Share Web Stuff with Buzka

Buzka is a new site that lets you share your favorite web stuff. In other words, Buzka is digg without the voting. Although digg claims to be a social news site, more and more items on digg are "offbeat" photos or videos. Buzka takes those interests and expands on them by offering a place to share not just stories, but funny items, videos, photos, and more. You can create your own "spot" on Buzka where you can organize the web content you have to share. Some sample spots include "BeatsandPieces - All things musical," "Teaching Resource Plans," and "HipHop is Livin", to give you an idea. Will Buzka really take off? Probably not, but it can still serve as a convenient place for you to organize your web stuff in the meantime.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

If you have ever sent someone a link and really needed to know if they ever clicked it, a new service from LinkBlip can help out. To use LinkBlip, you just enter your email address and the URL you want people to click. LinkBlip will create a shortened URL (like TinyURL does) that you can then send and share with anyone. When your link is clicked, you’ll get an email. You will also be given a link to their site where more stats, like how many times people have clicked on your link, are listed.

In other link news, LinkBunch smooshes a bunch of links into only shortened URL, great for consolidated lots of links into one. Clean up your favorites!

A man who goes by the name of "DVD Jon," gained fame for cracking both the DVD code and Apple’s FairPlay. Now he’s offering a new software application, called DoubleTwist, that allows for sharing of any music, photo, or video file on any portable media player as well across social networks. The CEO of DoubleTwist, Monique Farantzos, recruited Jon (Jon Lech Johansen) to build the software, which he and 10 others have worked on for 8 months.

How easy is the software? Says Jon, "the goal is to make something your parents can use." To use the software, a device is plugged into a Windows XP or Vista PC (Mac will be later) and DoubleTwist will recognize it and all the media files on the device. Using the software, the file can then be selected, dragged, and dropped into DoubleTwist to be synched up to a separate device, or shared with your friends on DoubleTwist.

The app will also work with Facebook and soon all OpenSocial platforms, allowing users to share media across social networks. Using the Facebook app TwistMe, Facebook users can drag and drop media into a box on another user’s Facebook profile. The friend will then see the shared files show up in their DoubleTwist client. They also automatically add audio and video files you receive from friends to your iTunes library. Shared photos will also be added if you enable iTunes photo sync.

DoubleTwist currently recognizes the following file types:

• Video: 3gp (used by most cell phones), MPEG4 (.mp4, .m4v), wmv, avi and MPEG2 (.mpg, .mpv, .mpeg)
• Audio: mp3, aac/m4a, wma, wav
• Pictures: jpg, gif, png, bmp

DoubleTwist currently supports the following devices:

• Nokia N Series phones
• Sony Ericsson Walkman & Cybershot phones
• LG Viewty phones
• Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 phones (e.g. Treo, HTC, Palm)
• Sony PSP
• Amazon Kindle

DoubleTwist will also recognize your iTunes playlists and will detected which ones are DRM’d. To decode them, the software plays the song in the background (without volume) while re-recording the files as MP3s. (This sounds like a good way to convert your iTunes files to MP3s, too, doesn’t it?)

You can download DoubleTwist for free, spyware-free from here.

(found on Cnet)

Worried you have a nasty bug? Not sure if your anti-virus software is up-to-date? (Shame, shame!) A free service from NanoScan will instantly scan your PC for viruses. The service provides an “instant” scanner that searches for viruses, spyware and other threats. It can detect, in less than a minute, a huge number of threats that could be running on your PC right now. NanoScan’s detection capacity is mainly due to the new Anti-malware Collective Intelligence, a system developed by Panda Research and hosted on a network of data centers. If any badware is found on your PC, you’ll have to find other means to actually eliminate it, but the service will at least give you peace of mind as to whether or not your system is clean.

PDF Hammer is a website that lets you edit your PDFs online, for free. You don’t need to download any software - the PDFs are edited right inside the browser after you upload them to the site. Right now, you can re-arrange the pages (reorder them), delete pages, and append one PDF to another. Soon you will be able to rotate pages and apply watermarks and stamps to pages with this service. Although it would be nice to really edit the PDFs by adding or removing pictures and text, this service can still be useful for some basic PDF manipulation needs.

…well, according to this post on Google, you can get that pink version of Google Docs year-round (or at least for a while) at http://docs.google.com/?holiday=vday. Anyone who knows me at all will know I don’t care how un-feminist it may be, I love pink stuff. Sue me. This was the best news I heard all week. (image via Venture Beat)

Mixbook.com is a site that lets you create photobooks from your digital photos. You can import photos from facebook, flickr, or upload them from your PC. You can also collaborate with others in the design of your custom book. Mixbook will then print and ship the finished photobook to your door so you can enjoy it as a coffee-table quality book. You can also use the service to share your Mixbook creations online. With the provided embed code, you can post your Mixbook to facebook, MySpace, or any other social network profile or blog. (via Go2web20)

Are you frustrated with navigating multiple websites and managing too many passwords? PageOnce is a new site that wants to make it easier on you to login to your various online accounts. You simply select your personal accounts from the sites you use - social networking, email, travel, entertainment, banking, credit cards and more and add them to your personal page. From this page, you can then see all the data that you would normally need to log in to the web sites to view. For example, you can find out what’s new in facebook or MySpace, track your investments, view your airline miles, or view email from multiple accounts. Even better, if you ever need support from one of the services you added, the support number is provided to you on your PageOnce homepage. The site is in private beta, but when launched, it will certainly be useful!

For fans of Google Reader, Lifehacker has introduced a Firefox extension you’re sure to love: Better GReader. The extension rolls up several Greasemonkey scripts that tweak the popular the online app into doing more. The extension offers adjustments like tweaking the max viewing area, skipping Google’s default subscribe mechanism, and adding keyboard shortcuts. You can download this new extension from here.

Digsby is a new application that functions as a universal instant messaging client but also integrates with facebook and MySpace and your email! On the IM side, the app gives you one combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber Accounts. You can manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows and you can even send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window. Digsby also lets you manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts get popup notifications when new email arrives. When you click a popup, you will be taken right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts.

And last but not least, Digsby also helps you stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook or MySpace account. You can receive alerts of events like new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc. You can also get a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to which includes everything from new photos, to status updates, and to upcoming birthdays. The only thing the software doesn’t work with is twitter (the horror!), but they might add that at some point since they hint that more social networks will be supported soon. Digsby is private beta now, so you’ll need an invite to download it.