Web Apps

Free Screen-Sharing Web App Means No Hassle Tech Support For Mom

LogMeIn Express is a free screen-sharing web app that allows you to immediately share your computer screen with up to 100 viewers without any registration hassles or sign up costs. The app has has an extremely simple interface.  If you would like to share your screen, it prompts you to download and install a small app.  To view another shared screen, you simply type in a 12-digit code. LogMeIn, which went public in July, has had successes recently with iPhone apps for remotely accessing and ...
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New Free Tool Finds Available Domain Names That Sound Like Any Word

Having trouble brainstorming a URL name for your new Web 2.0 project? Wordoid.com is a new domain finding tool that automatically generates natural sounding domain names that contain a root word or syllable of your choice. You can ask for results that sound like English, Spanish, French or Italian TLD availability for each generated 'wordoid' is listed next to each result.  If the domain is available, the service provides a link to Godaddy.com to complete the registration. From...
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YouTube Adds Auto-Captioning Feature

YouTube announced a new automatic captioning (Auto-Caps) function today for English language videos on the service. The site will now be able to automatically generate subtitles using speech recognition technology.  It will also allow video owners and publishers to upload transcript texts for their videos.  The uploaded text will not require any timing data, as the Auto-Caps function will figure out when the words are spoken in the video and display the captions at the correct time. Cl...
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Evernote Raises $10 Million From Investors

Evernote, the one and a half year old online note-taking and organizing service has passed its proof of concept stage with flying colors and raised an additional $10 million from its first round of investors, including Morgenthaler Ventures, Troika Dialog and DOCOMO Capital. The innovative web app's key technology is recognition of text in photographs, which allows users to photograph business cards, wine labels, receipts and more with their smartphone cameras and organizes and stores thi...
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Feedburner Stats Now Available On Google Analytics

Although Google acquired FeedBurner several years ago, users still haven't seen much integration between the two companies.  This is now finally changing. Google Analytics now shows clicks coming from FeedBurner feeds in it's "Traffic Sources" section.  FeedBurner tracking must be turned on, however, by checking an option in the "Analyze tab." From the Google Announcement: Traffic from feed item clicks will be included under “All Traffic Sources” and “Campaigns.” On these pages, use t...
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Better Than Hulu? Clicker.com Launches Comprehensive Web TV and Movie Aggregator Service

Clicker.com officially launched its Web video programming guide today after a two month testing period.  The site provides a single location for listings of all free and legally available TV episodes available for viewing on the web, as well as lists for-pay streaming movies available from Netflix and Amazon's video on demand.   The company has compiled over 400,000 TV episodes from over 1,200 sources and is currently listing 30,000 movies from Netflix and Amazon's catalogs. The site also...
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Project Management Web App Free For First Year

Tom’s Planner is an extremely easy to use web-based project management app, (similar to Microsoft Project, although far simpler and easier to use) that allows users to create and track gantt charts for defining and scheduling activities and phases in complex projects.  The app is suitable for just about anybody else trying to organize and keep track of complex tasks. The site includes several templates for website designers, event planners, construction projects, vacation rentals and work...
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Google Rumored To Acquire Gizmo5

The Washington Post is reporting that Google is rumored to be acquiring VoIP company Gizmo5 in an important move that, if true, will result in serious improvements to both Google Voice and Google Talk. You may have heard of Gizmo5 in relation to Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis' recent IP lawsuit with their former company.  In that lawsuit, Skype settled with the founders regarding charges that royalties were not being properly being paid to Joltid, which owned crucial back...
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The Twitter Times: What We Thought Twitter Was Going To Be Before We Joined

Had The Twitter Times been around for the past few years, I would have been far more sympathetic to the Twitter phenomenon.  Regardles, it's an idea whose time has certainly come.  The Twitter Times provides a newspaper-style way of displaying news content contained in links tweeted by people you are following on Twitter, as well as selected items from those they follow as well. The Twitter Times - Video Tour from Maxim Grinev on Vimeo. Items are sorted based on how often a particular ...
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Google Voice May Go Global Pretty Soon!

image from Download Squad Businessweek analyzed documents submitted by Google to the FCC regarding its Google Voice service and found tantalizing hints that the company is planning to roll out the mobile-connected Internet calling service globally. In the document, Google says it has already signed contracts with a number of "international service providers for inputs to Google Voice." To date, none of these services have been launched yet.  Contracts already signed is a pretty good sign, thou...
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Google Dashboard Allows Users to See/Edit The Data Google Stores About You

Google announced a new tool today that will allow users with Google accounts to see all the various data the company keeps about them and to edit or erase some (not all) of that data. According to Google, you'll soon find a link to Google Dashboard in the "personal settings" of the "my account" page. The dashboard will contain: "some of the information associated with the Google services you use: your name, your email address, the number of contacts, the number of conversations in your Gmail ...
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Google Commerce Search Provides Google-quality Searching Speed and Features to Retail Web Stores

Google's latest offering is directed at e-commerce site owners. According to Google, the average visitor to a web store spends 8 seconds on the site before making the decision to stay or leave.  In order to improve the odds, Google is offering a software-as-a-service cloud-hosted search functionality for your retail site. With Commerce Search, your site's users will enjoy sub-second response times, will have built-in spell check and synonyms features to keep customers on the right track to f...
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YouTube Adding Improved Anti-Duplication and Geo-blocking Features For Partners

TechCrunch got the scoop this morning on some new features that YouTube is offering to it's corporate partners... [image via TechCrunch] The new features enable large corporate uploaders a far easier way to protect against duplicate videos being uploaded by other users.  With one button - "Enable Auto Block outside Ownership", users can auto prevent any other users from uploading a duplicate video. The second feature is 'Block by country'.  This is an improved geo-blocking feature, which allows ...
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New Amazon Associate Program: Share on Twitter

Amazon just added  a "Share on Twitter" button, specially for Amazon Associates.   By clicking on this button, visible when you are logged into Amazon with an Associate account, the site will automatically generate a tweet containing a pre-shortened link to that page.  This link is personalized to your account - and any purchase resulting from it will credit you with a commission on that sale. the Amazon Associates ribbon For Twitter users with large followings, this has the potential to be a re...
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Google Improves Friend Connect, Adds New Features

Facebook is the undisputed leader in the social networking world.  Google isn't giving up in this particular front in the battle for Internet dominance, though. Starting today, Google's social networking offering 'Friend Connect' is adding new features and functionality which will allow site managers to offer social networking functionality to their users as well as allow visitors to sites to connect with each other. For site owners, a key advantage will be the ability to get more informat...
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Digg Launches New Voting Feature: Digg Trends

Digg anounced a new feature today, which it hopes will increase the relevance of its front page by putting highly active current stories in front of their users for immediate voting. The feature is called Digg Trends. From the Digg Blog: How does it work? Digg Trends identifies and highlights upcoming stories that have a high volume of activity (think Diggs, comments, favorites, shares, etc.). When we detect a new trending story, it will appear on the homepage for ten minutes. Based on the Di...
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