Category: Reviews

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[Online Tool] Chat Anonymously on Any Webpage with Chattp

Since I started blogging, I have been forced to think about online privacy. One reason is that bloggers or for that matter anyone who works online, ends up in contact with a lot of people who they do not really know as people. Mostly we can work around this problem, but sometimes there needs to be a discussion, lets say about a blog’s design.

Chattp is a nice online tool which adds a chat column to any webpage, hence two or more people can discuss the content or design of the page in real-time. 😉

Features of Chattp

  • Just visit the Chattp website and type in the URL of the page you want to discuss with someone.
  • A short URL is created, which can be shared with others who you want to take part in the discussion.
  • Anyone with whom, you have shared the link, will then be able to take part in the conversation in the left-hand column as a Guest.
  • Best part is requires no registration and is completely free.

This sort of collaborative tool would be ideal for people who work online and discuss projects on websites. Do try out Chattp and drop in your comments.

Link: Chattp

Related: Shared Spaces: Collaborate with your Google friends

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[Software] Manage Google+ from your Desktop on Windows

As a blogger I often like to use Digsby to get desktop notifications in real-time from Facebook and Linked In. At the moment Digsby does not support Google+, but there is a new desktop client for Windows users named GClient.

I have used it and I found it quite useful to stay in touch with what my friends are sharing on Google+. It also is a nice way to quickly type in an update, without the need of using my browser.

GClient Windows for Google+

  • Download the software, and install it. It will need your Windows OS to have .NET Framework 4.0 installed on it. If your computer does not have .NET 4.0, get offline downloader here.
  • Once installed, type in your email address and get the License Code for registering the software.
  • After the Registration Code is inserted the GClient for Google+ can be seen in an icon in the system tray.

I have not used this desktop application for more than a few days, but it is quite useful if you are addicted to Google+. In case you still prefer using your browser then look up these 10 great app and extensions.

Do try out GClient and drop in your comments.

Link: GClient

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Click.to – Easy Sharing and Integration with all Apps

Click.to makes it easy to share tidbits of text or even images using your favorite app/service. While surfing the web, I come across lots of interesting stuff and if I want to share it, I need to login to the specific service and do it, be it Facebook, Twitter or even Gmail.

With Click.to you can share things in very less time using the same service you were using before, this will save you a lot of clicks. Click.to integrates with almost any app, including some favorite services like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and many more.

Features of Click.to

  • Share text/image by just selecting it and pressing Ctrl+C.
  • Click.to integrates with almost any app, if you can’t find your favorite app in the list.
  • Apart from sharing it can also perform web actions, for example if you click on the Google icon after selecting the text, it will display the search results for the selected text.
  • You can also create customized web actions using the user manual.

Pros and Cons

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Pros: Pretty innovative idea, must have for people who use multiple browsers as you don’t need to install sharing plugins (Shareaholic etc) on each browser.

Cons: It needs to be polished in a few aspects like if you’re sharing text using Twitter option of Click.to, you can’t edit the tweet, that’s annoying. It is a bit resource hungry too!

Click.to Demo

Click.to currently supports only Windows. Try out Click.to and drop your opinions.

Link: Click.to

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Readings: A replacement for Google Reader!

UPDATE: Readings the service has been made unavailable at the moment.

There are many apps which act as replacement for Google Reader (Feedly, for instance), but I never liked any of them. Reason is simple, I can’t cope up with their interface, which is completely different from that of Google Reader. On the other hand,  Readings is something similar to Google Reader and that’s why I like it.

Readings is a new feed reader, especially for those who are bored with Google Reader. You may call it as a Modern Google Reader.

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Where ‘Readings’ is better than Google Reader

  • Start Page: Readings shows the top stories from the sites you’ve subscribed to, the relevancy of the top stories will certainly increase after it gains a considerable amount of users. Google Reader’s start page doesn’t show top stories, it just shows the articles from the feeds you’ve subscribed.

  • Subscribing to Feeds: You get a nice list of top blogs in Readings, you can narrow the results by selecting the category. You can also subscribe to the feed of a specific author (like me!) so, even if the author writes on more than one blog, you will be getting the articles and Google Reader can’t do this.
  • Interface: Readings’ interface is neat and simple, it also makes use website favicons, nothing more to say here.
  • Sharing: I’m not at all satisfied with sharing options provided by Google Reader, but Readings rocks in sharing articles! Irrespective of the feed you’re viewing, you can see the Facebook like, send and Tweet buttons, and at the end of the each article an Add this widget is also embedded.

  • Readability: You can change the font size from the left sidebar while reading an article, don’t have any time to read your favorite article? Click on Read Later and you can read it from the Unread section afterwards, no need of Instapaper! They do provide a handy bookmarklet to send interesting articles to Unread section!

Where it could improve…

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  • Subscribing To Feeds: I said subscribing to feeds in Readings is easy and better than that of Google Reader but wait, there’s a big disadvantage, you can’t import feeds from a .opml file! I have subscribed to 30+ blogs and it will take some 10-15 minutes to subscribe to all the blogs (Readings take time to cook the feed, it’s not instant). While, this is not the case with Google Reader, you can easily import feeds there.
  • Organizing Feeds: In Google Reader, I have all my feeds categorized and that keeps my Google Reader organized, now, you can’t do this on Readings! You can’t create folders (or tags) and drop feeds into it as you do in Google Reader.
  • No Unread Count: The Unread count in Google Reader gives you an idea of how many articles are left unread, Readings lacks this.
  • Customizing The App: You can customize Google Reader to the deepest using Reader Plus and many such apps but will developers come forward to develop add-ons for Readings? Certainly not!

Readings is pretty new, so there’s a scope of improvement, hope they will come up with new features in the future. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Readings (rdn.gs)

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Get Photos from Multiple Users in a Single Photo Stream with Liveshare

When a party takes place, people take photos on their phones. Then they tend to upload all these photos on the web on Facebook or any other social network or image sharing service. This creates a disjointed stream of photos and it becomes very tedious to get them all in one place.

LiveShare a product by CoolIris, allows sharing images in single photo stream by multiple users.

LiveShare Features

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  • Users need to register for an account or just sign up with their Facebook credentials. If you are sharing photos on Facebook to signing up with Facebook is a good idea.
  • Then we can create Private or Public streams. Private streams can be shared with others via email. Other can also stream photos they take of the same event in that particular stream.
  • This creates a live stream of photos of a particular event from multiple sources.
  • I used the browser version to test my account, but it does have an iPhone, Android and Window 7 Mobile apps that can make sharing  and viewing via smartphones very easy.

Here is a video presentation about Live Share and its features.

Try out LiveShare next time you are partying out with friends and do drop in your comments and views.

Link: LiveShare

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Free Online Tool to Edit and Add Effects to Images – Imageoid

If you use only a single computer, there is a good chance that you have some decent image editors on the computer which can resize or add effects to images. If you use multiple computers and use different computers on different days, it becomes quite tedious to download and install new image editors.

Imageoid is one such online editor for images that allows resizing images along with adding a lot of effects and then downloading it.

  • Upload any image file on the website and wait for adding effects on it.
  • I could chose through adding upto 32 different filters or image effects on the uploaded image.
  • Users can resize the image size down to a suitable size. This can be useful if you are looking to quickly resize the image down to manageable file size.
  • Imageoid does not require to register or signup.

Try out Imageoid to edit your images and drop in your comments.

Link: Imageoid

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TubGet – Free Online Tool to Download and Convert Videos

People spend literally several hours a week watching videos online. YouTube and Vimeo are the big boys of online video streaming, and often users might like to download the videos or a song into a mp3 version for listening to at a more convenient time or when offline.

Tubget is an online web service which allows downloading of videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

  • Just type in the URL of the video from YouTube or Vimeo and click on start.
  • Once done, the video will be processed and will be ready to be downloaded. It also gives option for cropping the video before you download it.
  • Users can also select sound quality, video resolution along with the type of file you want the video to be downloaded into.
  • It supports AVI, MOV, MP4 and other popular video formats.

Try out TubGet and do drop in your comments.

Link: TubGet

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Use a Timer, Alarm or Stopwatch on Your Browser – Timer Tab

Many people like me, can lose track of the time while reading posts, replying to email, checking out photos and videos and even following the news. The browser undoubtedly is a place I spend a few hours everyday.

I find that keeping track of time would be quite productive and an alarm or countdown to alert me of the time in the browser would be a good idea. Timer Tab allows creating an alarm like warning which plays at a specific time which you set.

Timer Tab Features

  • Just visit Timer Tab website and set the alarm for a specific local time or simply a timer which counts down to the time. The stopwatch can be used to track time spent online or on the browser without any alerts or alarm.
  • Timer Tab is also available as a Chrome Application for its browser. It also using these features even in while offline.
  • A good tip is to pin the tab on your browser so it can act as a timer every time you open the browser. This works just fine with the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Do try out Timer Tab and drop in your comments.

Link: TimerTab

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Create Easy to Remember Short URL of Your Google+ Profile

I have liked using Google Plus for a few days, but found the Google+ ID a little too tedious to remember. The Google+ profile is basically a numerical id and very difficult to share with people. There is no way to customize this profile id into a login name.

But there is a quick fix for that which is not from Google+ but a third-party tool called GPlus.to.

Just look up your Google+ profile ID and insert that number along with your nickname into the online tool.

Now with this I have a more easy to remember URL for my Google+ profile as Gplus.to/adityakane instead of the long and difficult to remember URL plus.google.com/u/0/116447136547996635976. 🙂

I am pretty sure that once Google+ is out of beta it will soon make this feature available but until then you might want to use Gplus.to.

Do drop in your comments.

Link: Gplus.To

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Get Latest Articles and Videos with Real-time Encyclopedia

In this age of information, there are literally a million things happening around us. RSS readers and search engines usually do a good job of keeping people informed. Sometimes you just want to catch up some real-time buzz.

For example I wanted to look up recent results on Google Plus, Zomobo gave me all the latest trending links on YouTube, Twitter and even Wikipedia articles.

Zomobo Features

  • Just enter the query into the search box and get results nicely arranged. This is a great way to learn what is latest about a topic along with actually learning about it.
  • It shows relevant links to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts along with a few public documents and links.
  • Other categories where information is arranged is Blogs, News and related images.

I think this web service, would be a very useful service to learn about something new on the web. I think it is like a enhanced version of Wikipedia.

Do try out Zomobo and drop in your comments.

Link: Zomobo