difficult to disguise – the unwanted-but-necessary side-kicks to our (hopefully) more beautiful homes. Like windows into alternate worlds, these printed tarps fromStyle Your Garage allow you to turn your unsightly garage door into a work of art that will definitely get the attention of anyone passing by your house.

From beach seems to burning subway stations and horse stables to whole aircrafts it is now possible to make your car parking room seem like any space you can imagine.

There are even multi-panel options to create the illusion of an double-wide space for construction vehicles or a triple-wide airplane hanger.

So if you want to camouflage the least-attractive part of your suburb pad: the sky is the limit, though you could probably have them print some cloud cover for you if you really wanted as well.

(from dornob)

As you saw in a couple of previous posts, google released his social tool called google buzz (not to be confused with yahoo’s one…).

I tried though it still does not work in google apps, and it is pretty good. It is sort of twitter with location and photos, in fact if you read me, you will see that in a way this is what I was looking for… well no.

Yes, it does have all the ingredients: location, you can follow people and in a way is like twitter on steroids (which is great), you can have it in your gmail, there is a cool mobile version too… but…

Well the but is the but I had with google wave. A lot of people can follow you but you need a google account. Like wave, where ended up being a very promising tool but from the moment that it is closed to google users (or wave users which is worse) then is meant to have a difficult future. With buzz the pool is bigger, as there are a lot of google users, but it is still not like email where you can send email across systems, or like twitter where you can just shout and everybody can see it, and follow you.

Did we need another social tool?

Most of us are happy with facebook and twitter. Twitter is limited as I said in the past (location, photos, etc…) but it is big.

Do you think buzz could be a twitter killer? Maybe…

We are starting to have a bit of fatigue on social tools. Recently I posted an article on location based apps, well I got several emails from little companies and I tried all their products. Some are good, but it will be difficult to beat foursquare which looks like is the most established.

For the time being I stick to facebook (for my friends), twitter (for the world), and brightkite to post in both (location and photos). For location foursquare and tellmewhere.

I keep trying buzz and latitude, that by the way, how do they live together? Looks like they don’t know each other…

By the way, google should work harder on integration. I would like to merge all my accounts under one profile and for the time being is not possible…

There is a very cool service called OpenTable.

OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants plus www.opentable.com, the world’s most popular website for making restaurant reservations online.

With more than 12,000 customers throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Japan, the OpenTable hardware and software system replaces pen-and-paper at the host stand. It automates the process of taking reservations and managing tables, while allowing restaurants to build robust diner databases for superior guest recognition and targeted e-mail marketing.

For diners, concierges and administrative professionals, the website provides a fast, efficient way to find available tables that meet desired criteria for cuisine, price and location at a specified time. Reservations are free and can be made around the clock. The website is directly connected to the thousands of computerized reservation systems at OpenTable restaurants. Search results reflect actual, “real-time” availability and reservations are immediately recorded in the same electronic reservation book used by the maitre’d.

Unfortunately there are only 2 restaurants in Geneva, but I see the potential of a tool like this, which has an iPhone app and also manages reviews (like other location apps such as tellmewhere or tripadvisor).

The nice thing of this one is that allows restaurants to manage bookings, and you can go and see who in a specific area and cusine has a free table at 8.30pm, click and book it. Pretty cool. True that you can always grab the phone and call, but here you can do much more: search, etc…

You’re busy. Between meetings, social events, and hopefully a workout or two, your schedule’s packed. Don’t you wish you could hand off simple tasks so you could have more time to play?

Take a look at Siri, your personal assistant. Just like a real assistant, Siri understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and adapts to your preferences over time.

Today, Siri can help you find and plan things to do. You can ask Siri to find a romantic place for dinner, tell you what’s playing at a local jazz club or get tickets to a movie for Saturday night.

Siri is young and, like a child taking its first steps, may be awkward at times. Siri may occasionally misunderstand things you ask it to do even within its range of understanding.

Nonetheless, Siri will improve quickly by getting to know you better and understanding a broader set of tasks. In fact, right now, Siri’s learning how to handle reminders, flights stats and reference questions. Our vision is that, over time, you’ll trust Siri to manage many personal details in your life – from recommending a wine you might enjoy to managing your to do list.

The current version of Siri is built for iPhone 3GS and requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later. Soon, Siri will run on the iPod Touch, iPhone 3G and additional mobile platforms, as well.

Google PowerMeter is a free software tool that allows you to view your home’s energy consumption from your personalized iGoogle homepage. Using information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices, Google PowerMeter helps you to save money and use less electricity.

What is Google PowerMeter?
Google PowerMeter is an opt-in software tool that allows users to see detailed home energy information right on their computer. It is a secure Google gadget that displays data on home energy consumption received from either a “smart meter” or another electricity monitoring device.

Why are you doing this? I thought Google was an internet company.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful; Google PowerMeter is all about giving users access to their own energy information.

Who are you working with today?
We are working with a number of utilities to deliver Google PowerMeter to their customers. You can see our current list of partners here.

How much will this gadget cost?
Google PowerMeter is free for all. Utilities and device manufacturers pay no fees to integrate into the offering and users likewise do not pay anything or see ads when they use Google PowerMeter.

We’re building this tool to provide energy information to consumers and to expose the opportunity that this front represents. As a project of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, the focus is on helping users understand how they use electricity and help them use less.

How can I get Google PowerMeter?
We are gradually rolling Google PowerMeter out in tests with partners and we currently have limited tests with utilities in the United States, Canada, the UK and India. We have also partnered with the independent device manufacturers of TED and AlertMe that work with Google PowerMeter.

How can I sign up for Google PowerMeter?
Google PowerMeter is not yet widely available. We’re currently testing it out with a small number of our utility partners and Google employees and plan to expand our rollout later this year. Stay up-to-date on our progress by joining our mailing list.

I’m a utility or an in-home energy device manufacturer. How can I partner with Google?
We are working with a number of utilities and firms that make power measurement devices and are eager to partner with even more. If you represent a utility company that has rolled out smart meters to some of your customers, we’d love to work with you, even if your rollout isn’t finished yet. Please fill out this utility form. If you represent an in-home energy device manufacturer and are interested in partnering with Google PowerMeter, please fill out this device form.

I’m a customer of one of your partners. How can I get Google PowerMeter?
Google PowerMeter is currently released as a limited beta to a small number of customers of each of our partners. We are working with our partners to scale Google PowerMeter and make the product available to all customers with smart meters.

What are Google PowerMeter’s privacy practices?
Google PowerMeter is an opt-in service and users must sign up to participate. No personally identifying information will be shared between Google and the user’s utility. All energy data received by Google PowerMeter will be stored securely, and users will be able to delete their energy data or ask their utility to stop sending data to Google PowerMeter at any time.

Kiva.org allows individuals to make loans starting at $25 to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world, also known as microcredit. By doing so, you can provide affordable working capital for the poor (money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc.), empowering them to earn their way out of poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on Kiva, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to entrepreneurs from communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Kiva creates an interpersonal connection at low costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery.

doubleTwist is a iTunes clone to sync your android, palm pre, blackberry or in fact up to more than a hundred devices.

It looks like iTunes, and you can buy music directly from amazon. If you have a nexus one, give it a try.

I have put on weight lately and since two days ago I am trying to actively loose is, but this time by eating better and controlling my caloric intake.
I have been researching online solutions with iPhone apps and there are quite a bit.
Well normally I keep track of my weight with an apple software called dietcontroller, but I am not carrying my mac everywhere, so it is not very handy to keep adding the food you eat.

In my case there is an extra problem, I live in France/Switzerland and most of the stuff out there are for american users (types of foods, stores, etc…) so there is actually no good solution for me, with the food I eat (that I buy at migros).

Here you have the options:

1.- I have been using for a while a service (free) called fatsecret (I know, horrible name) which is good. Most of the foods are there and it is sort of a community. Again, using the iPhone browser was not good enough but now lately they have open the API and there is an iPhone app (free) called Calorie Counter. I was going to give a try but it only works with iPhone 3.1.2 and I am not going to upgrade for that.

2.- I continued researching for similar solutions and I found myfitnesspal. This is a great service too (free) with the addition of exercices as well. Here you set up your target, and upfront you have the calories left for the day. I liked it. They have a nice iphone app, where you can add what you eat, classifying it in breakfast, lunch, dinner and snaks, discounting from the calories you have left for the day, add exercises. Very good, and the iphone app too.

3.- I found a third one called diet tv which has by far, the best website in terms of nice and graphics. I have not tried this a lot though. Looks like you can do most of what the other two can do: log food, weight, measures, see your progress, engage in the community, record your diary… and in a very nice interface. I don’t think they have an iPhone app, so for me is a no-going.

4.- Finally what is probably the best, but you have pay plans, is DailyBurn. You can do basically the same than with fatsecret and myfitnesspal but when you add food, the results are much better than with the chaotic other two. They have photos for each entry (which is a killer feature) and you can also track your workouts. They have two iPhone apps, one (free) to enter your weight and food, and another one (paid) to scan food code bars. Looks like it is good for the US, but not for Europe. What I don’t like is that you just keep adding food but you cannot structure it on breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is just what you eat. I also don’t like that you can only create 20 favorite food entries (otherwise you have to pay).

I guess for me the winner is myfitnesspal. With myfitnesspal and dailyburn you can use the withings scale (a weight scale connected to wifi), which make life easier. Withings scale can even twit your weight… cool (and expensive) gadget.

If dailyburn would be free, it would probably be my winner.

Wonder what google and others see in a website?

Try WooRank, you will get a ton of information about a website.

I have blogged in the past about prezi, and I think is one of the coolest presentation tools out there.
I would like to share a couple of other brainstorming tools that might be useful for your thinking processes:

• Prezi
• xmind
• bubbl.us

Many times you have wondered who the hell reads the adds in websites and other places. You just skip them or close them, so you wonder how can the companies pay to advertise…

Nowadays mass advertising is transforming into custom advertising. Google does so in its add sense and gmail. I would say it might work better as you can be interested in what it is being offered as it fits in the context of your search, emails, etc…

Is mass advertising dead then?

I guess no. Walmart or Carrefour, Coca-Cola and so need to continue with mass advertising as well as customizing their campaigns into this new era.

As you know I listen constantly to podcasts audiobooks and so. At first I was surprised that one of my favorite podcaster (or netcaster as he likes to call himself) started adding 2 to 3 adds in each show. The difference is that he would talk about the products and looks like he really likes it.

I think that it is not the same to listen to a commercial in a traditional way, than to hear someone you trust recommending a product. For the person you trust doing this could cost him the fact that you don’t trust him anymore as you might think that if he does reviews and some of them are ads, he is not being transparent and objective…. unless…. if he really likes a service he can choose to be paid by them to advertise.

Well this is where we are going and this website is some of it. Take a look: open candy

Others could be services like trialpay where if you are normaly buying something, you can get a discount on a product you want to try. For instance you are going to buy something from gap anyway and you would like to try 3 free months of evernote. Voila.

With remindo you can create your company branded intranet in minutes and access it from anywhere on the web. Use it free for up to 3 GB of storage. Share information, collaborate and project manage with your team and clients.

Here the features:
Personalization & Company Branding
Personalized URL Remindo gives you a personalized URL like http://intranet.yourcompany.com to access your company intranet. Share this secure URL with your clients and team to give them access to your company intranet anywhere on the web.

Company branding
Brand your intranet by uploading your company logo. Your team and clients will see it prominently displayed on every page of your intranet, truly making it your own.

Company Intranet

Company Network
When you sign up, your corporate email address immediately creates an intranet for your company on Remindo. Anyone with an email address ending in your corporate domain will automatically be added to your company network on Remindo, once they sign up.

Sharing links and status updates
A powerful Twitter-like messaging system but private for your team. Team members can share thoughts on work, projects, ask questions, share URLs, or simply post status updates.

Instant Messaging
As team members join your intranet, they are automatically added to the Instant Messaging list and instantly organized. Clients and partners can also be added to IM allowing your entire team to have instant one-on-one access to each other. You can also send offline messages as a great replacement to sending emails.

Rich Team Profiles
Each team member gets a personal profile space to fill out. This allows team members to get to know each other better and allows new team members to familiarize themselves with the team quickly and easily.

Online File Storage
Tag, upload, and share files. Its a great place to share frequently used files like employee manuals, sales collateral, presentation templates etc. Comments can also be posted for these file. Each file can be up to 200MB in size and can be downloaded from anywhere. Every company intranet gets 3GB of free storage.

Team and Client Communication

Discussions

Threaded discussions organize all inter-company and client communication in tidy strings saving you and your team the hassle of digging through emails to find what you need.

Communication Archive
All communication gets archived for future reference and is organized by the work they are related to. This allows you to quickly and easily recover any discussion if the need arises.

200MB File Sharing
Attach massive files of up to 200MB to discussions. Files this size cannot be sent by email and third party transfers create security risks, but Remindo discussions allow you to easily share files that too with platinum standard security.

Client Extranet

Work planning
Interact with your clients and set tasks and milestones on the shared work calendar to keep everyone on the same page.

Client privacy
No matter how many different clients you might be working with, Remindo architecture ensures that your interactions with one client are always invisible to all others so there is no risk of privacy breaches.

File sharing with clients
Share huge files of upto 200 MB each with your clients. Since everything in Remindo is protected with multiple layers of security, this is the best way to share sensitive information with clients.

Unlimited clients
There is no limit on the number of clients you can work with in Remindo. Invite as many as you want.

Work planning and project management

Personalized Work Calendar
Get a quick overview of the status of all your work at a glance. Each team member gets a personalized calendar with only work for which they are responsible.

Unlimited Users
Allow any number of people to be a member of your private intranet. Authorize any team members, freelance partners, and/or clients to view work and participate in projects.

Unlimited Projects
Setup and manage an unlimited number of projects on your intranet.

Unlimited Subprojects
Each project can have an unlimited number of subprojects within it allowing you to further organize your company’s work.

Milestones
Easily add milestones to projects by clicking the appropriate day on the calendar. Assign responsibility for the new milestone to anyone on your team.

Task Lists and Tasks
Link any number of tasks to each milestone and assign each task to any team member you choose. In this way, management of work can get as granular as you wish. As tasks are completed, team members mark them complete. When all tasks in a given milestone are complete, the milestone is automatically marked as completed.

Milestone Auto-Completion
Milestones can be set to automatically be marked complete on any date you specify.

Milestones and Task Delegation
Delegate milestones and tasks to any team member you choose. As they complete these tasks and milestones, Remindo will send email notifications to your email inbox alerting you that they are complete.

Milestone Alerts
Remindo sends you an email notification of any milestones or tasks that are either pending or overdue, alerting you to possible problems in plenty of time to make the necessary adjustments. Milestone alerts help you keep your work on track.

Cross Company Milestones
Milestones and tasks across all your work and projects from your entire company intranet can be viewed from a single calendar. Management can track the operations of the entire company at a single glance.

Multiple Calendar Views
View the progress of milestones and tasks on either a broad monthly basis or on a detailed weekly view. Both calendar views are available at a single click allowing you to toggle back and forth between views.

Enterprise Security

Engineering
Platinum standard security that plugs SQL injections, prevents XSS attacks, and protects your data from mismanagement, hackers, and your competition’s prying eyes.

VeriSign SSL
Remindo uses a 128 bit VeriSign SSL to secure all communication pipes. This encryption is the same as used in many global banks and Fortune 500 companies.

Amazon Web Services
All your company information gets stored on secure Amazon S3 server clouds using EC2 technology protecting you from the risks of stolen laptops, server crashes, and malware attacks.

Work Alerts

Email Alerts
Remindo sends alerts directly to your email inbox keeping you notified of the completion of work, tasks, milestones and projects. You will also receive notifications of pending or overdue tasks allowing you to get that work back on track.

Daily Digest
If you prefer, Remindo can send you a quick daily digest of all the day’s activity allowing you to review the progress your team has made during the day.

Instant alerts
Receive notifications the moment tasks or milestones are completed. These alerts are sent directly to your email inbox and flag you the moment they are marked completed by a team member.

Special event notifications
Get a daily report of all event activity that has taken place across your projects.

Live Feed

Live activity feed
All activities on your intranet and within projects are brought to you directly. Live feed instantly alerts you to activity so you don’t waste time report, updating, notifying, and sending team members emails on an individual basis.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Cloud Hosted
Remindo operates from Amazon S3 server Internet clouds. These are among the most secure and reliable available for SaaS.

Backed Up
Remindo backs up every file, message, tweet, and instant message so none of your important documents and communications are lost.

Access Anywhere
As Remindo is web-based, both you and your team can access it from any computer anywhere in the world that has an internet connect. You’ll stay connected with company operations no matter where you’re traveling.

Nothing to Install
You don’t need to install or maintain anything. Remindo does all that for you. All you have to do is log in.

Reduce System Admin Loads
Remindo manages your entire corporate network for you. We keep servers up and running, troubleshoot any glitches, and keep the system up-to-date. This frees up your IT team to focus on other things.

Always Up-to-Date
Remindo makes sure your project management system is always the newest, most stable environment for your project management.

Support

24x7x365 Support
Remindo has a dedicated support team that will answer your queries and provide support 24x7x365. Just shoot a mail to remindo [at] remindo [dot] com and support will get back to you.

Video Tour Guides
Detailed video guides to walk new users through everything from basic project management and collaboration features to advanced functionality

FAQ’s
All questions that Remindo users frequently ask are compiled for reference.

Case Study
Detailed case study that captures how a global company incorporated Remindo into their processes to boost productivity and get more ambitious with targets

Guides
Step-by-step guide for CEO’s and owners of Small Businesses on how to use Remindo to increase organizational efficiency and get results.

Free!
Free for unlimited users, projects and subprojects
There is absolutely no sign up or usage cost associated with Remindo. You can start availing all these features simply by signing up with your corporate email id.

Showdocument is free online service that will allow you to upload a document and in real time chat and highlight stuff together, like browsing the pages together. You can also open a plain one and write, and even link it with google docs.

Very easy to use and very handy when wanting to go over a document on the phone remotely.

Notable is an online tool that will allow you to easily provide feedback on websites.
Quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser.  Works on iPhone, too!

Notable helps your team collaborate through visual feedback on screenshots, via a chaos-free process so that everyone can express their opinion.

Ardone has released a quadricopter that can be controlled with an iPhone or iPod touch. Take a look at the video, it is a super cool gadget… it works with wi-fi and has two cameras…

I just wanted to introduce a new player in the photo hosting. I have talked in the past about flickr, picasa web, smugmug (one of my favourites) and now a small company from New Jersey, phanfare offers you options of unlimited photos from $49.99, and the pro $99.99 with Raw support.

The galleries do not look as cool as with smugmug but you have a ton of cool features such as HD video (up to 2Gb per file) support or a desktop client.

Give it a try!

I still have not decided how to back up all my photos (around 50.000 with raw and jpgs…) may be just a backup service of S3 in amazon… as I have my own galleries at http://norai.net with a selection of good photos and http://norai.net/gallery with the rest.

I still need an offsite backup though even if they are all in raid mirror and external HD… but looking at the prices of backing up at amazon S3, dreamhost or others, I rather buy an external HD and put it is a friend’s house.

Interesting to see how to waste $530 just to show up how is it made…

See it at iFixit

Keep all those resolutions you made. mysomeday is a website that helps you to make a list to keep track of these ‘Somedays’.

You can share them with Friends and the community or keep them private.

For each Someday, we’ll show you related step-by-step Plans for achievement. You can copy and customize a Plan or build your own.

They’ll also show you people in your area that have similar Somedays.

If none exist you can post an ‘Open Invite’ so others can find you. You can help others by posting a Plan with the steps you used to achieve your Someday. You can help others get on the right track by posting comments. Each time your comments are found helpful, your Altruism Rating goes up and you can promote your product/services by posting a Plan. The better the Plan, the more likely it will be copied and the more attention you’ll get.

TuneUp is a tool that will allow clean up your itunes digital music collections which are probably a mess… rename tracks like track01, add the cover, album and so… and automatically.

I did posted previously about another one: pollux but looks it does not work anymore….

Blippy is a fun and easy way to see and discuss the things people are buying.

Automatically share your favorite purchases from iTunes, Amazon, Zappos, Visa, MasterCard, and more.

It is now in beta but interesting idea on a twitter like website.

http://google.com/insights/search/

See what the people is searching for
With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. See examples of how you can use Google Insights for Search.
Categories
Narrow data to specific categories, like finance, health, and sports.
Examples: Top Newspapers in the UK | Soccer in 2008, 2007…
Seasonality
Anticipate demand for your business so you can budget and plan accordingly.
Examples: hotel in 2008, 2007,… | soccer in 2006 vs. 2007
Geographic distribution
Know where to find your customers. See how search volume is distributed across regions and cities.
Examples: tickets in different US metro areas | kangaroo in United States vs. Australia
Properties
See search patterns in other Google properties.
Examples: New York christmas shopping, 2008 | puppies vs. kittens, in the USA (image search)

Pogoplug has released a brand new improved version of the original Pogoplug. Now it looks like a snail…. cool.

The Pogoplug connects your USB drive to the Internet so you can easily share and access your files from anywhere.
The Pogoplug is the perfect accessory to your connected life. Imagine accessing all your files and media at home from any laptop or desktop computer, anywhere in the world, or sharing this content with friends and family without having to upload. There’s even an iPhone application so you can always “phone home” to get your files!

Connect the Pogoplug to the switch/router and then connect a Hard Disk to it. You can access from any browser and via https if you wish. With the iPhone app you can also have access to all your files. Pretty neat! No need to have a NAS.

The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 is a high-performance wireless music system with 5 speakers powered by 5 dedicated digital amplifiers. With 2 tweeters, 2 mid-range drivers and 1 subwoofer, the S5 delivers crystal-clear, room-filling sound that rivals much larger, more complicated audio equipment. Plus, the all-digital sound architecture provides precise sound reproduction, just as the artist intended. With the S5 you can quickly add a room of music anywhere you want — simply plug it in and enjoy. And thanks to the S5’s superior wireless range, no room is out of reach.

When it comes to controlling your S5 and the vast array of music on your computer and the Internet, you can simply reach for your iPhone™ or iPod® touch. The free Sonos Controller for iPhone app makes it easy to find and play any song, in any room. The S5 also includes free software for control from your Mac or PC. Or you can get even more control with the dedicated Sonos Controller 200.

Would you like to find more cat videos than the ones you find in youtube. If that is possible sure…

Well videosurf is a very smart video search. Give it a try.

Spotify is a new way to enjoy music. Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice. With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.

There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.

Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists, Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again! We’re music lovers like everyone else.

We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs by creating a product that people love to use. We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.

You will need to have an invitation (token) to get access as it is still in beta. There 3 plans, free (supported by ads) and two premiums.

There is also a nice iPhone app. This link is for the features and this for the price plans.

The iPhone app is superior to the Pandora or last.fm ones.

The interface is like iTunes (which is a negative point if you want it web based like pandora).

Unlike either Last.fm or Pandora, Spotify actually lets you pick the exact music you listen to, which is a plus.

Of course, there is a catch. In return for being able to access any music you want,  you have to listen to occasional adverts, like radio ads with web links to the products. This for the free version. The  ‘Premium’ account (a tenner a month, or 99p for a day pass)  removes the ads entirely.

Are you looking for an alternative to photoshop, word, or any other program?

Try alternativeto a great web where users vote for the best alternative programs.

They will help you find the right software for your computer or mobile phone. To do this they wanted to rethink the whole process of searching for apps. No more browsing through categories with long lists of crappy software.

Based on the users recommendations they list great alternatives to the applications you want to replace. By joining the site you can participate in the process of making these recommendations better.

Quick Pitch: NoNotes.com is a transcription service for students. Students can record lectures while paying more attention in class, then upload their recording to be transcribed by NoNotes.

Genius Idea: Last week, you might’ve seen the story about the Georgetown student that’s looking to hire a personal assistant to help deal with the overwhelming life of … being a college student (I can’t wait to hear his plan for dealing with the real world).

In any event, NoNotes is a service for that type of individual. The company provides a transcription service aimed specifically at college students, allowing them to record lectures, upload them to a website, and then have written notes prepared for them.

The company uses the tagline “you do the learning, we’ll take the notes,” but you can imagine how this service might be used in practice. Jokes aside, there is something to be said for paying attention to the lecturer in class as opposed to furiously trying to keep up taking notes, and this is the need that NoNotes looks to satisfy.

Like a personal assistant though, NoNotes will cost you money. One hour of class time costs $11.75, with discounts if you buy hours in bulk. That might make it cost prohibitive for many college students, though you can imagine groups of friends chipping in and then drawing straws to see who attends and records a lecture. The company is looking to build its customer base in part by hiring reps at universities.

GazoPa is a similar image search service on the web in open beta. Users can search images from the web based on user’s own photo, drawings, images found on the web and keywords. GazoPa enables users to search for a similar image from characteristics such as a color or a shape extracted from an image itself. There are abundant quantities of images on the web, however many of these simply cannot be described by keywords. Since GazoPa uses image features to search other similar images, a vast range of images can be retrieved from the web. GazoPa is a new visual search service that can navigate users to new territories on the web.

TaffyBox is a BitTorrent service, but there’s a hook that makes it a really nice choice for the casual BitTorrent user – easy search combined with a Java applet BitTorrent client for downloading.

There are other services like BitLet that let you download torrents directly from your browser via a Java applet. But you need to already know the Torrent link (usually via a Torrent search engine) to start downloading it. With TaffyBox, you can search for the name of the show, song or whatever that you’re looking for, and click a button to start downloading immediately in your browser. Point and click downloads for those who find the usual BitTorrent clients complicated.

TaffyBox just ties search and download together, and the search results seem to come from BTJunkie, who also host the tracker.

Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats – I Can Has Cheezburger?.

Nikon has announced a new player, the nikon D3s, an incredible machine capable of shooting at 102.400 ISO! and with its FX CMOS sensor shoot HD movies as well. It has 12.1 Mp and the will cost around $5.200.

You still have the D3X with 24.5 Mp and the D3 with 12.1 Mp and also $5.500

Here you have the techspecs for the D3s. Looks like the s gives video to the nikons, like the d300s.

• ISO performance: ISO 12800 as standard, expandable to ISO equivalent of 102400 (Hi 3)
• Nikon FX-format CMOS image sensor with 12.1 effective megapixels
• Improved D-Movie function including High-Sensitivity Movie mode and flicker reduction function
• Nikon’s Integrated Dust Reduction System including Image Sensor Cleaning function
• Incorporates Nikon’s original EXPEED digital image processing
• Active D-Lighting with bracketing for up to 5 frames
• Picture Control: Standard, Vivid, Neutral and Monochrome (Landscape and Portrait can be downloaded from Nikon website)
• Quick response with approx. 0.12 seconds start-up time and approx. 0.04 seconds shutter-release time lag
• 9-frames-per-second shooting rate in FX format, 11 fps in DX crop (CIPA Guidelines)
• Nikon’s original Scene Recognition System, utilizing 1,005-pixel RGB sensor, for more accurate autofocus, auto exposure, i-TTL flash control and auto white balance
• Multi-CAM 3500FX AF sensor module featuring 51 AF points
• Viewfinder with approx. 100% frame coverage and approx. 0.7x magnification in FX format
• Durable shutter unit proven by 300,000 cycles of testing on fully assembled camera
• Intelligent power management that lets you shoot up to approx. 4,200 frames per charge (based on CIPA Standards)
• Easy-to-access Live View modes with dedicated button
• Quiet Shutter-release mode for nonintrusive shooting
• High-definition (approx. 921k-dot), 170˚ viewing angle, 3-in. VGA LCD monitor with tempered glass.

Which one is for you?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Vue is the easiest and simplest way to remotely view your family, your home, your business…virtually anything, from anywhere, at anytime. Vue lets you create your own personal video network and delivers live video wirelessly for you to see and share from any web browser or flash-enabled mobile device – no software to load. It’s really that simple!

Vue FrameMesh technology – video unplugged.

Vue utilizes innovative patented FrameMesh™ technology to enable wireless live video transmission from battery operated miniature cameras. FrameMesh is an ultra low-power technology that allows a camera to operate for up to a year on a single battery with normal use. With no wires to restrict you, cameras can be positioned and repositioned easily in seconds using our patented peel & stick magnetic mounts.

Just minutes from the box to live video.

Vue is designed for zero-configuration setup. There is no software to load. No hard drive storage requirement. No long string of characters to type. We’ve simplified the setup to remove the need for technical expertise.

Stick. Click. View.

Stick the patented peel & stick magnetic mounts to the wall anywhere within 300 feet of the gateway* and position the camera on the mount. Click a single button to sync your cameras, then click on your personal my.VueZone.com page to register. View by dragging an active camera to the My Vue area on your Watch Page.
That’s it!

View Online From Anywhere

Your personal page at my.VueZone.com.

Vue provides secure viewing of your personal video network online from any browser* or flash-enabled mobile device. Your my.VueZone.com Watch Page gives you complete control for viewing up to 50 cameras on a single gateway…and even multiple gateways. Extend your Vue anytime by adding cameras and gateways.

View. Share.

It’s as easy as drag-and-drop. Your active cameras are visible on your Watch Page. Simply drag a camera icon into the My Vue area and click the Start button to view and share live video.

Record. Playback. Store.

Any video clip or snapshot can be easily recorded and stored for future playback. You can also schedule automatic recording times. Vue gives you 2gb of secure private storage with service plans for expanding.

Share Live Cameras

Let others share live events.

Vue lets your friends and family share the events in your life… at the moment they are happening and at your control. You can share a special event like a birthday party or family reunion. You can also grant share status to specific people so they can check in on your life periodically.

It’s easy to share live cameras – drag and click.

When you want to let others share your live Vue cameras, you simply drag the live camera you want to share into the Share area and click the names on your sharing list. Those people are then notified that they can see what they’re missing by viewing your cameras. Names can be removed from the sharing list just as easily.

So…

(from geekbrief)

The kit comes with two wireless cameras. Four ingenious magnetic mounts, four CR123 batteries, a receiver and an ethernet cable. The battery cover opens with the twist of a coin.

You have to create an account on my.vuezone.com.  You can rename them, drag them into the view screen. Press play the same way you start a YouTube video and the live stream begins. You can choose to record and my account includes 2000MBs of storage that you can watch later and choose to share online. You can share so your neighbor can to view the cameras when you are out of town. If the alarm goes off, you can hop on and see what’s happening without putting himself in danger.

It works as well as they say it does and it couldn’t possibly be simpler to set up. Image quality is perfectly acceptable. The magnetic mounting system is brilliant. You stick it to a wall and then move the camera around to get the best shot. Wireless range is excellent. Signal is good all around the house.  You can add up to 50 cameras!!! Now, that would be expensive because extra cameras are $100 a pop.  $300 for the initial pack that brings two cameras.

Quick Pitch: Ping! is simplified iPhone-to-iPhone messaging with push notifications (also works with iPod Touch). It uses a unique Ping! ID, and works similar to Blackberry Messenger so that messages can extend to friends anywhere in the world without text messaging costs.

Genius Idea: Although text messaging has come down in cost over the years, it’s still not free. A number of mobile applications work around that though, and let you send free messages to other users. Ping is one such application — after you download it for 99 cents from the iPhone app store [iTunes link].

One of the best aspects of Ping is that it uses push notifications, which makes it much more like regular text messaging. Simply download Ping, create a username, and start messaging your friends that also have the app. It also lets you link Ping contacts to your address book and works on iPod Touch, which extends its reach to the more than 40 million people that have either an iPhone or iPod Touch.

That is of course the downside of the app – it’s only for iPhone to iPhone messaging, so it can’t quite replace text messaging if your friends use other devices (or, don’t sign up for Ping). TextPlus, another app we’ve reviewed, actually does the opposite, letting you use an iPhone app to send text messages to any phone number, though we’ve heard that they plan to add app-to-app messaging as well.

The ideal messaging app would seemingly have a version for multiple platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry,Android, etc.) and also support texting to non-users. That’s likely the direction most of these companies will ultimately move in, but we’re not quite there yet.

(from mashable)

http://www.projectniu.org

Pollux for iTunes will help you to stop worrying about organizing your music library again
✹ Completely automatic and easy to use
✹ Tags name, artist, album, album art, genre, year, and lyrics
✹ Analyzes the track’s unique fingerprint, so it can never be wrong
✹ No existing track information necessary
✹ Automatically corrects each track’s information as it is added to iTunes

And best of all, it’s completely free! Give it a try!

Money management is now easy with moneystrands.

If you do not want to monitor multiple bank sites and maintain painful spreadsheets anymore, then moneyStrands automatically pulls together data from your bank, credit card and investment accounts to provide an accurate, up-to-date picture of your financial life broken down by meaningful automatically identified categories along with flexible user defined transaction types. Best of all, moneyStrands is 100% FREE.

Where does your money go?

Get a clear view of how much you spend eating out, gassing up the car and those guilty pleasures. Then look at your spending trends or drill down into individual categories to see just where all the money you earn goes. Easily define budgets, see projectionsalerts to help you follow your plan.

Your data wherever you go

Thanks to our easy to use mobile widget you’ll have immediate access to all your financial data anytime, anywhere on your smart phone. Check balances and receive text alerts on-the-go. moneyStrands keeps working for you where ever life happens to take you. All you need is a web browser to enjoy moneyStrands on the go.

How do you mesure up?

Find and connect with like-minded members who share your goals and your traits. See how you compare, share your thoughts on best bargains or just exchange financial tips and money missteps. Your experience is as valuable as any others and there is no better insider track than following to the word of mouth.

Savings and recommendations

moneyStrands intelligent recommendation engine constantly searches through numerous offers from a multitude of service providers to find the best deals on everything from credit cards to complementary products that fit your financial condition. We know recommendations are only as good as the value they add to your bottom line. moneyStrands recommendations are bias free and are uniquely tailored to your needs based on your spending, saving and investing patterns.

Outright is out of beta.
Outright is a very simple-to-use web service that helps you track income and expenses, pay estimated taxes on time, and see how your business is doing. It’s perfect for self employed people. Unfortunately only for the US, but a great product.

IRISnotes is a pen and mobile note taker that can capture handwritten notes and drawings, as well as edit, save and export them. Your handwritten notes can be instantly converted into editable text in a wide range of languages.

Turn your handwritten notes into editable text*!

Simply write your text using the provided ink pen. Your handwritten notes will be instantly converted into editable text!
Use your pen as a mouse

You can set the pen to mouse mode. In this mode, tapping the pen in the writing area or pressing the button on the side of the pen will act like a single mouse click.

Easy-to-use wireless connection*

Write your notes anytime, anywhere! When you are back to your computer, simply connect the USB receiver. Your notes will be instantly converted!
Works on any paper with normal ink refill

You can write your notes on any kind of paper! Simply place the receiver on the top or the corner of your document and you are ready to write!

*Only on Windows

Etsy is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell items that are handmade, as well as vintage goods and crafting supplies.

Etzy mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

Their vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:

Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

The Etsy community spans the globe with buyers and sellers coming from more than 150 countries. Etsy sellers number in the hundreds of thousands.
If each of these sellers stood outside at night with a really bright flashlight pointed towards the sky, it might look something like the image to the right.

Web annotation services let people add their own virtual Sticky Notes or comments to Web pages for others to see. But Web annotation is back with the launch today of Google’s Sidewiki. To be honest, I don’t have high hopes for Sidewiki. Marking up the Web has limited appeal to the average consumer.

A better approach, if you are not Google, is to make Web annotation an enterprise product and go after a specific industry that will actually value (and pay) for it. Boston-based WebNotes is doing just that by shifting its focus from consumers to professionals. Today, it launched WebNotes PR, which takes its basic Web annotation technology and turns it into a press clip service for public relations firms.

One thing PR firms do is keep track of all press and blog mentions of their clients and deliver these clips on a daily or weekly basis. These clip files used to come in the form of Xeroxed articles from newspapers, magazines, and other print publications,with the name of the client company highlighted every time it was mentioned. Some companies still get these dead-tree clip files, but for the most part they’ve been replaced by daily emails with links and other digital descendants of the original.

WebNotes PR lets someone at a PR agency highlight articles and blog posts online, add sticky notes, and pull excerpts into digital reports with links back to the highlighted versions. These reports can be sent out as emails or PDFs. The articles can be organized into folders. It supports keyword searches via Google News, Google Blog Search, Technorati, or Twitter, and these searches can be saved as an RSS feed. Any RSS feed from any publication can be added as well.

The highlighting and collecting are done via a browser toolbar or bookmarklet, and the service costs $300/user/year or $35/user/month. Any information source that can be accessed over the Web can be annotated (although if it is a password-protected service, the viewer must also have access). Here is an example of a what a highlighted version of a TechCrunch page looks like—you can drag the note around, but it is read-only. I personally have no interest in marking up Web pages for the random public, but if it was my job to mark it up for specific clients, this is the way I’d do it.

PBworks (formally known as PBwiki), a startup that specializes in helping businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions collaborate via wikis, today announced its Social Collaboration Update for PBworks Project Edition and Legal Edition, which integrates social media-style user profiles and microblogging to help teams work together more easily.

The new user profiles in PBworks allow organizations to specify which fields to include (e.g. office location, department, relevant skills and experience, etc., converting a company’s PBworks Network into a searchable personnel roster. Now, user profiles automatically include a list of the users contributions such as edits and file uploads, as well as tasks each user is working on.

PBworks is also going more social with the release of real-time, Twitter-style microblogging to facilitate unstructured collaboration such as brainstorming and discussions. Along with real-time updates, PBworks has added email upload support, so authorized users can add wiki pages and upload files simply by sending an email to that wiki.

The “Social Collaboration Update” as PBworks is calling it, is available today for all Project Edition and Legal Edition customers. PBworks is based in San Mateo, Calif., and has raised $2.45 million in venture funding to date.

Windows 7 is not yet officially out, but it nearly has the market share of linux.

OS	market share
Windows XP	60.55%
Windows Vista	22.64%
Mac OS X	7.11%
Linux	1.97%
Windows 7	1.69%
Windows 2000	0.78%
Windows 2003	0.65%
iPhone OSX	0.40%
Windows 98	0.13%
WAP	0.07%

Would you like to make your life easier?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your files synchronised over your Mac, PC, Linux and web? Being able to share files without sending emails and so?
Well a guy like me would use webDAV for that, but there is a particular commercial tool which looks great:
Dropbox

Take a look at the video for a demo of how it works.

• Sync files of any size or type
• Share large files and photos easily
• Automatic online backup
• Track and undo changes to file

Take a look at the pricing plans: Free for 2GB online storage, $9.99 a month for 50Gb and $19.99 for 100Gb.

Finally, it is online – the sneak preview explaining the idea behind SevenSnap. Take a look at the guide.

SevenSnap in a nutshell:

Every 60 minutes, we are offering you a product from the realms of consumer electronics, travel and leisure activities. To see the price of the product, which drops every second, you have to enter the Snap Room. Being in the Snap Room costs 1,– USD per minute.

If multiple people are in the Snap Room at the same time, the price of the product can drop by up to 100,– US Dollars per minute. The person first clicking on the “Order now” button gets the deal and the price drop is repeated from the top.
This system creates incredible saving opportunities and makes shopping a very exciting experience.

Now available for the iPhone.

‘SixthSense‘ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user’s hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Snow Leopard is nearly here. You can already pre-order it.

Click on the link to see what is new.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/

You take the best photos of flickr and you put them in a mashup in Google maps, and this is the result:

http://www.earthalbum.com

Do you have kids?

If you do, this website could be a nice present for them. You create a custom map of their kingdom. Unique.

http://www.kidlandia.com