Ever since Facebook opened itself up and released an API to programmers, there has been a mad rush to take advantage of Facebook platform. Tons of new apps are being added everyday. To those who don’t know - Facebook is a social networking website. Recently it opened itself up to 3rd party developers giving them access to its functionalities. Facebook applications are essentially widgets that can be added to enhance your social networking experience. So far several hundred Facebook applications have been created. Obviously I haven’t tried them all. However, among the ones I have tried my top five Facebook applications (in random order) are :

HotLists : Hotlist is based on the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words. Use icons to display what you like - be it companies or television shows or movies or music or celebrities. I prefer this to using simple text to list out your preferences.

Graffiti : Let your creative juice flow. Instead of just posting simple messages on the wall you can draw them using this application. This can be loads of fun and is a nice way to kill time.

Last.fm Music : Last.fm is a website that tracks what songs you listen to and suggests music based on your music taste. Not only does the last.fm widget display recently played tracks it also allows you to create custom (tag based) radio station. It also displays your top artists for the previous week.

You can also use the Last.fm Plus application. It doesn’t have last.fm radio but provides a lot more options as far as displaying statistics is concerned.
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How appropriate! This information about do-it-yourself website buildingis just the kind of thing one can find with a little practiced websurfing. And, if you want to find other goodies, such as a loan calculator, how to improve Internet speed or how to install a satellite TV , visit a top-flight do it yourself website!

We already have several web based Office suites. Hence, it’s only natural that someone would come up with web based web-design tool. Here are three web-based web-design tools.

Synthasite : The newest kid in the block is Synthasite. It sports an advanced tabbed interface that is very similar to desktop based solutions. It offers a rage of templates to get you started. Synthasite is widget based and you need to drag and drop widgets to create your website. Currently not many widgets are available but that is again due to it’s young age. Synthasite is in early technical preview stage and there are many quirks. It also made Firefox unresponsive on a couple of occasions. Also note that the content created during tech preview may be lost when newer versions are released. South Africa-based Synthasite has ambitious plans. Expect a lot of new features in the coming days.

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Couple of weeks ago I had reviewed a startup called Spool.fm. Today I came across an almost identical service called Jiwa Music. Jiwa Music enables users to play the song they want to listen to. Although both the services are appear to be similar there is a major difference. Spool.fm doesnt host any of the music files on it’s servers thus falling in the legally grey area. However, unlike Spool.fm Jiwa allows it’s users to upload songs which are then stored in it’s server. Not surprisingly, majority of the user uploaded content is illegal.

Users can search for their favourite tracks and save them in custom playlists. These playlists can be accessed from anywhere and shared with friends. You can even embed Jiwa Music player in your website. However Jiwa doesn’t allow you to synchronize your Now Playing list with friends. Also missing is the ability to integrate with audioscrobbler (last.fm). The sound quality is decent. Jiwah also seems to have a larger collection of songs. I couldn’t find any Indian songs though. Jiwa has some nice community based features. You can see what other Jiwa users are listening to and can interact with the community through the Shoutbox. The interface is rather simplistic. It isn’t as pretty as Spool.fm but works rather well. However, there are a few bugs here and there. The ability to search for videos is also thrown in. However only videos from youtube are indexed so it offers little advantage over a youtube video search.
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Technorati.com - the popular blogsearch engine, received a major update today. In brief the major changes are -

Technorati.com is no longer restricted to blogs. Technorati search has been expanded to include videos, photos, music and events.
The Home Page has been revamped to accommodate videos and music.

The search feature has been made simpler. Multiple search mode (keyword search, tag search and blog directory search) has been replaced by a single unified search option.
A new barebones Technorati Search page has been added. It is available at search.technorati.com or s.technorati.com.

You can read about the changes in greater detail at Dave Sifry’s (CEO of Technorati.com) blog.

YouTube has struck a content sharing deal with Eros Entertainment that will enable it to offer content from Bollywood movies. The Eros Entertainment - Bollywood Channel will feature music videos, trailers and promotional videos. As of now 163 videos are available for viewing.

Content from several Bollywood movie is already available illegally on YouTube (many movies are available in their entirety). However, I believe that this is the first instance of YouTube tying up with an Indian media company. With the penetration of broadband increasing in India, companies are finally realising the benefits of leveraging the web. Rajshri Media already provides significant amount of video content on their portal for free.
I am sure this is only the beginning. The web offers an easy and cost efficient venue for promoting content. As broadband connection gets cheaper and faster, I expect Indian companiesto start taking advantage of the internet in a big way.

( Via Mashable and KrishWords )

[If you want invites for Me.dium read on]

Me.dium (medium) is a Social Networking startup which wants to make web browsing social. It connects you with users based on their websurfing habbits. Me.dium is a small add-on available for Firefox which operates through a sidebar. This sidebar connects you with people visiting similar websites via a visualization system somewhat similar to Digg Swarm. You can also see what websites your friends are visiting. Me.dium also has a simple instant messaging system built into it which allows you to shoutout to other Me.dium users or chat with your friends.

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Sounds like this online music source may give iTunes a run for its money. Or not. Regardless, when it’s time to print out a song list from either source, don’t get stuck without enough printer ink in the machine. Double-check your supply now, and if you’re low, check out the cartridge solutions online. HP ink, Epson, Lexmark - they’re all available. Buying ink cartridges need not be a pain.

Spool.fm is a community oriented web-based music player whose goal is to make sharing music simple. I have been toying around with it since yesterday and I must say I am quite impressed. It has a fairly good collection of songs (this is subjective), including some hit Indian movie songs. The audio quality is average and there is definitely scope for improvement.

But, the low bitrate makes it possible to stream music while surfing even on my 256kbps connection. Spool.fm’s main objective is to allow friends with similar musical taste enjoy music collectively. You can drag and drop songs to create and save playlists which you can share with your friends. Not only that with the synchronization feature you can both listen to the same songs at the same time.

The most impressive aspect of Spool.fm is it’s integration of Audioscrobbler (which powers Last.fm also). While you are playing a song, it retrieves a list of related songs and albums based on data available at AudioScrobbler. If you have an last.fm account it can also fetch the list of top tracks, weekly top tracks and recent tracks played by you. It offers to play similar songs based on this data (Screenshot).
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Today Microsoft released new Windows Live Hotmail to some 280 million users. Microsoft hopes to pose a serious challenge to Google and Yahoo!’s offering with WLH. Like Yahoo! Microsoft has tried to bridge the gap between a desktop email client and their web email interface. WLH retains the basic three column system present in previous versions (you can change the arrangement of the reading panes). But, don’t be fooled by looks. Under the hood WLH sports several new features.

A quick look at the new features -

Now you get 2 GB of storage for free.

WLH provides you nine skins to choose from.

Like in Gmail you can send and receive email from other email accounts.

Available in 32 Languages. Surprisingly no Indian language is supported.

AJAX has been liberally used. You don’t need to use refresh to view new messages.

A security bar which turns yellow or red upon depending upon the suspiciousness of the emails. The only time the security bar wasn’t yellow, was when I was opening email from Microsoft or my contacts.

A check-box appears beside every email on hovering. This is a very nice touch.

If you use Internet Explorer then you can play mp3 and wav files attached to emails using in-line media player.

WLH displays a pop-up notification when your contacts come online and gives you the option to chat with them using Windows Live Messenger.

While composing new messages the in-line spell checker automatically underlines spelling mistakes. WLH also allows you to do basic operations like resize and rotate on image files before sending them. However, these features don’t seem to work with Firefox.

One feature that is missing, but should be present is the ability to preview Microsoft office documents and spreadsheets.

Another disappointment is lack of support for Opera browser. Opera users would have to use the classic version. And this raises the question. Why didn’t they use Silverlight? There couldnt have been a better way to demonstrate it’s potential, and also it would have meant compatibility with Opera.

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