From iPhones to Ebay, Amazon to Netflix, Heart Hi-Tech presents the latest technology and gadget news and reviews with a focus on the non-tech savvy crowd.
Ask Hillsy...
Have a tech question? Wanna suggest a topic for Hillsy's next post? Email us at hearthitech@gmail.com
Scenario: You're looking for a no-frills, simple e-commerce store Solution: Woot offers one product a day - for cheap
Back in the day Amazon.com used to only sell books. Now they sell quail's eggs and wasabi peas.
Woot is a site that takes us back to the simpler era of e-commerce. A single, new product is offered every day at a discount price. Items go on sale at 12.01am and are offered until they're sold out.
From digital cameras to TVs, you can occasionally pick-up a great deal on Woot - but the key is to act fast!
Scenario: You want to swim in the earth's oceans without getting wet Solution:Google Earth now includes a feature to dive down into the deep blue sea
Google Earth has been around a while and it has always been a rather spiffy application. Well it just got a whole lot cooler thanks to the addition of a new feature which lets users explore the earth's oceans.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from shipwrecks to schools of sharks - Google Earth lets users dive down to the ocean floor and access a wide range of interactive content to enhance the experience. There's an impressive array of video clips and underwater imagery available from a wide range of sources, including the BBC and National Geographic.
Check out the video above for a walk-through of some of the features.
Scenario: You're looking for an easy way to track album releases and concerts from your favorite bands and artists Solution:iConcertCal is a lightweight plug-in for iTunes that fits the bill
My music library is as broad as it is deep - spanning across a multitude of decades and a wide variety of genres. So keeping up with what all my favorite bands are up to is tricky. I couldn't tell you when Nick Cave is touring and I have no idea when Franz Ferdinand are releasing a new album. Hell, for all I know Erasure could be re-forming and releasing a comeback record next month and I'd be none the wiser.
That's where iConcertCal can help. This free application plugs right into iTunes and helps you stay abreast of what your favorite bands are up to. iConcertCal scans your entire music collection and creates a calendar that includes all upcoming album releases and concert appearances for the artists in your library.
Simply click on a calendar entry and you'll be taken through to a page that lets you order concert tickets or buy (or pre-order) the album.
Scenario: You're looking for an easy way to track album releases and concerts from your favorite bands and artists Solution:iConcertCal is a lightweight plug-in for iTunes that fits the bill
My music library is as broad as it is deep - spanning across a multitude of decades and a wide variety of genres. So keeping up with what all my favorite bands are up to is tricky. I couldn't tell you when Nick Cave is touring and I have no idea when Franz Ferdinand are releasing a new album. Hell, for all I know Erasure could be re-forming and releasing a comeback record next month and I'd be none the wiser.
That's where iConcertCal can help. This free application plugs right into iTunes and helps you stay abreast of what your favorite bands are up to. iConcertCal scans your entire music collection and creates a calendar that includes all upcoming album releases and concert appearances for the artists in your library.
Simply click on a calendar entry and you'll be taken through to a page that lets you order concert tickets or buy (or pre-order) the album.
Scenario: You spend a lot of time searching for images and videos on the Web Solution:Cooliris offers a super-slick way of finding rich Web content
For as long as there's been the Internet, there have also been search engines. The two are connected at the hip.
But let's face it - search engines and the content they display are not always the most exhilarating of objects. Google works great, but it's boring to look at. YouTube is crammed full of amazing video content, but the process of finding it isn't exactly pretty.
That's where Cooliris comes in as a product that will appeal to those of you who value form above function. Cooliris can be downloaded as a standalone program or as an extension for your Web browser, and it gives you the ability to search the Web for images and videos via a VERY cool interactive interface.
You can search a wide range of sources including YouTube, Hulu, Google Images and Flickr and rather than returning results in a dull-as-dishwater list, Cooliris give you a scrolling, 3-D style wall effect that you can click and drag to scroll through the content.
Will Cooliris ever replace your regular search engine? Probably not. But just the coolness factor was enough to have me playing around with it for a good ten minutes and I suspect that if you search for a lot of video this could come in very useful.
Check out the video above for a full walk-through of some of the features.
Scenario: You're bored with your Twitter friends and want to expand your horizons Solution: Use Twitter Search to see what's being discussed in the community....right now
Have you ever wondered how people who you've never heard of before are able to find you on Twitter?
Well the answer is Twitter Search - a somewhat hidden service that allows users to see what's being discussed in real time.
You can search for a keyword, a phrase, a name or even a brand and Twitter will return a list of Tweets that contain your search query. This is a great way for finding like-minded people and joining in debates around specific topics that you might be interested in.
This feature is also being leveraged by brands to enhance their customer service offerings. Many big brands monitor Twitter for conversations containing their brand name, and will often reply to individual Twitterers. This happened to me just recently when I left a tongue-in-cheek Tweet about an advertisement I saw for a "Flower Cupcake" from 1-800 Flowers. Within 12 hours I'd received a Twitter reply from an account named "1-800-Flowers", which just goes to show how seriously companies are starting to take the social media phenomenon.
Scenario: You're looking for an alternative search engine to Google Solution:SearchMe offers a unique, visual interface to display search results
Google dominates the search engine landscape in the US to such an extent that the term has entered everyday vocabulary. "Just Google it...." is an expression that resonates with both tech and non-tech savvy folks alike, but it may come as a surprise that there ARE other search engine alternatives out there.
One such example is Searchme.com. The main selling point of Searchme is not necessarily the accuracy of the results (although it performs well on this front), but rather how they're presented. Rather than returning a standard text-heavy list of results, Searchme offers users a highly visual presentation with big image previews of each Website.
The feature that I really like is the video search function. Searching for video clips returns big, bold screengrabs from available video clips that you can play right within the search results page. A very nifty and useful way of digesting video.
Now for the reality check. Searchme is never going to replace Google when it comes to the relevancy of results. But its novel presentation is enough for me to keep checking back from time-to-time.
Check out the video above for a full walk-through.
Scenario: You've heard the word "BitTorrent" but have no idea what it means Solution: Keep reading....
The notion that groups are always more powerful than individuals is not just a tired old cliche that gets drilled into children at school. In some instances it is actually true.
Take downloading files for example. If you download a song or a piece of software then - for the most part at least - that file lives on a single server and the time it takes to transfer to your computer depends wholly upon the health, speed and traffic tolerance of that server.
But the concept behind BitTorrent is a little different. Rather than downloading a file from a single server, instead you download the file from a community of users from all over the world who have the same file already on their computer. Rather than downloading the entire file, you download little pieces of the file from different users and then these little pieces are re-assembled on your computer to complete the whole. The more users you connect to the faster the download - so a file downloaded from 100 users (or "peers" as BitTorrent terminology goes) will generally be faster than a download from only 10 peers.
Being able to break-up files into tiny pieces allows for really huge pieces of content - like TV shows and movies - to be shared in a really efficient way. But you have to play your part in the community too. Rather than simply downloading files from other people all day long and then disappearing down the pub for the night, BitTorrent actually rewards users who give back. As you download parts of a file to your computer BitTorrent will automatically re-upload those same parts so that other users can grab them - and thus you become part of the sharing community. If you play nice and let these uploads continue, BitTorrent rewards you by increasing the overall speed that you can download from the community. If you cancel uploads (or are a "leecher" to use BitTorrent lingo again) then you'll never see your download speeds increase. So it does pay to give back to the community.
You'll need to install a free application to use BitTorrent, which is explained in the video above. In order to find content you'll need to browse torrent tracker sites where you'll be able to find everything from movies, to music to games. Some torrent sites offer fully legal material while others contain copyright material - so use your own best judgment when deciding what to download.
Check out the video above for the BitTorrent tutorial.
Scenario: You want to watch your DVDs on different devices Solution: Rip your DVD collection with Handbrake
Today, we show you how to rip your DVD collection to your computer so that you can watch your movies on everything from an iPhone to PlayStation 3.
Watch the video above for a full walkthrough!
NB: After re-watching the video I noticed that I used the word "burn" incorrectly in a couple of spots. Just to clarify, the process of getting a movie from the DVD to your computer is called "ripping". "Burning" refers to copying a ripped file onto a blank CD or DVD. Next time I'll drink coffee before making an early morning tutorial!
Scenario: You spend a lot of time managing your Twitter account every day Solution: Install the TwitterFox browser extension to take the pain out of managing Twitter
When I first started using Twitter I spent the longest time complaining that I had no followers, and then when I actually got some I was grumbling that there were too many to manage.
Popularity can bring headaches, or at least that's what my non-hermit friends tell me.
But thankfully there are several applications out there that help streamline your Twitter management and one of them is the subject of today's review. TwitterFox is a free extension for either Firefox or Flock that lets you manage your Tweets from directly within your browser.
Whenever a friend updates their status a small pop-up window alerts you at the bottom right of your browser - and you can reply or add an additional Tweet right from within that same window. In essence, TwitterFox removes the need to constantly visit Twitter.com to make updates. It's fast, it's lightweight and if you're a regular user of Twitter it can save you a lot of time.
Check out the video above for a walk-through of some of TwitterFox's main features.
Scenario: Life's full of variables...sometimes too many to track Solution: Use Trackle to monitor everything from real estate prices to crime rates
As human society has gotten more complex the amount of data available for us to digest is simply huge. Real estate prices, crime rates, concert dates, price of TVs on Amazon.com, FDA Health alerts.....there's so much stuff for us to track.
Trackle is a new Web site that is designed to help monitor things that are important to us. Free to join, Trackle allows you to set up personalized alerts based on certain criteria. Want to be alerted when Macbook Pros drop below $1500 on Amazon.com? Maybe you're curious to find out when your favorite singer will be playing within 10 miles of your home-town. Or perhaps you want to track the price of real estate on your block. All this and more is possible with Trackle.
Once you've set-up your alerts you can receive updates either by logging-in to the Trackle web-site and checking your Trackle inbox, or by receiving an email or SMS text message. You can set-up as few or as many alerts as you want and you can manage your alerts directly through the Trackle site.
While not offering anything particularly groundbreaking, the one thing that Trackle seems to have on its side is a very intuitive user experience. The design is simple and clean and it's really extremely easy to use - even for a beginner.
Check out the video above for a full walk-through.
Scenario: You're looking for a homepage that's personalized to you Solution:Netvibes lets you personally tailor your own Web experience
Offering users personalized homepages isn't a new idea. It was tried in the early 2000s with varying degrees of success, but due to technical limitations the execution was often clunky and poor.
Now the concept is back and Netvibes is just one of the companies that offers users the chance to choose the content and tools they see on their homepage.
Many people associate personalized Web experiences with the ubiquitous Weather services, whereby you enter your zip code and receive the forecast based on your location. But Netvibes takes that concept and turbo-charges it.
It's a pretty simple process to get started. After visiting the Netvibes site you have the option of adding content and features from Netvibes' pre-existing "widget" library. Think of widgets as embeddable pieces of content that you can add to your page and they range from adding localized news headlines, all the way through to video clips from YouTube.
You can also add a range of tools to your page too - such as the ability to read your email or stay connected with your Facebook friends. You can even add calculators and calendars and when you've created your page, you can move things around or make edits whenever you get the urge.
Netvibes isn't the only personalized homepage service out there but it's one of the better executed ones. Check out the video above for a full walk-through.
Scenario: You use multiple phones during your day, each with a different number Solution: With Grand Central you can use a single number to manage all your phone lines
I remember as a kid that simply having a phone in the house was a big deal. Nowadays, in our collective wisdom we determined that one phone simply isn't enough. There's the home phone, the cell phone, the work phone, the blackberry......many of us are managing 4-5 different devices every day. Grand Central attempts to restore some order to our telecommunications chaos by allowing users to sign-up and receive a "virtual" phone number. It looks and acts just like a regular phone number (e.g xxx-xxx-xxxx) and it's completely exclusive to you.
But here's where the magic happens. Grand Central allows you to take your new virtual number and to associate it with all your real phone-lines.....so if somebody calls your virtual number all your phones ring simultaneously. At the same time, it allows you to define specific preferences and rules - so perhaps you would only have your cell phone ring if you boyfriend/girlfriend called, or your Blackberry and work desk phone if your boss tried getting in touch.
This is a really useful feature because it means you only need to give out one phone number to friends and work colleagues and then manage everything through the Grand Central website.
Grand Central also has a whole host of other selling-points including the ability to check voicemail on your computer, the ability to record different greetings and control which caller gets which greeting and the option to record any of your calls.
Check out my video review above for a walk-through of some of the features.
Scenario: You think Twitter is just about finding out what your friends are up to Solution:Cheap Tweet lets you discover deals on everything from LCD TVs to Nintendo Wiis on Twitter
Twitter is a really great way to stay up-to-date with what your friends are doing, but unless your best buds lead particularly glamorous lives it may get a teeny weeny bit dull after a while.
For example, a particularly dynamic Twitter friend of mine might have the following list of posts:
10am. Woke Up. Getting Breakfast. Tired 1pm. Lunch Time. Bagel or Sandwich? What are you all having for lunch? 4pm. On the train home. Tired again. 10pm. Going to bed. Laters
Not exactly riveting stuff. But the beauty of Twitter is that it gives us a way to communicate instantly with large groups of people, and that ability is something that's being exploited by retailers and big brands.
Dell is a prime example. If you Follow Dell on Twitter you will receive a steady stream of discount sales prices and product deals that are exclusive to Twitter users. The hook is simple - Follow our brand on Twitter and we'll give you a whole range of ways to buy merchandise from us.
The same is true for 3rd-party e-commerce sites. I Follow a Twitter account called Sunshine Rewards which sends out a steady stream of offers and sales. Just recently I received a Twitter alert that Amazon.com had limited stock of the Nintendo Wii with a link to the product page, something that would have been very useful for somebody in the market for one of these limited supply consoles.
Expect more of this in the future. As Twitter continues to gain momentum more and more brands will be looking at ways they can tap-in to the e-commerce potential that the Twitter platform offers. The communication is more instant than email, plus the character limit means the message has to be short, sweet and to the point. Compare that with emails that clog your inbox, are overly long and generally take a long-time to trawl through.
Check out my video review above for a walk-through of Cheap Tweet.
Scenario: You're looking for a product manual, presentation, e-book, recipe or other document Solution:Scribd is the biggest online document sharing community on the Web
There's something about the word "documents" that can suck the life out of a room faster than Oprah in a Dairy Queen All You Can Eat Blizzard Buffet.
Documents mean business.....legal.....contracts. Dull, thick, dense globules of information. Things that stick to your brain like napalm.
But I actually think documents have been given somewhat of an unfair label. Sure, they'll never be as instantly compelling as video clips, photographs or music - but they can play a role. Think e-books, recipes, presentations, how-to guides, help manuals....there's a lot of love to be found in the MS Word and PDF realms providing we choose to seek it out.
That's why I've always been quite excited by Scribd - an online community site that lets users upload, download and share documents.
The amount of content on Scribd is quite impressive, and it has all been uploaded by site members. From that annoying manual to the DVD player that you lost during your move to an e-book about de-tox diets, Scribd gives you the ability to find documents on a wide range of topics. There's also a social element too, allowing you to create groups of friends and then share documents only within that group - perfect for studying, or even for colleagues working on the same project at work.
Check out my video above for a walk-through of some of Scribd's features.
Scenario: Everybody from The President to the Mailman is using Twitter and you don't know what on earth it is Solution: Read on and watch the Heart Hi-Tech Twitter video tutorial
Twitter seems to be everywhere at the moment. Barack Obama has a page. A host of annoying C-list MTV-type celebrities have pages. Even MC Hammer has a page. For Chrissake - MC Hammer.
Until now I'd consciously avoided looking at Twitter because I kind of assumed the majority of the world knew what it was, and why people should care about it. But after speaking to a few people in my withered, dwindling social group who were still earning their Twitter wings I realized that maybe it's not really hit the mainstream yet. Either that or I have the most socially retarded group of friends on the planet.
Twitter can be stripped down into very basic terms. It's a way for you to tell your friends exactly what you're doing in 140 characters or less. They can see what you're up to, and you can see what they're up to.
Sounds a bit boring huh? Well theoretically it is. I mean, who gives a flying toss if i'm cutting the grass or feeding bread to a startled chaffinch and - more to the point - why would I want to broadcast this information to the world? Well, not all tweets (that's what your updates are called) are that boring. They can include questions, useful links.....even news reports. When the US Airways flight landed in the River Hudson, the first picture appeared on Twitter rather than on a major news network. It gives us a way to instantly communicate with large groups of people and thus incredible potential for disseminating information.
Twitter is one of those things that sounds a lot more mundane than it actually is, so I's recommend you set-up an account and see for yourself. Happy Tweeting!
Scenario: You know what your social networking friends are doing, but don't know where they are Solution:Google Latitude lets you see the location of all your friends on a map
If you use Facebook or Twitter you'll know how easy it is to stay up-to-date with what your friends are doing.
But one of the drawbacks is these services don't actually tell you where your pals are hanging around. Your best buddy's Facebook status might read "having a sneaky bevvy at The Glass Onion pub. Great happy hour!".... which sounds like a riot, but if you want to head over and join them for a sickly-sweet nerve settler you have no way of knowing where the pub actually is.
Google Latitude helps solve this problem by allowing you to create a social network that's based on location. Available for both desktop/laptop and - perhaps more usefully - cell phones, Latitude plots your location and your friends location on a map that every member of your network can see.
If you have a GPS enabled cell phone Latitude simply utilizes it to plot your location. If you're GPS-less, Latitude pulls a smart trick by figuring out the three cell phone towers that you're closest too and then triangulating a point to work out where you are.
For those of you who like the idea of a location based social network but don't want all your trips to the off-track betting joint to be broadcast to your friends, don't worry. Google has built-in some privacy features to allow you to stop broadcasting your location, or to enter it manually - which simply means you can make something up.
Location-based social networks aren't for everyone - but if you and your friends are always buzzing around and like to stay connected, this little gem could be worth checking out.
See the video above for a walk-through of some of the Google Latitude features.
Scenario: You're trying to search for an old friend or acquaintance (but you're not a stalker) Solution: Find people online with Pipl
Like it or not, the notion of searching for somebody online will probably always be draped in a stalker-ish shroud. Many people are creeped-out to think that their personal information is on the Internet, but at the same time we voluntarily give out data to Web sites every day (think about Facebook and MySpace as a couple of good examples).
But occasionally there IS a genuine reason why you'd want to look somebody up that's devoid of simple curiosity or criminal intent. Pipl is a search engine that's designed to find people, rather than web pages. It scours everything from public records to social networking profiles and returns a list of results.
It works better for some people over others. A search for my name didn't bring-up many relevant matches, but a search for my girlfriend's name bought a whole range of blog postings, web site mentions and even former career data.
It's important to remember that all this data is already in the public domain - Pipl simply aggregates it together on a single page. So is this a case of don't shoot the messenger? On that point, I'll let you decide.....
Scenario: You love Gmail, but hate the fact you have to be online to use it Solution:Google has launched a new service to let you compose emails offline
I've used Gmail as my primary email service for over 18 months now and I've been very impressed with the product. It's fast, reliable, easy-to-use and more importantly - totally free.
The only major issue I've encountered with Gmail is the inability for a user to compose an email offline and let it sit in their outbox until they connect to the Internet. This is a particularly useful feature for people that fly or spend long periods of time away form a Net connection, and many of you may be familiar with it from email applications such as Outlook and Outlook Express.
I'm pleased to report that Google has addressed this issue and now users can enable an "offline" option within their Gmail settings. This lets users click on a Gmail icon that sits on their desktop whenever they're offline, and they can log-in and compose as many emails as desired. Each email automatically sits in a user's outbox, and then as soon as the user connects to the Inernet that email will be sent.
This brings some genuinely useful offline functionality to Gmail and takes it one step closer to becoming a truly realistic option to replace many standard email clients.
Check out my video review above for a full walkthrough.
Scenario: You'd like to be able to download YouTube videos to your hard drive Solution:Kiss YouTube is a service that allows you to quickly and easily do this
There's no doubt that YouTube completely transformed the Web as we know it and was the catalyst to the explosion of video content that we all enjoy online.
As great as it is to have the ability to search and browse millions of video clips for free, one of the minor niggles of YouTube is that it controls how you watch the content. You can't download any of the video clips and you have to watch them on YouTube's terms - all via an Internet connection and in the YouTube video player.
But there are times - assuming there are no copyright issues - where it would be nice to be able to download some You Tube videos to your computer and watch them in your own time. This wish has become a reality thanks to Kiss YouTube - which is a very intuitive way to grab clips and save them to your computer.
Simply find the video you like on YouTube, add the word "kiss" before "youtube" in the url and you'll be given the option to download the video. So, for example, if the url for your YouTube video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGNDDT_iKgs&feature=rec-HM-r2 you'd simply change it to http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=UGNDDT_iKgs&feature=rec-HM-r2
You'll need to install a free video player onto your computer to view the clips, but that's a small price to pay for the ability to download as much YouTube content as you want.
For a full walk-through check out the video above.
