Services | money news blog

13 05 2008

RIM and Microsoft announce Windows Live services for Blackberry handsets

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Utilities, Web services, Microsoft, Social Software, BlackBerry, web 2.0

windows live search develop for crackberry

RIM and Microsoft have announced a deal that’ll officially bring Windows Live Services — specifically Hotmail and Messenger — to Blackberry handsets. Has hell frozen over? We wouldn’t know. What we do know is the two companies have been rivals in the mobile industry up until now, but they both gain significantly from agreement.

Microsoft is no stranger to the idea of playing in a competitor’s sandbox (remember Office for Mac?). By making Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail more accessible on the Crackberry, the company further pushes its communications services towards mass standardization especially in the business world. RIM also benefits from the agreement in the same way Apple benefits from Office for Mac: an OS is only as good as the software on it.

Messenger on Blackberry should retain most of its functions. It looks like users will be able to do the usual: IM, set status, pull up buddy lists, save conversations, use emoticons, and even send and receive files. While it looks like users can join group chats, creating group chats seems to be absent from the feature list.

12 05 2008

Upload files to multiple file sharing sites with Uploadjockey

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: World wide web, Web services, web 2.0

Can’t decide whether to upload a file to Rapidshare, MegaUpload, Badongo, or another service? Each site basically offers the same service. You can upload files and share the link with friends or strangers over emal, IM, web sites, or user forums. But some of the services might be blocked by various ISPs, or the people you’re trying to share the files with might have registered accounts with one site, but not the others.

Uploadjockey solves these admittedly small problems by making it easy to upload your files to multiple sites. Just grab any file under 100MB from your desktop, and Uploadjockey will send it to six different file sharing sites and provide you with download links.

Beware, the Uploadjockey interface is choc full of obtrusive ads and pop-ups. But if you’re willing to brave the advertising, we can’t think of a simpler way to upload you big files to multiple sites.

[via GHacks]

12 05 2008

Fuelfrog: track gas mileage and cost

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Web services

Fuelfrog is a web service for tracking your gas mileage and cost-per-gallon trends which can provide insight into your empty wallet. By adding simple information each time you fill up your vehicle, Fuelfrog will chart that data to provide a gas history.

Fuelfrog accepts updates via its website, but it also can accept data via Twitter direct message. Simply add your Twitter account to your Fuelfrog profile and Twitter the miles since your last fill up, price per gallon, and number of gallons bought to @fuelfrog.

Someday you’ll be able to log in to Fuelfrog and tell your children, “See, back in my day I only paid $4.00 for a gallon of gas!”

[Via del.icio.us]

12 05 2008

gReader Comments adds Disqus comments to Google Reader

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Browser Tips, web 2.0

Last year two services launched, giving bloggers easy access to threaded comments, spam control, avatars, and other advanced features. Disqus and Intense Debate also let you create a single profile which you can use to leave comments on any participating blog or web site. No need to register for each individual blog.

And since last year, thousands of web sites have adopted these two commenting systems. Considering there are millions of blogs out there, that’s just a drop in the bucket. But each filled bucket starts with a single drop. Or something like that. Anyway, if any of the blogs you follow use Disqus, gReader Comments is a pretty nifty Firefox plugin that will let you see comments in Google Reader without clicking through to the blog.

Once you install gReader Comments, you should notice a new box in your Google Reader post windows that states Comments. Click on this box and a Disqus window will pop up showing you the comments left on the post and offering you the chance to leave your own comments.

The plugin still needs some work. We tested it with Firefox 2.0.0.14 and Firefox 3 beta 5, and in both browsers gReader Comments failed to accurately show how many comments each post had. At first it would show no comments, and then when you click the box on a post that actually has, state 3 comments, all the boxes may say 3 comments whether here are actually comments or not. But with a tiny more work, this could be an extraordinarily useful plugin for anyone who spends most of their time on the web in Google Reader.

[via A VC]

12 05 2008

TweetWire turns Twitter into a newspaper

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Twitter might have started off as a micro-blogging tool that asked users “what are you doing” right now? But the service has grown into a complex communications platform. Some people use Twitter to keep in touch with a few friends, while others use it take part in wider discussions taking place throughout the blogosphere. Still others use it as a sort of micro-broadcast medium, sending out updates, but rarely responding to messages posted by others. One thing is clear though: People post a lot of links to interesting articles on Twitter.

TweetWire attempts to take some of the most interesting links and organize them in a newspaper style web page. Tweets are broken up into a handful of categories, including elections, technology, sports, and celebrities. And the links are collected using a combination of the Twitter search engine TweetScan and the Yahoo! Pipes RSS remixing utility.

The results are… mixed. On the one hand, we love the idea of finding some of the best links from Twitter laid out on a simple web page. This way you don’t have to sift through page after page of messages from your contacts to find out what people are talking about. But TweetWire isn’t going to replace your daily newspaper anytime soon. On the one hand, all the links were at least interesting enough for someone to post them on the web. On the other hand, a lot of the day’s top stories might never make it to TweetWire simply because nobody bothered to tweet about them.

If you’re only interested in tech news, you might want to check out TwitLinks, which compiles tweets from a handful of influential technology bloggers.

[via Killer Startups]

10 05 2008

Guess The Google - Today’s Time Waster

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Games, Web services, Time-Wasters, Search

Swift, what do the twenty images above have in common? If you guessed they’re all images pulled from Google Images, you guessed right. But that’s not the answer we’re looking for. The correct answer is Windows. And now you pretty much know how to play Guess the Google.

The game picks a random word, performs a Google Image search, and then gives you the results. You have 20 seconds to figure out the original search query. The faster you figure it out, the more points you get. The game is easy, but surprisingly addictive.

[via MakeUseOf]

10 05 2008

HelloTxt cross-platform microblogging site adds video, image support

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

If you have half a dozen social networks and microblogs that you like to update simultaneously, you probably need to go outside and get some fresh air. But before you do that, you can post an update to let all your friends know that you’re going outside to get some fresh air using HelloTxt.

Last time we looked on on the site, you could post messages to 10 different services including Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku. And that was about all you could do. But now the service has rolled out a new feature that lets you post images and videos. Well, sort of. You can upload an image to the HelloTxt server and get a shortened URL to place in your message so that anyone can click through and see the image. But HelloTxt doesn’t actually host the videos. You’ll need to duplicate the embed code from another site like YouTube or Vimeo. You do still get a shortened URL that you can send out to friends, so there’s some value in the video feature. Just not as much as we’d like.

Somewhat ironically, while HelloTxt will give you shortened URLs for videos and images, there’s no option to shorten a regular URL, so you’ll have to rely on old standbys like TinyURL if you just want to share a link.

[via Go2Web2.0]

10 05 2008

Guess The Google - Today’s Time Waster

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Games, Web services, Time-Wasters, Search

Quick, what do the twenty images above have in common? If you guessed they’re all images pulled from Google Images, you guessed right. But that’s not the answer we’re looking for. The correct answer is Windows. And now you pretty much know how to play Guess the Google.

The game picks a random word, performs a Google Image search, and then gives you the results. You have 20 seconds to figure out the original search query. The faster you figure it out, the more points you get. The game is easy, but surprisingly addictive.

[via MakeUseOf]

09 05 2008

CallerComplaints: Track down telemarketers and umm… complain

Posted by: in Services

Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

It’s 7:30 in the morning. You’re trying to get the children fed, clothed, and out the door on their way to school without being late for work yet again. And the phone rings. You don’t recognize the number, but you pick it up anyway because who knows? It might be important. “Hello?” you state. “Hello?” No answer. Just as you’re about to hang up, you hear a click and then a friendly voice finally comes on, asking if you’d like to apply for a credit card, change power companies, or buy a burial plot. There goes two minutes of your day that you’ll never be able to get back. And odds are it’s going to happen again tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that.

We’re not entirely sure that CallerComplaints will get those nasty telemarketers off your case any more than asking them to remove your number from their list. But it certainly might make you feel better.

When you visit the web site, you can type in the phone number of the people who have been calling and hanging up on you to find out if other people have complained about calls from that number. You can read their comments and enter your own. Or if you’re just bored and want to read some horror stories, you can click on the most reported numbers from the past week, month, or all time. And if you’ve got any tips for getting a telemarketer to halt calling, you can share them with the community. Or superior yet, share them with us in the comments!

[via Mashable]