The World’s Most Social Places

Facebook has released a list of the most social places around the world as measured by the number of check-ins made at these places.

Facebook has close to a billion members, or about 14% of the world’s population, and thus they probably know a thing or two about what the world likes to do, the places we frequent and so on.

The social networking site today released a list of the most “social” landmarks in the world or places where the maximum number of Facebook check-ins have happened so far (since August 2010).

Sports stadium and public areas like parks were found to be the most “social” places as per the data.

Amusement parks like Johannesburg’s Gold Reef City, Moscow’s Gorky Park, Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens and Seoul’s Lotte World were among the top 10 places to check-in.

Cities with warmer climates had more check-ins to outdoors spots, like St. Kilda Beach in Melbourne and the Wynyard Quarter wharf in Auckland, while colder climes had more activity in concert halls or bars. Six of Moscow’s 10 most popular slots belong to bars and clubs.

See detailed analysis on newsroom.fb.com. Facebook says that check-ins data from airports and stations were excluded from the analysis.

Read More

Open Links on a Webpage by Typing – No Mouse Required

While you are inside Google Chrome, type the text of any link and hit the Enter key to open that link without ever using the mouse again.

Power users and keyboard ninjas who absolutely hate it when they have to take their hands off the keyboard should try Dead Mouse. This is a new Google Chrome extension that lets you click and open any link on a web page by typing a few characters that are in the anchor text of the link.

Once you have installed the extension from the Chrome Web store, type a few characters and the first matching link on the page will begin to wiggle (see the animation below). Hit the Enter key to follow that link or press Shift+Enter to open the target web page in a new tab.

If there are multiple hyperlinks on a page that match your typed text, you can easily cycle through the matching links by pressing the Tab key (or press Shift+Tab to cycle in reverse direction). And you can cancel the search mode by hitting the Escape key on your keyboard.

There are no settings to configure but the extension may not play nicely with websites like Twitter or Gmail as they have their own keyboard shortcuts.

Mouseless Browsing in Firefox

If you are on Firefox, you don’t really need any add-ons to open links from the keyboard. Press the “/” (slash) key and type the link text – the first matching link will be highlighted and you can press the Enter key to follow that link. [found via Hacker News]

Read More

Use Regular Expressions to Find Anything in your Gmail Mailbox

Gmail search doesn’t support regular expressions or wildcard character searches by default but you can perform such complex searches in Gmail with the help of Google Docs.

Gmail offers some very useful search commands to help you quickly find messages that could be buried deep in your mailbox. For instance, a query like from:(John OR David) has:attachment after:2012/01/15 will locate all emails received in the past six month that have attachments and the send is either John or David.

The built-in Gmail search is powerful but there are some scenarios where it will not work. For instance, you cannot perform a wildcard search inside Gmail (like apples * red). Or how do you locate all emails that have a phone number mentioned in the message body? It is also not possible to perform case-sensitive searches inside Gmail.

You can however do all this  in Gmail with the help of regular expressions (or regex).

Advanced Gmail Search with Regular Expressions

Regular expressions allow you to perform complex search operations in most popular programming languages and the same can be used with Gmail as well using Google Docs. Let’s start with a simple example.

Say you are looking for email messages that contain any variation of the string “gray color”. There could be one or more spaces between the two words, the words may use either British or American spelling and the first letters may or may not be capitalized. The regular expression thus will be:

[Gg]r(a|e)y\s.*[Cc]olou?r

Where do you put this search expression? The search box in Gmail doesn’t support regular expressions directly but with Google Docs, it can. Here’s how:

1. Click here to make a copy of the Gmail RegEx sheet into your Google Docs account.
2. Wait for 10-15 seconds and a new Gmail RegEx menu will appear in your new Google sheet. Choose Initialize from the menu and grant the necessary permissions as requested by the program.
3. The program will search your entire mailbox by default but if you would like to limit the search to any particular lable (say Inbox or Spam), just put that label name in cell F3.
4. Now enter any regular expression in the cell F4 and choose “Search Mailbox” from the Gmail RegEx menu to begin searching.

Any messages that match your search criteria will be listed in the initial columns of the same sheet. If you would like to perform a new search, simply change the regex in cell F4 and choose Search from RegEx menu again. Please do note that Google Apps Script allows you to perform 10,000 read operations in Gmail per day.

And if you are curious to know how the program works, here’s the annotated source code.

Read More

Slide.ly: Create Slideshows With Photos & Music From Popular Social Networks [Web]

Creating slideshows for your favorite photos not only requires a lot of effort, but can also be a time consuming task, especially when half of your photos are on Facebook, others on Instagram or Flickr, and the rest saved on your computer. So, with all your pictures scattered, how do you create a slideshow?Slide.ly is a free web application that grabs all your photos/albums from multiple popular social networks, such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Picasa and Google Images, letting you create gorgeous slideshows with a mix of your favorite music tracks and effects. The app is easy-to-use and comes with a slick interface. Once you’ve connected all your accounts, the service will let you pick and arrange images from different sources. For instance, you can select five photos from Facebook, two from Instagram, a few from the local disk and so on. When the images have been added, you will be able to arrange or shuffle them, add your favorite music from YouTube or SoundCloud, and add bright dots, spots, dust or glow effects to your slideshow. Moreover, with Slide.ly, you can share slideshows on social networks, email, embed or copy the URL.

To start off, you can log in via your Facebook account. You will also be able you browse Popular andRecent slideshows created by other users, and navigate through them by different categories, such asBirthdays, Art & design, Family, Music, Sport etc.

After you’ve signed in, connect all your accounts and start choosing your photos from different albums. You may also add images from your friends’ albums other than your own.

Once you’ve added all your photos, scroll down the page to shuffle and arrange them according to your needs. In addition to that, you can add captions, set a particular image as the cover photo and drag pictures around to arrange them in the order you want.

Next, add music for your slideshow by selecting the YouTube or SoundCloud option and then enter a track or artist name to search one of the services. You will also be able to browse a number of categories for music found on the left hand-side of the page, such as Movies & TV, Classical Music, Beautiful and more.

A pop-up window will allow you to add various effects, like Spots, Dots, Dust etc, and you will be able to change the speed of the slideshow by moving the slider.

When you’ve created the perfect slideshow, you can share it with your buddies on Facebook or other social networks, copy its link, email or embed it on your website or blog. Clicking the embed button allows users to select a player size and copy the code for it from a pop-up.

Note that your Slideshows can always be accessed or edited by clicking My Slidelys option under yourProfile. Slide.ly only requires a simple Facebook login, after which it connects all your social media accounts so you can create beautiful social videos using your favorite images and tracks. The service is free, so do give it a shot.

Visit Slide.ly

If you liked this app, you might also want to look through the other web applications that we’ve covered so far.

Read More

ListenItLater Is Like Read It Later Or Instapaper For Music [Web]

Music is believed to be the most vivid language in order to express the inexpressible. The passion for music has never been as alive and nourished as it is since the internet resources revealed music oriented communities that help everyone who is serious about music. In the realms of a wide range of such applications, ListenItLater (sounds similar to Read It Later, no? It’s not just the name, but the functionality too) grabbed my attention due to its potential to help you listen to a continuous stream of songs or be the DJ of your own music station. ListenItLater allows you to easily save the music you find so you can play it when you do have the time, helping you find, save and listen to your new music easier, better, and faster.

Accounts can be easily created by clicking on the ‘Create Account’ button at the top-right of the welcome page. It also allows you to log in with your Facebook or Twitter account. Once that is done, you can start creating multiple playlists of newly found music and podcasts collected from streaming websites.

There are two ways you can add to your ListenItLater music collection; from within the web app itself, using the the search bar, and through a bookmarklet (the same method used by Read It Later, Instapaper and other similar services) for when you stumble upon a song of your liking while browsing the web. Utilizing these two means in conjunction, you can search for and gather songs into any number of varied playlists to listen to later when you have more time to enjoy them.

According to a research carried out in Jan 2012, the leading social sound platform SoundCloud has reached up to 10 million registered users. Keeping the same thing in mind, ListenItLater incorporates SoundCloud’s vast array of sounds (with YouTube about to be added), allowing you to search for songs from its repository and add them to your playlists through drag and drop. Reordering of songs in a playlist too can be done in the same way.

ListenItLater is currently a web-only application, but according to the information on its welcome page, it doesn’t plan to stay restricted to the web for long. Apart from supporting all major web browsers, ListenItLater aims to soon release clients for tablet and smartphone users.

Despite being an interesting application, ListenItLater still needs improvements in the user interface, bug fixes, and most significantly, adding more platforms like YouTube (which they already intend to do). Though, spare time is something that very few of us have a lot of.  While we may have the time and inclination to search out new music, it’s rare to find enough time to thoroughly ingest the music you’ve found. This is where ListenItLater comes in.

Visit ListenItLater

Liked this web application? You might want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More

Pi.pe For Windows: Easily Transfer Images Between Multiple Social Networks & Web Services

There are hundreds of image sharing websites available out there that allow you to easily upload your files and share them with your friends and family. If you use multiple photo sharing and social media websites, you may want a cloud data management tool that can help you with your online image galleries. Previously, we covered an application for Windows called Migratr (reviewed here) that lets you move these pictures to popular photo sharing services including Flickr, Google Picasa, Photobucket etc. Today, we have a web service called Pi.pe that allows you to transfer hundreds of images and videos between multiple social media networks and image uploading websites including Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, MySpace, Picasa, Photobucket and more. Details to follow.

The web service provides you with a five step process to select the source service, select the images and videos, and transfer them to the target accounts. You can sign in using your Google or Facebook account. In the first step, select the source account that contains your images.

When you select a service, it lets you choose the folders/albums containing the images and videos you want to transfer them to the required target accounts.

Switch the view to Detailed View from the top right corner to select/deselect individual images and videos for transferring.

The third step allows you to edit the details of the selected items and lets you delete any unwanted items from the transfer list.

Next up, you have to select the destination account for the pictures and videos. The service allows you choose multiple destinations and transfer selected files to specified social media/photo sharing website. It’s worth mentioning here that if the target account doesn’t support files you want to move, it will automatically skip all the unsupported files.

The last step gives you a summary of the transfer process. You can view the source location and the target locations before starting the data transfer process.

As of this writing, the app is in private beta, and you need to sign up for the service using email address to get invited.

Visit Pi.pe

Read More

Picisto Is A Free Online Collage Creator With Customizable Templates [Web]

Picisto is a free web application that allows you to easily create different types of collages and before/after pictures in any layout of your choice. It is a simple yet powerful tool that lets you choose among several different templates, which can be further customized with text captions and background color options. Once a frame has been selected, the service allows you to upload photos by selecting a number of options, such as Upload Photo, Copy Photo from URL, Choose from Facebook and Google Image Search. Moreover, the app has an easy-to-use interface that lets you generate unique photo collages for sharing with your buddies on various social networking websites. To start off, login via yourFacebook, Twitter or Google account, choose a layout for the collage and upload photos. When you’re collage is ready, you can save it online or download it to the local system. That’s how simple it is!

There are numerous templates available to choose from, each one coming with different number of images and pixels. To begin, select a template that you want to work with. 

Next, you will be able to add photos through different methods, such as Upload Photo, Copy Photo from URL, Choose from Facebook and Google Image Search. However, you should note that the Facebook and integrated Google image search features are still in development, and will be available in the near future.

After the photos have been uploaded, you will be able to change the background color and add text captions for the images. When your collage is ready, hit the Finish & Save Photo button to download the image. Additionally, you will be able to view your entire collection of collages by clicking the My Accountoption.

With Picisto, you can make professional photo collages with only a few simple clicks and put them up on your Facebook, Twitter or Google+ profile. Visit the link below to create stunning collages.

Visit Picisto

Liked this web app? You might also want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More

Plug.dj: Internationally Available Tunrtable.fm-Like Social Network For Music & Videos [Web]

Popular social network Turntable.fm is one of the best ways to share songs online and socialize with music-lovers from across the globe. Unfortunately, it is only available for users in the United States. If you’re based outside of the US, and want to experience something similar, then Plug.dj is what you probably need. This social network cum web application lets you explore a wide variety of DJs and tracks, create playlists, join DJ waitlists, join online chatting rooms and choose dancing avatars that express your personality. The app is integrated with YouTube and SoundCloud, which means you have a heavy repository of songs at your disposal. Moreover, you can join or switch between any number of virtual rooms, where you can discover or share music, talk to people from different locales using real-time chat translations! Additionally, Plug.dj features a reward system wherein you can earn points by participating in different activities, like joining rooms, voting for different tracks and you can even get points when people add your tracks to their own collection.

To start off, simply login via your Facebook, Twitter or Google account.

You will then be able to scroll through and search for music rooms. Each room displays the total number of people plugged in, the user it is hosted by, its title and Now Playing details. You can either create your own room or hit the Plug in button to join an existing one to discover new music.

Once you’ve selected a room, Plug.dj will start playing music in what is nothing less than an absolutely gorgeous interface. Here, you will find music details, including Time Remaining, Now Playing, Info, Users, History and Crowd Response. Additionally, you will be able to add tracks to your playlist and share particular ones on Facebook or Twitter.

To the right of the page, you will also find a chat box using which you can connect with other users or DJs. The chat auto-translates from over 50 languages to your native language in real-time, so you can commune seamlessly with users speaking a foreign language!

Plug.dj retrieves music from YouTube and Sound Cloud. All you have to do is enter your query in the search field and results will instantly be displayed in a drop-down menu. Moreover, when the songs have been added to your playlist, you can easily move them up or down the list or add them to a Wait List.

Once done, you can click the View WaitList  button at the bottom-right of the page to view your number/position on the waitlist.

Plug.dj lets you go back and forth from one room to another, letting you listen to an unlimited number of tracks. The network provides a simple way to discover music from all around the world and interact with different people in real-time. That’snot all; Plug.dj isn’t restricted to desktop usage. The HTML5-based website also works in all the new Android browsers. Needless to say, if you’re a fan of music, you should definitely pay the website a visit.

Visit Plug.dj

Liked this web app? You might also want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More

WasteNoTime: Chrome Time Management Utility With Website Blocking & Usage Tracking

If you’re looking for a Chrome extension that can assist you in managing the time that you spend while surfing the internet, look no further than WasteNoTime. It’s designed to help you track the total time you spend on most frequently visited websites, like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google +, etc. In addition, it also lets you restrict users from accessing the specified web sites. This feature may prove to be handy for those who want to prevent their children from accessing websites that contain explicit content.

Moreover, it allows you to apply website visit time limit, so that you and/or other users can only access the specified websites for a defined amount of time. The Instant Lockdown feature is provided to not only remove the time restrictions (if applied), but also to instantly block access to all specified websites. Perhaps the most useful feature is Time Tracker, which tracks the amount of time you spend on websites, and generates a graph containing the ten most frequently visited websites.

After installing the extension, click the button in the toolbar to access Block Sites,Time Tracker,Instant Lockdown and Settings options. This pop-up also allows you to view the current and remaining time for blocked websites.

Whenever you visit a blocked website, the following block page will be displayed.

WasteNoTime is easy-to-use, and you can quickly add distracting websites to your block lists. You can then click the added URLs to customize the time limit for each link.

The Time Allowed category lets you set Define Work Hours and Time Allowed Per Day options for blocked websites. Additionally, you can enable these settings for individual days, depending on your preferences. The next category, Advanced Settings allows you to change the time for Idle detection.

The Time Tracker generates a graph for top ten websites that you’ve spent time on. The y-axis displays website URL’s, whereas the x-axis shows you the Time Spent in minutes. You can also view the graph for a Day, Week or Month.

WasteNoTime can be particularly useful for those who find themselves easily distracted, and want to control the way they spend their time surfing the internet. You can install the extension from the link below.

Install WasteNoTime For Google Chrome

Read More

ManualsLib: A Massive Library To Find & Download Any Product’s Manual [Web]

If you recently bought a product and misplaced it’s manual, finding it online can be really easy withManualsLib. This handy web application can help you save both time and effort as you browse the web to find a particular manual. ManualsLib’s database has a massive collection of PDF files for all types of products, and has a slick interface, with Popular and Last Search categories. The service is quite easy-to-use; all you have to do is enter your query in the search field and quickly find what you’re looking for. Search results include product’s name, description, model number, date, size and number of pages. Once you’ve found the manual you’re looking for, you can either read it online or download it to your local system. Moreover, these documents can be shared on various social media websites, like Facebook and Twitter. More after the jump.

The homepage comes with a search bar, Popular Manuals and Last Searches options. To start off, simply enter a query (e.g., Apple iPhone 4S) in the search field, and hit Enter. Note that you can browse manuals both by product name and brand. The service also has an instant search feature that quickly lets you select your desired product from a drop-down menu.

Each manual can either be read online or downloaded to your local system. Additionally, you will be able to share it on various social media portals, print it or send via email. The app comes with a neat layout, which allows you to read manuals in a clutter-free interface. You can switch between pages by clicking the numbered buttons from the top of the page, share pages, or embed the manual on your website or blog. Alternatively, you may navigate between different pages by clicking the Prev/Next buttons displayed at both ends of a page. As you scroll down the manual, you will find Related Manuals for other similar products.

ManualsLib’s database consists of more than 456,411 PDF files (as at the time of writing), and is growing each day. The service is free and does not require any sign up. With ManualsLib, you will no longer have to click multiple links and browse a large number of websites to grab a hard-to-find manual.

Visit ManualsLib

Liked this app? You might also want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More

Lalo.li: Create & Share Short Text-To-Speech Messages On Twitter & Facebook [Web]

Only a few days back, we covered Audiolip, a service that allows you to record micro-podcasts and share them with your buddies on different social networks. Lalo.li is a similar web application that lets you create short voice messages, which can then emailed or shared on Facebook and Twitter. Lalo.li is basically a free text-to-speech tool that transcodes typed messages and generates a unique URL, which changes with every character that you input. This URL can then be shared with anyone through various platforms. When the recipient visits this link, the voice message is automatically played. Lalo.li does not require any login or sign up; all you have to do is type your message, adjust the Amplitude, Pitch, Speedand Word Gap settings, and share it with others.

The service has a rather bland – perhaps too bland – interface that comes with a text field, play button and sharing options. To start off, simply type a message and set the Amplitude, Pitch, Speed and Word Gap parameters. You will notice that the URL in your browser’s address bar changes as you type. Once you’ve keyed in your text, you may either hit the Twitter or Facebook buttons to share it on the respective networks, or simply copy-paste the link and send it to anyone you like. Since the URL is quite lengthy, you might want to use a URL shortener.

While the service is functional at its core and pretty straight forward, it would have been nice if it supported multiple languages and voices. Overall, it can be a handy tool if you want to share your thoughts or messages in a different way (we say different, because the voice is merely computer-generated, and you won’t be able to give it a personal touch even if you want to).

Visit Lalo.li

If you liked this app, you might also want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More

Thingsly: A Universal Wish List For Online Content [Web, Chrome]

Thingsly is a smart web application (with a powerful Chrome extension) that lets you collect, arrange and organize your favorite links and imagesfrom all over the web. It lets you connect to various communities that share similar tastes, and allows you browse through their discoveries. The service uses images to bookmark content, only requires a simple sign up, and offers visual bookmarking, which you can use to save content for later use or create wish lists for products or items you love. The Chrome extension for the service grabs all images from a website and displays them in a neat pop-up. Selected images can then be added to existing or new collections. Additionally, you can browse the Feed category that comes with a massive collection of images, or you can find people who have similar interests. More after the break.

To start off, install the Thingsly Chrome extension and click the button in the toolbar to instantly retrieve all images from your favorite website, which will be displayed in a neat grid.

From here, you can bookmark any image on the page, add comments and add it to an existing collection, or create a new one by clicking the New Collection button. Once done, hit the Go button, and your content will be saved to your Thingsly profile. You can then send these saved images to a friend via Facebook as well.

The web service itself comes with a slick interface, too, with Feed, Me, People and Sources tabs displayed at the top of the page. You can browse through the feed, and upon coming across a particular item that you really like, hover your mouse over the image to like/dislike, collect or view the original source for it.

All your clipped/saved content will be added under your profile, which will also allow you to accessDiscoveries, Collections, Followers and Following options. In addition to that, you will be able to edit your profile and add new collections. The Sources option lets you view a variety of images from Latest, Biggest, Mine and Recommended origins.

The Thingsly extension certainly provides an easy solution to clip links and images, and create different collections. Thingsly is a neat and useful service that lets you organize images that you love in a beautified manner.

Install Thingsly For Google Chrome

Liked this app? You might also want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More

Twic: Nifty Twitter Client For Chrome With Multiple Accounts Support

Having more than one Twitter account could mean too much hassle, as you may have to switch from one account to another all the time. Signing in and out of Twitter each time you want to switch can not only be time consuming, but also quite irritating, and that’s what desktop-based clients are usually helpful for.Twic is a minimalist Twitter extension for Chrome that allows you to manage multiple accounts at once. After installing it, all you have to do is authorize Twic to access all your Twitter accounts. Once done, you will be able to switch between multiple accounts without having to log in and out repeatedly. The extension’s pop-up bubble lets you check the number of unread tweets right from the Chrome toolbar. Additionally, you can scroll through the pop-up to reply to tweets or simply post your own with inserted links.

After installing the extension, connect your Twitter accounts with Twic by clicking the (+) icon. After that, you will be able to switch between accounts by left-clicking them. You can also remove particular accounts with a right-click and view the count for the number of unread tweets for each account.

The extension lets you read tweets in a scrollable pop-up, enter text for your own tweets and reply to others. Note that clicking the Twitter icon displayed at the top right corner opens Twitter in a new tab.

The Settings allow you to change the Avatar size and enable Images, Geo Info, Tweet time, Make a link to a tweet and Twitter client options.

Overall, Twic is a handy extension for all those who use multiple Twitter accounts and find it difficult to switch between them continuously. The extension quickly lets you check tweets from numerous Twitter accounts at the same time, and is a must have for Twitter fanatics.

Install Twic For Google Chrome

If you liked this extension, you might also want to take a look at the other Chrome extensions we’ve reviewed so far.

Read More

Audiolip Is Like Twitter For Podcasts; Lets You Share 15-Second Audio Recordings [Web]

Audiolip takes the micro-blogging concept (the one that drives Twitter) a step forward, and allows you to record micro-podcasts up to 15 seconds long, which can then be shared with all your buddies on social networks the likes of Twitter and Facebook. Using the service, you can listen to, share, interact with and add replies to every recorded message available. Additionally, you may add new podcasts and comments directly from the browser, or via a toll-free number if you live in the US or the UK. More after the break.

audiolip comes with a basic-looking interface, which is easy-to-use. To the left of the homepage, you will find Newest, Popular and Random options. Each podcast comes with country details and sharing options. When you hover your mouse over a podcast, you will be able to access the audio reply and commentoptions. Note that you can always reply back with text if you don’t want to record your voice. Moreover, you can click the Load More button displayed at the end of the page to retrieve older messages.

At the top right corner of the page, you will find a Create micro-podcast option, which, when clicked, lets you record a message of up-to 15 seconds long.

Once you’ve recorded your message, it will instantly be published and you will be able to share it on Twitter or Facebook, depending on your preference. In addition to that, all your micro-podcasts can be accessed from your Public Profile, which also allows you to add comments, replies and download a podcast as an MP3.

The service is free and only requires a simple sign-up, after which you can post as many micro-podcasts as you like. Visit the link below to share your voice and ideas with the whole wide world!

Visit audiolip

Liked this app? You might also want to look through our showcase of web applications reviewed so far.

Read More