Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Verizon's Samsung Omnia II pictured, drops cubic d-pad

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/22/verizons-samsung-omnia-ii-pictured-drops-cubic-d-pad/

We know that Verizon's version of the Windows Mobile-based Omnia II superphone is incoming, and by all accounts, we would've figured on it looking more or less like its global counterpart -- but those tinkerers over at Big Red apparently can't leave well enough alone, because the phone that's appeared on Samsung USA's site actually looks a bit different. The most notable change is the move away from the original model's distinctive cubic d-pad, though the replacement -- a shield design in the same vein as the B900 for South Korea -- really doesn't look any more user-friendly. Otherwise, there's not much to see here, but there's a brief mention of a relatively generous 1500mAh battery which should come in handy for spending hours on end using those YouTube, WeatherBug, and Facebook TouchWiz widgets you've got installed, eh?

[Thanks, Austin]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Verizon's Samsung Omnia II pictured, drops cubic d-pad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, September 21, 2009

Top 10 Underhyped Webapps, 2009 Edition [Lifehacker Top 10]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/QWoq9aZZIKc/top-10-underhyped-webapps-2009-edition

As with rock music, video games, and other awesome pursuits, great web applications often don't get enough credit for what they do well. We're revisiting and updating our favorite underhyped webapps to give a new crop of contenders their due.

Photo by thievingjoker.

10. Freckle

Like previous underhyped champ Remember the Milk, Freckle doesn't require you to learn a new set of rules or input methods to track how you spend your time working for clients. If you type "Writing copy for Benderson Corp. 1h45m," it assigns a 1-hour-and-45-minute billing for Benderson. Want to make something non-billable, but still tracked? Add an asterisk after it. Freckle offers visually appealing reports about how you're spending time for clients, but also how you're spending your own time, giving you the chance to assess how you're spending your time. A plan with one account and one project is free, and any of Freckle's other plans can be tried for 30 days free, so if you don't find yourself addicted to its charts and graphs, you can return to your spreadsheet. (Original post)

9. TinyChat

Setting up a live video, audio, and screen-sharing chatroom for up to 12 people at once seems like! somethi ng that might require a dozen software installations and point-by-point walkthroughs. If you aren't pitching a client so much as just trying to get folks talking, TinyChat handles the task admirably, and nobody has to do a thing but follow a link and turn on a mic or webcam. The rooms aren't password-protected unless the chat owner has a paid account, but you can require chatters to sign in with a Twitter handle to verify identity, and control just who gets to jump in with their video or audio feeds. Pretty impressive stuff for a free web service. (Original post)

8. ScreenToaster

Your boss asks you to demonstrate exactly how "that thing you do with that program works," but you're at work without screen recording software installed. Fire up ScreenToaster's site, load its Java-based applet, and you can record surprisingly decent quality screencasts and demonstrations, with audio voice-overs, at the push of a single button. When you're done recording part of your desktop or the whole thing, you can have ScreenToaster upload the finished product to YouTube or ScreenToaster's own site, download your screencast as a QuickTime or Flash file, and re-record audio if you didn't hit it the first time. Here's our own quick ScreenToaster test. Tell your viewers to hit the full-screen button for your screencasts and it's like you're hovering right over their shoulder, semi-patiently showing them just how it's done. (Original post)

7. Lovely Charts

Sure, it's a pretty presumptuous name, but Lovely Charts succeeds at what it promises. The Flash-based webapp produces very clean-looking charts for all kinds of purposes, be it a flowchart to describe a process, a diagram describing a network setup, conference seating, or whatever you might want to sketch out on the back of a napkin. You only get to save one chart at a time to edit later with a free account, but you can export any number of charts to JPG or PNG as often as you'd like. (Original post)

6. Instapaper & Read It Later

It's a really cool article or blog post you just stumbled across, but at the moment—right this second—you don't have time to read it. If you had a bookmarklet or browser plug-in for either the Instapaper or Read It Later service, you'd be able to quickly send that web page to your account for bookmarking. Once there, it can be stripped of all but essential text for reading, saved for offline reading in your iPhone, marked as read when you're done with it, shared with others—you get the idea. Read It Later offers a Firefox extension for offline reading, easy saving, and a lot more functionality in general, but Instapaper keeps it clean and simple on purpose. Both are great services that quietly do similar, and extremely useful, things. (Original posts: Read It Later & Instapaper)

5. YouMail

! Not everybody can swing a smartphone, many smartphones don't offer visual voicemail, and very few people (at the moment) get to play with Google Voice and its transcribed voicemails. For those feeling like their phones are under-powered, there's YouMail. Sign up, follow YouMail's instructions on setting up your phone to hand over your phone's voicemail duties to its service, and you'll be able to listen to or download voicemails from its web site or smartphone apps. With the limited free or paid unlimited transcription plans, the halfway decent speech-to-text versions of your messages are emailed or sent by SMS right away. If you want different voicemail greetings for different contacts, YouMail can do that, too. Whether you're rocking the cheapest phone they had at the store or an iPhone, YouMail's a great add-on. (Original post)

4. PDF to Word

If you need to grab elements from a PDF, edit part of its text, or cut down its size, you might try converting it to a Microsoft Word file. For doing that task, PDF to Word is more than just adequate—it's darned impressive. We were kind of amazed at how well even the most complex of PDFs we had access to (an invitation to a snooty art installation opening) were flipped into almost exact facsimiles in Word format. Simply upload a PDF, provide an email address, and your document is on its way to you. Maker NitroPDF has other free PDF tools worth checking out, and paid software to entice you w! ith, but PDF to Word is a webapp that does exactly what it says, no catches or gimmicks. (Original post)

3. drop.io

It's hard to say that drop.io doesn't have a fairly persistent marketing push behind it, but for all the helpful functions it offers, the service doesn't get enough notice. Besides giving anyone 100MB of temporary file-sharing space without any sign-up required, drop.io can handle the rare faxing job, record voice memos by telephone, set up quick multimedia presentations, and more as developers hack on the open API. Having recently been assigned as Yahoo Mail's default large attachment handler should bring drop.io out of semi-obscurity, though its deeper functionality still deserves a bit more attention.

2. Fonolo

If calling a company's customer service line and dealing with automated answering systems fills you with a certain kind of dread, you need a Fonolo account. The free service has diagrammed the customer service phone trees of more than 500 major firms, letting you click the point in the call you want to be at ("Press 4 to cancel an account ..."), then taking care of the tedious number-punching up to that point, calling you to connect exactly where you want to come in. With its latest u! pdate, Fonolo can even record your call, giving you the power to get better customer service with detailed records. (Original post)

1. The Aviary suite

Aviary is a webapp maker that specializes in fully-featured Flash apps, and they're seemingly engaged in a dare to see how much users can get done entirely in a browser. Jackson West called Phoenix the best online image editor, and our readers agree. They've got a lighter, faster version dubbed Falcon, and if you want to annotate an image that's already on someone's server, you can paste its URL after http://aviary.com and it'll quickly import the image for your editing pleasure. Most recently, and most impressively, they've launched a full-featured audio editor that we totally geeked out over. If you can remember their name, you can benefit from Aviary's host of impressive in-a-pinch tools.

What underrated webapps are making life easier for you? Which smaller-scale sites do their jobs better than the big guys? Trade your tips in the comments.

Five Best Time-Tracking Applications [Hive Five]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/za-xZTd6hs0/five-best-time+tracking-applications

Where does the time go? Whether you need to know for billing purposes or just want a better idea of how your work day is split up, you can always answer that question with a good time-tracking application.

Photo by judepic.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite time-tracking tool, and now we're back with the five most popular time-tracking applications to help you track the time you spend on projects and tasks of every size. Whether you're an old veteran of time tracking and are curious to see alternatives to your current system, or you're new to the premise and curious to see what kind of apps people use, we've got five solid tools to showcase.

Klok (All platforms with Adobe AIR, Free)

Built with Adobe AIR, Klok is a lightweight and cross-platform tracking solution. You can create a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects in the task-management sidebar and then track the time spent on each by dragging and dropping them into the workflow for the day. While you can delve into the details of each block of time, simple adjustments like expanding the amount of time you've worked on a project is as easy as grabbing the edge of the block with your mouse and tugging it down.

Manic Time (Windows, Free)

One area of resistance many people have to using time tracking software is a fear that they'll waste too much time actually plugging information into the system. Manic Time alleviates that fear by actively tracking what you're doing on your computer to make tagging and analyzing your daily work flow simple. Your day is represented by three time lines: Activity (either on the computer or off), Applications (which were open), and Tags (your personal annotations to your work flow). Mousing over any of the three time lines gives you additional data about that moment on the time line and you can always pull up the statistics window to see your work patterns over time. Check out their video tutorials to see Manic Time in action.

SlimTimer (Web-Based, Free)

SlimTimer is a web-based tracking solution. Once you've signed up for a free account, you can begin creating new tasks you want to track. You track those tasks by flagging time you spend on them in the little pop-out time manager you see in the screenshot above or by keeping the SlimTimer web site open. You can add tags to your tasks in the management section of the SlimTimer site as well as share tasks with coworkers. If you're concerned about using a web-based tracker and losing control of or flat out losing your data, you can export your time-tracking data or even have SlimTimer email you a backup once a week.

RescueTime (Windows/Mac, Free)

RescueTime aims to be the least intrusive time-tracker you'll use. Rather than have you log each individual activity you do in a journal-style system, RescueTime monitors the web sites you visit and the applications you use. You can set goals in RescueTime based on a variety of factors, like how much time you want to spend doing certain tasks or how much time you want to dedicate to certain projects. RescueTime analyzes your computer usage and reports back to you on whether or not you're meeting those goals. RescueTime takes a different approach from most time-tracking tools, so we'd definitely recommend reading their FAQ file for additional insight into how they handle time tracking.

Project Hamster (Linux, Free)

Hamster is a simple time-tracking tool for Linux-based systems. You enter tasks as they occur, and then you can categorize and sort them. When you're done with a given task, you simply tell Hamster to stop tracking it. You can also set up a reminder system that will remind you to record what your current activity is every X number of minutes. One of the more interesting features of Hamster is the ability to shift how your day is defined. If you're a night owl and do most of your work after hours, Hamster won't slice your "day" in half at midnight just because the clock says it's a new day.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the candidates for best time-tracking applica! tion, it 's time to log your vote:

Which Time-Tracking Application is Best?(answers)

Have experience with some of the applications in this week's Hive? Can't believe your favorite wasn't included? Sound off in the comments.

PhotoLapse Makes Time-Lapse Movie Creation a Snap [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/whwewbs9UPU/photolapse-makes-time+lapse-movie-creation-a-snap

Windows: PhotoLapse is a tiny and portable application for stitching together images into a time-lapse video. Point it at a folder full of pictures, and you're mostly done.

All your time-lapse options are displayed in a single pane when you launch the 158k application. Select your directory of videos, load the images from that directory, and then tweak a few small settings like whether or not you want every image to be included or every Nth image. In the above screenshot, we've imported our test images and are about to create the movie. Spawn and Murphy the Cat Attack Mothra's Couch should be coming to an indie-friendly theater near you, any day now.

Since our sample movie isn't theater-ready however, we'll direct you towards a time-lapse video created by the program's author:

Have a favored tool for creating time-lapse videos? Let's hear about it in the comments. PhotoLapse is freeware, portable, and Windows only.

PhotoLapse [via gHacks]

Nikon's Coolpix S1000pj now shipping from select locales

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/21/nikons-coolpix-s1000pj-now-shipping-from-select-locales/

Nikon assured us that its projector-packin' S1000pj would be out and about by September 17th, and while we've yet to confirm whether or not anyone was able to snag one last Thursday, we can say for certain that it's shipping now from a number of respectable e-tailers. Ritz Camera, Abe's of Maine and Beach Camera are all shipping units out within 48 hours, while Amazon appears to be backordered until September 23rd. The cam is sitting at $430 pretty much everywhere, so the only question left the answer is this: you in?

[Via PicoProjector-Info]

Read - Abe's of Maine
Read - Ritz Camera / Amazon / Beach Camera

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Nikon's Coolpix S1000pj now shipping from select locales originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Verizon's Samsung Omnia II pictured, drops cubic d-pad

Monday, September 21, 2009