Webware

Fonolo, the Web service that helps you reach the inner depths of even the largest company telephone directories, has put out a big update that adds new tools for users and companies alike.

The biggest new feature of the bunch is call recording, something I pined for in previous looks at the service. You're now able to record the entire call for playback later, something that can be helpful when citing good or bad customer service experiences. It's honestly one of the most fantastic features I've used in a long time.

The best part is that call recording is free and does not require any special phone equipment. To record any call you're on, you can just hit a big red button as soon as it's connected. It then saves it to the cloud where you can either listen to it in your browser, or download it as an MP3.

Earlier this morning I did it with a call to Amazon.com, and it connected me three levels of phone menus deep to the right person. The only downside was that they such a strong accent, listing off my personal information became a game of trying to remember letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

You can now save customer service calls and listen to them in your browser or download them.

(Credit: CNET)

Along with call recordings, Fonolo has another new trick up its sleeve called Quick Tones. This is basically autofill, but for phone menus. So say you know you're calling Comcast; you can add any account, order, or phone numbers into Fonolo's system as bookmarks. Then, when you're on the call, you can choose to dial one of those bits of information into the call, without having to do it all on your phone. Honestly, this is only helpful for frequent users, but if you anticipate having to enter a lot of that information, saving it once can mean not having to enter it on future calls.

For companies, there's also a new way to embed their own phone trees on their site using a special widget. This lets users peruse the entire directory, then make a call without having to register with Fonolo. After the call is done it pops up with a customer service questionnaire that asks how their call was, which the company can then monitor back on Fonolo's site.

Fonolo is still only available on the Web and on Android phones and limited to around 500 North American companies. There's not yet a version for iPhone, Symbian, or Windows Mobile handsets, but the service has a way to add Fonolo quick call links to a company's mobile site that will let users jump to that part of a phone directory without having to use Fonolo proper.

Hawkscope is a cross-platform, open-source project that provides alternative navigation through your files for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Still in beta, it's also extensible, so not only can you jump folders in a zippy, context menu-style tree, but you can search Google, check your Gmail, and post to your Twitter account from the Hawkscope interface.

Hawkscope provides menu-based file navigation.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Hawkscope appears as a hawk icon just next to your clock, so that's the system tray for Windows and the menu bar for Macs. For users with dark themes, the icon might be hard to see--look for an empty spot in between other icons. Click on it to make the menu appear, and you'll find pre-loaded options such as your profile folder, your local drive and any networked or external drives, and a Settings menu near the bottom. The menu is divided into the Quick Access list at the top, file system roots in the middle, and the Hawkscope menu at the bottom.

From Settings, you can customize much of the program. The General tab configures the icon theme independent of your operating system, a neat if simple little trick. The next tab, Quick Access, lets you add, remove, and reorder folders that appear at the very top of the Hawkscope menu. In my screenshot, you can see that I've set Blogs and Reviews and My Pictures to show up there. The Blacklist tab prevents certain folders or file types from appearing, while Network configures a proxy if you need one.

Plugins is the following tab, and that's where Hawkscope starts to get interesting. As you can see from my screenshot, I've added the Gmail and search Google plugins. Hit the Get Plugins button to open up the Hawkscope plugins Web page, and download any of the plugins that interest you into the Hawkscope plugin folder. Once you've clicked the Reload Plugins button, you should see what you've just installed in your plugin list. Hit OK and they should appear at the top of the main Hawkscope navigation.

Hawkscope provides users with useful system integration, including proxies and custom configuration.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The Gmail plugin shows all your new e-mail in a drop-down list, which is tolerable but overwhelming when you've got a large number of them. Click on one to open it in a new browser window. I noticed that the plugin has problems switching between Gmail accounts, and--somewhat scarily, for secuity reasons--kept accessing one account, even when the user name and password had been replaced by another account.

The Search Google plugin works better, with a desktop-based search field that opens for you to enter your query. Hit Enter and it opens a new Web page with your Google search results. Currently, the small list of plug-ins supports two others that I didn't test: Tweeting from Hawkscope, and executing commands from the main menu.

I like that Hawkscope is taking another look at reinvigorating the context menu format, but the way it's done feels awkward at times. If you have a deep tree of folders and you haven't pre-programmed your most commonly-used ones to the Quick Access menu, it can take a lot of time to find what you're looking for. Hawkscope would be more useful, too, were it hot key accessible. Keyboard junkies could pull up the menu with quick combo and then use the arrow keys to maneuver. As it stands, it's an interesting way of browsing your files, but mostly because it's available on the major operating systems.

Social-bookmarking service Magnolia is in deep trouble. Founder Larry Halff, who has been keeping users up-to-date on progress being made on restoring the company's database server, which suffered from file system corruption last week, said in a blog post on Thursday that he believes that he let the Magnolia community and himself down by using a single backup for the site's data. The company's backup server also suffered from file corruption, leaving the entire site down and all its data unrecoverable.

In the blog post, Halff said he is "currently working with a data recovery company in hopes that (it) can recover a working version of the database." Unfortunately, neither he nor the company is sure if the lost data is recoverable, but he expects an update "as late as next week."

Online-chat application Meebo has added Facebook chat back to its service, the company's chief executive, Seth Sternberg, announced Thursday. According to Sternberg, Meebo is "now the first launch partner of the 'alpha' version of the Facebook Connect plus Chat integration."

In order to connect to Facebook chat through Meebo, users will need to log in to Facebook from the Meebo front page and add Facebook as a network account in the Meebo menu.

Tree.com, a company that owns a number of online properties in the personal-finance sector, announced on Friday that it has acquired personal-finance service Thrive from Loudwater Labs. Although Tree.com is a publicly traded company, the terms of the deal were not disclosed because it did not have a material impact on its financial statements. Thrive will remain an independent entity after the acquisition.

eHire, an online job-matching community, announced on Friday that it will officially launch its service on March 1. According to the company, its technology will allow prospective employees to create profiles containing their resume and qualifications.

Employers can sign up for the site and find qualified candidates by using the company's "matching engine" and scoring mechanism, which use algorithms to determine which candidates may be a good fit for an opening. The company plans to generate revenue from both the candidates and the employers by charging them subscription costs and success-only fees, respectively.

Dynastree (formerly ItsOurTree.com) has a new tool that shows you where others with your last name live. You simply type in your name and it shows you on a state-by-state basis where there are others who share it. Of course if your last name is "Smith" or "Jones" this won't help much, but I found it to be spot on with mine.

Besides the U.S., which has approximately 1.7 million last names in its database, you can also search all of Canada. Included with both is a small analysis right below the map that ranks your last name's prominence in each state (or province/territory), as well as on a national level.

Where the tool won't help you is tracking some of these folks down, or helping you figure out if you're actually related to them. That, to me, seems like the next logical step.

One other thing to note is that I didn't have any luck getting this tool to run in Firefox or Google Chrome. However, it worked fine in Safari and Internet Explorer.

Donald Trump isn't the only Trump in the U.S. Dynastree can now search for your surname as well.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Shoppers who want to save some trees soon will find a new option for rejecting receipts at the checkout counters of major retailers.

A service that will enable consumers to receive digital receipts through big box stores, such as Best Buy and Target, is set to launch May 16.

AllEtronic is an add-in for digital cash registers running popular point of purchase applications. When it recognizes a customer as a sale is rung up, allEtronic blocks the receipt-printing process, triggering details to be sent to its servers instead.

Consumers can visit allEtronic's Web site to view and export receipts to personal accounting software. First, they have to enter the first six and last four digits of a credit card number when they sign up for the program.

To drive home its tree-hugging angle, allEtronic displayed a receipt tree at the Eco City conference April in San Francisco.

(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET)

Participating retailers will likely display an allEtronic decal near the usual lineup of credit card logos. Some shops may add allEtronic kiosks or tout the service in their TV commercials.

Retailers that still use paper receipts for internal records could continue to do so, but without printing a customer copy.

AllEtronic won't give users' e-mail addresses to third parties for advertising, according to CEO Isaac Lay. It will share with stores the names and addresses of users, but a contract will prevent retailers from snail-mailing people coupons and ads.

The company is seeking a stamp of approval from Trustwave, which would mark allEtronic as a secure service for storing partial credit card numbers.

AllEtronic touts its product as green for helping to save the trees felled for some 600,000 tons of thermal receipt paper used by stores each year. It takes 15 trees, 19,000 gallons of water, and 390 gallons of oil to make a ton of paper, according to the company, which is based in Fullerton, Calif.

GreenPrint is another free service built to attract treehuggers. The free utility shaves off extra pages when people print from a personal computer.

It's Our Tree is a genealogy service that lets people create very simple family trees using Adobe Flash. Like Geni (review) and Kindo (review), the idea is to get your entire family involved by inviting them to join and add family members they remember. It doesn't offer some advanced services like DNA sleuthing using cheek cells, but it's incredibly simple to get started, and the finished product can double as a Rolodex, birthday reminder, and private e-mail system for you and your family.

Like Geni and others, to get started you simply add family members using the directional arrows found on each person's block. There's support for divorces, first, second, and third marriages, half siblings, and any other oddly conceived (literally) member of your extended family. It also supports nine different languages, meaning if you're trying to share your tree with your Italian grandmother she'll be able to see it in her language, including the invite to participate. It's a nice touch if your family is spread out.

Each family member you (or others) create gets his or her own profile in case you feel like turning the service into an updatable family phone tree. My one irk with this is that they don't take advantage of a pre-existing contact-management service like Plaxo, Gmail's contact list, or LinkedIn to save you some time of having to dig all that up. What does make these profiles interesting is that you can add all sorts of geo-data to your family members including the place of birth, death, burial, and present location. This information can be toggled on a large Google map, which can lead to some really great exploration if you're willing to spend the time researching and inputting it all. Ancestry.com's DNA service will do something similar, although it actually shows you where your family is from based on cultural migration.

I'm giving this service a thumbs up, although if you're already tied to one of these services, its feature set is nearly identical to Geni and Kindo, so give it a look before trying to get your whole family to convert. Grandma will say grazie.

Make your family tree quickly and easily with It's Our Tree. It's got support for half siblings, deaths, and geo-location for where people were born. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Are you a fan of Instructables or SuTree? Looking for a place with just science-related items? SciVee is a site for video clips of science experiments and processes that might be just up your alley. The service originally opened up to the public in late August but today is unveiling a newer, updated look with some new features to help users find and interact with content.

At its heart, the site has been designed with scientists (both established and fledgling) in mind, and according to an article yesterday by the Associated Press, creator Phil Bourne launched the site as a niche alternative to YouTube, so as to improve the categorization and focus of the videos for the scientific community.

Like most video-sharing sites these days, the entire operation revolves around a Flash player that provides instant gratification. What's interesting here is that SciVee breaks it down into two categories--one for standalone videos, and another for what it calls a "pubcast" which lets you link up the video to a related research paper. Viewers can watch the video in the left hand corner of the screen while the paper scrolls to match what topic the narrator is talking about. There's also a simple table of contents on the left, which lets you jump to the video and text portion at the same time.

To supplement the video and text portion of a pubcast, SciVee content creators can upload any related visual aids, along with links to the original work. There's also a place for references, and user-created tags. It ends up being a simple and effective way to cram a lot of content into a very small, but manageable amount of space.

While the pubcasts are a handy feature for publishers to get their work out into yet another channel, what's immediately more fulfilling to the casual user are the how-to videos, which are few and far between. To that end, the site doesn't do nearly as good a job at categorizing content as other popular sharing sites, with no real concrete separation beyond a search tool and user-generated tagging. I still think the pubcast is a really neat way to present a scientific concept, and offers users a chance to read, or watch science with some useful resources at their disposal--which is often more than you can say about YouTube. I'm still waiting for a research paper/video on Diet Coke and Mentos.

SciVee mashes up videos with live text science papers to help people in the science community put together a whole slew of content in a small space.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Kindo is a new genealogy site for users who want to create an online family tree. Like Geni and Amiglia, Kindo runs on Flash, and makes it dead simple to start building up your family tree with very little programming expertise whatsoever. You start with a mother, father, and child, and you can continue to work up and out, adding more people as you go along. To help aid in family tree creation, you can invite your family members to claim their profile, which will give them privileges to add and remove members from the tree.

Besides the very basic and simple implementation of the tree creation, there's also an integrated social network for families who want to dig a little deeper. Each family member gets their own profile, which shows off any included personal information, along with a list of updates they or others have made on the service. There's also a status update option a la Facebook and Twitter that lets you announce what you're doing to your family members. More helpful, however, is the birthday and anniversary reminder tool, which will automatically let you know when there's a family birthday coming up. While both these things can be had elsewhere, it's a nice touch.

One of the past criticisms we've had with sites like this is how they handle the non-nuclear families--single parents, adoptions, half siblings, and the like. The good news is that Kindo has planned ahead, and easily lets you add a half sibling, or a single parent to any part of the family lineage. There's still not a simple way to deal with adoptions, but you can add notes to someone's profile when you make it to denote that the mother and father they're tied to aren't the birth parents. You can even note if they're deceased.

Make a family tree quick and easy with Kindo, a new genealogy service.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I give this site the thumbs up for its simplicity. It took me less than 10 minutes to piece together my immediate family, and that of my uncle's. As long as you've got their pictures handy you can even give them thumbnail icons too. What would really take it to the next level is integration with Plaxo, so you could pick and choose from your e-mail contacts to populate the graph. The only thing I'm worried about is how they intend to make money, as there's no advertising or premium service. The only thing they've got going that I can foresee helping them make any cash are links to parnered sites like Moo, Amazon, Photobox, and Skype.

Also worth checking out is Ancestry.com, which will do the hunting and data entry for you, as long as you're willing to part with a couple hundred bucks and some cheek cells.

The goal of Tree-Nation is to plant 8 million trees in sub-Saharan Niger, Africa, the world's poorest nation.

The sunny Web site, based out of Barcelona, Spain, provides social networking for would-be huggers and planters of trees. You can donate between $14 to $106 per tree, and then track and map its growth via GPS and Google Maps.

Working with ecologists in Niger, Tree-Nation will nourish the sprouts of the baobabs, acacias and other species in a nursery before transplanting them outside. Although desertification threatens most of the land in Niger, the trees grow in places that receive enough rainfall to support them. Their roots are meant eventually to reach into underground aquifers, bringing otherwise untapped water to the surface and improving the soil.

Tree-Nation maps each member's tree with a personal message.

Tree-Nation says it has planted 5,000 trees so far, with 74 members responsible for 10 more trees in the past day. Organizers of last week's Web 2.0 Summit planted a tree for each attendee via Tree-Nation.

Tree-Nation is one of many Web-based services built to address global warming, pollution and poverty (see also alternative gifts, Kiva, Google's cleanup weekend, and WiserEarth). Such online tools are changing the face of philanthropy, connecting people with causes in parts of the world where they may never travel, and helping people to find others nearby who share charitable interests.

If you prefer to ditch the tech tools and support trees closer to home, Plant Health Alternatives, based out of New Jersey and exhibiting at last weekend's Bioneers conference, offers classes in "tree whispering." The company's backers claim that you can help failing trees sprout new leaves just by talking to them. How's that for social networking?

(via Treehugger)