TailRank Tale

Tailrank is a news aggregator which has been around for a little now. The service marks the quality of a news story by the number of times the story has been blogged or linked. The stories are aggregated from various sources much like Digg. But unlike Digg which sometimes suffer from worthless Diggs, the Tailrank system looks more robust as someone will take the pain of blogging or linking something only when its worthwhile. And with the rise of bloggers at exponential rate in every field its obvious that a good story will receive a lot of links.

Features that can make a difference

1. Recently added video category populated with videos from various video sharing services (mostly youtubes) which are selected on the basis of number of links or embeds. (TailRank Video)

2. Providing deep tracking for a story with the "track this thread", to get depth and breadth of a story.

3. Easy access to news by date. For 21st dec news -- "http://tailrank.com/2006-12-21".

4. Import service from other aggregators (bloglines, newsgator). Manual uploading of OPML files. (Tailrank import)

5. Allowing for embedding Tailrank on your blog with fully customizable CSS.

WebOS round up

Having been published some short reviews of WebOSs (web operation systems), it was good to see someone coming up with more reviews. This blog reviews 10 WebOSs which are set make it big in 2007. The list includes the hottest ones i.e. YouOS, Goowy and DesktopTwo.

Related :

ZCubes, The Browser your Home
EyeOS , OS on web
YouOS, another OS on web
YourMinis
NetVibes

LiveVideo : Another Video sharing site

In the recent months it has become quite clear that YouTube is there to stay and rule with a good number of video sharing sites launching each week and lost under the hype of YouTube. Unless these services bring some innovativeness in them, they are bound to remain under the YouTube's hood. LiveVideo could have been just another video sharing site and by now lost the newly created ocean of video sharing. But this service craved out some space for itself by introducing some new features. While the interface looks too much similar to Youtube's , its the addition of following features thats making the difference: [via Mashable]

» A Digg like voting feature "Hit or Miss".

» An interactive map to browse videos by country. Just mouse over the flags on the world map and the videos for that region will be shown up. For US you can even browse by states.

» Customizable Profiles. This is probably the most powerful feature to get it an edge in the race. Users can create there profile pages which makes viewing the video a different experience as they run against a different background for each user.

» Different skins to choose from.

See the what's new section to get hold of new features as it surfaces over time.

You - The Designer

In the recent months there is a surge in the online design services that let you design your custom goodies like tshirts, casino chips, cards etc. What more, you can order online the design you just made and get it home delivered with moneyback guarantee. Here is a brief description of the three pioneers in this field.

favorite products that match their interest.

» ChipLab : The service is dedicated for the creation of Casino Chips. You can choose whether you want complete poker set, customized chip set or individual chips. You can add layers, pictures, arts, pictures all customized to suit your requirements. After the design is done you can just checkout and the chips will be shipped to you.

» CafePress : CafePress is based on theme "Gift". You can almost find anything that you planned for gift to find it fully customizable. You can either choose from already created designs or created your own. The products are classified across categories like School or education, food or drink, military, sports , religion,technology or geek etc, to let you choose the nearest match to your interest or profession. If you are creative enough you can even sell the products designed by you to others. Or if you own a site you can direct your traffic to the

» Zazzle : This service has a lot to offer when it comes to range of popular products. The most important I felt was the design of tshirts. Besides you can design and sell your creations. You will earn a 10% royalty when a product designed by you sells. You can also refer visitors of your site to the products for which you will earn 7% commission for each sale.

Daytipper -- Tips for making life easier.

Daytipper is another social networking Web 2.0 service that runs on the content submitted by the user. The site seems first of its kind and therefore poised for a success. The service allows users to submit tips which in someway you feel will help others. The tips are classified across various categories. The service pays you $3 for each tip published. The importance or usefulness of your tip is judged by the users who can vote for it which will be shown as a percentage. No doubt, there were lots of negative votes. You can subscribe for the tips through email or through rss. At the time of writing there were 2,468 tips submitted but only 476 published, which shows there is really a lot of liking for this service and people are having great tips and the $3 factor is also doing its part.

TheVeniceProject beta

GigaOm published some screenshots from the VeniceProject. The VeniceProject is a mashup of television, p2p and social networking founded by the founders of Skype and Kazaa. The project is a broadband application which will harness the power of p2p to distribute TV shows over the internet. No, its not a file sharing service. This service allows users to add channels, switch between channels, join communities, chat etc.

The project is presently in beta and is accepting emails to get a invitation for beta testing.

Fauxto : Online Imaging

Fauxto is a recently launched, flash based online drawing/image editing service which besides basic drawing capablilities provides advanced features like layering. The service is in beta right now and possess some flaws nevertheless the service has a potential as it is flash based.The strong point of a flash based system unlike an ajax based system is that once the initial interface is loaded, operation becomes pretty fast.

Related: Online Drawing, Professional Sketches, Pimping Photos

Disposable Phone Numbers

Sometimes it just gets very important to get a disposable phone number for a lot of business or private reasons or simply to alleviate the problem of receiveing spam calls. Craigsnumber provides a free service whereby it generates a disposable number with validity period from ranging from one hour to one week. You can distribute this number to all those with whom you do not want to keep permanent contact. The calls to this number will be forwarded to your real number which cannot be seen by the caller. Presently, this service is for US only numbers. [via Lifehacker]

Link: Craigsnumber
Related: Disposable Emails.

Digg added Videos and Podcasts section

Digg, a one stop shop for buying news and interesting stories chalked out democratically, launched video and podcasts section yesterday. Although users used to post videos and podcast news earlier also, but that had to be included in the only section available - the news section. Now that videos and podcasts sections are specifically outlined, users will get a cleaner and organized experience while looking for video and podcasts. The podcasts section which requires you to sign on to access it, at the time of writing already had podcasts spread over 28 pages with "Diggnation" and "this week in tech" dugged down 5576 and 4628 times respectively.

Online SQL

Few days back I posted a list of online compiler. This is an add on to that in that it helps you to learn and play wiht SQL online. These online tools come handy when you do not want to go through the overhead of installing costly and bulky database systems, or you want to test a SQL statement on the fly. This list by no means is complete one, there exists a lots more, its only for the sake of add on that I am posting this.

» Sqlcourse : Tutorials for MS SQL, Oracle, MySql, DB2, Access

» W3Schools : Home of best resources for training. Covers a very wide area besides sql and the tutorials are laid out in a lucid and comprehendable ways with hands on with almost all of them.

» Grussel : SQL tutorial

» SQL zoo : SQL tutorial

ZCubes : The browser, your home.

ZCubes is a new webservice that is creating quite a buzz. But for me it was only after I tried it personally did I felt the buzz. The slick interface combined with almost all the contents you could think of makes it a unique experience. And boy this ajaxian interface is fast enough unlike online OSs that I discussed earlier (YouOS, EyeOS).

As the site claims:

ZCubes is the world's first website that seamlessly integrates browsing, searching, editing, painting, freehand drawing, cursive hand-writing, audio-video media
management, publishing, and much more into a pure BROWSER-BASED PLATFORM.

I think it really is what it claims to be. You can browse, search, paint blah blah. But the feature that interested me most was the drag drop of images, youtube videos etc from the sites open inside ZBrowser. Yes, you can drag and drop any html element from the ZBrowser to what they call ZSpace, what if its an image or a link or just a paragraph. It claims to support upto 30 file formats, so you can integrate PDF, Shockwave, Powerpoint, Word, and more. You can save your work on hardisk or publish directly on web.

The service as I see has some future in this Web 2.0ish world where every now and then innovative solutions appear.

ZCubes

Cogmap - Wiki of Organisational Chart

It happens at times that you need to know about an organisation, its corporate structures and governance. And if you are a reporter or an interviewer it just becomes more than necessary to keep an updated version of who's who of an organisation into your head. If you think it is a problem, then solution has arrived.

Cogmap, a wiki of organisational charts, ajax powered, maintains the structure of an organisation in a graphical format as shown in the snap. Anyone can add an organisational chart and anyone can edit to rectify the errors or put some new nodes. Now the next time you need to know who to call upon in your organisation for a problem or see organisational chart of any corporation you can just make a search on Cogmap and get to know about personalities holding crucial positions.

WengoVisio : Let your users call you

WengoVisio recently went public about offering there click to call widget that can be embed on any page to let your viewers call you. As an example a widget has been added to this blog. Check out the left side bar. Sign up is easy in 3 simple steps.

About two months back I added a Meebo chat widget to this blog, but latter removed it as it took some amount of time to load and I had to remain online from the Meebo's site. But with this WengoVisio's widget one can remain online on my own site. Just click on "Admin" on the widget and you will be asked for password to continue and you become online.

ChaCha Guide Search

Well, lets say you want to buy a computer to satisfy your ever increasing appetite for games, songs, videos and programmings. Simply put you want a powerful PC. You have two options either ask your nerd friend or do a web search, and now since you yourself know a lot about searching techniques you do a Google search and get one million results. Now you have two options either you go through all of them or go back to more reliable method, that is asking your friend. But, oh no this time your friend is stuck with some very serious work and do not want to be disturbed (obviously he is dating someone). You are nowhere, doomed.

And suddenly there's a thunder, all gets illuminated and ChaCha comes to rescue. ChaCha is a web search engine gives you the most optimized search which it brings out while chatting to you. You can in much the same way as talking to your friend, chat with ChaCha and quote your requirements. ChaCha will guide to the search result that is most suited to your need. Enter your search query and click search with guide. ChaCha will suggest you with sites while you chat and if you are not satisfied with the results you can tell you are not satisfied and want more specific results.

Here is an exerpt of a typical chat session:

Status: Looking for a guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: Lakhena L
Lakhena L: Welcome to ChaCha!
Lakhena L: HI
Lakhena L: How are you doing?
You: hi
You: i am fine
Lakhena L: How may I help you with computer today?
You: i am looking forward to buy a computer
Lakhena L: Ok,
Lakhena L: any specific type?
Lakhena L: Do you want to look for destop or laptop?
You: i want a powerful PC to play games, videos and running some common compilers
You: desktop
Transfer: You are being transfered to another guide who can help you search even better!
Looking for guide ...
Status: Connected to guide: SamanthaT
SamanthaT: Welcome to ChaCha!
SamanthaT: Hello, I will be happy to help you today with your search.
SamanthaT: Please be more specific as to what you're looking for on this topic.
SamanthaT: Hello?
SamanthaT: Hello?
You: i want a powerful pc that will run games like warcraft,nfs
SamanthaT: Sure one moment while I look.
SamanthaT: Thanks for being patient! Rest assured I'm finding the most relevant results for your search.
SamanthaT: Are these results sufficient?
You: yes thank you
SamanthaT: Is there anything else on this topic I can find for you today?
You: no thank you
SamanthaT: Thank you for using ChaCha, have a great day!
SamanthaT: Please RATE ME. Thanks for using ChaCha.

Yugma - Web Conferencing

Yugma launched a collaborative service that runs entirely inside your browser. You need not download any installer on your system to make use of this great tool. The good part is that it is offering all the basic features for free and works both of PC and Mac. Web browser with Java and thats all. Sign up is hassle free, on the fly. Once you have signed up and want to start a conference or join a conference, the java applet starts loading which takes a while. After that, you are ready to go, equipped with all the basic web-conferencing features such as showing desktop, annotation tools, changing presenters etc etc.

See your Page from Google's eyes

Heres the SEO tip of the day. If you want to see your page indexed top slot on the search engines, seeing how search engines or bots see your site is probably a good idea. This site provides the coveted service with a number of bots to choose from( googlebot, alexa, yahoo etc). All you have to enter the URL (include http://) and choose the bot.

Calc 5 - Calculate, Draw 2D & 3D graphs

Calc5 provides interface to draw 2D and 3D graphs. It is coupled with some basic mathematical functions including derivatives. The interface is easy to use and possess only few simple functions which can be learned within seconds, just check out some samples in the right hand corner of the interface, or better still check out help section. You can obtain an approximate rough plot or a precise one.

Also see: Instant Web Calculator

Google launches Click to Call ads in India

Google adwords, a advertising portal for advertisers launched its new Click to Call(?) service in India. This service allows advertisers to connect directly to users/consumers. It works as follows:

» Advertisers registar at Google Adwords for the Click to Call service.
» Users see a small phone icons next to Google ads.
» Users click on the icon, and it expands and prompts you to enter your phone number.
» Users phone almost immediately rings and they are connected to advertiser free of charge.

Google ensures that your phone numbers are not leaked to the consumers. Google is also trying to ensure that you do not become to prey of pranks when someone enters your phone number.

This service is already launched in US, and you can use it in conjunction with Google Maps, just click the Find businesses tab while searching (via Official Google Blog).

Maps Mania

Google by virtue of its two killer apps Maps & Earth brought the revolution and reduced the world to fit into your monitor ( see Google Earthopedia) and it has got a lot of takers worldwide. They take Google earth, leverage their APIs and come up with their own apps. Here is a brief compilation of user created Google Maps apps:

» Webcams of the World : A collection of webcams geographically laid out.

» 7 Wonders : Seven wonders of the world classified by ancient, medieval, modern and nature.

» Ascii Art : Google maps made with ascii characters. Creative one.

» BBC news : See the news as it happens at places in Britain.

» Cheap Hotels : Affordable hotels worldwide.

» Travel n Blog : See what people are writing about places they visit. Good guide.

» Classifieds : Classified ads laid out geographically.

» Photos & Videos : Google maps + Flickr + Youtube. Lets you see pics n vids shared by others.

» Frappr : Social map. Add maps, add yourself to others maps, track your site traffice & more.

» Link with Friends : Add buddies. Good for blogs, groups, forums.

» BuddyPing : Google maps+Flickr+Del.icio.us . Shoot & Share pics geographically.

» Life History of George Bush : Bush biography geographically.

Theres a lots more useful maps spread all over the cyber space. Do a Google for them using relevant keywords like hospital maps , hotels google map etc.


See Also : Maps & Maps,
Virtual World.

Pimping Photos

In my budding days I had an immense passion to alter or pimp any human face I found on my textbooks, or some old cherished family photographs. As soon as I spot a face, a pen suddenly appears in my hand and the innocent picture is turned into a monstrous one. Today I got another chance to recall that passion. But this time it was in the form of a web-service, with my mouse as the tool. Pikipimp allows you to pimp the pictures you upload. You can choose from a range of beards, moustaches, eyes, glasses, hair styles,hats, music, tongue, teeth and lots more with each item customizable in several aspects such as size,color,transparency etc.[via Techcrunch]

See also:

» Draw Professional Criminal Sketches

» Passion = Drawing