Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

There are all kinds of alternatives popping up for managing RSS feeds in an effecient, and easy-to-use way. One that you probably haven’t tried is called Anothr and it will send feed updates directly to your Google Talk or Skype instant messenger.

I was actually surprised at how easy the service was to use, and actually kind of fun. For Google Talk, all I had to do was add anothr@gmail.com to my list of friends in Google Talk and I was almost instantly able to start “chatting” with the bot. It made me feel like I was using a command-line RSS reader which is essentially what it is, and from it you can add/remove feeds, import OPML files, and set intervals for which you want to be notified. If you ever forget the commands, just type a question mark (?) in a message to the Anothr bot and it will let you know what commands you can use.

Using the command line to manage your subscriptions could get pretty tedious, and for that reason they also let you manage them via a web-based interface. The URL needed to manage your subscriptions from a website can be found by typing in the question mark (?) in a message to the Anothr bot.

So, what does it look like then when you’re using Anothr? Here is a screenshot from the notification message that Google Talk shows:

And here is what the actual article looks like…you’ll notice that they trim it down to just a summary and remove all images:

This obviously isn’t a great way to manage hundreds of feeds, but if you have a few favorites (like ours ) that you really want to keep on top of then this should work great for you. Some feed reader applications already offer a notifier so this may not be extremely necessary, but this makes use of a program that you probably already have installed.

There is no registration necessary…to get started just send a message to anothr@gmail.com and you should quickly receive a reply. Visit the Anothr homepage for more information.

News Source: Google Operating System

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This article was written on August 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

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Do you remember what a short time ago that it was when answering machines were saving our phone messages? There were the ones that had limited storage or maybe you had the one that took the mini tapes? Either way we are seeing those answering machines fade out as the days go by and voicemail is the replacement.

The problem is that people don’t have just one phone that they need to retrieve messages from. Instead there are so many of us that have 2 cellphones (or more), a home phone, a work phone, and the list can go on and on. GotVoice is aimed to simplify how you access your voicemail by delivering it straight to your email just like Vonage does for their VoIP users.

There are currently three plans available:

As you can tell from the table the biggest difference between the plans are how many times your voicemail is checked throughout the day. You can schedule the checks yourself based upon a large chart of times that are listed in 30-minute intervals. Most people who receive many messages a day would probably want to pay for the Premium version which will give you 24 checks each day. That means you could schedule a voicemail retrieval every 30-minutes from 7:00AM to 5:00PM and still have 4 checks left over to use during the night time.

Here is what the scheduling chart looks like:

As you can see in the image it is extremely easy to customize your schedule. Just click on the times that you want GotVoice to retrieve your messages and all you have to do is watch your email. They even add a button to the right of each row which will let you schedule the same time for each day of the week.

What if you never want to check a message on your phone again? You don’t have to worry about your voicemail filling up because users of the free GotVoice service can have the messages on their phone deleted every Sunday night. If you decide to pay for the service then you can even have all your message deleted every night. At first you will probably say “I’ll leave the messages on the phone just in case” but after a little while you will see how little you call your voicemail when you can just check it with your email.

After your messages have been downloaded GotVoice will mark them as “listened to” on your phone. That way it is always easy to distinguish which messages GotVoice has already retrieved when calling your voicemail on your phone.

There are also a variety of ways to manually retrieve your messages. The most common way would be to visit your Message Management screen where there is a “Retrieve New” button. A more convenient way is using the simple program that they offer which runs in your system tray. From there you can check for new messages or delete the messages that are on your phone. The only thing that it lacks is a way to configure your account (like schedule your message retrievals) .

I do have a gripe with the emails that they send. They display two advertisements in each email which make up a large portion of the content. Of course, for free users this is expected but I get the ads even as a paid user. In the past I have rarely seen services contain advertisements if you already have to pay upfront. I guess I will have to admit that I actually don’t “see” the advertisements though because I use GMail and it is set to block images from them . No big deal.

So are the paid versions of GotVoice worth it? After using the Premium service for a week I have to say that the free service is plenty for me. I don’t receive enough voicemails in a days time. However, what works for me may not always work for you. If you’re receiving many voicemails a day, a paid service would be more than worth it and convenient. They boast the great MP3 attachment feature which is a great addition for the paid users and could become a convenient way to access your messages. For myself, I found that I like to click on the link I receive in the email and have it start playing on their Website versus the MP3. The message starts playing less than 5 seconds after I click the link when I would have to otherwise wait for my music player to open before it can start playing the MP3. The RSS feed in the Premium version would be useful for anyone that owns an iPod because you can have iTunes put all of your voicemails right on your iPod!

Overall I would say that GotVoice is well worth the few minutes it will take to set everything up. I highly recommend that you at least try out the free service, and if you like it, it will probably be worth paying the monthly fee for the Premium or Plus accounts. Remember that with the free service you only get 3 scheduled message retrievals per day, but you can manually retrieve them as much as you want! That’s where the desktop app really starts to shine.

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This article was written on January 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Yesterday we wrote about Qtrax, a business that was launching “the worlds first 100% legal and free Peer-2-Peer music application” with all 4 major record labels on board. There was a ton of hype surrounding the launch, particularly because they said they had 25 million songs available for free.  Unfortunately for them, the hype was for nothing and all that has come out of this is a lesson for future business owners on how not to launch a business.

By the time they actually managed to get the software launched late yesterday, not a single song was being offered for download. Some launch, huh?  Engadget described it as a “barely skinned version of the open source Mozilla-based Songbird music player.” Several hours after launch, they managed to get 10 million tracks to show-up, but downloads still did not work. Sounds like they jumped the gun to me.  To make matters worse, none of the four major record labels have actually signed any type of contract. Some people have called the Qtrax team liars while others have said they are misrepresenting the actions of the music labels and the service is a total fraud.

The only benefit to this whole situation that I can see is that Qtrax has been plastered all over the place because of the mis-haps they have experienced.  And to me, it seems like they are generating more publicity for themselves than they would have received had everything gone as planned. To say that they had the four major record labels on board when they really didn’t though, that’s pretty bad. It makes you wonder what their investors are thinking at this point, doesn’t it? If they can manage to actually get the major record labels on board though, this could be big and would probably help people forget about the fiasco that came about when the service first launched.

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This article was written on April 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Yesterday Netvibes introduced Netvibes Universe, a compilation of both personal and branded universes that will give you access to more information. Netvibes is known as being one of the best personalized Ajax-based homepages organized with tabs, and filled with user selected widgets. This is a whole new area for them to dive into, and one that I think will attract new users.

If a user decides that they want a personal universe, they will have the option of creating both a private page and a public page where everybody will be able to see what is on the page.  The public page will be like your personal recommendation and you can include feeds, widgets, sites, and other content that you think others should check-out.

Last week we wrote about CBS teaming up with several big names to distribute content, and Netvibes was one of them.  The branded universes is where CBS and other names will fit in.

Netvibes has partnered with not only media companies, but musicians and other sources to create Branded Universes like CNN Money, Newsweek, CBS, 50 Cent, and more. They can be accessed from anywhere for free, or you can even add the content to your personal Netvibes page.

They’ve created a “Universe Browser” which will help you navigate through all of the different Universes available. Using that browser, you’ll also be able to add new ones.There are several pages of different Branded Universes, which gives you plenty to choose from, and they’ll be adding more in the future. Right now they’re listed in alphabetical order, and because there are only 12 pages, it’s not too difficult to sort through them all. 

In the future however, I think they’ll need to come up with a new way of organizing them so that it’s quicker and easier to find items in the categories you’re interested in like music or news. The list of current Branded Universes can be found here.

Thus far, Netvibes has always remained one step up from the rest of the crowd like Google, and Yahoo  with their personalized homepages.  I’m wondering if Google and Yahoo will take this challenge and look for opportunities to improve their service, or if they’ll just stick with what they have and make moderate improvements here and there.

Netvibes has set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd in the past, and this is another great way to set them apart further and draw in more fans.

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This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

The big news today for Last.fm is that CBS has acquired them for 280 million! In their statement, CBS said that Last.fm fits well with their plan to attract a younger crowd (as though this isn’t obvious) to help transform CBS from a “content company” to an “audience company.” CBS has been on a roll lately by fully immersing themselves in Web 2.0 and all it has to offer.

If you haven’t paid much attention to Last.fm, it reminds me a lot of Pandora in that it ultimately provides users with a personalized streaming radio. They are different though, and both have a set of loyal users who use the services on a regular basis.

This leads me to to the following question: Which do you prefer and why? I know for non US users, the answer is simple. It was just a month ago that Pandora started to exclude non-US users from their service due to issues with the Digital Millennium Copyright act.

On a whole, I’d say Pandora is easier to use, however Last.fm has a social aspect that attracts people in. Each service is good in its own way whether it be the user interface, or selection of music, it just becomes a matter of preference.

Feel free to head on over to the forum to continue the discussion that Chris has already started on this topic.

Source: Reuters [via PCMag.com]

Forum Discussion

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