mTextBox - eBooks for your mobile phone

Imagine if you could bring all your reading with you without carrying all the weight. That is the problem the good folks at Mapada Inc. are trying to solve with their mTextBox product. All you need is an internet-enabled mobile phone. Once you download and install the Java-based mTextBox on your phone, reading is a piece of cake. You can choose to read text already uploaded by others (usually, public domain books) or you can fill out your own text to read. Every piece of text (be it a book or a grocery list uploaded by you) is assigned an mCode. You must enter the mCode for the text you want to read in the mTextBox application on your phone.

I am very impressed with the implementation of the mobile application. I was curious as to how the entire text of The War of the Worlds would be transferred to my phone. I was anticipating a long download time of a single chapter if not the entire book when I first entered the mCode to read The War of the Worlds. To my surprise, the book loaded nearly instantly. As I scrolled down madly to see how such a large body of text loaded so quickly I realized what was going on. The application was loading small chunks of text as I scrolled. This is brilliant because each web request to fetch the next chunk of text is unnoticeable. I wish mobile browsers could do the same too.

The second great feature of this application is that when you stop reading or switch to reading something else a virtual bookmark is automatically created so that the next time you go to read it will pick up from exactly where you left off.

I would not recommend abandoning the trusty paper back because there are no batteries that could discharge nor do you have to worry about coverage (like on a plane). But for casual reading or taking some notes or your grocery list on the go with you mTextBox can't be beat.

mtextbox Hosted on Zooomr

Mobile Download | PC Download | FAQ

Tags: mtextbox, books, mobile

Catalog your books, movies, music, and games online with Zestr

Zestr is a tool to catalog your collection of media online. It has all the trappings of a web 2.0 application including sharing and RSS feeds for each component of your collection, meaning, there are separate feeds for books, movies, music and games.

The Goods:

• Simplicity and the slick user interface.
• Ability to add "stuff" using ISBN, ASIC, or UPC bar codes.
• Amazon back-end for search and display of items.
• International catalog with access to 6 different regions.
  
• Badges for collecting unique and rare goods.
• Sharing and subscribing to other user's lists through RSS feeds.
  

The Not-so-goods:

• No privacy control of your items.
• If I have porn in my collection, do I really want to advertise it to the whole world?
• Badges can be faked.
• There is essentially no system to verify the items I own. I can add all the rare items I can think of without actually owning them to get prestigious badges.

Zestr [via eHub]

Tags: zestr, catalog, books, movies, music, games

Google Time

What does a Google search not do? In addition to movie show times, package tracking, stock quotes, flight status, and weather, you can use your friendly, neighborhood, Google search box to get the local time for a particular city or country. Although this search feature is not explicitly mentioned in their search features help page, I have verified that it works but with mixed results.

To get the local time, simply search with the phrase 'time' followed by the city or country of your choice. For example, the search phrase

time india

reveals the local time in India.



I tried searching for times in other cities around the US and internationally. The only places that did not return with their local time were cities in China. Go figure!

[via tech-recipes]

Tags: google, googletime

Enjoy FREE international calls for the next 3 years

I have friends and family abroad, as you might have figured, being that I am from India. When I heard of futurephone, I was both delighted and a little disappointed at the same time. Delighted because futurephone promises FREE calls to "the world's most populous countries", which according to their list are 54 in number. Disappointed because India, strangely, is not in the list (even though it is the world's second most populated country).

The service works by having you call a number in Iowa followed by your destination number. Now, if you are still in the dark ages where you are paying long distance charges for calls within the US, then you got bigger problems. But, if you have an unlimited long distance calling plan on your phone (landline or mobile), then this service is absolutely FREE to you.

So, what's the catch? There is none except for the fact you can enjoy the luxury of a smaller phone bill for the next 3 years. They say that they are doing this in the hopes of gaining your confidence in the company and its services, so that they can introduce other (paid?) services to you in the future.

I used the futurephone to call my dad in China and the call quality was fantastic. I called him on a landline, though, so I am not sure if it will work when calling to a mobile phone. I am going to keep my fingers crossed and wait for India to be included in the list.



futurephone

Tags: futurephone, free, phone

Subscribe to podcasts in iTunes through the web using PodNova

Often times I will come across an interesting podcast that I want to subscribe to while I am away from my home machine that has iTunes and syncs my iPod. So, when I come across such a podcast and I am not on my home machine, I am faced with a challenge. iTunes does not synchronize your podcasts across machines even when you are logged in to your iTunes account on another machine. I can only pray that Apple adds this functionality to iTunes some day. So, my challenge then is how do I subscribe to a podcast in iTunes without the mess of emailing myself a link or bookmarking it to del.icio.us only to remember to subscribe to it when I get home?

Enter PodNova. PodNova is a FREE service that lets you subscribe to podcasts online. Once you create an account, you can add and delete subscriptions to podcasts as and when you choose as long as you have what they call an internet connection. So how do I get my podcast subscriptions on PodNova to iTunes to download to my iPod?



The beauty of PodNova is that you also get the PodNova desktop client to run on your local machine. Mac and Linux users beware - PodNova desktop client is supported on your platform too! The desktop client is the glue that holds your online subscriptions and iTunes together. The desktop client is based on Juice podcast receiver with one significant difference - you can synchronize your subscriptions to your desktop from the PodNova website by logging into your account through the desktop client. The desktop client provides integration with iTunes (and Winamp, although I have not tested this). The desktop client will add each podcast episode to iTunes, create a playlist for each of your podcast subscriptions, and set the Genre of each downloaded episode to Podcast (or any other value) for easy searchability within iTunes.



So there you have it, subscribe to podcasts online (or using the desktop client) on PodNova and let the desktop client do its magic to get it into iTunes so that you can home and download the latest and greatest episodes of your shows to your iPod.

Tags: podnova, itunes, podcast

How to: Save money on your next international getaway

If you are travelling international and you need to fly between local destinations in the country you are visiting then this tip is for you. Often times people will use big name travel websites, such as Travelocity and Orbitz to book their entire travel to and within the destination they are visiting. But, you can save a whole lot of money by booking your travel within the destination by booking your flights directly with a local airline that serves the cities that you want to visit. For example, I want to travel to India. In India, I am interested in visiting New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Jaipur. I could use Travelocity, Orbitz, and such to book my tickets to New Delhi. Now instead of booking my travel within India (to Mumbai, Bangalore, and Jaipur) with them, I can save by booking with local airlines like Indian Airlines, Jet Airways, etc.

How do I find out about which local airlines serve the destinations I want to visit, you ask. That is where A-Z World Airports comes in. On this website, you can browse through the index of all the airports by city or by country. When you find the airport for the city you are interested in visiting, you will be able to see all the airlines that serve that airport. Now, it would be nice if it had links to websites for each airline, but you can always use your favorite search engine to dig that up. Note that not all airlines will have an online presence, and even if they do, they might not let you book tickets. If you book tickets you might also have to worry about the forms of payment they are willing to accept as well as the currency conversion rates to determine if you are, in fact, getting a good deal.



A-Z World Airports

Tags: travel, local, howto

Search online with a concierge

ChaCha is a new search engine (in "experimental" alpha) that lets you search by connecting you to a real person called a "guide", in addition to the traditional search that everyone is used to. Your guide is a person who is an expert at finding information on the web and is knowledgeable on the subject of your search. The idea is that the guide can filter your search results and provide you more relevant results on the topic of your search with their expertise.

When you submit your search, an alert is sent to all appropriate guides who are logged into the system. Because your search is sent to a real person, you can submit your search in a natural language, like "What are the symptoms of cataract?". Once you are connected with a guide you can chat with him/her to refine your query or provide more specifics on what exactly you are looking for.

The guides are paid for their services and are rated based on their performance. You can rate a guide between 1 and 5 stars at the end of your search session. ChaCha does not disclose how much guides are paid or if their star rating is used to determine their pay.

Searching with human assistance has been tried before by Ask and by Yahoo! Answers, but the convenience of having a human help you in real-time is what sets ChaCha apart.

In all my attempts on searching with a guide, I was told that "All chacha guides are currently searching with others." and I should try it again soon. I was also presented with a set of links that were relevant to my search results. While I can understand that they are new and only have a few guides on the payroll, I do not think that with a dearth of guides the service could be useful. They really need to ramp up on the number of guides.



[via PC Magazine]

ChaCha

Tags: chacha, search

vFlyer: the swiss-knife for selling online

Selling online is an art. Some people are eBay fanatics, some like Amazon Marketplace, others prefer Google Base, while still others want to be on craigslist. Regardless of your choice of the store you want to use, it is common sense that cross-posting your goods to multiple stores increases the success rate for the sell. With this in mind, I bring you vFlyer, an online tool you can use to easily post your classified at more than one store.

vFlyer allows you to create a professional-looking classified ad and post it to multiple classified sites such as Google Base, eBay, Amazon, and more. You are provided more than 30 pre-defined categories to select for your ad. You can also get an HTML version of your ad that you can put on your own site or download the PDF version to print and post across bulletin boards in the physical world. Creating your ad is FREE and easy.

It only took me a couple of minutes to create an ad for a TV. The site gave me a number of fields to fill out for the TV - the title and description as well as the manufacturer, model number, screen size, color, weight, and quantity (if you have multiple items). I could also specify my asking price and whether it was firm or a negotiable as well as the forms of payment I am willing to accept (such as cash, check, credit cards, PayPal, etc.). I filled out my contact information, selected the template for the look-and-feel, added a photo and I was done. Quick, painless, and simple. I was also provided the option to add links to other sites. I see this useful if you would like to link to manufacturer's site where your buyers can see more details about the features of your item. You could also use this to link to other online merchants where they can compare the price of a new item to the price you ask. The default expiry time is 30 days from the date of post, but you can change this to another date or remove the date completely to prevent it from automatically expiring. You can preview your ad before submitting to the stores, or you can choose to save your work as a draft.



vFlyer

Tags: vflyer, classifieds

The case for Bloglines

Gina at Lifehacker has compared Google Reader to Bloglines and has made the case for Google Reader. Steve Rubel agrees whole-heartedly. I have been using the new features they rolled out and I agree with most of their assessment. I beg to disagree with Steve's claim that Bloglines has not innovated since being bought by Ask. In the last few weeks Bloglines has rolled out improvements to address issues that were starting to annoy me:

1. The entire left pane does not refresh when you select to keep an item new.
2. The time between automatic updates has decreased so that your feeds are updated more frequently.
3. The left pane can be expanded or collapsed to provide more reading space.

Additionally, where Bloglines shines, in my opinion, is in its mobile interface. They improved the mobile interface recently to integrate Skweezer. Skweezer compresses and reformats the content when you click on a link on a post. In the past, I was afraid of doing this on my mobile phone because of the load time some sites that contained flashy images. Skweezer is my shield. Sure, Google Reader also has a mobile interface, but it is not nearly as featured as the Bloglines:

1. You cannot select which feeds do and don't show up in the mobile interface. While subscribing to a feed Bloglines lets you select whether to include the feed in your mobile reader.
2. The feed items are presented in the river of news format. While this might be ideal for the desktop, when I am on-the-go, I prefer being able to select the feed I want to read. Google Reader mobile lets you browse feeds in the river of news format or by label. Bloglines presents me with all feeds that I explicitly chose for my mobile reader in the familiar folder hierarchy visible in the left pane. From there, I can choose to read only the feeds I want at that particular moment.
   

Thes features combine to make Bloglines a superior feed reader for mobile device. And since mobility is key for me, I am going to stick to Bloglines until Google Reader can deliver.

Tags: bloglines, google, googlereader, bloglines freedbacking

GE puts your imagination at work

I cam across this General Electric website that lets you draw inside your browser and share your drawings with friends (via email) for FREE, of course. It is not just a simple drawing web application. You are given your choices of tools you want to you use such as pens, shapes, and text. You can also choose colors for your pens, shapes, text as well as the background color. Another nice option is the ability to save the image. When you save, you get an email with a unique link to your drawing. Clicking on the link replays the entire drawing and you can choose to continue working on it or start a new drawing. You can also share the drawing with your friends. Sharing your drawing gives your friends permission to change it and send it back to you.

I can see the utility of this as a quick and dirty whiteboard for collaborating on designs over long distances.



Tags: drawing, sharing

Call in sick - Web 2.0 style

Call-in-Sick is a website with which "you can record your sick message the night before then schedule it to be sent directly to your boss's phone early in the morning without you even getting out of bed!". Some other great features include displaying your caller-id on your bosses phone, the ability re-record your message to that perfect sick sounding voice, and, here is the kicker, confirmation that your voicemail was delivered with a text message on your cell phone. Did I mention, it is FREE? Genius!



Available in US & Canada only (sorry international friends).

Tags: phone, hack