Networking

Ning is surprisingly good

I would be wary to predict a mass exodus from currently popular social networks, but after playing around with Ning in the last few days, I'd say it could easily steal users from MySpace. Ning lets you create your very own social network, with custom branding, forums, photos, and videos. Everything is fully integrated and customizable with really slick looking themes that put less focus on individual user profiles, and more of an emphasis on group sharing and communication.

Compared to MySpace and Facebook, you still get to create and manage an extensive personal profile. The main difference is … Read more

Shelfari: Social bookmarking for books

Shelfari is a social network and recommendation service that lets you flaunt your book collection to others, and discover new titles worth reading. Yesterday Shelfari announced a round of funding, with Amazon.com being the top contributor.

If you've ever seen Delicious Monster, Shelfari is visually similar, with virtual bookshelves that house your collection as long as you're willing to manually input all your titles. The result is a slick-looking listing to share with others on your blog or Web site (see below), and make friends with people who have similar tastes to swap recommendations.

Each Shelfari book … Read more

Skrbl makes whiteboarding fun

Skrbl is a delightfully simple whiteboarding tool that lets you draw, type notes, and share files without a software download. Admittedly, my use for and experience with whiteboard products is limited, but Skrbl really impressed me with how quickly I was able to begin a whiteboard and share it with others.

Skrbl also allows you to host files and secure your session with attendees, as long as you register. What's nice is that any unregistered attendee can download your shared files; Skrbl only requires registration to upload. However, one thing to note is the limit on uploading, which is … Read more

Jubii: e-mail plus everything else

Jubii is a new service that attempts to provide an all-in-one solution for Web communication and sharing. It combines e-mail, contact management, instant messaging, VoIP, and file hosting into one app. The big question is, whether combining these things together provides a cohesive solution that's better than individual Web services. In short, the answer is no.

Jubii centers around its e-mail platform, which uses a simple tabbed interface with two separate in-boxes. E-mails from people on your approved contact list automatically get sent to your private box, whereas others make their way straight to the public. Creating new e-mails … Read more

5 free ways to chat with other Web site visitors

Interested in chatting with other visitors of a Web site where there's no built-in chat or dedicated forum? Here are some simple chat services to let you get in touch with other site users without having to download or install a single thing.

Yaplet. We featured Yaplet earlier this week. Built by a couple of grad students from Georgia Tech, Yaplet is a no-hassle sidebar that shows up on the right side of your browser with the click of a button. It lets you see who is talking and even caches the last 20 lines of the conversation, so … Read more

Yackpack: Skype meets walkie-talkies [Update x3]

There have been several communication tools on Webware in the last few days. Joining the party is Yackpack, a messaging tool that lets you chat live as a group or swap recorded messages to group members, all within your Web browser.

Yackpack creates a visual chat room for you, with floating faces representing users. Playing and recording messages is handled through a slick and simple player that sits in the top right of the interface. Handling who you are and aren't talking to is as simple as clicking icons. Toggling all group members is managed with a single select … Read more

Yaplet: Simple and easy chat on any site

Yaplet is a simple idea: Add anonymous, no-registration chat to any Web site. Yaplet is a browser sidebar that can also be popped out as its own browser window. Each site is given its own chat room, and Yaplet caches site conversations for you or others to view, even when no one else is there.

To make the Yaplet experience a little more cohesive you can add an optional bookmarket to your browser. Clicking the bookmarket from any site you're currently on opens up the Yaplet sidebar.

If you're concerned about privacy, private chat is as simple as … Read more

Yellowpages.com vs. Yelp: User reviews compared

This week Yellowpages.com added user reviews to their directory service. Much like Yelp, the new system allows registered users to post one- to five-star reviews of local establishments. I decided to compare experiences using both sites to see how they stack up.

Round 1: User registration and benefits

Registering with Yellowpages grants you a few small perks, such as 100 slots to save your favorite establishments. You also get to save personal addresses and keep track of your last 20 searches. Yelp goes a little bit further with a friends list, a small counter under your name with how … Read more

Mosoto turns Facebook into a live chat service

Mosoto is a Web-based app for Facebook, giving you a virtual desktop with chat, music, and file sharing built right in. Mosoto allows you to chat with other Facebook friends and swap photos, music, and videos using a shared storage folder from Box.net. As a service, Mosoto is meant to replace desktop applications for chatting and music.

The music player's user interface takes a design cue from iTunes. Double-clicking a song starts playing it instantly, almost like it's running off your hard drive--a good use of streaming. You also can quickly make playlists with simple drag-and-drop functions. … Read more

Highrise, a new app from 37signals

Yesterday 37signals founder Jason Fried posted about the team's upcoming contact management app called Highrise. The goal of the app is to help you manage contact information in a better way than relying on Post-its or your current software-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Think of it like a Rolodex but with collaboration and more space to write things down. Many people can have access to the same records at once, and from the announcement, 37signals thinks they can do better than your current CRM.

In many ways Highrise is a solution for a problem with Web communication technology: … Read more