Website Magazine Consumer Corner

Streaming YouTube with InfiniTube

MikePhillips — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Addicted to YouTube? Check out InfiniTube. This site pulls video from - you guessed it, YouTube - and streams them non-stop. While you may not want to see back-to-back-to-back-to-back videos and spinoffs of "Leave Britney Alone!" it does present a nice opportunity for music fans. It sort of acts like Pandora for video. Of course, you will have to suffer through sporadic amateur video with bad sound quality, and there are small pauses between each video, but it's not all that bad. In fact, it's kind of cool - really cool if you're into live music.

Checking Prices Across Multiple Sites

MikePhillips — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:38:00 GMT

Shopping on the Web can spiral out of control when you're searching for the best price. So it helps if you can get a good idea of the current asking price for an item quickly and without needing to navigate multiple websites. Below are three sites that do just that. You may or may not know about them, but they're all worth a look - if for nothing else than to get a feel for what you can expect to pay before doing any hardcore shopping.

PriceCheckah: Goofy name, but a pretty useful site. Just enter the item in the search bar and press Enter. You'll see results from Amazon, Buy.com, eBay, Overstock.com, Froogle and Walmart. Click on the item and you'll be take to that site's page. You can also review your past searches through a drop-down bar that will stay intact as long as your cookies are active.

Plaza101: Similar concept as PriceCheckah. Enter in your search and you're presented with a list of results and prices and the sites offering the item. You may need an extra click to see prices from multiple vendors. It appears that a wider variety of stores is present at Plaza101 and it also includes a community feature to connect and share deals with other shoppers.

NexTag: Another comparison site, this has a large index of items and includes a "TruePrice" calculator. Enter your ZIP code and it will calculate applicable taxes (if any) and shipping costs to show you the final price you can expect to pay.

EveryBlock - Local Events Aggregator

administrator — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:28:00 GMT

If you live in Chicago, Charlotte, New York, Philadelphia or San Francisco, take a look at EveryBlock.com. The service provides a one-stop site to get a vast overview of local happenings in your area. Peruse by the city as a whole, or enter your address into the search bar and you'll find a variety of reports from within an 8 block down to a one block radius of your address. The different reports include latest news, building permit applications, crime reports, real estate listings, restaurant reviews, photos, street closures and more. There are neighborhood updates every day. You can also sign up to alerts through RSS and email. EveryBlock plans to continually launch the service in more cities.

Convert Text to Downloadable MP3

MikePhillips — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Don't have time to read? Try HearWho.com. This very simple tool allows you to paste any text - a word document, Web page or any other text - into a box, then click a button to convert that text into speech, in a downloadable MP3 format. You can then listen by clicking the speaker or download by right-clicking the speaker and using the "save as" function. Once downloaded, you are free to put that file on your iPod or MP3 player.

We tested it out and, in spite of the ugly page design, it works remarkably well. Conversion is fast (the site says 5 seconds to 5 minutes depending on site usage and length of text) and the sound quality is as good as any on the Web. You can choose the sound quality, male or female voice and it reads in either English or Spanish - of course, it's in that semi-creepy robotic tone. Short text converts in a matter of seconds. A test of about 3,000 words (a lengthy article) took about a minute.

This is a very nice tool for commuting, multi-tasking and just about any activity when you want some information but can't read it off a page. You could even get map directions, paste in the text and then you have a sort of audio turn-by-turn navigation.

Operate Your BlackBerry like a Mac

MikePhillips — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:48:00 GMT

If you're a Mac user, or even just a fan, but you own a BlackBerry, check out Flowberry. It turns your BlackBerry screen into a pseudo-Mac desktop, displaying icons for email, messages, calendar, address book, media BlackBerry Messenger, MemoPad and Keyboard Lock. FlowBerry will set you back $6.99.

Search for People on Twitter with Twello

MikePhillips — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:28:00 GMT

For you Twitter users who are looking to further extend your network, take a look at Twello.com. Here, you can select categories you're interested in, along with subcategories (Arts, Associations, Food, Small Business, Sports, Media) or you can search for people using your own criteria. What you get in return is a list of users, sorted by number of followers (or last activity), see where they are located and their URL.

At first glance, it looks like a pretty extensive list and not a bad way to add some followers. The service - a product of WebProNews - claims to currently index more than 382,000 people. And it doesn't look as crude as the image below.

Never Miss a Birthday or Holiday

MikePhillips — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:20:00 GMT

My family is big on greeting cards - for birthdays, holidays and the like. So every time a birthday is coming up, I have to be sure and get to the store, pick out a card, stamp and mail it. Well, GreetQ has a solution for me and possibly for you. This service lets you pick greeting cards, personalize a message and then put them in a queue for mailing. When the event draws near, GreetQ will mail your cards - either to your address or somewhere else in the United States. International shipping is coming soon, according to the website.

The cards are professionally designed and very attractive. There are shipping costs involved, of course. GreetQ can even hand-write a personal message for you, for a $2.99 fee.

At first glance, it seems like a very convenient service. The cards range in price from about $3-$7 and the shipping fees may be a deterrent for some, but it's worth checking out the site and pricing it out.

Give Getty Feedback, Get Gift Certificates

MikePhillips — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:10:00 GMT

For all you designers out there - do you use Getty Images? If so, check out their recent blog post. They are asking for customer feedback/research on their blog. In short, fill out a form and wait to be contacted. If you're selected you will receive a gift certificate - usually from Amazon.com or Giftcertificates.com.

From the Getty blog: "We’ll get in touch when we’re running research with people who match your profile.

What about the money? Participants we schedule can expect a generous gift certificate in return for their time."

According to Getty, after filling out the form you get added to their customer research database. If your profile matches who they want to speak to for their current usability study, you'll get a call. Each usability study consists of around 12-20 people and each gets a gift certificate for participating.

AmazonWatcher: Never Miss a Hot Item

MikePhillips — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:08:00 GMT

AmazonWatcher is a nice little utility that will alert you whenever an out-of-stock item is once again available. It will also alert you about price drops - Amazon's policy states that they will pay the difference if an item you purchased drops in price within 30 days of when you bought it. Also, if you have an account set up with Amazon complete with billing info and a credit card, you can use AmazonWatcher to automatically purchase an item when it becomes availble.

Find Nearby Restaurants for $10 Per Person

MikePhillips — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:20:00 GMT

If you're in the mood to eat out, but don't want to spend too much, you may want to take a look at Ueatcheap.com. Here, you can enter your city or ZIP code and you'll get a Google map in return with thumbtacks represented restaurants that offer meals for $10 or less per person. You can narrow results by choosing a type of cuisine and choose a radius to search from.
You can also add restaurants, read and write reviews and sign up for coupons and updates to your area.

Leave Voicemail Without Ringing the Phone

MikePhillips — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:30:00 GMT

If, for one reason or another you want to leave someone a voicemail, but don't want to risk that they pick up the phone when you call, try slydial. It's pretty simple. Dial 267-slydial (267-759-3425) from your phone. When you hear the prompt, enter the number you want to call. Then, after some advertisements, you will be connected directly to the person's voicemail. It's free - but if you want to avoid the advertisements and such, you can sign up for a premium account.

Rip DVDs Onto Your Portable Device

MikePhillips — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:56:00 GMT

DVD Catalyst is a Web-based service that lets you take your own DVDs and compress them to load onto your iPod, iPhone, PSP, Smartphone and other portable devices. It's pretty simple, you choose your portable device type, load a DVD and let the software do the work. An advanced version (about $20) comes with better features, including the ability to segment your videos, control quality, etc., but the free version should suit most people's needs.

StumbleAudio: StumbleUpon for Indie Music

MikePhillips — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:22:00 GMT

If you like StumbleUpon's capability of finding websites you've never heard of and you're an indie music fan, check out StumbleAudio. On the top right, enter in an artist you like and on the left you will see a list of indie artists (you've probably never heard of before) who have similar qualities. In the center square, you can cycle through the chosen album. Click on the left for another similar artist, or click "Stumble" for something entirely different. You can also purchase songs from iTunes, Amazon, PayPlay and CD Baby, share the music with friends and vote if you like the song or not - signing up for an account will let you save your favorites. StumbleAudio boasts more than 2,000,000 songs in their index.

Google Adds Speech Recognition to Video Search

MikePhillips — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:27:00 GMT

It's been in the works for quite some time and now Google's speech recognition for video is ready for limited release. For now it's only available with select political videos, but that will soon change. Simply enter in the word(s) you want to find in a video and you will get a list of videos that include that word or term, and small yellow dots on the play bar indicating where in the video it can be heard.

You can test it out here, and also add it as a widget in your iGoogle page.

iPhone Sales and App Downloads Amaze

MikePhillips — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:00:00 GMT

If the first weekend of iPhone sales and app downloads are any indication, the mobile era is about to match and possibly exceed every expectation set forth.

More than one million iPhones were sold this past weekend (Friday - Sunday) across 21 countries worldwide. By comparison, the first generation sold one million units in 74 days. And that's despite some stores running out of inventory.

What might be even more impressive is that 10 million apps were download during the same time frame. Now that includes the new 3G iPhone and older iPhones with the software upgrade. And that's despite many stores having problems activating the phones on the spot and overloads that caused the App Store to crash on occasion. It says that mobile users are ready for a full-on mobile Web experience - and they're willing to pay for it. Specifics are not available but many of the most popular apps are paid, ranging in price from $0.99 to $9.99 and up. That means that if you're a solid developer, there's gold in them thar hills!

It's interesting that the top paid apps are overwhelming of the gaming and entertainment variety while the top free apps are of a more useful function - including three social networking apps. A good sign that social networking has a wide-open opportunity to become a truly ubiquitous, global phenomenon that could forever change how humans interact.

The top paid apps downloaded so far:

Super Monkey Ball (game)
Texas Hold'em (game)
Enigmo (game)
Crash Bandicoot (game)
MLB.com At Bat (sports - real-time scores and in-game video highlights)
Cro-Mag Rally (game)
iBeer (entertainment - an app that turns your screen into a "drinkable" beer mug)
TETRIS (game)
Moto Racer (game)
Scrabble (game)

The top free apps downloaded so far:

Remote (entertainment - control your Apple TV or music on your computer from your iPhone)
AIM (social networking)
WeatherBug (weather)
Facebook (social networking)
Pandora Radio (music)
PhoneSaber (entertainment - your iPhone turns into a light-saber, complete with swinging sounds)
AOL Radio (music)
MySpace Mobile (social networking)
Tap Tap Revenge (game)
Google Mobile App (reference)