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!

1. Homepage:

The Homepage has a lot to offer by itself. The headings on the homepage are:

Tops at the Box Office: List of Box Office top grossers

Opening this Week: The releases of the week

Coming Soon: The upcoming releases

New on DVD and Blu Ray

Other than these, the trivia section on the Homepage is a lovely addition. Movie/TV quote of the day, Born today and Did you know.

2: IMDb Top 250:

We all movie lovers consider this as the Holy Scroll of movie favourites. The list of the Top 250 movies of all time. I do remember when Dark Knight’s soaring popularity made it an instant hit and how fanboyism votes made it quickly rise to the no.1 spot and dethrone its predecessor GodFather. But it wasn’t for long there. As of now [ Oct 19, 2009 ], the Shawshank Redemption is at the no.1 spot with a total of 449,943 votes and a rating of 9.1, whereas the Dark Knight is at no.9 with 8.8 .

But did you know how the rating is calculated? Here’s the formula:

weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

where:

• R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
• v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
• m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 1500)
• C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.8)

for the Top 250, only votes from regular voters are considered.

BTW, there’s also a Bottom 100 list.

3. Movie browsing by categories:

By Genre: Action, Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Drama, Comedy etc.

By Year/Decade:

4. Archives:

Award winners down the years.

All Time Box Office winners.

5. Movie details and People profiles:

Not only the movie rankings, but all related information. As in, who is the director of a particular movie. What other movies has he/she done. etc etc.

IMDb also has recorded information of Film personality profiles and a chronicling of their works.

Have I missed out on any other utility of IMDb that we use. Shout it out in the comments. Cheerio!

Yes, you read that right. You can download Megavideo videos for free online without any software installations which load bunch of spywares and adwares into your hard drive.

For starters, Megavideo is a video hosting site, which unlike other video streaming websites like YouTube, DailyMotion and the like, has no upward time limit for videos. The range of content on Megavideo has been similar to its parent data sharing website  Megaupload – [ if you know what I mean]. The catch here is that Megavideo allows non-premium users to view only 72 minutes of content at once. After this time is exhausted, the video streaming is halted. There are other work-arounds as mentioned in my post here [Firefox Hack: How to watch Unrestricted Full videos on Megavideo]. But if you are one of those, who just want it downloaded on your PC,Mac whatever, just follow the instructions below.

Step 1: Go to the page of the Megavideo video that you wish to download. Copy the URL of the video. This can be found in the addressbar, or if you are watching the video from a blog/website which has the embedded video, double click on the video will take you to the original video source website.

Step 2: Copy the URL of the page, and now go to ClipNabber.com

Step3: Paste the URL in the text-space where it says: Paste the URL Below. Now click the button : Nab Video!
This opens up another larger text space which asks to paste the HTML source code of the video page.

Step4: Go back to the video page, and copy its source code. In Firefox, Chrome, Opera this can be done by pressing Ctrl+U. Or just right-clicking on the page, and going to the relevant option ( View Page source, etc.). In IE, it can be done by going to View–> Source, or by right clicking on the video page and choosing View Source.

Step5: Copy the entire Source by selecting all and pressing copy. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C

Step6: Go back to the Clipnabber page and paste the entire source code in the space given. Once this is done, press Nab Video again.

Step7: A video download link similar to the one shown below will appear. Right Click and Save the video file.

Step 8: The video is in FLV format. Once the download is finished, you can play it any standard FLV player viz. SMPlayer, GOM or VLC media player.

Lemme know if it doesn’t work or Clipnabber no longer supports Megavideo. Cheers!

1. Firefox 3.0 on USB:

Portable Apps bring the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition. So, now you can take your bookmarks, passwords, history, extension with you. Visit the PortableApps website - Mozilla page to download the browser. It is just 9 MB in size, and after installation it expands to 27 -77 MB. I really don’t know what that * sign, beside the 77MB figure, means on the Download button.
Works fine on Win XP SP2 onwards, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.

2. My favorite – Sabka favorite – Google Chrome 2 Portable

No installation required. Just unzip the files in the folder and you can get started. To download your copy of Chrome Portable, go to this site [ the site is in German ]. The download link is here. Don’t worry, the software is indeed in English.
All your Chrome goodness are saved on the portable device. User settings such as Web History, Cookies are saved in the ‘Profile’ folder. And Program Settings are saved in ‘Chrome’ folder. Works fine in Win XP SP2 onwards, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.

3. And finally, Opera10 @USB

Opera USB is actually a private project by an Austrian Web Developer called Markus Obermair. Opera@USB has been certified to be tested by Opera. The portable version of the browser can carry out all the usual functionalities, and stores all the user data in the portable device itself.
Go here to download the USB version. Languages supported are: Deutsche, English and Russian, and there is an International Version as well.
The developer’s webpage suggests the only requirements to install Opera@USB are: a computer with an internet connection, and a USB Flashdrive with about 15MB space left. And oh yeah, it works with every Windows PC. hmmm, not quite sure about ‘EVERY’ Windows PC, but it surely works on WinXP SP2, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.

P.S. Sorry Linux and Mac users. And oh yeah, talking of browser, I am at work, where I don’t have access to USB drives, nor the admin rights to install Chrome/Firefox. That means I am using IE6. And this is what Tumblr reminds me.

Morgan Stanley’s report ” How Teenagers Consume Media ” talks about the impact, reach and relevance of different forms of media on the target section of the population – the teens. The importance of this paper is the very fact that today’s teenagers will be evolving into tomorrow’s workforce and the ones who will be shaping tomorrow’s consumer market. This in itself means that the behaviour of the teenagers and their reaction towards media cannot be overlooked.

However, the report is written by a teenager, 15 year old Matthew Robson. The report reflects how a normal teenager perceives media of the current world spanning across traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new-age media like social networking websites, cellphones, game consoles etc. Although the discussion provided in the report does reflect teenage behaviour in a lot of sections, it has its shortcomings.

The basic problem with the report is that it is not a wide study on teenage behaviour and hence, market research figures are not reflected at all. Rather, the behaviours noted and reflected in this report are a biased sampling of the close friends and family of the writer. This certainly would not entirely represent the true behaviour of teenagers. Besides, the facts stated in the report should be quite obvious to market researchers who deal with actual facts and figures and carry out surveys based on age-groups or regions or income groups. The footnote of the report introduction states: While these trends will not necessarily surprise, their influence on TMT stocks cannot be underestimated. Now, if it takes a 15 year old for market researchers to realise such trends, I believe, we can see a lot more positions being made redundant.

Re-Analysing the Media analysis.
Radio: The popularity of traditional Radio or FM is still relevant inspite of internet radio stations and sites like Last.FM. The peak periods of radio listening are early morning – more so as a wake-up alarm, as a baathroom accomplice etc, in the car or bus to work, and in the evening on the way back home. Distribution of radio over FM transmitters have been reduced, and portable media devices such as a mobile phone or PMPs are where radio is being listened to. And in a country where Radio DJ are national celebrities and have shows running on National TV, can we discard the popularity of traditional radio?

Television: In the UK, due to services such as BBC iPlayer, Sky Plus and Virgin Record, and similar services offered by ITV, Channel 4 etc, prime-time is quite non-existent. BBC has no system of advertising based revenue. Whereas Channels like ITV and Channel 4 are freeview channels and completely rely on advertising based revenue system. With On-Demand viewing which enables users to skip advertisements, ad revenues are set to decline.
For teenagers, the trend of watching their favourite shows depend on
a) no. of televisions in their respective house
b) Availability of a computer with broadband. As most channels offer online catch-up facilities.
c)The channels subscribed for by the earning members of the family.
Since more than often, teens are not the earning members of the family,the final decision of what channels their TV is subscribed to is decided not by them, but by their parents or elders.

The choice of Virgin Media over Sky on the price criteria is another example of sample bias.
Sep 2008 figures: Sky has 9 million customers, which is almost thrice the size of Virgin Media, which holds the second place. Television viewing hours are again dependent on the demographic of teenagers selected.

Internet:
The popularity of social networking websites is evident amongst teenagers. While Facebook remains a favourite, Twitter seems to be not so popular amongst the teens. Even when Twitter occupies much of the attention in the internet buzz-zone, it is absent from the buzz-words amongst the teenagers, primarily because of lack of connectivity, or the cost of it. More of this will be discussed in a later post.

Much of the other information shared in the report regarding Newspaper, Viral Marketing, Cinema and Music is basic common sense stuff. Print media is struggling to get revenues; Viral Marketing works; Cinema has to look for other avenues to compete with Home Entertainment – hence 3d films, Movie experiences etc and Music industry keeps struggling with Piracy.

Please comment below and let me know your thoughts on the observations stated in this post. Thanks!

Image Courtesy: Service-Now’s Flickr Photostream

Sometimes things can become worse from being good, just in the name of innovation. A current example of such a thing is the newly introduced change of features in the Labels of GMail inbox.[Read: Labels, drag and drop, hiding and more] Innovation is supposed to bring with it, ease of use and user-friendliness. But with this new feature, what we have is completely the opposite.

GMail has pioneered user-freindliness, and I was overjoyed when I was given the facility to use the GMail Lab – Right side Chat. It allowed to manage my inbox space in a much more organised fashion. I did not bother if my hundreds of labels would mean my Chat Window would get buried down in deep underground. Everything was jolly good.

With the new features though, Label is back to a space above its original position – which is just below the default Inbox Tabs, and above chat. Sure, there is a summarizer which wraps up the Labels, which again questions its utility now.  For one, I am not used to the Left-sidedness of it. Secondly, if the Labels tab is wrapped up, it only means, that when I drag and drop my messages to the left, it is going to unwrap then. The wrapping up of the Labs to show only the most used Labels is also quite questionable. This is because I have lots of Labels which I use frequently, but GMail Inbox now shows only 4 of them. For sure, I can use the “Move to:” feature still, which completely negates the drag and drop feature introduction.

I know GMail introduced the ‘drag and drop’ feature to replicate the Folder scenario as seen in Yahoo and Hotmail. But to do so here, users have to strategically place the mouse between a space so small that it can only fit a hair. This space is at the extreme beginning of the email, and before the checkbox. Yes, can you SEE it even? Talk about user-friendliness.Pffft!

And yes, Right-Side Label Labs is dead. WHYYYY????? I cannot send my Chat to the Right, because the popped up Chat Windows block the Contact list. So it did mean more sense for Right-Side Label to be enabled. I can only request, along with all the other users to bring Sexyback – Imean Right-Side Labels. Puhhhleeeeeeeezz!!!

iPhone OS demo begins

Thank you for the Apps

A billion apps download in 9 months

Cut Copy Paste in iPhone

Landscape Typing

Tethering with iPhone

App developers revenue model

iPhone meets Satnav TomTom

Games Galore in iPhone

SDK

ESPN Alert

iPhone OS 3.0

Next up: WWDC 2009 Keynote Images from the iPhone 3GS launch. Stay tuned!

Just a couple of hours from now [ exactly at 6 pm, London time ] the WWDC 2009 keynote will be held at Moscone West, San Fransisco. Unlike previous year, and the years before, when Steve Jobs took the centrestage to unveil many a fabulous products that Apple has, this year it will Apple’s SVP for Product Marketing, Phil Schiller, who will be presenting the keynote. And by this time, since the first announcement of the dates for this year’s WWDC, the internet and the blogosphere has been buzzing around with rumors and predictions on what possible products will Apple lift the curtains from. This post covers all of them, and also gives you the essential links you will need to stay connected to this year’s WWDC. [WWDC image source: Adam Jackson's Flickr Photostream]

First up: The Liveblogs:
Yes, these are the bunch of ‘Apple Groupies’ who will be tearing off their Tees, and screaming out loud with whistles blowing et al. They will be covering the event live through their Netbooks, Macbooks etc. Here is the elite list.

Engadget Liveblog of WWDC 2009:
Gizmodo Liveblog of WWDC 2009:
Slashgear Liveblog of WWDC 2009:
ComputerWorld Liveblog of WWDC 2009:
Macrumors Liveblog of WWDC 2009:
9to5mac LivePanel of WWDC 2009:
Macrumors Link for the Keynote Video [as and when Apple updates it]:

**Rumors and Predictions:**

The New iPhone 3GS:
What does ‘S‘ stand for? Is it Super or could it be Speed? Does that mean better processing speed, i.e. faster processors and more RAM. Also does it mean more storage? And oh, S could also mean (more) Saleable -i.e. a budget range product with a budget range price-tag. All these rumors have been making waves since the last couple of weeks. Let’s discuss them.

Well from different sources [mentioned below] we have collected the following data that the new iPhone 3GS is going to have the following features.
..significantly faster processors, twice the RAM, and twice the storage.
..expected prices to remain the same as the current lineup: $199/299 for 16/32 GB, respectively.
..better Battery life. [via Daring Fireball]

From images from Carphone Warehouse [ via AppleInsider] , the new iPhone should have more storage space, of the range of 32 GB.

Also among other rumors, Apple could bring Sexyback. I mean the 4GB model for 99$. [via Macrumors]. This could possibly be a smaller version, nicknamed the iPhone Nano or Mini. And yes, Engadget, Financial Times as well BGR second that.

The major feature to be added in the new iPhone is the Video Capture, plus Video Call. This means the possible addition of a front facing camera on the iPhone 3GS. Also, the camera will be upgraded from the now existing 2MP to 3.2MP. [via Techcrunch]

Finally Gizmodo has enlisted the following features to make it to tomorrow’s keynote.
A matte finish external design, with a glowing Apple Logo.

Other Apple rumors [besides iPhone]
The Snow Leopard may be displayed [most probably in the first 15 minutes of the Keynote to build up the anticipation]. Although this is the next big release of the Mac OS, but it is for sure that the event will be eclipsed totally by the new iPhone.

New Macbook, Macbook Pros, Macbook Air. [Anyone bothered?]

Other hardware releases such as Apple Cinema Displays, iPod Touch, Apple TV, iTunes updates etc.

**Lies:**

Okay Lies are just rumors which turned out to be negative. Since, WWDC Keynote 2009 is still a good 17 hours away, we cannot exactly call the following as lies. But, according to our respectable sources, the following are hardly going to make the cut. [And it also includes the labor of all those genius Photoshoppers].

TouchScreen Tablet aka iTablet or iTab [ via Wired].

Some fake, noisy picture of the new iPhone [via 9to5Mac]

Steve Jobs: Is Mr.Jobs really gonna make a guest appearance or at least wave from the audience inside Moscone West?

**And all that:**

Just a quick reminder for survival through the week overdrive in WWDC. Here is a post by Brent Simmon [inessential.com] which gives all of us the tips for WWDC. The list includes, Hotel Tips, Food Tips, Session Tips etc.

Of course, WSJ’s Walt Mossberg, confirms that the new iPhone to be announced tomorrow will be sporting a lot of new hardware. [Source: WSJ-Mossberg's Palm Pre Review]

And finally, since the new iPhone will be featuring a Video Camera [hopefully a front-facing one], all the features of Video Conferencing and MMS enability in iPhone 3.0 will be explored.

Now go on, have some sleep. Catch you at one of the Liveblogs. Peace out!