eHub features and reviews
Feb 11, 09
Getting Things Done with Twitter
After three years on the web, Twitter has become more than just another micro-blogging client. A whole industry of web applications have sprung up to extend and capitalize on its capabilities, from the ridiculously silly, to the gobsmackingly useful. If Twitter is not already a part of your daily life, these applications can give you a whole new perspective on the idea of Getting Things Done. There's a lot you didn't know you could do with 140 character spurts.
Jun 25, 08
Wedding Planning Made Easier
Weddings can be a stressful time for the bride and groom (mostly the bride), and the entire project can seem overwhelming, especially when trying to balance expectations, ambitions, and limited budgets. Luckily for them, the web is here to help, with many useful tools that engaged couples (and occasionally, their families and friends) can rely on to make the process much smoother. Unluckily for them, the wedding industry is also a minefield of advertising gimmicks, with as many ploys to get couples to spend as much as possible in as little time as possible. I've tried to keep this list focused on less commercial sites, and where necessary, inform if a paid investment is worth the money.
May 13, 08
The Language Of Gardening
My fiance and I recently moved to Los Angeles and inherited a large garden, which includes, but is not limited to: roses, figs, artichokes, lemons, loquats, oranges, figs, and grapefruits. I have been known to kill bamboo. Clearly, we needed guidance, information, and resources, a lot of which I found online. Learning how to garden is like learning a new language. For those who've always wanted to connect to other gardeners, get advice about compost and plants, and trade seeds and stories, this round-up is for you.
Apr 28, 08
BooRah Makes You the Restaurant Guru
I've spent the past few days exploring food website BooRah, which I can only describe as a localized restaurant information mecca. BooRah's Brian Warren and Nagaraju Bandaru graciously offered me a guided tour, which I hungrily accepted. The conversation was both informative and professional, and I was left with the impression that BooRah is not only a capable product, but that it is in capable hands as well.
Mar 26, 08
Diigo V3 a Win with Non-Intrusive Social Networking
I have been an avid Diigo user for some time now. I use it to manage my bookmarks, to take notes, and organize and share my research. It's even become my primary blogging tool. Each time I think that I've finally mastered Diigo, they add some new feature or enhancement. Now, with the newly released Diigo V3, Diigo comes bounding into the social networking world. While it seems like everyone is getting into social networking these days, most are building communities around who knows who. Diigo, leveraging its success as a knowledge sharing tool, is building communities around who knows what.
Mar 06, 08
Fun With Social Shopping
Shopping and the Internet are a perfect marriage. Combine equal parts user curiosity, materialism, need for research, and a dash of social networking, and you have a great recipe for happy users and advertisers. Finding the perfect item, be it the perfect pea coat or the most eco-friendly couch, has never been easier, or a more fun diversion. The following sites are all vying for your attention and shopping prowess with endless options for sharing your finds, which is as it should be.
Feb 16, 08
The Web App as Your Personal Assistant
There are dozens of ways to keep a calendar, make a list, or get reminders online. A few web offerings do all three very well. A human personal assistant is best but, for many, not in the budget. Until you reach that stage, consider three free sites that are serious competition for your personal assistant needs.
Dec 17, 07
Traveling Internet Style
Travel is a necessary fact of life. We travel to visit far-away families and friends, or we travel for business. Most people, if you ask them, will say "We love to travel", but if you press further, they will admit that it's not exactly the act of traveling they love, but the end result - being away from home or escaping the stresses of their personal or professional lives. The romance of travel is often obscured by the stresses of hunting down the cheapest airfares, researching hotels, and looking for the best experiences while avoiding the tourist traps.
Nov 21, 07
Know Where Your Money Goes With SpendView
Recently, I was given an awesome guided tour of personal finance application,
SpendView. Nikhil Roy and Nikunj Somaiya have taken SpendView from concept to fully functioning closed beta in the space of about nine months. I was honestly pretty nonplussed about looking at yet another personal finance app. (This might have something to do with the shape my finances are in, maybe...) By the time we were done, I was totally excited by what I saw!
Oct 30, 07
The Crafty Revolution
One of the most pleasant ironies of our fast-paced, technological Internet era is the renewed interest in all things handmade and do-it-yourself. People who wouldn't otherwise have picked up so much as a ball of yarn are now learning to sew from tutorials online, trading tips with other people with the same crafty interests, and even selling their creations. In some cases (happily, more than a few), they are able to make enough money to quit their day jobs and make their crafts their sole source of income.
Oct 15, 07
Save the Planet Web 2.0 Style
Today is
Blog Action Day. Today, bloggers all around the world will call attention to issues concerning the environment. Thousands of unique voices will be discussing these issues in thousands of unique ways. In typical eHub fashion, we're going to look at saving the environment Web 2.0 style.
Oct 04, 07
The Mobile Web Goes Widescreen with Opera’s Beta Browser
I've been using Opera's Java-based mobile browser for what seems like eternity. I don't even remember how it ended up on my phone to begin with. What I do remember is that it has outperformed every other mobile browser I've tested on my handset. You can bet that I went straight to the Opera Mini website as soon as I found out that a new version, version 3.1, was ready for download. When I got there, I almost missed the link to the new beta version of Opera Mini 4.
Sep 26, 07
Health 2.0
In case you hadn't noticed, healthcare is one enormous economic sector. In the United States, spending on healthcare in 2005 was calculated at $2 trillion, which is 16% of GDP. Other countries aren't off the hook either: across the globe, healthcare spending is exceeding the rate of economic growth. So, it stands to reason that web entrepreneurs and even large corporations are increasing their offerings to meet such a voracious demand.
Sep 13, 07
Drinking To The Web
Alcohol is all about socializing, which makes it the perfect experimental playground for Internet junkies and drunkards. There are all sorts of tools for finding the perfect wine, keeping in touch with other fans of your favorite beers, or mixing the perfect cocktails to show off for your next party. I believe that as with food, alcohol, in all its forms, is something to be savored, and should be uncomplicated and enjoyable. Alcohol is one part of adult life that is all about having fun!
Sep 06, 07
Student Organizers Add the Power of Facebook
With my graduate student wife and two younger siblings all focused on squeezing the last bit out of summer, I was almost hesitant to say that my latest topic was to be online student organizers,
Notely and
Stu.dicio.us. As it turns out, I was able to enlist the opinions of real live students, without which I would not have been able to finish this article. We set out to find which was the better student application. What we found is that there is really not a better or a worse, but a difference in how you approach studying that matters. Are you meticulous or free form? Are you introverted or extroverted? Do you take careful notes or do you just discuss things after class?
Sep 05, 07
eHub Analyzes Movable Type 4
Six Apart takes its long-anticipated Movable Type version 4 out of beta and into the spotlight. Let's take a look at the revamped blogging system and take it for a spin.
Aug 29, 07
Nature of Food on the Web
I've recently discovered that talented geeks also make great chefs and restaurant critics. So many of the qualities that make geeks so valuable as your personal tech support and computer programmer - obsessive attention to detail, an eagerness to learn and research, and a fascination with process - make them wonderful in the kitchen. Along those lines, I've found a wealth of sites, built by talented geeks to cater to theirs and our food and cooking obsessions.
Aug 28, 07
Walking through the Web: Web2Walk
Web 2.0 provides us with all sorts of ways to check our favorite sites. However, for the most part, we've been constrained primarily to using browsers, email and RSS Feeds. With the dawn of this second internet, there seem to be a plethora of new ways to surf the internet. Walk2Web takes old paths and give them an upgrade.
Aug 22, 07
Buzzword, The First Real Word Processor for the Web
I'm not writing in my usual text editor today. Today, I'm writing in the web's first real word processor. At least, that is what the team at Virtual Ubiquity has to say about their partially unveiled masterpiece. They've also chosen what is quite possibly the perfect name for a supposedly ground breaking and much-hyped word processing application: Buzzword.
Aug 16, 07
Web 2.0 for Moms and Dads
Recently we've noticed a pack of websites and apps targeting tech savvy moms and dads. We've observed that the websites that cater to families tend to be very community-oriented, and deliberately family-friendly without being overly "girly" (which can be a problem for dad-oriented sites). Care is made to ensure a positive experience for the user, and not just in using the app or website, but also in interacting with other people who use the same tools.
Aug 13, 07
Reactee Puts Your Message on the Streets
I get fairly excited when I come across a company working within the web 2.0 space that I'm not quite certain how to categorize. This excitement (some might call it confusion, but I prefer to be optimistic) is why I decided to take a closer look at Reactee. In a list somewhere, you might find them filed under fashion, communication, or perhaps marketing. Reactee deftly combines elements of all three. Truth is, I think that this is a case where the sum is greater than the whole of the parts.
Aug 02, 07
Mobile 2.0: Still in the far-off future
Let's face it, most of Mobile 2.0 is still trying to catch up to Web 1.1. Despite the rapid growth of the mobile gaming industry, we still get excited about graphics that would have bored us in the glory days of 8-bit game stations. While the mobile world is about more than gaming, many mobile productivity applications seem to lack the luster needed to qualify them for anything that could be considered 2.0.
Aug 01, 07
Project Management 2.0
The Internet has long been a boon to project managers. And before that (remember those disconnected days?) many offline software applications were as well. But apart from the ubiquitous Microsoft Project there have been few specific applications for project management. Project managers have mostly filled their planning and communication needs by cobbling together systems from more generic applications.
Jul 26, 07
Highlights from WordCamp 2007
Unconferencing is one of the reasons I moved to San Francisco. They are free, geek-infested, and very enlightening. The open source software community is probably my favorite group of folks to hang out with here. I spent my whole day at WordCamp 2007, hosted at the Swedish American Hall in downtown SF.
Jul 25, 07
eHub Reviews Sputtr
With so many ways to find what you need on the Internet, it's good to see that companies and developers have realized that there needs to be more then just one way to search. Enter Sputtr. Sputtr aspires to be a metasearch designed to search multiple engines from one single website.
Jul 24, 07
Do More With Your Music at Lala
I came across Lala while looking for a (free) way to listen to my music collection when the computer that I was at wasn't mine. While I'd toured similar services like Oboe Locker by
Mp3tunes.com, in the end I grew tired of dealing the limitations of these other services. Limits to the size of your online library, or limits to the size of the mp3 file itself, for example, are common among free accounts.
Jul 23, 07
eHub Reviews last.fm
Recorded music is an important part to many of our lives. However, the way that we consume recorded music varies greatly. Additionally, the separation is not clean. How we consume music depends on our mood, location, and other things we may be doing at the time. There are five categories that can help define how we interact with recorded music. These categories are collection, personalization, ambiance, discovery, and sharing. Note, sharing can be as simple as a playlist of songs. Now the pure collector may not see the need for discovery. They've built their 70GB music collection and may believe they have everything they need. But how did they build their collection in the first place? Exactly. Enter last.fm.
Jul 19, 07
Tools for Researchers and Book Lovers
Libraries, students and book lovers can take advantage of several Web 2.0 tools to help them manage their book collections, do research, and create bibliographic citations. We've briefly mentioned BibMe and LibraryThing in the past, but let's explore them further, as well as Zotero, a "next generation research tool".
Jul 18, 07
GTD 2.0
Are you a member of the cult of GTD? David Allen's time management system has gotten so much attention in the last several years that you've probably at least tried it out. If you found GTD didn't work for you, you might try again--there's a whole host of Web 2.0 tools for GTD.
Jul 12, 07
Web 2.0 Meets The Past at Footnote
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sat down to test drive Utah-based website Footnote. Imagine a mashup of Flickr + Diigo + a little of Genealogy.com for historical documents and you get some idea of the function. This simplified description doesn't do justice to what you can actually do with Footnote, nor does it explain how I completely lost track of more than three hours of my day while exploring the site!
Jul 11, 07
Check your receipt: eHub reviews personal finance sites
As time progresses, Web 2.0 gets less esoteric and more practical with sites that are useful for everyday goals. Today, we'll look at a few web offerings that can help you with your personal money management: Wesabe, Moneytrackin', and Expensr.
Jul 09, 07
Top 10 apps from iPhoneDevCamp
Hundreds of web developers, designers, and ordinary geeks gathered this weekend to build usable applications for the iPhone. The barcamp.org event was hosted at Adobe Town Hall and featured dozens of sponsors. The hack-a-thon began on Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. and culminated Sunday at 2:00 p.m., when each team had a chance to present their app.
Page 1 of 1 pages
