Archive for May, 2010
MashPedia The Real-time Encyclopedia Searches Many Online Sources In One Go
The sources in most online encyclopedias are static. Take Wikipedia for example. User submitted articles on Wikipedia have fixed sources for their articles. A change in the source therefore can present a problem for that particular article.
Suppose there was an encyclopedia with the latest sources accompanying its article on a subject. Not only will that be a great help to the encyclopedia’s user, but it would make the article more reliable as well.
Realizing the usefulness of such a search engine / encyclopedia and how beneficial it can be to internet users, Mashpedia was created.
Mashpedia is a free to use online encyclopedia that updates and gathers the results of our query in real time. The advantage of this is that we get new / different results each time we execute a search, even if our keywords are the same.
In addition to news and trending topics, the site has a simple search bar located at its homepage.
Entering our keyword in the search bar and starting our search quickly shows us gathered results from a variety of sources including social media sites and video hosting sites, in addition to standard search engine results.
In the above image, I executed a search for ‘electrons’ and came up with the Mashpedia article on it. The pane on the right details the properties of an electron whereas the pane on the left show us YouTube and social media sources for the keyword ‘electrons’; these sources are updated in real time and will be different the next time we search for ‘electrons.’
As we scroll down the page, we find other related sources from numerous other social networking sites and informative websites.
News results regarding our query are also shown.
The absolute end of the page lets us leave a comment on the article.
Mashpedia presents the results of our query by gathering them in real time from many sources. This unique concept of an online encyclopedia will surely benefit many internet users.
Click here to visit Mashpedia.
Use Google Maps Without Leaving Your Current Page With Mini Google Maps
Google has released many useful products to the internet community. Most of these products are free and many computer users benefit from them. Take Google Maps for instance; it shows us the map of almost any location in the world. All we do is type up the location’s name or its longitude / latitude to obtain its map.
While browsing a website we might need to know the exact location of its head office. We get the location’s name off the website and head on over to Google Maps to generate its map and know exactly where it is. It can be a little inconvenient to repeat the procedure for more than one website and to constantly shift from one browser tab to the other. That is where Mini Google Maps comes into play.
Mini Google Maps is an extension for Chrome that makes it easier to use Google Maps whenever we are browsing the web. The extension adds a new icon to Chrome’s address bar which is a shortcut to using Google Maps.
When we click this icon, instead of opening a new tab redirecting us to Google Maps, a small window pops up in front of our current tab. This window contains a small view of Google Maps and contains navigations controls.
We can enter any location we want to search in the assigned area. Our map is generated and shown to us within this popup window.
By showing us maps of locations without interrupting our browsing, this extension has proved to be useful; Mini Google Maps will surely benefit all users whose work involves heavy usage of Google Maps.
FBlike: An Easy Way To Find What Your Facebook Friends Like and Discover New Trends
People join Facebook with the intention to stay in touch with family and friends, and perhaps meet some new interesting people. But they are soon spending time discovering new online content shared by their friends. Soon they learn to share as well. Later they log in to their accounts simply to entertain themselves by reading whatever is popular and being shared on Facebook.
While that works well for many people, it is not quite perfectly effective. The content we see is only what our contacts are sharing and not what Facebook accountholders are promoting / sharing as a whole. To find out that shared content, users should visit Fblike.
Fblike is a free to use website that lists the Facebook feeds of many popular sites. Facebook accountholders can view what their friends are sharing on these sites. But you do not need to have a Facebook account to view the content available on Fblike.
The homepage of the site has the most popular Facebook feeds of some of the most popular sites such as YouTube, CNN, ESPN, and IMDb.
A categories bar lets us browse the site and posts according to our tastes.
To find posts more specific to our tastes, we can use the search box located on top of the site.
Buttons in the top right of the website enable us to share Fblike with our friends on Facebook and other social media sites.
Fblike is a great quick way to find humorous, interesting, and latest articles on Facebook which are being shared not only by our Facebook contacts but by the Facebook community as a whole. A site all Facebook users should bookmark, Fblike is a great idea. Click here to visit the site.
The Smartest Online Form Builder To Collect And Manage Your Data Efficiently
As a web professional you need tools that are easy to use, flexible, and powerful. Look no further. The smart and easy online form builder allows you to build web forms for any project and implement them in a matter of minutes. Style your forms with custom CSS/HTML or embed right on your client’s site. I am talking about Formstack.
Formstack could be your best choice as an online form builder. It allows you to add any field type including name, email address, radio buttons, and more. Plus, you can easily drag-and-drop fields to customize web forms to fit your organization’s need. Create a smart, powerful web form using features like Conditional Logic and Smart Routing.
With Formstack, the ability to create basic online forms is just the beginning. Their powerful, customized tools equip you to quickly create almost any type of form imaginable. Below are just a few examples of how people are leveraging the power of Formstack.
The real power of any online data collection tool is, of course, the data. With Formstack you can quickly view, sort, and search the information you have gathered. You can create saved searches, and share that data with others.
Download your data to Excel or Word using our integrated export tools. For advanced users we also provide an API that can be used to integrate with third party applications or with your internal database.
- Job Applications
- Employee Evaluations
- PTO/Vacation Requests
- Contests/Promotions
- Newsletter Sign ups
- Volunteer Recruitment
- Donor Feedback forms
- Fundraising Forms
- Course Evaluation Forms
- Teacher Evaluations
- Class Registrations
What Internet Explorer 9 Can Do For You? Let’s Take A Test Drive To Find Out
Internet Explorer 9 will be the next version of Internet Explorer. The first public preview of IE9 was released on 16th of March, 2010 and as Microsoft promised the release of preview every 8th week, the 2nd preview of IE9 was released on 5th May, 2010. You can grab the new Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview by visiting the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive website. General Manager for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, has posted to the IEBlog about Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 2 you can get detailed idea of what it will be like, he discussed some test results with IE9 like with SunSpider JavaScript, Acid3, API Usage, and CSS3.
The Internet Explorer 9 is designed specifically for web designers and focused primarily around same markup and what that means for developers. The system requirements for IE9 are Windows Vista SP2 (with Platform Update and Internet Explorer 8 ) or Windows 7. Unfortunately Windows XP is not supported. The final build is expected in 2011 which I am not sure of. Well IE9 will use graphic advances in terms of GPU (Graphical Processing Unit), as well as windows 7′s DirectX 11. IE9 will support CSS3 specially round corners, HTML 5, XHTML SVG, DOM, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles via Windows Color System, and the HTML5 video and audio tags was also promised. I will try describe some benefits of IE9 for you.
1. Speed
Using the GPU(Graphical Processing Unit), IE9 does more work and due to this, there is less load on CPU, it also enabling other browser subsystems to do more, as well as enabling higher frame rates for smooth animation and video playback. IE9 will leverage the graphics card in order to better render text, images, video and SVG (vector graphics). For some graphical operation the GPU is a much better choice, like the GPU executes alpha blending and bilinear image scaling much faster than the CPU, and uses pixel shades to perform complex per pixel calculations.
2. Zooming in Browser
Have you ever tried Zoom In and Out in your browser like in Google Earth? Well you may have observed that it goes pretty slow. Now the IE9 uses GPU to scale images and other content, to make browser’s zooming very fast – as you can see the map zooming demo on ietestdrive.com. You were already able to set the size of all UI elements on the screen in IE8 and now IE9 will use GPU to make it more fast.
3. Hardware-accelerated HTML5 Video
To play HTML5 videos, IE9 will use Windows Media Foundation system which makes the most of your graphics card using the CPU or the hardware video decoder if available. The hardware video decoders reduce the CPU usage and it greatly improves battery life. The IE video engine decodes video directly with and into the GPU. Once the video frames are decoded, they can be treated like any other bitmap in the graphics pipeline with full compositing and integration into the rendering system.
4. Support of High Quality image and color
To decode PNG, JPEG and (new for IE9) TIFF and JPEG XR images, IE9 uses the Windows Imaging Component (WIC). For a lot of uses, JPEG XR offers a good compression improvement over JPEG, allowing you to serve higher quality images at the same file size. In addition to being up to 30% faster than IE8 decoders, the new WIC decoders understand embedded color profiles in images, making IE9 a color-managed browser that understands ICC v2 and v4 profiles.
5. Text Quality and Performance of Text Animation
To do text output, IE9 uses the GPU (via DirectWrite) which is up to twice as fast as IE8, and with higher quality. With IE9 the Text can be smoothly animated, and sub-pixel positioning is a more faithful representation of the Web (and font) designer’s intent. Internet Explorer 9′s sub-pixel text positioning is made possible by the new Windows 7 Direct2D and DirectWrite
technologies.
6. High quality graphics printing
You need a high quality print subsystem to do high quality printing of HTML5. Internet Explorer 9 directly converts web content into XPS format when sending output to the printing system. XPS is a more modern print system with native support for features such as opacity and complex paths, which results in increased fidelity and quality when printing modern web content.
Conclusion
Seems like its all about speed and performance but I don’t think a software can speedup something? I think the performance of IE9 will depend upon your hardware capability, so its a bit disappointment though like you will need Windows 7 or Vista and it definitely means you need a new and fast machine and then you will be able to see what IE9 can do for you. So what about the people who has XP and comparatively slower machines? Finally, IE9 will support CSS3 specially rounded corners, well many other browsers have supported these things for years. Well I hope this would be a revolutionary product from Microsoft, but I don’t think Safari, Chrome, and Firefox will just sit there and watch. As Google (Google) has just released a video demonstrating the speed of the new beta of its Chrome web browser.
Project Managers Turn Into Zombies Over Time! Have You Looked At Yourself Lately?
Stress and long hours are part of every project manager’s life who battle to get the most out of the resources at hand to achieve the scope. The main goals are to be on time, within budget and deliver quality; a combination that can be impossible to plan and achieve and can be devastating for some project managers.
We all know that achieving these 3 things together is theoretically impossible. Most often, project managers sacrifice quality and budget just to achieve the set deadlines or have a strict budget and sacrifice quality and push deadlines. There are exceptions where all bricks align and delivery is within the planned scope; however to achieve this requires a lot of planning, effort and time which we don’t have at disposal.
Project managers are people that need to multitask and manage not only the project but all aspects of the project including organizing and motivating the people. We can group this into five main areas: planning, organizing, coordinating, motivating and controlling.
Planning a project can be extensive and exhausting mostly because the process towards defining tasks, assigning resources, estimating costs, setting milestones is usually very complex. On the other hand, the project manager needs to track and coordinate the project progress on a daily basis. The project manager needs to be sure that all project members understand and are striving towards achieving the project goal. And, of course the project manager must control the project flow and make appropriate adjustments if necessary.
Is it too much for one person to deal with?
Having the right skills is not enough; having the right tools is as important in order to be efficient and successful.
We have seen a lot of new project management solutions on the market piping out like mushrooms. Some of them cost even thousands of dollars. Some of them lack crucial project management features. Most of them lack advanced project management features. So, how to pick the best one at an affordable price and still have all the needed features? We all know MS® Project, however a professional license can cost close to one thousand dollars.
Seavus Project Planner is a project planning and tracking software, used to plan and track projects, manage resources and track project costs. Project Managers use Seavus Project Planer to organize work and project delivery as well as to manage resource schedules and scope changes.
The software provides all of the desired productivity and it’s simple to use, very effective, and most importantly, it will help you win over biggest threats of your project success.
How can you utilize Seavus Project Planner?
Define project plans with reduced efforts
As mentioned above the project planning process is the initial and crucial component of the project lifecycle. If the planning is not done properly, the chances to fail in the next phases increase exponentially. Seavus Project Planner provides the easiest environment where project managers can set rational expectations for the objectives that need to be accomplished. The intuitive and easy-to-use workspace makes the schedule building, resource allocation and cost assignment effortless and accurate.
Effectively manage resources and costs
Most projects, if not all projects face limited budgets and resources. It is pure magic for the project managers to successfully balance budgets and resources. Seavus Project Planner’s advanced project cost tracking features empower the project manager to achieve effective cost tracking and avoid spending more than the project actually has. On the other hand, resource management is eased with resource availability tracking and over allocation management, hence allowing assignments’ adjustments to avoid conflicts in tasks.
Gain project control and keep guard on the project progress
Seavus Project Planner is software that will help you not only to set rational expectations for the objectives to be accomplished, but to present precise information to every team member regarding their tasks and deadlines. Using Gantt charts, resource tables, tracking toolbar and customizable forms the project is clearly communicated to team members. In addition, the intuitive workspace provides opportunity to track and control the work of team members through the project lifecycle. Adding notes to tasks in Seavus Project Planner is simple, but has high impact in delivering the desired results.
Adequately present project information
Project stakeholders want/need to be up to date with the project status at every point of time. The project manager is obliged to present the project progress information to the stakeholders. Hence, stakeholders need to understand the project plan. Project managers can choose from different views, forms and tables to display project information effectively. Additionally, they can use the Copy option to copy data to MS® Office applications and use it for various needs.
For ex: Project managers can copy cost data to include it in reports in MS® Excel. Also, when presenting project status in board meetings project managers can copy relevant data from the plan created in Seavus Project Planner to an MS® PowerPoint presentation.
Instantly access needed options and views
Driven by the 1-click away concept, Seavus Project Planner is the only desktop project management solution that offers Quick Bars which allow the project managers to access options with 1 click. Quick Bars access your calendar, Gantt chart, network diagram, resource sheet, task sheet and other frequently used options using the function keys.
Integrate Seavus Project Planner with other systems in your organization
If you are a developer and in need to extend Seavus Project Planner’s options to better serve your project planning and tracking needs, you can make use of Seavus Project Planner’s open API (Application Programming Interface).
The open API allows you to get the most of Seavus Project Planner while integrating it with other systems in your organization.
Integrate Seavus Project Planner in an MS® Project environment
Project managers in organizations who use Seavus Project Planner can collaborate and share project plans with project managers who use MS® Project. This make is it possible to integrate Seavus Project Planner in an existing project management environment where MS® Project is the main tool used to plan projects. The goal of this integration is to reduce the license costs for existing MS® Project users by providing a fully compatible project planner for a far lower price.
Introducing Seavus Project Planner in such organizations drastically reduce project management costs, but also:
- Empowers collaboration among stakeholders using Google Apps
- Lets organizations create an environment where project managers use Seavus Project Planner and team members use Seavus Project Viewer, which additionally cuts costs.
Empower collaboration within teams
Having a collaborative project management environment in your organization is the key for project success. Thus, in order to motivate teams to collaborate and achieve superior results Seavus Project Planner launched the Google Apps Integration.
The Google Apps Integration empowers the project managers to continuously collaborate with project’s stakeholders. Namely, project managers are able to collaborate and share project plans created in Seavus Project Planner and store those on Google Apps.
Then, the project plans can be accessed and updated by all project stakeholders (Project Customer, Resource Managers, and Project Team Members).
Organizations that decide to collaborate with Seavus Project Planner and Google Apps:
- Achieve collaboration without the need for any server installation
- Utilize existing Google Accounts for project collaboration
- Access projects from anywhere around the Globe
- Reduce the Inbox clutter
Having a successful project plan is not a single thing to do. It means identifying priority needs and opportunities, discussing and testing various possible courses of action and afterwards choosing the most appropriate ones, analyzing and accepting what can be achieved, estimating both human and material resources needed to reach objectives, anticipating possible problems and getting acceptance from all stakeholders about clear targets and timetables for the work in view. All of this is built in Seavus Project Planner, so it is powerful guide in the planning and tracking of your project.
Introducing Seavus Project Planner as your project management tool completes the circle for success. You can forget about miscommunication, missed deadlines, over allocation and overspending.
Feel comfortable with your project and satisfied with your results. Win over failure; be organized, productive and effective with your planning. Be happy!
If you want to learn more how to improve your project management skills using Seavus Project Planner, you can follow Seavus Project Planner on Twitter (@projectplanner).
Top 5 Software To Secure And Locate Your Lost Cell Phones
Today’s cellphones are mini-diaries in which we store all our information. The smartphones of we use are feature rich and allow us to store text, pictures, videos, and anything we can save electronically. This is why losing a phone is not only a matter of losing our financial investment, but also of losing our personal data.
Phone owners therefore, should know what steps can be taken to help them in the event of a lost phone. Here are 5 web services that help users relocate their phones or at least protect their data in case of phone loss or theft.
You are welcome if you want to share more software that help to secure and locate lost cell phones that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter , follow us on Google Buzz and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.
Phonelocator is a web service for Nokia S60 phones. After creating a free account and getting the application from the OVI store, phone owners can use the website to view the location of their phone as well as a trail of where it has been. Phonelocator has advanced features like “Intelligent Update” that reduces the amount of data sent by the application and “Battery Saver” that turns off the GPS when the phone is stationary or the GPS signal is too weak. Phonelocator can be run in the background and started when your phone is booted.
Phone Guardian is another cautionary tool users will find helpful. It supports Series 60 v3 Symbian smartphones. When you lose your cellphone, you can use Phone Guardian to remotely secure and auto lock your phone by sending a lock SMS. In the locked state the phone cannot be used nor can the Phone Guardian software be uninstalled. Unlocking can only be done by sending the password to the phone via an SMS. The software also automatically sends a secure SMS to the owner; this SMS has information on the phone’s location.
iTag is an application for smartphones running Android. Once the application is installed on the handset, users can log into their iTag account online and remotely view their cellphone’s location, make it ring from the website, lock the keys, back up their data, and delete the information on the phone.
Mobile Defense is in its public beta and another security application for Android phones. Its interface is a lot better than other security applications and it provides the standard features (remotely viewing your phone’s location and remotely controlling it) to users. An additional feature is that it detects if a new SIM card has been entered in the phone; in the event that this happens, the user is sent an email notification.
Lookout is a free application compatible with all major mobile operating systems. In addition to the remote location and remote controlling features, the application also has built-in antivirus and firewall tools that protect it against malware.
Now Control Your Twitter Accounts Via Email
Application developers have created many clients for various social media websites. Most of these clients are targeting at the Facebook and Twitter community. From what I have observed, Twitter clients outnumber the Facebook clients; but Twitter clients often lack originality. Many of these clients are similar to each other and do not offer anything special. Even if they do offer something special, Twitter catches up and makes that ‘special’ feature a built-in Twitter feature.
Because of all that, a unique Twitter application is a rarity which is what makes TweetyMail such a wonderful find.
TweetyMail is a free to use Twitter client that offers what no other Twitter client offers and its features will not be implemented by Twitter any time soon. With TweetyMail, Twitter users can control their accounts via email. This means that to perform almost any task, all you have to do is send an email to an email address; to receive any Twitter messages or updates, all you will have to do is check your email.
After creating a TweetyMail account by linking our Twitter account, we are supposed to link a valid email address to TweetyMail.
We then use our linked email address to send email to email addresses. The email address we send the mails to changes according to the task we want to perform. These email addresses can be seen in the image below.
TweetyMail is a very convenient way to handle our Twitter account. People who are trying to access Twitter on networks that have blocked the site will find this Twitter client to very helpful.
3 Chrome Extensions To Enhance Your Grooveshark Music Listening Experience
Streaming music online lets us listen to any song without having anything stored on our computer. Moreover since the procedure takes place in our browser, it does not depend on our operating system so any OS user can stream music online.
One wonderful online music streaming website is Grooveshark. Visitors can quickly create an account (although an account is not necessary to start streaming music), then go on and create their playlist. Playlists are played within the built-in player of Grooveshark.
You are welcome if you want to share more Chrome Extensions To Enhance Grooveshark Music Listening Experience of our readers/viewers. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter , follow us on Google Buzz and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well
My default web browser is Google Chrome and while using Grooveshark on it, I came across 3 wonderful Chrome extensions that enhanced my overall experience on Grooveshark. For the benefit of all my Chrome using readers (who are also Grooveshark fans), I am going to share these wonderful extension. Read about and install each one; they all serve an important purpose.
Grooveshark offers paid and free plans to its users. Free accountholders are shown ads in their Grooveshark interface – something which is quite distracting and bothersome to some users. This Chrome extension does exactly what its name suggests: it removes those ads. What I liked most about Ads-free Grooveshark that there were no options to set up; the ads simply disappeared once I started installed the extension.
Click here to get Ads-free Grooveshark.
2. ChromeShark
ChromeShark is another Chrome extension that neatly complements the Grooveshark experience in Chrome. It places an icon in our address bar which, when clicked, shows us very basic audio player controls. These controls include previous song, play/pause, next song, and stop.
Click here to get ChromeShark.
3. keySharky
While we have the Grooveshark’s player open, we can use keyboard shortcuts which let us control the player like any other audio player. These hotkey shortcuts are introduced by keySharky. The extension lets us change the default hotkey combinations in its options.
Using all these 3 extensions on your Chrome will surely enhance your Grooveshark experience.
Poynt, A Free And Best App On Blackberry To Locate People And Places Near You
Poynt is a FREE and great app to find people, businesses, hospitals, fuel stations, train stations, banks, movie theaters, retailers, restaurants and famous places near you. Poynt will pinpoint you using GPS or cell-site locations and quickly delivers the information you need whenever and wherever you need it.
It is supported in every model of Blackberry and you can freely use it if you are in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, or in United States. You can find phone numbers and connect with one click, browse websites and map directions. You can book a movie ticket and dinner reservations and add it to your calendar and invite your friends and family. If you are new to any of these countries mentioned above then you must use this free app for your guidance.
Poynt won the 2008 Blackberry Developer’s Challenge Grand Prize and was recognized as the Most Innovative Consumer Application in GSMA’s Mobile Innovation Grand Prix, EMEA Tournament. You can download this app from here.
