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The Top 8 Killer Alternatives to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most well known website analytics around, not to mention being one of the best. Although Google Analytics is a fantastic app to tackle your site’s analytics needs, there are actually several other options available that many would argue are better choices. We’ve pulled together eight of the best alternatives to Google Analytics and some information about each; price, plugins, mobile apps, real-time tracking and requirements.

Which analytics app do you use and why? Read on to see if there’s anything more fitting for your needs or if you have something you’d recommend.

Google Analytics

Perhaps the most well known and most used, Google Analytics is king of the hill. It’s one of the most powerful analytics apps available and remains free, which makes it the most popular choice to date. There are plugins, tweaks and third-party apps for just about every platform available so integration should be a snap.

Among its greatness, it also has drawbacks and many argue quality flaws. Keep reading to see eight great alternatives for your analytics needs.

Price: Free
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: Third-party iPhone app (iTunes)
Real-time data: No
Requirements: None
Developer: Google

Mint

Every time I’ve looked into analytics apps several people always tell me they much prefer Mint over Google Analytics. Mint is self-hosted, so you have more control in that respect, but also offers real-time tracking and is extensible. Mint’s interface is clean and easy to read and navigate, so it’s a breeze to use.

Price: $30 per site
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: Third-party iPhone app (iTunes)
Real-time data: Yes
Requirements: Self-Hosted (PHP, MySQL)
Developer: Shaun Inman

Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate is one of my favorites and actually my personal analytics app of choice. The app offers real-time tracking, visitor “NameTags” (great for seeing who’s on your site), a desktop app and even heatmaps. The app design is fantastic and it’s a breeze to use; although it can be addicting watching your real-time data flow in.

Price: $10 per month, 14-day free trial
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: No
Real-time data: Yes
Requirements: None
Developer: Sean McNamara

Clicky

Clicky probably offers the most features of any app listed here, including real-time tracking, various plugins, mobile apps, website widgets and a whole lot more. Along with piles of great features, Clicky also offers more price plans than other apps to best fit your needs and your budget. Clicky’s interface design wasn’t too appealing for me, but it does a great job at accomplishing its goal.

Price: Free, $6.99-$19.99 per month
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: Yes
Real-time data: Yes
Requirements: None
Developer: Clicky

chartbeat

Chartbeat, like several of the other apps here, also offers real-time tracking but features an interface that’s more enjoyable to look at than just a pile of numbers or the typical line graph. It’s a clean looking and easy to use app that will be much more appealing to the average user rather than hardcore analytics users.

Price: $9.95 per month, 30-day free trial
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: iPhone app (iTunes)
Real-time data: Yes
Requirements: None
Developer: Chartbeat Inc.

Woopra

Woopra takes a different approach to analytics and requires that you download a desktop client to handle your site’s incoming data. The app offers real-time tracking and a dark color scheme for its interface, making heavy use of icons and vibrant colors. With the features offered, Woopra is a great choice, especially since it’s free.

Price: Free
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: iPhone app (iTunes)
Real-time data: Yes
Requirements: Desktop compatible with desktop client
Developer: iFusion Labs, LLC.

Piwik

Piwik is an open source analytics app that you’ll have to host yourself but offers everything from real-time tracking to mobile apps for iPhone and Android and is even offered in over 30 languages. It’s directly intended to be an alternative to Google Analytics and does a pretty dang good job of it.

Price: Free (open source)
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: iPhone (iTunes) or Android app
Real-time data: Yes
Requirements: Self-hosted (PHP, MySQL)
Developer: Piwik

GoingUp

GoingUp!

GoingUp! takes a slightly different approach by pushing SEO tools along with the regular analytics app tools. The interface could use a some refinements but overall gets the job done. Among the piles of features the app sports, real-time tracking, heatmaps and mobile apps are nowhere to be seen. The app is free though so if you need easier to understand SEO tools, this might be worth checking out.

Price: Free
WordPress Plugin: Yes
Mobile App: No
Real-time data: No
Requirements: None
Developer: GoingUp!

KISSinsights

KISSmetrics

While KISSmetrics is an analytics app, it takes a very different approach by focusing on the people visiting your site rather than pageviews. KISSmetrics does a great job of helping you focus on your visitors, site conversions, where future development should be and more aspects that truly help your site and your visitors.

Price: Free
WordPress Plugin: Unknown
Mobile App: No
Real-time data: No
Requirements: None
Developer: KISSmetrics

What Do You Use?

Each of these apps are fantastic in their own way and make for pretty great alternatives to Google Analytics. Do you use or plan on trying out one of the apps listed here? Or maybe you use an app we haven’t listed that you think should’ve been?

Quick Look: Thoughtboxes

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the polls below if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Thoughtboxes . The developer describes Thoughtboxes as a a simple web application that helps you organize everything you do. Whether you want to keep track of tasks, manage projects, or brainstorm a new idea, Thoughtboxes makes the process fun and easy.

Thoughtboxes combines the simplicity and structure of lists with flexibility of mind maps. Use Thoughtboxes for whatever you like, you can’t go wrong.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Thoughtboxes

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

See all of your thoughts, tasks, and ideas on a single screen.
Choose to share your thoughts with friends, or keep them to yourself.
Easy drag and drop controls allow you to rearrange your boxes and thoughts.
Our simple layout makes it easy to navigate your thoughts.
Start for free, upgrade when you need to.

Requirements: Web Browser
Price: Free or $25 per year
Developer: Thoughtboxes

Would you like to see Thoughboxes reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?customer surveys

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of this app? Have your say in our poll:

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.

When I Work Makes Staff Scheduling a Snap

Managing the resources of a company is key to increasing revenue and improving profit margins. Keeping an eye on all resources and ensuring they’re optimally utilized is a daunting task. Handling human resources, in particular, is a delicate task and mishandling them might take a hit on organizational culture.

When I Work helps employers manage employee scheduling better. Read on for more a deeper look at the app.

Overview

When I Work connects your staff to their work schedule online using any platform of their convenience — web, mobile apps and text messaging. Managers can schedule shifts, move them around, check availability, address time off requests, swap shifts, assign locations, arrange drops and set preferences — all without having to move an inch from their desk.

Overview

Signing up for When I Work doesn’t require a credit card; there’s a thirty day free trial period to evaluate the service and all its features before opting for a paid subscription.

Pricing

Not counting the free plan, When I Work offers 7 different plans. All plans have the exact same features and the number of employees your company has is the sole criterion that determines pricing. Small and medium businesses who have anywhere between 1 to 250 employees can find a plan that fits right into their budget.

Pricing Plans

A free plan that supports managing up to five employees is available in “blink & you will miss” small print on the pricing page. As the web app notes, until you add a sixth employee to manage from the free account, there’s no need for submitting credit card information.

Using When I Work

Ease of Use

I loved the way the app cuts useless, but common, practices like email activation, overlays, forced tutorials etc. Straight off the bat you’re taken to a page where you can start adding employee information and their schedule. The user interface is free of clutter and quite refined. I wasn’t quite sure until today that green on a white background would look as great as blue on white!

Adding Employees

First of all, even though the sections are given sequential numbers, you don’t have to go through all the steps in that order. Create employees and shifts then mix and match them later when you begin the actual scheduling. The way timings show up when you start entering numbers and assigning a color to the shift are nicely done.

Scheduling Shifts

Assigning Shifts

From the Scheduler, you can view all employees and their positions in the company along with a weekly calender.

A Scheduled Week

Assigning shifts is very simple; click on the date corresponding to an employee name and choose a color code that denotes a particular shift. You can add multiple shift timings for multiple days and have option to repeat the shift too. Deleting or altering a shift schedule can be done by double clicking on the color code. A rule based system for advanced scheduling, say, a warning message if one or more employees have the shift or a notice if an employee is always stuck in a particular shift etc., would be a nice addition.

The option to create a new shift on the fly from the right from the scheduler can he very useful for companies who are expanding fast. It’s also good to see the number of man hours available every day and week at a glance! Once the roster is ready you can mail it directly to employees or take a print out to pin it on the noticeboard.

Creating Positions

Positions is a brilliant feature if employees at your company work in teams. Instead of selecting and assigning the shifts for all the members of the team who will be working in the same shift, you can create a position and assign member(s) to it and schedule the timings. Once you assign a shift to a position, all members will automatically be assigned that particular shift. Neat, isn’t it?

Once you create Positions, tabs dedicated to them are automatically added to the scheduler. From these tabs you can get a quick view of which positions have been covered in the schedule.

Employee Requests

Requesting Time Off

When I was working full time, the best day would be when I request for day(s) off in the ERP! You company might be a better workplace than the one I was working in but employees often need some time off work to tend to personal things and factoring them into schedule is a tricky task.

Time Off in the Scheduler

Employees can put in a request with a date and the reason for taking time off and it will come the manager’s screen for approval. If approved, the respective shifts will be tagged time off.

Dashboard

Usually I cover this part of the app in the beginning but when it comes to When I Work, the power of dashboard is revealed after getting the schedule ready. As you can see, the schedule of employees for the day is displayed so you don’t have to view the crowded scheduler to find out who is working when.

Dashboard

Another point where When I Work outdoes itself is with the notification system. Whenever a new employee is added, a shift is created or a request is submitted, then you can view them all from a single place. Notifications will come in handy to prioritize a manager’s tasks.

Finding Replacements

ShiftReplace

When I Work has a ton of awesome features and the most interesting one is ShiftReplace. With the ShiftReplace feature, handling a scheduling snafu or emergency replacement becomes a walk in the park. Select the shift that needs a replacement and hit the Replace button. The app will immediately show you a list of employees who are free and once you select them, they will be intimated of the same. The first one to accept the new timing will be automatically assigned in the scheduler.

Final Thoughts

The When I Work team could do a little bit of tweaking on the landing page that allows creating employees and shifts. Since adding employees and creating shift timings are displayed with sequential numbers, I was a bit confused to see a button to complete the task in both cases. You can create an employee and a shift. Later you can assign the shift timings from the calender. But the way things are designed, it looks as if creating an employee should immediately be followed by his/her respective shift timing.

Overall, When I Work is a fantastic app and could very well aid your organization in handling scheduling tasks that otherwise tend to be extra work we don’t even realize could be done so much easier. I would recommend When I Work for companies that cannot afford under using its manpower. It’s a huge time and money saver!

Share Your Thoughts!

Do you think When I Work covers all aspects of work scheduling in a company? Are there better alternatives?

Store, Organize & Share Information With Shelfster

Irrespective of the domain you work, there’s so much information available on the internet that might benefit you — a lot. After a certain point, you might find the bookmarks you’ve created to be rather stale and useless. If you’re like me, there’s a very good chance you might forget why you’ve even bookmarked a page after a few days.

Making comments, taking notes and annotating content has never been easier. There are quiet a few apps doing a stellar job in archiving all your snippets of information in the cloud for anywhere access. One among them is Shelfster. Read on to see how it can help you collect, edit, organize and publish all sorts of information.

Overview

Shelfster assists you in meaningfully organizing snippets of information by offering you easy to use tools, supported by an integrated platform. Shelfster offers a great set of apps — both desktop and mobile — to make the task of capturing information from any environment quick and simple. You can see all the apps available in the Downloads section of their webpage.

The Shelfster service and all its apps — including the pretty slick iPhone app — are available completely free of charge. However, you’ll need to go through a simple sign up process to start accumulating all your snippets.

Getting Started

Getting started with Shelfster begins by selecting a tool of your choice — the bookmarklet or the desktop app. Shelfster’s Desktop app allows you to quickly gather your ideas and information from the web or from documents on your computer in cleverly designed snippets. These snippets are organized with specific tags and are stored in your online account. They can also be published on popular social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and WordPress, isntantly.

Desktop App Upon First Launch

The Shelfster bookmarklet works more or less the same way as the desktop app and is ideal if you are behind a corporate firewall that restricts user installations. With the bookmarklet, all your snippets can be sent directly from your browser without switching to Shelfster’s online platform. The bookmarklet works an all modern web browsers and no installation is required!

Working with the Desktop App

Desktop Assistant

While the Shelfster web app and homepage are gorgeously designed, the desktop app isn’t. After a quick installation, a desktop assistant that allows you to clip and crop snippets shows up just above the clock. Considering other snippet tools that have fat apps which commonly hog RAM (I’m looking at you Evernote), the Shelfster desktop app runs without making a peep!

Adding a Text Snippet

Found an interesting article and looking to quote a paragraph or two in your paper? Select the text on the page and click Clip in the desktop assistant. The entire text you’ve copied, complete with the original formatting, will pop up in the desktop app. The snippet is automatically given a name but if you want you can change it. Add as many tags as you want to make the snippet easier to find later.

Jot down your thoughts by selecting the notes tab. Since only the text from the page is taken, if you wanted to know the source, you can do so by visiting the source tab that displays the original link. And, if you’re planning on sharing the snippet, you’ll need to make it public. Make sure you’ve added the login credentials of the social networks in the web app beforehand.

Cropping a Snippet

The Crop tool works perfectly for saving images you’ve found. Once you select Crop, it pretty much works like a typical image capturing tool. A rectangular window highlights the section of the page where the mouse is pointing and you’re able to move it around the screen by clicking and dragging. More screen real estate can be covered by resizing the capture window and by moving the mouse to its corners. Once you’re satisfied with the selection, hit enter and the desktop app will pop up with the image. Follow the same steps mentioned above to organize the snippet.

Using the Bookmarklet

Bookmarklet Options

Drag and drop the Shelfster bookmarklet on the Bookmarks toolbar and click it to initiate the snippet creation process. Creating a snippet from the bookmarklet menu works the same way it does on the desktop app, plus there’s an option to add the web page to your bookmarks. Strangely, the option to crop an image was missing!

Adding a Bookmark

Accessing the Snippets

Snippets in the Web App

Shelfster’s web app acts as the mothership that stores all your snippets as and when they’re created. All tags, notes and comments you’ve added are available exactly the way you created them.

Advanced Filters

After a while, if you have hundreds of snippets stored in the app and weren’t able to narrow it down the conventional way, Advanced Filters will come to your rescue. True to its name, you can filter snippets using advanced filters based on category, fields, date of creation, type, visibility and more.

Sharing & Community

Community Snippets

Shelfster has an active community that shares lots of useful snippets in the public domain for everyone’s benefit. To make one of your own snippets available to the entire community, toggle its status to Public rather than Private. You can sift through all the snippets shared by the community with the extremely useful Advanced Filters.

Final Thoughts

Shelfster is a thoughtfully designed app and could be a worthy competitor to Evernote. While Shelfster doesn’t look as pretty as Evernote on the desktop, it isn’t a resource hog either. Shelfster’s desktop app runs on a tiny footprint and is quiet resourceful. The absence of a Mac app is a hefty downside but the bookmarklet works just fine on all Mac compatible browsers. Shelfster is a great choice for those looking for a light-weight yet powerful app to organize and share information. Take it for a spin!

Share Your Thoughts!

Do you use a snippet organizer yourself? Is Shelfster a better alternative to Evernote?

Weekly Poll: Do You Use Third Party Headphones?

Do You Use Third Party Headphones?Market Research

Apple has been shipping earbuds with products ever since the first iPod. They’ve gone through years of improvements and design changes and reportedly tested thousands of ears to end up where they are today with the current models.

The question we want to know today is “Has all this research paid off?” Though many people are more than happy to use their Apple-provided earbuds every single day, some audiophiles look down on them as crude contraptions that provide pure ear torture.

Leave your vote in the poll on the right to let us know which products you use regularly to pump music into your brain from your iPhone or iPod. If you don’t use the Apple headphones, leave a comment below and tell us the specific model you do use. Also, tell us how you rate the default Apple earbuds in terms of both audio quality and comfort.

iPhone Game Friday: New Releases

How’s that list of New Years resolutions coming along? I hope it’s got “play more iPhone games” written on it because we’ve got a nice spread of titles for you this week — including one of the most unique titles to ever hit the App Store.

And it also happens to be the last selection of the year, so take a look and welcome 2011 with some good gaming. Make sure to let us know if you’ve got any tips for us to jump start the new year!

Shift! 2

Armor Games’ Shift was one of the most popular early platforming titles available for the iPhone and has remained a favourite among fans. The sequel continues the legacy with a huge selection of new levels, achievements, and even some awesome special levels that can be unlocked by scanning a code from the web or press releases.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Shift! 2 is a platform puzzler with a stylish black & white, minimalistic aesthetic and a plot somewhere between Portal and Exit. As you make your way to the end of each level, you can use the shift buttons to flip gravity and the active colour in the environment (black or white) in order to allow you to move past the obstacles and reach your goal.

The game drops you in without too much of an introduction, but the learning curve is not difficult so new players won’t have much trouble adjusting to the game mechanics. There’s a lot of character wrapped up in this package, and even a bit of humour, so any fan of platforming puzzles should have a look.

Price: $0.99
Developer: Armor Games Inc.
Download: App Store

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

As you would expect, Ultimate Mortal Kombat is a very faithful and very direct port of the arcade classic fighting game to the iOS platform. Thirteen of the characters and ten of the stages from the original have made it across, and EA has also polished up the graphics a bit.

Kombat unfolds smoothly, with all the crazy button combinations still present so you can unleash all your favourite combos and finishing moves against opponents. Luckily, you can customize button layout to suit your preference, though the need to tap precise combos on a series of relatively small buttons is still awkward on the limited real estate of an iPhone screen. The inclusion of a multiplayer segment makes it fun to beat up your friends though.

At this point, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is still a little rough around the edges, but updates are obviously coming and are likely to include refinements to performance and controls to further optimize the title for the mobile platform.

Price: $6.99 (Holiday sale for $0.99)
Developer: Electronic Arts
Download: App Store

Perfect Cell

Worth mentioning in the new generation of iPhone games is Mobigames’ attractive side-scroller, Perfect Cell. It shows off some spectacular pseudo-3D graphics and a smooth, intuitive control scheme and features a very engaging story to boot.

You play as an alien organism discovered at the bottom of the ocean in the heart of a crashed meteorite. Your glowing, purple squid-like body is controlled through simple taps in the direction you wish to travel. Swiping will execute a dash that can be used to attack or smash through weak barriers. Your goal is to escape from the underwater base where you were being held for study. As you progress, navigating through the levels becomes increasingly difficult as soldiers and security systems bar your way.

Perfect Cell is truly a beautiful and well-polished title that deserves more attention that it’s been getting. Any fan of solid side-scrolling action games should check it out — they won’t be disappointed.

Price: $5.99
Developer: Mobigame
Download: App Store

Papa Sangre

The latest little marvel of iOS engineering is a game by Somethin’ Else called Papa Sangre. You’ve probably already read about it on various blogs, and if you haven’t, then the reason it’s been making waves is because it’s a game that’s designed to be played without visuals — it’s an auditory experience that makes use of some clever and brilliant sound design to allow you to play.

Before you drift past thinking it’s another one of those artsy games where nothing actually happens, allow me to specify that despite its unusual presentation, it is undeniably a very playable and very creepy game with a plot, goals, and so much detail in the auditory design that you will find yourself reeling at the sheer vividness of the virtual environments you’re made to imagine. It’s something that needs to be experienced to be properly understood.

The developers have crafted a work of art here, and I say that not just because I work as a composer. Papa Sangre is truly one of the few titles that brings something utterly new and unique to the table and actually executes it well too.

Price: $6.99
Developer: Somethin’ Else
Download: App Store

Rebellion

And speaking of pushing the envelope, Rebellion is one of the few games on the App Store that actually requires a 4th generation device (iPhone 4 or iPod Touch 4) to function properly.

The plot is the first in a series that will follow the exploits of Jake Knight, and 8-year-old who is apparently going to save the universe. Looking at the graphics makes it easy to understand why you need higher end hardware to run it, since everything is rendered in attractive 3D. A variety of gameplay modes and very simple touch controls help keep the game feeling uncluttered and breezy despite the complexities running under the hood to make it all possible.

Apparently, the game is going to be ported to the Unreal Engine, just like Infinity Blade, in a future update, so that’s definitely something to look forward to as the series progresses. Meanwhile, there’s a great story and even some multiplayer to keep you busy, so if you’ve got a new device then you’ll definitely want to grab this game and make your friends jealous.

Price: $0.99
Developer: PERKAT GAMES
Download: App Store

What Have You Been Playing?

Have there been other titles keeping you busy this holiday season? Mention them in the comments!

Otherwise, from all of us to all of you, have a happy and fulfilling New Years celebration and we’ll see you in 2011!

Netflix: Movies on the Go

Netflix has taken the world by storm. It used to be known as the company that sent DVDs out in the mail, but now they’re moving their business model into streaming video as well. To that end, they’ve put out apps for both the iPad and iPhone, both of which are very popular. But each variation isn’t created equal, so which version is the right one for you? If you’re a Netflix subscriber, this is news you need to know.

The Requirements

Netflix changed my life. I’ve never been a huge movie watcher, but it’s amazing all the movies or TV shows that you’ll find in the Netflix library that you might want to watch. The basic streaming-only plan runs $7.99, and for an extra two bucks you can get a DVD sent out to you one at a time as well. If you want to use either the iPad or iPhone version of the app, you need to have at least the basic streaming plan, or it’s of no use to you.

Netflix on the iPhone works great over 3G or Wi-Fi.

Your Netflix account lets you browse for movies, and then you can select them for watching immediately, being sent to you in the mail (if you opt for one of those plans), or adding to your queue to watch later. The iPad and iPhone versions of the app let you do all of this and more.

The iPhone Experience

One of the great things about the iPhone is being able to watch movies on the go. Netflix works over both Wi-Fi and 3G, so there’s no need to hunt down a random network just to watch your favorite movie. How’s the quality? Well it’s better over Wi-Fi, that’s for sure, but no matter which way you go you’re not going to get HD quality. It’s definitely a good picture though, and considering it’s being streamed to you wherever you’re at, that’s pretty cool.

Watching over 3G works well on the iPhone, but the quality goes down just a tick.

The other bonus is that you can start watching a movie at home on your PC, Mac or AppleTV, then pause it and pick right back up where you left off on the iPhone or iPad. In fact, that’s what I did to get the screenshot above; I started streaming on my iPad, then picked it up again on the iPhone. That’s pretty convenient.

Overall, I’ve found that I use Netflix on the iPhone for two things: Adding movies to my queue, and watching a movie in an airport if I don’t happen to have my iPad handy. It’s nice to have when you need something to do, but it’s not a substitute for having a bigger screen.

The iPad Experience

Everything on the iPad is bigger, and Netflix is just the same. Instead of using a tiny interface that appears to be designed specifically for mobile phones, you get the full web experience. It looks just like what you’d get by signing onto Netflix.com, but the streaming movies now come to the front instead. I’ve been told that it’s all just HTML5 coding, but I don’t know the behind-the-scenes workings first hand, I’m just a reviewer with a keyboard.

Pause a movie on your iPhone, pick it up where you left off on your iPad.

The iPad is perfect for Netflix. One thing I like doing is firing up the app and putting the iPad in a stand so I can watch a movie while I work. Then it doesn’t hog up my computer’s resources, and I see everything on a big screen. And since everything is as full size as the web version, it’s easy enough to add items to your queue or find a new movie that you want.

The Cons

When you’re streaming anything, your network connection is always going to be an issue. Once you’ve picked out a movie, it can take a few minutes to load it up before anything shows on the screen. Unfortunately, there’s really nothing you or Netflix can do about this, because of current technological limitations. But once the movie has started, the app doesn’t try to load up the entire movie at once. Instead, it acts like a 1990s portable CD player, where there’s a buffer to help avoid skipping. I haven’t found many issues with streaming problems, and if any happened, it’s been on my end, not from Netflix. So if you’re good with the wait, then you’ll be alright.

It may take time for some movies to load, depending on your connection speed.

Final Thoughts

I’m a Netflix fan, and I’ve only had it for a few months. In that time I’ve received a good amount of DVDs at my house, and watched several hours of streamed TV and movies on my iPad and iPhone. I’ve been told for years now that I needed to get on the Netflix bandwagon, and now I’m wondering what took me so long. It’s great.

But for me, it’s only great because of the iPad and iPhone components. If I could only watch streaming movies on my computer, then I don’t know if I could justify the price. But now I can watch it whenever I want, because I always have my iPhone on me, and I usually have easy access to my iPad. That makes the minimum $7.99/month price plan pretty valuable to me, and I’m willing to bet it will be for you too. This app gets 9 out of 10 for both the iPad and iPhone versions, with the only deduction being for the delay for downloads.

Simplify Your Web Browsing on iOS with Cyberspace

Do you often find the web too cluttered on your iPhone or iPad, or find it too difficult to share what you’re reading with others? Today we’re going to look at a browser that was designed from the ground-up to provide a great online reading, bookmarking, and sharing experience on iOS.

Most of us have gotten used to using Safari for our daily iOS browsing; it’s fast, smooth, and gets the job done. But it’s not perfect. Adding support for Instapaper to Safari is difficult at best, and browsing between multiple pages can be confusing. Plus, if you want to take advantage of newer search engines, there’s no way to add new sites to Safari’s search box.

Cyberspace is a new browser that aims to tackle some of these problems. It integrates Instapaper deeply into your browsing experience so you can read any site easily on your device. Then, it lets you share anything you read with a number of popular social networks and bookmarking services, and keeps a list of articles you want to read handy. Let’s dive in and see if this browser is right for your needs.

Getting Started

When you first launch Cyberspace, you’ll notice that unlike many alternate browsers, it’s nearly as simple as Safari. You can get right to work with it, too. You’ll see a welcome page when you first launch the app, explaining how to use the DuckDuckGo powered DuckBar and other Cyberspace features. Or, if you already have a URL clipped in the clipboard, it’ll recognize it and offer to let you go ahead and open the site.

Check out an overview, then quickly go to your favorite sites.

The DuckBar is very similar to the combined address and search Omnibar in Google Chrome on a PC. You can simply enter a website address or a search term you want, and it’ll take you to the site or search results respectively. As you’re typing in your search term, you’ll see suggestions that often make it quicker to find what you’re looking for. And, if you type in a popular site name, the suggested entry will take you directly to the site. By default you’ll see the standard keyboard that iOS uses when entering an address in a browser address bar, but you can tap Switch Keyboard to get the standard layout if you’d like.

Searching with suggestions and DuckDuckGo Bang finds results faster

Since the DuckBar is powered by the new DuckDuckGo search engine, you can directly enter special bang syntax to find results quicker. Tap the ! button on the top of the keyboard to get an overview of search goodies and Bang syntax so you can get the most out of your DuckDuckGo powered search.

Get quick tips on using DuckDuckGo

Once you browse to a site, you can view it in either Full or Text mode. Full mode renders sites the same as Safari Mobile, while Text mode runs sites you visit through Instapaper Mobilizer to make them easier to read on a small screen. While you could manually visit a site through Instapaper Mobilizer on Safari, having it just one tap away is incredibly handy. The Text feature works surprisingly good, even on rich, multi-column layouts like the WordPress.org site uses.

View full sites or an Instapaper-powered text version

Save or Share Sites

Cyberspace’s two main areas it shines are making sites readable and then letting you share them easily. When you’re reading a site you want to share or save to read later, tap the arrow button on the right in the bottom toolbar. You can quickly select from three popular options, or press More to access all the actions and services that Cyberspace integrates. Once you’ve started using services, the share menu will show your 3 most recent choices so you can get your favorites easily.

Cyberspace lets you share or save sites with a ton of services

Before you can start sharing, you’ll need to add your account info for most of the services to Cyberspace. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to tweet about a site in just two taps: tap the arrow, select Twitter, and your link will automatically be shortened and ready to tweet.

Add your account credentials, then share with one tap anytime

Alternatively, if you’re wanting to read a linked page later, tap and hold on the link to copy it, add it to your queue, or save it to your Instapaper account. Cyberspace doesn’t include support for browsing multiple pages or tabs like Safari and other browsers. Instead, it includes a Queue so you can save sites to read later. Once you’re finished on a site, press the drawer icon on the bottom left to see your queued sites and visit them. You can also save a note about sites you want to visit or things you find online from the button on the top right corner. These tools let you manage your browsing session in a unique and productive manner.

Keep a Queue of sites you want to read later

If you want to save a site for good, then Cyberspace works great for that too. Press the plus button to bookmark a site as you would in other browsers. The nice thing here is, you can choose to save your bookmarks locally on your device, or in a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Pinboard. You can also easily save or share your bookmarks with an easy HTML export.

Save bookmarks locally or online with Delicious or Pinboard, then export them to share or save

Tweaking Cyberspace’s Settings

Cyberspace includes a lot of features, but you can also tweak these to work just like you want. Head over your device’s Settings app to tweak Cyberspace’s settings. Here you can turn on or off actions based on apps and services you use, select your favorite service for reading articles, turn off ad blocking, and more. Also, if you have OmniFocus or Pastebot installed, you can enable support for them here so you can integrate these into your browsing experience. There’s way more settings available here than in most alternate browsers, so you can take some time here to get it working just like you want.

Tweak tons of settings from your iPhone Settings pane

Pros and Cons

Cyberspace definitely makes it easier to integrate Instapaper and social bookmarking into your iOS browsing experience. However, if you’re not a fan of reading sites in plain text and don’t share links often, you may not find these features helpful. Additionally, the new features can take some time to get used to, though we did find the queue feature handy once we got used to adding sites to the queue instead of opening them in new pages.

The only major problem we had were some occasional crashes. The app closed itself a couple times when opening a link, and once we had to remove it from the currently running apps on iOS 4.2 before it would open sites again. Cyberspace is very new, so we hope to see some stability updates in the near future.

Conclusion

The breadth of the App Store lets you find apps for every taste and style. This time, more features mean less clutter and easier ways to read and share online. We found Cyberspace to be a promising new browser, and appreciated many of the new touches. From the deep integration with Instapaper to the innovative Queue list, several of the features made browsing easier, especially when reading longer websites. Plus, after getting used to Chrome’s combined address and search bar, it was nice to see this feature on iOS along with DuckDuckGo’s new search tools. The stability issues were frustrating, however, so hopefully we’ll see an update soon that fixes these problems.

Worst Gear of the Year: 2010

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Fusion Garage JooJoo Tablet

It may have been a year where we gawked at the shining glowing glow of the iPad, or swooned at the Jawbone Jambox, or sat amazed by a slew of handy Android handsets that blew away the iPhone in some key areas.

But a lot of the gadgets we reviewed this year just plain sucked. Some were atrocious train wrecks, hurriedly pushed out by companies looking to bring a product to market before it was ready. Others were just ill-conceived pieces of garbage that, for whatever reason, slipped past the quality-control department and made it onto store shelves.

These are the 10 absolute most hideous pieces of crap to have crossed the review desk in 2010. Sure, some came out in previous years, some were released last month, but they all made our stomachs churn. You’ve seen the best, now brace yourself for a suck-fest.

Above:

Fusion Garage JooJoo Tablet

Twice the weight of an iPad with half the usability and an interface buggier than bucket full of cockroaches. And no access to apps. And a $500 price tag. No 3G connectivity, Google Talk or Adobe PDF reader. POP3 e-mail? Support for Microsoft exchange? Keep dreaming. A battery that conks out after only a few hours of use. All this can be yours for the low, low price of $500. We wish the JooJoo were just a bad joke with no punch line. Sadly it was a real thing and the absolute worst gadget of 2010.

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Client Application For Internet Management System

Details of project available to request.

Joomla/virtuemart Template Edit 2

I am looking for someone with Strong virtuemart, PHP, CSS and JQuery, Ajax and W3C skills to work on editing a virtuemart tableless template:

1) Have the shopping Checkout Edited to be one page with slide down tabs working properly (Currently have slide down tabs but need some editing.

2) Dropdown MiniCart Need shop items organised

3) Style drop down list

4) Style Menu

Should be without W3C errors

The successful bidder must have portfolio of virtuemart work completed, must be professional, available to start now and communicates until project is completed.

Future jobs available after successful completion of this project.

New Top Banner For My Website

Hello,

I need a new logo for my website. The logo should be 150×1000 and 500×1000.

I need you to join three images:
1 – Barão do Rio Branco: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9olrVlek1Ig/TAgnzzUHKyI/AAAAAAAAHtE/BwAoCewpJeU/s1600/a.jpg

2 – Celso Amorim: http://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/multimidia/albuns-de-fotos/destaques-da-semana-12-a-de-16-outubro/celso_amorim_antonio_cruz_a.jpg

3 – And, as background, I need the brazilian flag: http://www.canalbrasil.com.ar/images/wallpapers/007.jpg or you can use your creative to create something like this “http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs19/f/2007/304/1/8/Brazilian_flag_by_leaod.jpg”.

These pictures are just examples. You can look for more using the keywords “Barão do rio branco”; “Celso Amorim” and “Bandeira do Brasil” or “Brazilian Flag” on google.

You´re free to use your creativity, but remember that in front of that will be presented a text, so the background should present a good contrast either with white or black text.

Article Writer

I’m searching for one or more article writers. Articles must be written in dutch so you should master the dutch language.

I’m hoping here is someone who can take care of this job (preferably full-time!)

Corporate Id Templates

need 10 id templates created for 10 top brands

Iphone App – Energy Savings

Need someone to develop an iPhone app for my LED lighting business to show the savings for going to LED lighting from halogen/incandescent lighting. We would provide the details for how much power each uses and then the app would need to work out the savings per year from the amounts the user puts in. We will provide the information of what exactly we are wanting in the calculator eg power savings, energy savings etc. we will provide images of our products and our logo, we will create a rough design of how we would like the app to look but the design can also be your own creation.