Filed under: Web services

Mugtug is one name (and website) for two distinct, and equally impressive, image editing/creation applications:

Darkroom is a sophisticated, in-page photo "adjustment" software. Note that I don't use the word "editing." That's because you can't really make selections (unless you want to crop or mirror). You can, however, adjust any image parameter (such as white balance, exposure, contrast, or saturation) and apply specific effects. There's a live histogram, and you can also look at just one channel of the histogram.

Sketchpad is a drawing application with a complete set of tools (except that I couldn't figure out how to draw a straight line!). It's also very fast, responsive, and solid. You get gradients, swatches, multiple options per tool, and a GIMP-like interface with a draggable panel that you can move around.

What's so striking about Mugtug is that it is usable. There are keyboard shortcuts, it's fast and responsive, it's not Flash, and it really doesn't feel like a toy. When I first messed up with the drawing application, I instinctively hit Ctrl-Z to undo; it worked! I then hit it again, and it rolled me another step back. Ctrl-Shift-Z brought me forward again, just like on the desktop. That feeling extends throughout both applications.

I don't know if Mugtug will catch on as an application suite (although I do hope so), but at any rate, I think this is a prime example of where the Web is headed.

So, maybe I should just say that "Google Alarm makes noises," because Google is always collecting your data.

Whether it's Google.com, YouTube, or any site with Google Analytics, chances are you've picked up some Google cookies during your browsing travels. If you want to know when that's happening, Google Alarm is the Firefox or Chrome add-on for you.

I shouldn't make it sound like it's going to be beeping at you and popping up alerts nonstop (there's a no-sound option, too), but I don't necessarily want to install an extension that tells me when my data is being sent and then doesn't give me a way to prevent it. There are already popular alternatives, like Ghostery, that offer similar alerts and the option to stop your data from being sent when you don't want it to.

If you're worried about what Google's servers know about you, I recommend you skip past Google Alarm, and give Ghostery a try. It works on Firefox, Chrome, and IE. There's also another Firefox add-on called BetterPrivacy, which focuses on removing never-expiring cookies like the ones Google uses. Check both of these out and see which one might be right for you.

The big story in Twitterland this week is the rumors of photo and video support coming to the Twitter website. Up until now, you've been able to use third party services to share photos and videos, and a lot of clients -- including the official Twitter mobile apps -- have been able to display them with one click. Well, now there's something called "Tweet Media" that's showing up in some users' settings, and it looks like a test of inline media for the Twitter web.

Mashable spotted and reported on this option before it disappeared -- apparently, the test is over for the moment -- and got a quote from Twitter that confirms the possibility of inline photos and vids. "We're constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps," said a Twitter rep.

What would that mean to Twitpic, YFrog, and other Twitter photo services? Well, they'd definitely still be useful for hosting your photos, unless Twitter starts offering storage space (unlikely, especially with video). The best case scenario is that Twitter will do what many third-party Twitter clients do, and autodetect links that lead to a photo or video on these services.

I have been wanting to add visitor chat to my company's website for a while now. I think that when you have a fairly small site (for a small company), chat is a great way to get to know your customers and make them feel at home.

An added bonus of using visitor chat is that it gives you a bit of real-time tracking data; you (the operator) can see approximately how many visitors are on your site at any given instant, what countries they're from, what pages they're looking at, and other such data.

So, when I stumbled across Olark, an easy to install JavaScript chat system, I quickly decided to add it to our site and test it. I have been using Olark for about a week now on Tibbo.com, and below is a summary of my own experience and impressions about the system (with screenshots!).

Getting rid of a Facebook account is notoriously difficult, but it may have just become doable with a new "delete account" button that Facebook is testing. Previously, users were able to deactivate their accounts -- although it wasn't too easy -- but Facebook would keep the data on file, so if the user came back to the Facebook flock, they could pick up where they left off.

"Delete" is more permanent than "deactivate" -- it removes all your info, and it doesn't take 14 days of inactivity to complete like the deactivate option. That's good, but like everything else about Facebook, there's a catch: Facebook's terms of service allow them to hold onto your information, even when you delete the account.

That means the big difference between deactivate and delete isn't whether Facebook keeps your data -- Facebook always keeps your data -- it's whether you can get it back if you start an account again.

Delete is currently only available to a small number of users. None of us at Download Squad have the option yet, so let us know if it appears on your account.

[via TheNextWeb]

Facebook is working on a new feature that would make "likes" more like Pages, allowing for info to be posted on the walls of anybody who "likes" a particular thing. Currently, this only works one way: if you post about something you like, your post goes on the wall of the Facebook page for that thing. Under the new version, any page with a like button will be able to do this in reverse, leaving messages on the walls of all its "likers."

AllFacebook.com puts a positive spin on this, saying "all webpages on the Internet immediately have become two-way communication channels." I have a different perspective, though: by clicking "like" in the future, you'll be opening yourself up to potentially massive quantities of wall spam. Right now, liking something is a fairly insignificant gesture: you'll probably click it once and forget about it. That's going to change, though, and I think people will start getting pickier about what they like.

What do you think, DLS readers? Is this two-way communication a positive development for users, another case of Facebook making itself attractive to advertisers ... or both?

Most of you have probably embedded a YouTube video at one time or another, even if it's just to share it on Facebook. Because copying and pasting is so easy, you might not have paid much attention to the embed code itself, though. Well, now's a good time to start looking, because YouTube is changing to a shorter, more compatible embed code, using the <iframe> tag.

What does that mean to the average YouTube user? Well, for one thing, the new code adapts to users' viewing environments, serving HTML5 or Flash videos depending on your browser and settings. It's also a big step toward showing embedded YouTube videos on mobile devices that don't have a dedicated YouTube player.

If you want to try out this enhanced embedding capability on your own site, you can just copy-paste this block of code, and fill in the video ID for the video you want to embed:

<iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" frameborder="0">
</iframe>

Touration is a simple to use web app for creating visual tours of your Web pages. If you go to their page and click Show me how it works you'll get a demo tour that would explain the concept in about 10 seconds, but the gist of it is that you get callouts that walk you through page elements, one by one.

They also offer a demo of the editor, which is really simple to use -- which is a large part of its appeal. Simply click a page element and create a rich-text callout for it; that's all there is to it. You can also add floating "dialog boxes" (i.e, explanations not directly related to any one page element), or "groups". Groups are basically callouts which highlight arbitrary sections of the page and not just one image or piece of text.

Note that this is a page tour, rather than a site tour. I think it can come in handy for sites with complex visual layouts or for web apps which pack loads of functionality onto a single page.

When I wanted to write a post about WhatIsMyIP, the first thought that came to mind was about the commenters. I read all of your comments (thanks for your kind and useful ones!), and there are always those readers who are looking for the bleeding-edge stuff, and are disappointed when I write about things "everybody knows".

Well guys, this one's not for you – sorry! For those of you who did not know WhatIsMyIP.com, it's a very handy service for figuring out exactly one thing very fast: What is my "real" IP address right now?

This is something you're going to need every now and then, when troubleshooting network applications, trying remote control applications (although it's not needed as often these days), configuring certain games, et cetera.

WhatIsMyIP's advantage does not lie with edgy Web2.0 looks, or snazzy JavaScript. It's a pretty drab-looking site, and the copy writing is bordering on awful ("Whats My IP Address?"). But it has one big thing going for it: the domain name. It's really, really easy to remember. And it shows you your IP address in huge font right on top, and does not have any pop-ups, pop-unders, or blink tags. Sometimes, that's all I need!

Squad (no connection to us) is an interesting collaborative text editor for coders. There are several things I like about it, and several things I don't. Let me count them off real quick:

I like:

• The general look and feel. Stylish!
• Real-time collaboration a-la Etherpad, but with proper syntax highlighting for JavaScript, HTML, and a bunch of other languages.
• The product has Pro versions, so hopefully it's making some money and will stick around for a while.
• The name, of course!

I don't like:

• The fact that there is no Word Wrap.
• That it's pretty slow with collaborative real-time editing.
• No Ruby syntax highlighting!
• No auto-completion.
• Banners for the Free version are huge, and very little screen space is left.
• Free version is extremely limited.

Bottom line: Squad has some great potential, and maybe the paid version is awesome. The free version doesn't quite make the cut, but with a few minor changes it could be a huge hit for collaborative development. [Oh, what happened to Google Wave... -Ed]

Google Image Search has just gotten a much-needed refresh that looks great, works better than ever, and keeps Google competitive with Bing's image search. At the risk of sounding like a Google advertisement, this update is awesome. As a regular image search user, I have to say that every change the Google Image Search team just made is an improvement.

First, the new results page: it's denser with images than ever before, and you can view 1,000 images in one scrolling page before you have to jump to another one. The thumbnails in the results are larger than before, too, which gives you much better idea of what's worth clicking on. There are also new keyboard shortcuts (page up/page down) to make browsing faster.

When you do click on an image, you're no longer presented with an annoying frame at the top of your browser window. That frame was the worst thing about Google Image Search, and I am quite glad they removed it. Instead, the image appears, full size, in a lightbox above a greyed-out version of the page where it appears. If you want to view the whole page, just click outside the image.

We've mentioned Twitter's special @earlybird account before, but this little project has finally left the nest. @earlybird offers deals to Twitter users and it launched with a Disney partnership -- offering discount tickets to The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Apparently, services like Groupon and Gilt will be getting in on the action soon. If you like deals, keep an eye on @earlybird.

In apps news, Loren Brichter, developer of Tweetie (and now Twitter for iPhone) seems to be close to releasing his next project, and he calls it "THE MOST AMAZING CLIENT YOU'VE NEVER SEEN" ... yeah, in all caps. Is this the next version of Twitter for iPhone? Is it Twitter for iPad? Or, even better, is it the newest version of Tweetie for Mac?

As a new Twitter client emerges, we're also saying goodbye to an old favorite: Beak, a great-looking Mac client, has been killed off by its developer, Mike Rundle. Mike just didn't have enough time to devote to Beak, and he couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel with the project. Plus, he's more of a Twitter web interface guy when it comes to his own usage of the service, so he wasn't even using his own app.

If we use heat as a metaphor for access to streaming movies, Canada really IS the frozen north. No access to Hulu and Netflix means a hard life for film-hungry Canadians.

Hulu will have to wait, but Netflix has announced it's launching in Canada this fall. If you're in Canada and you want to be notified when Netflix is available, you can sign up now at netflix.ca. Canada should be getting Netflix on all of the service's existing platforms, including the mobile apps.

Netflix has never expanded outside the U.S. before, so this might be good news for more than just Canada. There's no word yet on which (if any) other countries will be next, but I assume there's plenty of demand elsewhere in the world.

Netflix also hasn't announced prices in Canada, but the cost should be similar to the U.S. plan: $8.99/mo for streaming. Yep... less than five twoonies!

If you're not in a band, you probably haven't been to MySpace in a while. You know, MySpace? The social network without a major motion picture about it? Anyway, the MySpace profile pages that used to be laughably hideous have been dramatically cleaned up, with a pleasant new black and white theme that puts the eyesore pink backgrounds and flashing GIFs of the old MySpace right out of our minds. Navigation has been cleaned up, too, with a Facebook-like sidebar. You can check out the new profile design in action before it rolls out to all users by visiting the page of MySpace's Sean Percival.

Is this going to keep MySpace relevant in a market dominated by a company with a Hollywood movie, senators arguing over privacy settings and (perhaps most importantly) FarmVille? Probably not, but it's a good start. The trick isn't doing a good redesign, it's doing an entire rebranding of a place that's long been considered the domain of teens and lowlifes.

Perhaps the most promising part of the profile redesign is a new section for links to your other social networking profiles around the web. If MySpace can cement itself as a meaningful part of a larger web presence -- for someone other than bands, who still don't have a reason to switch over to Facebook -- it can survive to rebrand itself another day.

What's your take? Am I being too harsh? Is MySpace making an amazing comeback, or delaying an inevitable death?

[via TheNextWeb]

Let me start off by saying I am not a huge fan of the Windows file context menu. On my system it contains twenty eight separate entries, just on the main menu (not counting sub-menus). It's an abominable UI pattern, and I wish it would be replaced by a simple command-entry interface, like Microsoft did with the Start menu. I mean, how many people actually use the "menu" part of the Start menu in Windows 7? I bet the vast majority of users just use the Quick Search box.

Now that I have this out of my system, you can probably understand why the screenshot of Dropbox Shell Tools is not from my own system; the last thing I need it another context menu entry.

However, the tool itself does seem very useful. It's originally German, and the English version was created in response to interest from GadgetHubs. That means documentation is a bit on the thin side (read: "does not exist"). But the menu entries seem rather self-explanatory. You can click on any file on your system, and immediately transport it onto your Dropbox public folder, or onto a specific subfolder within your Dropbox. If you use Explorer (rather than Total Commander) that should save you a few clicks.

Know of a quicker way to put stuff in your Dropbox? Tell me in the comments!