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Archive for May, 2007

easypostlogolc6 Use EasyPost To Send Snail Mail in Canada
EasyPost, a new service launched in Canada, allows users to send Snail Mail to any address as long as it is in Canada.

All a user has to do is provide a valid Canadian Address and fill in the content for the letter. The letters are posted by the end of each working day. At the moment the service is pretty bare bones and does not even have a sign up process, which means you cant save frequently used addresses or use other such features which needs to customized for each user. They are also promising other features like photos to be printed and sent out with the letters. In case you enter in-correct address and your letter returns to EasyPost, they will discard it without opening it, but you wont get a refund for this. For a limited time the service is free to use.

Postful is a similar service that allows you to send snail mail via email. To use postful you need to send an email to quickletter@postful.com with an email address in the subject line. Unlike EasyPost, Postful allows you to send photos and draft rich text letters. It also provides developers with an API and users could also create a permanent email account like dad@postful.com for frequently used addresses.

Remote Control Mail
on the other hand does exactly the same thing backwards i.e it allows you to access your snail mail on email. I think that these two halves should be integrated into one comprehensive offering.
easypostyz8 Use EasyPost To Send Snail Mail in Canada

myspace logo MySpace Launching Branded Video Channels
Fox Interactive Media is taking the battle with Youtube to the edge. After announcing a joint venture with NBC to share and distribute NBC programming they are now launching a new section within MySpace Video that will feature premium content from a host of media and news outlets.

The new section that will be launched in the coming months will include “branded channels” from news outlets including National Geographic, The New York Times, Reuters, and lifestyle outlets including Animation Show, The Daily Reel, Expert Village, Flow, FOX’s IGN Entertainment, LX.TV, Octane TV, Kush TV, Ripe TV, Studio411, VBS.tv (from the makers of Vice Magazine), and Young Hollywood.

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twittervisionlogody2 After Twittervision We Now Have Flickrvisionflickrvisionlogoge3 After Twittervision We Now Have Flickrvision
Dave Troy, the founder of twittervision, a service that lets you visualize twitter stream has now launched a new service called Flickrvision that does the same thing to Flickr photos.

If you dont know by now, twittervision is a twitter visualization service that takes your twitter userid and password and allows you to view who are posting on twitter right now, where they are located by moving Google Maps to that location, and also displays what they are saying. You could also add your twits to twittervision by setting your location on the service and can also make posts on twitter right from your twittervision page. Mine is here.
twittervisionog0 After Twittervision We Now Have Flickrvision

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Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms

meeboroomslogote4 Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms
Meebo, a web based IM service, has launched a new feature called Meebo Rooms that allows users to create their own chat rooms.

Users could create chat rooms and invite upto 80 friends to the room. The rooms could be customized and themed and could also be embedded into other websites. Once a chat room is created you can invite others to the room, they will receive a URL, clicking which will immediately let them join the room even if they are not a Meebo user. In case you are a Meebo user, you could add the chat room to your buddy list and click on it to join the room whenever you want.

Users can also embed media into the chat rooms. If any user sends a link of a youtube video or Flickr photo it automatically gets embedded into the room for others to see or view. Yahoo was the first one to release this feature when they announced the Zync plugin for Yahoo Messenger. Google soon followed suit and also allowed users to share and view videos and photos in their Google Talk client.

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imifiedcrierye7 Imified Acquires FeedCrier for RSS Alerts
Imified, a service that lets you blog, make notes and do other things via an IM interface, has announced the acquisition of FeedCrier, an IM based service that alerts you about a new post on the blogs to which you have subscribed.

Imified will integrate the service into its existing IM based productivity tools and will re-brand it as “Imified Alerts“. Users will also be able to receive notifications on their phones provided if they are IM enabled and via Imified widgets.

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cebaselogokn3 CeBase is a Web Based MS Access
CeBase, a new service that launched to general public last week, wants to be a web based database management system for small and medium sized businesses.

Cebase allows users to create database applications like Contact Lists, ToDo Lists or whatever with just a few mouse clicks without writing a single line of code. After creating a database application you could analyze your data and display it using different filters and could also sort the data according to a certain data field.

CeBase also allows users to export their data to Microsoft Excel, PDF or a CSV (Comma separated) File. They could certainly add to this feature by creating an API and allowing users to access data from other applications as well. RSS feeds for the data tables would also be handy for tables that are changed often.
exporttu7 CeBase is a Web Based MS Access

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resoliologocw7 Resolio Brings Color and Portability to Web Resumes
Resolio lets you instantly create colorful and professional looking web resumes.

Resolio uses hResume microformat standard to ensure that your resume will be machine readable, which in turns will enable a wide array of services to be built that could use this data in countless ways.

Users could enter as much data as they want, which including a summary, experience information, educational background, skills, affiliations, and publications. You can then select the design of the layout and customize the color, layout, style, formatting and labels. Users also have the option to make the resume public or keep it private and embed it on their personal web page using javascript code. Resolio also provides the option to export resume data to any other site or application. Check out a sample resume here.

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anywrlogoys9 Anywr Allows You To Access Your Contact Data From AnyWhere
Anywr is a new service that lets users stay in touch with their contacts and events from anywhere around the world and using any device that they could get access to.

After a user signs up, Anywr asks him to import his contact information from Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL. Users could also invite their contacts to start using Anywr and whenever they will update a contact information on Anywr it will automatically be updated everywhere. Anywr does this by using SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language).
addressbookhr8 Anywr Allows You To Access Your Contact Data From AnyWhere

Users can also synchronize their address book with the telephone data on their mobile phones. Anywr also supports grouping of contacts and communication features like messaging and tagging. The service extensively uses vCard microformat standard, that will ensure that the data is machine readable and could later be used by a wide array of services.

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faroologohq0 Faroo Employees P2P Technology to Search and Index the Web
Faroo, a German based startup, has launched a P2P search engine that lets users search and browse the web via P2P technology.

Faroo’s search engine uses a distributed crawling, indexing and ranking to provide relevant search terms. Whenever a user opens a web page in a browser, the page automatically gets inserted into the distributed index of the P2P network. If the technology gets traction this will enable an almost complete index that will be updated in real time.

Faroo does not store the search index on a central server but rather uses distributed indexing. Faroo makes every P2P users a part of its index and assigns certain keywords to him, if another users visits the pages associated with these keywords he also gets assigned to the index of these keywords. The index is replicated across multiple nodes in order to create redundancy and prevent information loss.

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joostlogoif1 Joost Raises $45 million From Strategic Investors
Joost, an IPTV based video service, is making news on a regular basis now. The company has now announced that it has raised $45 million from the likes of Sequoia Capital (based in Silicon Valley), Index Ventures (based in London and also investors in Skype), Li Ka-shing (a Hong Kong based business tycoon), Viacom and CBS. All the investers have taken a small minority stake in the company.

The interesting fact about the investment round is that Media corps i.e Viacom and CBS have increased their interests in Joost and have become investors instead of just being content partners. Sequoia and Index on the other hand are industry reknowned and war hardened VCs. Another key fact to note is that with Sequoia in Silicon Valley, Index Ventures in London and Li Ka-shing in Hong Kong, Joost has expanded its reach to 3 continents including the strategic and difficult to enter Chinese market. So all in all the investment round has brought a lot more than just a huge pile of cash into this startup.

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