Quark and other similar design programs are infamous for having a very tough learning curve, making it extremely difficult for amateurs to pick them up and make anything of quality. The company is looking to make layout and design more accessible for the general public with the introduction of Quark Promote. The goal of Quark Promote is to allow individuals and small business owners to quickly and easily create promotional materials.
Quark Promote's online template gallery features professionally designed templates for everything ranging from business cards to letterhead. Once users pick a set that they like, the Quark Promote application quickly installs and launches. Users can then enter in their own information as well as play with the color schemes and layout.
Quark Promote features hundreds of professionally designed templates that you can customize for your needs.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)The actual Quark Promote application is very easy to use and is not intimidating. It doesn't have all of the functionality of the full blown version of Quark, but there is enough there to tweak the design to your liking.
Up to this point in the process, everything is free. Users don't need to pay for templates like they do with other services. Rather Quark thinks that you will like the design enough to want to make prints. Quark Promote gives you the option to order prints by mail or to find a neighborhood printer where you can pick them up yourself. This is where Quark makes its money--on the referral fees from printers.
When I talked with the guys behind Promote, they said they have bigger plans for the service, moving forward, which include partnering up with stock photo sites such as Getty and iStockphoto to give users more customization possibilities with images. It is also possible that they will add support for searching for Creative Commons licensed content on Flickr to the application to widen the selection of available images that users can use in their promotional materials.
Over the last few months, you may have noticed the Meebo Bar gracing the bottom of some Web sites, mostly large blogs, or other similar big content sites. That's because previously, the Meebo Bar was only available to select partners, so the little guys were mostly shut out. Now, Meebo is making the Meebo Bar available for all Web sites, with a specific focus on blogs.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Meebo Bar, it's a JavaScript plug-in that sits at the bottom of Web pages. It enables a lot of different social interaction and sharing features, such as displaying a specific stream of tweets, promoting a Facebook fan page, as well as Stumbling or Digging the page. The Meebo Bar also allows users to chat with their friends through the IM platform that made Meebo famous. Additionally, the Meebo Bar enables easy sharing of content on the page through its very slick Meebo Share Dock.
The bar is extremely easy to set up on blogs, especially TypePad, self-hosted Wordpress, Blogger, and Moveable Type, all of which have preconfigured solutions, built by Meebo. For those with other setups, the installation just consists of inserting a code snippit, something to which we have become very accustomed. Users can customize which features appear on their Meebo Bar all on Bar.meebo.com. The changes are then pushed out to the installation on your site in a matter of minutes.
Users can customize the Meebo Bar for their site with a variety of buttons.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)This version of the Meebo Bar, for everyone, includes all of the same features that it offers to its partner sites, which is something that they were really shooting for with this release, Daniel Bernstein, Meebo's director of business development tells CNET. Meebo Bar users get all of the features of the bar, as well as detailed sharing analytics to see how people are using it, all for the low, low price of...free.
The Meebo Bar is a really great way of enabling a lot of different types of sharing and content interaction very quickly and easily. The sharing that results could, potentially, be a big driver of traffic back to sites. It's really great to see this rich functionality being adapted into to a "self-serve" type of system. With so many more possible installs out there, the Meebo Bar should see a huge explosion in growth.
Meebo's Share Dock pops out when you drag a piece of content on an enabled site.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
URL shortener, bit.ly, has a new service out, called bitly.tv. Bitly.tv displays a collage of the most-linked videos (through bit.ly) of the moment. Users can also sort by the top videos from the last day or the last two days.
Bitly.tv displays the most buzzed about videos linked through bit.ly.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)The site looks really slick and is well presented. When you click on a video, a light box pops out, which plays the video as well as displays a variety of sharing options (Facebook, Twitter, e-mail) and shows a live stream of tweets about that piece of content. The live stream is especially compelling since you can see what other people are saying about the video as you formulate your own opinion.
The URL shortener space is getting increasingly crowded, with a ton of new and existing companies bringing their offerings to the table. Google is the most recent example of this. Bit.ly is trying to stay ahead of the competition with products like bitly.tv and bit.ly Pro, which currently allows a limited set of beta users to create their own branded short URLs. They have a really strong beta user base for that service already, which includes The New York Times (nyturl.com) and foursquare (4sq.com).
The pop-up video lightboxes play the video as well as feature sharing options and a live stream of tweets about the video.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)One of the hottest use cases for Twitter, as you well know, is businesses communicating with their customers or potential customers. Up to this point, Twitter really has not introduced any new features to support these business users, but as a part of an initiative to roll out more business-specific features, Twitter on Monday introduced "Contributors." Contributors allows business accounts to designate other Twitter users, usually employees or PR, to tweet on their behalf. Twitter is currently testing this with "a limited subset of folks."
The screenshot above is what this new feature will look like, according to Twitter's blog. Tweets will still appear as coming from the business' Twitter account but will have a byline that credits the author of the tweet. This will help to put some more personal faces behind the generally faceless business Twitter accounts.
As far as we can tell, however, this will not be required for Twitter business accounts, so if you run a business that wants to keep its tweeters anonymous, you can still do that. Twitter does note that this feature is "not ready for prime time" yet, so the functionality could change around a little, but expect it to stay generally the same.
It's worth mentioning that there are a couple of business and power user-oriented Twitter apps out there right now, specifically CoTweet and HootSuite. This added Contributor functionality will be incorporated into Twitter's API, so these third-party apps should be able to support it as well. This new feature should play nicely with CoTweet and HootSuite's current offerings.
Up to this point, Twitter business accounts have had the same functionality as personal accounts. While it's not clear whether personal accounts will get the new Contributor feature, the release of this and the other business-oriented features that Twitter currently has in development might be a sign that the release of Twitter business accounts is imminent.
In August, Biz Stone said that Twitter would be offering business or "pro" accounts by the end of the year. Paid accounts for businesses has long been a rumored business model for Twitter and it looks like we are on the verge of seeing that come to fruition. While Twitter is running out of days in 2009, it appears that it is making some progress toward the eventual release of full-blown business accounts. Whether Contributors will be included in the paid offering is unknown, although some users might resent Twitter for charging for it after offering it for free initially.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post running down the best places to store your files online. Of the six that I covered, two have since closed up shop and one has changed its name.
It's a constantly changing space. Since then, we have seen a lot of new entrants into the online file storage and backup game. Norton Online Backup is a fairly new product that is getting a very strong upgrade Wednesday with version 2.0 of its product. The new version includes support for Mac and Windows, 90-day file versioning, and the ability to send file download links via e-mail.
Norton Online Backup's home page allows the user to see the status of every machine on their account.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)Norton has put together a very solid offering with version 2.0 of Norton Online Backup. It is introducing support for Intel-based Mac for the first time with this release. This is huge, especially when the company is trying to offer a solution for the whole household. Where most other online storage or backup services focus on serving one user, Norton has placed the focus on protecting the whole family or household. When you buy a year of the service, you are allowed to manage and back up up to five computers on your account. Jeff Kyle, a group product manager for the product, said that support for Ubuntu should be coming around March.
File versioning is a welcome addition to Norton Online Backup. This allows you to see previous versions of backed-up files for up to 90 days. This means that if you accidentally make changes that you don't want anymore, then you can just go back to the previous version. This is similar to the functionality that Apple offers with Time Machine.
Additionally, Norton Online Backup 2.0 allows you to send files via e-mails. You can select multiple files to be sent, and they will be presented to the recipient on an easy-to-use landing page. You can even password protect these files or control how long they are available for download.
Norton Online Backup's landing page for files sent via e-mail.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)My current solution for file storage and backup is Live Mesh, which continually monitors your machine for changes in backed-up files and automatically uploads them. While this feature is great, it can sometimes result in your machine slowing down since the application tends to use a lot of resources. Norton Online Backup's client is fairly lightweight and works on a scheduled backup system, which means that it checks for changes in your backed-up files at a designated time and does everything at once. This results in less overhead for your system.
Other, more minor features included in this release are open file backup, which backs up a file even if it is in use on your computer, file purging, and a simplified set-up/user interface.
Norton Online Backup has a 30-day trial and the full version costs $50 for one year, which gives you 25GB of storage and allows up to five computers on your account.
This is what the recipient see when you send them a file via e-mail.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)
As one of its weekly new features for Hulu for the Holidays, the company has rolled out new advanced search functionality. Hulu's blog notes that the new feature is part of an ongoing effort to improve in the area of search. This is going to be crucial for Hulu moving forward as users have more and more videos to sift through in their ever growing catalog.
This new advanced search allows users to filter their searches by fields like show title, season number, video type, network, air date, and people. This really helps you to narrow down a search if you have a specific video in mind that you want to track down.
When Hulu first launched, search wasn't as big of an issue since the library of videos that they offered was relatively small and easy to browse through. However, as the site has grown larger, it has become more difficult to find what you are looking for. By taking steps such as launching advanced search and debuting support for search operators back in April, it is clear that Hulu is making an effort to correct that problem.
Popular tech news aggregator Techmeme has launched a new mobile version of the site built for the Apple iPhone, Palm Pre, and Motorola Droid. The new version, which can be found at http://techmeme.com/m, is a lot easier to read on your phone than the regular site. It even includes individual pages for each Techmeme headline, which show all of the relevant discussion links. Separate pages for each story is something that even the full Techmeme site doesn't currently provide.
New mobile versions are also available for Gabe Rivera's other sites, Memeorandum, Ballbug, and WeSmirch. Techmeme has been ramping up its efforts lately, hiring three additional editors for the site. That brings its headcount to six employees.
I tend to check Techmeme throughout the day as I'm sure many of you do. A lot of the time, I am looking at the site from my phone. This new mobile update makes browsing Techmeme on the go a far more pleasant experience. Since this is not a native app for any platform, the new mobile site is viewable from a variety of phones, widening the potential audience. I can say with almost certainty that the release of Techmeme Mobile will increase the site's mobile readership.
TweetDeck's new Facebook support.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)TweetDeck, the popular Twitter app for the iPhone, was pulled from the Apple App Store on Monday due to a crippling crash bug. An update was quickly resubmitted to Apple and the new version (1.1.1) is now available for download (iTunes Link). The new version includes Facebook integration, video uploading, and support for Twitter trending topics.
The Facebook support in TweetDeck for iPhone works very well, allowing you to add columns from Facebook by either selecting a feed of all your friends or separating them into groups. The feed support is restricted to status updates, so you cannot see when new photos or events are posted, but comments and Likes on status updates are visible. It also allows users to comment or Like a post from the app as well as post a message on someone's wall. Of course, Facebook's own iPhone app is a much more robust offering, but it is nice to have data from Facebook and Twitter centralized in one app.
TweetDeck now also offers video recording and uploading for iPhone 3GS owners. This service is supported by 12seconds, which has an iPhone app of its own. This type of short-form video plays nicely with the overall concept of Twitter and should help to cut down on upload times when posting new updates.
Additional features included in this update are the inclusion of Twitter trending topics, the ability to cross-post updates to Twitter and Facebook, nearby tweets, bit.ly support, and landscape composing. These are all features that make a lot of sense for TweetDeck and were surely highly requested.
A nice video of the new features, put together by the TweetDeck team, is included below.
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Twitter announced late Wednesday that it is starting a limited test of a new feature that displays the number of new tweets in your timeline since you last refreshed. This works in much the same way as the new tweet notification on the search page for a term. When you click the notification, the new tweets slide out in the same fashion as the search page.
While this functionality was probably not too difficult to implement, since it was already built for the search feature, it is a welcome addition and something that just makes sense. In fact, it would make a lot of sense for Twitter to build out a notification system for @replies, re-tweets, and direct messages, like Facebook has for Wall posts and other actions. Getting updates without having to manually reload the page is one of the big advantages of Facebook's current functionality, so I would not be surprised to see Twitter to follow suit.
While this feature is still in limited testing, Twitter says it hopes to roll it out to everyone as soon as it can. I, along with many others, am not in the test group yet, so please share your thoughts on the feature in the comments if you are.
Hulu has debuted a long-requested feature--the ability to find out when new episodes of TV shows will be available to stream.
The video site, which is a joint venture of NBC, ABC, and Fox, calls the new feature Coming Soon. It went live Monday.
Hulu's new Coming Soon feature.
(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman)The schedule of when TV shows will be released online has been unclear up until this point, leaving people guessing when an episode will be posted. This new feature solves that problem.
The update includes a few additional features. First, people can choose to get an e-mail reminding them when an episode gets posted. This is definitely helpful for those of us who are forgetful and don't use Hulu's excellent Queue feature. Also, Hulu now lets you place the embed code for an unreleased episode on your blog or Web site. I embedded this week's upcoming episode of "The Office" below to show how this feature looks.
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