Crenk

Huge URLs and Crazy E-Mail Addresses

Dean Sherwin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:53:52 +0000

We’ve all heard or Bit.ly, TinyURL and the rest. All of them shorten URLs so they can be discreet and fit places (like in the restrictive Twitter posting area). But what about the opposite end of the scale. What about huge URLs? And I mean HUGE.

HugeUrl.com is a website that takes you average sized link and makes it really big. I’m still yet to come up with a good use for it other than to annoy friends and for your own individuality.

I was planning on posting a link here to the Crenk Twitter account or something but when I got the link lengthened at hugeURL.com it was over forty lines long which I though was a bit much to have on the homepage.

Another similar service which I found was http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/ who offer the worlds longest e-mail addresses. Apparently they’re so long that some software and online forms won’t accept them and “people have a hard time typing in your e-mail address” – obviously.

So long story short (pun intended) – go to HugeURL.com if you want ridiculously long URLs which are useful for nothing and go to http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/ for the worlds longest e-mail address.

ElfYourself: Make Your Own Custom Christmas Cards

Dean Sherwin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:42 +0000

So Christmas is coming – or so the advertisers would have us believe. Still, it can’t be a bad time to get the office e-cards out of the way I suppose. For the past few years a popular services has ruled the internet Christmas card market – and this year it’s back again.

ElfYourself lets you embed the head of yourself, a friend, family member or co-worker on the tiny body of and elf in scenes such as Crazy Dancing and Hip-Hop Elfs.

However, it has also linked up with Twitter and Facebook so you can share your creations online with your buddies and even distribute hilarious ones among your network via connecting with friends on Facebook or simply tweeting your card.

So what are you waiting for – get over there and Elf Yourself.

Free Downloadable Add-Ons Make for Speedy Browsing

Steven Finch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:08:20 +0000

Mozillas Firefox Bookmarking Add-Ons make browsing on-line faster, more organized, and more convenient. While there are hundreds of free Bookmarks Add-ons to choose from through Mozillas AMO website, only a handful of them have received a coveted Recommended rating. Features vary wildly, and though some are a slight improvement over Internet Explorers Favorites, others succeed at being both simple and sophisticated.

If you just want to take the bookmarks names off the Bookmarks Toolbar to allow for more bookmarks to appear, Smart Bookmarks Bar 1.4.3 is an okay option. Its straightforward, but doesn’t give you much in the way additional functionality. Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar 4.0 does just what it says. As you get too many Bookmarks for one row, additional rows will appear. Of course as you add more and more bookmarks, you wont have much space left on your screen.

Xmarks 3.3.2 is popular because it synchronizes your bookmarks and passwords and allows you to access and update them on each computer you keep. Plus it supports Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer and Safari. One slightly worrisome feature of Xmarks is that it captures all of your Google searches (and other search engines) so it can interject websites into your Search results (they call this their “discovery service”). Just like Google, it keeps a history of websites that you visit, so security is a concern. Although Xmarks says its encrypted, it doesn’t seem impossible for its server to get hacked and all of a sudden have all of your passwords for sale to the highest bidder on the net.

The best feature of samfind Bookmarks Bar 2.0.3 is how fast it gets you to the sites you visit most often. Its totally customizable, and starts you off with some of the most popular websites already configured. Bookmarks are organized by Topics and its easy to add websites, even letting you drop and drag sites you want to add right from the address bar. You can position the samfind Toolbar where you want it, and you can select the look of websites on the Bar as icons, icons and text, or text. You can also change samfind’s layout to fit several times as many websites as you normally could, saving valuable screen space.

Shareaholic 1.9 supports over 60 social sites, allowing you to choose your favorite social services and access them from a single drop down menu. This add-on is tightly focused on bookmarking/sharing, blogging/publishing, as well as emailing, and link shortening. You can have instant access to shared web pages with the websites in these categories. In this respect it is similar to some of the other add-ons mentioned, although with fewer numbers of websites to interact with.

Mozillas Recommended Bookmarks Toolbars are all free downloads, and they offer a variety of features that will appeal to virtually any level of web browser. Once installed, they can all make repeated visits to the Internet a whole lot quicker and a lot less cluttered. Now if we could only find our car keys

Apple & Beatles Finally Come Together…

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:43:51 +0000

Just not in the way you think.

For at least two years now there’s been huge speculation and anticipation for the Beatles library to be released on iTunes, and in all this time, with as many teases, it just has not happened. Much to our disappointment we seek out their music elsewhere, having to find a library that has all of the music with the sound quality that can best define the music that defined a generation.

Well in a way, Apple and The Beatles have come together, but it’s not something you can download direct onto your iPod. Instead it’s the Beatles inside an apple. Get the picture?

This this USB stick is filled with the entire Beatles library including all the remastered goodness of the fab four’s Stereo Box Set, including 14 albums in lossless FLAC and 320 Kbps MP3 formats, 13 mini-documentary films, replicated UK album art, rare photos, and expanded liner notes. All of this put onto a 16GB stick for your listening and portable enjoyment.

The green apple is an interesting way to bring the two biggest names in media together, but there’s a limited run folks. Only 30,000 of these babies were made, so if you want it, you better act fast. The cost is $280 and comes out on December 8th, 2009. Sure it’s more expensive then the box set itself, but for collectors this is a dream, and honestly, how cool is the apple idea?

Okay, okay, not that cool, but the content is priceless.

Make your Own Cereal with MojaMix

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:02:46 +0000

This is quite a weird app I must say – make your own cereal. Interesting. Mojamix are a company that allow you to make your own cereal or trail mix from cereal flakes, dried fruits, nuts and seeds. Basically, you go to www.mojamix.com and click ‘Mix-It’. Customize your cereal and place and order for a bag which should be delivered to you within a few days.

Another thing I liked about this is that when you’re actually mixing your cereal the list of ingredients and the price are listed to the right of the screen so you don’t go overboard. They also offer nutrition facts about each ingredient (best to steer clear of ‘Chocolate Chomp’ I guess).

I think this is a really cool service especially those who like their cereal a certain way and are always trying to get some more dried fruit or nuts out of the box.

You can also buy gift certificates for other people who you know to be cereal maniacs. Imagine Christmas morning when they open a gift certificate for 50 pounds of cereal. Who wouldn’t be dead pleased?

Another Reason To Envy iPhone Users

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:33:21 +0000

There is a day not long ago when we said, the future will be here. And in that day long ago we saw amazing things in the future, self lacing shoes, hoverboards, flying cars even, but while none of that may have happened what we do have is iPhones. Sure you may know of the iPhone, held an iPhone, and maybe you’re one of the millions of people worldwide that own an iPhone, but now the future has indeed arrived; your iPhone is now capable of starting your car.

Thanks to a little iPhone app called Viper SmartStart, you simply get the SmartStart system installed into your car ($300-$500), and the iPhone app will do the rest. Using a GSM signal you’re able to not only start your car, but also lock and unlock your doors, open your trunk and a few other additions without ever needing your keys again.

The website says you can literally start your car from just about anywhere. Not sure what the actual “anywhere” means, but it’s good to know in those times when I can’t remember where I parked my car, or when you want to distract someone as you run for your life. In any case, below you’ll find some demos for the actual product.

It’s not a hoverboard and it’s not a flying car, but if you can add self driving from your iPhone ala James Bond, then we can forgive the lack of said advancements. One thing is for sure, it makes your iPhone that much more valuable to thieves. Now they take your iPhone and your car. Saddle up my friend, it’s going to be a long walk.

Online Tribes Can Avoid GigaTribe

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:03:32 +0000

Online communities have since been known as tribes. Thanks to Seth Godin’s famous book of the same title, it’s forced us to think of our online networks and communities in a unique light. Much like primitive tribes of earlier times, we’ve now formed digital tribes where we’ve found comfort in connections with people of similar interests, habits, hobbies, and histories. The tribes we belong to have a simple connectivity of communication that we long to maintain, enter Gigatribes.

The concept of communicating with your tribe is easy to see in networks such as Twitter, Facebook, or even LinkedIn. What if you wanted to share files in a local depository where all of your tribe can have access to? Or what if you only wanted to share with certain members of the tribe? Gigatribes allows you to build your community, much like any other social network, but now you’re able to share large files seamlessly and with out problems.

But there is a problem. How is this different from DropBox? Or maybe ZumoBox? Or any other of the hundreds of file sharing sites. In looking at the application itself I didn’t see anything that really stood out to make this the go to community file sharing network out there.

What it’ll come down to is comfort level and ease of use for your needs. DropBox and Zumobox both have mobile apps that give you access to your files on the go. No such app was found for Gigatribes which already puts this network at a disadvantage.

Google Acquires AdMob and Gizmo5, Plus Playfish Acquired by EA

Steven Finch — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:16:58 +0000

It has been a very big day in acquisitions for both Google and Accel partners. Google has announced that they have acquired Admob and Gizmo5. Admob is a mobile advertising network in which cost Google $750 million.

AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:

Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:

*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.

*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.

Im very surprised that Admob sold out to Google on this occassion. I know that $750 million is not an average sum of money, but with Googles track record of advertising products that aren’t Adsense is pretty terrible. Back in February 2007 Google purchased Adscape, which still hasn’t really taken their in-game advertising product to the next level. Additionally, Google killed Feedburner’s very profitable advertising network and replaced it directly with a much worse product for the type of market, Google Adsense. Accel partners won out big on this acquisition as they and Sequoia Capital were the early investors.

Gizmo5 Acquisition:

Gizmo5 was the other company in which Google purchased today, but for only around $30 million in cash. Gizmo5 is a VOIP infrastructure. In previous months Gizmo5 was in talks with Skype about a potential sale, mainly because Skype was having big issues with their current infrastructure. This is a very interested move for Google, I’m not entirely sure why they purchased VOIP infrastructure. The only possible solution is that they are thinking about tying it in with their current Google Voice offering.

EA purchase Playfish:

After lengthy negotiations, Electronic Arts closed it’s anticipated acquisition of social gaming startup Playfish for $275 million in cash. An additional $25 million in stock will be set aside for retaining the top talent at the startup, and another $100 million in earnouts are part of the deal as well if the business hits certain milestones. This has no reaffirmed how lucrative this market current is. I would not be surprised to see a Zynga IPO or Playdom acquistion in the first half of 2010.

gdgt.com: User Generated Gadget Reviews

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:18:32 +0000

Gdgt.com is a user generated site, which is kind of like Wikipedia in many regards, that caters for gadgets and electronics reviews. Basically, users log in and add reviews for tech items they own. Other users can then update or edit that review with their own opinion and thoughts.

There is also a questions section normally on the homepage called the ‘Big Debate’ where users ask questions related to tech products. The community is also alive and kicking. When you ask a question you needn’t bother logging off to check back later – just wait five minutes.

Most of the comments made there about products are sensible and well thought out. I didn’t find one comment from some idiot complaining that Blackberries are better than iPhones (nut jobs).

Connection with fellow enthusiasts is also a good feature that I liked as you can follow their own reviews and edits.

Signing up is easy and of course free. So if you fancy venting about your new purchase or want some solid advice about what to buy – and when, head on over to gdgt.com.

Danish Give up on Fighting Piracy

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:59:02 +0000

The fight against piracy has been ongoing in Europe since late last year when countries such as the Netherlands started to ban Pirate Bay. In Ireland, the main ISP Eircom, limited internet access to just 20 minutes per day for any of their customers found using the service and the owners of Pirate Bay were wanted men in the Scandinavian countries.

However, it appears as though the Danes are now “throwing in the towel”.

The main reason for this is the lack of adequate evidence which they can use to prosecute. Because, in terms of the law, the internet and the piracy associated with it are fairly new, there are no constraining laws which make it easy to prosecute. As it stands now, if the defendants don’t actually admit to having being organisers in piracy then they’re free to go.

To be honest, I’m still waiting to see if there will ever be a real prosecution and take down of a main service – anywhere.

Classy External Hard Drives

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:42:00 +0000

Having external hard drives has become one of the most common requirements for most of us, and if you were thinking that your portable hard drive didn’t combine with your desk nor your wallet, Brinell is giving you a new touch of class for you HD.

They have designed some really cool and elegant covers that will definitely class-up your portable devices. The Purestorage line is made of leather, wood, carbon fiber and even stainless steel. Having all those components you can easily confuse it with your wallet, cigar box or some other items.

The actual hard drives that include this series contain capacities of 160GB and 500GB, with 1.8 and 2.5 inches. And the cost goes from €189 and €229. It shouldn’t surprise you, having excellent built quality comes with a little bit of cost.

I can even see these models in women purses.

GIMP: A Great Free Photoshop Alternative

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

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

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

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

Here are a couple of screenshots from GIMP:

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

News Corp Strategy with Rupert Murdoch on Paid Content Online, Google, BBC and More.

Steven Finch — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:42:43 +0000

Great interview with Rupert Murdoch on the paid content, BBC, YouTube and more.

BlockPosters: Make Huge Posters for your Wall

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:48:02 +0000

This is without a doubt the best art website I’ve seen in ages. What you can create with just an hours work (most of which is you betting up close and personal with some double-sided tape)is fantastic. Take a look at the image below. Cool right?

To make one of your own follow these steps.

Go to blockposters.com
Upload and image that you ant as a poster (1Mb max)
Download the resulting file
Print it out
Get sticking

There are slight gaps at the edges of the page which could be sliced off to provide an uninterrupted image but I think the gaps add a certain charm.

New Open Office Mega Mouse

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:58:28 +0000

Gaming, especially with MMOs of fast paced shooters is difficult with the PC because of the limitations of the keyboard. Obviously one could go for a better mouse with more buttons – openoffice.org though so too.

They have just released a new mouse with 18 buttons including a thumb controlled joystick. It’s fully compatible with games such as WoW and browsers such as Firefox. And yes, obviously it works with the original Open Office software.

From looking at the picture you can probably tell it’s not the most attractive piece of software. I don’t quite get why they chose those colours and the material looks cheap and very 90s-ish. But hey, I’m sure gamers and power users the world over will love this thing.

OpenOffice 3 with Over 100 Millions Downloads

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:32:12 +0000

For over several years now, the OpenOffice.org Project has been increasing significantly. And on October 28^th they’ve reached the 100 million download with their 3.0 version.

Open Office 3, released a year ago, included several improvements:

Enhanced compatibility with Microsoft Office 2007
Added edition capabilities for PDF
Included Open Office extensions (quite similar like you have in Firefox add-ons)
Various improvements with Writer (Word), Calc (Excel) and Impress (PowerPoint).

The latest and stable build is the 3.1.1 but there is already a Beta available for the 3.2 version, you can check it here.

Open Office originally appeared as StarOffice, owned by Sun Microsystems (back in the year 2000). The first original version of Open Office, 1.0 obviously, showed up in 2002. And for those that worked with it, knew that it had a lot to improve.

Even though all that, this project was the only one that maintains certain stability over the years with an “attempt” to use it as a free possibility working with Office standards. Personally I’ve never got used to it to use it, but continue to be as the main possibility for several governmental and educational entities, related to costs of course.

New Open Office Mega Mouse

Top 3 Netbooks for Home, School and Work

Dean Sherwin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:53:34 +0000

Netbooks are becoming more popular because they’re more portable than the very portable laptop and have all the working power into the bargain. Plus they pack more punch than even the best of smart phones. Here we have what I think are the best three netbooks for their tasks.

Home

Dell Inspiron Mini 10v Netbook

This is a great little curvy computer running the most popular of OS among netbooks – Windows XP. It has 1GB of RAM which is into laptop territory and is great for surfing the internet and taking care of all those tasks. The reason why this is the best netbook for the home is because of the price. At just $299 it’s a fine purchase to make to fill the gap when someone else is using the family PC or you just want to relax in bed and check you e-mail or RSS. It also doesn’t look and feel cheap like other netbooks for the same price. It can run for over five hours playing video and using software so it’s ideal for entertainment and heavy usage.

School

Asus Eee PC

This one is slightly more bulky than the one mentioned above but it packs more of a punch and it has an extended battery life for those long cramming sessions. The keyboard is also much better for typing on than the DELL.

It has 1GB of RAM but a 1.66GHz processor while running XP.

It weighs 3.4 pounds which isn’t too bad when you compare it to the laptop you could have been lugging around between classes. It looks good and ticks all the right boxes for students. The price tag of $400 isn’t to bad either.

Work

HP Mini 5101

This small netbook is definitely the way to go for work and business. It stylish and discreet with a minimalistic design and has sharper angles than the other too. Again, it has 1GB of RAM and a 1.66GHx processor doing all the work for you. It’s really sturdy and solidly built however I don’t like how it lost its Express Card slot which was on the previous model.

Nonetheless, the 160Gb hard drive is more than enough to hold any projects (no matter how big) until you make it back to the office and the 10” display is the perfect screen for working on them along with the comfortable keyboard and track pad.

For ultimate gaming laptops, click here.

Virtual Radio: Internet Radio On Your Cell Phone

Dean Sherwin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:08:15 +0000

Even listened to the radio on your phone while you’re on the bus or just relaxing in the park – sometime it can get a bit boring. Especially for us geeky types who love to know what going on all over the world in the tech biz.

Well I found a cool app for your cell phone that may fix the problem.

Virtual Radio is a cool Java app for you Java enabled cell phone that allows you to listen to Internet radio stations in crisp high quality sound. The have lowered the frequency to 32kbps for the Java version so your GPRS connection can keep up with the content.

There are loads of different channels to choose from depending on where you’re located. You can also reprogram the tuner to play your favourite channels or simply find new ones.

The best this is that it’s completely free to download and use. One piece of advice that I’ll give you is to watch out for the GPRS costs. However, nowadays most network have deals on GPRS internet such 99c per day for unlimited usage or a set fee every month.

Download Virtual Radio here.

Feedly: The Best Browser RSS Reader

Dean Sherwin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:22:24 +0000

I though I’d share with you guys an RSS reader that I started using recently called Feedly. Basically it’s and add-on for most browsers including Chrome and Firefox which combines all your RSS feeds into one incredible place that by far surpasses generic readers such as Google.

Here is a screenshot:

What I like most about is that it also combines other services such as GMail and Twitter into the same package so you’re getting all of your information in the one place instead of having several tabs open.

It’s free and its easy to set up once you have installed it as an add-on. Click here to download Feedly.

Google Open Sources Its Own Development Programs

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:29:32 +0000

It’s a great day when Internet giant Google open sources the programs it uses to build well-known favourites such as GMail, Docs and Google Maps. It announced on its blog that it will be making a lot of it’s own development software available to developers all over the world. This release comes as Google are undoubtedly upgrading their own tools especially with the upcoming launch of Google Wave.

The first of the three tools they released is called Closure Compiler which helps developers trim down code and optimize it for better performance. There is also a plug-in for Firefox released alongside this so they can view heir Java Script code in the browser.

The second one is called Library which is a tool to help build Java Script Apps. Here is what Google said on their official blog about the program:

The Closure Library is a JavaScript library that provides many features that are useful for building web applications across browsers. It helps to abstract browser differences and provides clean class and function interfaces for common tasks. Besides DOM interaction and UI tools, the library includes tools for arrays, objects, string manipulation and much more. The library also implements a name spacing and import standard, which helps keep scripts small and load fast when used with the Closure Compiler.

The third and final release until further notice was Templates. This is an app that is for creating HTML elements that can be used within Java Script.

Closure Templates simplify the task of dynamically creating HTML and have an easy-to-read syntax. They allow you to write templates for reusable HTML and UI elements that can be used within JavaScript or on the server side in Java. They also have excellent run-time performance because they are never parsed on the client side.

Over the next month or so there is undoubtedly going to be a big rush of new Java apps and programs onto the market thanks to the Google outsourcing. Be sure to stay in touch with Crenk to stay informed!

Dual Monitors: Why You Should Set Them Up

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:10:32 +0000

The vast majority of people have a single monitor. Even suggesting adding a second would baffle them.

‘Eh, why?’ they might ask while staring at you as though you just landed in a spinning saucer.

Here’s my answer.

‘Because productivity is increased, desktop size doubled and it looks AWSOME’.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter you’ll have noticed that I spent an hour last night hooking up a second 19” monitor in my office. As I write this post I currently have Microsoft Outlook and Trillian Astra running on the spare screen with my whole laptop screen available for work. If I want to check my e-mails I just move my cursor to the second screen and use it as though it was a different computer. Then just move it back to the left until it reappears on my laptop – then back to work!

Seriously, for anyone who is even a semi-hardcore computer user I would definitely suggest this quick tip. It’s as easy as plugging in the new monitor, going to display settings and setting the resolution of monitor number 2. Easy.

Facebook and Twitter to Fight SPAM… again

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:51:56 +0000

SPAM is one of my pet hates. In fact I think that everyone reading this hates those annoying e-mails, comments left on our pages, tweets and clearly misleading advertisements that promise you a months salary in a few hours. I really, really hate SPAM. It’s useless and in this day and age it achieves nothing with its instantly recognisable language format, strange links and oh yeah, the promise of a few million bucks for transferring money.

Twitter and Facebook hate SPAM too. At the same time, both of them published posts to their blog that clearly announce plans to go on the offensive against spammers on their networks.

Twitter is due to start crating tweets and organising the trending topics section. This could mean one of two things:

Either they’ll simply remove an entire trending topic if it becomes too spammed.
Or they’ll painstakingly monitor tweets in trending topics with the first filter being a computer and the last a human.

They told us that the changes may not be apparent immediately – but I can assure you, it’s happening as you read this post.

Meanwhile, Facebook are targeting SPAM and scam ads on their network. This is a really big problem for two reasons. Firstly it lets users make their own ads and publish them – with so many it’s hard to catch all the scams. And secondly, they’ve gotten into bed with some shady advertising networks recently and are having a spot of bother breaking the relationships. Although they have assured us they’re in the process of ending two of them.

Let’s all pray for a SPAM free Internet in the mean time.

Twitter Peek Offers Lackluster Appeal

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:43:29 +0000

Back in the early 90’s there was this song, “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…”. It’s this song that I sadly have to reference when mentioning the Twitter Peek. Unlike the song that had some redeeming qualities this doorstopper is the clunkiest piece of technology I’ve seen yet (a disclaimer, I do not own one).

This product is made by Peek. The same company brought you the horrors that were the Pronto Peek and the Meet Peek. I’m not sure why I would want any of these devices since my smartphone does it all, and when I’m not at my mobile, I’m at my desk.

Perhaps therein lies the truth. It’s not geared towards me, the tech savvy geek, but rather the Twitter uninitiated.Despite the millions of users, there are still many demographics who have not embraced it. What a simple bridge to get them to join.

Clever plan or failure upward? Too early to tell, but one thing is for sure, based on their past successes, the Twitter Peek might make a small splash.

The Twitter Peek can be purchased on their website or via Amazon.

Web App Buffers Timely Online Communication

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:53:50 +0000

Heard of Twitter? Sure the whole world has by now. Lone tribes on far islands have heard about Twitter. This massively immersive and widely used micro-blogging network has become a staple for both our personal and professional lives. The world seems to still be feeling the “Twitter effect” as industries adapt their existing messages to fit the fast paced world of this social network.

But do you ever feel like you’re being left behind? Perhaps not enough time to get the right message in a timely fashion? Now there’s a solution to that.

Twuffer presents itself as the buffer between you and your timed messages. By using the web application, you are able to preset messages on a timed schedule to be released on your network at the times you think most important. The possibilities of this type of functionality are as endless as your creativity.

The web app is easy to use and can serve you to better time your announcements, set reminders for yourself or others, engage in timed online activities, or, as the site suggests, make it appear as if you never sleep. The practicality of this app seems pretty straightforward.

The application is currently in beta, but your able to explore what it has to offer pretty seamlessly. I suggest you give it a try to announce regular days when your podcast or blog post will go live, or perhaps some other similar campaign to see if Twuffer is right for you!

Google Celebrate Anniversaries of Children’s TV Shows

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:29:25 +0000

Google has always been known to mark special occasions such as Christmas, St. Patricks Day, 4^th of July and many others depending on what country you live in, by creating a new Google logo, or doodle as they have become known, for their homepage.

Well for two days in a row they have been celebrating the anniversaries of two famous children’s TV shows.

Yesterday they had a Wallace and Grommet logo to mark the 20^th anniversary of their creation:

And today, Google.co.uk is displaying the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street to mark the 40th anniversary of the show.

Takes me back…