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As a first-time dad of a two year old, I continually find myself being humbled by how much I have still to learn about being a great father. Every time I think I’ve got something down with my son, he throws a curve ball our way and we go back to the drawing board. I am realizing that this full time job — parenting — is one where I am constantly learning and seeking advice, and I don’t think it is ever going to stop.
My wife and I have found the web to be very helpful for a lot of answers to our questions that we have about our son, when it comes to simple issues like when to potty train, to more complex ones like “Why is our son not eating?” But, as we have found, we can spend hours on the web finding the answers to our questions and we can get many different opinions from people. That is great, but I would love to be able to condense that into one site — where hopefully the answers are all high quality.
As I was looking for answers to a question a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon Quib.ly, which is a question and answer site, similar to Quora and the like, but puts its focus on parenting and technology. Those are two areas where I can offer help and learn a great deal from so I thought I would give it a spin to see how beneficial it could be for me.
When Google announced that they planned to close Reader on July 1, the online community’s reaction varied from surprised approval, to shocked horror. Google’s decision was based on the flagging number of users who still use feeds in preference to social media.
But as any self-respecting RSS aficionado will know, flicking through your tweets, or browsing your Facebook timeline, isn’t the best way of finding interesting content. Until now, though, there have been very few services providing a halfway house between feeds and social media.
Rockmelt, which was once a socially-orientated web browser, has been reinvented as a social media-based, feed-reading network. But is Rockmelt‘s new course bound for being accepted as a great new way to read the news, or is it heading more in the direction of the doomed FriendFeed? Let’s see.
The social media revolution has undoubtedly broadened our social horizons, but, in my case certainly, it has also broadened the spectrum of online chores to be completed on a daily basis. Keeping up with social media appearances, and the content-hunting which that entails, can easily turn into a full-time vocation.
There are already some apps at hand to ease this burden. Schedulers, like Hootsuite and Buffer, allow you to designate a time at which your posts and tweets should be sent out. Both of these services, and some of their competitors, also offer analytics, meaning you can track how popular each of your missives has been. Services like Feedly make the process of content-gathering easier, although trawling through a catalogue of feeds isn’t a quick process.
A new invite beta-stage startup, called Swayy, aims to streamline these processes into one, simple workflow. Swayy offers a stream of shareable content tailored to your choice of subjects, along with scheduling and analytics options. But can Swayy really be the master of all trades?
I’ll come right out and admit it: I’m a sucker for good design. And while there are many sites which allow you to browse cool and well designed products, sites like Pinterest rarely actually link you to a place where you can purchase said product. This leaves me wondering whether or not the device actually exists and, if it does, it’s almost impossible to find the product.
However, I recently came across Fancy, a social network and eCommerce hybrid website for well designed products. It’s Pinterest meets eCommerce, in the best of ways. Let’s take a look.
Everyone that used to love Google Reader is having to quickly search for a new RSS reader, now that Google Reader’s getting shut down. Many users seem to be headed for Feedly, while some, like our own Mathew Guay, have opted to set up their own servers with Fever, and a few are heading for The Old Reader. All of these services have been under duress since the announcement, feverishly adding bandwidth and servers in an effort to keep pace with their new-found popularity.
Me? I honestly think I am leaning towards startup Feedspot. I have tried both Feedly and The Old Reader. Both are nice, but I can not say much beyond that. Feedspot, on the other hand, may be the app that hits the spot for me. (more…)
I admire app developers that are willing to take a fresh look at what they have developed after releasing something for a while. It shows that they are passionate and believe in what they are building, not only for themselves, but for the general population as a whole. In my opinion, it takes a lot to be able to swallow your pride a little, take in user feedback and be willing to tweak a product or app so that it can better meet the demand for the user.
The reason why I am reflecting on this is that I have been using Kippt for the past couple of days and have been really impressed by what they have done to their app. They haven’t necessarily done a full facelift to it, but they were able to analyze how well the app worked and took user feedback to produce an even better product than before. If you are unfamilar with Kippt, we did a review on their old version a couple of years ago.
Apps that enable you to send contact information and files from one device to another have been available for years now, but when it comes to sharing websites, email is often the best bet. Yup: if you want to open the page you’re looking at on your computer in your phone’s browser, often the easiest way to move the link around is emailing yourself. That just doesn’t seem right.
While many web browsers now offer the option of syncing open tab sessions between computers, the way synchronization has been implemented is not always ideal since they only work with other versions of the same browser. What if you use Chrome on your computer and Safari on your mobile devices?
This is where SendTab can help, making it possible to push tabs from one browser to another, on any device. Let’s see if it holds up to its promise.
One of the things that I truly love about social media is how you can make connections with people that you have never met before in real life. For example, my editor and I live on practically opposite ends of the earth, we have never met face to face, but yet, I feel like I know him decently well. It is amazing how many people I have been able to connect with and share ideas and talk tech through social media. There is something about it that makes people feel “safe”, and they can let their guard down and be themselves.
Over the past year or so, I have started to see a different type of social media avenue crop up around the web. These are sites where you can throw out a question to people, and you let the power of social media help with getting you an answer. There are formal sites like Branch and Quora that are set up for this, and then you have informal ones like Twitter and Facebook where you can solicit feedback as well. But, the app that I have been testing for the past few days, Yabbly, takes a somewhat different approach and so far, I like what I see.
I’m not only a confessed app junkie, I’m an email hoarder, too. I just counted the number of accounts in Thunderbird and there are a whopping 19 email accounts that I monitor for various reasons. That’s not to mention my various social media accounts. As you can guess, I am always on the lookout for the next great app and I may have stumbled upon one.
Enter Unified Inbox, a new app designed to bring all of your inboxes together. It’s currently free in invite-only beta, and let’s find out how Unified Inbox can wrangle your email and social media accounts and keep you on top of your game. (more…)
The world wide web can be a dangerous place for me at times, especially when I see a cool new product. I have a hard time when I come across a cool iPhone case, or some other cool gadget that I just “need” to have. I know I am somewhat obsessed with technology, but I always feel like I have to have the latest and greatest. Granted, I don’t go too overboard and I make sure to stay within my limit and there are times when I have to save the item that I want for later and actually save up for it.
There are a variety of ways that I have tried to save things that I find on the internet that I want to buy later. I have bookmarked websites and I have also tried to use sites like Pinterest and Clipboard as well. Needless to say, for whatever reason none of the things that I have tried seemed to work well. So, a little while back I found out about Wanelo, which is a place where you can store things that you want to buy. But it is more than just that, it is kind of like Pinterest, but more of a niche service. Let me show you what I am talking about.
