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Filed under: Developer, Internet, Yahoo!

Yahoo Hack Day: WYSIWYG editors, StumbleUpon clones, etc

by Brad Linder (RSS feed) Sep 15th 2008

Will Duff WYSIWYG
Yahoo! hosted their third annual Hack Day this weekend, which basically consists of a ton of hacker/developers hanging out at Yahoo!'s Sunnyvale campus for 24 hours while consuming lots of pizza and trying to write interesting code. The results? A bunch of geeky mashups between one service and another. But there are a few projects that caught my eye.

Will Duff created a What You See is What You Get web page builder that you can open in a browser window. This is hardly the first web-based WYSIWYG editor, but it seriously makes it easy for anyone to build a simple web page in a matter of seconds. You can export the results as an HTML file which you can upload to your web server.

Jordan Sissel developed an app called SnackUpon that uses Yahoo! Pipes and delicious to create a StumbleUpon-type service that will show you a list of web pages you might be interested in based on your delicious bookmarks and tags.

Team Gokuso developed a new method of displaying CAPTCHAs by pulling imagery from Flickr. And the Game Changers team came up with an offbeta idea. Their iHeater web app basically pulls together 4 YouTube videos of fireplaces or space heaters on a single page. The goal? To burn CPU cycles which will overheat your computer and turn it into a space heater. Umm yeah.

Tags: captcha, flickr, hack-day, hackday, iheater, snackupon, wysiwyg, yahoo

Filed under: Design, Photo, Windows, Freeware

ArtWeaver: a Viable, Free Photoshop Alternative?

Windowsby Lee Mathews (RSS feed) Sep 14th 2008

Before the shouting begins, no, ArtWeaver is not a Photoshop "clone."

You won't find the same multitude of tools Photoshop offers, but ArtWeaver is a promising option for people wanting a slimmed-down alternative that offers the functions that beginning and intermediate users want.

Artweaver's interface is uncomplicated and should be comfortable for anyone who's used Photoshop before. The included help file is very detailed, and provides tons of information and useful tips to get you started.

So, what kind of tools does Artweaver offer?
  • Selection tools: Rectangular and eliptical selection, freehand and polygonal lasso, magic wand
  • Brushes: standard, airbrush, cloning, and a ton of "artist" brushes (like charcoal, chalk, felt pen, pencil, impasto)
  • Shapes tool: rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and custom shapes
  • Eraser, paint bucket, stamp, crop, and move tools
  • A nice set of color palettes (Windows, Mac, Web, etc.)
  • Filters
  • Grid and perspective grid overlays
Tablet input is supported, and Artweaver provides an easy calibration tool. Pressure settings can be tied to effects like opacity, grain, jitter, angle, and flow on your brush tool's advanced palette. It's also much less resource-intensive than Photoshop and runs very well on my Intel Atom-powered netbook.

Couple Artweaver's core functionality with the fact that it can be extended by plugins, it certainly has the potential to be a very competent Photoshop alternative.

Tags: alternatives, photo-editing, photoshop

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Filed under: Utilities, Office, Productivity

Doodle.ch: elegant, no-fuss scheduling utility gets a Facebook app

by Jay Hathaway (RSS feed) Sep 14th 2008



Doodle.ch is a straightforward, highly-usable tool for scheduling events or making decisions with a group. It generates polls that the members of your group can use to fill in their availability for an event, or even simpler polls that let you make a list of options (What should we serve at dinner? Which movie should we see?) and see which ones work for your group members. We last wrote about Doodle two years ago, and it's gotten a lot better since then, so I thought it was time for an update

You can now export your Doodle appointments to other calendars (Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.). Some power user options have been added, like hidden polls and an ifneedbe option. The latest new feature is a Facebook application, which brings the power of Doodle into a space where a bunch of people you know probably already hang out. Now you don't even have to get people to wander over to a Doodle URL to fill out your poll. How much easier can it get?

Tags: appointments, calendar, doodle, doodle.ch, events, reminders, scheduling

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Filed under: Fun, Productivity, Social Software

Sleep.fm: building a better alarm clock?

by Jay Hathaway (RSS feed) Sep 14th 2008

Sleep.fm is a personalized alarm service for your computer, phone, or Internet-enabled alarm clock that lets you and your friends leave each other personalized wake-up messages. While I agree that waking up to the radio, the standard alarm clock beep, or some obnoxious fake birds is less than ideal, I'm not sure I'm 100% sold on the utility of Sleep.fm.

I started to get the picture a little more clearly after checking out a video on the Sleep.fm FAQ page. In this little demo, a woman who had missed her Japanese studies the day before wakes up to a teasing message from a friend, in Japanese. I think that says a lot about what Sleep.fm is trying to do: turn the wake-up alarm into another useful way to communicate. I wouldn't object to waking up to a message that all of my meetings for the day were cancelled, for example, or finding out about a change of lunch plans with a friend.

Isn't that what we have voicemail, email, text messages and Twitter for, though? I agree with the Sleep.fm theory that waking up is personal, but for me that means just wanting to be left alone. If you're the kind of person who likes to jump right into the day with new information, someone who checks email and rss feeds before even getting out of bed, this might be a good new tool in your arsenal. The site is taking signups now for its upcoming relaunch.

Tags: alarm, alarm-clock, alarmclock, messages, sleep, sleep.fm, wakeup

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

SiteMeter gets a facelift - and a few other nips and tucks too

by Brad Linder (RSS feed) Sep 14th 2008

SiteMeter
Web analytics company SiteMeter has rolled out a major update to its free and premium web stats tracking service. The new version of SiteMeter is full of new charts and graphs that let you see how a web site is performing at a glance. The update is also supposed to do a better job of accurately tracking unique visits and page views.

One of the biggest changes for web publishers is that you no longer need a separate login for each web page you maintain. You can bring all of your accounts together under a single username and password. You can also decide whether to offer visitors full, partial, or no access to your statistics.

Some reports appear to have been retired, like the traffic prediction report. But others have been added or expanded. For example, you can now see how your site stacks up against other web sites in a given category using SiteMeter. And while users used to be able to see visits and page views by day, week, month, or year, you can now select a custom time period to view.

Overall, the new SiteMeter looks a lot prettier and offers you many new ways to analyze web site traffic. Will that be enough to convince people to choose SiteMeter over other free services like Google Analytics? It doesn't really matter. There's nothing preventing you from using both services simultaneously. Many web publishers do.

Update: In response to the overwhelmingly negative reception this redesign has received, Sitemeter is rolling back its service to the old version. No word on how much time and money they've spent on the "upgrade." While the new service certainly offers more features than the old version, reports take longer to load, they're not as simple to read as the old versions, and most importantly, a large number of Sitemeter users had complaints.

Tags: google-analytics, sitemeter, statistics, web-analytics

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Googleholic for September 12, 2008

Androidby Christina Warren (RSS feed) Sep 12th 2008 {1 comments}

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google! In this mega-huge-fantastic edition: YouTube and Pulitzer Center launch journalism contest More iGoogle bling Gmail Labs introduces new Reply options Open source sample Android applications New features for Google Docs Google Mobile App for BlackBerry Mobile Search adds My Location ...

Build easy web pages with Sauropol

by Brad Linder (RSS feed) Sep 12th 2008 {6 comments}

Online web page builders are a dime a dozen these days. In fact, they're even cheaper because many will let you build and host a web site for free. But Sauropol is worth mentioning for a couple of reasons. First, this web site builder and host is incredibly easy to use. You can make a static web page or start a blog in a matter of seconds. And you can add image galleries and forums with the ...

Is HP building a custom Linux distro for home computers?

WindowsLinuxby Brad Linder (RSS feed) Sep 12th 2008 {12 comments}

Business Week reports that sources inside HP claim the company is readying a custom operating system based on Linux for home computer users. There are practically no details about the rumored OS at this point, aside from the fact that it's supposed to be "easier" to use than most Linux distributions. Why would HP, a company that has made billions of dollars by selling machines designed to run ...

VideoSurf: Search for web videos, sort by actors, genre, etc

by Brad Linder (RSS feed) Sep 12th 2008 {0 comments}

VideoSurf is a new search engine for web video. But unlike most video search engines, which let you find the video you're looking for and then leave you on your own, VideoSurf can point you to specific content inside a video. For example, say you're searching for Battlestar Galactica episodes. You just type the name of the show into VideoSurf and it will pull up a list of episodes and clips from ...

Stopforwarding.Us Asks Your Friends To Stop Spamming

by Lee Mathews (RSS feed) Sep 12th 2008 {12 comments}

Everyone has at least one friend who just can't resist forwarding every virus alert, joke, or lolcat they get their hands on. Apart from just replying with a nice, blunt "I don't want you sending me this crap anymore," how do you ask them to desist? Simply entering their name and email address on StopForwarding.Us and clicking send will fire off an anonymous message asking them to give it a ...

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