SamRag Blog

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:26:00 -0500

At an event held by TechCafe at the 10 floor of one of the many office buildings in down town Seattle I was so lucky to watch a short introduction for Zebigo by Jonathan Wolff and few of his colleagues.

Zebigo is a ride sharing community website with the aim to make it easy to share rides. It is stunning to watch here in the Greater Seattle Area how many people are driving alone, and it becomes even more apparent due to the ride sharing lanes that are on most of the highways. You can be totally stuck in traffic and the lane for cars with 2 passengers or more is totally empty.

I have heard that many companies here encourage ridesharing, and it is hard to miss the Microsoft couches all over the Redmond area where I live. So Zebigo is starting their business in the right place. Here is the need and, to a point, a willingness to utilize ridesharing.

Overview

Zebigo is not running just yet though you can sign up and start to prepare for your ride sharing. You can create an account and if you have a vehicle you can add it as well. Once Zebigo launches it will notify you by email.

As I understand it you will simply put in your starting point and destination along with the time. Zebigo will then find people going the same way and pair you up. Once both parties have accepted the pairing, they can be connected via phone to work out the details. Zebigo will offer a clever way in which you can call a standard number, and it will connect you with your ride (or passenger).

Here is the presentation:

Why use it?

We should all be trying to find ways to minimize pollution, but there are many other reasons. You will reduce your travelling time at peak hours, reduce the cost of travelling and save in parking. It might even encourage people to utilize this when going out and possible minimize the chances of drunk driving.

The main thing with Zabigo from what I can see is the simplicity. It seems to be such straight forward way to put in your route, contact the person and to get paid or pay (via Zabigo). There are also community checkers, where as you can vote for your passenger or driver, slowly building up a reputation for that individual.

Why not use it?

Like with many other community websites it is difficult to use without mass of people already using it. I will use it in two ways once it opens. Firstly to enter in my trips and hope for some passengers, and secondly to try to find rides when I need to go into Seattle down town, as I find the parking very expensive. My worry is that I will be entering trips for months before I finally get paired up with a person.

Jonathan tells me that they are going to build up to critical mass by having large companies participate. I can see that work possibly within the Greater Seattle, but how will they reach critical mass countrywide or even worldwide?

Summary

It is a fantastic effort that will fail at the start unless thousands of users are there ready at the start line with Zebigo. However, if they pull that off, I will see a future where one will simply put in your destination 10-15 minutes before you leave and instantly see someone passing your location on the way to the same destination. Few simple steps later you are sitting in the car on your way. It might not replace Taxis, but one can always hope!

Questions:

Would you use a tool like Zebigo, and do you have any ideas for them to reach the critical mass of participants quickly?

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:26:00 -0500

After a longer break than initially planned I am back again to write about some of the things I come across on my travels on the Web.
The initial hiatus was due to me packing up my stuff and moving from Tokyo to Seattle. Here several months of getting papers, apartment, transportation and other not so interesting but necessary things have been keeping my life pretty busy and filled it with irregularity. Visitors from Iceland and Japan have also spent big parts of the summer here and kept me occupied along with some travelling I've done exploring Washington state.

Now I am back at the grinder, though I believe that my posts will be somewhat less frequent. For a while I wasn't even sure I should keep going, but after having attended some great startup introductions here in Seattle I simply can't resist. On top of that I have finally become part of the 3G mobile crowd with my iPhone, and a whole world opened up to me there.

Let me here what you would like to read about in the comments!

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:52:00 -0600

If you are anything like me you have signed up for several different networks that you end up never really visiting. In my case I use Facebook on daily basis, Twitter on and off, Plaxo regularly and Flickr weekly or so. Other networks I seem to sign up for and hardly ever do anything with them.

Many great tools have been popping up that are supposed to help us managing all the countless networks out there. Most of these tools, at least in my case, end up just like any other network; as something I try out for a day and then forget about.

Trying Ping.fm

Today I am trying Ping.fm for reasons that somewhat escape me, beside the usual "oh, it is just so much fun". Ping.fm allows you to post from a single place to most (if not all) your networks. It understands the difference between status updates, micro blogs and actual blog posts.

It is easy to pick and choose where you want your msg to end up by using the drop down box or @ feature. You can also create groups if you want to combine few of your networks together and send regularly pings to just those networks.

There is something inherently introverted or even selfish about sites like Ping.fm as they go by the assumption that you only want to share not receive.

Is it really that useful?

You might find this tool great to update your Facebook and Twitter at the same time, but you will always end up on both the sites to check:

Did your msg actually get through? (maybe after a time you will stop doing that)
What are other people saying and doing?
How are they re-acting to your msg, if at all?

Therefore all you have really done is added yet another tool to your toolbox, only for it to collect dust.

Mobile

The use I could see from Ping.fm is as a mobile application. If I was travelling or simply just running around somewhere and had something important to share, it would be cool to have the same window to type in for wherever I wanted to send it to.

It could even catch on, as you see something grab your iPhone, snap a photo and tell your friend "I need to Ping this". (He might answer "Oh, where are you pinging it", at which my answer would be "Twitter and Facebook".)

Not there yet

Ping.fm has some way to go before that though, as currently the photo upload is only available via third party and as far as I can see no mobile phone version is available.

Be afraid, be very afraid

Finally, this connectivity between websites can become scary at times. When I was testing this I posted a message through Ping and decided to send it only to my Tumblr page. However, surprisingly it went to FB, Twitter and Tumblr. Ping.fm didn't do anything wrong though, but I had allowed Tumblr to post to my FB and Twitter!

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:57:00 -0600

It is interesting to think about how the world has changed with advancement in computer technology, even just in the last 5 years and mostly in the way it has affected our communications.

History

For most of our history communication has been ‘in person', where people meet and communicate with each other. News would be sent out with runners and good storytellers were popular. 30,000 years ago we invented symbols and 7,000 years ago the letters, so surely some form of communication (stone tablets etc.) must have been exchanged or passed on. The first known official publication saw the light of day just over 2000 years ago, though we had to wait further 1500 years for any privately published newssheets.

The changes were not that massive though, as stories would travel slowly and even though words could be printed most people were still only communicating verbally. Letter writing become common place as we get closer to our time but the essence of communication had not changed that much. Instead of the runner bringing you news verbally, you would receive a letter by carrier or buy a newspaper. In both cases you were receiving news or information rather than giving them.

Difficult to have an affect

The notion of affecting your surrounding was not common at this time as you had to have the means and access in order to make a difference. You might have been able to write letters to politicians and possibly stand on a box in the pub and shout out for a revolution. This was not an easy prospect though and took a massive effort to reach the masses or the people in power.

With the invention of Radio and Television some doors were opened, at least in the later years. Finally there was a way to distribute news in real time and as this technology become more accessible, even the common man could have his voice heard.

The last 20 years have changed all of the above so rapidly that none of us can really keep up with it or fully understand how to use it. The internet with its blog pages and social networks, the emails and the mobile phones, have all made communication instant and for the common people.

Our voice can be heard

With the latest real time boom and social networks such as Twitter we have now unprecedented access to many of the world leaders and have greater opportunities to have our voice heard.

That is if we have anything to say.

It is amazing that I can reach out and say directly "Good speech" to Barack Obama or "I'm coming to Seattle" to Bill Gates. We can now find ways to communicate with the people that govern us directly as we leave comments on their blogs or send them emails.

More than just using this to speak directly to our heroes and politicians we can find our target audience so much easier these days. I am moving to Seattle in few weeks, and my interest among other things is photography and hiking. Via such sites like meetup.com I have now not only found a group interested in photography, but a group that combines the two hobbies, and it took me about 2 minutes to find the group.

Speak up!

We should be using the tools and have our voice heard more. Every time we feel that CEOs are not doing their job, Politicians are breaking their promises or when we like a musician we should tell them! And if we have a hobby or interest of sort we should surround ourselves with likeminded people. The best form of course is when we have a cause that we want to stand behind. Then we should be creating Facebook groups, blogs, mailing lists and find all the other people out there that are willing to get behind the same cause!

How are you using the tools to have your voice heard?

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:59:00 -0600

It is fascinating how we throughout our inventions get stuck in almost single minded way of doing things. We seem so sure that we have found the best solutions to things. For example keyboards, which hurt people all over the world, are all flat! There have been invention with rounded keyboards (possibly not very practical), which are much better for your hands, but it didn't catch on. Many examples are of us, the users, sticking to inferior ways of doing things. Why? Because we like what we know, and to change it takes something spectacular!

BumpTop, I am sorry to say, is nothing spectacular. However much we are in need for better tools to manage our computers, BumpTop is most likely not it! But it is oh so much fun that it warrants a post.

Overview

The software creates a "desk" on your desktop where you can play with your files, photos and sticky notes. You have almost total freedom, moving them around, stacking them, spreading them, making them larger or smaller, throwing them up on the wall and sending them out into the world via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Watch this video to get a better idea how it works:

As you can see this is wonderful to look at, and for touch screens (computer pads) this might even become popular one day. I also love the idea of changing my screen into a virtual desk.

Sadly, this will not make me want to use it on regular basis!

Free vs. Paid

The free version is very limited as it doesn't even allow creation beyond 2 sticky notes. Most of the nice file maneuvers are only available in the purchased version, along with having access to USB or drives.

Files are not on your Desktop

Most people do not use their desktop for files beside possibly few short cuts and recent downloads, and experts advice not to save files to your Desktop location, but rather in My Document. As I follow these guidelines I found myself with about 20 files on my virtual desk to play with!

Space

I could change my way of working to accommodate the fact that I am now working on my desktop, but it wouldn't help much as the virtual desk is simply too small. If I were to have a virtual desk on my desktop I would have it one of those with hundreds of drawers. It would be a nice looking mahogany desk where I could easily open up drawer (a folder) to work with my papers in there. I could lay them out and flip through them and so on and so forth. When finished I would simply put them back in the drawer.

The BumpTop is full after you have placed 20 files on there. Yes, surely you can pile them and do all sorts of things, but you can't really make them disappear, or in other words, you can't file them away!

CPU

With my few files BumpTop is taking up 90 CPU which is way way way too much for an application that in essence is supposed to be running 24/7 on your computer.

Conclusion

BumpTop is pretty application which you can have fun with. If you should be so lucky to own a TouchPad it migth even be useful (almost like turning your desktop into iPod). The bottom line though is that it is not very helpful for heavy users of computers.

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:27:00 -0600

If it wasn't for my love of films I might not have decided to write about this new little cute website called Short Reviews. Not because they don't deserve it, because they do as this is a fantastic site, but rather because we have so many other sites out there doing the same. Most notable for movie reviews would of course be IMDB which is one of my top 10 visit sites, while on Facebook we have rather unfortunately Flixter as the dominant site. Similarly for books, shows (tv.com) and music there are countless sites out there.

Short Reviews sneaks into this market with almost total ignorance of the dominance of other reviews sites or simply with not a care in the world. They do set themselves a part with what I would call Twittics (Twitter+Critics), a 250 character limitation on reviews. This forces you to get into one paragraph what you think!

What I like instantly about Short Reviews is their simplicity. It is quick and easy to find your movie, show, music or book (though I found similar problem with the books as on similar sites with several options/languages coming up for each book) and give them 1-5 stars. What I also like is that a review is a requirement (15 character min). This means that you can't simply dish out stars without at least putting time into writing one sentence.

Easily integrated with your Facebook, MySpace and Twitter account it will post your reviews (if you like) to these networks. A little gem there is that you can choose how many updates an hour you want to post. This means that you will not flood your social networks even if you decide to review 20 films in one go.

Short Reviews is hopefully here to stay and have some further features as time goes by. We will be watching :)

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:53:00 -0600

As I am writing this the Haiti earthquake news are all over the Internet and CNN is on in the background with somewhat more honest news reporting than expected. Catastrophic events such as those unfolding in Haiti show us the best and the worst of human kind as we hear of people lying and stealing in the mist of the shattered city of Port-au-Prince, while others travel thousands of miles to help out as the global community struggles to give a helping hand.

Our world is changing so fast, but too often in the areas it might not really matter. The Internet is a centralized placed where the difference between nations and culture gets blurred, while the real world takes longer to adapt. The latest display of how technology is far ahead of our thinking and behavior can be witnessed through the response to Haiti.

Through Twitter, Facebook and other social media people have rallied together to help in whichever way they feel they can. CNN is helping out in three somewhat new methods. Via the CNN iReport regular people on the ground can send in their photos and videos to give clearer picture of what is happening. On the CNN "Impact the World" information are given as to how people can directly help out. Finally CNN has now told people that they can post a photos and names of missing loved ones via the iReport. The level of involvoment by the general public has most likely never been so abundant!

Few hours or even minutes after the earthquake we began seeing tweets about special phone numbers for donations. Facebook page was quickly created and has now over 88K followers. There people can post photos and find links to further information. In fact the whole internet community was up and running straight from the start doing what they could.

That leaves the government and organizations all over the world struggling to keep up! At this point, about 38 hours after the disaster news reports still indicate that rescue is unorganized, with medical, heavy equipment and other supplies yet to arrive in any considerable numbers.

What we need is a Global Disaster Center (GDC)!

The world needs a new organization that operates independently from, but in cooperation with, the Red Cross, UN, Doctors without borders and other similar groups.
It should not be bound to any Government and have pre-signed authorizations from every country in the world to operate within their borders in case of disaster.
GDC should have minimum of 20 (and upwards) volunteer in each country simply on standby in case of local disaster. These volunteers should be the local asset, ensure communication channel and initial cooperation of all involved.
GDC should have about 3-4 warehouses on strategic locations around the world with machinery, medical and food supplies, located at an airport where cargo planes can be dispatched within 1-2 hours.
There should be ready made deals with rescue crews in most countries of the world that the GDC can contact and request without any bureaucracy or middle man. Included in this should be deals with airlines and other transportation companies.
GDC should have 10 point (or so) action plan for the most common disaster ready to roll out. (It was interesting to see CNN reporter pull up Google Maps with roads, important location such as airports and harbors, and in few moments had a decent action plan mapped out. With current technology such action plans are so much easier to set up).
The purpose of GDC would be the dispatch of first rescuers, initial operation and organization on site and finally (most likely within 2 weeks) pull out and hand over operation to local authorities or other organizations such as the Red Cross.

Imagine such organization where every individual in it, weather it is the local volunteers, rescuers, doctors or the staff of GDC would be connected through closed social network. With pre-build tools such Global Organization could within minutes dispatch rescue crews from all over the world. Centralized databases could monitor manpower, supplies, tools, medicine and serve as communicator to other organizations and news corporations.

We have all the technology today to create such an organization, now we just need the willpower and someone to start!

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:54:00 -0600

Tracks On A Map is as brilliant as it is simple! It combines Google Maps and music uploaded to SoundCloud.com to portray a visual image of music around the globe.

What I like about this is that you will quickly be able to listen to local music, pick your type such as Jazz, Classical or even Hip Hop. The map is populated with red dots and once you click one of them it will show you the songs and who uploaded them.

If you find something you enjoy you can quickly share it on Facebook or Twitter.

For any of you music creators (and lovers) the logical next step would be to visit SoundCloud.com where you can upload your own music, easily share it and also embed it on your blog or other websites.

I recommend that you check Tracks On A Map out and if you don't find music from your corner of the world, upload some at SoundCloud.

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:09:00 -0600

I predict that 2010-11 will see surge of tools on the Internet that combine several services into one simple to use interface. The fact is that we must all be getting tired of having countless services such as Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, Digg, MySpace (anyone still using that?), Gmail, LinkedIn etc. Even with our massive brains and capacity for multitasking, keeping all these services up to date is a daunting task, left only for the most devoted Internet surfers.

One tool that is trying to do this is Zbang and for the last few days I tried it out.

Overview

Zbang is a desktop application, a fact that I like. Even though the recent surge in web-based application is somewhat wonderful, it is nice to find some tools that still require you to have an application on your computer.

What Zbang does is to combine your emails and few of your social networks into one single dashboard interface. It also makes it possible for you to deal with documents from various sources, music and images.

The idea being that you can more simply both read and deal with all the incoming data along with your own data.

If you watch this promotional video you will get a better idea:

From the Zbang application you can very simply deal with most of your incoming msg, social network streams and even more easily than ever before distribute your own material. For example Zbang makes it very easy for me to find my photos that are on my computer, cloud computing, Flickr, Facebook, Picasa or even emails, and to distribute them further.

Why use it?

It is obvious that Zbang is where we are heading and even though I am not sure about using it for my social aspect, it has won me over in regards to photos, music and documents.

If you are tired of going through several different sources to check your Facebook, Twitter, couple of email accounts etc, Zbang is clearly for you. The easy of crossing over different services is the most appealing part of Zbang. For example if you see a post on Facebook that you want to mail to some friends directly you can do so at a click of a button.

Why not use it?

Zbang is somewhat in its infancy (it seems). The graphic is a bit off, and the processing of request is slower than it should be. There are several issues that need to be resolved, such as how come you can't share on Facebook or Twitter what comes into your stream.

The interface needs to be redesigned to some extent, mostly as it doesn't allow enough information at one point. On my laptop I can most see 4 updates from Facebook at a time which is way too little.

Another important add-on is to be able to exclude services. If you have included your Twitter account it will dominate the stream, so if you want to see anything else you will have to pick that exclusively. I would want to be able to exclude Twitter sometimes, seeing all other updates.

There is also the question of how beneficial Zbang at this stage due to the limited number of services they are offering. The winner in this battle will be the company offering the best interface, with lots of options and linkage to almost any service out there!

Summary

In general Zbang is on the right track and might just be able to keep on going. Several changes will be required though and I am sure the competition will be extreme in the next couple of years.

Questions

Do you feel that consolidation such as Zbang is the future?

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:41:00 -0600

Finding myself in China over the holidays has severely limited my blogging options. With all the restrictions to such sites as Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, along with Internet connection slower than a snail, makes it difficult indeed to blog. Therefore I have decided to take few days off while enjoying the hospitality of my in-laws.

I wish all of you have wonderful times over the holidays and that next year will bring you happiness and joy.

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:47:00 -0600

Interestingly there are few websites dedicated to help us learn new skills as the Internet is mostly populated by articles and wikis rather than tools that utilize the web to teach us. With all the studies out there on how we best adopt new knowledge, specialized websites could greatly increase our ability to learn from the comfort of our homes.

Today I found via KillerStartups.com a new tool, Lingt, that helps you to learn a new language.

Overview

What Lingt does is systematically showing you new words both in writing and with pronunciations, training you by asking you to click what the correct meaning of the word is and then writing the word down as well.

It doesn't really show you how to connect the words into meaningful sentences (at least not at the start), but greatly increases your vocabulary if you follow their training.

Currently in Beta stage they only have Mandarin Chinese but clearly intent to include further languages in the future. The training is built up by lists of words, which you can even add to if there are specific words you would like to learn. As you go through the training plan you earn achievements while piling up the levels you complete.

I did find one problem with writing the Chinese words as there are specialized characters that I currently don't know how to type, but I am sure I'll figure that out.

Why use it?

If you, like I, would like to learn Chinese this is a fantastic tool to start building up your vocabulary. The interface is easy to understand and the training plan will take you systematically through it.

Why not use it?

Well, clearly if you don't want to learn Chinese this tool is of no use to you at this point. However, you should bookmark it and check back at a later date to see if they have added further languages.

The Beta is free for all but at some point if this service will be pricy that might be a deterrent for using the service.

Summary

It would be great to see more websites that help you improve your intelligent in a systematic way. Lingt is a great example of such tool and I will surely be using it for the next few months.

Questions

Do you know of other sites that help you learn new things in a systematic way?

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:42:00 -0600

Now we all love seeing the most popular videos often as a link on Facebook or even as some hardcore users looking for them directly on YouTube or similar services. Compiling these videos in some meaningful way is not easy, especially if you take into account the appalling way both YouTube and Facebook display the history of your favorite ones. A new service called VodPod is a step in the right direction at least for the bloggers out there.

What VodPod does besides the usual collecting of your Videos it offers you brilliant widgets to place on your site (screenshot on the left). After you have signed up and possibly imported all your favorite YouTube or Vimeo videos you simply go and pick up one of their widgets codes and place it on your website.

This will display videos in almost any manner you like making it so much more a part of your site rather than for example just embedding them. They also offer easy tools to add to your browser, enabling you to grab most videos you find and place them on your VodPod profile. As you do so, as long as placed in the appropriate folder, it will appear on your website.

Great tool to add your toolset!

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:38:00 -0600

We have recently seen amazing increase in ways to share our opinions and commentary to the world. With Twitter and Facebook at the forefront we end up posting about most things we do and see, comment on what our friends are saying and distributing what we find on the Internet. There are however more ways to burden the world with our wisdom than the traditional ways of writing.

One of the new sites out there exploring this is Cinchcast.com.

Overview

Cinch offers you to record your voice via your computer or phone. Along with your recording you can include a photo and a twitter like message.

When checking this site out I could not (and can't) find where to record from the computer. This might simply be because I am missing something, or due to the Beta status of Cinch the button simply has gone bye bye for now! Once I figure this out I'll write an update here below...

UPDATE: This feature had simply not been included yet and it was just my misunderstanding this was possible due to the text in the help section. However, this as now been added, and a button next the the "Attach an Image" now says "Record a Cinch".

The idea is clever though and mostly so due to being able to call in the messages. Imagine yourself on a holiday somewhere and you call in a short message! This will be posted on Cinch and even shared on your designated websites. In an instant you have left a message for all your friends!

Why use it?

If you like the sound of your own voice this surely is a great tool. Not to mention if you are travelling a lot or a slow typist! My main reason would be how personal the message is. We read so many comments and status updates these days from friends and family, that sending them a voice recorded message can be more meaningful.

Why not use it?

One of the major drawbacks is of course that the only phone number is in New York and that you have to enter your own number before calling (understandably as they need to know which account to associate the message with). It would be nicer to be able to call from whatever phone (including Skype) and record your msg. No one in their right mind will for example call in messages from their mobile phones if not in the USA, which makes the holiday voice messaging somewhat redundant.

Summary

I must say that I do like this idea of leaving voice messages. The recent surge in personal video recordings has never really appealed to me, but this is smart. Even just recording some personal stuff that you keep private, allowing you to check it months and years later, is neat.

Hopefully Cinch will keep on developing this.

Questions

Do we need yet one more way to leave our mark on the internet, or is there enough already?

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:21:00 -0600

Now almost every website has been so kind to post the top YouTube videos of 2009 and clearly if only to take part I post them here as well. However, I will also include further 5 YouTube Videos that I have come across during this year.

1. Susan Boyle

The Susan Boyle video is one of the best known videos of all time and not since seeing the similar Paul Potts video 2 years before had YouTube brought tears to my eyes.

Sadly, embedding is disabled, so here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

2. David After Dentist

Not sure I would like my kids to be shown to 38 million people, not to mention if they are high! It was however very funny and they have now opened a website with t-shirts and stickers and proceeds go to charity, which means something good beside a laugh come of this.

3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance

This is truly a great example of how something made "at home" can become world famous. This fantastic and different entrance by the wedding party and the bride and groom has now been seen by 34 million people!

4. New Moon Movie Trailer

Somewhat sad entry to this list is the trailer to the New Moon teenage flick. 23 million have felt the need to view it already (yeh yeh, I am one of them).

5. Evian Roller Babies

To make an advertisement that is one of the top most viewed videos on YouTube is nothing if not astonishing accomplishment. This is such fun to watch.

SamRag favorite YouTube Videos of the year 2009

Beside Susan Boyle which is one of my favorite, here are further 5 videos that I found interesting during 2009.

HTFU - Permaband

Seeing my former colleagues at CCP in this Harden-The-F**k-up video (which is the in house slogan) was surely the best video of 2009!

Advertisement on flies!

This was so unique idea and seeing it in practice was unbelievable.

Four guys from Norway sing Hallelujah

Very nicely done! - Embedding not allowed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NEU6Xf7lM

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

Great to see my childhood friends sing to the music of my teenage idol.

Short film

And to end with, a really well done short film that will leave you wanting more

Questions

What were your favorite YouTube Videos of the Year other than the above?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:17:00 -0600

Haven't we all at one time or another planned a party or some sort of an event paid for by many? It often lands on one person to plan the whole thing, and in the end it becomes difficult to monitor who has paid for what.

This new website Credeble, is a possible solution in planning the expenses and ensuring full visibility.

Overview

Credeble makes it possible for you to create an account for free. Once in, you can create a group of people that are participating in paying for said event. You create the group and invite all the people that are going to be paying their share.

As easy as that you are in the main dashboard and you can start posting what you have already paid for. It allows you to put in the amount and the name of the expenses. You can post who paid for it and even change the distribution (for example if some of the expenses are to be paid for by only few of the people).

When people pay you for the expenses you can easily add that as well, and the website will calculate what every ones debt is to you or others that have purchased something for the said event.

Watch this video to get a better understanding

Why use it?

I would have loved to have a tool like this when I was planning my wedding. Several people (in several countries) helped out getting everything ready, but after the wedding it took a long time to figure out who had paid for what and who owed whom what.

For any event that you are planning, such as birthday surprises, bachelor party and weddings, this tool will really help in keeping track of it all.

Why not use it?

Well there are few issues that might detour you from using this Beta website at the moment. The main thing is that you have to invite everyone to participate via email. It is clear that you might not have all the emails and/or people might not really want to log onto a website to do this. You should be able to create names there without an email address, for example if your grandma that never uses computers is helping out!

The other thing is that currently there is only euro available. Now if everyone is working with the same currency, this might not be a problem - you just tell everyone that even though it says euro on the website that you are all working with USD, Yen or something. But for visual presentation, it would be nicer to be able to change to your own currency (not to mention if it could have people enter in different currencies - but that might be a bit much to ask).

Finally, with having such tool, it would be fantastic to have even more functionalities to play with. Further description on each entry, time-lined planning of the event, photos of purchases etc. I am sure that if successful, Credeble will add more fun stuff later.

Summary

For the next time you need to plan something where group of friends (or family) needs to participate in the expenses Credeble will surely be able to help you monitor what is owed to whom! It is a promising tool and will be great if it keeps on developing (and stays free).

Questions

Do you know of other similar tools?

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:11:00 -0600

We all think of ways to make our family and friends happy over the holidays (or I hope so) and one way is to compile a video with your photos with some nice music.

Of course there are hundreds of services out there offering some sort of photos to video creation, many with software downloads and some even online. In the past I have used the Windows Movie Maker, but it takes a lot of work and patience along with requiring most of your computer's processing power.

One alternative option is Animoto who have been in the spotlight for the last year. This service is about the simplest solution I have seen while at the same time it doesn't give you much freedom in the creation.

You upload your photos/videos (online), add music and within few minutes you have professional looking videos to share with your friends. The biggest difference between something created in traditional tools like Windows Movie Maker and Animoto is that the pictures are not shown simply as a fancy slideshow but have much greater animation to them. Animoto say that they are Movie trailer like!

The price is not that unreasonable, at 30 USD a year (I like that they aren't calling it 29.95). There are some limitations, the most noticeable one being the quality. Before writing this I created a video with high quality photos but in full screen the video looked fuzzy. You can pay 5 USD to have a video upgraded to DVD quality as they call it.

For anyone that wants to create a quick video that looks professional, with the sole purpose of sharing it with friends and family, this is a great tool. If you on the other hand create videos on regular basis and would like to have full control of what it looks like, you will have to find an alternative.

Questions

What sort of video creation software do you use?

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:16:00 -0600

It is almost sad how the digital age of photography has turned mass production of wonderful photos into side notes on web pages. Though wonderful that almost everyone can now photograph their experiences, the value of a good photograph has somewhat dwindled as we flickr or Facebook through hundreds of photos.

Growing up you wouldn't visit a household unless an album was dragged out and the family photos were displayed, often with neatly written footnotes and over a cup of coffee (or soda) you would slowly turn the pages under verbal commentary from the owner.

In today's world we are reduced to look at these collections on our own late in the night, and even though the exposure to photos is somewhat greater, the social act of looking at them has all but disappeared.

This is where a wonderful web page like Blurb comes to the rescue and will hopefully in the long run restore some of the shared experience of viewing photos with your friends and family.

Overview

Blurb gives you the tools to create photo-books. After signing up you download their program onto your computer and spend the next hours creating a professionally looking book.

The program is easy to use with endless options of templates, colours and other nice design features. In essence you upload your photos from your computer or from a photo services such as Flickr. It would be best to first have an idea what kind of a book you are making and preselect you pictures instead of just uploading tons of photos.

After you have picked your photos and the type of a book you want to create you are ready to start messing around. You work yourself through the book, adding photos and text, with the options of easily changing the layout as you go along.

One of the clever features is the way in which you can paste text into your book. If you write a long travel journey for your holiday photo book, you can simply paste the whole thing into the first text box and it will distribute over following text boxes until finished. In essence that allows you to simply write your text and then amend your photos and text boxes to fit the material.

What I personally like most about Blurb is that even though it is possible to have it generating a book almost automatically it actually more relies on you to do the work. It believes you to have the creativity to produce a beautiful book and simply gives you the tools to do so.

I haven't ordered a copy myself yet, but I have seen a copy that my friend purchased and the quality was simply astonishing. There are many services out there that offer you good price if you purchase several copies while Blurb has no such limitation. The price is pretty fair even if you are only buying one book for your coffee table.

Why use it?

If you are at all into photography the Blurb website will surely interest you. Being able to collect your photos into a beautiful book for the price they are offering is great. If you have ever needed a birthday or a Christmas gift, the solution is here.

Why not use it?

If you snap of photos on your iPhone and the most you do with them is posting them to Facebook with witty comment, Blurb might not be what you are after.

Summary

With advanced tools, great price, simple shipping cost and good quality, Blurb can only be something I recommend. In the future I hope I will have one Blurb Photobook on my living room table for each of my travels (well, eh... there would be about 15 for this year...).

Questions

Have you ever ordered photo books or other photo products online, and if so from where?

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:40:00 -0600

Haven't we all at one time or another goggled subject in an effort to research a giving topic? There are surely countless tools out there that will make the experience more useful and provide the ability to extract an accurate result.

One of these tools is WebNotes.

Overview

WebNotes provides you the ability to not only bookmark the pages you have found, but also to highlight parts of the page and even add comments. This can be extremely useful, especially if the subject matter is complex.

Once you have created your account the first task would be to download the taskbar to your browser. With it you can easily highlights part of the webpage and add comments with sticky notes. Should you only want to bookmark the page, you place it directly into a folder.

Besides the obvious benefits of being able to highlight the main text on the page (i.e. the text that is relevant to you) and to add comments, the organizational possibilities are of great value. In a side bar you can drag and drop your saved pages into folders you create.

Here is a video that demonstrates the basics:

WebNotes Screencast from Alex King on Vimeo.

Why use it?

WebNotes will increase the efficiency of your online research and at the same time save your results online, enabling you to access your results from anywhere. It will focus your search and increase the possibility of getting the most out of it.

Why not use it?

WebNotes has the simple features mentioned above free, but should you want to create reports of your finding and/or work with pdf files you will have to purchase subscription. At 10 dollars a month I find this a bit steep. Also if you are purely looking for bookmarking tool and have no need for comments and highlighting, tools such as Delicious will do just fine.

Summary

For specific research online WebNotes will be of great help to most. The biggest customers are surely students and people regularly using the Internet for fact findings on complex matters. For the rest of us, this is a great tool for the few times we need to explore the Internet on purpose!

Questions

What similar tools do you use?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:20:00 -0600

With the recent privacy changes on Facebook the question of our privacy on the internet is being asked on countless blogs and social networks. It is interesting how our personal world has gone from being few friends, family and coworkers to reaching out to thousands of people all over the globe. With websites like Facebook we are no longer bound to actually knowing our audience (in order to be heard), but rather to have something interesting to say.

This change has more or less sneaked up on us as now almost every website is offering countless ways to link your multiple online identities. No longer is the Internet a separated spots of different interests but a big melting pot where you have to be an expert in order to fully realize the reach of your online existence.

It is questionable if this change is any good for us as we go about shouting our most mundane comments to whoever is listening. Some might say that this might bring on world peace as we all become friends or friend of a friend, breaking cultural barriers and in the process realizing how much alike we all are. Others might say that we lose our individuality and that our privacy is lost. That no longer can we use the Internet as our personal library and TV channel, but instead expose ourselves in damaging ways no one can fully appreciate yet.

What is also interesting is this need we have today to get approval for our daily lives. The days of keeping your own private journal, for your eyes only, are gone. The days of having to go through vigorous process in order to publish something are also gone. We now post to the world that we made ourselves a cup of coffee and some even distribute the occurrence of their toilet trips.

Will we end up being lost in an Internet full of non-essential information? Will we end up living our lives so publicly that our smallest mistakes will hunt us for the rest of our lives?

What we need is one more website, a website that tracks all your online activity allowing you to fully appreciate what sort of a person you are portraying online. This would not be a website that simply links all your accounts together, but such site combined with powerful search engine and visually efficient interface. In one click you should be able to see all the comments you have left behind, all the articles you have written, all the status updates you have made and purchases from various websites. It should create from this an image of you, showing you what people might know about you and what sort of a person you seem to be, all based on your online activity.

There is also a need to start looking at ways to make parts of the Internet totally private. One might imagine almost two internets. One is the public, social networked one, the other one is the cloud computing, an area that is purely for yourself.

We might like the idea of people admiring and listening to us. Having the feeling that countless people out there are impressed with us, are keeping track of us and even wish to be us, might deliver us the sensation of accomplishment. This could backfire badly at some point, when the common Internet user will feel that he has no privacy online any more. We could see people stop using the Internet in masses and others start to terrorize people that are left.

Now is the time to start posting solution to this problem in the hope that governing bodies will find ways to tackle this in time. The Internet is a living, breathing thing, but like all living things it needs boundaries!

Photos from: Alan Cleaver, Markus Mayer & Rob P

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:05:00 -0600

There are countless ways to find new restaurants, hotels and clubs from various websites. Here is one more! Placebeat works with your Facebook account allowing you to click on places you have visited and announce that you like them. If the place isn‘t there you can simply add it.

The idea of course being that all your friends on Facebook will click on which places they like giving you a comprehensive list of possible locations to visit, whether it is a restaurant, tourist attraction, university or stores.

Pretty good idea and surprisingly not something Facebook has done as part of their service. Facebook currently advertises places and has some sort of algorithm to figure out what you might be interested in, while it doesn't utilize the friend factor. (Well, that is not totally correct! If a place has a Facebook page, and my friends become fans, I might become a fan as well.)

Placebeat is simple and has already thousands of locations. Just using it to get some good ideas about restaurants in your area could be useful enough. If all my friends were using it enabling me to see which places they visited and liked, it will also help me find new places. You can add photos, videos and even reviews should you be so inclined, and of course if the place isn't on Placebeat you can be the one to add it (as I did with Nonnabiti the best take-away in Iceland).

There are some questions though, the main one being why this is not just a Facebook application. (UPDATE: They do have facebook application after all: http://apps.facebook.com/placebeat/) I am sure many of my friends on Facebook would love to post which bars and restaurants they have been to and like, but I doubt they would like to go to a separate site to do it. Most of them review books and movies, so doing similar stuff for places they visit would be logical next step. Going to another site to do it is somewhat questionable though.

I am giving it a try, and hope that some of my friends will try it as well.