ShinyLetter

ShinyLetter is another way to use the web to send snail mail, which something that I love to do since I never have stamps. With ShinyLetter, you type out your letter online, just like it was an email, then you can send it anywhere in the world for $2.00. Although that’s pricier than a stamp, it certainly is convenient. Your letters can be up to four pages and there’s a nice selection of font styles to choose from. The letters are printed out on high quality paper, too. ShinyLetter is brand new, so there still might be some kinks they need to work out.

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Things have been a little busy for me lately, but just because I’m not posting here, doesn’t mean I’m not blogging! Check out my latest on RWW:

Postalz & Scrapblog - Doing More With Digital Photos

When
you go on vacation, you no longer pack canisters of film for taking
vacation photos - you just pack a digital camera and a handful of
batteries. If the hotel has wi-fi, you might even upload photos from
the day’s activities to flickr in
the evening. However, when it comes time to send postcards back home,
you still have to browse through the assorted offerings from the gift
shop, emblazoned with hokey “wish you were here” sentiments overtop
images that look nothing like the place you’re visiting.

In this post we look at web 2.0 services that give you more options with digital photos - postalz and scrapblog.

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Lately, I’ve been reading about some new ways to work with your documents offline and then sync them back to an online service. While initially this seems to go against the idea of an online office suite, working offline in this way has some benefits. For one thing, the internet is not everywhere yet. Although wi-fi is now being slowly introduced on some airlines, many business travelers still need to be able to work on their files on the go and this still is not an option on all airlines yet. Then there are other jobs that take people “into the field” that also often involve working on documents when no internet connection is present. Without offline capabilities, a lot of work could come to a stop.

Another useful aspect of working offline is that you have the ability to work in your traditional “offline” office software, which is, at the moment, much more robust and feature-rich than its online counterparts. Suites like Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, StarOffice, and others let you to do a lot more than a free online service like Google Docs, though this may change in the future.

Until recently, the choice between web office suites and offline suites was an “either/or” choice; however, now, there are options available that give you the best of both worlds. Here are a few services and tools I’ve found, some of which are now just on the verge of launching, that promise to bring you the new “blended office suite”:

• DocSyncer: DocSyncer is a yet-to-launch service that syncs up your Microsoft Office documents with Google Docs. The screenshots look nice, so it’s worth signing up to see how it works out.
• OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs: This OpenOffice extension exports & imports your docs in and out of Google Docs. With this, you can upload OpenDocument Text (.odt), StarOffice (.sxw), Microsoft Word (.doc, but not MS XML), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Comma Separated Value (.csv), & Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps) files into and out of Open Office.
• Microsoft Office Live: (Private beta) Your documents are online in the Microsoft Office Live workspace, but when you go to edit them, the editing is done in Microsoft Office software, which you have on your PC. Those edits are immediately reflected in the version on Office Live. Documents can also be shared with others who can comment on them or edit them and the different versions are tracked in the Office Live workspace.
• Zoho Writer + Google Gears: Zoho Writer lets you click a button to go offline. The first time you use the feature, you will be prompted to install Google Gears. After installation & a browser restart, click “Go Offline” again to make your documents (15 docs by default) available offline. When you’re offline, you can go to http://writer.zoho.com/offline to access and edit your files.
• ThinkFree, Premium Version: ThinkFree just announced that they will begin offering a premium version of their online office suite that offer users the ability to work offline. The premium edition will be $5-10/month and the free version will be rebranded as ThinkFree Online Basic Edition and supported by advertising. The private beta will begin in January, 2008 and the wider beta in February.

Do you need to work offline? If so, what software or services are you going use?

If you have ever used online photo editor, Picnik, then you know that it’s one of the better free tools out there. Now, that easy-to-use functionality has come to Flickr! Flickr has teamed up with Picnik to offer this service right from Flickr. To use Picnik, you need to first give the Picnik service permission to edit and save your photos, like other 3rd party services, but then it’s integrated right within your Flickr account. With Picnik, you can fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, add text, shapes, or apply effects to your photos. To get started, just browse to one of your photos on Flickr and click “edit” from the menu above the picture.

HelloTxt is a website that lets you post to multiple microblogging services at once. The supported services include Twitter, jaiku, Pownce, meemi, tumblr, yappd, and more. If you’re a member of more than one of these services, you know that updating multiple services at once can be time-consuming and usually not even worth your time. Although jaiku will display your Twitter posts for you, many services don’t have any aggregation features. Now with HelloTxt, you can quickly microblog to all the services at once.

Cumul.us is a new website that uses the “wisdom of crowds” in order to to predict the weather. Aggregating weather data from openly available sources and APIs from AccuWeather, Geonames, Google, NOAA, WeatherBug and weather.com, the weather predictions are likely to actually be more accurate than if you were to use just a single forecast. Along with with the weather predictions, you can participate in the community by trying to predict the weather yourself, as well as submitting what you’re going to wear. You can check out what other people are reporting they’re going to wear, too. As you make your predictions, cumul.us goes to the available weather data sources and saves what it was really like that day; then your prediction is scored for accuracy for the conditions and/or temperature. The better your predictions, the higher your user rating. The site’s content floats in fluffy white clouds on a blue background, making this fun web 2.0 “wisdom of the clouds” community worth checking out.