Google & YouTube getting into the Halloween spirit

Tweet

SWEET!

Gmail Newer Version - Screenshots

Tweet

Sign out from your Gmail, then in..


New window pop-up when you stand on a name:

A whole different interface in the Contacts section:

More Actions:

Chat options:

Better looking spell checker: (the white color is annoying though..)


Edit-link opens in new box:


I was expecting to see some integration with Picasa web and pictures that I'm getting in my email..

None.

UPDATE: More on Philipp Lenssen Blog!
UPDATE2: Based on your comments, it is not yet launched to the whole public.. (I was just lucky I guess)

Tag Based Search Engine

Tweet

A quick recommendation:

TagSlides was an interesting site I came across this morning. It’s an interactive search engine that allows you to conduct a search by tags. Right now you can search these services: Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Del.icio.us, and Technorati. It looks like the site is still in development, but an interesting first start.

Be A Ringtone DJ - Make Cool Free Ringtones

Tweet

Many ringtone applications encourage you to be more creative by providing some easy-to-use tools to create, mix and share tones on the Web. Beside the fact that they are useful, it is also fun to create AND they’re free. . . (which is always a good deal)

Here are some cool services that will help you find, create, mix and share tones that you love:


Razz is an audio platform, which includes carrier-class telephony, content and web systems that enable consumers to mix their voice with sound clips and music to create personalized and entertaining communications. You select the theme, background music, and record your own voice to make a completely unique ringtone. Then you can send it to your own phone, share it with your friends or post it on your site/blog.

CREATE YOUR OWNSEND TO PHONE

ToneMine allows you to create, download, manage, store and share your ringtone creations. With the assistance of their mixer and its 8 different soundpacks, you can easily compose, mix and create your own killer tones. You can also discover, and download free ringtones from other community members or create a collection of your favorite tones.




Phonezoo makes it easy for you to make free ringtones and share them with others. With Phonezoo, it’s simple for you to turn the music you already own into custom ringtones and get them on your phone. You can also explore the ringtones other members of the Phonezoo community have created and rate them, comment on them and get them for yourself.


My favorite:



I was really impressed when I first saw Musicshake’s presentation at the Techcrunch40 conference, their platform is absolutely amazing! Musicshake enables you to create professional mixes and share your creations on their site. MusicShake owns all the music and the business model includes a revenue share for the music creators. Unfortunately, it's not web-based application but it still worth the download even though it does not work with Firefox. . . yet.

Musicshake unforgettable DEMO:

The Ultimate Facebook Notifier: FizzBoost

Tweet

If you are one of those Facebook addicts (you aren't? yeah.. right), and want to get Facebook alert notifications even when your browser is closed, I recommend that you download FizzBoost. I've been using other notifier application in the past but this one works much better.

Features include:

Notification example - Clean layout:


Notifications of friend, group, event invites, pokes, unread mail, unread shares and wall posts. Choose which notifications you'd like to get:


Easy to navigate menu:


Update your status directly in FizzBoost without having to go to your profile page:


You can sync your Status between Facebook and Twitter:


Upload photos to albums and create albums:


The ability to view your friends with convenient shortcuts to message, poke and view profile, plus you can view friend photo albums from within Fizzboost:


Bottom line - Download worthy!

44 Web 2.0 Music Services in one Interactive Presentation

Tweet

I was reorganizing the Music Tag on Go2web20 today in order to see if there were any broken links that I should take out of the directory.. and gladly I found that most of the services are pretty much alive except a few.

Link that seem to be broken:
Songrio

Services that changed their name:
Mercora is now: Social.FM
SingShot is now: The Sims on Stage

So.. I gathered some good music web 2.0 sites and created an interactive presentation powered by diigo webslide. (you can find all these music services and more - on our directory, which is where I took all the content from)

Click here


Companies included:

1. Bix - Online karaoke
2. Grooveshark - Discover New Music
3. Lala - Trade the CDs you Have for Music you Really want
   
4. Stage.FM - Find Independent Music
5. Audiofarm - Store, Search, Sort and Share your Sound
6. Amie Street - Your Independent Music Fix
7. Franceradio - Music Search Engine
8. CRITICAL METRICS - Music Recommendations Across all Media
9. Faces - Share your Photos and your Music on any Website
10. qloud - People Powered Music Search
    
11. iLike - Instant Music Discovery
12. FoxyTunes - Universal Personalized Music Mashup
13. uPlayMe - Play Music. Meet People. Discover New Songs
14. Ezmo - Explore and Share Music with your Friends
15. RADIO.BLOG.CLUB - Save Your Favorite Tracks and Build-Up your Playlist
16. Sideload - Free Music on the Internet
    
17. Musicovery - Your Web MP3 Player
    
18. Finetune - Create your own Playlist, Listen and Share with Others
19. ChizMax - Lyrics and Video Search Engine
20. tun3r - Easy to Browse Radio Stations
21. MediaMaster - Your Music. Anywhere
22. SeeqPod - Amazon+SeeqPod - Music Recommendations Mashup
23. bandBUZZ - Get the Buzz on New and unknown Bands
24. Spool.fm - New Web-Based Music Player
25. SoundPedia - Music Community
26. MyBloop - Music Network
    
27. Purevolume - Make Online PlayLists
28. Jamendo - Listen and Share free Music
29. MXPlay - The Best Audio with all the Music the Web has to Offer
30. kSolo - Sing, Record - Send to Friends
31. MusicIP - Global Music Relationship Engine
32. SkreemR - Search and Play Audio Files
33. Musicmesh - Find Related Music Artists
34. Songbirdnest - Play Music - Play the Web
35. The Sims On Stage - The Stage is yours
36. IMEEM - Social Media Networking that will Give you More
37. Twones - Share your Playlist
38. Pandora - Discover New Music you Love
39. Last.fm - Powerful Social Music Revolution
40. Ubroadcast - Host your own Live Internet Talk Radio or Music Show
41. Streakr - Exposing the Social Web
42. Deezer - Music On-Demand
43. FIQL - Playlist Sharing Community
44. JiwaMusic - Create and Share Playlists

MTV Israel - Raising The Bar

Tweet

On December first, MTV will launch a new music site in Israel. This is an exciting news not just because the site is going to be one of the major sources for music in Israel, but also because of the user experience focused approach and the technology used to develop the site. This could easily become the biggest music community in Israel.

The site is powered by Israeli-based company TVinci, which specializes in providing a platform solution for managing video content online for content owners and publishers. The solution also provides support and related integrated interactive features like widgets and social networking hooks. TVinci delivers everything expect the content to the site, taking every little detail of the user experience into consideration.



The main feature of the MTV Israel social network is the TVbox player (TVinici's main product), which behaves similar to Joost. However, unlike Joost, TVBox is a completely Web-based platform, nothing needs to be download to your computer. Also TVBox offers some other unique social features that are still very much in stealth mode.

The content on the site is divided to two categories:
1.) MTV Content - Content that is owned by MTV Israel, that will include: Artist firstborn albums, shows, music articles, CD's reviews, interviews, spacial animations weekly show, tunes of great music clips and many, many more surprises.
2.) User generated content - Users will be able to add their own content as well: pictures, songs, video clips, stories, insights.. everything goes!

This will be a great place for young artists that need a stage to present their music and gain some popularity to show-off their stuff. In fact the most popular user generated content will be expos on the main page of the site.

Watch the DEMO to get some of the site spirit: (not just an Hebrew content)



Finally, MTV Israel will be the only site that allowed to broadcast Israeli music clips and other content from popular shows such as: Jackass, Punk's, Pimp my Ride, etc., in legal way.

Sign up here to get an invitation as soon as the site will go live.

il.Go2web2 - Web 2.0 Blog in Hebrew

Tweet

Just a quick note to announce my new Hebrew blog: il.Go2web2
On this new blog, I'll write about Web 2.o Hebrew platforms. I hope that by writing about this niche, I'll encourage more creativity and innovation in this area.

Business as usual: English Israeli-based applications will still be covered here.

Either way, you can send me an e-mail, if you think you have something that interests me :-)

*BTW, Blogger in Hebrew is one of my toughest experience..

inTune.fm - The Hottest Music on Facebook

Tweet

inTune.fm allows you to discover and listen to music on Facebook, in your Network and from your friends. inTune.fm is very much resembles to anywhere.fm, which is a Web based player that allows you to listen to lots of free music online, the only change is that inTune.fm is an application that works ONLY on Facebook. (sometimes it's enough)

inTune.fm already have an impressive number of 79,000+ tracks that been uploaded by other Facebook users, so it most likely that your favorite song is already in their library. If not, you can still upload any song you wish directly to the player.


You can easily share a song in your profile

A cool feature is the Profile Bar: It lets you see which friends enjoy the same music you are currently playing. Mouse over a friend's photo to discover what music that friend enjoys.

As If Facebook Wasn't Addictive Enough...

Tweet

Did you know you can control your Gmail through Facebook?
Fmail provides a way for you to access your Gmail from your Facebook account.
With Fmail app, you can read, send or receive emails, and also create new labels and organize your emails like it was from your Gmail itself - all from your personal Facebook page.



Though it seem very useful, I would be more comfortable with Fmail if it was created by Google themselves. So for now, I'll stay with my beloved Gmail page which is also the center of my life/work.

If I already mentioned Google, I think Gmail is missing some important features there:

• Add star to emails, should have for at list one more color (Red?!) so it will be easier to find emails and track them
• PicasaWeb-Gmail integration is a must. I don't understand why, why, oh why?! I can't send a picture that stored in my PicasaWeb, to my recipients right from my Gmail account?! I can only do it from PicasaWeb page itself. Also, I want to be able to upload pictures that I'm getting by email, right to my PicasaWeb account!
• YouTube videos: After the whole world is doing it, how come I still can't watch a YouTube movie right from my Gmail account?
• And how about some emoticons...
  

Now.. I don't know about you but I am finding myself reading messages in the Facebook inbox more than I'm in anywhere else lately. And they also should improve some things there. For example, I think it is necessary to have the ability to search something specific in your private messages. It would also be nice if Facebook allowed users to forward a message to another friend..

Just a bunch of email thoughts...

10 Invitations 2 BeFunky

Tweet

Tekin Tatar from BeFunky just posted a comment in my BeFunky post with some invitation codes to join the site!

So grab them as fast as you can :-)

1) TECH9169141
2) TECH7452193
3) TECH1081603
4) TECH8477508
5) TECH9080360
6) TECH5923439
7) TECH8872378
8) TECH2621738
9) TECH3096127
10) TECH5282918

I'll post here more when they become unavailable.

Thanks Tekin!

Update: All codes has been used.

Exclusive - Newest VUVOX App

Tweet

It is not a secret that my favorite slideshow creator is VUVOX: An easy to use production and instant sharing service that allows you to mix, create and blend your personal media such as video, photos and music into rich personal expressions.

I am really happy to break the news about their new tool: VUVOX Cut-Out Express, which allows you to EASILY cut-out any shape, object or even the whole background from a photo you choose and add your media instead. (Flickr, Picasa, Buzznet or a Rss Feed )

You simply cut a hole in your photo and play a presentation inside it!



VUVOX user friendly interface makes it easy to understand how to quickly create an exciting slideshow from your own media, and without previous knowledge or professional skill.

Your work can be saved on your VUVOX account and you are able to share it with family, friends via link/email or with your readers by embedding the code to your site or blog. Private content is viewable on VUVOX by the owner only. However, if you send a link to your Private content to someone by email (or post the link on another website), anyone who clicks on the link will be able to see the private content.

Overall I think the new VUVOX Cut-Out Express tool is unique and interesting (I never saw this kind of tool in any other slidshow platforms), and the important thing is that it's fun and definitely can brings out your creativity:


BTW, this is just the beginning to some other things VUVOX's cooking so stay tuned from more..

It's Fun to be Funky

Tweet

BeFunky is a very cool application that allows you to easily turn your picture into lovely cartoon, avatar and video! I've found about Befunky, after my friend Frank Gruber wrote about them in his blog (and was kind enough to get me an invitation so I tested it myself).

I found the "Cartoonizer" to be the most fun feature offered by BeFunky. With "Cartoonizer", a user can recreate images/videos by turning them into digital paintings, cartoons and comics in just a few seconds without the need to download a tool. Also, you can save all your creations in your own BeFunky gallery and other users can rate, comment and grab the code for their personal use.

Unfortunately the video tool is not yet launched on the site but it's appeared to be similar to the pop-art look of rotoscoping used in the trailer below , so you can see it is definitely something worth waiting for!

Bottom line, I've enjoyed the site A LOT and have been using it to annoy some of my friends with awesome cartoons pictures.

Collaborative Web 2.0 Presentation

Tweet

Ed Yourdon created an extremely detailed Web 2.0 presentation powered by the new Google Presentation application.
Personally I found the content and the collaboration idea in this matter, to be very interesting. This presentation is also a good example of what you can do with Google docs today.

Go2 the presentation by clicking on the screen below:


Note from Ed blog:

If you would like to become a collaborator, please send a message to this email address, and describing who you are, what your interest is in Web 2.0, and what kind of additions, corrections, and improvements you’d like to make.