You can never be too upfront with your audience. With RSS feeds, Google Alerts, and scraping tools, most of your faithful readers know about changes to your site as they happen. But determining exactly what has changed can be a challenge, even for your most dedicated fans. Now change-tracking service Versionista allows you to be as upfront as…
CoolFlick: Flickr Embedding Cooliris Style
Cooliris is one of the best ways to flip through photos, enabling you to scroll through hundreds of photos effortlessly. Flickr is one of the best sites to search for photos. Combine the two and you’ve got CoolFlick, a service that lays Cooliris’ thumbnail scrolling on top of Flickr – all from within the browser window.
Understand Your Electronica: Mugasha Makes Sense of Long DJ Sets (Invites)
If you’re into electronica, you’ve likely grabbed some sets from your favorite DJs. And while DJ sets are a great way to get fresh content from some of your favorite artists, they all suffer from one annoying drawback: a set is usually a single file devoid of any track information. What’s more, it’s usually a huge file spanning one or more hours…
Nothing Interesting to Say? Plinky Hopes to Change That
Like it or not. You’re a writer. You’re creating content on a daily basis, updating your Facebook status, commenting on blogs, sending tweets. Social networking requires that level of communication. But as a writer, you’re also a potential victim for writer’s block, a condition that plagues even the most prolific authors.
The next time you find…
Who Is Syndicating Your Content? CopyGator Knows
It’s no secret, we here at ReadWriteWeb are fans of RSS. Still, we have to admit that the format has its benefits and its drawbacks. In a world of RSS feeds, the syndication of content is a foregone conclusion – for readers. But as we all know, any number of sites have cropped up that take RSS content, publish it to another page, and wrap that page…
Whitehouse.gov: Looking Back at 12 Years of the US President’s Web Presence
As the eyes of the world were focused on the pomp and circumstance of Barack Obama moving into a new role as President of the United States, Obama’s Web team was hard at work – with far less fanfare – moving their Web property to a new address: whitehouse.gov, the official Web site for the President. And while, at first blush, the site may appear…
Need a Little More Personality in That Presentation? SlideShare’s YouTube Embed Can Help
For many, the ability to share presentations online has changed the way they design their slides, present material, and interact with their audience long after the presentation has passed. But when it comes right down to it, a presentation – regardless of the artistic rendering of the materials – is only as good as the presenter.
SlideShare…
Public Sentiment: Taking the True Pulse of the Public with Farewell W, Aloha Obama
There was a time not so long ago when traditional media provided the primary vehicle for voicing “public opinion,” how the average person felt about the world at large. But, today, as more and more people move online and begin sharing opinions, the “man on the street” has largely been subsumed by “the man or woman on the Web.” Which is a step in…
Dipity: Visualizing the Passage of Time
For many of us, our tributaries of social data find their way into our lifestream, an aggregated collection of our online activities. More often than not, that stream appears as a collection of text entries: the most recent item followed by the second most recent, and so on. While the progression is obvious, what’s not so clear is the passage of…
The Road More Traveled: Dopplr Compiles Personal Travel Histories for 2008
Travel. It can be both a blessing and a curse. And if you’re a frequent traveler – especially for business – you’re likely among the thousands of people wondering “Just how far did I travel, last year?”
Unfortunately, frequent flyer miles will only provide so much detail. That’s why the latest project from Dopplr – the site that helps you keep…
Obama in 3D: Photosynth to Crowdsource Synth of the 44th Presidential Inauguration
Next Tuesday, the eyes of the United States – and likely the world – will be on Washington, DC, as Barack Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States. Attendance is likely to dwarf any presidential inauguration in history – with estimates currently predicting at least one million people at the event…
LifestreamBackup: Keeping a Copy of Your Posts, Tweets, Photos, and More
Anyone who has ever crashed a computer without a backup knows the painful and arduous process required to restore the machine to its previous state. As such, many of us keep regular backups of the data on our systems, just in case.
But there’s another vast set of data many of us are creating on a daily basis that has little to no backup at all…
Odds Are, You Now Have a TypePad Connect Login
In November of last year, Six Apart announced a new community management tool, TypePad Connect, a service designed to give bloggers more insight and accessibility to the conversations taking place on their blogs – whether they used Six Apart products or not. Now, the community with access to TypePad Connect just got exponentially larger.
Too Lazy to Click that StumbleUpon Button? Playericious May Be for You
Social bookmarking sites – as many of us know – are a veritable treasure trove of information, especially when it comes to common tags like “howto” or “webdesign.” But sometimes, clicking through all of those links can get a bit arduous. That’s what makes playericious so great. It’s designed to let you be lazy. Just a few keystrokes and you’ll soon…
SMS to Kwiry: TiVo Flight of the Conchords kthxbai!
As the mobile handset continues to move from being one of our many computing platforms to becoming our primary platform, we want to be able to do more and more with it. We want to send messages with it, carry music on it, record video with it, and use it as a remote control for our lives. It’s all about immediate gratification and the power to…
Art Historians Rejoice: Google Earth and The Prado Bring Masterpieces Up Close – Really Close
It’s a well-known fact that Google is working to capture high-resolution images of the landscape for its mapping products. What might come as a surprise is that they’re also pursuing a similar challenge within the walls of one of the most famous museums in the world – The Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. Now, thanks to this groundbreaking project…
What Do You Think? RateItAll Rolls Out Additional Social Features
When we last spent time with RateItAll – roughly 18 months ago – the service had just released a Flash-based widget designed to help extend its reach to blogs. Today, we’re checking back in with the company as it rolls out a new look-and-feel, accompanied by a number of new features designed to facilitate recommendations on practically any topic…
Userfly: Get Usability Insights with One Line of Code
When it comes to Web design and development, one thing trumps the latest technology and cool features: usability. Why? Because all of the features and functions in the world are completely worthless if a human user is unable to figure out how to use them. But testing against human factors, creating use cases, and observing focus groups can prove to…
Hiring? Two New Apps Simplify Job Postings and Resume Review
Even with the economy in its current state, many companies are still hiring. ReadWriteWeb Jobwire is living proof of that. But when it comes to hiring in a down market, supply always exceeds demand, because there are always more people looking than jobs available. That can make it harder than ever for companies – especially small companies…
Searching for Random Tracks? Just Hear It May Let You Do Just That
There’s no shortage of music available on the Web. But finding that music and easily playing it? Another story entirely. Just Hear It hopes to solve that problem by allowing users to search for tunes, play those songs, and create temporary playlists based on the results they find – all from a Web interface that’s simple and straightforward.