Oct 10

FoxyTunes Planet: The Web 2.0 Version of Music Searching

Posted in: Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

FoxyTunes Planet Beta

One of the most used Firefox extensions has to be FoxyTunes. It is designed to control a large range of media players right from your browser, and it is compatible with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Just when you thought the best couldn’t get better…

They are currently testing FoxyTunes Planet which is a music aggregation service. They have a nice search engine (pictured above) that will let you search for artists or you can browse for them by genre. Once you find the artist/group you’re looking for it will take you to a customizable page featuring videos, photos, news, bios, and much more.

They also offer a version of the FoxyTunes add-on/extension that works seamlessly with FoxyTunes Planet. While you’re playing a song all you have to do is click on the “planet” icon in the Status Bar to have it retrieve that artist’s page:

FoxyTunes Planet

As you can see from the screenshot above a wealth of information is presented to you in just seconds…and the best thing is that you can customize how much stuff is shown. One of the planned features is to let users add widgets that aren’t already pre-designed, but until that happens you’ll be limited to these:

  • Amazon.com
  • Last FM
  • Flickr
  • Google
  • iTunes Music Store
  • eMusic
  • Hype Machine
  • Rhapsody
  • Pandora
  • YouTube
  • Yahoo! Images
  • Yahoo! Music

So…one thing that is important for you to know is that the service is currently in a private Beta and you’ll have to request an invite to get in. “Jack of all Trades” is the one who sent me information on this and he told me that I should request an invite myself…so I did. The only thing that he said the service lacks is a widget to retrieve the lyrics for a particular song, and I’m sure that will get added very soon because a lot of people would love to have that.

Here is some more information on the FoxyTunes Planet:
Frequently Asked Questions
FoxyTunes Planet announcement

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Oct 09

1,000 Pixels From The Million Dollar Homepage On eBay

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Homepage On eBay

If you didn’t get your chance to get on the Million Dollar Homepage then you better jump on this, that is assuming you have more than $21,000 to spare. The creator of the Million Dollar Homepage has sold all but 1,000 pixels and has put them on eBay to go to the highest bidder. The pixels for sale are circled in red on the above picture (which is almost the dead center of the page!). With more than 8 days left, the bidding is already at $21,400.00 and will definitely continue to rise. The auction states “1.5 million unique visitors and over 2.7 million page impressions in the last 7 days alone” which is amazing! This will be an auction that we will definitely have to watch!

View The eBay Auction

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Oct 08

Wal-Mart does DRM-Free at $0.94 Per Song

Posted in: ipod, itunes, Music, Today's Chili, Web Sites, zune

This article was written on August 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

WalmartdrmfreeWhile Wal-Mart may have entered the digital music scene a little late and didn’t really come in with a bang, they’re proving that they can compete with the competition, namely iTunes. Their recent announcement that they will be selling DRM-free music at $0.94 per song is proof of this. The music will be from labels like Universal Music Group as well as EMI group and will be compatible with nearly every digital media player including the Zune and the iPod. Starting today, Wal-Mart’s catalogue includes these songs – thousands of them.

Music labels that have agreed to offer DRM-free songs are hoping that it will boost the sales of digital music. At the same time, some labels are concerned over whether or not the lack of DRM protection will hurt sales and increase/encourage piracy. While there are people who flat-out won’t pay for music, DRM-free or not because it’s available for free via torrents, there are others who regularly purchase music. The lack of DRM will certainly be an incentive for these people to purchase more music.

The price that Wal-Mart is offering these songs at is amazing to say the least, and I wonder if they’ll be able to keep this introductory price. You’ll probably recall back in May when Apple’s iTunes started selling sans-DRM music for $1.29 per song – $0.30 more than what songs with DRM sell for. This means that iTunes is selling songs with DRM for more than what Wal-Mart is offering DRM-free songs for. Hmm… does this mean a price-cut is in store over at iTunes soon?

Source: Reuters

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Oct 05

MySpace Launches Profile Editor for IE Users

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on May 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

MySpace is all about customization and allowing users to create personalized profiles. However, up until this point, users generally had to turn to outside sources to add that element of customization to their profiles.  There are hundreds of third party sources that offer pre-designed themes and backgrounds for MySpace pages for free. I had always wondered why MySpace never had a profile editor built in because it’s something that most of their users would use.

Finally today after years in business, MySpace introduced a profile editor.  It’s a matter of convenience now, and because users won’t have to leave MySpace to track down a theme or an editor, I’m thinking it will get used a lot.

Myspaceprofileeditor

While the profile editor doesn’t cover EVERY aspect of what some users like in their profile, it does cover the basics like background modules, images, fonts, links, etc.  The announcement on MySpace says that it’s been made possible by 20th Century Fox. They’re also using this editor as another way to bring in sponsorship dollars by offering a featured theme. The current theme is designed around the movie “Live Free or Die Hard,” and I’m sure it’ll be changing frequently.

It’s important to note that if you’re using anything other than Internet Explorer, you won’t be able to use the profile editor.  If you are using a different browser, you’ll see a message explaining that this is in beta, and they’re working on making it available for other browsers.

After realizing that it wouldn’t work in my Firefox browser, I opened up Internet Explorer to give it a try. It does exactly what you’d expect it to do, and I’d say it’s easy to use. At least from my experiences, they give you more customization options than other editors I’ve used.  You can change the look of individual modules on the page, whereas other editors I’ve used only gave the option to create one look that was applied for all modules.

I’m sure those that provide the third party editors aren’t too happy today because this could potentially take away a good chunk of their business. Just remember, you’ll need Internet Explorer if you want to give the new editor a try.

MySpace Profile Editor

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Sep 28

iTunes Offering Gates/Jobs D5 Interview for Free!

Posted in: itunes, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on June 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

SteveandbillIf by chance you’d like to watch the entire Bill Gates/Steve Jobs D5 interview without watching it in segments as previously offered, Apple has made the interview available via an iTunes download.

When I downloaded the interview, it took me about 35 minutes.  The connection seemed fast, so it shouldn’t take you too long if you’re on a broadband connection.  A sit-down public interview with the two of them together is a rare thing. They have a rather large influence over the tech industry, and because this doesn’t happen often, I think it’s worth the download.

You must have iTunes installed to be able to download the video or audio podcast. If you have it installed, you can click this link for the download. Oh, and did I mention it is free? Yep, a free 997 MB download from iTunes.

I think one of my favorite parts of the entire interview is the prologue with the Apple Dating Game Show in October of 1983. Both Gates and Jobs looked so young, and so geeky.

Source: TUAW

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Sep 25

YourMinis uses Adobe Apollo to Create Desktop Widgets

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

It seems like yesterday that Adobe released Apollo, oh, wait that was just two-days ago. ;) To help commemorate the event YourMinis has just released an Apollo application that will bring online widgets into your offline world!

YourMinis is a website that offers a ton of widgets for you to place on a homepage. They have a wonderful tabbed interface that helps prevent too many widgets from cluttering up one page, and best of all is that they offer an extension for Firefox so that your widgets can be accessed in just one click.

Now, however, you can take your favorite widgets offline with you as you add them to your desktop. In order to use the widgets outside of your browser you’ll first need to get the Apollo runtime which is available for both Windows and Mac.  Then, like any normal application, you’ll need to install the yourminis air file by downloading and running it. You should see a window similar to this when you execute the “air” file:

Apollo YourMinis

Apollo treats this as if you were installing a real application. An entry for the YourMinis Widget Manager will even be added to the uninstall screen (Add/Remove Programs in Windows XP) in case you decide to remove it later on.

After setup completes you’ll see some default widgets already placed on your desktop. After a little configuration you can start to get things just how you like them:

YourMinis Widget Manager

In the upper-right corner you’ll see the Widget Manager. I like to refer to it as the light switch for the widgets. Each widget is represented as a little box, and clicking on one of the boxes will show/hide that widget.

The coolest thing is that you should be able to go to the YourMinis Widget site and select any widget to “copy to desktop”. That’s how it should theoretically work, but on my Vista machine the entire Widget Manager application crashed every time that I tried to load a new widget from the site. That was extremely disappointing because there are a few widgets that I would have liked to use on my computer.

The other thing that this desperately needs in order to become a “real” widget application is a shortcut key to show/hide all of the widgets. When people want to see their widgets they don’t want to go scrounging around looking for an icon or minimizing their windows…they just want to hit a key and have them popup.

I’m sure the YourMinis team will be getting around to adding more great things later on, and hopefully fixing the bug that I found. Maybe they’ll even start offering some sort of option where you can display the tabs from your customized start page. Right now you have to add the gadgets that you want because the application is completely independent of your online settings. Also, a tabbed interface for a desktop widget program, similar to what they offer for their online version, would give them something that no other gadget/widget application currently offers. After all, tabs are the hot thing these days…all the kids are doing it!

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Sep 24

Netvibes Ginger Launches to Public

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Back in December we wrote about the new “social-side” of Netvibes. At the time, Netvibes Ginger launched into a private beta and has only been available to those with invitations. The big deal with Ginger is all of the new social elements like widgets and the option to import and export info from social networks like Facebook. Another big deal has been made out of all of the new storage opportunities. They said that the final release was expected in January, and so while they’re a little late, Netvibes Ginger is now available to everybody as of this morning.

Now when you go to the Netvibes page, you’ll be presented with a pop-up that explains that Ginger is open for everyone. You’ll have to sign-up to use it, and then use a code they give you to get started. Migrating your account from the old version to the new does take a few minutes. The biggest change you’ll notice aside from all of the social aspects is the interface. It’s quite a bit different from the previous version of Netvibes and looks great. They also have new themes to choose from and new opportunities to personalize your start-page even more.

netvibes ginger

The one downside is simply the fact that they haven’t worked out the details for the Web Storage Device.  At the top of your Netvibes page you’ll notice next to the “Profile” and “Sign Out” link that it says “Drive.” It’s grayed out so it’s hard to see, but if you hover your mouse over it you’ll see that it says “coming soon.” It has said that ever since it launched into beta. Everybody thought that it would be ready for this launch, however, it wasn’t. There’s been no word from the Netvibes team as to when the drive will be made available and who they’re teaming with so that people can save items that are important to them. Webware made an educated guess that they’ll be teaming with Box.net to offer the service, but the partnership hasn’t been finalize yet.

Once the Netvibes Team manages to get the Web drive access available to their users, they’ll have a complete personalized homepage service that offers a lot of value to their users. Hopefully we’ll be seeing it soon…

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Sep 20

Blogger lets you use your own Domain…for Free

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Blogger Domain Registration

Yesterday Blogger announced that they will let their bloggers use custom domains (that are already owned) with their Blogger service. What I found really surprising is that they are not charging for this service, and even more shocking is that they are not the ones “selling” domain names for anyone who doesn’t already have a custom domain. In fact, they are recommending sites like GoDaddy, DreamHost, and *gasp* Yahoo! for registering your domain name.

I’m wondering whether Google is receiving a portion of any sale that might result in users coming from their Blogger service. However, it would have to be purely based on HTTP referrers because none of the URL’s that Google links to use referral accounts (although GoDaddy does list the referral URL in the address bar automatically). So why isn’t Google offering the service themselves? That’s a question that I have been asking myself all day. Nearly two years ago they became an ICANN-accredited registrar which means that can sell any of these top-level domains: .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name, and .pro. As soon as this happened people began speculating that they became accredited for the sole purpose of selling domains on Blogger, and now that they have released this feature they are recommending other services? It’s pretty bizarre if you ask me.

So how does the competition stack up? I can’t really say that there is competition because WordPress has a solution that costs $10 per year (not too terrible) and they’ll register the domain name for you for just $5 more per year. WordPress also offers an astounding $250 per month package that will put you in the hot seat (not because of publicity…but rather because it burned a hole in your wallet). Typepad also has a custom domain solution that will run you $8.95 per month, which is still a lot more than what Blogger is charging…FREE!

If I had to choose between one of those three services I would probably pick the WordPress.com hosting. By the time you pay for the annual fee on the domain name you can get the WordPress package for just 5 or 10 bucks more. With WordPress you’ll be able to use a wide variety of plug-ins that are currently available to make your site that much more fun. If you do decide to take Google’s route with Blogger, then you’ll find these directions useful in setting up your custom domain.

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Sep 19

Play Scrabble Online for Free with Scrabulous

Posted in: Games, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on May 31, 2008 by CyberNet.

Scrabble is one of those classic board games that many of you have probably played at one point or another. I remember multiple occasions playing the game growing up and always being frustrated when I got the letters Q and Z. Times have changed and not everybody is interested in sitting down to play an “old-fashioned” game board. Instead they want to play the game online, either by themselves, against a computer, or with other people all around the World. One way you can play Scrabble online is a site called Scrabulous.

Scrabulous is just like the board game except you’re playing online. They offer four different ways to play including:

  • Just Scrabulous – play online against users from all over the world or play with your friends privately inside “rooms”
  • Email version – play with your friends over email
  • Scrabulous Blitz- fast paced, play against others in 4 minute games
  • Solitaire & Computer – play against the computer or practice by yourself

I decided to try playing against the “robot” and it was pretty tricky. You don’t have to sign-up to be able to do the type of game I played unless you want to save your games. They try to make things a little easier for you by providing you with a Scrabulous Dictionary, but it’s still tricky. To play, just drag your tiles up to the board and place them wherever you’d like. They’ll show you your best move of the game on the left side of the board. If you’re having trouble coming up with a word, you can select to view a hint.

scrabulous 1.png

There’s also a version available on Facebook as a Facebook App which is fun as well, the only problem is that we’re not sure how long it will be around because Hasbro and Mattel have asked Facebook to remove it. Instead of fighting it, one smart move would be for the game makers to buy the game from the two brothers who developed it because it’s one of the most popular Facebook apps.

If you’re looking for something fun to do on the web, checkout Scrabulous.

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Sep 17

Yahoo Goes Green – Get Your Free Light Bulb

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites, Yahoo

This article was written on May 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Who’s the greenest? That’s the question that Yahoo is asking.  Tech companies have been taking big steps forward to help the environment, and it appears as though a green-trend has started as more and more people get involved. The latest green project that we wrote about was Google’s solar-power project, and now Yahoo is taking their own route to help in the form of a contest.

It’s Yahoo’s “national call-to-action” and they’re out to find the greenest city in America.  The city that wins the title will receive an entire fleet of hybrid taxis, which by the way, are already popping up in cities across the US like New York. From the pictures, it looks like they’re going with a Hybrid SUV, which is a little surprising, but only because there are standard cars that get better mileage than the Hybrid SUV. In terms of SUVs though, it’s a huge improvement.

Yahoogreentaxi

There are a few ways that you can get involved in the contest:

  1. “Take the green pledge” – Select from a list (pictured below) different ways that you can lower your CO2 emissions. IE: Make sure your walls and ceilings are well-insulated
  2. Share your knowledge on Yahoo Answers – earn credits by answering questions in the “environment category.”
  3. Use your mobile phone – search eco-friendly terms (organic food, bike, ride share, etc.) on your mobile phone and earn credits.

Yahoogreen

By participating in the contest, you’ll automatically get a free compact fluorescent light bulb. Each way that you participate earns you credits, and after you’ve accrued 500 credits, you’ll get another free CFL.

To go along with this contest, they’ve launched a brand new site called Yahoo! Green.  It was designed to be the place to go when you’re looking for any topic related to bettering the planet. There you’ll find gas savings tips, ways to better the planet, and opportunities to meet other people online who are striving to be green too.

So, if you’d like to see a Yahoo themed hybrid taxi driving around your town, or you just want a free compact fluorescent light bulb, go check-out Yahoo! Green.

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