Well, it is not a full fledged desktop, but if you are looking for the basic functionalities of a desktop, you get pretty much everything out of the Web version in Schmedley [ visit the link here].

So, there is Weather, Search, RSS, Facebook, Friendfeed, Maps, Stocks, Amazon, Sticky Notes, Bookmarks, Twitter, YouTube and even E-Mail. Everything is configurable in the form of the snazzy widgets as you can see. All you need to do is Register with them. As the header shows, it is in Gamma phase, and I hope the first roll-out will be out soon.

The Movies tab show coming attractions and movie showtimes. The look of your homepage can be customised and the Mac dock at the bottom is very smooth.

Do let us know if you liked this one. Cheerio!

Not so easy

For some reason best know to itself my Sky+ HD box decided to record only the second half of Stargate Universe this week.

No problem I thought, I’ll watch it on the much flaunted updated Sky Player that integrates with Windows 7 which was launched on the 19th November. Installation and registration onto my ASRock Nettop went fine and all initially appeared OK…

Sky's Sales Pitch

I log into the system and only see last weeks episode of Stargate Universe which is a real shame as nobody seems to have added this weeks episode yet (other series I have check before have been OK) . Now I’ll have to wait until they update it before I can watch the whole episode. Poot!

Whilst installing Sky Player it I did notice a few other oddities…

Some of the Episode details do not match up to the footage they are linked to, e.g. the present weeks episode of Modern Family actually has the title and synopsys of NEXT weeks episode. I saw the blurb and thought nice! I haven’t seen that one yet only to find it was this weeks which I had already seen! how disappointing :-/

When Installing Sky Player I noticed it said about the capabilities for integration into Windows 7′s Media Centre – there’s even a video of it. However the only info it says on how to actually access it is “Start Media Centre and select Sky Player”. But what if there is no SKY item listed as is the case with mine? it’s really not very helpful.

moving goalposts

I tried to check out the Forums (basically “you sod off and support yourself” so we can save money on any actual decent Support model) and that was  as buggy as hell too. The Posts are erratically displayed all over the place with many parts repeated and the Search box allows you to enter only grayed out text and when you click ‘Search’ it does nothing.

Actually – in the last few mins of writing this post the’re  forums have been taken down. The Link to it has been replaced with a “Register for free” button!

Come on guys! get your act together!

Enter a new alternative to iGoogle – 44tips.com, a website run by some awesome developers at picturesque Amsterdam [ I am imagining that they have an awesome view in their office ] The first thing you notice about the UI [user interface] on 44tips is that the site design is simplistic, clutter-free and quite minimal – yet, pretty. The colours are basic dark grey and Orange with a twang. Both remind me of Firefox somehow, which means-it works for me. Let’s explore the usability and the features on this website, and if it is worth making it your homepage. Shall we? The first thing once you hit the website is that it asks you to create a new account. Although you can use the features on the upper tab without creating an account. However, you will not be able to save your favourites [which we'll explore later]. But it’s better to just go ahead and create an account – coz it’s easier rather than relying on your browser cookies. Also do remember to change your country preferences. Else, you’ll end up watching a lot of stuff in a language you wouldn’t understand. [That happened to me ] Also, when you create an account, you are asked to add your delicious account name and/or flickr account if you want to integrate it with 44tips, which is great.

A quick run through the website shows that the different tabs on the top divide the site into sections such as – collections, feeds, news, music, social, photos, etc. Add to that there is a search bar in the middle. Like the design, but there is a problem with the navigation. It is a huge page of content when you go for any one of – Music, Video etc. And so, to go the next page, you need to go to the bottom right, and find a small arrow button as the one shown below.

Its a bit annoying to place the mouse pointer precisely on that small space. It should have placed somewhere in the middle of the page, and please make the arrow bigger. A quick round-up of what the pages do:

Collections: Shows some nice goodies -like Facebook apps, and lotsa other goodness. I believe this links are collected from Del.Icio.Us.

Daily Tips: It’s something similar to the above, but worth checking out.

Feeds: Need I say. You can add your own feeds, and ditch that Google reader. Kidding. I cannot ditch Google reader.

Friends: Creates a Mosaic of the pictures of your Facebook and/or Hyves friends. But nothing more than that. All that you can do is to send them message informing about 44tips, or visit their profile via 44tips’ mosaic. A very pretty UI must say.

Games: The best one of all the tabs. It features legendary games such as Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia, and Solitaire. But there’s no Bejeweled here #fail. Games are divided into Men, Women, Kids I and II, and Girls. Apparently, Women like to play Deal or No Deal . But playing Prince of Persia was awesome, and it brought back a lot of happy memories.

Messages: You can add your Twitter, Facebook, Hyves of Linked In account here. It will act as a status updater. But to use this, you’d have to be registered as a user with 44tips. There are no provisions to add multiple twitter accounts, or lists from Twitter.

Music: It collects links from YouTube and Last.Fm.

News: Brings in news feeds and is sub-divided into different sections – Tech, Politics, Science, Health etc. This is great, but you can’t actually replace Google News.

Photos: It’s a well thought out Visual search which aggregates images from Flickr. I like it.

Radio: Even on the USA-selected website, the Radio tab shows the following.

I translated it using Google Translator – from Dutch to English and it means: Click and listen to your favorite radio station I tried clicking it, but it didn’t work. So, as of now Radio is not here on 44tips.

And finally Video: which accumulates YouTube links only. I haven’t seen any video links being gathered from other video sites such as Vimeo or DailyMotion, which is a bummer. As for customization, you can add/delete any of these tabs using the + button in the end.

Final Verdict: 44tips is definitely a very useful content aggregator. It is ad-free at the moment, and most of its features can be used without even registering. It’s social skills are still quite limited, although you can still use the basic tweeting feature if you are not too fussed about using Lists etc. The music and the video tabs are a breeze to work with and the Flickr image search is pretty awesome.

I’d like to see the Radio working, along with a Tiny URL generator somewhere. And I need more Games. That’d surely make me happy. And with time, we could probably see more regions been added. I am however sceptical about the revenue-model of this website. Does it only use the user-email IDs as contacts for future marketing avenues, and well, the other accounts associated? It is a tough model to generate revenue, as there are no ads on the website. This is a good thing for us users.

But at the end of the day, 44tips has a lot to offer, but there is no real amount of user customisation that is available on iGoogle. iGoogle also has a lot of themes, gadgets and widgets to choose from which we would like to see on 44tips. But taking 44tips for what it is, my verdict is – It surely is worth being the homepage on one of your browsers. Works just fine on IE7 and above, Firefox, Opera and Chrome. Haven’t tested on Safari, but should work fine. Do lemme know in the comments, what do you think about 44tips and if this review was helpful. Cheerio!

It all started for me when Google had something to offer. My classmates in Engineering College told me of a something called Orkut. It was fast becoming one of the emerging trendy keywords, and was supposedly the successor of email. The next generation of communication, as we call it, was here. It was late 2004 when I joined Orkut, and have been an active subscriber to it [ except for I deleted my account twice because of spam reasons ].

A few years went by, and my friends list exponentially increased till it was ready to explode. And then, in late 2007, I came to know of a something called Facebook. I was reluctant to join because of all the hassle involved to invite all my friends there, and importing contacts, and yes maintaining the account by participating in the discussions and replying to the posts. I had already been through quite a lot of other social networks like hi5, gazzag, myspace, bebo, multiply et al. My relation with all of the others remained limited to just a couple of months, as I retained my loyalty to orkut.

And then, something happened. All of a sudden, I heard all the social network gurus, the “in” crowd of the blogosphere – from Michael Arrington to Om Malik, John Chow to Darren Rowse- everyone was on Facebook. It was the place where everyone was there. And besides these people, my contact list from orkut had by now started sending me invites for Facebook. After a few reluctant logins to the Facebook, I got used to the interface. Long before I could realise, from celebrities to my local chai-walla to even my University professor – everyone was on Facebook.

Which brings me to this – Windows Live Planet. Really, who needs yet another Social Network in 2009? I do not. I am too old to keep shifting base. I am too used to the Blue and White interface to shift over to the Aero-Flow based Live presentation. I do not want my ‘space’ to look like I am living in an MSN World. And yes, I did check out the initial questionnaire, and it is filled with absolutely unfunny, non-sensical answers to some of the most badly placed questions. The only thing I liked about Live Planet was nothing.

One last thing, the Self-Cool image being posed on the homepage looks excruciating. And the tag-line – Match And Make New Friends – makes it feel like it is not a Social Network but a Matrimonial Matchmaker. The guy with the curly hair reminds me of Justin Guarini [ which is not a good thing ] and the forced usage of “Whats up” seems like a conscious attack to the teenage target audience. Also wtf is meant by the line: Find ur Twin?

I don’t know why I have so much negative about Live Planet. Hmm, may be because its 2009, and its TOO LATE for a Social Network to be born. But again, if I find everyone else is moving in that direction [ as in Windows Live Planet] , who am I stop? But do you really think people will adopt this new Social Network? My prediction- NO!

But now almost after a week, when the smoke has faded away and users have already got accustomed to the new look or redesign of Facebook, here’s some reason to cheer up. Here are 5 reasons why I like the new Facebook and possibly you could as well. 

1. The News Feed can be filtered.

In the Home page, where we see the Twitter Like feed of the activities of the friend of a user, it displays all the activites of friends. This display can be filtered as well, based on Filters available, such as : Photos, Links, Videos etc. I have some more filters in my profile viz. YouTube, Twitter, Flixster, LivingSocial etc. If you have grouped your friends ( I have grouped them such as :-Social Network Contacts, University, School, Work etc.), then the NewsFeed could also display feed from only the members of those group.

2.Application on Bottom Bar

Very uncluttered look and organised. Only six of them are displayed, and the rest can be accessed by clicking on Applications. A sort of a drop down menu appears. This UI is much better than the previous version.

3. The Wall can be filtered as well

The Wall on the profile page can now be filtered to show posts by self and friends, just self, or just by friends. 

4. Friend Activities in HighLights

New Groups joined by friends to New photo uploads can also be accessed from the Highlights on the Right Sidebar on the HomePage

5. Updates and Invitations are shown on the Home Page

All invitations and updates etc, are visible directly on the Homepage unlike the previous version, where the Right Sidebar showed 5 updates awaiting etc. Lesser links to click.

So, there you go, 5 reasons to like the new Facebook. Tell me, do you agree?

So, anyone who has been able to get in and started the fragging? See you on the other side!!!

Back in the day, we all used phones to communicate. Then Skype came along and changed the world. Sure, there were other systems before it, but Skype had it all sewn up with a neat little package that bundled the hallowed VOIP with a simple interface and of course – It was free!! Later, video was added (that Beta seemed to last forever!) and the whole thing really took off. Skype has always had some big hitters looking over its shoulder with the likes of the goliath Windows Messenger (Currently in its ‘Live’ incarnation) and the Gmail (With its flexibility and low resource usage) to name but a few.

With this in mind the major release of Skype 4.0 was much anticipated… What new wonders can we behold?… Well, I can tell you one thing – if you’re expecting better video you may be sadly disappointed.  :-\

Last week if you’d have asked me what my preferred video calling software was I’d have said Gmail and Skype were pretty much 50/50, this week however it has to be Gmail. The new Skype 4.0 video looks like a nasty police photo-fit or, worse, a deliberately pixelated news item. Yes it gets a little better if you give it a few minutes but the previous video was clearly better (IMHO). They have, however, done a good job with the voice side of things which is undoubtedly smooth, and sure, there are some new whistles and bells to play with (the “Open” or “Open with Video” seems so obvious now) but why would you release an update with worse performance on the one thing everybody stares at???…

Now if only Google could make their video a little more resilient to all those sudden crashes….

I got to know about this app, through DownloadSquad’s post on 8hands. First things first, the app needed some update of Microsoft .Net to be installed on my machine, and a reboot. Ok, no complaints. Once installed, the application required me to make an account to login, giving in my e-mail credentials. No activation link from email required. Ok, cool so-far. Setting up Twitter easy as it goes. Click the twitter icon, enter username and password. Done! 

Facebook next. Enter user-login (email address) and password. Doesn’t accept. Tried again, doesn’t accept. Signed out of Facebook from browser, and then tried login in 8hands, doesn’t work. Tried 3 more times, whilst I was updating my frustation on Twitter via 8hands (Get my twitter feed here) . If I cannot get my facebook set-up here, what’s the damn use?

Went to Start, Programs, 8hands— No uninstall exe. Went to Ctrl-Panel, Add-Remove Programs. Found 8hands. Removed. 

The other thing I noticed while I was updating Twitter through 8hands was that the messages were getting updated quite well on twitter, but there was no updates on the client itself. I could not wait for them to get updated, and hence hit the uninstall button. If anyone can set-up their Facebook account here, please let me know. Cheers and DONOT install. 

P.S. The image means , 8hands doesn’t require Refresh. Yeah right!