Sunday, February 5, 2006

New Media Picks Of The Week: Sharewood Picnic 38

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Sharewood Picnic is my weekly collection of new media resources and tools. In it you find the best new media tools and picks I discover weekly during my daily research and explorations. The picnic gems I select are all tools and services that while small or still in Beta stage deserve definitely more attention and exposure.

Photo credit: Marja Flick-Buijs

Also this week I have a great list of new media gems that can enable, augment, enhance anyone's ability to inform oneself and to communicate more effectively with others in many new and innovative ways.

Here is what I have found:

Supersearch service makes in-depth information research a breeze

Send super large files to anyone bypassing email

Advanced RSS generator creates feeds from static web pages

Simple, non-geek RSS generator to scrape static web pages with no feeds

Community web-magazine allows anyone to create a grassroots generated webzine

Instant messenger real-time language translator

Online free poster creator enlarges digital images to up to 20 meters

Web-based free image editor for non-technical users

Synch display of images and text with audio recordings and podcasts

Suite of cool image tools to enhance your Flickr-based image collection

Whonu

Whonu is a web-based supersearch tool like no other one out there. Whonu allows you to apply your search terms to any of many possible different content universes including blogs, RSS feeds, news, standard web search, opinions and review, video or audio-based content, and much more. Not only. With whonu you can select a set of specific web sites and search only through those. Whonu.com also allows you to create RSS feeds for any of these searches. Whonu.com has a cool, easy and intuitive interface that makes using it simple for any novice or non-technical user. Compile a list of domains, type in your query in the search box provided on the same page, and see what comes up. Simply brilliant and free to use.
http://www.whonu.com/

MailBigFile

Mailbigfile.com is a new free, web-based service that allows you to send large files up to 1 gigabyte in size to any email address without having to actually use the standard email programs and ISP gateways and file size limitations. MailBigFile.com requires no software download and in three easy steps it allows you to send very large files reliably to anyoneas. Files sent through MailBigFile.com are available for pick-up by the recipient for up to 7 days, or for a maximum of 3 downloads. With the option to secure files with 128-bit encyption, and the scanning of all emails for viruses MailBigFile scores high also on security and trust. Free.
http://www.mailbigfile.com/

Feed43

Feed43 is a web-based service which allows you to create a custom RSS feed for any site )who doesn't have one). This process is generally called HTML scraping. Yes, you are reading it right: Feed43 converts free-form HTML or XHTML documents to valid RSS feeds by extracting specific recurring snippets of text/HTML, or by utilizing custom search patterns. This service is definitely for "geeks" or for those who some good technical comptence. To give you an idea of its technical complexity here is the procedure of setting up a feed :
- Find a web page with the content that interests you.
- Create a new feed on Feed43, which points to that web page.
- In feed parameters, define search patterns and output templates for this feed.
- Get the link to your feed.
- Subscribe to this feed using your favorite feed reader (aggregator).
- Optionally, protect your feed with password so no one could alter it.
Feed43 is currently in private beta stage of development. To use this service you must get an invitation code. To get one, say that you have read Robin Good' Sharewood Picnic and apply for it here. Free.
http://www.feed43.com/

Feedtier

FeedTier is an automatic RSS feed generator for non-geeks that has already been featured as a Microsoft Windows Live.com gadget. FeedTier simplifies the process of scraping RSS from any web page by offering a user-friendly and simplified approach. FeedTier performs content analysis, picks-up the most prominent cluster of hyperlinks and automatically generates RSS web feeds from HTML-based web pages that do not have already an RSS feed. The beta version is free for personal use though I would recommend if you find this tool useful to please consider donating any small money amount to Ashutosh Nilkanth, FeedTier generous developer.
http://feedtier.somee.com/

Linkadelic Magazine

Linkadelic Magazine is a public content clearinghouse where the end users are the editors and story writers. The content of Linkadelic Magazine is created by users and rated by users. Any user can submit hot news, articles, and recommended links--or even write a column. Linkadelic is also a community of people with shared interests. All users who choose to register with Linkadelic Magazine are automatically given their own page in which they can put information about themselves. Readers of Linkadelic Magazine can contact each other, discuss ideas, exchange information, and more. To read you start by selecting a section among News (hot news, innovations, and whatever is new and exciting), Recommended links (websites that people like you recommend), Stories (in-depth articles), Columns (blogs) and Forums (discussions and Q&A). Registration is optional and required only if you want to submit a story. Images can be also submitted and associated with a post. Linkadelic Magazine allows people to vote on submitted articles and links helping good content raise to the top and allowing others to find the most interesting news more easily. But wait, the greatest news of all is that CoMagz.com, the company behind Linkadelic Magazine allows anyone with a subscription of at least 500 members list to create their own, custom, Linkadelic Magazine made, created and edited by your own very community. To apply contact CoMagz directly while specifying size of your community, topics and title of your community web magazine and a good description of what coverage you intend to provide. CoMagz pays itself back by placing non-intrusive Google ads next to the content. Free.
http://www.comagz.com/webmagazine/

Yahoo Messenger Translating Proxy

Yahoo Translating HTTP Proxy (YTP) is a two-way translator which works with your Yahoo! Messenger to translate (by leveraging Google Translate) your typed message into various languages. At the moment, the languages available are English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Each Yahoo conversation between two users has an associated session ID. Developed by Ivo Zivkov, this is an open-source project for which the original source code is also available for download. To test it without downloading you can use a live Translating Proxy running on a dedicated server. Set your Y! Messenger HTTP proxy Server Name to avmedia.org, and Server Port to 8084. For more detailed instructions see here. The proxy keeps track of each Yahoo session, and remembers which language, if any, is translating to and from. That is why it can be used as a central server for any number of users, only limited by hardware limitations. Free.
http://avmedia.org/ytp/

The Rasterbator

The Rasterbator is a web service which creates huge, rasterized (rasterbation is the process of taking an image, blowing it up, pixelating it, and printing it onto numerous pieces of paper) images from any picture. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into extremely cool looking posters up to 20 meters in size. The Rasterbator is very easy to use. You can either upload a file from your computer or use any file that is publicly available on the Internet. After you have cropped the image and selected a desired enlargement size, the resized digital image will be sent to you as a PDF file. You will need to have Macromedia Flash Player 7 and Adobe Reader (or other pdf viewer) to use The Rasterbator. Free.
http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

Online image editor

The Online Image Editor is a free online image editor hosted by Easy2upload.net which allows you to do basic digital image editing from any computer without the need to install any commercial software. edit images. The online image editor is completely web-based and it allows you to upload, re-size or crop any digital image, and to save it in your preferred file format for personal use. Free.
http://easy2upload.net/editor/

Audio Merge

Audio Merge is a web-based application that requires no downloads or installation and that allows anyone to associate the display of pre-selected visual or text-based content to the playback of any pre-recorded audio file. Through a simple process called 'Playback marking', Audio Merge allows you to listen to your audio recording and to mark the individual points at which specific content will need to be displayed for those listening to it. Not only. Audio Merge also allows in-depth tracking of views and page impressions of the content associated with your audio file or podcast. The content to be displayed in synch with your recording resides on Audio Merge servers and can be easily edited and changed by using one of the several predesigned templates made available. Audio Merge works for both PCs and Macs and it is free to use.
http://www.audiomerge.com/default.asp

fd's Flickr Toys

Flickr Toys is a collection of truly great web-based services that extend, enhance and augment in many interesting and useful ways the image hosting and sharing service provided by Yahoo/Flickr. Flickr Toys include among many other: