Adobe Illustrator, the industry-standard vector graphics application, is the tool you use when you need flexible, scalable vector graphics such as logos and artwork that will be printed in various formats, mediums and sizes.

Illustrator’s huge array of digital drawing features makes it a favorite amongst illustrators and print designers, but for those just starting out, the application can be intimidating. To help set you on your path to Illustrator mastery, here are some great beginner-level Illustrator tutorials that cover the fundamental tools and techniques.

If you have tips for aspiring Illustrator pros, share them in the comments below.

1. Getting Started in Illustrator

First thing’s first: You need to familiarize yourself with Illustrator’s graphical user interface. This quick and easy-to-read tutorial talks about Illustrator’s workspace, pointing to areas such as the Tools panel, the Status bar, the Artboard where you craft your vectors, and so on. It also touches upon how to create your first Illustrator document, as well as the different items you can find within the Tools panel.

2. Illustrator’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

The primary drawing feature of Illustrator is the Pen tool. If you have aspirations of becoming an Illustrator ninja, you’ll need to have a strong command of this tool. This Illustrator tutorial from Vectortuts+ (a leading vector graphics tutorial site) covers all the things you need to know about this powerful, but oftentimes daunting, tool.

The tutorial covers the concept of Bezier curves, which are used to draw shapes with smooth curves, the need-to-know keyboard shortcuts, and even provides a practice sheet that you can download and import into Illustrator to help you practice your vector-drawing skills.

3. Fun with Illustrator’s Blend Tool

The Blend command is deceptively simple in function. It takes two or more shapes or colors, and then blends them together smoothly. But as this Illustrator tutorial will show you, the Blend command is a very effective feature for crafting stunning graphics effects quickly and easily.

4. Adobe Illustrator Tips: Live Trace

Live Trace, which appeared in Adobe Illustrator CS2, is a game-changer. Before Live Trace, an artist sketching an art piece using pen/pencil and paper would have to scan their work into Illustrator, then spend hours manually tracing it with the Pen tool and other Illustrator functions.

When Live Trace was introduced, this process was made simpler through automation, saving you precious hours. From sketch drawings to photographs that need to be converted to vector graphics — Live Trace is an excellent option to try. This tutorial goes over the process of using Live Trace by using a stock headshot photo, discussing how to execute Live Trace, the various options, as well as showing off a handful of examples of where Live Trace has been used in existing artworks.

5. Illustrator’s Type Tool: A Comprehensive Introduction

Illustrator is also a popular graphics application for print designers. From logos, business cards, and brochures, all the way up to posters and large billboards, Illustrator can help you make flexible and scalable designs.

A big part of print design is quite obviously text. This Illustrator tutorial will help you begin to explore the Type tool. It covers ways you can set text on vector paths for unconventional text flows, talks about the associated panels such as the Character and Paragraph panel, and provides useful keyboard shortcuts.

6. The Power (and Ease) of Patterns in Illustrator

Using patterns allows you to make repeating graphics. Experimenting with patterns can lead to excellent artwork that looks like it took days to complete.

Creating custom pattern brushes and applying them to vector shapes is covered in this Illustrator tutorial.

7. Mastering Illustrator Effects

Effects in Illustrator allow you to add all sorts of wonderful graphic treatments to your artwork. From applying 3D effects to creating faux colored pencil looks, this set of Illustrator features will let you rapidly enhance your work with a few clicks of the mouse.

If you’d like to discover the abilities of Illustrator effects, check out the above tutorial, which discusses various processes — such as Roughen and Scribble — as well as the Appearance panel, which allows you to modify applied effects, among other helpful tips.

8. Everything about Gradients

The Gradient panel in Illustrator is a wonderful feature for applying color and pattern gradients to your work. Gradients allow you to stylize your graphics such that they have smoothly blended fills or strokes.

Learn everything you need to know to get started with gradients from this tutorial, which discusses topics like applying gradients, modifying the angle and direction of the gradients, saving gradient swatches, and more.

9. The Stroke Panel

In Photoshop, a sibling of Illustrator, strokes (creating an outline around the edge of an object) seem like an afterthought. But in Illustrator, where your vector paths take center stage, the stroke feature is very important to master.

This Adobe Illustrator tutorial covers the use of the Stroke panel in creating vector objects.

10. Pathfinder: Explained

The Pathfinder panel is a popular time saving feature for working with shapes and paths. This panel is a collection of commands that allow you to unite, divide, and subtract two or more shapes, among other functions. Utilizing these commands gives you the ability to draw complex vector graphics using basic shape tools.

Learn how to use the Pathfinder panel with this excellent Illustrator tutorial.

11. The Power of Smart Guides in Illustrator

Don’t have a steady hand? Having trouble drawing shapes that align with one another? Smart guides give you snapping features that will enable you to draw objects more accurately.

Explore the fundamentals of Illustrator’s smart guides through this beginner-friendly tutorial.

12. How to Make a Custom Illustrator Brush

Brushes in Illustrator are a quick way to save objects that you will reuse later in your projects. Art brushes, for example, take a vector object that you’ve drawn and allow you to then apply those objects later as strokes or fills of other vectors.

In this step-by-step guide, you will discover the awesomeness of custom brushes in Illustrator.

These 12 tutorials will set you on your path to Illustrator mastery. If you’ve had success with other tutorials not on this list, let us know about them in the comments below.

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

(from mashable)

Google has added a new feature to Gmail: the ability to save file attachments by simply dragging-and-dropping them onto the desktop. If you hover over the file icon or the “Download” link for any attachment, you’ll notice the new text prompting you to drag the file to your desktop to save.

We just tried out the new feature, and we have to tell you: It’s really as simple as it sounds. There is one caveat to saving file attachments via drag-and-drop, though: The feature is only available in Google Chrome.

Google has been adding more drag-and-drop functionality to Gmail in recent months. Back in April, Google launched the ability to add attachments to e-mails via drag-and-drop. In May, Google gave Gmail users the ability to add images to e-mails via drag-an-drop.

(from mashable)

The Taxi Fare Calculator was developed by Ricky Brundritt as a submission to the King of Bing Maps competition.

The app is available at the Bing Maps website right now. Just pick a region (results are best within a major metropolitan area, such as New York or London) and type in two addresses. The app gives the shortest route and a fare estimate based on normal rates for cabs in the area. The pick-up charge, time charges and by-the-mile costs are all factored in where applicable.

This tool should prove helpful to users who want to save some cash by comparing routes or who need to make sure they have the money on hand for a trip they intend to take.

Taxi Fare Calculator is one of many apps being considered for Microsoft’s King of Bing Maps title. The winner will soon be selected by a panel that includes CNET’s Josh Lowensohn, Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling and Directions’ Joe Francica. Expect the announcement to show up on the Bing blog August 20.

The Bing blog already features a few other candidates along with Taxi Fare Calculator, including World of Football, Random Location, Ricky’s Data Viewer, Apo-AT, Festivals de Theatre, GeoSalesTax and Microsoft Regional Directors. You can use some of the candidates in Bing Maps right now.

Microsoft has been using this competition and other initiatives to tout Bing Maps’ development API and snazzy Silverlight 4 bells and whistles. This product needs to compete in a market already dominated by more entrenched applications such as Google Maps and Mapquest. It’s not easy to beat the reigning champions, but Foursquare integration and apps such as the Tour de France map and the street level stargazing feature are as likely to offer a formidable challenge as anything we’ve seen.

What do you think of the competition apps so far?

(from Mashable)

The apps [iTunes link] are divided into six sections containing more than 500 searchable listings, complete with venue information, photos and editors’ reviews:

• Neighbourhoods: Browse all listings in a single neighborhood
• See & Do: Major sites, museums, parks, farmers markets and other attractions
• Places to Stay: Organized according to location, price range, type (i.e. fashionable, family-friendly or classic), and a key feature (gym/spa, internet access, etc.)
• Eat & Drink: Mainly high-end sit-down restaurants with some exceptions, like a well-known knishery and an East Village dumpling house
• Shopping: Features an array of products, including apparel, home, records and electronics from high-end to outlets
• Nightlife: Bars, music, dancing and other venues for late-night entertainment
• Word of Mouth: Recommendations from celebrated New Yorkers like designers Oscar de la Renta and Paul Smith, nightclub owner Amy Sacco and architect Carlos Almadada

The list of venues is well-curated; there are enough to appeal to a relatively broad array of tastes without being overwhelming. Users can bookmark interesting listing by adding them to a to-do list and share them via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

What’s most impressive about the apps is their Augmented Reality functionality (pictured above). Simply point your phone in a direction and it will bring up images of nearby attractions, which you can narrow down by type. You can also use GPS to pull up venue locations on a map.

The apps contain a number of other neat little features as well, including a handful of guided audio tours and magazine articles, a travel journal, a Flickr-integrated personal photo log, a timeline of the city’s history and essential travel information about local customs, transportation and the location of tourist offices and so forth.

What’s more, Condé Nast Britain promises to update the apps’ content every four months free of charge.

The only major drawback are the prices, which are hard to justify when free apps like restaurant-finder Urbanspoon also come with many similar features (although Urbanspoon’s Augmented Reality functionality is admittedly more basic and many users would rather read a review from a food editor than from the guy next door). In all fairness, Zagat’s TO GO app [iTunes link] also costs $9.99, but then it has a key feature Condé Nast Traveller’s does not: the ability to make restaurant reservations. It also covers almost every major U.S. city in one app.

(via mashable)

You can see the routes the cyclists are taking on the map, including important points like the beginnings and ends of stages. Weather forecasts, distances and times are provided for each stage, and results are updated in their own tab as they come in.

Microsoft has also put an elevation profile over the map. Just move your mouse along a route to see where the climbs and falls are.

Two months ago, Google announced some major new features for Google Docs. Users were able to preview these upgrades, which included completely group chat, real-time collaboration tools, and completely redesigned editors for documents, spreadsheets, and drawings.

From now on, anytime you create a new document, you’ll be doing so from the new version of Google Docs. Documents already created using the older editor will remain in that interface, and you’ll soon be able to move those older documents to the new version of Docs, too.

Here’s a little video that highlights some of Docs’ new features:

Enterprise-level users of Google Apps will also see the new default interface soon.

Here’s what the rebuilt Docs looks like, in case you haven’t been testing it out over the past couple months:

This upgraded version becoming Docs’ new default interface comes at just the right time; Microsoft recently announced a Google Docs competitor in Office Web Apps, a web-based suite that includes a text editor/word processor, spreadsheet editor and presentation software.

(from Mashable)

Genius Idea: If you are thinking of putting an old watch up for auction oneBay or listing your latest T-shirt design on Etsy, you may want to check out Tinypay.me first.

Tinypay.me is an e-commerce service that enables users to create quick listings for their products or services. Simply fill out the name, price and a quick description of the good or service you’d like to sell, type in a few personal details and upload a picture. You can also opt to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity, and identify your product or service’s location on a map.You can then share your listing directly with your social networks or set up your own online store on your blog or website. The whole process can take less than a minute.

The service only asks for your name and your PayPal e-mail address; you don’t even need to set up an account or share any of your bank information. You can also sync your listing with Facebook, Twitter and Google Product Search to share your listings instantaneously.

While the service is great for selling your products and services quickly and easily, it lacks many of the benefits of e-commerce sites like eBay, Etsy and Amazon Marketplace. They are destination sites for buyers and drive most of the traffic to the listings of individual sellers via marketing and excellent search and recommendation engines. And although Tinypay.me allows visitors to leave comments on a product, it has yet to implement seller and product ratings.

In other words, if you want to succeed with Tinypay.me, you’re going to have to depend entirely on your website and social networks to advertise and sell your goods.

What do you think of Tinypay.me? Have you ever sold anything online? If so, what e-commerce service did you use?

Find out more about the service in the video below.

But the app doesn’t stop at saving information; it also pulls in actionable links. For example, if you “save” a movie, you also save links to buy tickets for a local theatre or add that film to your Netflix queue. If you save a restaurant, that entry is accompanied by link to the menu and an Open Table link so you can quickly and easily make reservations.

The idea behind the app — that we no longer surf the web idly or without intention — has led to a highly effective product, one that’s just today launched in the Android Market. The app is free and also available as an iPhone application.

Users can make lists, save items by barcode, save images, save locations using geo-data only and access saved information from a variety of devices, including web browsers. And of course, users can choose to share items on the social web if they like.

Jeff Janer is Springpad’s CEO, and he was kind enough to give us a demo of the Android app today at Google I/O. Check it out, and if you’ve got an Android device, give Springpad and spin and let us know what you think.

You don’t have to be Oliver Sacks to know that music can have a profound effect on the human psyche. Music is undeniably important in shaping moods, and, likewise, certain frames of mind require certain kinds of songs.

Luckily for us, there are now several websites out there that feature mood searches. Instead of generating artists and songs by genre or title (as Pandora does), they are able to filter songs by emotions and activities.

So whether you’re feeling down and need a pick-me-up; you’re down and you’d like to stay that way for a bit — whether you’re in an “Empire State of Mind,” or it’s just another “Manic Monday” — we’ve hand picked our five most satisfying sites for finding the perfect songs to suit your mood.

1. Musicovery

Musicovery is a fun and colorful website that lets you find your mood-appropriate music with several adjustable options. First, it instructs you to chart your mood on a grid, with the x-axis going from dark to positive, and the y-axis ranging from energetic to calm. Then, below the chart, you can select which genres of music you’d like Musicovery to dig around in for you, and which music decades you’d like to be included in the search. (If you’re open minded, you can select them all!)

Musicovery then creates a brightly colored family tree of mood music for you. Each burst on the tree has a shade corresponding to a genre (rap is dark red, funk is light green, etc.). Although you have to register on the site in order to shuffle from one song to another, you can always alter your mood on the grid if you don’t like what’s coming up. You can also ban songs you don’t like, and you’ll get the next song in the lineup.

As an added perk, if you’re looking for something to dance to, there’s an additional grid to refine your search. This grid allows you to alter the dance-ability and tempo of your tunes. There’s also a discovery feature that will just plainly surf Musicovery’s library for you without any fuss.

Pros: Fun to look at, lots of fine-tuning options.

Cons: Registration is required to shuffle and choose specific songs.

2. AUPEO!

Despite the enthusiasm in its name, AUPEO! is not the flashiest website, but it gets the job done. Like Pandora, it is capable of creating a playlist for you based on a favorite artist, but it also contains an easy-to-use mood search feature.

Simply click the mood tab, and then select one of the ten provided emotions, which include aggressive, happy, relaxing, and dramatic. Then you can instruct AUPEO! to hunt for appropriate songs in all genres, or narrow its searches down to one specific classification. The menu includes nine genres ranging from pop, to country, to R&B. Hit the orange music notes icon and you’re in business. You can shuffle songs if you want something new, or change your search criteria. As you listen, AUPEO! will give you album covers to look at, which is nice.

Pros: Simple and easy to use. No fuss involved.

Cons: Must search for songs one emotion and genre at a time. Occasional ads.

3. Stereomood

There are three elements to Stereomood: Mood, activity, and artist.

To get started, you can either click on one of the tags on the homepage, or use the menu at the top. The tag cloud on the front page is a wacky jumble of emotions and activities varying from the more basic (e.g. sad, jogging) to the more eccentric (e.g. lost in thought, driving Route 66.) I prefer to use the menu at the top, which is a little more organized. The menu lets you search either the site, the moods, or the activities one at a time. If you search by mood or activity, a pull down menu will appear, and you can make a choice from that list.

Whatever you choose, you will be taken to a playlist page where you can either select the specific songs you’d like to hear, or just put the songs on shuffle. There is also a menu on the left that will suggest other action, emotion, or artist playlists for you based on the one you’re currently in.

If you simply choose to search the site through the menu, you can put in whatever criteria you wish, including artists you like, or your own activities/emotions. The search results tend to be a little more literal when you put in your own keywords, but, for example, if you wanted to find a whole mess of songs that contain a specific word, this would be a good tool. If you search for an artist though, you can see what mood and activity playlists your favorite band is included in, which is kind of fun.

Also, regardless of how you search, each song that comes up contains a list of tags, so you can see what other playlists each one is in.

Pros: Shuffling, and even choosing specific songs you want to hear, is possible.

Cons: Slightly disorganized.

4. Last.fm

Maybe I’m the only one, but I never realized that it’s possible to search music by tags on Last.fm. Thanks to those user tags, Last.fm can be an excellent aid for finding songs appropriate to how you may be feeling.

Simply type an emotion into the music search field, and then click on the appropriate tag. You’ll get a station full of songs that other Last.fm-ers have tagged as being appropriate to that emotion. In addition, you’ll get a heads-up on the artists included in the station, and a list of suggested tags that might be related to what you’re looking for.

Pros: Very straightforward. Easy to pick up and contribute if you already use Last.fm

Cons: Somewhat less adventurous.

5. Thesixtyone

Thesixtyone  is different from the other sites because it has a strong visual component. The images and information it generates are usually nice, but can veer towards distracting or cluttered at times. Other than that, it’s a fun experiment in finding mood-appropriate music, and in finding new music in general. Since thesixtyone likes to highlight newer artists, you’re more likely to hear something you’ve never heard before on this site.

To get a mood station on thesixtyone, simply hover your mouse over where it says “popular” on the top right, then click on moods. A little menu will pop up with 12 moods listed (10 really, since “remix” and “covers” are not moods.) Just click on one and the station will start playing. If you’d like to shuffle forward or back, click on the green paddles on both sides of the window.

Pros: Nice photos and artist information. Backtracking is possible.

Cons: A little cluttered. Less user-friendly.

Have you found any other sites that can generate music playlists by mood? Let us know in the comments, and happy hunting!

(from mashable)

That’s the idea behind a new breed of “group buying” Web sites — at least one of which may be valued at more than $1 billion.

It’s hardly a stretch to predict that group buying will become one of the biggest Web trends of 2010, and the market leader will be one of the most closely-watched sites of the year.

Groupon, which traces its origins back to 2008, has a simple premise: If enough people agree to buy something, they all get a big discount.

Today’s deal for those in New York: Save 50 percent on a $20 purchase of cupcakes from “ChikaLicious Dessert Club.” If 450 people agree to the deal, everyone saves money.

If that critical number is not reached, however, the deal is a dud. The site offers one deal per day in the cities it covers, and the number of cities in the network is growing fast.

It’s a good idea for sure, but it might also be an incredibly valuable one. Web rumors this week suggest Groupon may be in the process of raising a new round of venture capital at a $1.2 billion valuation. The money follows a $30 million round that valued Groupon at $250 million. In layman’s terms: Investors think Groupon is set to be the Web’s next breakout hit.

Groupon’s competitors are seeing big investment, too. Rival siteLivingSocial recently raised $25 million. BuyWithMe has raised $5.5 million. How many group buying sites are there now? Possibly dozens: SocialBuy, Groop Swoop and Scoop St., to name a few.

The dynamics of group buying mean that Groupon has a significant early advantage, however: The more users a site can gain, the more leverage it has to score big discounts from businesses.

It’s a hot market we should have seen coming. The top Web trendsat the start of the year included the “real-time Web” and “location.” With almost constant web connectivity provided by smartphones and free Wi-Fi at coffee shops, airports and bookstores — not to mention the immediacy of Twitter and Facebook — we’ve come to expect instant gratification online. Group buying meets that need.

Groupon is local, too, targeting deals to metropolitan areas. There’s a further trend Groupon capitalizes upon: Social networking brings us together to share opinions and experiences … why not deals too?

Is Groupon worth a billion dollars? Could the group buying market be worth multiple billions? Investors seem prepared to make that bet.

Editor’s Note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He writes a weekly column about social networking and technology forCNN.com.

(Article from CNN)

The invitation addition makes scheduling meetings and setting up appointments via Gmail much easier. It also completes the circle between Gmail and Google Calendar’s Smart Rescheduler. You can now schedule an event and verify attendee availability right from the Compose Mail window.

Inserting a calendar invitation in a Gmail message is as simple as clicking on the “Insert: Invitation” link. A new window automatically appears showing your availability and the availability of the parties included in the email. You can then adjust the time, add a place and description, and specify which calendar to add the event to. Once you send the email, the event is automatically added to everyone’s calendar.

For users of more robust business e-mail programs, today’s Gmail update probably seems minor. But for those of us who use e-mail and calendar services in the cloud, it’s an important and time-saving update that ties together two key Google services.

[from mashable, Img credit: cinefil_]

OffiSync

That’s a big deal, because Microsoft has been heavily promoting real-time collaboration as one of the key features of Office 2010. With OffiSync, you wouldn’t necessarily need 2010 — you’d be able to coauthor a document using Microsoft 2003 and 2007 as well, and you won’t need SharePoint, either. The application allows you to do Office-to-Office collaboration, and you can also have users editing the same document from Google Docs’ online interface. Changes aren’t synced as you type in each character, but rather each time you hit the ’save’ button.

The new version of OffiSync adds support for the ‘any file upload‘ feature that Google Docs added in January. It also has better integration with Google Sites (it will automatically pull in your Google Sites file hierarchy within Office, and allows you to create a file on Sites from Office as well).

While OffiSync offers a free version of its product, most of these new upgrades (including coauthoring) are for premium users only. Premium seats cost $12 a year, or there’s an option for a $30 one-time fee. And, sorry Mac users — OffiSync is still only available for Windows.

OffiSync has been doing quite well lately — it’s currently the top rated app on the recently-launched Google Apps Marketplace, and has the third most installs on the Marketplace overall. CEO Oudi Antebi says that OffiSync now has over 300,000 users The company hasn’t disclosed its funding, but says that it closed a Series A round of over $1 million.

(via mashable)

The one word that describes today’s updates is collaboration.Google  believes that “collaboration is broken”: People make revisions to the same document, but one bad save by a late person can ruin the whole document. Thus Google’s belief is that creating a browser version of collaboration software that bridges the gap between the desktop and the web is key to better collaboration and quicker innovation.

Google Docs: A Complete Rebuild

The rebuilt Google Docs focuses on addressing those issues, starting with the document editor. One of the biggest changes is that collaborators can now see what others are typing character-by-character. In addition, up to 50 people can now collaborate on one document. The company has also added a chat feature that allows collaborators to discuss a document in a popup that appears on the right-hand side.

Here’s what it looks like:

You might notice that Google Docs feels more like a word processor like Microsoft Word. This is no accident: Google deliberately added features such as rulers, tab stops, spell-check as you type and floating images.

Spreadsheets have also gotten a hefty upgrade: new features include auto-complete, the ability to drag-and-drop columns and faster load times. The best one, though, is probably autofill:

The final addition is a new “drawing editor” for Google Docs, which allows you to draw and download images that can be copied and pasted into multiple Google Docs. Up to 50 people can draw at the same time (we think that sounds chaotic, but haven’t tried to draw with 50 people yet). Finally, the images that you create can be published and embedded onto the web.

Here’s an image depicting the new drawing editor:

Google’s very proud of the newest version of Google Docs; it compares it very favorably against Microsoft Office, only conceding that Office has more advanced (or, in Google’s opinion, niche) formatting features. Collaboration, mobile access, multi-user editing and IM functionality are all things that Google touts.

(via mashable)

But the sophisticated image editor has a daunting learning curve. With so many tools, features, and concepts to get a hold of, new users can be discouraged by dry help files and blind fumbling.

But fear not, gentle reader, for the collective wisdom of YouTubeYouTube is at your disposal. Photoshop tutorials abound on the video network. Some are superb, while others may not be worth your precious clickthrough. For help, check out the resourceful selections below. Whether you’re brand new to Photoshop or a seasoned veteran, there’s always something to learn from the screencasting community.

For Beginners

If you’re looking for a visual way to wrap your head around the basic functions of Photoshop, check out these “101″ resources that take it nice and slow, and don’t assume any prior experience.

1. Workspace Overview

If you’ve never taken up the virtual paintbrush before, get the lay of the land with this overview of the workspace. It will give you a good sense of where the most useful tools and menus live in Photoshop.

2. Tools and Layers

This two-part tutorial breaks down most of the basic tools you’ll need to start your graphic hacking adventures.

If you come away with only one concept from a Photoshop lesson, it should be about layers. Layers are key to everything in Photoshop, but jumping in head-first can often leave new users confused. In addition to rummaging through the toolbox, this video offers a concise, visual explanation of how layers work using a simple drawing exercise.

For Intermediate Users

If you’ve gotten a feel for the software and done your share of image touch-up and manipulation, you may want to kick the program into second gear and start exploring some of the more powerful and creative features. These tutorials will get you going.

3. Blending Modes

Blending modes are connected to layers and are integral for toning photographs and many other graphic manipulations. This screencast will take you through Photoshop’s many blending flavors and hopefully spark some creative ideas for your next epic FacebookFacebook photo.

4. Patching and Healing

So you’ve got your new Facebook photo perfectly toned for maximum epicness — except for that tiny blemish and your annoying little brother who insists on jumping into every frame. That’s where the healing tools come in. With these, you can remove unwanted elements and (with a bit of practice) smooth those adjustments right into the background.

5. Text Effects

Let’s face it: The black and white arial text your rendered in MS Paint simply won’t cut it as your blog’s logo anymore. It’s time to snazz it up with some creative texturing. Check out this two-part tutorial that showcases some of the powerful text manipulation tools at your disposal in Photoshop.

6. Creating Actions

As you start using the software more regularly, you may find you’re repeating the same processes (sizing, filtering, blending, etc.) over and over again. The “Actions” feature lets you record the steps you use frequently and execute them with a single time-saving click or hotkey combination.

For Advanced Users

If you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you surely know what some Photoshop wizards are capable of. While the truly amazing feats require actual artistic talent (for which there is not yet a software substitute), some advanced Photoshop knowhow can go a long way to impressing your social media pals. Even if you’re not up to speed on all the advanced tools, just following along with these example-based lessons will provide a lot of insight into how the pros work their magic.

7. Changing Eye and Hair Color

If you’re due for a new look, but don’t want to drop a pretty penny at the salon, check out this tutorial on how to change eye and hair color for some dramatic portrait results.

8. Photo Combination and Manipulation

And now for some of the cool stuff. Through some clever erasing, blending, smoothing, and layering, this tutorial grafts a roaring lion’s face onto an apple to make for some frightening fruit that even Adam and Eve would have stayed away from.

9. Environmental Effects: Beams of Light

If landscapes are your passion, you can add even more drama to your sweeping vistas with some Photoshop tricks. Here, the designer adds some cloud-bursting light to make for an awe-inspiring desktop wallpaper, or perhaps even a snazzy TwitterTwitter background.

10. Environmental Effects: Fog and Mist

If you’re looking to add a bit of mystery to your recent snapshot, check out this tutorial on adding some rolling fog.

Have you found any other useful Photoshop tutorials on YouTube? Be sure to post the links in the comments below.
(from mashable)

Perhaps the best part of the TED conferences is that videos of the talks are archived and free to view right on the organization’s website. Given the wealth of insight we’re sure to see tomorrow, we thought we’d whet your appetite by highlighting a few recent and exceptional talks from TED’s past, with a focus on social media.

1. Alexis Ohanian: How To Make a Splash in Social Media

We’ll start things off with a real-life social media parable about how the biggest and most effective forces on the web usually take shape by accident. Alexis Ohanian of Reddit.com tells the quick and hilarious story of how the social web provided some unexpected help to Greenpeace in halting the Japanese whaling industry. Internet marketers take note: The meme is all powerful, and it cannot be controlled.

2. Clay Shirky: How Social Media Can Make History

In this talk, consultant, professor and author Clay Shirky discusses the unprecedented immediacy of real-time citizen journalism made possible by social media and the nearly ubiquitous access to mobile web technologies. From the election crisis in Iran to the massive earthquake that shook China in May of 2008, Shirky discusses how media is made on the ground, as-it-happens, via the social web.

3. Evan Williams: Listening to Twitter Users

With a couple of anecdotes building the ultimate social media case study, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams discusses how a little side project called Twitter became a game-changing phenomenon with the help and input of the very users who made the service a success. From innovative marketing uses to core functionality, Williams provides the evidence for what we knew all along: Users know best.

4. Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy

As social media changes our social lives, speculation has abounded for years on how the web may be disconnecting us from intimate interactions in favor of meaningless quests to rack up followers and “friends.” Not so, says Stefana Broadbent, who explains that social networks function the same way online as they do in real life. While we may have lots of friends, we only really communicate regularly and meaningfully with a handful of them, and social technologies like e-mail, texting, and tweeting allow us to do so more often across time and space.

5. Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead

From professional sports mascots to balloon animal makers, some communities are so extremely niche that they could only properly thrive on the Internet. So argues blogger and author Seth Godin, who believes that our revolutionary new connectedness has brought human culture back to its roots, and that tribes (groups of people mobilized around a shared interest) are the present and future of all web content.

(from mashable)

Now, if your intranet or Web site search is powered by Google’s enterprise universal search appliance, you too can take in real-time tweets related to search queries.

There are two key differences to point out between Google.com and Google Search Appliance. Google Search Appliance users will notice that real-time search is limited to just Twitter feeds for the time being (you’ll have to forgo Facebook Page updates and the like for now), and tweets are displayed in a separate search box. So while Google.com’s implementation shows tweets appearing inline with other results, intranet search will highlight them separately.

If you’re a GSA user, you’ll want to have an administrator follow these instructions to turn on real-time tweets for search. You’ll also have the option to enable the functionality for all users, individual users, or allow for users to self-select their real-time preferences.

The Google Enterprise Blog writes:

“Social information is important for businesses: employees searching for information needed to do their jobs benefit from real-time news too. They might be developing a new breakfast cereal, or designing a marketing plan for a clothing line, or writing strategy report for a political campaign. In all of these cases, understanding what is being said just as Twitter users are saying it can be invaluable.”

The addition of Twitter updates to enterprise search seems like an natural extension of Google’s new-found focus on real-time. If you’re a GSA user, share your thoughts on the development below.

The native PDF reading support is nice too, since previously users either had to pay a $0.10 per conversion charge or go through several steps in order to convert documents from PDF to the Kindle format used by the eReader. Now PDF can simply be transferred via USB connection or emailed to the user’s @kindle.com email address to be added to the Kindle.

While the native PDF support will also be made available to existing owners of the Kindle (or at least, some of them — Amazon’s announcement doesn’t specify what the requirements are) via a wireless firmware update, the new battery life-infused Kindle will apparently only be rolling out to new buyers.

It’s a couple of minor but nice updates, and a good excuse for Amazon to capitalize on the fact that the holiday season’s other hot digital book reader, the Barnes & Noble nook, is already completely sold out for reportedly the remainder of the holiday gift-giving season. That’s more bad news for B&N, who are also busy fending off a lawsuit from Spring Design over its Alex eReader — which shares some of the key design principles with the nook, a similarity Spring Design says is no accident.

Are you considering picking up a digital book reader for yourself or a loved one this holiday season?

Google Wave may seem familiar to older users of the Internet, who have been using the parts that make up the whole of the platform for years. Wave, however, brings those pieces together cohesively to allow users to share photos, embed videos, and converge other Google applications such asGoogle Maps and Google Calendar to create customized blocks of user-editable content on the fly. Here are four ways that newsrooms are using Wave.

Using Waves to Foster Engagement

Using Google Wave allows newsrooms to reach out to their audiences and invite their active participation on news stories. In the process, waves become a vehicle to create an engaged local community who can also play a role in the newsroom. That may redefine how news is gathered, reported and presented to its audience, blurring the boundary between newsroom and community bulletin board.

Chicago Tribune’s RedEye blog started its first public wave on November 10, and since then it has attracted more than 300 blips. Following that success, Stephanie Yiu, RedEye’s web editor, and Scott Kleinberg, senior editor of digital and print, now lead a half-hour public wave session every day.

“It’s a lot more live than Twitter because it’s like you can see people typing and everybody gets to know each other,” she told me. “It’s really about connecting with our readers on a new platform. We’re learning with our readers and moving forward together.”

RedEye sends out tweets promoting each wave with a link asking Twitter followers (those that have access to Google Wave) to join the conversation. Yiu told me the daily wave is a discussion about RedEye’s cover story. During the last 10 minutes they ask participants for suggestions on how to make the wave better.

What makes Google Wave so useful is the community building aspect, according to Yiu. “The great thing is once it ends at 11 o’clock, it keeps on going. They keep on talking,” she said. Yiu is hoping it will be a cool way to get feedback, such as movie reviews, from their readers that that they can also run in the RedEye print product, which is something they’re already doing with Twitter.

Using Waves As ‘Town Squares’

Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, has started two public waves so far. “People are enthusiastic and they want to talk about news. I was surprised how much discussion there was about the news,” he said.

However, said Quigley, the challenge right now is keeping public waves on topic. If they get more than 50 blips discussion grinds to a halt, reported Quigley. He added that in order for Google Wave to work during a news event, there needs to be the ability to moderate and or easily spin something into another wave and link to it in the first wave to keep it on topic. He stressed Google Wave is in its early stages and in preview, but there’s definitely potential with it, so these are issues that could be addressed in the future.

“We’ve been looking for years for collaboration with the public in a meaningful way and this could be the tool,” he said.

Quigley is eager to keep pushing the envelope with Google Wave to see what it possible. He told me, for example, that he wants to try a participant’s suggestion to embed a Google Calendar with links to waves listed within it so users can follow that calendar with the wave schedule. He also hopes to try the map gadget the next time Austin gets hit with an ice storm. He said he would embed a map into a Google Wave and then people could report conditions at their house. Users could edit the map as weather conditions change.

Google Wave has the potential to become a virtual “town square,” where otherwise separate gadgets applied to content created by journalists and enhanced by the wave’s users can be used to provide an accurate, detailed description of what’s happening locally.

Wave as a Newsroom Content Planning Tool

Chris Taylor, online editor at TBO.com, is also the online breaking news editor in charge of planning content for his converged newsroom (which includes the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and TBO.com). Each night he emails a content budget to the deadline team, but he is now also using a daily wave that others in the newsroom can add to, edit, etc. Taylor said there are about 15 people on this wave and he has requested more invites from Google to get more people involved.

The daily wave accounts for all the content the newsroom knows is coming or is chasing down. There are about 40 stories in a wave and each story gets a paragraph and after each story is a blip. “Anything we can do in a newsroom of this size [to help] the content we produce to keep from falling through the cracks is a plus,” Taylor said.

When Taylor comes into work in the morning he can immediately get caught up on the status of all items in the newsroom budget by checking the wave. He said reviewing the wave at his desk takes one-tenth the time of having meetings.

“I think using it for this will get people comfortable with wave, which is my ultimate goal,” he said. “As we get more comfortable with it, we’ll be able to be where our audience is.”

Turning Blog Posts Into Public Waves

Andrew Nystrom, senior producer of social media and emerging platforms at the Los Angeles Times, collaborated with social media reporter Mark Milian on the blog post “How Google Wave Could Transform Journalism” that ran on the newspaper’s web site a couple of months ago.

Among some of the ideas listed in the post were: collaborative reporting, smarter story updates, live editing, discussing while reading, and a transparent writing process. Nystrom said in an email interview they’re looking at all the potential uses that Milian posited in the blog post. In a case of “eating his own dogfood,” so to speak, Milian even embedded the post as a wave and it has since received more than 350 blips.

“That experiment was definitely an eye-opener. My understanding of Wave has always been that it’s a valuable tool for small-team collaboration. So to see it succeed as a larger-scale crowdsourcing tool was unexpected to say the least,” Nystrom said by email. “People quickly swarmed the wave and provided a ton of really smart insights. Things we had never thought of.”

He added that they’ll definitely do more of this and that it’s just a matter of identifying which topics would benefit from collaboration.

“Ideally, every post would plug into wave because I love the inline commenting system. But I don’t want to flood the ocean,” according to Milian. “When we do another piece on Google Wave, or on something that begs for crowdsourcing, you will definitely see it in Wave.”

(from mashable)

While the company hasn’t removed the “translate” button from its service, it should because now the proper translation will appear in real-time below the text box. It’s actually quite amazing: you can type in complex words and see their roots as you type. It also allows you to craft sentences faster and more efficiently in other languages.

Google Translate’s two other additions are nearly as impressive. Another new feature helps English speakers pronounce and read non-roman languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Clicking “Show romanizaiton” will provide you a phonetic representation of the translation so you can read it off instantly. Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian aren’t supported yet. However, Arabic, Persian, and Hindi now have a feature that allows you to type out the words as they sound (in English) and convert them to native script.

Finally, Google’s added text-to-speech support for English translations: just click the speaker icon to hear your translation. Overall, these new features are a good upgrade to Google Translate, especially the real-time translations, which we think may change how people interact with the tool.

If you want to learn more, Google’s provided a video demoing these new features:

Google

Let’s be clear: this is a very early stage test of federating the Google Wave code onto non-Google servers. It only affects the developer sandbox, meaning that the preview version of Wave that most people are using is not a part of this test. However, it is a big step in making it a widespread product, rather than only a tool of early adopters. Businesses and individuals can begin testing their own local copy of Wave. This is just the beginning of Google’s legitimate attempt to upend email as the standard for web correspondence and communication.

If you’re a developer with a sandbox account and want to get started, Google has published some installation instructions for a Java version. Be warned though: there will be a lot of changes occurring over the next few weeks, many of them based on developer feedback.

Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates is representing Barnes & Noble in a search for the “head of their international business,” according to a source who was contacted about the position. The job entails building the international business for BN.com from scratch, hiring the team and “building the infrastructure outside the U.S.” They prefer the executive live in New York, but Europe is ok, too. Global ecommerce experience is preferred.

Barnes & Noble is no Amazon, but it is a billion dollar company and they have an upcoming ebook reader that kicks the Kindle’s butt (it’s so easy to love unlaunched products, isn’t it?).

Quick Pitch:

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.

This changes today, as Google just released a beta version of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0. Here’s a quick overview of the features:

- Search in plain English – quickly search and navigate to places, businesses, landmarks
- Search by voice
- View of live traffic data over the Internet.
- Search along route – find locations near your current path
- Satellite view – you can view the same satellite imagery you’ve seen Google Maps, on your phone
- Street View – check out what the exact surroundings of a location look like

Google Maps Navigation does two very important things for Google: it makes it a competitor to established GPS firms like TomTom and Garmin, which should make this space a lot more interesting, and it suddenly makes Android – the only platform this app is currently available on – a lot more desirable. And – you guessed it – the first Android 2.0 phone to support this app is the upcoming Motorola Droid.

Check out a video overview of Google Maps Navigation and some screenshots below.

]]> http://tokao.com/2009/10/28/google-maps-navigation-becomes-reality-on-the-android/feed/ 0 http://tokao.com/2009/09/24/starbucks-goes-mobile-pay-for-coffee-with-your-iphone/ http://tokao.com/2009/09/24/starbucks-goes-mobile-pay-for-coffee-with-your-iphone/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:40:40 +0000 dani http://tokao.com/?p=2272 Starbucks and the iPhone are sort of the perfect combination. You can browse the web for free on the AT&T hotspots, you can buy in-store songs from iTunes right from your phone, and now you can use two new official iPhone apps.

Now available in the App Store, myStarbucks (iTunes Link) and Starbucks Card Mobile (iTunes Link) let users find their nearest Starbucks and manage their Starbucks Card. If you live near one of 16 stores in the Seattle or Bay Area, you can even pay for your purchases with the Starbucks Card Mobile app via barcode.

Starbucks is a little late to the store-locator game, as a number of unofficial applications — both free and paid — already exist to show store locations or keep track of your Starbucks Card balance, but the official apps offer a lot of functionality, great design, and an unbeatable price — free.

In myStarbucks, you can find the locations near you, either by entering in your address or letting the app use your iPhone or iPod touch’s built-in GPS or WiFi locator. You can search for stores based on certain factors, like drive-thru, operating hours (are they open now) and what type of food they offer. You can also add a store to your favorite’s list and call the store directly from the app or invite people in your address book to join you for a latte.

One of the cooler features is the ability create your own drink configurations — hot and cold –and save them. The order is viewable and you can show it to a barista if you are in a hurry. Hopefully, the pay via iPhone option is rolled out across more locations, because combined with the drink configuration tool, it would certainly make grabbing coffee more convenient.

What do you think about store-branded iPhone apps? What are some of your favorites?

As Internet connections get faster and storage becomes less expensive, online backup services like Backblaze, Mozy and Carbonite have stepped-in to help consumers back up their data.

Not only are these services useful, they are also very inexpensive. Most of the services offer unlimited (truly) storage for your online backups for around $5 a month. Now, granted, storage prices are constantly decreasing, but how can companies make those sorts of claims?

Online backup service Backblaze has decided to shed some light on how it manages to offer unlimited backup storage to its customers, while also easily expanding its own cloud-based storage platform. Today, Backblaze posted an entry in its company blog that explains what tools and hardware it uses to maintain cheap, efficient storage for its customers. Backblaze hopes that other businesses who are looking at building cloud-based storage solutions can use this information as inspiration or as a blueprint for themselves.

Yes, this is not a joke, the no fuss solution to getting all your data backed up securely. Online backup for only $5/month per computer for unlimited storage: backblaze

(from mashable)

Most of the tools on this list are web-based and as easy to use as filling in a web form. We’ve added a couple of desktop applications that make visual communication a lot quicker and easier, even for those of us without a ton of graphic design skills.

1. Warning Labels and Signs

Advising people to the dangers of the situation has never been so easy. Simply pick a label style, a warning icon, and enter your desired text into a simple web form and voila, you’ve got a standup warning label.

For a vertical sign-style warning image, check out the companion site Warning Sign Generator.

2. De-Motivational Posters

Annoyed by those superficial and unflaggingly insipid motivational posters we’re subjected to in dentists’ and corporate offices everywhere? Why not take a stance against mass-produced pseudo-solutions to important problems?

With the Demotivators tool you can easily generate a realistic illustration of the trials and tribulations of Real Life. Just choose an image from your desktop to create a motivational parody from, customize your image settings, add a title and de-motivational text and you too can contribute to the better psychological health of us all.

3. Street Signs

From the same fine folks who brought us the Warning Label Generator above is a tool for making funny and inappropriate street signs. Once again this is a simple web form; simply choose one of four background styles, input the text you want displayed on the sign, and choose an optional suffix (Road, Lane, etc.).

4. LOLcats

Almost no list is complete without a reference to funny cat pictures. On the internet, all roads lead to LOLcats, so you might as well make like the natives and start rolling your own.

The LOL Builder tool will help you achieve goofy captioned imagery of your favorite felines and other irresistibly cute animals in no time. You can upload your own photo or re-use an image someone else has submitted.

There’s even an advanced version of the LOL Builder for once you’ve mastered the basics, allowing you to adjust the position of your text and caption bubbles. Poster and “breaking news” bulletin styles are also available, and there’s no rule that requires an actual funny cat to be present. If you want to use any of these tools to make images with other themes, the Internet Police will probably not be showing up at your door.

5. Magazine Covers

This magazine cover tool from Big Huge Labs lets you upload an image or bring in one of your photos from Flickr (), Facebook (), Photobucket () or from a URL. You can customize the color palette, fonts, and up to 17 lines of text to generate your own custom print mag cover.

6. Tombstones

It takes a hardy soul to laugh in the face of death, but if you have the courage this tombstone generator might help. It’s a quick and painless web form that adds your custom text to the headstone.

7. Xbox 360 Achievements

This one goes out to the gamers in the house — especially those of you who experience that satisfying pang of joy each time the achievement badge with trademark sound pops up on your console.

You can make your own achievements with this handy tool, and we sincerely hope you put them to hilarious uses. Know of a funny Alterna-Achievement? Let us know in the comments.

8. Movie Posters

Another project from Big Huge Labs, the movie poster tool is a web form that helps you design a film-style poster from your own images. Choose an alignment for the photo, a poster style, text and accent colors, title fonts and colors, and enter your own custom text for the film title, taglines, credits and MPAA rating.

9. Garbage Pail Kids

Who else is old enough to remember these gems? Relive your youth, or your child’s youth, with this Garbage Pail Kids card generator. Modify the text badge, customize your font and the positioning of the text, and you’ve got your own gruesome custom and classic trading card.

10. Presidential Seal

Going from the cultural to the political, this simple tool lets you add your own verbiage to the official U.S. Presidential seal. And did you know the Vice President also has a seal? Can someone please alert Biden?

11. Add Photo Effects

The Tuxpi site offers a bunch of easy, one-click web-based tools for adding borders, captions, reflections, and other types of effects to your digital photos. You can turn any image into a postage stamp, wanted poster, pop art collage, and more.

12. Skitch

Sorry Windows users, you’re out of luck on this one. Skitch () is a Mac desktop app that makes screenshots dead easy to edit and share. Simple edit tools allow you to overlay text, lines and simple shapes to your screenshots or other images. Skitch integrates with iPhoto, Aperture and Photo Booth to easily pull in your existing images or grab a shot from your webcam.

Once your image is ready, you’re one click away from sharing it to the web (publicly or privately), uploading it via FTP, or dragging it to your desktop. A history trail saves the images you’ve worked with for easy reference.

This tool is so useful it’s one of the few I have set to launch automatically on startup. I wouldn’t want to be on a desert island without it.

13. Comic Life

From the makers of Skitch is another great application for would-be doodlers and ad hoc illustrators. Comic Life is available for both the Mac and for Windows PCs, and helps you create professional-looking comic panels, photo albums, and other image layout template styles.

Have you ever torn your hair out looking for those great poofy comic fonts in Photoshop or other tools? That’s one of the areas where Comic Life shines, allowing you to easily drop in impactful lettering text to your images or panels.

More than that, Comic Life provides a fun and easy entry into getting more create ideas flowing with your images. This is the only paid app on this list, but at $24.95 for the standard and $29.95 for the deluxe version, it’s on the cheaper side of imaging tools that help achieve professional-looking results without spending a heinous amount of time. There’s a free 30-day trial as well so you have a chance to check out if it’s worth shelling out the registration fee for your needs.

(from mashable)

Well, in the last two months, Google and third-party developers have been hard at work testing out the system, fixing the kinks, and building some amazing extensions (which we discussed in-depth previously). Still, only a handful of people, almost all developers, have access. That’s about to change soon though: on September 30th, Google will start sending out about 100,000 invites for the next version of Google Wave.

Google made the big revelation in a blog post on the Google Wave developer’s blog. The post is part of an update on the Google Wave Hackathon, which allows developers to come to the Googleplex and work with the Google Wave API to build extensions such as Wave in WordPress, a bot that allows you to easily place Waves in WordPress posts.

It looks as if the testing in the Google Wave sandbox is going well though – it opened up the sandbox to 6,000 new developers and up to 20,000 more will get access before the end of August. But this pales in comparison to the 100,000 users that will get access on starting September 30th.

According to Google, at that point Google Wave will appear on Wave.Google.com, instead of the Wave Sandbox. They will help further test for bugs, provide feedback, and play with apps. Google intends to invite groups of users, so the invites may not come out all at once.

With push notifications, you can now stop checking news for breaking stories, or forget opening your IM app to see if someone is looking for you – rather, you can get instantly notified instead. Let’s take a look at a handful of useful apps that can get you the information you crave even more quickly.

iPhone Apps with push notification

Chat and Instant Message Apps

BeejiveIM: Web – iTunes: By far, my favorite instant messaging app for the iPhone, BeejiveIM ($9.99) combines Google Talk, Yahoo!, MSN, AIM and more all under one program for your iPhone. Now you’ll receive IM notifications even when you have the app closed.

YoFrog: Web - iTunes: YoFrog ($.99) is a mobile group chat application that allows you to chat with all your friends or business associates (who also need YoFrog) at once. No more SMS mayhem! With version 1.1 (sent to the App Store last week and waiting for approval), you’ll now be instantly notified when your contacts are trying to chat with you. They also have a free, Lite version.

Textfree Unlimited: Web – iTunes: Textfree ($5.99) allows for unlimited text messages (for one year) to any other US mobile phone. You’ll need to set up a username for people to text you directly, so it’s not ideal for your contacts – but probably not a bad deal for anyone who sends a ton of text messages and doesn’t want to upgrade to their carrier’s unlimited plan. Push notifications for Textfree will now notify users as soon as a new message comes in (imagine that!). They also have a Lite version that limits you to 15 messages per day and is ad-supported.

IM+ with Push: Web – iTunes: A popular instant messaging app, IM+ ($9.99) can now update you in real time when you receive an IM. You can manage IM with all of your contacts from any of the instant messaging platforms, including Skype.

To-do List Apps

RememberTheMilk: Web – iTunes: One of the most popular web-based to do list managers (and my go-to web app), RTM will now instantly notify you when you have a list item that’s due. The RTM iPhone App is free, but requires a Pro account with Remember The Milk for $25 per year.

ToodleDo: Web – iTunes: Another solid to do list manager, you can purchase their iPhone app ($2.99) to use with your free or paid subscription to Toodledo. Push notifications will let you know when an item with a due-date is coming up.

ReQall: Web – iTunes: ReQall (Free) is a unique information manager for to do items and other reminders. If you haven’t used it, I’d suggest trying it for a week to see if it makes sense for you. Open the app, speak, and let their system convert your speech into a to do item. The app now supports push notifications to instantly notify you of upcoming events.

Reminder Apps

BillMinder: Web – iTunes: ($.99 on sale) The next update of this bill reminder application promises push notifications. Just set your due dates and make sure notifications are turned on. Now you’ll never forget to pay a bill again… accidentally, at least.

NotifyMe: Web: Not to be confused with Notify.me, the IM notifier app, NotifyMe (price unkown) is yet to be approved by the app store, but promises notification for anything you can think of. Set it to notify you when your favorite TV show is about to start, when you are supposed to call back a client, or when you need to change the cat box! You’ll need to set up each alert, but the developer promises you can set up a new alert in as little as two taps. The free version (with some limitations) is in iTunes now.

Occasions: Web – iTunes: Occasions ($.99 on sale) notifies you of the birthdays and anniversaries of your iPhone contacts. You can also add more information about each contact or add reminders for people not on your phone’s contact list. For me, this is great. I manage all of my contacts in GMail and they’re synced to my phone automatically, so now I can get notified of the events in their lives, without having to do much extra work.

Other Apps with Push

AP Mobile: Web – iTunes: The popular free news app now supports push notifications of breaking news. However, it seems like it might not be working properly (serious lag time and not all notifications coming through). If this gets fixed, it could be very useful for those of us who can’t stand missing the latest North Korean missile launch.

AreMySitesUp: Web – iTunes: While push notifications are not yet available for this app, they promise that it’s coming. For an app that is built to “notify” you when your web site goes down – push would be ideal, of course. Their app is a free companion to the Premium membership on their site (starts at $25 per year). There is also a Lite version of the app that works with their free plan.

Zillow Real Estate: Web – iTunes: If you’re looking for a home, it doesn’t get much better than Zillow (Free). While you could always find houses for sale near your location (no need to enter an address), you can now get push-notified of new listings that match any of your saved searches.

E*Trade Mobile Pro: Web – iTunes: For the investors out there, you probably know you can already manage your E*Trade account with their iPhone App (Free), but now they’ve introduced push notifications. You’ll get stock and account alerts pushed directly to your phone’s screen. Next time you miss that big opportunity, it won’t be E*Trade’s fault!

Will Innovators Rise to Push?

While the apps that currently use push notifications are handy, I hope that developers will take this opportunity to do some things above and beyond your typical “message waiting” notifiers. E*Trade, Zillow and a few others get the idea. I’m waiting for the app that allows me to get notified of anything I decide I need to be notified about. With all the open APIs out there today, it’s bound to come along.

Things I want pushed:

1. Allow me to be notified when my car or house alarm goes off.

2. Google, let me be notified of a new Google Alert I have set up.

3. How about instead of giving me a big vibrating brick of plastic at the restaurant while I wait for a table, let my phone connect to your system and you can ping me instead.

4. I’d also like to know immediately when Albert Pujols hits another grand slam – or when any other sporting event I’m interested in occurs.

5. What about when I need two days of rain-free weather, within specific degrees, in order to paint a fence or deck. Should I really have to check the weather forecast every day? I’d rather have an app that did the work for me.

Sooner or later, push notification of almost anything will be a reality, making our digital lives even more real-time. What type of alerts would you like pushed to your iPhone?

(from mashable)

It’s not a revolutionary update, but the new sharing functionality for notebooks is certainly a welcome change given that previously you could only publish notebooks to the web for manually sharing a view- only version.

Evernote sharing is made available through a new sharing tab on the web and in the desktop clients. This will open the sharing settings menu, where you can adjust settings for each of your notebooks, and view quick links for currently shared notebooks. From here you can opt to share notebooks with the world, or share with individuals via email. When sharing with individuals, you can now specify if these recipients can just view the notebook, or can actually add and edit content.

There are a few caveats to shared notebooks, however, given that Evernote is trying to push their premium accounts. So as a free user, you can share with the world (that feature already existed) and view or edit notebooks shared with you, but you won’t be able to take advantage of the new share with individuals feature. Only premium users can invite collaborators to edit notebooks. Also keep in mind that shared notebooks can only be modified on the web, and currently there’s no way to track who’s making edits.

Watch the video below for a quick demo:

(from mashable)