Mygazines.com is a Flash based site where you can read most of your favorite magazines online for free. The big question is for how long, since this is copyrighted material after all, and as Folio reports, the magazine trade association MPA has already threatened legal action against the site.
Content on the site is uploaded by users and then displayed in a neat Flipbook reader with lots of tools like zoom, search, keyboard shortcuts, article directory, etc. You can also create your own magazine with content you supposedly own, upload it and share with others.
Since the site was registered in the Caribbean island of Anguilla, and is hosted by PRQ of Sweden, the same web host of Pirate Bay infamy, does the piracy theme apply? Although there are arguments aplenty for why publishers should be happy about their content being shared online - increased readership, more ad views, ability to go viral, etc., there is still that pesky copyright infringement argument that just won't go away.
If you think you're too old to do something like go back to college, learn how to scuba dive, or be social on the interwebs, you can either think again or stay beholden to your self imposed rigid beliefs. One person who throws such nonsense to the wind, is Ivy Bean, a 102 year old former mill worker, who has the distinction of being the oldest person on Facebook.
With 1,217 friends on Facebook (and climbing), Ivy's story has definitely resonated with people. She started with just 9 friends when her story was first published today. It just shows, even if you're late to the party, it's getting there that matters.
To find out more about Ivy and be her friend, check out the Oldest person on Facebook - Ivy Bean group.
Despite its seriously flawed name, Coccinella, the open source IM client, has some interesting features that might make you do a double take. The idea of chatting and having the ability to draw on a whiteboard, as well as play chess during a chat session sounds like fun, so I decided to give it a spin.
I learned from the process that Coccinella is the Latin name for ladybug. It is not, as I had thought originally, a bacteria found in pond scum. I continued my pursuit, preferring to focus on the cute little ladybug in the logo and ignore the unfortunate "ella" associations with the name.
Coccinella is a free download for Windows, Linux and Mac. After downloading the application, the set up assistant leads you to select from a list of servers to open a new account on. Although Coccinella can connect to any Jabber/XMPP instant messaging server including Google Talk, AOL, MSN and ICQ, you have to dig for information to find out how. The set up assistant leads you to select from various servers and so I created an account with Jabber.org. I was happy I did.
We're big fans of FriendFeed, the social network aggregator that helps you keep track of your friends' activities across different platforms like Twitter, LastFM, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and about 1,000 36 others. If you're a fan or if you're just getting started, below are 10 tools to help you experience it just the way you like, after the jump.
There is a battle for the hearts and wallets souls of our young surfing children on the interwebs. Parents are obviously concerned about the appropriateness of the world wide web being a kid's playground, so are looking for suitable controls to help them feel their children are protected online.
We looked at 2 kids browsers, Glubble and Kidzui, and gave them a test spin as well as subjected them to an unscientific kid focus group. Check out our results after the jump.
Wirewize is here to help you put together your home entertainment center setup and tell you just where to put all those a/v cables that may be confusing you. If you're not savvy with input/output and reading tiny instruction manuals in Chinese thinly disguised as English isn't your cup of tea, Wirewize could be what you need.
The concept is great - you tell Wirewize what components you have by providing the brand and model and after you input all your components, Wirewize shoots out a detailed step by step instruction list. The best part is the instructions are complete with detailed illustrations of the cables and inputs and they're in color. Wirewize is also nice to include pdf manuals of your system's components, a list of necessary cables and a way to purchase the cables if necessary.
You've been left behind (YBLB) is a new service to help you say "I told you so" to your friends and loved ones who don't make it with you during the Rapture. Rather than letting them figure out on their own that you've made it and they didn't, YBLB sends them an email from you so you can be sure to get the last word.
If nonnynonnybooboo isn't your style, your note could instead continue to harass encourage them to live their life the way you chose to live yours. You might also want to send them information as to the future hell they are about to endure and as YBLB so eloquently puts it, help "snatch them from the flames."
For just $40 for the first year, you get all this to help you stick it to your loved ones:
Store up to 250mb of documents
Send to up to 62 individual email addresses
150Mb encrypted document storage
100mb unencrypted document storage
You can edit documents any time
Write your own documents or choose from some of YBLB
Now, you might be wondering how YBLB will send the emails out since they're going to the Rapture party too. Well they came up with an ingenious solution - when 3 out of their 5 team members fail to log in over a 3 day period it will trigger the emails to be sent but, and here's the clever part, the system waits another 3 days to ensure no false triggers.
You've just got to hope the fab 5 of YBLB don't all get together and somehow aren't able to get online for 6 days pre-Rapture. That could be a very big oops.
Retaggr takes the concept of paper business cards and transforms them into Harry Potter like interactive cards. Beyond the benefits of not killing trees to leave your contact information, an interactive card is sooo multi dimensional. With your Retaggr card you can:
Show your recent Twitter messages
Link to your blogs, web profiles such as Facebook
Display your online activity on other sites like FriendFeed, Flickr, etc.
Add any web widget
Allow others to get in touch with you via Skype, MSN, Gtalk, etc.
Whereas paper cards are static, your profile card instantly updates as you update information on your various social networks. Also, when you leave comments on other Retaggr enabled sites, your profile card is left there too. If someone mentions you in a post, they can link to you so your card automagically appears.
A profile card provides more context to what you're about and what you're up to. And that is the other edge of the sword. (Cue scary music). How much information do you want people to have at their fingertips anyway?
FriendFeed has launched FriendFeed Rooms, a new feature where users can create private or public rooms to discuss various topics and share items with one another. Whatever happens in the room, stays in the room since only room members can see what comments are being shared by one another.
FriendFeed is a social network aggregator (which is growing wildly in popularity) that collects content from over 30 social networking sites and consolidates it to a customized feed.
Some of the rooms that have already been created include Obamamania (note to Hillary and McCain staffs) and a room about the new season of The Bachelorette. Rooms are a cinch to set up - all you do is click on the Rooms tab on your FriendFeed page and name the topic and whether the room will be public or private.
There are several Issues that need to be addressed. How do you find rooms that are public? And what about those name squatters who grab rooms with the names of corporate registered trademarked names? For instance, Thomas Hawk opened Ars Tecnica, Chevron and Exxon rooms just to see what he could register. Will there be a way to transfer room administration?
In any event, rooms looks like it's going to be a hit with users. Be sure to check in and tell us what your favorite FriendFeed Rooms are.
Budget Hero, released by American Public Media, is an online game where you're in charge of balancing the federal budget. If you're tired of hearing politician's economic policies as seen through the lens of political parties or special interests, Budget Hero cuts through the bull and provides policy options that have been vetted by non partisan government and think tank experts.
The object of the game is for you to balance the budget according to your values or goals, such as emphasis on national defense, health and wellness, economic stimulus, etc. You then play various cards from different categories representing sectors of the budget including among others, defense, school and kids, health care, and environment.
You're supposed to pay attention to the deficit meter and think about what impact your choices will have on future generations. You can then print out your budget and use it as a discussion point with others and even perhaps your elected representative.
We're happy to report in our own game we balanced the budget through 2028 and the budget bust point would not occur until 2070. We did this by repealing the Bush tax cuts, saving money on defense by having the troops come home soon, and raised taxes on the top 1% of wealthy Americans. We also raised the retirement age to 67, cut school lunch for kids who are not poor, and increased spending on mass transit.
So what's the big deal about balancing the budget?
How do you do decide which photosharing site to go with? If free is your criteria, there are certainly many options to choose from. Most free photo sharing sites are ad supported and come with a certain GB capacity limit. If you upgrade to a pro account, which can run anywhere from $20-$25 per year, there are typically no limits and no advertisements.
We took a look at the most popular photosharing sites' features and did a comparison to help you decide which photo site is best suited for your needs. We compared Flickr, Photobucket and Zooomr and then test drove each of the sites to see how well they did. Check out our unscientific findings after the jump.
It's official - SourceForge.net has joined the OpenID bandwagon. SourceForge, the world's largest open source software development website, is a little late to the party but nonetheless, it's nice to see a leader of the open source community adopting OpenID and walking the walk.
OpenID is an open source, decentralized, digital identity user system which allows users to have one identity across the internet and alleviates the hassle of having multiple user names and passwords to log-in to different sites.
OpenID is gaining traction with big companies such as AOL, Sun, Microsoft, and Novell who are accepting and providing OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins. Thanks FF!
Yes. It's true. Now, you can broadcast to the world what you eat, want to eat, feel like eating (hey, let's keep it clean) on a site dedicated to doing just that, called FoodFeed. We guess there's no end in sight to the banal, continuous, slog of bytes that people feel they must ingest and digest too.
Among the amazing features FoodFeed offers is the ability to search by yes, you guessed it - Food! Now you can put a search term in like, say, chicken, and bingo - everyone who has eaten chicken pops up. Wow. After you scroll through all the exciting chicken eating people, you'll probably either a). want to find all the beef eating people b). throw up or c). find some other place to explore on the interwebs or d). go outside and get some fresh air.
If you must tell everyone what is on your plate, well you can set up a feed, but first you need a Twitter account. Just add "having" as a friend on Twitter. Then check your feed out at "http://username.foodfeed.us." You can post by sending tweets to @having (showing up in your Twitter updates) or d having (not showing up in your Twitter updates).
What do you think? Do you think people are interested in your food itinerary? Are you riveted to others' food moods?
The folks at Aviary are at it again and today released their latest webbased photo tool called Dodo. Unlike any other photo editing tool, Dodo allows users to age people, places and things. So for instance, if you wanted to see what you might look like in say 25 years, you would upload a picture of yourself and choose different settings, set a year and click to generate. See below screenshot of Dodo in action.
What's really cool is you can reverse the process as well - a nice touch especially for your aging grandparents - like a face lift without the surgery. Dodo is a great tool to have in your editing arsenal and since it's web based, you can have it with you anywhere you go.
You can sign up for an Aviary account at http://a.viary.com. Be sure to log in, then log out and log in again to activate the Dodo tool.
We've covered Animoto before. It's a rocking web app that allows you to create a music video with your own photos or video in about 5 minutes or less. Now, Animoto has recently won the Film/TV Web award at the 2008 SXSW conference and has some new features we thought deserved a revisit.
For starters, Animoto has a new Facebook app which allows you to produce unlimited free 30 seconds spots using your Facebook photos. If any of your photos are tagged with your Facebook friends' names, they too will get an alert in their News Feed informing them.
If you're not too excited by that, (is it possible to get excited by Facebook apps anymore?), you can also now export any of your Animoto videos directly to YouTube by clicking a little button. The beauty here is there's no video camera or video editing software required to produce professional results.
And there's the ability to post your videos to most every social network around, like: MySpace, Friendster, Blogger, TypePad, Freewebs, Webwag, Pageflakes, Netvibes, Windows Live.com, iGoogle, Orkut, Hi5, LiveJournal, Xanga, myYearbook, LiveSpaces, Tagged, Multiply, BlackPlanet, Eons, Piczo, and Vox.
In our previous post, we said we wanted the ability to add text to the photos. Apparently that idea has registered with Animoto but it is not live yet. A work around is to add your text to a photo and save it as a JPG or GIF and upload it like your other photos. They are also still working on the ability to send videos to cellphones and downloading videos to your computer.
No word yet on a Lessig Method video tool. Now, wouldn't that be something?
