Google dips its toe into TV programming searches, netbooks' market share is growing, Twitter and Facebook gear up for geolocation, and researchers make the case for fat as a sixth taste sense.
Users of the social bookmarking service Delicious were only able to use a bookmarklet in combination with the Google Chrome web browser if they wanted to improve their workflow when bookmarking new websites.
The Delicious team has been hard at work to provide their Google Chrome users with an extension that would offer them the same functionality as their Firefox counterparts.
The Delicious extension for Google Chrome is currently in beta stage which means that not everything that has been integrated into the Firefox add-on is currently also offered in the Chrome extension.
The Delicious extension currently be used to sync the Delicious bookmarks with a Delicious account, display Delicious bookmarks in the address bar of the Chrome browser and to bookmark pages with the help of the Tag button that is being placed in the Chrome toolbar.
A Delicious account is needed to make use of the extension. Bookmark syncing can be enabled in the extension’s options as well so that the bookmarks are always synced between the browser and the Delicious account.
Users who want to read up on the release can visit the Delicious blog post that announces the beta release of the Chrome extension. Those who want to skip the information can head over to the Google Chrome extensions gallery to download the Delicious extension.
Delicious lands in Google Chrome Extension Gallery - it's official, and very beta originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Delicious lands in Google Chrome Extension Gallery - it's official, and very beta originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Most websites on the Internet are not only made up of information but also other content that might be seen as a distraction sometimes. Elements like advertisements, logos or navigational menus can distract from the main content of the website and tools like Readability remove the clutter from websites so that it is easier to concentrate on the content.
Readability was initially offered as a bookmarklet compatible with most web browsers. The Firefox add-on of the same name is limited to the Firefox web browser. It provides access to five different styles that can be applied to any website that is open in the browser.
Selecting one of the styles turns the original website into a compressed one that is displaying only the main content which usually is the text that is provided on those pages.
Readability places an icon in the status bar of the web browser. It is also possible to display an icon in the toolbars where it can be accessed easier. Keyboard shortcuts are also provided which makes the process even easier. Pressing CTRL + ALT + R will turn the Readability style on while CTRL + R will return the webpage to its original design.
The extension provides access to autoscroll functionality as well which can be activated with the keyboard shortcut CTRL + Shift + A. Once activate several additional controls are available:
0-9 : Set scroll speed, 0 being stand-still and 9 being skim-speed
– : Decrease speed
= : Increase speed
shift + – : Decrease speed quickly
shift + = : Increase speed quickly
ESC or q : Quit
The auto scrolling functionality is unique to the Firefox add-on as it is not provided in the bookmarklet. Readability can be downloaded from the Firefox add-on repository. No Script users on the other hand will not have much fun with the add-on as it only works if the root url is whitelisted or allowed in the security add-on.
Do you prefer keeping your Taskbar hidden but still need to keep watch on what time it is? Now you can keep track of the time without the Taskbar using the Date Today extension for Google Chrome.
A Look at Date Today with Different Themes
This extension does one thing and does it well…it provides you with an “active icon” clock that will let you view the time and date in two fashions. The first is by hovering your mouse over the “Toolbar Clock Button”…
And the second is by clicking on the “Toolbar Clock Button” to view an enlarged version. Here you can see the extension in use with five different themes to get an idea of how it might look with the theme that you are currently using. It does stand out very nicely with brighter or darker colored themes.
Conclusion
While this extension is obviously not for everyone it will make a nice (and useful) addition to Chrome for those who prefer keeping their Taskbar hidden.
Links
Download the Date Today extension (Google Chrome Extensions)
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Sometimes we’ve entered data in a column in Excel, only to realize later that it would be better to have this data in a row, or vise-versa. Here’s a simple trick to convert any row or set of rows into a column, or vise-versa, in Excel.
Please Note: This is tested in Excel 2003, 2007, and 2010. Here we took screenshots from Excel 2010 x64, but it works the same on the other versions.
Convert a Row to a Column
Here’s our data in Excel:
We want to change these two columns into rows. Select all the cells you wish to convert, right-click, and select copy (or simply press Ctrl+C):
Now, right-click in the cell where you want to put the data in rows, and select “Paste Special…”
Check the box at the bottom that says “Transpose”, and then click OK.
Now your data that was in columns is in rows!
This works the exact same for converting rows into columns. Here’s some data in rows:
After copying and pasting special with Transpose selected, here’s the data in columns!
This is a great way to get your data organized just like you want in Excel.
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Keeping your computer and software up to date is very important in keeping everything running smooth and secure. It’s also important to keep your geeky gadgets updated as well. Here we take a look at updating a Zune HD.
Note: In this example we’re updating a Zune HD out of the box which hasn’t been updated yet.
The first thing you’ll need to do if you haven’t already is download and install the latest Zune software (link below).
Now plug your Zune into your computer with the included USB connection cable and give it a moment to be recognized.
Next launch the Zune Desktop software and you should get the following screen. Just accept the EULA…
Then the update kicks off. Make sure not to disconnect the Zune while the update takes place.
The update will take a few minutes, and after it’s complete you should be good to go and can start using your Zune.
To update your player in the future, go to General Settings then Player Update.
![sshot-2010-03-05-[22-17-39]](http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sshot20100305221739.png "sshot-2010-03-05-[22-17-39]")
Just like your computer’s hardware and software, you want to keep your other geeky gadgets updated as well. This will help the device run more smoothly, and sometimes add additional functionality.
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Memonic is online information capturing and organizational service. It allows you to capture pieces of information like maps, routes, photos or text. The capturing process can be completed in a variety of ways including: a smart bookmarklet, an iPhone application, email your documents and/or using copy and paste. Once the content is in the Memonic system you can organize the data in collections and share the content with your friends. An example of a nice collection is Johnny’s iPad collection with shows offsome new technology. Memonic could be considered a competitor to the popular information capturing service Evernote.
The Swiss-based Memonic team is made up of five business and development team members. Memonic has quickly sky rocketed to become a new darling in the Swiss startup scene.
This week, Memonic has launched their business model. For a yearly price of 29 Euros (USD 39) you receive storage of unlimited items & collections and up to 10 GB of storage. For comparison, Evernote charges $45 a year. Neither Memonic nor Evernote charge for file uploads although Evernote has a monthly limit of 500 mb.
Have a look at the Memonic Tour to see if the application could help capture the information you are interested in across the Internet. And you can easily start using the service by creating an account or just anonymously organizing your bits of information.
Every now and then we look back at services that we have reviewed before. Print What You Like was reviewed by us in 2008. It is an online service that allows a user to optimize printing jobs before they are send to the printer. It is limited to optimizing printouts of websites and offers controls to remove elements from those websites. The advantage of this is that the user can reduce the website so that only the content that needs to be printed is send to the printer and that everything else is not which saves printer ink and paper.
The service works by pointing it to an url on the Internet. The website will be loaded by Print What You Like with controls to manage elements on the website in a left sidebar.
The mouse cursor will automatically highlight elements on the website. These elements can then be manipulated in the sidebar. It is for instance possible to remove elements from the website, change the text font and size, fit elements to the width of the page or resize elements.
Print What You Like offers an automatic option as well which works well on some websites but not on all. This option in theory removes all unnecessary elements from the website.
The service is also offering a bookmarklet that sends urls directly to it making the process more user friendly. Alternatives to Print What You like are The Printliminator bookmarklet, Print Friendly or Green Print.
Do you prefer visually browsing through your open tabs as opposed to using a tab list? Then the Visual Tabs extension for Google Chrome just might be the “visual tool” that you have been looking for.
Visual Tabs in Action
As soon as you have installed the extension you are ready to go. To browse through your open tabs simply click on the “Toolbar Button” to open the drop-down window. You will see thumbnails of your open tabs and a “background color chooser option” in the lower left corner. Use your “Middle Mouse Button” to scroll through the tabs and click on the one that you would like to view. That is all there is to it…
Switching over to the “Blue Background Theme”…
Then the “Green”…
Followed by the “White”. Between the six colors you should be able to make a good match with your browser’s theme.
Conclusion
If you love using a visual approach for browsing through your open tabs then this extension should be a lot of fun for you to use.
Links
Download the Visual Tabs extension (Google Chrome Extensions)
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Instapaper Pro, one of Gadget Lab’s favorite iPhone apps, has been updated to version 2.2. Despite that incremental number, there is a slew of new features which make the application more like v3.0. For those who never heard of it, Instapaper lets you save long articles from your browser by clicking a bookmarklet. It then cleans up the text and images (stripping out all the crap and ads) and serves it up to you on your iPhone to read at your leisure.
Developer Marco Arment was planning on waiting for the iPad before releasing this version, but couldn’t hold on any longer. It shows. Small interface touches make Instapaper much nicer to use (if that were possible) and the application now seems more complete.
So what’s new? The biggest addition is pagination. Previously you had to either scroll continuously with your thumb or switch on “tilt-scroll”, which would scroll the page slowly as you tilted the iPhone. Pagination works much more like an e-reader: touch the bottom or top of the screen and the next “page” flips into view. You can toggle this from the reading screen on the fly.
Next is dictionary lookup. Tap a word to highlight it, as if you were going to copy-and-paste. You can then choose to look the word up. The dictionary comes from Wiktionary, and is completely off-line, so you can use it on a disconnected iPod touch. This is useful for learning English, we guess.
There is also an in-app browser, which replaces the old option to save the full version of a page. You need to be online, of course, but a browser is far more useful as you can follow links and of course mark them to read later in Instapaper. Better, the browser has a text mode, which Instapaper-izes a web-page in place for better small-screen reading.
You’ll also notice indicators on your article list. Like the blue dots by podcasts and TV shows in iTunes, these show partially-read articles (and you can now delete archived articles, something you couldn’t do before).
There are also much nicer text and font controls (the pop-over panel may hint at the future iPad version) and general tweaks to the graphics (including a nice new icon). If you don’t have Instapaper Pro already, go spend you $5 now. If you do, you won’t need any pushing to grab this update.
Instapaper Pro 2.2 now available [Instapaper Blog]
Instapaper Pro [iTunes]
See Also:
Spotify is arguably the best streaming music service available online. Spotify is available under Windows and Mac. However, by using Wine you can install Spotify to run on Ubuntu as well.
Note: Spotify is not available in all countries or the United States. Here we look at installing Spotify on Ubuntu 9.10 using Wine 1.2.
To begin with we’ll need to install Wine on Ubuntu. If you already have Wine you can easily skip this step. To install Wine on Ubuntu 9.10 first open synaptic package manager by going to System \ Administration \ Synaptic Package Manager.
You’ll be prompted for your password. Enter your admin password and this will open Synaptic Package Manager.
Select the package wine 1.2 and click apply. This will install Wine on your Ubuntu and it’s available under Applications \ Wine.
Now that you have Wine installed. All you need to do is download the Windows version of Spotify and install it over your Wine. To do so download Spotify (windows version). Once downloaded, navigate to the download folder and right-click the Spotify installer and click Open with Wine Windows Program Loader.
This will install Spotify on your Ubuntu machine.
Now you can enjoy Spotify on your Ubuntu machine if you live outside of the US. Also, make sure and check out our review of Spotify.
Links
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Love it!
- Jesse Staycool! extension's first success!
- FranciscoWell, not sure it's working :-) I'm running OS X Chromium nightly, and clicking it doesn't seem to do anything.
- Jesse StayBut I like having the FF logo next to my URL bar, so that's a success :-)
- Jesse StayIt's right next to the Facebook logo
- Jesse Stayheh, um. not sure how to um, debug it?. As I said it's very simple. it loads a background.html page containing a few lines and the orig. bookmarklet: chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
var action_url = "javascript:void((function(){var%20e=document.createElement('script');e.setAttribute('type','text/javascript');e.setAttribute('src','http://friendfeed.com/share/bookmarklet/javascript');document.body.appendChild(e)})())";
chrome.tabs.update(tab.id, {url: action_url});
});
// EDIT: ok that's messy. here: http://tinypaste.com/6081b Anybody know hoe to make it work on OSx?
- FranciscoWorks fine on Mac OS X 5.0.335 dev channel release. It looks like extensions are disabled on the extensions website and on Chrome internal pages, but if you go to like http://google.com the bookmarklet pops up just fine. You can try to remove the %20 in the action_url string, but removing it didn't seem to affect my usage either way.
- Mark TrappGood work, Francisco.
- MicahWorks GREAT!
- Reformed GoadkickerFriendfeed Bookmarklet Mock - Google Chrome extension gallery
- Kol Tregaskes"Just a cute-looking button for that bookmarklet we love."
- Kol TregaskesThanks, Micah.
- FranciscoActually, it seems to work, just wasn't working on the link to the extension. Seems to work fine on other pages though so I think we're good.
- Jesse StayNeat
- ♻ ǝuǝƃnǝGreat to hear, Jesse. Btw. What does the facebook button do? :-)
- FranciscoFrancisco, here's the Facebook one: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lkdedmbpkaiahjjibfdmpoefffnbdkli - from what I hear it was written at a Facebook hackathon by an intern there.
- Jesse StayI really like the small scrolling bar they styled there. Sweet.
- FranciscoIf you could combine FFcheck with the bookmarklet, that would be very useful
- Shey, Jamaican of FFand friendfeedTranslate - if someone does this, I suggest using kynetx to do it. It will give you one jquery-based language to write extensions with one code base across most browsers: http://kynetx.com
- Jesse Stay*ears perk up*
- MicahJesse, are you an advisor to kynetx (I see they're based in Lehi)? Do you know what their business model is - have they stated anything as such publicly. It certainly looks interesting.
- MicahMicah, I am not an advisor, nor do I have any vested interest. I just really like what they're doing. Their business model is in building custom apps for brands interested, or in consulting. I'm not sure what other types of deals they do. Their developer platform is free though. You can ask @windley or @fulling on Twitter though and I'm sure they can answer more detailed questions than I'm aware.
- Jesse StayOf note, @windley wrote the Digital Identity book for O'Reilly, and has a very strong identity background. I fully expect them to go full force into the identity realm with what they're doing. Imagine completely customized context (such as this extension, but even more), through extensions, action cards, and bookmarklets, across all browsers.
- Jesse Stay@Shey do you have a link to ffcheck? never heard of it. I think it is doable. ;-) as for ff translate ...
- Francisco"This applet will have access to your private data and web history on all web sites" .... err, no thanks, lol
- Freudian SlippyLol, if it's doing so, I had no idea. @Slippy
- FranciscoObviously it's just a bit of poorly-worded google boilerplate. "will have access" should probably read "may have access"
- Freudian SlippyWow, just what i needed, thanks Francisco!
- Majento@Slippy ¬¬ haa I should have seen it coming! I'm glad it's useful, Majento.
- Francisco
You probably already knew about IMDB for its movie reviews on upcoming, recent and even older movies, but when you have that wide of a movie selection available, it’s good to have more streamlined ways to help you narrow down which films are worth your while and which most likely aren’t. Good starting places would be movie recommendation sites (such as Criticker or Filmaster), places that aggregate movie ratings from different sites, or reputable sources’ guides to the best and worst movies of all time.
Here’s our list of the latter, which includes the better known sites (that you read about on Saikat’s skillfully written free e-book, The Awesome Internet Guide to the Movie Addict) where you can find great lists to the top (and not-so-much) movies.
The site name refers to movies that suffer from a rating of less than 60%, while the movies that get good ratings and reviews are called fresh (tomatoes). Since it has such a large number of reviews, it of course has compiled lists for movie buffs who are eager to watch excellent movies, and want to know which are the worst movies of all time.
For superb films, RT has ranked the best 50 films of all time in the form of a countdown to keep you more excited (though you can skip clicking on Next 49 times with PageZipper’s bookmarklet).
RT also has the top 50 TV series-to-movie adaptations of all time in the form of a countdown as well.
RT also honors every year’s best-reviewed movies (by users and RT staff critics) with the Annual Golden Tomato Awards. On this page, you can browse best-reviewed movies by year, genre, release site (UK, Australia, limited release) and user rating.
Now when it comes to bad movies, RT knows terrible films so much it even made a whooping list of the worst 100 films of the 2000-2009 decade, titled Worst of the Worst.
For a list of each year’s least favorably-reviewed films, RT’s Golden Tomato Awards, which were mentioned above to honor best reviewed films, apparently also honors Moldy films; which are the worst of the worst for a specific year.
If you visit RT frequently, be sure to make use of RT’s feed which will bring you the latest on upcoming movies and release dates.
IMDb features a gigantic list with the 250 best-reviewed films by IMDb user votes. While RT and IMDb both take into account users’ votes to create these lists, IMDb also packs 200 more films in the list and features commercially successful movies so you can browse the lists of box office-topping movies in the U.S. and UK by week and of all time. You can also browse movies by most DVD rentals, by decades and even gender.
IMDb also has a list, named IMDb Bottom 100, of the 100 lowest-rated movies that have gotten the most votes from IMDb users.
If you frequently check Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, check out these Firefox addons which are designed to liven up your RT and IMDb visits.
Metacritic offers a Metascore (where the maximum is 100) for each movie based on reviews by national critics, and also displays user scores (with a maximum of 10) for each movie. However, for the lists the site compiled to present the best movies of the decade and of all time, MC only takes into account the Metascores.
This list of the best movies of the decade actually contains many foreign and indie films so MC also supplies us with a list of the Best-Reviewed Wide-Release Films of the Decade, 2000-09, and also a second part of the article that’s dedicated to sorting the best movies by genres and categories. And now onto the list of all-time winners.
While this is an impressive list with 200 of the all-time high scoring movies, the site also compiled a humongous list of the 200 worst-reviewed movies of all-time (since it’s actually 100 more than either Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb’s terrible movie lists, now you have more movies to avoid).
As if those lists from the sources above aren’t enough, New York Times’ Film Critics have published an astounding alphabetical list on NYT’s website, which is actually extracted from a book, The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.
If you’re into classic movies, you will definitely enjoy this list as it seems to include a lot of older movies (there’s only about 37 or so titles from the 2000’s).
When it comes to moving and thought-provoking films, the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) might know a thing or two. Its official site lists all the movies that have earned the award of Best Picture from 1927 and on.
Two TIME magazine film critics created this easier-to-manage list of 100 best movies, sorted alphabetically here.
If you want a general list with reviews of the best movies aggregated from different sources, check this Wikipedia article.
Maybe you’re trying to avoid wasting your precious time, money and effort the next time you get a movie, or you’re looking to have a fun night with your friends laughing at some bad acting. Whatever your reason, you won’t be disappointed with Empire’s guide to the 50 “most disastrous films ever made.”
According to its site, the Golden Raspberry (Razzie for short) Awards have been presenting “dis-honors for Worst Achievements in Film since 1980.” Although voters include journalists, film industry professionals and users of the website, the Razzies are meant to be a “light-hearted parody of award shows in general (and the Oscars in particular)” according to the author’s site. Either way, the list of the movies that got recognized as Worst Pictures is worth a look.
Here’s a general list of the worst-reviewed movies on Wikipedia, aggregated from a number of sources.
If you’re feeling as excited as I am after such a variety of movie recommendation sites, you can start watching movies on the web (if you can’t play those movies on legal movie sites such as Hulu because you live outside the US, read this piece on how to solve that), create your own Top Movies of All Time list and even blog about your movie-watching experience. Believe it or not, this man was recently featured on ESPN for trying to watch IMDB’s top 250 movies in 1 year.
Feel free to comment on your own list of recommended movies and have fun watching!
Photo credit: Andres Rueda
em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Top Guides To The Best And Worst Movies Of All Time
- ◄ani625ΞIt’s Friday and you’re sick and tired of the boss telling you about the TPS Reports that are due. Time to have some fun on company time and play the fun flash game Mechanical Commando 2.
Mechanical Commando 2
This is a cool game where you are in the cockpit of your mech and visit different planets to obliterate enemies and save civilians.
At the main menu you pick the planet where you want to start a mission at. As you progress through levels you’ll have more mission options. From here you can control the game volume and quality.
When each mission starts you’ll get a briefing with a main objective.
Here is an example of the first mission…you’re in the mech and start shooting enemies and structures. The controls are simple…aim and shoot with the mouse and use the “WASD” keys to move around.
Here we’re rescuing civilians…
Trying to defeat a boss so you can take control of a larger vehicle to continue destroying the enemy.
Once you defeat the boss you can take control of the vehicle and continue on with more fire power.
Sometimes the terrain will be blocked off so you can’t always use the larger vehicle and will need to hop out of it by pressing the Space bar and continue in your mech.
There is a hanger for you to grab weapon upgrades as you progress in levels.
If you’re looking for a fun way to pass the time until the whistle blows this game will do the trick.
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As Phil Windley mentioned the other day, I’ll be speaking at the Kynetx Impact conference, April 27-28 in Salt Lake City. Last year I interviewed Phil about what Kynetx does. It’s hard to boil it down to an elevator pitch without examples, so here’s one that came up today: Scott Hanselman’s Put Missing Kids on your 404 Page application.
Inspired by a PHP solution to the problem, Scott set out to replicate it for ASP.NET.
But then I realized that a server-side solution wasn’t really necessary.
Could I do it all on the client side? This way anyone could add this feature to their site, regardless of their server-side choice.
One next step, as Scott points out, is to add geolocation so the list of kids you see will be more relevant to you. But there are lots of ways to contextualize that list based on aspects of your identity. And this is what Kynetx applications do: Contextualize your experience of the web based on aspects of your identity.
My own interest in this idea dates back to the LibraryLookup project, which was an early demonstration of the power of client-driven contextualization. It evolved from a bookmarklet to a browser plug-in, but then stalled there for lack of a ubiquitous client-side technology.
Now there is: jQuery. What Scott’s example shows, as do all Kynetx applications, is that we’re ready to make clients more equal partners in the dance of the web. Among other things, this possibility raises horny issues about the control of content — issues that I explored in a 2005 screencast.
But there’s also a deep connection between Phil’s work and the ongoing saga of digital identity. Phil wrote a book on that subject, and has been a key organizer of the Internet Identity Workshop. When he started Kynetx he wasn’t really thinking about a tie-in to Information Cards and the identity metasystem. But the connection emerged organically.
In a Kynetx-enhanced version of the Missing Kids 404 Page application, your browser would present selected aspects of your identity to the services that provide the data, and a Kynetx application would personalize that data in ways meaningful to you.
The Internet began as a network of peers. That arrangement didn’t last long, and there have been several efforts to restore the original symmetry. In the early 2000s, during Napster’s heyday, there was a flurry of interest in peer-to-peer architectures. Thanks to today’s more capable and more standardized browsers, we’re seeing a new wave of interest. I’m looking foward to hanging out at the Kynetx conference and meeting folks who are riding that wave.
We have been giving you, the readers, a lot of advice over the past few years, and now it’s your turn! We are starting a new series where we’ll be posing a question each week and hoping you’ll share your experience, comments, and advice related to the topic.
Photo by aranarth
![sshot-2010-02-23-[17-56-36]](http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/sshot20100223175636.jpg "sshot-2010-02-23-[17-56-36]")
Laptop, Desktop or Both?
This week we’re starting things off by asking if you use a laptop, desktop, or both. With laptops today, enough power can be packed into the machine to get your work done, and there’s the benefit of convenience and portability. Others are happy with just a desktop which can be used as a media center, server, gaming rig…etc. Still others of us need the power of a desktop, along with a laptop or netbook for lighter tasks when on the go.
We want to hear what you think. Just leave a comment below and join the conversation.
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Twones started life as a FriendFeed-type service that aggregated various music services into a single stream, which we dubbed a social music feed when we first caught wind of it.
Problem was, the startup says, since users generally couldn’t play the music on their site and were constantly being directed to third-party websites and apps for streaming, people never really got that FriendFeed experience that would compel them to come back.
The Dutch company figured they needed to do something else, and the result of their overhauled strategy will be going live in alpha mode this morning. The short version: it’s Delicious-type bookmarking meets StumbleUpon-type discovery for online music.
The service will be going live within the next few hours, but here’s what I gathered from the demo they gave me last night.
Essentially, Twones will now focus on what it refers to as the “Music Bar”, a browser add-on / bookmarklet that lets users bookmark music that is being streamed on other websites or MP3 blogs and discover music others have bookmarked in a fun way. The Music Bar will debut as a Firefox extension, but Chrome and Internet Explorer versions are near completion, I’m told.
When installed, you can use Twones to bookmark music on thousands of supported websites, manage your virtual collection in a sidebar that looks a lot like Delicious, and share music with others in Twones or on services like Twitter and Facebook. In addition, any music you stream can be scrobbled to Last.fm so you can keep track of it there.
Finally, there’s an ‘Explore’ button that basically lets people jump to any random track that is in Twones’ database – no need to install the Music Bar even for that. This can be a great way to discover new music, but arguably there is a need for some kind of controller that lets you explore tracks within a certain genre, at least.
The problem with Twones is that, since it revolves almost entirely around music that’s being shared online elsewhere, you’re never quite sure if the songs you’re so carefully bookmarking are going to be there tomorrow, because the source could be gone for whatever reason. The startup says it’s working on ways to downsize that issue.
Twones aims to make money from advertising, affiliate revenues, maybe a premium version down the line, and/or as an analytics service for online music sharing (kind of what Bit.ly does for general links today). They haven’t really figured out which path to take right now, but the startup says the $500k seed funding it raised earlier is enough to buy them time to do so, as they are very ‘cost efficient’ in the sense that there’s no need to store a gigantic amount of music on their servers, seal license deals or run a complex content distribution network.
All in all, I could see myself using Twones for sure, but it feels more like a feature than a solid business to me. We’ll see if the next iterations of the service will make me change my mind.
The New Twones: Delicious Meets StumbleUpon For Online Music http://bit.ly/9hnxNH
- Mike HochanadelThe New Twones: Delicious Meets StumbleUpon For Online Music
- Mike Hochanadel
This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.
Name: ZipList
Quick Pitch: ZipList is a free online shopping list and recipe service that makes it easy to share and add ingredients with one click.
Genius Idea: ZipList gives you the tools to create, store, and share a family grocery shopping list on the web. The list can be accessed by almost any device with a web browser, or you can share it in an e-mail or SMS text message. Of course, you can also print out an old-fashioned paper list if you prefer that.
The web-based shopping list interface lets you specify which store an item is available at — you can even specify the aisle. There’s also an option to add notes about coupons or anything else that’s pertinent to whichever household member goes to the store to pick the groceries up.
ZipList hosts a recipe database with hundreds of thousands of dishes thanks to an integration partnership with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia at MarthaStewart.com. You can pull a recipe out of the database, identify it as one you plan to make, and add the items to your virtual shopping list.
If you want to pull a recipe from somewhere else on the web, ZipList provides a Recipe Clipper bookmarklet that lets you do exactly that. Again, ingredients for the recipe will be added to your shopping list.
The ZipList website is free and ad-supported. ZipList also powers Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food: Fresh & Easy Recipes iPhone app [iTunes link], which costs $0.99.
BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”
Tags: bizspark, Martha Stewart, spark-of-genius, startups, ziplist
Have you ever found that a quick recommendation for a similar site to the one that you are looking at would be handy? If so then you might want to check out the Google Similar Pages extension for Chrome.
Google Similar Pages in Action
We chose three different types of websites for our test. The first was for “fileforum”, a software download site.
Note: If a website is still new to the Internet you may receive a “No similar pages found.” message.
Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” opened a “Popup Window” that displayed four similar and very useful recommendations for software download websites.
Our second example was “photobucket”, a photo and video hosting website…
Once again we received a nice set of recommendations.
And just for fun we tried it with the “Google Search Page”…
In this particular instance two of the four recommendations were from the same “originating source”…
Conclusion
If you need quick and easy recommendations for webpages that are similar to the one that you are viewing then you will definitely want to give this extension a try. You just might find that next great website to add to your bookmarks collection.
Links
Download the Google Similar Pages extension (Google Chrome Extensions)
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