Friday, March 31, 2006

Gliffy - Online Diagram Editor

Gliffy is an online diagram editor which is amazingly slick and easy to use. Below is the diagram created by gliffy team to show its capability.






    Features

  • Shapes- it supports all the basic shapes i.e. lines, rectangles, ellipse, square etc. and all the flow chart shapes.



  • Share capability- It allows to publish the diagram, collaborate, print the diagram, save the diagram in SVG format or JPEG format. It all



  • Editor capability- It supports all the keyboard shortcuts ctrl + c, ctrl + z etc. It attaches properties for each object on the grid ( it shows the grid to create symmetrical diagram). These are the properties to bold the text, change the font, alignment, justify, color etc. For other shapes it allows expansd/collapse, coloring etc.



  • Revision history - It has source control system embedded in it, shows various versions for the currently opened document. It provides the user with a capability to go back to previous version.




I have created a simple diagram using gliffy which is published here.

I am highly impressed by Gliffy's slick implementation and highly shophisticated features but it has some minor flaws like
1) Saving cookies for the current page and login etc. so that when user comes back they should be directed there.
2) Undo worked for last 3 changes only for me.
3) When clicking on versions instead of showing hour glass, show loading message in dark color or some spinning image.

But overall this is really good replacement for expensive tools like visio which many people (including developers, student) need to create basic diagrams. This tool does this job nicely. Great work guyz.

Mobbed today!!

Well not really but Mobber capture who is online on which page.

You can see slider below my blog's heading showing different images and avtars and which page they are on right now. It allows user to click on each image to see their profile, chat with them privately. It also allows to create a chat room where group of people can join and chat togather.

Sweet implementation using AJAX and very simple but innovative concept. To add this bar to your page add the following script right below the heading.

Enjoy mobbing !!

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Alternative to yahoo finance - Google finance

Google has launched tonight it's finance site which is a great alternative to MSN's and yahoo's finance site.



Google as usual does the same thing differently and in a much cleaner and better way. Google finance has the following features.

  • Search engine which is the most important forte of google is embedded in this product which can be used to get stock by their tickers, company name, sector name, specialization etc.


  • It stores your portfolio, you can add tickers to your portfolio. It imports tickers from your portfolio if you have created in your personalized google home page.


  • The chart is implemented in a very neat way (similar to google maps). You can drag your mouse on the chart and it will go backwards to those days. The new feature along with it is the news headline associated on those days changes along with your mouse movement. Very sleak implementation using AJAX.


  • It shows company facts, company summary , company financials, management, related companies and their stock prices, blog posts for that company, disucssion board and more resources. It provides users to start discussion on each of the stock provided the post abides all the rules laid out by google.


  • People will have more alternative than sticking to yahoo or msn or any other site.




The only thing which I would love to see here is real time quotes for free :)

Friday, March 17, 2006

Jabphone - Jabber to phone gateway

Jabphone is a gateway to make phone calls using Jabber messaging clients (Google talk, gaim, Kopete, PSI etc.) and to SMS to mobile phone (cellular) anywhere in the world.



Jabphone is fully compliant in Google talk as of now. To use jabphone you need to add mr@jabphone.com as your friend using add friend button on your instant messaging client.

As you you open your account you get a chat messaging window on your system. To place a call, write "call " and accept the voice chat request by mr@jabphone.com. Examples: call 1-418-555-1212, call 33 2.11.22.11.22
To send a SMS, write "sms "
Please see below the chat window which appears when you double click on it in your messenger.



If you check your account initially it will give you $0.33 free credit to make calls or to use it for SMS. It provides buttons for credits for 5, 10, 25 and 100 dollars respectively. It shows the usage of your credit by showing call history in which it shows destination, date and duration for which calls are made. It also provides list of rates for different countries across the world.



I see this as a really great application to make calls from computer to phone anywhere in the world. I find SMS as a great feature which allows people to use computer to send SMS rather than using tiny keyboard on cell phone to do the same.

Great product.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Fixya - Support for products

Fixya is a web application which can be used to find support for any kind of consumer product like digital camera, printer, laptop etc.



Fixya aggregates all support information that from the internet and stores it into their database by categorizing on the basis of manufacturers, products etc. At the same time, Fixya's knowledgebase is updated by a live community of users who share their experiences with support problems and solutions. It uses rating system whch allows users to find the best solution for every consumer product problem and even offer a new solution.

In their homepage Fixya shows most common problems and their best solutions, problems which are not solved, top experts who shares their expertise in solving or supporting some product's problem. The best thing about that support information is that it is based on the experiences of users rather than the manufacturer.

Megite - A intelligent newspaper

Megite is the newspaper for anyone interested in what's happening right now by intelligently uncovering the most relevant items from auto discovered news sites and weblogs.



It gathers all the important news(technical, entertainment, politics, deals, sports etc.) from the web using keywords, OPML file, blog for each category and uses ranking algorithm to show the relevant items without duplication on it site.

I am using their small widget to show top news (technology) from megite on my blog (look at my sidebar).

Monday, March 13, 2006

LabelR - way to tag blogger's blog

Labelr is a plugin for blogger's blog so that user can tag their post. All the tags will be categorized and will be shown as a category (this name is customizable, for instance we can name it as Tags) in the side bar.



As you see on the sidebar below the google ads I have one more template Category where all the labels which I will create will be displayed. It allows user to file your particular post under those labels. So when you will click on one of the label in the category all the posts which are filed under that category or tag will show up.

It is a nice and handy utility to categorize your post on blogger so that later it will be useful to get post which has relevant labels associated with it.

KeepVid - For keeping (downloading) popular videos on your system

KeepVid is a web based video download tool which can download vides from most of the famous video hosting sites like google video, youtube, metacafe and so on.



It is very simple to download any video. Follow these steps.

  • Go to the video hosting site, search for your video and get the URL of the video from your search result (by clicking on it, you will get the url on the address bar).

  • Copy this URL and paste it into KeepVid download textbox and click download.

  • It gets you the link for downloading the video. Right click on the link and click save link as and it will open the save as dialog box. Change the extension from .php to .flv



You will need FLV player to play the downloaded video. If you don't want to download FLV player then you should have VLD media player.

It is very useful tool to download video from number of sites. Right now it supports 40 odd video hosting sites including all the biggies.

TripConnect - Share your trip to help others

TripConnect allows people to advice others about different destinations across the world. It allows user to create group or join groups to get advice about hotels, destination to go, places to eat etc.



It is a nice way to share information about different places where you have been to or where you want to go. Right now this service is in beta and not very clean. It is full of advertisements to get ad revenue.

While giving ratings to the places it allows to give rating to hotel, resturants but the interfaces it clumsy. It opens up another window when we need to add information about resturants and hotels, not purely web 2.0

It needs lot of refinement before it is publicly available for masses to use.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

My ether buttons so that people can reach me

I am testing ether about which i did write sometime back here . After we create our account in ether, it provides us with the following buttons (and links) which we can stick it on our website, blog, signature (email) etc.

dipeshkhakhkhar
1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 01308323










Call Me

These buttons allows seller to publish their services through different ways. I have attached one on my blog too now.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

3Bubbles are sprouting on my blog

I have integrated 3bubbles on all my posts. For those who don't know what I am talking about have a look here .




3bubbles facilitates live conversataion on your blog or website. This application is still in beta phase, but already people have started writing greasemonkey scripts to adapt it as per their requirements. So consider this situation, when someone wants keep a watch on 3bubbles chat on his blog or site, get a notification when someone joins a chat like the way we get email notification in google alert, here is the solution by Social twister . Chat watcher is not working as of now but will keep a eye on it.

I also have live chat link on my blog at the end of each post.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Online Microsoft Office - ThinkFree

As we know that web2.0 is sweeping across the Internet with rich user interface application, here comes one more player ThinkFree who has integrated power of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.



Following are the features of OnlineThinkFree application:



  • It gives the power to the user to create new word, excel and powerpoint documents and save it in their folder, so that they can access it from anywhere, anytime.

  • It does allow user to create their own folder and organise their documents as per their need. It allows moving or copying of documents and folders.

  • It allows user to edit and modify these documents whenever needed.

  • It can upload documents in any of these formats.

  • Users can post their documents to their blog with one click.

  • Users can keep their document public or private.






Few more features like sending file and properties of the document will be implemented soon. This application takes some time initially to load or create new document as it interacts with JVM (Java Virtual Machine) installed on the system and creates some stuff in it. It uses JVM's cache functionality so that next time it loads application (word, powerpoint and excel) quickly.

Currently it is in beta version and allows user to create their account with 30 MB of free storage. This is a killer application, allowing user to live without having expensive software on their system. Users are not needed to upgrade their paid software on their machine instead use this kind of application wherein they can have almost the same advantages of desktop software.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Earn money to Talk!

Wait wait don't start blabbering, well who knows someone likes your blabbering also, so get paid to talk. When i say talk it is a talk in the form of consultancy, advices, skills which you sell like writing news column, writing blog, writing research for someone or doing homework for someone.

Check this out here. Here you can create your customer account.



Following are the steps for creating your sellers account. Right now only selected beta testers can have sellers account and rest will have customers account.



  • Sellers will get a toll free number like 1-888-my-ether with a unique 8 digit extension. So when customer call at this number it will be redirected to the contact number which a seller sets up during seller registeration. It can be home, office or cell number

  • Seller quotes his/her rate either on the basis of hour or minutes.

  • It allows seller to set call timings during which they will talk, so its upto them when do they want to provide their services. It will be easy to set timings either from web or from cell phone.

  • Next step is to publish your ether phone number whereever you want like blog, website, business card, school's notice board etc.

  • Get money when you recieve call from someone. When someone calls you they must have already paid money to you. Isn't it cool ! So talk with them and offer services to them. Money payment is through Ether and this is what is their business model. Sellers publish their services through Ether and ether charges customers 15% for the services offered through them by the service providers (sellers). 15% they are charging for setting up this infrastructure, a nice web.20 distributed application to use and convenience and effort put on to make this viable. Well it includes the charges they have to pay to the credit card company if customers uses credit card.



This application from Ether seems very promising and have great potential for on demand services to be provided by the people to the people through them.

Great work!

Here is my Sergey Brin!

For those of us who have not got chance to play with Larry Page(s) yet, no big deal we will spend time playing with Brin(s).



Don't wait, make your Brins and publish it on the web and share it with your friends.

My Brin is here.