TechnoTracker

GSpace: a must-have extension for Firefox

2006-04-14T09:24:00.000+02:00

Gmail high capacity and the availability of its API tempted a lot of people from the begining to use it as a hard drive for file storage or back-up and now, we have several solutions for trasfering files to our gmail account from a web application to a firefox extension.
I've tried GmailDrive, Xmailharddrive.com, and Gspace and
among these the later one, Gspace, a firfox extension written by Rahul Jonna was far better than others. its long list of features and its speed outweigh all its rivals in this field.
you can easily upload and download big executable files (bigger than 10 MB which is normally not allowed by google!) with high speed and without any problem. here are some of the key featurs:

Files > 10 MB can be uploaded.
Allows to upload and download files and folders.
Every file is sent as an attachment.
Allow to upload executable files.
Allow to preview images before download.
Allow so send files or folders directly to another email address of your own or a friend.

if you are using Firefox browser then Gspace is a must have!

ajaxXLS: another gift from ajaxLaunch

2006-04-14T09:06:00.000+02:00

introducing ajaxXLS, AjaxLauch is also entered the web-based spreadsheet market which the previous players were Jotspot Tracker, Num Sum and iRow. Although none of them charging money for their service (and it's not also probable to do it in the future), most of them are fighting with hope of a good acquisition from a bigger company (like Google or Microsoft) which sounds reasonable. google is one of the potential customers of these kind of applications in order complete its portfolio of office web appz.
here is a short description of ajaxXLS from their website:

a web-based viewer application with a look and feel similar to Microsoft Excel. With one click you can easily open any .xls file in just a few seconds. The interactivity and responsiveness provided by AJAX programming allows you to enjoy the power and utility of a spreadsheet without the cost of conventional software.

Impressive Google Calendar Launched!

2006-04-14T08:30:00.000+02:00

Google finally launched its ajax-based calendar application which sounds prefect and is going to challenge not only the online calendar applications like 30boxes, Kiko and CalendarHub but also the old and famous desktop calendar softwares like outlook and iCal.
the key features according to Michael Arrington are:

Text recognition - In adding an event, or detecting a new event from Gmail, Calendar automatically detects event-specific words and suggests the adding of a new event with data auto-structured.
Manage Multiple Calendars - set up multiple calendars (work, personal, etc) and view them separatetogether.
Heavy Gmail integration an event, you can add it to Google Calendar with just a couple clicks. Google Calendar links on the right side of the Gmail page.
Sharing - Calendars can be shared with others, and you can subscribe to others’page.Sharingndars. Read/write permissions can be granted on a per user basis. Calendars can be published via a web page or via RSS, so readers do not need to be on the Google Calendar platform.
Importing - You can import events from other calendar programs, including Yplatform.ImportingMicrosoft Outlook. Click “Settings,” then “Import Calendar”.
Calendar Search

Read more about Google Calendar on other websites. yesterday and today all the geeks are talking about it, so don't miss it:

Netvibes released multi-tabs and multi-columns features

2006-04-09T18:17:00.000+02:00

Netvibes, the Paris-based web 2.0 home page solution, added a couple of new features to cope with the harsh competition in the web 2.0 personal homepages market. A lot of companies entered this market in 2005 which makes the market a little bit over-crowded but still most of them fail in providing a real full-featured personal homepage for the users. on the other hand, the expectations of the users increased though to the competition and now they are more requesting for a mash up service that could not only work as a personal homepage but also as an online feed reader or instant messaging system. Netvibes' main competitors are giants like Google's Personal Homepages and Microsoft Live Personal Homepage but there are also small companies doing quite well in this market namely, ProtoPage, Pageflakes and Goowy. Anyway, their most important new feature is the highly requested tabbing feature. In addition, they add also some other useful features like:

The ability to change the column number and hide the green page title for more screen space!
Enable/disable faviconsDecide
to preload modules in background to increase the loading speedcheck

Check the new version of Netvibes and I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Ajax load: create your own loading image!

2006-04-04T05:34:00.000+02:00

Delicious adds private bookmarking and import features

2006-04-04T05:15:00.000+02:00

Del.icio.us, recently, has added two new features. The first is the controversial private bookmarking and the second (not that much new) is the re-activation of the suspended import feature.
Private bookmarking feature brought up a hot debate among those who are supporting having this feature and those who believe privatization is against the norms of a social community.
the problem mainly stem from different looks over the functional concept of the delicious. while the former believes that delicious is a bookmarking tool and therefore it must have some privatization features, the latter sees delicious as a social community rather a bookmarking tool and says that if it is something private then its place is not on delicious.
if you are interested you can read people comments on delicious weblog regarding this new feature. the number of comments clearly shows how much controversial this feature is!

Yahoo new user interface of the main page

2006-03-30T09:34:00.000+02:00

yahoo recently decided to let some of its lucky visitors to have the chance of testing the new user interface which dramatically changed comparing to the current interface.

they new interface is far better in terms of user-experience, simplicity and user-friendliness. They omitted color of the box headers form the previous UI and convert it to a light grey, stylish boxes which add more consistency to the deign and easier to read. It also reduce the weight of the page for the reader's eye.
another big change is moving all the tools and services to the right side in a vertical menu. Although this kind of design might be considered as a traditional design style but in Yahoo's case it seams to be very effective and helpful by letting you easily and freely take a look at all of their services in fraction of second (something which was, if not impossible, very hard and time consuming in the past. I'm sure with this new user interface you will find a lot of new and useful services from yahoo which are not actually new!

Ajax Sketch, the first step toward Online Vector Graphics Softwares

2006-03-30T09:13:00.000+02:00

After releasing AjaxWrite, the AjaxLaunch team, as they promised before, launched their new Ajax-based software called ajaxSketch. According to their website, it is supposed to be a paired down version of Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape which is completely free and perfect for creating quick charts and diagrams from scratch. It includes autoshapes, pencil mode, and text for creating the basics. You can also edit by resizing, rotating, changing background or pen color, and altering opacity.
the software is still very rudimentary but it can clearly show the new capabilities that ajax brought to web developers. Now, web, considering its capabilities and drawbacks, could be a potential threat for all kinds of desktop application. ajaxWrite and ajaxSketch are proving this fact.

Web 2.0 Validator, or "is your website a real web 2.0?"

2006-03-28T10:36:00.000+02:00

Web 2.0 Validator is a really cool idea! Grading your website and identifying the level of your "web-two-ness". But unfortunately, some of the criteria are ridiculous somehow, like referring to firefox or using prototype.js! There are a lot of improvement opportunity and you know, like all the other web 2.0 services they are "still in beta."

Screenshots of CL2 the new Ajax -based Google Calendar

2006-03-28T10:19:00.000+02:00

Visited Countries

2006-03-28T08:36:00.000+02:00

Visited Countries is a cool service demonstrating the power of manipulating the palette of a gif image on the fly. It starts with a map of the world with each country in a different color. The script asks which country you have been to and sets the colors of those countries to red, the rest to gray. It's the easiest and sexiest way to show where you have been and which countries have you visited in the past.

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

SixApart Confirms Funding and Acquisition

2006-03-19T23:46:00.000+01:00

As previously widely speculated, Six Apart, the makers of the TypePad blogging platform and MovableType blogging tool today announced that they have closed a Series C round of financing of $12 Million. The round was raised from Focus Ventures, Intel Capital and August Capital and brings total amount Six Apart has raised to $23 Million.

Six Apart seem to be doing well with a large subscriber base at TypePad and their recent announcement of TypePad business class and a new plan to bring more businesses into blogging easier. SixApart have a lot more growing to do and this latest round of funding should see them through the next phases of growth.

Also SixApart today announced that they have acquired SplashBlog for an undisclosed sum. SplashBlog is a blogging solution for mobile phones and PDA’s and we should shortly see this service integrated with Six Apart’s existing services.

Web 2.0 Time Tracker: 14Dayz

2006-03-19T23:36:00.000+01:00

14Dayz is a Netherlands based company that is still in private beta, although I’ve had a chance to test it out. It does one thing, and well: time tracking. It allows multiple project, categories and subcategories, and multiple users. Reports can be viewed in the browser, or exported in excel or pdf format.

Pricing isn’t cheap. There is a free unlimited version that is restricted to a single project, which isn’t much help for people with multiple clients they are tracking. Pricing for the premium plans ranges up to $99 per month.

The site is still in beta and needs some work before they launch. Saul Weiner, another beta tester, has posted a couple of helpful suggestions and I agree with him - navigation is poor, and I don’t like having to leave the main screen for things like new category creation. The back end seems solid, though.

One other feature that is really needed is billing. The report has total time, but there is no way to associate a project or hourly fee to that time, nor is there an invoicing function. Building something like Blinksale into this would make it significantly more useful.