Webware

Console browsing: Not there yet

Is it possible to have a positive Webware experience on something besides a PC? Cell phones and small handheld Internet devices don't cut it with their tiny screens and awful browsers (at least until the iPhone arrives). So what if you could use that nice bandwidth you get at home and combine it with that large HDTV sitting in your living room? That question has recently been answered with Nintendo and Sony's more recent gaming consoles: the Wii and the PS3, respectively. Microsoft's Xbox 360 doesn't have a browser, likely because of the company's failure … Read more

For shame: Gotcha Web sites

Most social networking sites are built to help people make friends and play nicely with each other. In this era of digital exhibitionism and surveillance, however, a new generation of Web sites exists to out people for their public wrongdoings. This Wall Street Journal story (free preview) tracks the rise of "the snoop next door." Some highlights:

PlateWire lets you connect with other drivers by their license plate numbers, whether you need to express road rage or puppy love. Caughtya lets you tattle on those who park in the disabled spot. Holla Back NYC exposes pervy Santas and … Read more

Quick hit: Get Rid of Stuff.com

Mice? Browser pop-ups? Halitosis? Bad girlfriend? Check out How To Get Rid Of Stuff.com, which has advice on ridding yourself of the various encumbrances and pests we accumulate in life.

I don't know who put this site together, but once you get past its novelty factor, you'll find the advice on it is actually pretty good. It taught me, for example, how to make a mousetrap out of a bucket, a wire hanger, and a paper towel roll.

Can't wait for iPhone voice mail? Use Callwave now

CallWave is about the coolest free cell-phone utility I have ever seen, and it goes a long way toward making me not care so much about the "visual voice mail" that Steve Jobs touted for the upcoming iPhone. The CallWave service, which is live now, replaces your standard carrier-provided voice mail with a much better system, and it lets you pick up incoming cell-phone calls on any other phone or even your PC.

I've been using the competing GotVoice service since I first wrote about it in May to get my cellular and home voice mail messages … Read more

BakeSpace: Cooking, "caking," and social networking

Yesterday I was reading the PSFK Trend blog and came across a post about several emerging social networks for foodies. I made a New Year's resolution to stop relying on take-out and pizza (an easy habit to fall into in Manhattan, where practically every eating establishment offers free delivery) so I thought I'd check out one of them, BakeSpace, to see if I could pick up some cooking tips.

I quite liked it. The site provides a diverse range of ways for "cookers and cakers" to network (there's apparently an important distinction between people who … Read more

Finding cheap tickets with Oyaka

Forgoing the recently purchased StubHub, there are very few ways to find good Web deals on event tickets without doing some legwork or dealing with cluttered interfaces. Oyaka, which launched last year, draws from several ticket vendors to help you find the best deal on seats. In the same way that Kayak pulls plane tickets, Oyaka grabs all the data, then gives you various tools to sort through it without inundating you with text. You can narrow the results by price, seat location, and number of tickets to quickly find what you're looking for.

Unlike other ticket services such … Read more

AOL ditches music download service to partner with Napster

AOL. Napster. Partnership. Imagine if those three words had been put together in a sentence way back in 1999. It would've been something out of The Onion: AOL was the massive, dominant corporate giant, and Napster was pretty much a bunch of punks who were raising hell. But times change, and companies change, and today AOL has announced that it has inked a deal with the music subscription service--formerly synonymous with cyber-piracy--as the power behind the download service on its AOL Music site.

Napster will be replacing the AOL MusicNow subscription download service, which AOL had been operating since … Read more

Will Outlook 2007 break your e-mail?

Some digital publishers are complaining that the new Microsoft Outlook rolls back design standards by half a decade. The 2007 edition of Outlook, the most popular e-mail client for big businesses, ditches Internet Explorer's technology for that of Word 2007 to display HTML messages.

The result? In your Outlook 2007 in-box, background images may not appear within dressed-up HTML messages. Forget about filling out certain forms. Animated GIF images won't play, and a red X will mark the spot where a Flash movie would be. ALT tags, which describe pictures and help blind people to "see" … Read more

EditGrid: A nice competitor to Google Spreadsheets

I've had a few problems with Google's online spreadsheet. But I still think it's a fantastic product, primarily due to its collaboration system: multiple people can work on a spreadsheet at the same time and text chat about their work while they do.

But making the transition from Excel to Google is not as smooth as you might like. While nobody expects an online spreadsheet to have all the features of a mature application like Excel, I often find myself frustrated with Google's limitations. For example, there is no charting function. Whoever heard of a spreadsheet … Read more