tech news and opinions
Internet radio has been saved! Broadcasters now have a cap on the fees at $50,000. That means that no one broadcaster will have to pay more then $50,000. Individual channels will have a minimum of $500.
This is great news because now my favorite internet radio site Pandora will not go out of business. Other internet radio sites such as Live365 and Last.fm should be fine as well.
If you want to find out all of the details of this agreement you can head over to Save Net Radio.
It is amazing how the web has grown and the website SimpleSpark is indexing all of the Web 2.0 companies out there. They have indexed over 5,000 logos and have made a little 5 minute video showing all of them. Check it out:
Cellfish.com is actually fairly similar to Joey in which you are able to throw videos, images, and music to your “Digital Locker.” Some of the stuff in your digital locker can be shown to the public or you can have it private. Being able to not only share the files with your phone but also share it with friends is a great feature over Joey.
I uploaded a couple of things to my locker including this picture:
Cellfish allows you to Download Ringtones onto phone which of course didn’t work with my phone since I have an iPhone but the video features are fairly robust allowing you to upload a video from your computer or give Cellfish.com a link to a YouTube video that it will grab and make available to you.
All in all I think Cellfish.com is really cool (much cooler then joey however joey is in very early stages). I’m not sure how exactly I would use it but I probably would be able to get more use out of it if I had a different phone. The iPhone really makes this service less useful. The Download Ringtones feature won’t work until Apple makes custom ringtones available.
The service is completely free and is at least worth a look. The service does text message you almost every time you do anything so keep that in mind. You can stop the text messages by texting STOP to them but I wish there was a check box while signing up that allowed me to choose whether or not I wanted the messages.
This post was sponsored by Cellfish.com
Many news outlets on the internet were talking about AT&T having some data issues yesterday. Although I don’t live in a very large city I did experience some problems while trying to read my RSS feeds with Google Reader on my iPhone. I had 5 bars when it came to how good my service was but when I tried to view web pages it told me that it could not activate EDGE.
Reading through many of the comments made on Engadget’s post about the subject showed that it was pretty wide spread, with issues all over the country.
I haven’t been able to find any information on what is causing the issue but as I type this right now the problem seem to have been fixed. Regarding how long I was affected, it was only for an hour or so but was still very frustrating.
“Google now offers a way to purchase more storage space to use with some Google services (currently Gmail and Picasa Web Albums). This extra storage acts as overflow when you run out of free storage space in either service. If you’ve filled your free storage (2.8 GB and counting for Gmail or 1 GB for Picasa Web Albums), you’ll automatically use your purchased space to store more pictures and messages up to your new storage limit.”
So Google has begun charging for storage in its services. That surprises me since I figured that Google would just continue to give you more and more storage for free like they have been since they launched it. The pricing is pretty good starting at $20 per year for an extra 6GB of storage.
I won’t be purchasing it however because I am only using 5% of my Gmail storage and I’m not even using Picasa so it wouldn’t be worth it for me. But if you are tight on storage space you can go purchase more storage at the link below.
Reddit has changed its logo, at least for a little while, due to a story that hit its front page called “This Fish Looks Like the Reddit Logo.“ which was just a link to the picture below:
The picture is from a blog called “Bounty Fishing Blog” for a story called “27 Aquatic lifeforms you never caught while fishing.”
So because of this story Reddit decided to change their logo,
from 
to 
I think this just shows that Reddit really seems to care about what their users think. On the other side of the spectrum Digg’s users have been complaining about adding a Pictures section for months.
I’ve heard of Box.net before and love its services but they recently released a mobile version of their online storage service. Brian from Box.net emailed me saying “The Box app allows users to access files stored on Box.net, giving iPhone users the ability to store and access Word, Excel and PDF documents.”
I tried it out by going to i.box.net and it works great. I put some pdf documents on it and they loaded up flawlessly for me.
I will mention that I tried to stream an MP3 from Box.net to my iPhone and it didn’t work, I don’t know whether or not I had an issue while uploading it or if Box.net doesn’t allow you to stream MP3’s but none the less it didn’t work (I figured I’d give that a mention).
Other then that simple issue I had with music it works great. Box.net gives you 1GB of free online storage and you can upgrade to up to 15GB for $19.95/month or $199.95/year. They also have plans for 5GB at $7.95/month or $79.95/year, but the free 1GB plan is plenty for me.
If you need a place to store just about anything Box.net is great but it is even greater if you need access to your documents on the go.
Digg has add a new item to its list of ever growing features. The newest addition is Digg Widgets which allow you to add a bit of Digg to your own website or blog. Choose from 5 different styles or create your own style.
You can customize what is shown in the widget such as, popular stories in specific topics, a top 10 list from a specific topic, stories dugg by a user, etc.
The new tool is pretty interesting and makes me wonder if you will start seeing this pop up on personal sites showing things that they have dugg. It would be an interesting way to display new information on your blog all the time.
SeeqPod is a very interesting idea. SeeqPod is a search engine for music. They search the internet for servers that have mp3’s on them then puts them in their index. You then can search through their index and find music to listen to.
After searching for a song or artist you can add songs to a playlist on the right and search for more music on the left, the page uses javascript so your music will continue to play as you add songs to your playlist. After creating your playlist you can share it with your friends or embed it on your blog/site.
The site also has an iPhone version which lets you search for music on your iPhone and stream it to your phone by clicking the links to the MP3’s.
What is really cool about the site is that they have a discover button in the search so it will find similar songs to what you type in the search box, so typing in Fall Out Boy will give you things like the Plain White T’s, The F-Ups, The bled, etc.
Check it out is a really cool place to go and find music to listen to along with discovering new music that you might not have ever heard before.
Google has created a search page that is built for the iPhone. It doesn’t reload when doing searches so it works fast in the browser and is made so that you don’t have to zoom in on text to read it. The search page has options for the web, news, and images. Clicking on links within the page opens up a new window in the Safari browser.
What is horrible about it is that when you click on “More Results” at the bottom it opens up a normal search page.
I still think it is great though because most of the time I can get what I want in the first page of my search results.
Moola is a new website that according to their introduction page has taken 5 years to develop. What you do is Moola gives you $0.01 to start out with and you play games against others for their money. If you win the first game you end up with $0.02 and every game you play after that can double your money all the way up to $10,737,418.24.
No it is a little bit of a pyramid type scheme however it is completely free and you get to play fun and interesting games at the same time. The money comes from advertisements that are run before you play the games.
I have been spending most of my time playing Gold Rush! but there are 2 other games that you can play and I’m guessing they are developing other games as well.
I haven’t won any money on the site yet, my account is only up to $0.04 at the time I am writing this I haven’t had any more than $0.05 in it but if I ever get up above $10 or so I’m probably just going to take the money.
Alright well if you want to get in on this it is invite only but, I have 3 invites to give out. I’m going to do it a little differently then the other times I’ve given away things on this blog. I will give the invites to the first 3 people to comment on this post.
*Sponsored Review*
I love watching movies but one of the biggest problems with movies is after you have watched the DVD, what do you do with it? I usually just throw it on a shelf and let it collect dust until the time comes that I want to watch it again, The problem with that is that usually that isn’t for years. So why do we save these things when we could trade them in using a service such as SwitchPlanet.com which lets you trade DVD’s, CD’s, Games and Books with other members for free.
SwitchPlanet has a huge amount of stuff available for trade with its ever growing number of members. SwitchPlanet has a great mission statement:
“It is our goal to establish SwitchPlanet.com as a premier online community that is committed to helping reduce the impact waste is having on the planet by trading the things we no longer use to get the things we want.”
That’s a great way to look at it, instead of going out and buying that DVD someone could recycle theirs and trade for it, that means one less DVD needed to be made and not only that but also one less DVD will end up in a landfill.
SwitchPlanet not only talks about helping they also support organizations through cash and product contributions. Such as, The Red Cross, Boys and Girls Club, The Nature Conservancy, American Cancer Society, and Child’s Play Charity.
SwitchPlanet sounds like a great service, I would love to get rid of all those old DVD’s I don’t watch and those old CD’s I don’t listen to, this seems like a great way to do it.