Videojug- Life explained on film.

for people in a hurry-

Today's awesome link- Videojug. Videojug tries to make aspects of life less complicated by showing 'How to do it?' on Video. Learn How to give the perfect kiss or How to fold a t-shirt in two seconds.


for people with time-

In a hostel, life's always piling problems after problems on poor inmates like me. Laundry obviously tops the list and saving money comes a close second. And then people in the outside world have problems of their own. You have to clean dishes and then fight hangovers to reach work on time and it does not help if you are socially inept also.
I'm guessing creators of Videojug were facing problems of similar magnitude, when they had the brain wave and realised the best way to solve problems is to learn how others do it.

Videojug is a site which has a directory of videos which attempt to explain life. They have various sections like Christmas, Food, Drinks, DIY, beauty, etc.

For example Christmas section has videos which explain how to survive a family Christmas, and how to wrap an awkwardly shaped gift.
The Drinks section has videos on How to make the perfect hot chocolate and How to Make a Spider-Brain Kids' Cocktail (never heard of it!).

When I first visited this site, I saw this- How to care for Bearded Dragons. It helped me understand my dragon better. This site is awesome, because it not only has some very informative videos like, How to Fit a door handle but also videos like How to be the perfect Boyfriend. I'm sure lot among us will do good by watching it.

Videojug is also very very entertaining! Its got some really funny videos. The thing about videojug is also that the video quality is pretty decent and then you can download all the videos and upload your own as well.

Among the flurry of video sites getting launched, Videojug has its own important place. It'll grow because today people really do need help and advice. And then none of the videos are crap.

I'm loving it. I'm sure you'll love it too, because Videojug is awesome!

links-

• Get over that hangover. Learn How to make a hangover juice
• Techcrunch on Videojug
• Telegraph on Videojug

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last word

What can you use?

Use Videojug for advice on life.
Use YouTube if you need advice on life and ready to filter through crap.

happy DIY,

abhishek

Discover new music- Musicovery

for the people in a hurry-

Today's awesome site- Musicovery. A radio site which streams music according to the mood you set.

for the people with time-

I have some favourite bands, but they sometimes really don't match the my mood. It probably happens for all of us. Musicovery is an awesome radio site, on which using an analog interface you can decide the kind of music you want to hear.


The console has got 4 extremes- Calm, energetic, dark and positive. And then you can decide between mood or dance kind of music. So you then click on a point which best suits you( see picture below). Well too subjective for you? For people not like me, you've got the conventional categories of music like rap, classic rock, pop, soul, etc. And for more, you should really check it out yourself, because its awesome! Its also awesome for students on hostel lan, because if I can stream music on musicovery without much problems, then it'll probably work well even in the deep amazon forests.

I think the more popular music radio is probably Pandora. And I think even Liveplasma's radio is pretty popular, but Musicovery not only has better features and better songs lined up, it also doesn't require any registration. And the fact that it gets loaded in a jiffy, makes it really attractive for people who have an access to slower net speeds, like me. I'm loving it! And so are most of my friends!

The screenshot below shows the funky plant vines of sorts that come out and have songs arranged on them.


Now for the geeks who want more information on Musicovery-
Musicovery's been developed by Frederic Vavrille. He also had made liveplasma(bless him for both!). And yeah for bloggers, this is really not for you if you want to embed it on your blog, because you can't do so. You can probably look at Pandora.

links-

• Think Frederic Vaverille is God? Tell that to frederic.vaverille@liveplasma.com
• More on musicovery- Visualcomplexity
• Why Pandora?- Read O'reilly on Pandora.
  

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last word

What can you use?

Use Musicovery to discover new music.
Use Pandora if you are want an account which'll remember your preferences.
Use Musicovery if you are too lazy to login for a radio service.

happy discovering!

abhishek

Photohosting

Flickr or Zooomr?

While trying to make this blog, I was looking at various photo sharing web sites. Flickr is the most famous one and then there are others like Photobucket, Fotolog, Panoramio, Fotki, which are not as user-friendly(therefore not as famous). But one photosharing site which is creating waves is Zooomr. Its been created by a 17 year old (Kristopher Tate). Its commonly described as Flickr on steroids. The advantage of Zooomr is that it offers users tagging, rss, and importantly 100mb limit per month, while Flickr offers only 20mb. Well, bloggers around the world are loving it!

related links-

• Worship Kristopher Tate, here- Hot Potatoes
• good old Wikipedia on Zooomr
• Zooomr blog.
  
• TechCrunch on Zooomr
  

In Indian context an example of a photosharing site will be Pixrat, its a very well made site and certainly better than Flickr . Its main feature is that you can not only upload your pictures, but you can also bookmark online pictures. So if you find an interesting picture online, you can just save its link and tag it for others to see. It was possibly the first Indian site to be reviewed by TechCrunch(link in the sidebar) and recently got acquired by a South African company.

related links-

• Techcrunch review of Pixrat
• Acquisition of Pixrat

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A little more about something called the Tag cloud, which is one of the features that distinguishes a web 2.0 site from one which is not. A tag is basically something which describes the pic or the music you just uploaded. Tags are what the search program looks for when another user is looking for something. What is exciting about it is that while a search engine like Google uses algorithm only, tagging depends completely on users. This results in more relevant content turning up as search results, because as more users tag a content its search rating goes up.

happy clicking!
abhishek

addition:
Talking about photosharing and hosting, I had missed the feature called as geo-tagging which Zooomr and Panoramio offer. As Eduardo says in the comment, Panoramio has a feed called KML feed using which you can watch photos on Google earth.( I still haven't used it, but the idea sounds like funk!) And then Panoramio is also good because it offers 2gb storage per user for free. If you've just returned from some trip, you'll have some hundred photos to show off, then Panoramio is for you. I just got my account and the service is pretty decent. For bloggers looking at making slide shows, look at rockyou.com or Photoshow. I'll cover these soon.

links-

• Edit your photos online- PXN8. PXN8 has a brilliant name and I'll write more about soon.
• Make your social networking profile picture online on mypictr.
• What is geo tagging? use the wikipedia!
  

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Last word
What you can use?
Use Zooomr if you are a blogger
Use Panoramio if you want to upload a lot of pictures at a time.
Use Pixrat if you want to tag online pictures for others to see.
Use these because they are quite new and very open for more development, so will become better if more users start using them.


again,
abhishek

Web is changing!

The web is changing!

This is the first post on this blog. I've recently discovered that the web is the most awesome thing around. And with the arrival of web 2.0 we can virtually do everything using the internet. Web 2.0 has made everything more efficient and more user relevant.
Web 2.0 has given birth to a lot of applications which can make a lot of work simpler. For example, now for a group of people working to create an excel document, proximity is no longer a problem. Tools like Edit Grid allow collaborative efforts in making spreadsheets.
And then a lot of these applications allow bloggers to attract more readers by adding more useful information in their posts. A not very well known example will be Stuff a blog. I found it very useful for people who want to describe their recent trips and can add information like maps, climate etc.

In this blog I want to share what I found on the web and can be of good use to others. Since there are so many useful applications available, we might as well use them!