Filed under: Business, Developer, Internet, Blogging, E-mail, Web services, web 2.0, Web, Lists
Tell DLS: What are your Top 10 Web Apps?
web-applications posts
Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Photo, Utilities, Web services, Freeware, Social Software, Search, web 2.0, Web
Find inspiration with Ideas
John Watson, the man behind the many fun photo-related web applications at BigHugeLabs was feeling a little down last week, and in response he produced yet another web app. But this one is a little different; while his other web apps often provide inspiration as a by-product of other actions, Watson's latest site, dubbed Ideas, is intended as a source of inspiration as a primary focus.
When you visit Ideas, you are presented with a large search box, beside which sits a button that simply states, "inspire me!" Type in a word, and the site will present you with a series of sets of information that is somehow related to the word entered. If you're feeling bereft of ideas for even a word to enter, a few examples are provided such as love, beauty, sorrow, yes, red, winter, home, africa, kiss.
Depending on the word you enter, Ideas may or may not be able to find examples of the following types:
- Famous quote
- Creative Commons licensed photos from Flickr
- Color swatches from COLOURlovers.com
- Songs from Last.fm
- Related words from BigHugeLabs.com
- Videos from YouTube.com
- Listings from Etsy.com
- Bookmarks from Delicious.com
- Article from Wikipedia.com
What a great way for creative people that are looking for a little boost in the inspiration department to start with a specific word and serendipitously follow a trail to something that may well inspire them.
Filed under: Internet, Windows, Web services, Freeware, Beta
Bubbles single-site web browser updated, adds extensions
by Brad Linder May 28th 2008
These extensions are scripts that let you change the way you interact with certain web content. You can find extensions at the Bubbles repository. When you click on an extension to run or install it, the extension will be added to your Bubbles menu. This provides a quick and easy way to create shortcuts to frequently used web applications like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Facebook. One user-generated script provides you with a window that keeps the Facebook Chat interface open even when you're not viewing the whole Facebook web site. Other extensions provide system tray notifications of social networking or email updates.
The beta is relatively new, and there aren't a ton of extensions to choose from. But Bubbles handles most web sites that you can access in Firefox or Internet Explorer fairly well. And while Bubbles will eat up a ton of RAM if you open 5 or 10 windows, it appears to use less RAM than Firefox when you're just visiting a single page.
Adobe releases AIR: Brings online apps to your desktop
During the beta period, we've been pretty impressed with the look and feel of AIR applications that we've tried out. Now that there's a new release of AIR, users may be prompted to download the update in order to install newer applications, while some applications you've previously installed may be bound to older versions of AIR. Fortunately you can have multiple versions of AIR installed on your computer simultaneously.
AIR is available for Mac and Windows computers. You can find an incomplete list of applications built on Adobe AIR at Adobe's web site
Filed under: Internet, Windows, Web services, Freeware, web 2.0
Bubbles turns web apps into desktop apps
by Brad Linder Feb 15th 2008
When you first run Bubbles, you'll see a list of web sites which you can open with the application. You can also add any page you want just by entering the URL. You can start a web app by clicking the "Go" button and you should see icons for each application pop up in your Windows system tray. Click on one to bring up the web app of your choice. Clicking the X bar doesn't close the window, but minimizes it to the system tray. In order to really close a window you'll need to right-click on its icon and select close.
Bubbles appears to use less memory than Firefox when accessing some web pages like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. But we noticed a window running Google Reader quickly grew to use 50MB. Overall Bubbles seems like a slick and easy to use alternative to Mozilla Prism. But there is room for improvement. For example, when you click on a link in a Bubble window, instead of opening a new Bubble, the program opens your default web browser, which sort of defeats the purpose if you want to do anything besides read web pages.
Bubbles has actually been around a lot longer than Prism, but it works pretty well with modern web applications and supports Greasemonkey. There's even a Gmail notifier that works even with the newer version of Gmail.
[Thanks Jim Mauro!]
Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Mozilla, Beta
Mozilla WebRuner becomes Prism, brings web apps to the desktop
by Brad Linder Oct 26th 2007
Oh experimental applications, they grow up so quickly. It seems like just last week we were telling you about Mozilla WebRunner, a stripped down version of Firefox with no tabs or URL bar. And now WebRunner's all grown up and has a new name: Prism.OK, all grown up might be an overstatement. But Mozilla has outlined their goals for the simple web browser: to let you access web applications without firing up Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, or whatever it is you're using to read this site.
Here's how it works. You download and install Prism. The first time you run it, a window will pop up asking you for a URL, name, and where you'd like to "install" the application. Installation basically means creating a shortcut on your desktop, Start Menu, or Quick Launch Bar. To "uninstall" a web app, just delete the shortcut.
While you could argue Prism is just a glorified way of making desktop shortcuts to web pages, something we've been able to do for years, it's a bit more than that. Because Prism doesn't feature all the bells, whistles, toolbars, and add-ons of Firefox, it's a very light weight browser. And if you just want to access Google Reader, Gmail, or Zoho, that might be enough.
Eventually, Mozilla may integrate Prism with Firefox. In other words, there would be a toolbar menu that says "make this a desktop app." Any time you visit a website that you want to open with Prism in the future, you could click a button to activate the Prism settings menu.
Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Productivity, Web services, Adobe, Beta, web 2.0
Adobe: 10 years, and all our apps will be online
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen says within 10 years, the company will be offering all of its applications online. His remarks come at a time when we see more and more companies offering online applications as an alternative to desktop products.Google Docs, Zoho, Picnik, SnapLayout, Zude, just a few of the many successful online applications that can be accessed anywhere without the large cost of boxed versions. There might be some features missing, but this new breed of application has much to offer the user with free, portable, cross platform, accessible with no upgrades needed as a few of the benefits.
Major software development companies like Adobe are starting to take note and recognize their shrinking market share. The likes of Picnik and PikiFX are emerging and growing the free online image editing space and have forced Adobe to quickly rethink their software strategy pushing them to develop a version of their popular Photoshop for online usage. Adobe still has no release date for Photoshop Express but realizes that the future of software lies with online versions and is working to deliver all of their applications via the web.
Chizen says he believes that these new online applications will only appeal to a younger generation of users that would never think of paying $400 for a packaged software product. Dear Adobe, we think this will appeal to all users, young or old, just as long as they, along with the rest of the world will have access to broadband in 10 years. After all, what good is an online application if it can't be accessed properly?
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
