Digital Media Buzz > Product Buzz

Product Buzz

Reviews and access to the latest products within the digital media industry.

AppMakr

Last modified on 2010-03-01 00:31:48 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

You’ve got a website and you’re already publishing content to the web via RSS and Atom feeds, Twitter, iTunes podcasts, Flickr streams and more. Now you want to promote your site by creating an iPhone/iPod Touch app. That process can take months and involve hefty development fees. AppMakr, a new system from PointAbove, lets you create a mobile application in 30 seconds or less from your existing assets at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated developer. All you need to create an app with your own branding is an RSS or Atom news feed from your web site/blog, graphics for your header and landing page and an icon for the iTunes App Store.

Features:

Uses your website’s RSS or Atom feed
Supports playback of MP4 video within the app
Can create multiple tabs for multiple feeds from your site
Two pricing options. With AppMakr as the publisher, the fee is $199 (a small AppMakr logo will appear on the splash screen). If you want to publish under your own brand, the AppMakr fee is $499
Can embed ads from services such as DoubleClick, Google Adsense and AdMob

Watch a video of an app created with AppMakr.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Cloudkick

Last modified on 2010-03-11 03:20:15 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The digital counterpart of that old business chestnut that you can’t manage what you can’t measure may be, “You can’t manage what you can’t monitor.” Nowhere is that more true than when you’re trying to take advantage of cloud services and are using multiple providers. They all have different dashboards, which makes monitoring their performance an onerous chore. Cloudkick, a Y Combinator-incubated startup, has developed a web application that provides a unified view of multiple service providers to help companies monitor performance. It enables users to monitor and manage cloud service providers that include Rackspace Cloud, Amazon EVC2, Linode, GoGrid Slicehost, RimuHosting and VPOS.NET. Cloudkick is available through subscription-based plans and a free developer plan.

Features:

Load, CPU, bandwidth, and memory monitoring
Alerts including SMS and Email
Advance and innovative performance graphs
Diagnostics performance
Autosetup
Multiple users per account
Change-log tool

Alex Polvi, CEO and founder, introduced Cloudkick last year at the Under the Radar Conference

—————————————————————————————————————-

Collecta

Last modified on 2010-03-01 00:25:43 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Here’s a great way to enrich your website or blog content: embed a free widget from Collecta that provides streaming, real-time content centered on search terms that are relevant to your audience. If you’re a developer of apps for the mobile devices, for example, you could customize the widget to search for information about iPhone and Android. What sets Collecta apart from other search offerings like Facebook’s Live Stream Box, is the depth and breadth of its content sources, which include Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, The Associated Press, CNN and Reuters.

Features:

Free embeddable widget
10 million unique content sources
Results are automatically refreshed
Customizable search terms
Customization options include header, control scroll rate and link to external style sheet to integrate widget with website’s existing look and feel.

View this YouTube video of Collecta search in action.

—————————————————————————————————————-

PositionApp

Last modified on 2010-03-01 00:22:25 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

With over 100,000 apps available in the iTunes app store, it’s hard to keep track of who’s on first in terms of popularity. If app-watching ever gets certified as an Olympic event, you might want to spend some time training with yet another iPhone app, PositionApp. This new app from a UK/Sweden digital design studio crawls the App Store on an hourly basis and collects data from the top 300 apps across all categories and geographies. It’s a great tool if you’re consumer looking for the latest and greatest, a developer who wants to see how his latest software baby is faring in the marketplace, or a marketing type who wants to keep tabs on sales in markets across the world. The normal price of the app is $7, but it will be free for the next several months thanks to a sponsorship deal with AdMob.

Features:

Up to date country-by-country position performance stats on the top 300 apps
Six months of historic position data
Browse by country, genre, position change, app name, free or paid, day, week or month
Track selected favorites on your personal dashboard
Highlight the biggest climbers in the top 100 and the top 300

—————————————————————————————————————-

SlideShare Branded Channels

Last modified on 2010-03-01 00:19:20 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

In the world of business there’s rarely a case of TMI, unless you happen to be Toyota. Oversharing is the rule of the road, especially when it comes to PowerPoint presentations, the lingua franca for all who toil in the trenches of commerce. SlideShare, the world’s largest community for sharing business presentations and documents, has been a faithful business sidekick for business since 2006. You can upload PowerPoint, Open Office and Keynote presentations and Word and Open Office documents. You can share them on your blog or website, or send a URL by email. Transcripts of your files will be indexed by Internet search engines and enhance the search engine ranking of your presentations and documents. Since the site is searchable by then outside world, it’s a great and inexpensive - read free - way to spread the word. Well, a good thing has just gotten better, Slideshare has launched a new Channels service to provide custom-branded micro sites that businesses can use to showcase presentations, whitepapers and webinars to a professionals audience. Some of the early adopters include Adobe, Ogilvy, Microsoft and Razorfish Marketing.

Features:

Share PowerPoint, Open Office and Keynote presentations as well as Word and Open Office documents
Can embed your presentation/document in a blog or website
Has apps to share via Facebook, Linkedin and XING

See how ReadWriteWeb uses Slideshare branded channels.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Airplay SDK

Last modified on 2010-03-01 00:16:33 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Picking your platform is always a challenge for developers working on mobile apps. Do you develop just for the 65 million iPhone users or do you want to cast a wider net and develop versions that can tap into the larger universe of 500 million mobile devices? In a number of areas, it’s a dollars-and-cents call. You can make more if you go for the whole mobile megillah, but there’s also a corresponding increase in development costs - porting to new platforms can drive up costs by 20 percent to 50 percent. Ideaworks Labs has a better idea: Airplay SDK. Airplay is a native mobile application and development solution that lets you code once for the ARM processor that dominates in the mobile world and with a single click port the app to other platforms, including iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BREW and Maemo.

Features:

Single Binary
Open Platforms
Scalable Graphics
Proven Technology
OpenKODE Compliant

—————————————————————————————————————-

Seesmic Look

Last modified on 2010-02-22 22:40:54 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Let’s admit it: Twitter’s Search function leaves a lot to be desired. There’s a better way to feel the pulse of the Twitterverse and find tweets that match your interest: Seesmic Look. A free download that allows you to immerse yourself in the real-time web without having to log into Twitter, Look enables you to discover trends in real time and see who is commenting on them or view tweets by broad categories such as news, sports, entertainment, celebrities, music, politics, humor, culture, business and style. When you log into Look, you can save your favorite Twitter feeds as well as your saved searches.

Features:

Inbox and social timeline
Standard timeline view or playback mode
Find accounts and tweets that match your interests
Track work or phrase being said in real time
Optimized for Windows 7

View Look videos to see various features in action.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Iomega v.Clone

Last modified on 2010-02-22 03:43:58 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Anyone who has to work in multiple locations or visit clients is familiar with the road-warrior ritual of lugging along a laptop containing your files and programs. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a clone of your PC on a portable hard drive that you could just slip into your pocket or briefcase and take with you? That’s the value proposition offered by Iomega v.Clone software. Developed by EMC utilizing VMware technologies, v.Clone enables you to create a clone of your PC onto an Iomega USB hard drive. It lets you take your operating system, files, settings and applications with you. Plug the hard drive into any available PC and use all your applications, including office software, email programs and browser favorites. The v.Clone software will save any changes you make and sync all your data when you return to your primary computer. It takes the hassle out of traveling with a laptop.

Features:

Create a virtual image of your computer’s primary hard drive
Includes all the operating system, all applications, text files, images, videos and personal settings
Plug and play with an Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 computer
Capable of creating multiple clones on one hard drive, space permitting
Automatically synchronizes files and folders between clone and primary computer
Ideal for users with multiple computers

Watch v.Clone in action:

—————————————————————————————————————-

Arrayent

Last modified on 2010-02-22 03:40:05 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The Internet of Things took a major step toward becoming a more widely distributed reality this year when Arrayent introduced its Internet-Connect System at CES in January. This complete end-to-end communication system enables companies to connect their products to Internet-based applications at very low cost, with high reliability. The technology enables customers to monitor and control products from a smartphone or web browser. The company sees three markets that are particularly interested in integrating this kind of connectivity into their products: home automation suppliers looking for ways to connect customers’ home LANs to remoter diagnosis and repair suppliers; companies in the health monitoring field who want to connect their products to web apps such as Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault; and companies making toy and entertainment devices such as ebook readers, personalized radio and connected physical toys. Mattel selected Arrayent’s technology for its IM-ME, wireless messaging system designed for girls ages 8 and up. Over 100,000 units have already shipped in the U.S.

Features

Rapid time to market
Low-cost alternative method of connecting to Internet
Small memory footprint
Data rates from 250kps to 2Mbps, ideal for telemetry ad light media applications
Low-power consumption; 12-month battery life on 3 AAA batteries

Learn more about the features that Arrayent technology brings to Mattel’s IM-ME.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Postling

Last modified on 2010-02-01 04:28:50 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Image courtesy of Postling

Businesses that have adopted social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and blogs as a way to market, listen and respond to their customers have found that logging into different sites every date to post updates can be a major time suck. This is particularly true for agencies and other marketers who post on behalf of multiple clients or companies with multiple brands. Postling offers a software-as-a-service solution that can streamline this process. In three simple steps you can publish your blog post, update your Twitter and Facebook status with a link announcing the post and upload any photos in the post to Flickr. Postling supports Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Squarespace, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Adding an account is a breeze.

Features:

Simplify publishing workflow
Organize your social media accounts
Comment aggregation
Collaborate with team and clients

Take a tour and see all of Postling’s features.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Tibbr

Last modified on 2010-01-27 05:39:11 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

Reading NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter posts inspired Tibco CEO Vivek Ranadive to develop a Twitter-style enterprise communications tool called tibbr that allows users to follow specific topics. Unlike other social networking applications that focus on “following people,” tbbr allows users to follow granular subjects and machines as well. The notion is to help workers find information related to their particular tasks and jobs quickly and easily by searching for information based on its subject matter and subscribing to relevant feeds on those topics. A tibbr subject can represent a user, an application or a process relevant to a particular business user in an organization. For example, by subscribing to a subject such as Finance or Finance AP (accounts payable), a user could find out if a relevant purchase order had been cut or if an invoice had been received and processed. The application is based on Silver, Tibco’s own cloud-computing infrastructure platform. Currently in use by TIBCO employees, tibbr is scheduled for general availability early this year.

Features:

Integrates directly with most enterprise IT infrastructure
Allows information to be delivered in the form, frequency and manner of user preference
Follows subjects as well as people
Available via a standards-based API
Massive scalability, state-of-the-art security encryption, high availability and reliability

Watch Vivek Ranadive’s demo of tibbr on YouTube.

—————————————————————————————————————-

FourSquare for Business

Last modified on 2010-01-27 13:56:51 GMT. 2 comments. Top.

Like many social media products, Foursquare started out as a way for friends to connect with friends and update their locations via text message from their mobile devices or device-specific applications for the iPhone and Android. Blackberry and Palm Pre apps are in the works. It combines friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics. When users check in, Foursquare lets their friends know where they can find them and recommends places and things to do nearby. Those into bragging rights can become the mayors of locations by being the most frequent visitor. As with Twitter, it didn’t take long for businesses to see how Foursquare could make a great promotional tool by offering freebies like free coffee, free drinks, free food and free hotel stays to Foursquare mayors. Foursquare also offers users a way to keep boredom at bay by winning badges such as School Night for checking in after three a.m. on a school night or Superstar for 50 check-ins to unique venues. The service is now available in more than 100 metropolitan areas, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Austin, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington and Mumbai.

Features:

Encourages people to explore their neighborhoods
Users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites
Combines friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics
Foursquare specials for businesses

To sample the kind of awards available to Fourquare mayors, check out the participating venues offering freebies.

—————————————————————————————————————-

RationalPlan

Last modified on 2009-12-28 03:20:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Romanian software developer Stand by Soft has released the newest version of its RationalPlan software, RationalPlan 3.15.7, a powerful project management application that helps project managers create plans, track progress, allocate resources, manage budgets and analyze workloads. The new version comes with email integration with Yahoo, Hotmail and Live. RationalPlan is designed to be an affordable alternative to Microsoft Project. The software comes in a single project version and one designed to manage multiple projects and projects that are interconnected through dependencies and share common resources. Additional features cover Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) management areas such as planning and scheduling, critical path management, over-allocated resources detection, progress tracking and cost estimation.

Features: