products on SWiK

Green Products Seventh Generation All-Purpose Green Cleaning Products

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:51:20 -0700

Seventh Generation All Purpose Cleaner effectively cleans and degreases hard surfaces both inside and outside your home without producing harmful residues t…

NewsCred, a Credible News Dashboard Opens to the Public

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:48:08 -0700

NewsCred garnered quite a bit of attention in its initial private beta launch where ReadWriteWeb was considered by its users to be one of the most credible news sources to read. With less than 20% of readers really believing what their news sources are saying, NewsCred aims to be the solution to this particular problem. With plenty of sources to choose from, we're taking a look at what's new with NewsCred and why it may be the best news aggregator yet.

A Credible Dashboard

NewsCred aims to help users find the most credible content and news sources across the web. In doing so, the service aggregates content from some of the best newspapers such as the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist.com, CNN, The Washington Post and tons more. They also feature content from various prestigious blogs including ReadWriteWeb, CenterNetworks, BoomTown, Digital Daily, and more. You can select your choice of sources and have your NewsCred dashboard only display news from your selections.

To Credit or Not to Credit

All news is sorted by the source's credibility. To credit a source, simply head to the source's page by clicking on the name of the source, and you'll be presented with an option to credit or discredit the source. You'll also be able to get a graph of the source's credibility trend at the bottom of the page. Overall, it's relatively easy to credit or discredit a source with no limitations or regulations for doing so.

What's New

NewsCred has a ton of great new features. For one, there's a complete dashboard redesign with more content to consume. In fact, the homepage reminds me a lot of Feedly, an RSS dashboard. Other new features include:

Topics (automatically generated news pages)

Related Topics using Semantic technology (co-occurence)

Breaking News section

Limited Quality

While we like that for once, things can be based off of quality instead of popularity with NewsCred, we're having a tough time overlooking the fact that it's a free for all ratings fest. I can credit or discredit a source or article on a whim and not suffer any consequences for it. There could be some serious brand demoralizing done at NewsCred with its new public launch. While we'd recommend adding some restrictions for crediting and discrediting sources, we honestly like the service. It's a great dashboard for your news and we fully agree that the sources that are available to choose from could be considered credible.

3jam Launches Twitter SMS Service

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:48:08 -0700

When Twitter announced they were killing SMS for anyone located outside the U.S., Canada, or India for financial reasons, many Twitter SMS users were upset as they had come to rely on that aspect of the service to send and receive tweets. However, in only a matter of days, numerous services sprung up to fill the void, including sites like TweetSMS, TwitSMS, and ZygoTweet. Today, you can add one more to that list: 3jam.

3jam is an SMS startup whose main offering is a group text messaging service, SuperText, that is currently available to over 180 countries. Because they already have experience delivering texts on this scale, they believe they will be the most reliable Twitter SMS service when compared with their competitors. In addition, due to the large amount of messages 3jam sends using its SuperText service, they have been able to negotiate cheaper rates than any of their competitors.

Starting today, 3jam's new Twitter SMS service will be offered to all users outside the U.S., Canada, and India. However, at the time of launch, they only plan to support the delivery of direct messages. It seems they want to test the waters first - only if there is enough interest will they then look at expanding to include @replies or normal Twitter status updates.

The service will not be free, of course, as none of these new pay-per-tweet services are - you will need to pay for each text you get (replying is free) and you will only receive messages when you have a positive credit balance in your account. The prices will be the same amount per message as a SuperText message to your own country. Standard SMS receiving rates apply (typically free outside of the U.S.).

Is there enough worldwide demand for Twitter via SMS for these pay-for-Twitter services to make it? If you live outside the U.S., Canada, or India, do you have plans to use any of these new SMS services? Let us know in the comments.

Feed.Informer Relaunches Its All-in-one RSS Toolbox

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:48:07 -0700

There is an infinite variety of things you can do with RSS feeds and a substantial number of those things can be done with Feed.Informer, which was formerly known as Feed Digest and just relaunched today. This super useful service was acquired in a small, unreported deal earlier this year and today comes out of a dormant period when new account creation was limited.

What can you do with Feed.Informer? You can splice feeds together, filter them for keywords and most importantly - display them dynamically on a web page with just a little bit of code. There are other services that do all of these things, but Feed.Informer is so quick and easy to use that a free account is worth checking out and a premium account may be worth paying for.

We Love Feed.Informer

Feed.Informer is a service I've used regularly for years and happily pay for every chance I get. It is the fastest, easiest and most user-centric way to publish items in a feed dynamically on a page. We've used it here on RWW in a number of posts, the best to see how it works is Ten Sites to For Finding Wonderful Things.

Why Use This Tool Instead of Others?

Much of Feed.Informer's functionality can be performed better by Yahoo! Pipes but many people find Pipes intimidating and it gives users no control over the styling of RSS output on a page. It doesn't offer PHP code like Feed.Informer does, so there's no SEO benefit to using the Pipes "badge" for feed display.

SImplePie is a powerful way to parse and display RSS feeds and is probably what you want to use in a production environment, but it requires hosting on your own server and is beyond the technical capabilities of many new publishers.

Feed.Informer is simple, fast and powerful. Unfortunately, that's why a fair number of spam bloggers probably use it. Automated website content by feed? Only recently have reputable publishers discovered good use cases for such technology. Our favorite? Displaying the feed for a user's tag in Del.icio.us on a web page.

There's a lot of things you can do with this handy little tool. It often throws up errors in the admin section of the site and it's not as pretty as it could be - it's not perfect, but day in and day out if comes through for us in powerful ways. Check it out and let us know what you think of the new Feed.Informer.

10 reasons to download the new version of USB over Network 3.4.6 !

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:25:36 -0700

USB over Network new version released. Minor bugs fixed. Enhanced complete solution is ready for download. The following ten reasons will outline the evident solution of the product. We are thrilled to launch the new version of USB over Network 3.4.6 with the considerable upgrade in the program’s workflow in order to make [...]

Virtual Serial Port Kit goes 5.0.8!

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:25:31 -0700

Our team is ready to inform all customers of the long-awaited Virtual Serial Port Kit update! “Unable to load VSPK API module” error in command line utility is fixed. Thank you for patience and understanding! Enjoy the download! A quick reminder of what Virtual Serial Port Kit is: The program creates pairs of virtual serial ports in [...]

Create a Tour of Web Pages with Agglom

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:12:14 -0700

Sharing web pages in a conversation shouldn't be as tricky as it is. Sometimes you're on the phone, or speaking to a group of people and there isn't a handy way to bring people along with you from page to page and then let them have easy access to those pages after the conversation is through.

Enter Agglom, a simple little service built by Italian developer Enrico Foschi. It's a Firefox plug-in that will make sharing a list of links far easier than it's been before.

How It Works

Agglom is a remarkably easy way to create a "slide show" of live links that you can share with other people. See the screencast demo we recorded below.
For those who prefer to read, there's a text description after the video.

After downloading the plug-in, you can click on the Agglom button at any time. It captures all the URLs from each tab in your browser. After making some admin decisions, including public/private or password protection, you receive one link that you can share with anyone else. They can then follow through the slide show along with you, access it later, get any changes made to it by RSS, leave comments and suggest additional links.

It's simple but looks quite useful.

Presentation Is Powerful

Earlier this month we wrote about five lightweight apps that are useful for web consultants and trainers. If we had known about Agglom then (we just discovered it today via Marjolein Hoekstra's blog CleverClogs) it would have made a great fit there as well.

The web is changing so fast and there's so much information available that providing accessible ways clearly show people what you're talking about is the best way to help friends, family and co-workers wrap their minds around the powerful new tools now available.

Agglom is simple - that's good. It also looks quite useful. That's a sweetspot for applications these days. Can you imagine using it? We can.

First Android Phone Approved By FCC

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:15:55 -0700

Today, the news broke that the HTC Dream, the first handset to run Android (aka "the Google Phone") has been approved by the FCC. In the documents provided, it appears that we have now a release date for this highly anticipated phone: November 10th, 2008.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gadgets/First_Android_Phone_Just_Approved_By_FCC';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';So what will the HTC Dream offer? We take a look at some of the details and unknowns surrounding this device.

This morning Engadget Mobile broke the news of the HTC Dream's FCC approval, and confirms that it is indeed the long-awaited Android phone. T-Mobile, HTC, and Google should be announcing the Dream's launch in either September or October, depending on who you believe. Originally, the launch was thought to be in October, but today, VentureBeat is reporting that, in the FCC document, HTC requests the commission grant it a short-term confidentiality request on "attachments" until Nov. 10th, 2008. That date seems to confirm that the phone will be released on November 10th.

What's Inside

A recent post in the unofficial T-Mobile blog, TmoNews, confirms that the HTC Dream will offer the following features:

Touch screen
Full Qwerty keyboard
3G/ WiFi
Full HTML internet capabilities
Easy access to all Google applications (Gmail, Gtalk, search)
Maps
Street view
YouTube
Phone
IM/Text
Email
Camera 3.0mp; no flash
Video (playback only, no recording)
Music player & 1GB memory card pre-loaded
Applications, all available in Google marketplace (icon on the homescreen)

Engadget adds that the Dream will also offer Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR compliance and has a "jogball" as seen this video:

Unconfirmed at this time is GPS, but it seems likely that the handset will have this considering that T-Mobile can provide the service and the phone will offer Street View, which would require its use (although it could work through triangulation, we suppose). TmoNews also adds that the phone will offer two data plan options: Unlimited data and 400 messages or Unlimited data and unlimited messages. Prices for these plans will be in the $35 range, they say.

Image courtesy of TmoNews

Still no word on whether or not this video is legit, though:

The New Mint.com Launches: Site Redesigned, But Still No Data Upload

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:15:06 -0700

When Mint.com launched, they were taking a big risk - would people trust a web app to manage their finances online? Web 2.0 apps don't necessarily have a reputation as offering hardened security. However, Mint's efforts to prove they were safe and trustworthy won people over as did their easy-to-use personal finance tools. Today, Mint.com serves nearly 400,000 users, manages over $12 billion in transactions, and has saved $100 million+ for its users. However, one problem the site has struggled with was keeping its users informed as to all the new features of its product. Today, the Mint.com site gets an overhaul to specifically address this issue.

The New Mint.com

One of the best things about using web apps is that you don't need to download updates, install new versions, or go buy a new boxed product every year or so. However, in Mint's case, the speed with which they innovate - they claim to implement customer-driven improvements every six weeks - meant their new features were being overlooked by their users. People who signed up to manage their bank accounts were often not aware that the site could help them manage their other accounts, too, since those features weren't offered at the time of initial registration. Calling attention to these features was the main goal of the site's redesign.

Today, the site launches with a new look and feel which brings the focus back to the major new features added to Mint since their launch: enhanced budgeting tools, the addition of brokerage and investment accounts, mortgage accounts, student loans, and auto loans. In addition, they've added six new "how to" guides that can help you with your major financial decisions. These include things like saving for retirement, paying off your student loans, buying a car, creating a personal budget, and more. The guides are the start of a new educational series for the site.

What It Looks Like

Below we have both the old version of Mint.com and the new version. Do you think the redesign is an improvement?

Before:

After:

Before (Features):

After (Features):

The New Mint: All Flash, No Substance?

For the happy U.S. customers who are able to use Mint.com, the redesign is sure to be appreciated as it really does give the site a fresh, new look and makes finding out about new features easier than before. However, Mint is still ignoring the needs of those customers who don't bank with large, national banking institutions. One of the most requested features is for Mint to allow for data uploads - that is, the importation of downloaded files be them in .QIF, .QFX, .QBO, or even .CSV or .TXT format. For those who chose to bank with smaller community banks or credit unions - a choice often made because of the typically lower fees that those institutions provide - Mint.com is not an option. That's a shame because if anyone is interested in using a service to save money, it could very well be these folks.

By keeping their niche so narrow so as to not include a good portion of the U.S. banking population, Mint.com is allowing its competitors, sites like Wesabe.com and Geezeo a big advantage. Today, both of those sites have FAQs that state "if your bank isn't available, let us know and we'll add it!" They also both support data upload. Meanwhile, Mint's FAQ, hidden away on their forums, reads "...we are adding new banks as quickly as we can," and "Mint currently doesn't support features that would allow customers to import data from another source (Quicken, Excel, etc.). We're looking to see if we can provide support for these down the road."

We hope that since Mint.com has a fresh new look now, they will focus on offering their Webby-award winning services to more people now, too.

NHibernate 2.0.0.CR2 released

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:12:21 -0700

Second release candidate of Nhibernate is available for download. Read release notes here.

Why Apple doesn't do "Concept Products" " counternotions

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:06:05 -0700

Reason's why a company should do 'concept cars'

Top 5 Streaming Music Apps for the iPhone

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:13:54 -0700

The iPhone's memory might be too small to carry your complete music collection with you, but thanks to a growing number of streaming music apps, you don't have to rely on your local storage anymore to have an ample supply of new music to listen to.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Top_5_Streaming_Music_Apps_for_the_iPhone';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';And thanks to a new application from Simplify Media, you can now even access all that music from your desktop while on the road.

1) Simplify Media (iTunes link)

Simplify Media does something Apple should have built into the iTunes Remote already: it allows you to stream the music in your iTunes or Winamp library right to your phone or iPod touch, no matter whether you are on your home wifi network or the cell network. The interface is very similar to that of the regular iPod application, but adds some nice touches to it, including automatically downloaded lyrics and artist bios.

In order to use Simplify Media, you have to first install a small application on the machine that hosts your music and set up an account with Simplify Media. The application is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and installing it is extremely easy. As a bonus, you can also share your music library with up to 30 of your friends and family members.

We mostly tested the application over AT&T's 3G network, where songs started within seconds. Our tests on the EDGE network were also successful, but it just takes a bit more patience as you have to wait for the buffer to fill up just a bit longer.

Simplify Media is available for free for the first 100,000 users and will cost $3.99 after that. As of now, the app is still available for free on iTunes.

2) Pandora (iTunes link)

The music discovery service Pandora has been a long-time favorite here at RWW. Pandora, if you are not already familiar with it, lets you create your own radio station, based on songs or artists you like. As you listen to more songs, you can vote them up or down, which allows Pandora to calibrate itself to your music tastes. If you like a particular song, Pandora gives you the option to directly buy it from iTunes, or to bookmark the song so you can buy it later on.

Pandora's iPhone interface is similar to that of its web interface and, like most of the music apps listed here, is somewhat reminiscent of Apple's own iPod app.

One thing we noticed was that there is a trade-off between sound quality and network speed. If you are on a wifi network, you get a high bitrate and stereo sound, but if you are on a cell network (even 3G), the bitrate is adjusted to only 64kbps and the sounds is only available mono, which can sounds a bit tinny, but is still quite acceptable while you're driving in a car.

Overall, we love the Pandora application because it has allowed us to discover more new music than any radio station ever would.

3) Last.fm (iTunes link)

Last.fm is somewhat similar to Pandora, but it has more social aspects built into the app. You can, for example, play stations from your friends on Last.fm. The Last.fm application also displays any upcoming concerts by the band that is currently playing.

One limitation of the Last.fm iPhone application is that it can't look at your favorite music on your iPod and make recommendations based on this ('scrobbling'), which has always been one of the main selling-points of Last.fm on the desktop. This is probably due to the limitations of the iPhone SDK and won't feel like much of a limitation to new Last.fm users, but if you are used to this functionality, using the iPhone app will feel limited.

Once you are logged into the app, you can listen to songs you can listen to recommended songs you have already scrobbled on your desktop, listen to your friend's recommendation, or start a new station altogether. If you like a particular song, you can immediately buy it on iTunes.

Last.fm offers a higher audio quality than Pandora, but the price of this is that we experienced longer delays and more drop-outs when streaming over the 3G or EDGE network.

4) AOL Radio (iTunes link)

The AOL Radio application lets you listen to online radio stations, though the selection is mostly limited to CBS owned stations and AOL's own special interest stations (think 'All German Folk Music 24/7'). While it might seem backwards to want to listen to radio on the iPhone given that you have so many other options, a lot of the specialty AOL stations are actually quite good. There is also a nice selection of talk radio stations available, including one called 'Psychic Radio' (their motto is 'We Know You are Listening...").

The application organizes stations by location (and it can use the built in GPS of the iPhone to find your own local stations) or music genre. If you like a particular song, you can, as will all the other apps, buy it on iTunes, or bookmark it, though you can't really do anything with those bookmarks besides buying the song later on.

One restriction of AOL Radio is that some stations are only available while you are on a wifi network and there is no way of telling which stations have this restriction and which don't/

5) Tuner Internet Radio (iTunes link)

If you want more Internet radio stations and the ability to add your own streams, Tuner Internet Radio is for you, but you will also have to pay $5.99 for the privilege. While it is overall quite similar to AOL Radio, you get a lot more options and even a built in OpenGL based visualizer. One area where Tuner Internet Radio shines is in its selection of international stations. While AOL Radio mostly features CBS stations, Tuner Internet Radio also features BBC and PBS stations, among many others.

Tuner Internet Radio can play any AAC+, MP3, PLS, and M3U stream, but note that it does not support RealPlayer or Windows Media stream, which might be quite a limitation if your favorite Internet stations use these formats.

Whether buying this is worth the $5.99 is a personal decision, but if you don't mind the price, Tuner Internet Radio is, in our view, a better application than AOL Radio.

Cooliris Lets You Enable Your Web Site For 3D In Minutes

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:14:22 -0700

We've been fans of Cooliris, the browser plugin formerly known as PicLens, for quite some time. This plugin transforms a normal 2D web page into an immersive 3D experience for viewing photos and videos. It allows you to fly through all the media on a page, zoom in and out, watch the videos full screen or view the pictures in a slideshow format, and so much more. However, the one problem with Cooliris was the limited number of sites that supported it. As of now, that's about change.

According to a recent article in VentureBeat, the company has just introduced a tool that will allow anyone to add the Cooliris technology to their web site without needing to know any sort of programming at all.

Now, in addition to the "full featured" option on Cooliris's Developer page, there's a new "Quick and Simple" option that promises to work on most sites. All you have to do is enter in your URL, and, after some tests are performed, you're provided with an XML file and some embed code to add to your site. The entire process is said to take about ten minutes, but in our testing, it was even quicker than that.

Another new feature in Cooliris is a new sharing option which lets you drag and drop media from the Wall to share with friends. Right now, this feature supports email only, but in the future, sharing via Facebook may become available.

If you're looking for content to view with Cooliris, you can visit Getty Images, the world's largest source of stock photos, which recently became Cooliris-enabled. You can also just launch the plugin and use its "Discovery" option, which loads a list of channels for you to choose from, including one that currently offers photos and videos from the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Livestreaming From Qik and Flixwagon Comes to the iPhone

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:13:14 -0700

It's no secret that the iPhone lacks video recording capabilities, which has served as a huge roadblock for companies and services that would like to introduce services that take advantage of video capabilities. For users that love to livestream or lifestream from their iPhones this is also a huge drawback. Well worry no more iPhone heads because Qik and Flixwagon have both introduced their livestreaming apps to jailbroken iPhones!

We'd like to warn all of our readers that jailbreaking your iPhone is not illegal, however it does void your warranty with Apple.

Qik Announces iPhone 2.0 Support

Today on the Qik Blog, Qik announced support for jailbroken iPhones running the 2.0 iPhone OS firmware. According to their post, users can expect regular updates to come through the pipeline as the days wear on. While the settings for Qik are minimal and unsatisfying at the moment, the interface for the Qik app is awesome. Unlike the Qik app for the Motorola Q, you cannot set tittles and descriptions via the Qik app on the iPhone.

Qik developers recommend using 3G or WIFI when livestreaming from the Qik app. Unfortunately, EDGE is just too slow.

Flixwagon Launches on the iPhone

While Flixwagon's registration and setup is a lot easier than Qik's, I'm not a fan of the interface. Where Qik takes advantage of the iPhone's entire screen estate, Flixwagon ops for a square box. After doing a quick test of the app, video quality is pretty decent and certainly on par with video quality from my Motorola Q9c on Qik.You can also edit titles and descriptions directly from the app.

Start Livestreaming From Your iPhone

We'd like to warn all of our readers that jailbreaking your iPhone is not illegal, however it does void your warranty with Apple.

To get Qik and Flixwagon on your jailbroken iPhone you first need to jailbreak your iPhone. Their are two programs available for jailbreaking your iPhone:

Pwnage for Mac users

WinPwn for Windows users

Head to the respective websites for further directions on jailbreaking your iPhone. Once you've jailbroken your iPhone, head to the Cydia app on your Springboard. Here is where you can find a ton of programs including the Qik and Flixwagon apps. Hit the 'install' button in the top right hand corner, confirm, and you're all set! You should now see both apps on the Springboard of your iPhone. Enjoy!

The Next Social Networks Will Be Powered By WordPress and Movable Type

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:14:44 -0700

Platforms like WordPress and Movable Type democratized the process of self-publishing. With these tools, everyone could be a publisher and it didn't require advanced technical expertise to do so. Now, the next revolution for publishing is to bring that same ease of creation to the process of building social networks. With Six Apart's recent release of Movable Type 4.2, that revolution has begun. The new release provides DIY tools for building your own social networking platform which includes member profiles, forums, friending capabilities, rating of content, and more. WordPress isn't too far behind, either - a new platform called BuddyPress, is being built on the WordPress core. Is this the future of blogging? Or is this the future of web publishing altogether?

Movable Type 4.2

With the latest release of Movable Type 4.2, publishers can easily add forums, community blogs, and group blogs to their site. Site members can establish customizable profiles with avatars and can follow their friends. Given the correct permissions, community members can submit content for publishing on the site for the admin to approve. Those submissions will then display next to the comments on the submitter's user profile. Site members can also vote on content they like, too, a feature MT is calling "Digg in a box."

In addition to the changes in MT, Six Apart has also introduced a new plugin called "Action Streams." This plugin is very much inspired by FriendFeed, as it lets you aggregate and share your content from around the social web. In other words, Movable Type has just introduced their own self-hosted lifestream. (We had a feeling this was coming).

An Action Stream

BuddyPress

So where is WordPress's social network? It's still under development. Unlike MT, social networking with not be a feature of WordPress - instead, the WordPress MU core is being used to build out a next-gen publishing platform called BuddyPress . Essentially, BuddyPress is a set of WordPress MU specific plugins, each adding a new feature. When complete, BuddyPress will offer extended user profiles, private messaging, groups, friends, status updates, albums, as well as something called "the wire," which sounds a lot like Twitter.

Goodbye Blogging, Hello Social Web?

With both of the big players extending their traditional blogging platforms to offer social networking features, you have to wonder if traditional blogging is on its way out. For many years, web pundits have been saying that social networking would gain in popularity to such an extent that it would become a feature, not a destination in and of itself. These latest designs from MT and WordPress seem to prove that point.

In fact, even on today's blogs, publishers have already been adding social networking features to their sites through the use of blog plugins that offer things like FriendFeed integration, for example. (Case in point: RWW has integrated with FriendFeed). Also, by adding Disqus as a site's blog commenting system, bloggers were including a social network of sorts, as well. Like with MT 4.2, Disqus users can establish profiles, follow users, and track their comments across sites from one page.

More Profiles To Maintain

The only problem with MT and WordPress going the social networking route is that they are adding yet two more social networks where you will have to establish a profile, find and add friends, etc. Where's Facebook Friend Connect? Where's Google Friend Connect? Where's your portable social graph in all this?

These new publishing platforms will power the social web of the future, but without tools to make all these disparate social graphs meld together, the people who are actually participating will become even more frustrated than they are today. The need for data portability is even stronger than ever, but we need there to be a clear winner in the game before our lives can improve.

Six Apart company profile provided by TradeVibes

Wuala Launches P2P Cloud Storage Solution

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:13:12 -0700

Wuala puts a new twist on cloud storage. While typical cloud storage services move your data onto servers managed by the provider, Wuala also uses disk space on other members' computers. Files are encrypted on the user's own machine and the chopped up into little pieces and uploaded to Wuala's servers, as well as numerous other users' computers (Wuala calls this 'social grid storage') to provide a redundant storage solution. Wuala's local client is written in Java and runs on OSX, Windows, and Linux.

Share It

While Wuala will happily sell you additional storage space (from $25 a year for 10GB to $1000 for 1TB), you can also trade your own local disk space for cloud storage space. If you share 5GB of space on your local drive, you will get an additional 5GB of online storage. Given how cheap hard disks have become, this seems like a fair trade-off. Users who share their local hard disk space can also turn off advertising on Wuala.

Wuala's client basically looks like a local folder and you can decide if you want to share any of your files stored on Wuala with either your friends or a group of users.

Encryption: The Good and the Bad

Even with the strong encryption Wuala uses, though, the fact that some information is going to be stored on machines outside of even Wuala's control is not going to sit well with a lot of people. While most private users can probably live with these risks (which are inherent in any cloud storage solution), businesses will probably stay very far away from Wuala.

There is also the question of how people will use Wuala - after all, the service provides almost unlimited and strongly encrypted storage. As Wuala has little control over what is shared on the network, Wuala might turn out to be a haven for rather unsavory activities. But then, the same can probably be said for most other cloud storage services as well.

Where's the Money?

Wuala expects to monetize its service through advertising and in the German and Swiss market, where Wuala is based, they have also partnered with a photo printing service that will allow Wuala users to order prints of shared photos right from within Wuala. Besides this, Wuala is also selling storage space beyond the 1GB that every user who doesn't share disk space gets by default.

The cloud storage market is highly competitive, but so far, no clear front-runner has emerged. Wuala's competitors include Box.net, Dropbox, Mozy, as well as Apple's Mobile Me and Microsoft's various online storage services, including SkyDrive and Mesh. There are also various software solutions to make backing up to Amazon's S3 more consumer friendly. All of these have different business models and feature sets, but Wuala's simplicity and P2P sharing approach will make it very competitive.

Pageonce's New iPhone App: Now 100% Mobile and Self-Destructs When Stolen

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:13:31 -0700

When Pageonce unveiled their first version of their iOnce iPhone app, it became an instant success. Within 10 days it was ranked in the top three applications in the Productivity category, and overall it was ranked in the top 50 out of all the free iPhone applications. What made this app so appealing? Simple: it's a one-stop-shop for managing all of your online accounts - finance, utilities, travel, shopping, email, and social networks. Now, the latest version of the app, iOnce 2.0, has arrived and it's even better. The new app offers improved security features that users have been clamoring for as well as the ability to add accounts directly from the app itself.

Lost Your iPhone? Nuke Your Personal Data

With the new version of iOnce, the app has received a security enhancement called the "mobile destruct feature." With this, you can instantly delete all your account information off your iPhone or iPod Touch if your device is ever lost or stolen. Also, you are now able to register you device by serial number which allows that device - and that device alone - the ability to access your Pageonce account data.

Fully Mobile - No Web Browser Need

Another new feature in iOnce 2.0 is the new ability for you to register, add accounts, and fully manage those accounts directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch. This is a big improvement over the initial version of the app which required you to still visit the Pageonce homepage to do so. Now, you'll receive your notifications via the mobile app - things like new travel itineraries, mileage points earned, flight status updates, approaching cell minute limits, package delivery dates, new emails, and important balance changes - all without having to visit those services' websites. And if you ever need to add a new account, you can do so from the app itself.

To try iOnce for yourself, you can visit www.pageonce.com or download the free app from the Apple app store.

Zapproved: A Lightweight Decision Making App

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:13:55 -0700

Want to go to fewer meetings at work? By making group decision making faster, easier and more accountable, new app Zapproved may help you avoid hours of painful face to face drudgery or endless email loose ends and get back to work. Zapproved is a lightweight hosted decision making service, it's essentially like Evite for approval processes.

Freshly launched this week, the four person company has a little bit of usability work it could do on its product and the possibilities for additional user interfaces (Blackberry, IM, etc) are many - but the service already looks quite useful.

How it Works

Account holders create proposals, enter email addresses to send requests for approvals and manage open and closed proposals in an interface that looks like email itself. Recipients get HTML emails with simple buttons to click to say "approve," or "deny." It's quite simple.

The end result is faster, more accountable decision making. It's simple but it looks like it could be quite effective and it certainly addresses a major pain point.

The four person company is self funded and only offers free accounts right now. In time there are a number of options for enterprise subscriptions or premium features.

Future Possibilities

We'd love to be able to respond to requests for approval by IM. A mobile interface would certainly be good. There are no RSS feeds on the site right now, a fairly serious shortcoming that the company says will be resolved soon. We'd also like to see the admin page made a little cleaner and simpler.

Raven Zachery, open source industry analyst, told us he'd love to be able to forward ordinary email requests for approval to a Zapproved email account and have the sender receive an automatic invite to the Zapproved system.

The possibilities are nearly endless for this simple little system. Allowing people to interact with it in as many was as possible will lead to a higher degree of adoption. Company founder Monica Enand tells us an API is on the way as well, so interface and functionality options will be thrown open to the world's developers.

We can imagine analytics like "this member of your team tends to respond fastest" or "this person has been consistently holding up decisions." There's a whole lot that can be done when you take a data and relational database driven approach, as Zapproved calls itself, to a fundamental human problem.

How To Lifestream From Your iPhone

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:19:22 -0700

Recently, we took a look at the growing trend involving lifestreaming and how more people are choosing to go this route instead of establishing a more traditional blog. But outside of certain celebrity lifestreamers like Julia Allison, the streams belonging to "regular folks" may serve more as a personal collection of content for your own reference instead of a site that's meant to draw traffic or readers. There's nothing wrong with that, though, and you don't need any special software to "lifestream" in this way either...all you need is a platform and an app. And there are at least a few apps from the iTunes app store that can help you get going.

What's Lifestreaming?

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Before we look at apps and other solutions, let's try to nail down just what exactly is lifestreaming. The thing about lifestreaming that is perhaps confusing to some is that the term is this very general, all-encompassing word that can be applied to all sorts of things from a FriendFeed stream to a Tumblog to a full-on hosted stream at a site like Swurl.com.

There are people that argue that sites like FriendFeed are not, in fact, lifestreaming sites because "aggregation is not lifestreaming." There is some truth to that because those types of sites only collect a sliver of your activities, specifically those on the social web, and that's only a small portion of your "real" life. However, short of strapping a camera to your head, there's not that many ways (yet) to truly "lifestream" everything you do. However, by taking this concept to the mobile phone, you're apt to share more about your life than just what you can do when behind a computer screen. The convenience of having mobile tools for lifestreaming will only serve to push this movement forward, and what better place to start than the gadget-du-jour, the iPhone.

Apps For The iPhone

For iPhone users, one of the major benefits to owning the device is the application platform it provides. With apps, you can begin a "real" lifestream - that is, one that acknowledges that more life is spent away from the computer than at it. You would think that iPhone would be a great platform for lifestreaming apps, but there were surprisingly few to be found (so far). We hope to see this list improved in time, if not with apps, then at least with iPhone-ready mobile web sites.

LifeCast

The LifeCast app is one of the first iPhone apps that allows you to easily lifestream from anywhere in the world, no computer required. With LifeCast, you can post text and images to either a Tumblr or Blogger account. (Blogger users need to use Picasa, though). The app is simple enough to use and supports multiple lifecasts, so you can have one for work, one for personal use, etc. For Tumblr users, this app is a quick and easy way to keep your blog up to date when you're out and about, but the setup for Blogger seems a bit more complicated. No other platforms are supported at this time, but that may change in the future, so keep your eyes on this one.

Note: we noticed the reviews of this app in the App Store were mixed, so it's worth noting that LifeCast is on GetSatisfaction if you have any issues. Our tests to Tumblr worked just fine, though.

WordPress and TypePad Apps: Blogs Can Be Lifestreams, Too

Just because a platform was designed for traditional blogging, that doesn't mean you have to use it that way. With a decent theme and layout, even your TypePad or WordPress blog can be transformed from a long-format site filled with articles to a lifestream. The beauty of this solution is that you can keep the content flowing - photos and short updates while you're out and about - and still occasionally interject a longer post when you have something to say. Will this be a blog that attracts the attention of thousands of followers? Probably not (well, unless those uploaded photos are extremely compelling if you know what we mean), but it would certainly be a nice way to for an extended family to share their photos and activities with each other. Both TypePad and WordPress have iPhone apps available for download.

Previous Coverage: WordPress Comes To iPhone

The Social Media Lifestream, iPhonized

Although sites like FriendFeed get a lot of credit for being a "lifestream" portal, as noted above, they're really more of an aggregation of your activity across the social web. If you Twitter from your iPhone are you really lifestreaming? We'll leave that up for debate, but needless to say there are a number of sites that let you lifestream (and interact with the lifestreams of others) from your iPhone.

As you use the "real" internet on your iPhone, your activity on the social web can be piped into a service like FriendFeed, SocialThing, or Lifestream.fm. But to tweak it - you know, hide some entries add comments to others, post a link, etc. - you'll need an iPhone app or iPhone-enabled site. That's where sites like FriendFeed To Go (www.fftogo.com) can help. But since both SocialThing and Lifestream.fm are still in private beta, they aren't much use to the average user just now. However, if you're lucky enough to be in on the private beta, check out www.socialthing.com/iphone. Lifestream.fm doesn't seem to have iPhonized themselves yet. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any actual apps for these sites though.

Image Courtesy of the Lifestream Blog

What's Missing?

Of course, the biggest thing missing from the iPhone is video - how can a lifestream be complete without that? Without the ability to record and upload video from an iPhone to a service on the web, any lifestreaming solution for iPhone will just be a little bit incomplete. (For non-iPhone users, though, VentureBeat had a great summary of tools for broadcasting your life).

As far as what else is missing, it can be summed up in one word: apps. Even Swurl, whose lifestreaming platform we praised earlier this year, doesn't have an app or iPhone-enabled web site available. And then there are the smaller players like Profilactic and SuprGlu and the like, who could have potentially used the new iPhone platform to launch their sites into niche success stories. Unfortunately, it seems, lifestreaming is still too new to be worthy of much development yet, Sweetcron withstanding. That's a shame, because more and more blogs are incorporating or becoming lifestreams every day. But just who is going to give us the tools we need to keep them updated?

Apple Inc company profile provided by TradeVibes

[from obrun] Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:04:25 -0700

The Semantic Desktop? SDS Brings Semantics To Excel

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:17:31 -0700

When you hear the word "semantic" you likely think of the semantic web - the supposed next iteration of the World Wide Web that features structured data and specific protocols that aim to bring about an "intelligent" web. But the concept of semantics doesn't necessarily apply just to the web - it can apply to other things as well, like your desktop...or even your Excel spreadsheets, according to Ian Goldsmid, founder of Semantic Business Intelligence, whose new app, SDS, brings a semantic system to spreadsheets.

Semantic Spreadsheets

The problem with spreadsheets that their system is trying to address has to do with those who need to derive data from multiple spreadsheets (two or more). Although it's easy enough to perform sorts, build macros, and create formulas within one spreadsheet, when needing to compare values in multiple spreadsheets the process becomes more difficult.

The company's app, The Semantic Discovery System for Excel, or just SDS for short, will look for similar columns or rows between the sheets and then "semantically" connects them. They don't appear to just be throwing that term around either - the app uses the same W3C Semantic Web technologies (RDF, OWL, SPARQL) to help you capture "meaning, intelligence, and knowledge" from the data saved in your spreadsheets.

Do We Need Semantic Desktop Apps?

Does SDS solve a business problem that is not yet being addressed through current technologies? In my experience, the short answer to this question is "no." (But wait, there's more...)

Typically, when a business has need of comparing and analyzing large amounts of data, the solution is to turn to a database product that can then be queried and from which custom reports can be pulled. And a business doesn't need to spend a lot of money on a robust solution to do so - even a smaller business can create a database by using inexpensive desktop software.

However, the difference between using a database technology and "semantically connecting" some spreadsheets comes down to for whom this product is being built. In the past, databases and other business intelligence apps were built as if the creators knew that the only person using them would be an I.T. guy or gal. SDS, instead, aims to satisfy the needs of the non-technical end user.

Is this another example of tech populism at work? It certainly looks like it. Yet, in this case their market is small - a non-technical user who's also a power user with Excel? There's usually some overlap there. Not to mention, by the time you've achieved "power user" status, you've often also figured out how to do more complicated things in Excel...like, say, formulas that work across spreadsheets, for example - the very pain points this app is trying to address.

Still, it's an interesting concept to think of taking the semantic web capabilities and integrating them into everyday programs to add a layer of intelligence to these programs as well. Done correctly, it could improve the capabilities of our favorite software apps without making the programs overly complex, which is what typically happens when you add more features.

What do you think? Is the Semantic Desktop (that is, semantically-enabled desktop apps) right around the corner? Or is this product and those like it too niche to find an audience? Let us know what you think in the comments.

FirebirdConfig 0.1.2.17 released

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:11:48 -0700

FirebirdConfig is free and provides you with a friendly user interface in order to configurate the firebird operation modifying the firebird.conf file with the most intuitive and functional graphic form

Disqus Revamps its Look and Improves Integration

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:13:58 -0700

We've mentioned Disqus here on ReadWriteWeb numerous times. You can even preview Disqus' popular commenting system across numerous personal and major blogs. It's been taking off since it hit the scene with advocates such as Steven Hodson and Louis Gray. Now, they're taking their platform to the next level with a new look and improved integration.

Fresh Redesign

There are numerous updates to the Disqus site design. As of today, Disqus has went from this:

to this:

You'll notice that there is an entirely new layout and color scheme for everything. However, one thing fans of Disqus will appreciate is the emphasis that has been placed on the most important aspects of the service. For example, there's a lot more emphasis in the site design on management options for comments and threads. It's a lot easier to jump directly to the original comment's link and options that used to appear hidden are much more noticeable now.

A Shift in Perspectives

The site has also shifted to the user as the focal point instead of the sites that are being managed using Disqus. This could be due to the fact that users are starting to sign up to the Disqus service to claim their comments, but not integrate their commenting system into their blogs. In doing so, the profile page for Disqus users has an entirely new meaning and design. The profile page will now serve as a comment blog for users and the redesign only serves to confirm the shift.

Much More Under the Hood

Disqus as also released new APIs for developers to allow for deeper and better Disqus apps and integrations. New platform integrations include:

SEO friendly comments

Automatic data sync between Disqus and the local database

Seamless import/export of old and new comments

Comment moderation from the WordPress Admin

Disqus now hosts comments for over 30,000 websites. With a substantial amount of growth and backing from numerous major hitters including Robert Scoble and two writers from ReadWriteWeb, we expect to see more great things from Disqus in the future!

Widgenie Graph Maker is Fast, Free and Easy

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:13:58 -0700

Making charts and graphs might not seem like an exciting way to spend your time, but new service Widgenie manages to make this common task relatively enjoyable. The service allows you to upload spreadsheets and create nice looking visualization widgets that can be embedded on web pages.

You might not make graphs very often, but the next time you do - this service is worth a look. There are a lot of graph making tools online, but few are as easy to use and attractive as this one.

Data Sources

Currently, Widgenie users are limited to uploading Excel or CSV files. In the near future the company says it will support graph creation from 3rd party data sources, including dynamic ones like Google Spreadsheets. The company says this functionality is likely to become available in the final months of this year.

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Obviously my little sample spreadsheet isn't particularly well suited for a pie chart, but the chart is attractive enough, is it not?

Output

The service offers six different types of widgets: Tabular, Animated Line Chart, Animated Bar Chart, Animated Pie Chart, Animated Area Chart and a Text Cloud Widget. The widgets are very easy to configure and are embedded using Javascript. Further customization options would be good to have, the aesthetics of the graphs are relatively unchangeable.

We had some file uploading problems the first few times we tried the service, but it appears to be working now. The embed code for the primary widget is broken, we used the code for Blogger, but the company says that's a bug that will be fixed later this week. If everything about the service worked like it ought to then it wouldn't be a startup, would it?

Analytics

One of the most charming details here is the provision of viewership analytics. It's pretty simple, but Widgenie shows you how many viewers your widgets have had, from what sites and when. That's a pretty handy and fun feature for a free service.

Context

There is so much data flying around on the web that good tools for visualizing it are important. That's why we said at the start of the year that Data Visualization was going to be a key trend in 2008. We're not sure how well that prediction has played out, but it does help us appreciate the need for good services like Widgenie.

Mainstreaming Web 2.0: Shutterfly Share Sites

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:13:30 -0700

Shutterfly, the photo sharing and printing company today launched Share Sites, which will allow users to create photo albums centered around events like travel, birthdays, or weddings. Shutterfly member can also invite others to upload their own photos to a shared album. Share Sites is Shutterfly's first foray into providing a more open, Web 2.0 oriented service to its mainstream audience. While Shutterfly markets Share Sites simply as a different way to share photos, it is really a fully featured photoblogging platform.

Mainstream Photoblogging

We spend some time testing out the service this morning and came away impressed with the capabilities of Share Sites. Most of the sites functions are accessible even for novice users. Share Sites comes with a very wide range of templates for various special occasions, most of which are actually pretty well designed. Users also can decide to make a site public, only accessible to invited members, or to simply password protect them.

While Shutterfly announces the service to its users as a way to "create a custom website for sharing," Share Sites are really fully featured photo blogs, with comments, polls, RSS feeds, and even the ability to download an OPML file with feeds for your various photo galleries. For those who want to photoblog on the go, Shutterfly provides you with an email address to send your pictures to. You can also embed YouTube videos, though the embedded Google and Yahoo video search for finding those videos didn't yet work during out tests.

Competition

With Share Sites, Shutterfly is obviously competing with Flickr, Google's Picasaweb, and Photobucket, but its real competition includes Kodak and HP's Snapfish, as Shutterfly's business model revolves around making money from physical prints (most of Shutterfly's employees actually work in its printing plant). Indeed, most photo sharing sites rely on Snapfish or Shutterfly to fulfill their printing orders.

Out of the Silo

What is most important about Share Sites, though, is that it provides mainstream users an easily accessible entryway to the sharing and commenting culture of the modern web. In the near future, as the New York Times reports, users will also be able to embed their pictures on any blog or social network.

Though it allowed for sharing, Shuttefly's old system was mostly a closed off silo. However, adding these photoblogging features makes a lot of sense for Shutterfly. After all, the more people you share your photos with, the more people are likely to want prints of them.