Filed under: Audio, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

The holy grail for die-hard Pandora users has been a desktop application. While there have been several third party solutions, Pandora has announced the launch of an official desktop client.

Using Adobe AIR, naturally.

It's a trend we're seeing, as we mentioned before, and it's nice to see Pandora jumping into the game.

You can use all of the features that you'd expect from the website, the ability to create channels, listen to your current channels, and navigate the social networking features as well. It's slick and fast, and being able to use Pandora without a browser is quite a treat.

If you're not sure, Pandora is a music streaming service that is dubbed the "Music Genome Project", which basically means that they have trained music experts who give "DNA" to pieces of music, so that they can recommend music that you'll really like. They base it on song, artist, or lyrics.

Being able to see what's playing, change channels, or create new ones right on your desktop has been a private dream of ours for years.

They want your feedback, so install it and test it out. Knowing those guys like we do, they'll listen to the community and build it up to what the people want. The way it should be done.

Welcome to the desktop Pandora!

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Filed under: Developer, OS Updates, Linux, Open Source, Canonical, Beta

At any given time on the planet, there's a technology trade show in progress. Some are more significant than others, and there's no formula to figure if any given one will be worth the airfare. We're guessing that a few ultraportable laptop manufacturers, as well as a few of us (cough) normal folk, are a little intrigued with the news emerging from the Computex exhibit halls today.

Canonical let slip some further information and screen shots of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the Ubuntu derived operating system for ultraportables. The quick and dirty information: it looks suspiciously as if the Ubuntu image is made to work solely on Intel Atom processors. How radically different is that from the other Intel processors used previously in ultraportables? Will it be a significant enough difference that it won't run with other Intel chips? Are VIA machines left in the dust? Maybe, maybe not, but we're guessing it'll affect performance on some level.

It seems that Canonical and Intel are working with various manufacturers to get Ubuntu Netbook Remix into our hot little hands, but it probably won't happen much before late 2008. They were so kind, however, as to release some screenshots of the demo version.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix looks... well, a little bit like the "Easy Mode" settings in the Eee PC's customized Xandros. Maybe not quite as simplistic, but we have this funny feeling that many people picturing "Ubuntu on an ultraportable" were thinking more along the lines of the traditional look with a few GUI tweaks. We're not sure if this is really a good or bad thing, as yet. Ultraportables are different animals, and used in a different manner than a desktop. Perhaps a different looking user interface is enough of a disconnect to make it all work (and keep us from trying to install the sorts of things on our ultraportables that they aren't intended to run due to processing limitations).

What will be interesting, and promises to push Linux on ultraportables to the next level, is all that scary stuff on the backend. The most intriguing bit of this conversation seems to focus on the use of Moblin, and the push for developers to get Ubuntu packages to work well -- really well -- with the specific requirements of the processor and ultraportable hardware.

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Filed under: Internet, Browser Tips, Search

Like all modern web browsers, Firefox has a little search bar that lets you quickly access popular sites including Google, Yahoo!, Dictionary.com or Wikipedia. But the search bar is still a two-click solution. You enter your query and then visit another web site with a page of results before clicking through to your final destination.

Peers is a Firefox extension that saves you one click by showing search results as you type. Just select your search engine of choice and Peers will provide a drop-down list with clickable search results as you enter your query.

The browser plugin does for Firefox much of what Inquisitor does or Safari.

If you want to install peers on Firefox 3, you'll need to disable extension compatibility checking, which is easy to do, but can cause some problems if you're not careful. We can confirm that Peers works fine with Firefox 3 RC 1. But trying other extensions that are not designed for your version of Firefox can break your browser.

[via CyberNet and Mozilla Links]

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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Web services

Have you ever wanted to view or edit a file that wasn't sitting on your own hard drive? Sure you have.

It's either on your work machine, or on your mom's machine, or it's on your brother's Alienware gaming machine in the basement and you just don't want to get up to deal with it. You wish you had a network drive for all of these machines.

That's where ExpanDrive comes in (Mac only).

The great thing about external drives on the mac is that they show up on your desktop immediately. Like this little USB thumbdrives. We love how they JUST WORK.

Basically, ExpanDrive is a souped up SFTP client. You don't have to set up any configurations, you can log in to any machine with its current credentials to access files and edit them seamlessly.

Just like they were on your own drive.

If you get disconnected, no problem...you'll automatically reconnect when you're able to.

This basically lets you use any computer that you have access to as an external drive for storage. As long as that computer has an internet connection and is turned on...you're set!

Currently, the cost is $29, and that's an introductory price, so it could go up in the future.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

AceBackup is a free backup utility for Windows 98 through XP. The program used to be commercial software, but the company recently set it free. You can use AceBackup to back up your data to a local or network drive, an FTP server, or to an optical disc.

The backup utility supports 256 bit encryption, file compression, and scheduled backups. There's also a feature that lets you launch an application before and after every backup, which would be useful if, for example, you want to run a disk cleaning application.

AceBackup also support for backing up multiple versions of your files. If AceBackup finds the same file in the source and destination folder, you can choose to replace the destination file, overwrite it only if it's older than the source file, or create a new file. If you have documents that you frequently update, but might want access to older copies, this feature can be a life saver.

[via gHacks]

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Pageonce is a personal start page that gives you access to the web services you use most frequently. While other start pages like iGoogle or Netvibes let you read updates from a variety of RSS feeds, Pageonce goes a few steps further, letting you add email accounts, social networking profiles, bank and credit card accounts, airlines, and shopping sites.

We first looked at Pageonce back in February when the service was in private beta. But today the company launched a public beta meaning anybody who's willing to part with a few usernames and passwords can sign up. We're still a bit wary of any site that asks for your bank login information. But we can also see how it would be useful to have all of your financial information at your fingertips without having to login to a half dozen different sites every day to check your account balances.

Pageonce has added a few features since February, including a news feed that gives you a run down of changes across all of your registered services.

[via TechCrunch]

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Blogging

Microsoft has released a new technical preview of Windows Live Writer, the company's desktop blogging client. Windows Live Writer lets you create, edit, and post blog entries using popular blog services including WordPress, Blogger, and Windows Live Spaces.

The latest version has a revised toolbar, tabs for switching views and word count features. But probably the most notable change is the addition of basic image editing support. You can now crop, tilt, or rotate images in Windows live Writer. There are also additional border styles including reflection and rounded corners.

You can also upload videos directly to Soapbox, MSN's answer to YouTube, for easy embedding in posts. We'd be happier if you could upload videos to YouTube and other sites as well, but this is still just a technical preview, so perhaps support for other sites will come in a future release.

[via Digital Inspiration]

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Googleholic, web 2.0

In this edition:

• Google Finance gets real-time NASDAQ quotes
• IMAP or POP? Learn the differences
• Google Speaker series: Tim Ansell on open source gaming
• New Google Apps book

Continue reading Googleholic for June 3, 2008

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Filed under: Internet, Google, Search

Search engines don't get much easier to use than Google. You type what you're looking for into a text box, and the web site will spit results back at you. But if you're looking for a slightly geekier experience, you owe it to yourself to check out goosh.

Goosh has the look and feel of a Unix or Linux shell, but the site is powered by Google. If you want to conduct a web search, just enter a search term, like "download" and hit enter. If you want to search Google News you can type "news download" (without the quotes) or just "n download." You can even search Google Maps by typing "place" before your query. For a complete list of commands, type "help."

The site gives you access to a bunch of Google services from a single web page, which is kind of useful. But the site's true appeal lies in the fact that it's incredibly geeky.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Web services, web 2.0

Flock, the "Social Web Browser" built on the same Mozilla engine as Firefox, has launched the latest stable version, 1.2. The beta has been available for a while now.

In this version, Digg, Pownce, and AOL Mail integration. Digg and Pownce makes sense, but the AOL mail one didn't really excite us all that much.

It seems like Flock is stockpiling partners and features though and are putting together a very nice user experience "out of the box" that other browsers can't offer.

Firefox is perfect for the ubergeek that wants to install his or her own extensions, but for someone like our mothers or aunts who just want to try out this new fangled web thing, Flock is the answer.

Plus, the browser's blog editor is still the killerest app out there for any browser.

The knock on Flock has been stability which we haven't seen issues with on Windows or Mac, but the loadtime for first startup is a known issue that they're working on.

They recently won a Webby award for "Best in Social Networking" which is actually quite impressive considering that they were up against Facebook.

Go give Flock a shot and let us know what you think.

Do you want your web browsing experience to be social?

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