Earlier today, my friends were raving about JJ Cale and the soulfulness of his music. Unfortunately, I had no clue regarding who the heck JJ Cale is. So what did I do? I whipped out my phone, and ran a Wikipedia search for Cale using Opera Mobile. Wikipedia might not be accurate enough for academic purposes, but its utility as a reference site is unquestionable. However, reading up an encyclopaedia article spanning several thousand words is neither the most efficient nor the most natural way to get an overview of any subject. Enter Qwiki.

Some of you might have already heard of Qwiki, since it got a lot of press coverage for winning TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco ’10. Qwiki describes itself as a new information experience. It wants to tell a story, a quintessentially human way to experience information, instead of just dishing out a collection of facts. TechCrunch described it as a “movie highlight reel of Wikipedia pages”, and that’s what it is. Enter a topic you want to know more about, and Qwiki will present the basic facts in a neatly put together slideshow of images and text accompanied by a computer generated voiceover. Qwiki is currently in closed beta, so the embedding of the videos is currently disabled. However, you can get an idea about the service from the video embedded below.

Update: I just realsed that can actually view a Qwiki without logging in. Here’s a Qwiki on M. K. Gandhi.

Each video or presentation itself is called a Qwiki, and for now, there are just over two million of them. The breadth of topics covered is quite impressive. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Qwiki even had information on Asansol, my home city. Although a Qwiki won’t make you an expert on any topic, most of them have enough depth to help you gain a meaningful overview of the subject matter. Even better, the Qwikis are interlinked. So, you can keep hopping from one Qwiki to another Qwiki, in Wikipedia style.

A snapshot of the Qwiki on J J Cale

I am amongst those who were rooting for CloudFlare to win the TC Disrupt, and after having used Qwiki for a couple of weeks, I still maintain that CloudFlare should have won. Qwiki is intuitive, entertaining, addictive and fun. However, it’s hardly disruptive in the manner Soluto can become with its PC Genome Technology, or CloudFlare can become with its CDN for everyone approach. I would have also liked to have Qwiki as an app on my phone, as it is a fun and useful way to pass time while travelling. However, for now it’s a web only service. Worse still, it utilises Flash, which puts it beyond the reach of iPhone and iPad users (and even a majority of Android users, since Flash requires at least Android 2.2).

Qwiki is currently in closed alpha. This means that there might be some bugs (I noticed that some of the Qwikis refuse to load), and you will need an invitation to get in. If you want to take it for a spin, I can help you out with an invite. Here’s what you need to do:
Either, subscribe to my newsletter and leave a comment using the same email address.
Or, follow me on Twitter and let me know by leaving a comment.

(Doing any one of the above is sufficient)

I don’t want to keep doing this forever, so just make sure that you get in your invite request before 14th November.

The post Qwiki: Stop Reading and Start Learning appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

NewsBlur is the creation of a single developer – Samuel Clay. If you already have a Google Reader account, getting started with NewsBlur should be a breeze, since it can automatically import your Google Reader feeds. You also have the option of manually importing feeds through OMPL files. However, be warned, importing an OPML file will delete all your existing feeds. The developer tells me that this will be fixed in the coming months. In the future, NewsBlur will be automatically able to identify duplicate entries and add new entries from an OPML file.

As mentioned earlier, the interface is tidy and efficient. Normally, Google’s the one that gets the kudos for keeping things simple; however, somewhere along the line they sacrificed simplicity in favour of functionality for Google Reader. NewsBlur supports three view modes –
Original: This is NewsBlur’s unique selling point. It captures a snapshot of the website and displays your RSS feed in-context of the website. This makes it appear as if you are surfing through the original website.

Feed: In this mode NewsBlur displays a feed as a continuous stream of articles in a consistent interface.

Story: Almost same as above. However, in this mode only one article is displayed at a time, instead of the entire stream.

The biggest challenge modern RSS Feed readers have to tackle is to make discovering news that matters simple and straight-forward. NewsBlur supports nested folders, which allows you to organise your feeds into categories. Additionally, NewsBlur also supports filtering of stories. To get started, you will be asked to rate (like/dislike) selected authors, tags, websites. Based on this initial training, NewsBlur will automatically curate a list of stories you are likely to find interesting.

You can also rate stories, or even highlight keywords from its title while using NewsBlur to constantly improve the suggestions offered by NewsBlur.

NewsBlur is a freemium service. The free version allows you to follow up to 64 feeds. If you want to track more feeds, you will have to shell out $12/year, which is quite reasonable. Since the source code is available, you can also install it on your own server, if you are so inclined.

All in all, NewsBlur is an interesting service. It looks great and is a joy to use. The filtering feature seems interesting; however, I haven’t used NewsBlur long enough to make an educated judgment on its accuracy. Additional features currently in the pipeline include an iPhone app, ability to sort stories, and account management. For me the biggest drawback of NewsBlur is that it doesn’t always update a feed. The frequency with which a feed is updated depends on its popularity. Thankfully, you can manually update a feed using Insta-Fetch. NewsBlur also lacks any sort of social features. If you enjoy reading and sharing stuff with your friends, you should stick to Google Reader. NewsBlur also lacks some elementary features, like being able to quickly check all unread items.

The post NewsBlur: An Impressive New RSS Feed Reader appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

AllTop describes itself as an online magazine rack that helps people answer the question: What’s happening?”. It is a collection of RSS feeds of the leading content sources in different spheres. AllTop covers various niches, including but not limited to technology. Registered users can mix and match different content sources to create their own customised AllTop experience. Check out the video to get a better idea about AllTop.

AllTop doesn’t do anything your RSS feed reader can’t do. But, it saves you the effort of curating custom RSS feed lists. For example, if you are interested in Android related news, you can just pick that topic and get a quick idea about what’s happening in the Android world. If you want to check out latest programming news, you can do that too, in an instant. Another similar service you can check out is popurls.

Kickpost

Kickpost tries to algorithmically determine breaking news stories by monitoring a selection of high profile blogs. The interface is sparse but functional and easy on the eyes. The main drawback of Kickpost is that there is no systematic organisation. Hence, there is duplication of information and related information is not clubbed together.

TechMeme

TechMeme is the undisputed leader in this segment. Although TechMeme also focuses mainly on the top blogs, it does a better job at identifying and organising content than most of its competition. It employs an algorithmic system that is aided by human operators. This allows it to discover breaking news, even when it’s not coming from a tier-1 blog.

(image courtesy: openclipart)

The post 3 Websites That Will Help You Spot Breaking Tech News appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

You have heard about tinyurl.com, you have heard about tinypic.com, and now we have tinysong.com. At its core, TinySong is somewhat similar to TinyPic. It provides a quick and easy way to share songs with your friends over Twitter, Facebook, email and so on. However, there is one critical difference.

TinySong doesn’t allow you to upload your own audio file. Instead, you are restricted to the songs already available in its database. It uses GrooveShark as its backend. Thanks to Grooveshark’s vast library, this limitation isn’t likely to be a limitation for most people. Almost all the popular songs are present in TinySong’s database. All you have to do is type a song name and TinySong would throw up a short URL to listen to that song in GrooveShark. You also have the option to instantly share a song on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon etc.

TinySong’s simplicity is its biggest asset. It’s just one of those services, which everyone should know about, as it’s bound to come in handy at some point.

The post Quickly and Easily Share Full Songs with Your Friends Using TinySong appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

ItsTrending is a quick mashup created by Matt Schlicht, which provides a real time feed of the most shared content on Facebook. The site is divided into several sections. The featured content section displays top videos, addictive games and news. The other sections (News, Videos, Pictures and Games) have channels for major websites like TechCrunch, Digg, YouTube, Hulu and Flickr. Each channel showcases the most ‘Liked’ items from a particular website.

Another similar (but superior) service is Like Button. However, Like Button has a greater number of categories and several additional channels. Moreover, it provides you the flexibility to create new channels from your favourite websites.

Services like ItsTrending and Like Button can come in quite handy if you want a quick and easy way to discover hottest content from around the web. However, be warned – stay away from the Games section if the next couple of hours of your life is precious to you. I just lost half an hour playing ‘Eyjafjallajoekull‘.

via TechCrunch

The post Find Out What’s HOT On Facebook With ItsTrending And Like Button appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

Alternativeto maintains a huge repository of applications, covering all major platforms including Desktop (Windows, Mac and Linux), Mobile (iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Symbian) and of course the Web. In order to get started, all you need to do is type the name of the application and hit the search button. If the application exists in Alternativeto’s database, you would instantly get a list of alternatives ranked according to popularity. Here are some of the alternatives to the popular internet radio service Pandora:

Go ahead and liberate yourself from substandard software with Alternativeto’s help. After all, there is no point in settling for anything but the absolute best.

The post Effortlessly Find Better Alternatives to Your Favourite Applications and Websites appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

iWeaver works through a bookmarklet and should work in almost all browsers. However, I haven’t tested it on any browser other than Firefox and Opera. Installation is as simple as bookmarking this link and adding it to the personal bar (bookmarks toolbar in case of Firefox). Being a bookmarklet has its own advantages. One thing I loathe about other similar add-ons is the fact that they are always active – even when I don’t need them. They eat up screen real-estate and invariably become annoying after a short while. However, iWeavr springs into action only when you require it. Just click on the iWeavr button and it will be loaded.

iWeavr’s functionalities can be grouped into two categories:

Discovery: The official description of iWeavr (as a search tool) is slightly misleading, since it doesn’t actually allow you to do any searching. iWeavr is better described as a discovery tool. It displays dozens of websites with similar content as well as other webpages which links back to the webpage you are viewing. This is a handy way to discover relevant and interesting new websites and would please the information junkies. iWeavr also assists you in discovering more content from the currently opened website. It automatically spiders the website’s RSS feed and displays excerpts of the latest articles.

Sharing: iWeavr makes sharing websites a breeze with its excellent Facebook and Twitter integration. Its Twitter applet even includes an in-built link shortener (bit.ly). If you prefer to do things the old fashioned way, you will be pleased to learn that iWeavr also includes e-mail support. To make things even easier for you, iWeavr also provides quick access to all your contacts through Plaxo.

The concept of iWeavr is fascinating and it really had the potential to be an outstanding add-on. However, there are a few shortcomings in their execution which holds them back.

The algorithm works reasonably well but could do with some improvements. In most of the cases a large number of backlinks displayed are from the same site. This may be intentional, but I would prefer being shown only external backlinks. The related links tab fared much better and almost always returned relevant links. However, the related links feature becomes really useful, when you are browsing an obscure or a less popular website. I tried it on MobileCrunch.com and the top four results were Gizmodo.com, Engadget.com, TechCrunch.com and BoyGeniusReport.com. Don’t get me wrong – all of these are relevant results and the algorithm deserves compliment for this. However, I was already aware of all the suggested websites. Hence, I didn’t really discover anything. On the other hand it returned TechTipsBlog.com, OnlineTechTips.net, MakeUseOf.com and Geeks.com while I was surfing OnlineTechTips.com. In this case 2/4 websites were relatively less popular, yet useful.

iWeavr is not perfect – it does have some minor issues. In spite of that, it is both fun and useful. It’s quick and easy to install and doesn’t get in your way. If you are an information junkie, you will probably fall in love with it. Give it a try and don’t forget to let us know what you think.

The post iWeaver is Social Discovery Bookmarklet Which Enhances Your Browsing Experience appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

Cameroid includes 36 different effects – from the mundane like photo frame to bizarre like alien spaceship and Mona Lisa. In order to use Cameroid, all you need is a web cam and a browser with Flash plug-in installed. The effects are grouped into four categories – Filter, Distort, Scenes and Frames. Using Cameroid is as simple as selecting an effect and clicking on the camera icon.

Once you have snapped an image, you can save it in the public Cameroid gallery (requires registration), download it as a JPG file or print it. Cameroid is similar to Apple Photobooth and Cheese. However, its biggest advantage is that it doesn’t require any special software (which also makes it multi-platform). It’s the easiest way to create and share groovy head shots.

The post Cameroid Allows You to Take Funky Pictures Directly From Your Browser appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

Legally or illegally, most of the popular music videos end up on YouTube soon after its release (sometimes even before their official release). Tech Dreams has created a wonderful mashup of YouTube and Apple iTunes Top Songs.

This mashup utilises iTunes RSS feed to fetch the top 10 songs (for the current week) from iTunes and generates a playlist of YouTube videos of those songs. To make things even more fabulous, Tech Dream offers separate playlists for different countries. Currently supported countries are USA, UK, Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden. Gopinath – the developer of this mashup also promises support for more countries (which are not covered by iTunes) soon. Support for Indian Music videos (Hindi, Tamil and Telegu) is on the cards.

Some of the songs have grainy videos, while few have only music but no video. However, the service works flawlessly in most of the cases. A majority of the videos are either HQ or HD. The other minor issue is that the layout breaks in Opera. On the whole, Tech Dreams Music aggregator is a simple yet brilliant service. It saves music aficionados the trouble of manually searching YouTube and allows them to enjoy the latest chartbusters for free.

The post Tech Dreams Aggregates Weekly Top 10 Music Videos appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

The new Orkut is considerably faster than its predecessor. But, that’s not the only change. Google has redesigned pretty much everything. The home page provides you quick access to friend suggestions, birthday reminders and your network’s activity stream. The new activity stream is an obvious imitation of Facebook’s activity stream (Stories) and finally supports comments.

Orkut has got a lot of things right with its new design. The new interface is a lot cleaner and simpler. There are five different colour schemes to choose from, but (at least for now) Google seems to have ditched the idea of themes. Navigation has been improved greatly and thanks to AJAX, now you can edit your profile, check out your scrapbook, chat with your friends or comment on your friend’s activity stream without leaving the home page. Everything just seems to work the way you would expect them to. Start typing your friend’s name in the “my friends” box and Orkut will instantly display the relevant results. Want to upload a photo? The days of waiting for the upload manager applet to load is over. Simply click on the “add photos” button and select all the files you wish to upload. The “About Me” page has also been pimped. You can now add some splendour to your profile page by embedding videos or adding OpenSocial Applications.

There is no doubt that the new Orkut is a huge improvement. However, Orkut’s problem has always been that its been too late. It always seems to be playing catch-up to Facebook. Does this update make Orkut better than Facebook? Not really. Will it help in winning over Facebook users? I doubt it. Will it help in stemming the outflow of users to Facebook? Probably, Yes. These are troubled times for Orkut. Facebook is beginning to get serious about markets like India and more and more users are deserting Orkut. This design may just provide the much needed boost to curtail Orkut’s decay.

As I mentioned before, the new interface is currently available only to a select few users. If you wish to get in on the action simply add me as a friend (necessary) and request an invite below in the comment (don’t forget to mention your Orkut name if its different). I will invite the first three person who request an invite. (All invites exhausted) You can also join the official community and participate in various activities to win invites.

The post Orkut Redesigned – Faster and More Efficient [Invites Inside] appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

Clicker debuted last month at TechCrunch50. Its aim is simple – to be your online TV Guide. Thousands of hours of video content is available online. And Clicker wants to bring it to your fingertips. It acts as a directory, search engine, wiki and entertainment guide. When Clicker launched it had mapped more than 300,000 episodes, from over 5,200 shows, from over 1,200 networks – in addition to 1,200 movies and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists. The number has certainly increased significantly since then.

Clicker makes it really simple for you to find want you want. The videos are grouped into four basic categories – TV, Web Originals, Movies and Music. Each category contains dozens of sub-categories (which can have its own sub-sub-categories). The organisation is top notch and finding anything you want is really easy.

If you don’t have anything specific in your mind, check out the “Trending” and “Popular video” section to find new videos. “Related” (video) is another tool you can use to discover interesting content. Due to licensing issues many of the videos aren’t viewable onsite. Instead, you will be taken directly to their publisher’s webpage. Also, most of the videos only work if you are in US/Canada (or are behind a proxy/VPN), but that’s not really Clicker’s fault.

Clicker is not the first video search engine. However, what puts it head and shoulders ahead of its competition is navigation and organisation. Finding new content as well as tracking your favourite artists and shows is really easy. You can subscribe to various channels and be notified whenever new content becomes available. The Web Originals section contains several relatively unknown gems. Clicker is currently in private beta. It will be launching later this year and has big plans for the future. It is a great place to hang out at, whether you are a music, movie or TV show buff. If you want to sign up just use this link. First five people will get instant access. If you do signup, don’t forget to share your impressions of Clicker.

The post Clicker is Your Online TV Guide [Invites Available] appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

While the major search engines are busy figuring out the best way to tap into the social web, a new start-up called Kikin has come up with their own solution. Kikin is a browser extension which integrates relevant results from Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and clipfish into your search results. Kikin is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows and Safari and Firefox on Mac. It works with Google, Bing and Yahoo search.

Kikin can even connect to your Facebook and Twitter account and display results from your personal stream. The Facebook and Twitter integration is fabulous. The results pane has in-built social abilities like retweet and reply (comment and like for Facebook).

Kikin is a real gem, which works because it allows you to choose what you want. It mixes the real time web and social web (and more) to produce stellar results. The integration is non-obtrusive and the interface is stylish, simple and effective. Once you get accustomed to Kikin, you would begin wondering, “Why can’t Google or Bing offer such harmonious integration of the social web?”

The post Kikin Enriches Your Search Results by Leveraging the Social Web appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

Good news for Indian twitter users. Twitter has struck a deal with Bharti Airtel (the largest mobile carrier in India) which would allow Indian users to receive free twitter updates on the go. Twitter has already started promoting this deal. If you are an Indian, be prepared to be greeted by the following notification on the home page.

If you are an Airtel subscriber, setting up your Twitter account is really simple. You can either do it from the Devices page or simply text START to 53000. Receiving SMS updates is completely free. However, standard text messaging rates (Re 1.00 per message in most cases) will apply for sending updates.

Mobile updates were always an important aspect of Twitter. Initially, free updates were available almost all over the world. However, Twitter had to cut back on free SMS updates as many carriers started complaining about the large volume. Interestingly enough, I don’t remember Twitter disabling mobile updates in India. I may be wrong, but free SMS updates have always been available for Indian users. At least on paper, because the last time I had tried signing up for SMS updates I never received the verification message.

Internet penetration in India is increasing at a rapid rate. The huge population coupled with a relatively untapped market represents a unique opportunity to most internet start-ups. And they are certainly beginning to take notice. Fairly recently, Facebook chose India to test Facebook Light and now Twitter has made it clear that they consider India to be an important market.

 
Don’t forget to follow me on twitter
 

The post Twitter Ties Up With Bharti Airtel : Allows Free SMS Updates appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

The last couple of years have been really tough for Yahoo. It’s not that they aren’t trying. But they simply don’t have much to show for their efforts. Yahoo has been attempting to make inroads into the social web, but the results have only been disastrous. Yahoo 360, Mash and SpotM all ended up being big duds and had to be shut down. One of the problems is that they always appear to be playing catch-up. Yahoo has been busy merely reacting to the latest trends instead of aggressively launching innovative products to catch public imagination. Yahoo Meme is another perfect example.

Yahoo Meme is popularly dubbed as Yahoo’s Twitter Clone. However, in reality it is more of a cross between Tumblr and Twitter. The basic concept is same. You can follow other people and their activity will appear in your streams. In a similar manner people who find your meme interesting can follow you. However, there are a few important differences. For one, there is no 140 character limit. Unlike twitter, you are not restricted to text. Yahoo Meme supports sharing of video, audio and image files. However, you cannot upload a video or an audio file. For audio files you need to paste the link to the MP3 file whereas for video you need to paste the Vimeo or YouTube video URL.

The first thing that caught my attention in Yahoo Meme was the repost feature. Reposting is the twitter equivalent of retweeting. Most twitter users (including me) have been demanding a retweet button for a long time. When you report an item you can also comment on it and add your own opinion. You can also comment on an item without reposting it. Another nice touch added by Yahoo is that clicking on the down arrow besides every comment (which is not a repost) loads the original post inline, thus giving your follower a better idea about the context of your comment.

I couldn’t find a way to automatically add existing users from my address book or invite them to Yahoo Meme. This is definitely something Yahoo should think about including in the future if they want Meme to survive. For now you can invite users manually by typing their email address. Yahoo Meme has a list of interesting memes as well as list of most popular posts (i.e. the posts with highest repost count) which seems to suggest that Yahoo Meme has become somewhat popular in China.

Yahoo Meme is currently in closed alpha. There is nothing bad about the product. At the something there isn’t anything exciting about it. Yahoo is going to have a hard convincing people to migrate from Tumblr, Posterous and Twitter. And a social network without enough users is a dead social network. Yahoo Meme currently doesn’t have an API. Hopefully, it will come soon and there would be enough exciting apps based on Yahoo Meme. Because otherwise this may meet the same fate as Yahoo’s other social networking ventures.

I have a few invites for Yahoo Meme. If you want one just let me know in the comments section. I will distribute them on a first come, first serve basis. If you already have an account you can follow me at meme.yahoo.com/pallab (although for now I will continue to actively use Twitter).

(thanks to Rahul for the invite)

The post Yahoo Meme – Review and Invites appeared first on Pallab dot Net.

Using fontcapture couldn’t have been simpler. All you need is a printer and a scanner (and of course a pen). To get started download the font template. Print it and fill it up according to the instructions taking care of the margins and baselines. Use a black market pen for best results.

Once you are done, scan the image (200 DPI or more required) and upload it to fontcapture. The rest of the work will be done by fontcapture. If you are happy with the results download the font and install it. The fonts created using fontcapture can be used both on Windows and Mac. Go ahead and create your own font with fontcapture. And don’t forget to share you creations with us.

The post Create a Font From Your Own Handwriting With fontcapture appeared first on Pallab dot Net.