I got accepted into the Soocial beta, and after having a nose around, I think it easily contends with Plaxo as a contact sync system.

Plaxo needs no introduction as one of the best contact synchronisers in its field, but after it was acquired by Comcast, the general opinion on the net is that users aren’t too happy about handing over their contact data.
How does Soocial excel Plaxo?

• The webapp is less browser-intensive as Plaxo’s. It resembles Address Book on OS X, and works faster than Plaxo’s own.
• Automatic backup comes as standard with Soocial, but is part of a premium package at Plaxo.
• Soocial implements a simple API, so users can extend it by developing clients to sync contacts wherever they want to.
• Your data is secure – connection is always encrypted, and Soocial stress how your data will be completely erased when you want it to be.
• It has a working sync to GMail; Plaxo’s has been broken for a long time. It also syncs to Highrise, which Plaxo doesn’t, and has a proper mobile sync (although no mobile access page as of yet).
• Soocial is dead set on contact synchronisation, whereas Plaxo has seemed to stray off into more of a social network.

There are some drawbacks that I can see though, compared to Plaxo. For example, it doesn’t yet cover calendar & task sync, and the list of services it syncs to isn’t as large a Plaxo’s. Still, if you’re interested in trying an alternative to Plaxo, check it out.

I have beta invites! Comment if you want them.

[https://www.soocial.com/]

Opera did it first, yes. And then there were the Firefox extensions (Auto Dial, Fast Dial, Speed Dial) which replicated the killer feature.

Fore those of you who haven’t come across it, a dial page is opens in blank tabs & the home page to provide links to oft-used websites, either manually entered or pulled from history or bookmarks, depending on the dial variation.
But there was never really any portability between them; working on both Windows & Mac, I couldn’t keep my changes current between my dial page. I’d change which websites I’d visit often, re-order them, make changes, only to find that I have to repeat again. And again.

The pages don’t have any sync functions, so they’re not really designed to be used across computers – however, there is a similar service offered online by 3×3links. You can set up a custom dial page online (all that’s needed is a Google Account), and then simply set it as the homepage on each computer you want to use it. If you want it to open in blank tabs, just set it up with the Firefox extension Tab Mix Plus, but the pages themselves can be used cross-browser. I find that using 3×3links is faster than the extensions as it doesn’t have the bloat, but a downside is that clearing browser cookies would mean you have to log in to the site again to access your dial page.

A similar service is provided by Flyapp, but I personally prefer the layout of 3×3links. Who knows, maybe this kind of start page will become as prominent as the likes of NetVibes and iGoogle.

[http://www.3x3links.com/]
Via [http://lifehacker.com/5074982/3x3links-is-a-speed+dial+style-start-page]

AdobeAIR is a great, cross platform app development system.
We all want to use it, but finding good apps can be difficult. Where do we look?

It catalogues AdobeAIR apps, but also gives comprehensive news, tutorials, and developer resources.
Interesting – could become AdobeAIR central.

[http://www.freshairapps.com]

Sorry, can’t see the photos, not got MySpace.

Google Talk? Can’t chat there, I use AIM!

Ever heard Phrases like these?
Not with Twitter!

Think about it. Twitter is an open data platform.
It’s easily accessible via the web where anybody can see it.
It publishes universal RSS feeds, which people can subscribe to or do cool stuff with.
And then there’s SMS support. Bi-directional SMS usage, all over the world.
The API then opens more doors.
There are all sorts of programs and plugins for it. Email, IM, anything you can think of is now using Twitter.

More web apps should use open standards. It makes life easier for everyone.

[http://www.twitter.com]

Logged onto Google Reader this morning to check my feeds.
I get a dialogue asking me to refresh for a new feature.
Ok.

I now have a Notes section in Google Reader.
I guess I could use it for writing follow ups to news items, my thoughts, what I was going to etc.

Cool stuff Google.

[http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/05/share-anything-anytime-anywhere.html]

Like most people out there, I miss my favourite shows when stuff happens.
Also like a lot of people, I use the internet to my advantage.

1. BBC iPlayer [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/] for all BBC shows on all of their channels.
2. ITV Catch Up [http://www.itv.com/CatchUp/default.html] for independent drama on ITV.
3. 4oD [http://www.channel4.com/4od/index.html] for Teenage shows on Channel 4
4. Five Download [http://download.five.tv/] will serve me shows from Five.
5. Veoh [http://www.veoh.com] for user-uploaded programs, mostly anime.

Quoting BBC iPlayer –

Making the unmissable, unmissable.

To me, Twitter can be several things.

• Letting people around me know what I’m up to.
• Showing people the cool stuff I find
• Sharing links without writing loads
• Sloppy blogging
• Announcing things to lots of people
• Messaging a person’s web/IM/email/phone to get their atention
• Procrastination

Follow me.

Got some Holiday snaps? Wanna share photos without email? How about accessing photos on more than one computer?
Then PhotoCasting is for you.

PhotoCasting is a bit like a PodCast, only that instead of Audio files, Images are sent.
To view them, you just need an RSS reader (IE & FireFox both work fine), or if you’re using a Mac, iPhoto can organise your subscribed PhotoCast in many ways.

So how do we do this, without shelling out a .Mac subscription? Our good friend Google of Course!

You will need –

• Collection of photos
• Internet connection, Broadband recommended
• A Google Account
• Picasa Uploader (Mac) or Picasa (PC)

This guide is for PC users, but is essentially the same for the Mac.

Assuming you’ve already got your photo library into Picasa/iPhoto, let’s start.

1. Highlight the photos you want to include in your PhotoCast. Click the Web Album button.
2. Log in with your Google Account if prompted. From here, you can chose to create a new Album or Upload to an existing one, as well as other settings. Each Album will become a PhotoCast, so sort them however you like.
3. Click OK, and wait. Depending on the amount of photos, it could take a long time.
4. When that’s done, go to http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/home and navigate to your album. Scroll down to the bottom right hand corner, and click the little link labelled RSS. Distribute this link however, it’s your PhotoCast.

That’s all there is to it! One drawback, however, is that you manually have to add new photos to the PhotoCast, but the subscribers receive them automatically, and the maximum size of each PhotoCast is 500 photos.

Google Browser Sync is a gem. Google has the power and means to expand it, making it a complete sync system.

• Google desktop indexes files, right?
  So save the index online (possibly to the users GMail account) and sync specified parts of the index. If a file is requested – providing the ‘master’ computer is switched on and connected, it should be able to transfer over.
• In addition to the above, there should be a way to sync settings from one computer to another. This could cause a little hiccough on a Windows & Mac infrastructure, but it doesn’t need to be perfect.
• GMail iMap can be used to sync other email accounts, applying labels and rules to keep it out of regular GMail. Contacts can also be sent to GMail to be stored for syncing.
• iCal and Outlook could both be synchronised via Google Calendar. Notes could possibly be exported and converted to Google Notebook.
• Browser sync could be expanded to include FireFox extensions and settings. Once again, these could be stored by Gmail.

A lot more things could be done. Essentially, you just need to store files using GMail, or text-based items using Google Docs. If anybody wants to work on this idea, feel free, just post in the comments when you’re done. Failing that, I hope Google reads this!

My favourite social network just got cooler.

You can now subscribe to High-quality video channels, ranging from humour, pop culture, news, music videos, anime and much more. Big names like the BBC and MTV have opened up their own channels, allowing them to generate traffic (and possible revenue) through Bebo’s servers.

I use the internet for a lot of my media, and Bebo has made it easier for me to watch the channels I want to, online. I’ve also found some new shows (like MTV’s ‘Bedroom Diaries’) that I’ve started watching on TV.

[http://www.bebo.com/Video.jsp]