Main view - app is accessible through the menubar.

Cobook is a new Address Book application for Mac OS X that makes use of popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Voice to provide unparalleled functionality.

By using information stored in the cloud, it automatically adds and updates relevant information to your contacts.

You can set it up to sync Address Book.app and, if you’re an iCloud user, all your contacts will be available on your iOS devices. If you have lots of contacts, keeping your contacts up-to-date can be a daunting task to do manually – Cobook saves you time and effort. It’s a must have, and it’s completely free.

Banshee for Mac Beta 1.8.0

However, there are good things to say about Banshee. It will import your iTunes library, even correct and add metadata such as BPM and cover art automatically in the background. It supports plugins such as Last.fm, eMusic and Amazon which are killer features from my point of view. Using the Last.fm plugin you can view related artists and tracks as well as listen to your personalised radio stations.

The interface is clearly something they need to overhaul. It wouldn’t hurt to use default OSX UI elements instead of the default Gnome resources. Its simplicity however is commendable. If you’re so inclined, download it and help the developers kill some bugs. If you want to have a good alternative to iTunes, one that’s free and open-source, this is what has to be done.

Mission Control

• The user interface elements are not consistent throughout the OS. Some elements, such as the login window still have remnants of the old UI, which look out of place. While a fresh coat of paint is always something neat and to be expected of a new release, I wouldn’t exactly decide in favor of the new desaturated approach to visual design, or the buttons that look transplanted from GNOME. Don’t get me wrong, GNOME is an awesome window manager, but I’d prefer Aqua any day.
• The new ‘About this Mac’ application is a commendable effort and stays true to the ‘it just works’ mantra.
• Launchpad is buggy, slow and superfluos to desktop computing. I understand that they want to get rid of the Dock, maybe even Finder, but instead of making things easier to access, they implanted a mobile UI paradigm into a full-blown OS. You can fully replace the Dock with Spaces, Mission Control and Launchpad, but why do I need three things to do what one small application does?
• I’ve wanted for so many years to get back to the MS-DOS days of single tasking, and full screen applications do just that. Aside from photo and video editing, which already had full screen views, why would I want to fill my entire screen with just one application? To make use of the Spaces feature and distract myself with beautifully rendered smooth transitions… .
• They’ve implemented Sessions, which means that when you restart, the n-th applications that you had opened, will be restored, which does an amazing job at simulating how time would pass if you were in the accretion disk of a black hole.
• The new Mail app is wonderful from both a design and functionality standpoint. I’m sorry for the developer of Sparrow.app which will have its user-base significantly diminished.
• FileVault had its security significantly boosted, with whole disk encryption now implemented.
• Scrolling is bass-ackwards. They’ve removed the open application Dock indicators by default. The WiFi status icon is always animated, even when connected (AirPort Express) and options like show time connected don’t do anything. You can now reset your account password using an AppleID and use iChat with your Yahoo! Messenger ID. FaceTime is installed by default. Accounts for services like Gmail, Yahoo and MobileMe are available to all applications that make use of the API. For example, if you set up your email account, those settings will be available to chat applications.

A free download from the App Store, PlainText uses your Dropbox account to store and sync plain text files between your computer and mobile devices, anything that works with Dropbox. Because it allows text input from mobile devices, you can use it for everything from to-do lists/reminders, short notes, expenses list, and even writing blog posts on the go (which I’m doing right now). Since it has a local cache and no bells and whistles to drain the battery, it is the perfect companion for the mobile blogger.

Create a stack from your PlainText folder and have every file only a click away.

If you’re proficient enough with the onscreen iPhone keyboard you could easily use this application to take class notes, keep track of homework and anything you can think of. Why carry your MacBook on campus when you could just pack your iPhone or iPod touch? Add a stand, an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and a charger for those long sessions and you’ve got yourself nothing less than a workhorse for modular mobile computing.

Revise your notes on the bus, or write your next novel, PlainText is a stroke of genius that’s there whenever you need it. Get it from the AppStore.

HideIP VPN creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your computer and their servers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands or Germany. By doing so, any traffic originating from your computer will appear to the receiving server as coming from the HideIP VPN server you choose when creating an account. This means that you will be able to use services such as Spotify, BBC iPlayer, Hulu or any other service that associates IP addresses to geographical location in order to block usage.

There’s no need to worry that your Spotify won’t work when you’re visiting your family overseas. Or that your web traffic will be captured, analyzed and attacked at a unsecured public WiFi access point. You will be able to use websites and forums completely anonymously, as the servers will register information about the VPN server instead of your machine. It even bypasses throttling of VoIP services such as Skype, that your ISP may employ in order to deter its use. No longer will your ISP know everything you do on the internet, as the contents of the data transmission are completely obfuscated by encryption.

The service provides an array of tunneling options, through PPTP, OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec and Proxy. Personally, I’ve found that OpenVPN provides the optimal balance between speed and security, allowing you for example to watch HD streaming videos, granted you have an appropriate bandwidth plan from your ISP. However, be aware that P2P traffic is not allowed, and as a Terms of Service violation, your account may be suspended. This means that torrent downloads among other peer to peer sharing technologies (such as Limewire, Gnutella) are not available while connected to the VPN server.

HideIP VPN is a very useful tool to have if you want to make the most out of your internet connection. You can learn more about the service on the company website. A comprehensive article on VPN technology is available on Wikipedia. You can even get a free account if you subscribe to the blog and keep an eye out for announcements.

How’s that for a sensationalistic headline? In all seriousness now, after pondering the issue for a good part of the evening, I realised how fine a line Firefox is walking, even more now than in the past.

Think back to mid 2005, early 2006, the days of Firefox 1.5. That’s when Firefox became a solid alternative browser. As more and more tech-savvy people were getting sick and tired of Internet Explorer 6, Firefox was the right thing at the right time. It promised less crashes, better performance and most importantly better security. Along came the extensions and themes, and as their number grew from tens to hundreds – now thousands – the user base expanded further and eventually trickled down to people less interested in tech. Three versions later, it’s 2009, and Firefox has 25% of the market-share according to a Net Applications survey.

What has essentially changed from three years ago?

• We’ve got ubiquitous wireless internet access via 3G networks and WiFi at pretty good throughputs, sufficient even for video streaming.
• Fibre-Optic and high speed cable connections are more accessible.
• Web applications seem to be quickly attacking the current computing paradigm. It could turn out to be the second coming of the thin-client.
• Whereas in 2006, we would accept pretty much anything to get rid of IE 6, we now have something called competition.

First of all, Firefox lacks any sort of meaningful leverage. It only comes preinstalled on a number of Linux distributions. Which as much as we’d want to, doesn’t amount to more than 1,6% machines. On comparison Internet Explorer is preinstalled on millions of Windows machines, from netbooks to gaming PCs. Even Safari, which is based on the same underlying technology as Chrome, benefits from more leverage by being preinstalled on Macs, not to mention the millions of iPod touches and iPhones. So, I guess this is strike one. (Nay-Sayers out there, my mom isn’t going to be installing a browser anytime soon. Being ‘there’ is very important for a large sector of the market.)

Second of all, Firefox isn’t revolutionary anymore. It’s no longer the fastest, the most stable or secure, the most open. Does anyone have any doubt that by next year, every single one of Firefox’s add-ons will be ported to Chrome? I for one, do not. And the trouble is, it’s the only thing that separates Firefox. If anyone out there has leverage, then Google has it, with its millions of hits every day. They already have a message for IE 6 users browsing YouTube, asking them to upgrade their browser to either Chrome, Firefox or IE 8. And how much would it cost them to give Chrome a plug on the frontpage? Or AdSense links?

Lastly, think about more devices like the ‘alleged’ Apple tablet and netbooks running Chrome OS. Is Apple going to let Opera publish its browser on the App Store? I don’t think so. More than that, Google can choose to end its search engine referral deal with Mozilla, which nets for 91% of all the revenues. Who’s going to promote and sustain active development, at a level that would allow them to compete with Google’s resources?

I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing. That’s for each of us to decide. More than anything else, it should be a message to the developers working on Firefox that there’s still a window of opportunity to make Firefox relevant once again.

But did Microsoft come through with a stable computing platform, with decent hardware requirements and a hardened security model? The definite answer is yes. I’ve been running Windows 7 on my laptop for over a month, installed all the applications I’d normally use – iTunes, Office, Firefox, Mozy – and they all worked fine, without any compatibility settings or whatnot.

While my computer is far from being state of the art, it is able to run Firefox, iTunes, Word and Photoshop at the same time, with decent speed. On just 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 2,2Ghz AMD Turion 62 single core processor. The visual effects are fluid on a two year old ATi X200M graphics chipset with just 64MB of RAM. What they did under the hood, optimizing the code to run faster, is simply amazing. Running Vista on this laptop was like swimming with cement boots, even with the visual effects turned off.

A very important aspect for Windows users, security, has also been addressed in many ways, and while most of the technologies were present in Vista, they have been improved in Windows 7. The UAC (User Access Control) dialogs are less frequent and not so annoying, executables are scanned for digital signatures of their vendor, you are notified about files downloaded from the internet as well as an improved firewall and notification center. DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is enabled by default, we still have the KPP (Kernel Patch Protection) and a significantly improved Autorun. Also, the privilege level of your account is not root, which would grant you unlimited access to system resources, but a member of the Administrators group. To affect changes that may affect system integrity and security you have to accept an UAC prompt. In addition to this, all start-up items that access critical system areas are also required to be manually approved via an UAC prompt. Checks and flags are implemented all around, to the point that you would have to ignore multiple security warnings in order to get infected. These are all significant changes from Windows XP. All around, you can see that the engineers have dedicated a significant amount of time to securing the operating system.

From such an important aspect as security,we go on to examine the improvements in the user interface department. The taskbar, part Mac OS X dock, part Start menu is an elegant and comprehensive UI element. The functionality offered is simply amazing; We have quick access to commonly used applications, an amazing way to find the window you’re looking for with Quick Look, a streamlined notification area which is clean yet retains usability and instant search from the Start menu. I’m sorry to disappoint the Linux and Mac OS fans, but Windows 7, as it is today, has the most advanced and usable UI.

With Windows 7 Microsoft has changed the game. I for one was saving money for a MacBook, which from a Windows XP viewpoint is an incredible upgrade. But compared to Windows 7, not so much. We have performance, stability, a not too shabby security model, an incredible selection of hardware and software. If lastly, we consider the price – free until June next year – we have an incredibly attractive offer. The ball is at Apple and the pitch is going down at WWDC. Unless something amazing comes out, it’s going to be a homerun for Windows 7.

As always, I’d love to hear what you think about this topic. You can check out How To Install Windows 7 on a Virtual Machine with VirtualBox and Test Windows 7 RC on a Virtual Machine written by Guy McDowell.

“Linux doesn’t have viruses at all!”

Most of the time this is just a case of over simplification made by ‘Linux people’ in order to convince Windows people to try Linux. The truth is that there are about 30 viruses for Linux. I know this number sounds extremely large, but bear with me.

The trick is that there aren’t any viruses in circulation – that can currently infect systems and are present on USB sticks, malicious servers, etc. In fact, most of those viruses are gathering dust somewhere on a floppy disk. How come there are so few viruses for Linux? Linux is radically different from Windows because:

1. The source code is freely available, which means more eyeballs are staring at the code, ever since the 90’s, continually improving it. On the other hand, it’s a felony to decompile or reverse engineer any component of Windows. Which means only  Microsoft employees and hackers see the code.
2. Linux was built with security in mind. Windows started paying attention to security well after Windows NT. Like putting the money into the bank and installing the safe afterwards: the robbers came and went.
3. And even then, they set the combination on the lock to ‘1234’.
4. On any modern Linux OS, you get updates for the system as well as for the apps, automatically. On Windows, every app has its updater program, which isn’t as robust or reliable.
5. Multiple Linux package managers means that a Debian virus can’t infect a Mandriva system. To cover all the major Linux distributions, a virus programmer needs to write the same virus about 5 times.

Linux can however store the Windows virus executables without getting infected itself. Which is why the bad guys use Linux themselves. Smart, isn’t it?

The structure of Linux makes writing a virus very difficult as it requires root access to do anything of significance. For a virus to run it would have to be granted root access with a password request. If you fail to give it root access then the most a virus could do, if anything, is damage your home directory. It is unlikely it could even run again so it would die there in your home directory. Most smart Linux users grasp the power of root access and would question why an unknown program is suddenly requesting root access. (You don’t enter your password for just ANY prompt do you? Only for programs YOU have called up, right?) –BrunoLinux

There’s a Linux antivirus called Clam AntiVirus. Which is completely useless, because finding a Linux virus in the wild is like finding a unicorn in your backyard.

Windows fanatics, please leave angry thoughts using the comment form below. Yes, make the pain go away.

I recently wrote an article about Opera 10 – which is currently in development – and got a lot of backlash from readers.

According to about 70 comments which were published, I downplayed Opera’s importance as a browser and as an innovator.

Jon says:

I agree with N_P. To say Opera has stagnated because it has not brought true innovation is just wrong. For one, they were the first to introduce a system like “speed-dial” which you describe as being familiar to rival browsers who were simply emulating Opera’s innovation.

I left the Opera camp a long time ago, at least 4 years, and according to some, I’ve missed the mark completely when I said Opera didn’t bring true innovation these past years.

You are wrong, then. Firefox’s awesome bar? Ripped off from Opera. Chrome and Safari’s top sites feature? Ripped off from Opera. And so it continues… Just look at the feature list for Safari 4. It’s like looking at a list of existing Opera features!

Thomas Ford, Communications Manager at Opera, contacted me after a day or so with some clarifications. We continued our conversation, and, as a result, I’ve got some interesting bits of information which I’m going to share with you.

A lot of the comments raise different points, but I’d like to highlight a few that they didn’t. I won’t take issue with you saying there isn’t much new in the labs release. That’s fair. The labs release of Opera 10 with Turbo is essentially to showcase that technology only. It certainly isn’t a complete representation of Opera 10.

Thomas then goes on to point out an interesting aspect about the Opera Turbo technology:

One important thing about Turbo though is that it is different from Opera Mini technology. Where Opera Mini’s OBML is actually a transcoding technology, Opera Turbo is a compression technology. They have fundamentally the same client-server architecture, but they work quite differently. Opera Mini translates the code from the Web into OBML then spits it out on the handset. Opera Turbo simply compresses things. It doesn’t transcode. This means you can use technologies like Ajax which are broken in the transcoding process.

I replied shortly:

Truth be said, I’ve lost my faith in Opera a while ago and I didn’t give Opera Turbo enough time when I wrote the review, which was clearly pointed out by the comments.

Referring to ads integrated into the browser interface, one of the main reasons I gave up on Opera years ago:

Totally fair. I think the ads turned a lot of people off. We faced a problem. We used to be a paid product, then wanted to release a free version. Of course, we had engineers to pay and our mobile business had yet to really take off. So the ads were a necessary evil to make enough money to keep operating. I think that was in 2000 or so. In 2005 we were able to go free through the same monetization strategy Firefox uses (Google search).
I think there are a lot of users who went through the same thing with Opera. Convincing them to try us again is a challenge, but I think we’re trying even harder now.

How would you feel about releasing the Opera code into under GPL, like Mozilla did with Firefox? What are the benefits for keeping the source code closed?

It’s actually something that has come up a lot. I should point out that some things we do are open source. We released Opera Dragonfly (our developer tools) under a BSD license and we’ve released a bunch of open developer libraries.
But in terms of releasing the browser core under a GPL or other OS license, the benefit isn’t necessarily there for us. We make a significant amount of revenue from licensing the browser. Since we have only one core (the same browser core is at the center of Opera on desktop, on mobile and on TVs, etc), we would give away a lot of our competitive advantage.
Our CEO I think had a decent answer to the question. He’s a computer scientist by training and has worked on open source projects before. Here’s an interview that might be interesting if you have the time.
You raise a valid question and it’s definitely something we can’t rule out for the future as our company evolves. Overall though, I think our resources are best spent trying to bring open standards to the Web to improve interoperability.

If Mozilla comes out with a decent competitor for Opera Mobile, they showed some alpha code recently, what would your response be to that situation? It would probably cut a whole lot of your revenues from OEMs.

In practice OEMs and network operators expect many things from a Web browser. Often it requires a great deal of customization to meet their demands. No two OEMs or operators have the same demands so it makes the mobile browser space quite different to the PC browser space.
I don’t think that it necessarily would cut into our revenues. Currently there are several Windows Mobile browsers already available. Even with those competitors we have been able to grow our revenues every quarter.
Mozilla does present a more formidable competitor due to its brand recognition and pre-existing user base. I guess we’ll have to see how it plays out. I’d like to think we add value to operators and OEMs through close collaboration and partnership and thus would continue to earn their business.

To conclude, I think Opera 10 is definitely worth another review when it reaches Release Candidate status.

Let’s take a look at GMX Mail, its features and caveats.

GMX, with an interface similar to Yahoo! Mail, makes it very easy to import other email accounts and contacts – the wizard only asks for the email address and the password, everything else is automatically configured behind the scenes for you.

There’s nothing exceptional about GMX; Yes, it integrates iGoogle gadgets into the frontpage – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more – but do you really want that in your email application? Personally, I prefer simplicity, and the option to disable these add-ons if I don’t require them.

Although I missed the Gmail labels and the ‘conversation view’, I’d switch in a minute from an Yahoo! Mail account.

The usual suspects – an Address Book and an Organizer  – are also present. The File Storage section gives you 1GB of free space, without the possibility to upgrade. Share high-resolution photos with a couple of friends and you’ll risk running out of bandwidth, at just 1 GB/month.

You can use GMX as a proxy to get POP3/IMAP access from your Yahoo! Mail accounts – without paying the premium subscription. Import your account into GMX then set it up in Outlook, Thunderbird or any other email client.

Signing up for GMX now gives you the chance to have a short and personalized email address like “yourname@gmx.com”.

If it doesn’t impress you with its features or interface, will surely impress you with the fact that they don’t show ads. Yes, that blew my mind too. If you’re tired of those annoying credit score banners in Yahoo! Mail or the Adwords in GMail, be prepared to meet GMX.

Here’s an excerpt from an email conversation with Olivia Hine from Groshelle:

Q: I’ve been looking at GMX and it struck me that this service does not have a business model. No ads and no subscription fees? How is this possible?

A: […]UIG was founded in 1988 and has a market cap of $5 Billion US, 4,000 employees in the US, Europe and Asia.  The company has the largest global web hosting service, supports over 10 million domains, and has 50K hosted servers.  They already have a rate of over 5 billion emails a month through their service.[…]

A classic bait and switch, we don’t receive a clear answer regarding the question and instead we get some facts about the company – which, admittedly, is quite large. Pushing the envelope, I tried to bait and switch myself, giving an improbable reason for this no ads policy hoping to get a clear answer.

Q: And still, why would a corporation willingly choose not to monetize a service? My conspiracy mind would suggest a data mining scheme.

A: That is not the case, especially because GMX.com follows German privacy laws. Data of any kind is simply not available to anyone for any reason. GMX.com is a service that the company is offering, just as Google is offering Gmail.

Why would GMX, apparently defy logic, and remove any kind of ads from its service? It wants to attract users that need an incentive to switch from their current provider. After they reach a magical number of users, say 1 million, they flip the switch and start making money. At least that’s how I see things – this is not confirmed by GMX.

Aardvark communicates with you through an instant messenger bot that is  currently compatible with Google Talk, AIM and MSN/Live! Chat. The bot approaches you in a very conversational style, using full sentences, thanking you and replying with ‘no problem’ when you decline to answer a question. It’s cute, in a Terminator-style way.

Aardvark let’s you customize your profile by adding tags, like technology or programming, and then sends you only questions that match those tags. This way, questions are routed to persons that are best suited to answer them.

Instead of posting your question on a page like Yahoo! Answers does, Aardvark checks to see if people in your network of friends have know-how in the subject you’re inquiring about. If it doesn’t find anyone, it goes on and searches for the same tag on the whole Aardvark database of users looking for people that are currently online. When it finds a person, it pops up a new IM windows with the respective question.

The user can choose to answer, pass or just ignore the question by typing ‘Busy’. If you’d like to make Aardvark leave you alone for a while, just type in ‘Away’.

If you’re not satisfied with the first answer,you can choose to resubmit the question, or if you don’t need answers anymore, cancel the search.

All the conversations are kept for later reference in the History tab on your site – and each question has its unique URL.

Aardvark, because it makes use of your network of friends and targets questions to knowledgeable people, gets absolutely fantastic answers, the best I’ve seen in a free service.

I’ve got 19 invites to give away, so if you want one, just leave a comment saying what’s your favorite Linux OS.

ZumoDrive is easy to set up, but unfortunately, you can only upload files from Windows or Mac; Linux users will still be able to access the web interface but without any upload capability. The small installation program that helps you create an account and select your desired capacity. The free plan includes 1GB of storage, but you can go up to 500GB with premium accounts.

After you sign up, you’ll have a ZumoDrive icon in the notification area which will allow you to change settings and view the status of uploads.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with the upload speeds, topping at 200KB/s, which means you’ll have to wait a bit if you’re uploading a movie or pictures shot in RAW format. The same holds true if you want to upload your entire music library and use the iTunes integration.

An interesting feature specific to ZumoDrive, is that it caches frequently used files on your local disk – which means you can continue working even if an internet connection is not available. You can control how much space you want it to use by visiting the ZumoDrive Console.

ZumoDrive can also be used as a backup – if the hard drive in your laptop dies, you’ll still have the files if you uploaded them. It’s not very cost efficient though; Mozy’s Unlimited plan is 5$ whereas a 50GB plan for ZumoDrive is 11,99$.

Their iPhone application gives you about the same functionality of the web interface: view photos, listen to songs and read documents(Word, PowerPoint, Excel, .txt, .rtf).

I’ve found ZumoDrive useful in a couple of day-to-day situations, such as showing a colleague the revised presentation even though I forgot my flash drive and working in the lab using schematics saved on the iPhone/iPod touch application.

With Zumodrive, we help people store, access and share the bits of their life – their music, their memories and their ideas. People don’t want to think of where all this is stored and how to take it all with them on their various devices. They just want to know that it is all constantly protected, always accessible and easily shareable.  We have leveraged the cloud to make this more of a reality, and we would love to see cool netbooks where ZumoDrive could be added for a few more bucks with a click or two.  Would you be willing to pay a few more bucks to always have access to all your personal content? –Zumo Blog

I couldn’t get myself to pay for the premium service; the free option served my limited needs and I’d rather walk with my information stored on an IronKey, safely encrypted, not available to anyone who happened to pick up my iPod touch.

ZumoDrive has one advantage and disadvantage over Wixi: the iPhone application.

On one hand it doesn’t ask you for your password in order to access your files and on the other it provides great convenience over Wixi’s web app. I’m sure Wixi will get around to an iPhone application soon, if they want to stay competitive.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get a hold on the ZumoDrive team via email; I had prepared some interesting questions. I invite them to contact me via email. As always, I look forward to your comments and recommend you to try Zumo Drive and share with us your experiences.

As you’d expect from a web 2.0 start-up – the interface is clean and simple. Let’s look at it tab by tab and check out the functionality of each one.

Dashboard allows you to track:

• Overdue or upcoming assignments and exams.
• Lists your classes along with the current average for each.
• Recent notes or files that have been uploaded.

The Dashboard makes it extremely easy to stay on top of everything you have to do with a glance. Isn’t it better than your Sticky Notes?

• Next up we have the Assignments tab which only shows, you’ve guessed it, upcoming and completed assignments with grades attached.

• Exams tab let’s you set up detailed reminders, with both SMS and email support for notifications.
• The Notes tab contains a rudimentary word processor, more likely a text box. It is a big downside for those who are used to process their text to highlight ideas and important aspects. It has revisions which means you won’t lose any changes – if you’re not happy with the outcome – just revert to the previous edit.
• The text editor is Markdown enabled which means:

[…] a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). –a Daring Fireball project.

• Calendar tab, let’s you see – in a manner similar to Google Calendar – your assignments and exams. It is iCal format compatible so you won’t have any problems importing your current calendar.
• The best part yet, the Files tab let’s you upload/download any kind of file you might want to use, PDF, Word, JPG, you name it.

TrackClass is completely free and available for everyone to use. If you want to organize your student life TrackClass is the way to do it, it is for normal people. Of course, if you’re a geek, you could always use the Google Apps suite to achieve the same result, it has more features – but you won’t get cohesion and a one stop shop for all of your needs.

As always, I look forward to your comments – what do you use, and what do you think about TrackClass.

YawnLog

YawnLog, by far the cutest startup I’ve had the chance to review, helps you quickly set up an account and monitor your sleep – how many hours you slept the past week, you even have to make up for lost sleep if you stay up late on Saturdays… You can rate your sleep – and then compare it to how others in your area did or just observe how final exams take a toll on your rest. And it sure is a cool pickup line: “Hey Dear, did you see my YawnLog yesterday? That was hell of a party.”

And the guys behind YawnLog sure do have a sense of humor – the whole press release is written in that official lingo with spiced phrases like ‘after a breakneck 24 hours development, YawnLog was released’ or [launched to] ‘an assembled audience at the annual SleepDex ‘09 conference.’

Greg Marra, founder and CEO of YawnLog, was inspired to create the product by his own study habits. “As a college student,” he explained during questions at the public launch of the site, “I find myself frequently staying up late . . . . I wanted a way to collect informatics on my own sleep habits so I could better learn how stress affects my sleep schedule.” He figured if he could make use of a tool for monitoring his sleep, others could as well.

Here’s a screenshot of my stats:

Get in touch with your sheep and sleep at YawnLog.

RadioBeta

RadioBeta allows you to listen to radio stations around the globe, create your playlists, all with a easy to use, intuitive design. The site is public and free to listen to, you don’t even need an account. If you ever wondered what the French are listening to, now’s your chance to find out. There’s not much you can say about this service other than its great, free and not many people know about it. The founders are pretty big on electronic music, so you might want to take a look at their blog, which is filled with music recommendations and videos from concerts all around the world. Check it out at RadioBeta.

Here’s a screenshot:

Jinni

It’s no magic but it works like nothing else. If you’re a movie buff like me – you always wanted an easy way to browse movies and get recommendations based on what you like. Jinni does just that, with a Google style search engine interface.

Although it is in private beta, you can sign up for an invite on the homepage. You need to create a profile for best results, but that should take you more than 10 minutes; then you’re free to search for movies and get awesome recommendations based on your tastes and previously watched movies.

It meshes information from around the web, bringing reviews, ratings, complete information about cast and set, pictures and video. You can rate the movie and choose whether or not you want to see more like that one.

And as a nice bonus – if you invite your friends to the service you get a chance to win a brand new iPod Touch. You can’t beat that!

Founded in early 2007, Wixi has continually added more functionality, and at this point is an quite amazing service. While being more Gamma than Beta, Wixi appears to be a feature complete service – allowing you to easily upload, manage, view and share media. I didn’t encounter any issues while using the service – no errors or freezes – and enjoyed reasonable fast uploads (200-300KB/s). I didn’t expect that a service using a mix of JavaScript and Flash will behave so consistent and snappy.

Wixi’s interface – clearly designed to appeal even the least computer-savvy users – resembles your desktop – windows, menus and, of course, a wallpaper of your choosing.

One of Wixi’s strong points is the ability to set access levels to files; private, friends or public. You wouldn’t want to share your final essay with the whole world, would you? Because you can pick individual people with which you want  to share a file or a folder, you can work together with your friends on a project, and not worry about sending each revision over email to the other participants.

Once you invited your friends to Wixi, you are automatically updated with their public activity via the Friends Activity Report. Arranged by media type, you could find pictures that your girlfriend took on the trip, or just as easily, the new school timetable posted by a colleague. Wixi has a lot of real-life uses that differentiate it from the other storage services – because of the tight integration with social aspects.

Social tools on the site allow users to interact with their friends online, across campus or across the globe, sharing a cool new song or photos of a recent vacation or family event. For those without access to their computers, Wixi offers long-distance access to media files. Registered members can also meet fellow users, browsing their Wixis, discovering new media and expanding their social circles.

Wixi also enables you to discover new content by simply browsing other people’s public ‘wixis’; if you find something you like, you can leave a message, save the file to your Wixi or request to be friends with that person.

Another interesting feature is ‘Web Channels’. Recently implemented, Web Channels lets you search, save and view content from YouTube, Daily Motion, Flickr, Hulu, CNN and MTV Music.

With offices in Paris, New York, Buenos Aires and half a million dollars in funding, Wixi has set a high goal for itself, ‘a world-class community for millions of users’. Their goal is far from unattainable if they continue adding features, maintaining the service reliable and easy to use. Wixi certainly gets my thumbs up, with the same concerns I have for any cloud storage service: privacy and data safety.

You can sign up for free at wixi.com; the free option gives you 3GB of storage and just a couple of restrictions, such as streaming files under 100MB. The premium option removes al the restrictions and gives you unlimited storage.

The first 50 readers who send an email leave a comment on the blog will get an code for the premium service; If you want to say thanks, include in your email a cool service, website or software you’ve discovered or a topic you’d like me to cover. This will help me pick future stories according to your interests.

As always, I love hearing what you think, in the comments. Have you previously used Wixi or a similar service? What could be improved?

Gist – as its name suggests – helps you get the essence about your contacts, greatly improving my workflow these past days. Its algorithm sorted out all the duplicate contacts, a part which more than a few other apps have failed, and mashed everything together – pulling information from social networks, email and even news articles, and ranking the importance of one contact by the number of conversations and the date of the last contact.

By using this process it prioritizes news items in the Gist dashboard – grouped by Company and People – it gives you a sense of what’s happening right now  in your network of people and companies, putting you up-to-speed about the topics you care about. And the best part this service is that you don’t have do the legwork to make it work, just sign in, input your accounts and sit back.

Other notable features are:

• Attachments box which lists recent documents that you’ve received – don’t need to hunt them down anymore.
• Links box shows you recent incoming links – handy if you’re doing research on something or need to reference the link often.
• Syncs with the Outlook Calendar – and soon with Google Calendar.
• Import contacts in .CSV format.
• Manually adjust the importance of a person or add details.

This service is certainly angled at the work/business types – and is a must-have for anyone working with people, like public relations representatives, journalists keeping track of their sources or a company keeping track of its clients.

Gist is currently in private beta, and a lot of features are not yet implemented. Robert from the Gist team assures me that support for more email providers, Twitter and Mac OS X Mail app is on the roadmap. In my tests Gist was stable – no crashes or unexpected behavior; the user interface is simple and easy to use. I still feel a bit queasy about handing over my Gmail credentials, but their Privacy Policy is solid; they clearly state that they won’t share this information and once you delete your account, it is gone, not like Facebook who keeps you account dormant until you manually request deletion.

A downside to Gist is that it doesn’t have an offline mode like Google Reader or Gmail; if you don’t have an internet connection you’re out of luck.

I strongly recommend this service once it officially launches and invite everyone interested to keep an eye on their blog – which is riddled with interesting information about APIs, coding frameworks and announcements regarding the service.

If Action Method would succeed in getting a large user base it will be the best thing that happened to humanity. It is a ‘workflow manager’, and the results are probably better than having your own personal secretary:

• Accessible from any computer connected to the internet. Standards based Javascript/DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict means you won’t be in trouble if using Safari or IE8.
• A well thought of interface, with different types of tasks clearly differentiated, and absolutely no digging through menus – an achievement considering the feature set that this app provides.
• You can create your own Projects and add tasks under it, in a typical 2 level branch scheme. The tasks you create can be delegated to other Action Method users by simply typing their email. You can communicate with them, send a nag if the job didn’t get done or thank them via ‘Share the love’ button. Set up a due date and monitor the time it took to complete is a cinch.
• References lets you store files, links, documents anything you need to achieve a certain task. Instead of searching every time for the Sticky Notes or notebook you’ve got everything in one place, neatly organized.
• Discussions, a major breakthrough of Action Method, gathers all communications, files, decisions into one place making it extremely easy to work with – and you can do this with many people! Doing this in Yahoo! Mail would be a total disaster and even GMail would require setting up filters and labels for each of the participant – Action Method does it for you without lifting a finger.

• Backburners – ideas that might be genius but you just can’t work at them right now, now have a place to live.
• Events manages deadlines for projects or tasks, meetings, conferences, it’s what you need it to be.
• Inbox – the place where you receive delegated tasks, new discussions, backburners and references.

The team behind Action Method has created a very insightful short video that explains the main features of the product along with live examples of a situation which is available here.

If you’re worried what you’re going to do when you’re offline, well, there are Action Method paper products: Action Book – a notepad with a task oriented printed pattern, Action Runner – the smaller brother, cards and stickers.

There’s only one downside to Action Method – when you reach the limits of the free version, and believe me, you’ll want all the features, you’re going to have to get a subscription. It’s not terribly expensive considering what you get out of it and the work that the team put towards creating this amazing web app. In the meantime, you should definitely try it by going here and setting up a free account.

I had the chance to ask Scott Belsky from Behance, the company behind Action Method, a few questions:

Q: What was the inspiration for ActionMethod? Was it a personal need that later developed into a product?

A: The inspiration was the fact that creative people and teams have too many ideas, but seldom take enough action to make their ideas happen. Productivity is sorely missing in the creative world. We developed the Behance Network to help organize the creative world’s work. Now we wanted to help organize the creative process – all with a bias towards action. What started as a small project for our team (Action Paper) became a major project to build an online productivity application fro the creative world.

Q: AM is certainly one of the most advanced solutions out there; How long did it take to bring the idea to fruition?

A: It took us over a year to get it to where it is – and we’re just getting started. We have many improvements in our pipeline. Another interesting and little-known fact is that our team used Action Method to build Action Method. We developed the Action Step functionality (creating action steps and delegating them) first. And then built the rest of the application around this basic functionality.

Q: Most of your competitors are advertising supported. How would you justify a paid subscription? Why not have that just for business users?

A: If users adapt Action Method Online as their primary task/project management solution, they typically take advantage of our advanced file-storage and project management capabilities that cost us on the bandwidth and storage side. As such, we structured the product to provide UNLIMITED action steps to iPhone users and up to 50 for those who want to test the full online capabilities.

Also, we believe that design, functionality, and methodology are sacred. So, we decided against introducing advertising into an application that is all about focus and productivity.

Q: How would you imagine AM evolve in the future?

A:We think that “ACTIONS” should be removed from email and other forms of communication. Action Steps are a unique element that must be managed accordingly. After all, progress in any project ultimately comes down to taking action.

Q: If you had to pick one feature of AM you can’t live without, what would you choose?
A: Definitely the Action Steps!  We feel that every idea – and every project – ultimately comes down to taking action. I log in every morning and see ALL of the Action Steps for every project in my life – personal and professional – sorted by Target Date. I can then further filter these action steps by color (priority) or by keyword.  To me, this is the most valuable aspect of the system.

I’m currently doing research for an article geared at free, simple, collaborative organization tools, and I’d like to hear about what you use, and, of course, your opinion on Action Method.

For example, let’s say you bought an Apple computer, and the experience wasn’t exactly perfect; You could open up the Kutano sidebar and leave a comment about what went wrong – warn other potential buyers of flaws that the seller might not want you to know. The good thing about it is that they can’t do anything to stop Kutano.

Kutano is very easy to use, partly due to its single purpose, posting and responding to comments. Click the fast forward button and you’ve hidden Kutano out of sight.

I had the chance to ask some interesting questions about Kutano to Cathy Wright from Kules Public Relations:

Q: What would you say differentiates your product from similar products like Xpanity?

A: There are three key differentiators:

• Kutano has developed (and has submitted the patent for) a new technology call Page Subject Recognition Technology. What this does is […] recognize the subject of the web page and delivers discussions and comments based on the subject of the page – not the URL. This is important as all other sites use the URL, which causes several problems for the user […]: lost or orphaned comments when the URL is updated (even through regular maintenance); disassociated discussions as some website pages have the same URL, but each page is clearly a different subject (Facebook is an example) and fractured discussions as some websites have multiple URLS for the same product (e-commerce sites like Amazon do this frequently). Kutano’s technology makes all these user problems disappear and creates a more seamless conversation on each page.
• Kutano integrates into how people currently use the web; it doesn’t require users to change their regular web behavior.  Kutano follows the user and is available whenever the user wants to use it, side-by-side any webpage. The UI was designed to flow with the users regular activities, and in many instances reduce the amount of time and effort to find comments and information on the web.
• Kutano integrates into people’s existing social networks, like Facebook and Twitter.  Users can broadcast their Kutano activity to their social networks to meet/discuss online in Kutano.

Q: Is the story on ‘About Us’ a real life experience of one of the founders? Is that how the idea for the service was conceived?

A: This story is one of many such true instances our engineers experienced that helped generate the idea for the product. The idea is to create a site where people can share information and experiences and help other people in a more positive environment.  Unlike “gripe sites” Kutano was developed to share information, reviews, etc. Today we have over 1 million comments on the site and the environment is fun and informative.

Q: How do you plan on monetizing the service?

A: Our patent pending technology allows us to develop a truly unique ad platform. With our technology, companies can significantly expand their reach and advertise on any site where their brand or product is mentioned (like a Sony camera can advertise on any blog, website, forum, etc. that mentions them). They can also advertise on their competitor’s site (Home Depot can advertise on Lowe’s, for example) and also advertise on sites that currently do not support advertising (a tax law firm can advertise on the IRS site).

Q: What kind of filters are/will be put in place? Will you take down user comments if requested by a website author? If not isn’t that subject to ‘defamatory’ and ‘libel’ suits?

A: We give the user control over his/her own experience. When they create an account, they can decide how to filter the comments they see.  For instance, a user can select to see only those comments that were rated 4 stars or higher by the community. The user will not see other comments.

They will know that other comments exist and can click on them if they choose once they are on a web page, but they will not be automatically visible to the user. We give users a second option of viewing comments so they can track the entire conversation if they so desire. Users may also edit their preferences at any time  In the name of full disclosure, this feature is currently being built and will launch in the next few weeks while we are still in beta. As we do with all features, we will test this with our users to ensure that it meets their needs.

Q: Since Kutano is always running in the background, how would you sum up the privacy policy regarding tracking users behavior?

A: Our servers are hosted by a reputable company and have extensive firewalls protecting the information from hackers. In addition, there are only 3 officers within the company that have access to the databases.  We do not sell or rent this information to anyone.

Kutano, a 1.8MB download, is available for Firefox or Internet Explorer from their website.  Meanwhile, what do you think about the service?

One of the startups coming in at the Demo ‘09 Conference, Sobees is of value to any social network addict – and everyone is these days. Using the intuitive interface you can create your own desktop widgets, each customized to your own preferences – from Twitter Search on a topic to pictures uploaded by your friends on Flickr – you can mix and mash to create your own personal news room. The customization potential of this app is literally unlimited and it’s dead simple to use:

• Pick a template

• Pick a service, a search term or a RSS feed.

Other functionalities worth mentioning:

• Your status is published on all the social networks you’re logged into.
• There are integrated weather notifications.
• Also Flickr photo uploading.

But not all is good about Sobees – because unfortunately there is no Mac or Linux version, and the Windows version is based on .NET Framework 3.5 which not even Microsoft used to create their most recent operating system, Windows 7. In fact, there supposedly was a rule against any code written in .NET.

• On my up-to-date, fully-patched and cleaned Windows XP system, Sobees was sluggish, froze 2-3 seconds when adding new widgets and there’s clearly something wrong with the Anti-aliasing of the titles.
• The Search function only works with Yahoo! and Windows Live! Search, a big disappointment for an app that is all about customizability.
• Uses too much memory, 125MB with only one widget open. Too much transparency, translucency and other flashy effects; a black stylish interface would have achieved a better effect without using so much resources.

Like David Chartier from Ars stated, it’s really hard to stay excited about Sobees after the initial jump; while the ‘taskbar for the web’ concept is original, it certainly wasn’t developed enough – but after all this is a beta.

You can get Sobees from here and help the developers by submitting feedback. As always I look forward to your comments about desktop applications for web apps.

In this article we’re going to take a closer look at the service, deconstructing its features and weaknesses. Plus, for those not lucky enough to live in one of the officially accepted countries, we describe a simple way to circumvent the protection and gain immediate access.

The Selection: Is it enough?

The current music selection will not impress a hard-core audiophile, or fans of Britney Spears – but it certainly will satisfy the needs of most casual listeners and even the more pretentious ears of an indie-lover; Spotify features bands such as Decemberists, The National, Atlas Sound, CSS, The Shins, Feist and many others.

Nobody is arguing that the current song count is significantly lower than the catalogs of any major seller – the fact that it is completely free is what’s so compelling about this service.

Initially, I was deeply worried about bitrate quality, which thankfully is 192kbpps, and interruptions, but none happened. The team notes on the blog:

However, we want to make sure that everyone who uses Spotify gets the same fast, uninterrupted experience so providing a stable service is our priority. If growth happens too fast and it starts affecting quality we may have to re-instate the invitation system, hopefully this won’t happen. –UK launch of the service

It’s notable that for 9,99 pounds/month you can get the premium service – ad-free listening – and some cool extras such as pre-release songs and concert tickets:

Mikael Wiehe, sogwriter and driving force of Hoola Bandoola Band, has another solo album, Sånger från en inställd skiljsmässa, which is now available for pre-listen.

[…]and get to be one of the first to hear the new Morrissey album. –From Spotify blog

They’ve signed deals with all the major labels(EMI, Universal, AMG), and adding more music at a fast pace:

We’re currently adding about 10,000 tracks a day from our current deals. – from the Spotify blog

The application: Simplicity in its purest form

You’ll be impressed with the sheer simplicity of the Spotify desktop application – and its similarities to iTunes, Songbird or Banshee. It clocks in at a mere 2,4 MB download.

Although is incredibly small – it has all the basics covered: playlists as easy as drag and drop, an very easy to use Radio feature, saved searches, easy navigation and search.

The Radio feature is a killer one: with two clicks you can find the right music for a romantic evening, peaceful reading, or just going back in time to rediscover old classics.

Another utility I found for Spotify is quickly previewing songs – recommended from friends or iTunes’ Genius – full length quality preview of the whole album before deciding if I want it or not.

Conclusion

If you’re going to ask, I’m going to tell you that I hate not having control over my data, be it music, photos or documents, but you can’t help noticing that everything is slowly moving away to the cloud – which ultimately might be better, or worse.

If there’s something I’m not quite sure about it’s this bit of information posted on their website:

We ’ve got a far greater range of targeting than you’ll find in offline or even most digital media – starting with demographic, location and mood. Of course, detailed tracking and reporting comes as a given.

I don’t like being tracked – unless it’s Last.fm – and I certainly don’t like that they don’t mention it prominently during signup.

Spotify is a must-have in my book and definitely worth watching in the future. That being said, you should visit spotify.com/en/get-started/ and sign up. If you’re not living in one of the accepted countries, use a proxy that supports SSL and maps your location to the UK or Sweden. It’s easy to set up a proxy in Firefox using the Options menu:

Don’t forget to share in the comments your take on Spotify and other cool services(and music) you’ve discovered in this space.