2008 August | money news blog

29 08 2008

ShoZu - EZ all in one mobile social networking

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: World wide web, Social Software, web 2.0

ShoZu is a mobile download which allows you to connect and publish media to most of your favorite social networks in one convenient place. With official support for Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Twitter and a ton more, this might be the mobile lifestream manager you’ve been looking for.

After downloading and installing ShoZu on your phone (supported on over 300 handhelds), the easiest way to add applications is via your personal. I added Facebook, Twitter, and TwitPic apps quickly by inputting the required user names and passwords and then checked for updates on my handset. Success!

A nice feature is called one click pic destination. This is the setting you choose for where you will be sending your photos and videos the most. It will appear as a send-to prompt right after you take a photo or video. There’s also the convenience of sending to multiple sites at once via a feature called CC sites.

If you don’t want to be prompted about where to send your pic each time, you can also choose the Zero-click upload setting which will automatically upload every photo and video to your primary destination. You’ve the option of adding tags and descriptions to your uploaded pics and if you have a GPS-enabled phone, when you select GPS settings, ShoZu will geotag your photos for you.

If you’ve a Flickr account you can download your friends’ photostreams and upload to your own, as well as read and reply to comments in your posts. ShoZu also has a convenient feature where you can send multiple pics at once. To do this, press menu and select mark/unmark which will check the pics you wish to send. The bad news is this feature didn’t work for me and I ended up sending all my files on my phone individually.

There’s a RSS feed of all your uploaded media on your My ShoZu page which you can access when you log in to the service.

ShoZu is a free service however carrier charges might apply depending on your service plan.

(Yes, there’s a new iPhone app too).

26 08 2008

Muse Wedding 2.0 keeps you organized

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: Productivity, Social Software

Muse Wedding has recently changed nearly everything about its format, and it is for the superior. The formerly ho-hum wedding to-do list program is now a full-fledged information and community site full of good stuff. All of the new features will be live today for new users.

Muse Wedding is basically one of those huge, thick wedding planning binders on the internet. You can enter whatever you need to get done into your task list and check it off as it gets done. You can create a budget and add what you’ve spent. You can even see it in a pie chart!

You can visit the Idea Book to see what other users have posted or post your own ideas for others to see. You can create a profile so like-minded users can find you for brainstorming sessions or idea swapping.

I used Muse Wedding for some of my own wedding planning before the redesign and community features were available. What I liked the most is that I made my own task list and wasn’t tied to the traditional ideas of what needed to be done 6 months before the wedding, 5 months before the wedding and on and on.

Muse still offers that flexibility, now with a nice looking site design, and plenty of planning and community features. And even if the person planning the wedding isn’t quite as web savvy as you, our DLS readers, each page has clear explanations of what you can do with each command.

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22 08 2008

M2: Ma.gnolia to go Open Source

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: Developer, World wide web, Social Software

The social bookmarking service Ma.gnolia is announcing a new version at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle today, and the large news is that the whole thing is being rewritten from the ground up. M2, as it’s being called, will include all of the features of the current Ma.gnolia, but it’s going to be entirely Open Source. A first look at M2 should be available by September.

So, why Open Source, and what does it mean to Ma.gnolia users? Well, you’ll be able to download Ma.gnolia and run your own version of it, and that version will be able to interoperate with Ma.gnolia.com and other web services. Standards like OpenID and OAuth will be supported, allowing for maximum portability of your data — which, in the case of Ma.gnolia, mostly means your bookmarks and tags — between sites. If you’re already thinking of creative uses for an Open Source Ma.gnolia, good! They’re looking to make user feedback a huge part of building M2, so keep an eye on their blog if you’ve got input.

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22 08 2008

Fuelly - finally a gas mileage social network

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: News, Social Software, web 2.0

Look out Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Pownce, there’s a new social network on the interwebs soon to take over all chatter channels - it’s Fuelly, the social network devoted to tracking, sharing and comparing gas mileage.

If you engage in small speak at the water cooler about the rising cost of gas prices, and enjoy comparing odometer readings with your friends, Fuelly could be your next favorite social network.

Built over a 2 week period in July, Fuelly was designed so users can track their mileage between fill-ups and compare notes with one another. For added convenience, Fuelly has a mobile version.

Recent activity from the site shows various users either adding a automobile to their garage, filling up their automobile, reporting on their ideal tank ever, or newly joining. You can befriend people based on their car type, gas mileage and odometer checks. Man, this is fun!

Hot tips such as use cruise control often and keep your tires properly inflated are among the many not so obvious suggestions to keep you more gas efficient.

As of this writing, 5,389 Fuelly users have tracked 17,203 fuel-ups in 6,006 vehicles over 4,375,464 miles of driving.

[via popurls]

21 08 2008

Flickr finally launches embeddable slideshow widget

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software, web 2.0

Image sharing site Flickr has granted users to view attractive slideshows of search results or image sets for a while now. But for some reason, up until now you had to rely on a third party service if you wanted to embed that slideshow on your own web page. Or you could create an iFrame and figure out how to create the code yourself. But who wants to go through the trouble?

This week, Flickr finally added the ability to share a slideshow with other users. Just click the Share link when viewing any slideshow on Flickr. You get two options: a URL that links to the slideshow you’re viewing or HTML code that’ll let you embed a smaller version on your web page.

The slideshow embedded at the top of this post shows search results for the word “compiz.”

[via ReadWriteWeb]

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21 08 2008

Zoho Share takes on Scribd, DocStoc document sharing services

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: Internet, Office, Social Software, Search

Zoho officially has more online office applications than most people could ever possibly need. But the latest addition makes a lot of sense. Zoho Share lets users upload documents (PDF, DOC, XLS, etc) and share them with other users either via the Zoho web site or by embedding docs on another page. In other words, Zoho Share doesn’t do much of anythin gthat Scribd and DocStoc don’t already do. But Zoho will also let you import documents from Zoho Sheet, Zoho Writer and other online office docs, which means you can easily create and share your files using the same service.

Zoho Share is available as a public preview, and is still pretty rough around the edges. For example, I was unable to upload any documents, and thanks to the lack of a FAQ, it took me a while to figure out how to import docuements from other Zoho services. Eventually I figured out that by marking a Zoho Writer/Sheet or other document as public, it would show up in a Zoho Share search.

If you’re looking for PowerPoint style presentations with pictures of adorable kitens, or sample resumes, you can find them at Zoho Share. But like any YouTube-for-documents style service, Zoho Share will only really be useful if the company can build a strong enough user base to ensure that you’ll always find what you’re looking for — or if Zoho decides not to accentuate the search and find functionality of the site as much as the fact that you can use Zoho Share to embed documents you upload yourself on your own web site. You know, if the company ever fixes the upload feature.

[via CNET]

18 08 2008

Opera Stumbler brings StumbleUpon to the Opera web browser

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Browsers

Thinking about switching from Firefox or World wide web Explorer to the Opera web browser, but can’t envision life without the StumbleUpon toolbar? StumbleUpon has yet to release an official toolbar or plugin for Opera. And while there’s certainly a way to rank web pages and discover new pages without a toolbar, it’s rather inelegant.

Opera Stumbler is a third celebration plugin that gives you all the same features you’d expect from the toolbar, sans the toolbar. There are lots of different ways to use Opera Stumbler. You can install the menu button, which adds a StumbleUpon menu to Opera.

If you’d rather have toolbar buttons, you can install a series of buttons for common tasks like giving a page a thumbs up or thumbs down. These buttons can be dragged and dropped onto any Opera toolbar. You can also add a Stumble option to your Opera Speed Dial bookmarks.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

15 08 2008

You’re never too old to have a Facebook page

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: Fun, World wide web, News, Social Software

If you think you’re too old to do something like go back to college, learn how to scuba dive, or be social on the interwebs, you can either think again or stay beholden to your self imposed rigid beliefs. One person who throws such nonsense to the wind, is Ivy Bean, a 102 year old former mill worker, who has the distinction of being the oldest person on Facebook.

With 1,217 friends on Facebook (and climbing), Ivy’s story has definitely resonated with people. She started with just 9 friends when her story was first published this day. It just shows, even if you’re late to the party, it’s getting there that matters.

To find out more about Ivy and be her friend, check out the Oldest person on Facebook - Ivy Bean group.

Do you want to be Ivy’s friend? Why or why not?

14 08 2008

Chandler wants to set you free from Outlook, takes 6 years to do it

Posted by: in Social Informant

Filed under: World wide web, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Open Source, Social Software

About six years ago Mitch Kapor, the guy behind Lotus 1-2-3, started a new open source project called Chandler. The goal was easy enough: Create an personal information management tool that would grant users to store, share, and collaborate. It would have things like a calendar, address book, and to do list.

In other words, Chandler is a lot like Microsoft Outlook. But there are a few major differences:

Chandler is open source
Chandler works with Windows, Mac, and Linux and has a web interface
You can sync your Chandler tasks with an on the web server and share them with others

Overall the interface of the desktop and web clients is pretty, but not necessarily intuitive. For example, there’s a nice massive text entry box at the top of the application that you would think would be for searching. But it’s primary use is for entering new tasks. Type something into that box and a new task is created. If you want to use the text area as a search box, you need to type “/f” before entering your query.
Is Chandler kind of useful? Sure. Is it an Outlook killer? Maybe. Was it worth a six year wait? Maybe not. But now that it’s here, Kapor says it’s up to the open source community to continue developing the project. And I’ve learned never to understimate the open source community. If there’s a will, there’s a way, and this application could be the future of collaborative task management. On the other hand, it’s not entirely clear if there’s a will at the moment.

What do you think? Is Chandler the wave of the future, or should Kapor have given up on it years ago?