Category: Tutorials

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Unfortunately, for the Apple-consuming public, iCloud won’t be hitting us until the fall. That means we’re going to have to wait several months because all the cloud-based syncing magic becomes a reality for us. However, either for those going crazy in anticipation, or those who oddly despise Apple, there’s a range of online services that offer similar functionality.

In today’s article, we’re going to take a look at some of the apps you can grab right now to help build up an iCloud-esque ecosystem for yourself.

Mail, Contacts and Calendar: Google Apps

Even in the time of MobileMe, the most popular alternative to these three core web apps was Google Apps. Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts are all viable alternatives that offer very similar features; you can access these free services through online web apps and hook them up to your native apps via Microsoft Exchange so you get similar push functionality.

Google Apps doesn’t really require much explaining, but they are a set of free web-based applications that offer communication and collaboration tools through interfaces like e-mail and document authoring.

Google Mail, part of the free Google Apps suite.

iTunes in the Cloud: iTunes Purchased Songs +

One option for working on documents in the cloud is Google Docs. Basically, Google Docs is a suite of web-based office and productivity tools of mediocre quality that allow for cross-platform collaboration. Everything is based in the cloud, so editing and authoring done on a document on your PC can be accessed and edited on another, or on your mobile, or on your tablet.

Plus, Google Docs can be easily “shared” in the sense of opening your document up to additional clients forming the opportunity for collaboration. For light authoring on a budget, Google Docs can be a perfect solution.

Google Docs, another web app in the Google Apps suite.

Documents in the Cloud: Dropbox

Google Docs is okay, but its web apps aren’t amazing in terms of features. They can also be a bit laggy and unresponsive at some times. An elegant alternative is using a native app, specifically those that Apple are highlighting in their iCloud feature, iWork. The iWork apps for iOS will all sync and push via iCloud, so the most recent version is on all your devices, but that can be achieved right now with Dropbox.

Whilst Dropbox itself isn’t a word processor, nor a spreadsheet or presentation app, it can be easily integrated into Pages, Numbers and Keynote (the iWork apps). DropDAV uses the WebDAV sharing feature built right into the iWork apps, alongside sharing via email and iTunes, to upload your files to Dropbox, where they can be accessed elsewhere. When you want to get them on another device, simply pull them down from the importing feature inside the iWork app.

DropDAV costs $5/month, but you can try it out for 14 days for free, and then get another month for free with a coupon. Sure, it’s not automatic and it’s not exactly free, but it can be a nice interim solution until the official offering comes out. Also, you can use the free DropDAV Limited to get basic WebDAV integration with Dropbox for free.

DropDAV.

Photo Stream: EyeFi

Unfortunately, this isn’t a software solution, but, nevertheless, EyeFi does an excellent job at performing a similar function. An EyeFi memory card is just like an SD card, but it has WiFi built in so photos can be wirelessly transferred from camera to device. Simply place your EyeFi card in the SD card slot of your camera and configure a few options in either the EyeFi iOS and Android apps, or choose to setup online sharing to social networks and MobileMe (yes, MobileMe stays here since it will remain existent until next summer for existing customers).

Then, whenever you snap a shot on your camera, it will be wirelessly uploaded to one of your configured accounts or sent to the app on your Android or iOS device.

Of course, this doesn’t solve the problem when taking shots on your iPhone but the wealth of file sharing options (such as Dropbox) might serve an affordable solution.

EyeFi photos being shared from a DSLR to an iPad. Image courtesy of "MattsMacintosh".

Photo Stream: Picasa Web Albums

Picasa is more of an alternative to Apple’s whole view on photos. Similar to the features available in iPhoto, Picasa helps you organise your photos into albums with facial and location tagging like Apple’s Places and Faces features.

Picasa can also work in conjunction with the aforementioned EyeFi cards to get direct uploads from your camera onto the web, where you can view and download through the Picasa web app or a replacement native app that syncs with Google’s photos service.

iTunes in the Cloud: Ready today … partly

One of the most hyped anouncements from WWDC was Apple’s iTunes in the cloud. There was much speculation about what the service would offer, especially as both Amazon and Google launched competing online music storage services in the weeks beforehand. Apple has taken a different approach with syncing music than their competitors.

First, iTunes with iCloud will let you re-download any purchased songs from any of your devices for free, and when you make a new purchase, it will automatically be pushed to your other devices. Then, for $25/year, you can pay to upload all of the music you have ripped from CDs to stream it to all your devices as well. Rather than uploading each of your songs individually, Apple will match your songs with songs in their iTunes library, letting you upgrade your songs to 256Kbps AAC format and get your files in sync in seconds rather than weeks.

iTunes in the Cloud is one of the first parts of iCloud we can go ahead and use. If you’ve ever purchased songs (or iOS apps) from iTunes, you can log in today and re-download your songs and apps from the cloud for free. Then, later this year, the iTunes Match service will be come available, so you can sync all of your songs automatically. Until then, you could give Google Music or Amazon Cloud Drive a try. Both of these will let you upload your music to the cloud, and then play them back from anywhere via your browser.

iCloud: Keeping your music in sync

Picasa, yet another Google web app. Anyone seeing the trend yet?

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Final Thoughts

Anyone recognising the trend here? Google offers a range of alternative solutions that have always been popular among the iOS users who didn’t feel like shelling out $99/year to get themselves MobileMe.

Unfortunately, the more intricate OS features like backup don’t have viable alternatives, so for them, you’ll have to wait. However, hopefully these apps have given you something to work with for the minute.

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Codeplane. The developer describes Codeplane as a Git hosting focused on small teams and freelancers. You’ll receive 2GB and can create unlimited private repositories. You can also invite unlimited collaborators.

Codeplane comes with a command-line app which allows you to manage repositories, SSH public keys and collaborators. You don’t have to use our web interface, but if you do, you’ll see a nice interface that just works.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Codeplane's Homepage

Repositories in Codeplane

About the App

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

1. Unlimited private Git repositories
2. Unlimited collaborators
3. Full-featured command-line
4. Backup repositories on your Amazon S3 account
5. Easy-to-use interface

Requirements: Any modern browser
Price: $9/month
Developer: Nando Vieira

Twitter is a fun place to hang out. The official web app might be bland, but there are a whole bunch of third party apps out there to make Twitter special. I have always maintained that if it weren’t for third party apps, Twitter would never have been the cultural and social phenomenon that it is today.

We use Twitter for a variety of personal and professional reasons and the platform by itself isn’t flexible enough for our needs. So after the break, we have compiled a list of 20 apps that fill a dozen holes in the Twitter platform. Come check it out!

StockTwits

StockTwits

StockTwits is an acclaimed investment site that helps people share ideas, trades, links and charts with the Twitter community. Find investors and traders and follow them to find the next great investment or to understand market trends.

Category : Finance
Complete OAuth Sign Up : No

BrandChirp

BrandChirp

If you are small or medium business owner, with BrandChirp you can effectively monitor, manage and track tweets that relate to your brand. The app supports multiple accounts and follow users/accounts based on their location and search keywords.

Category : Brand Management
Complete OAuth Sign Up : No

We Follow

We Follow

We Follow is a Twitter directory service that helps people find interesting accounts to follow. Accounts are listed based on categories, tags and location, making it one of the easiest destinations to discover influential people on Twitter.

Category : Discovery
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Not Required

Friend or Follow

Friend or Follow

Not sure if your friends are following you or what, despite what they claim? Try Friend or Follow. As soon as you submit your username (no password needed), the app will let you know how many people that you follow are actually following you. Additionally, you can find more about your following habits,\ too.

Category : Analytics
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

Featured Users

Featured Users

Desperately looking to gain some followers and not worried about spending some money? Featured Users might be what you are looking for. The app puts banner ads of your tweets at 40+ websites ensuring maximum exposure to your tweets.

Category : Promotion
Complete OAuth Sign Up : No

Nearby Tweets

Nearby Tweets

As you might have guessed from the self explanatory name, the web app displays tweets from the location you are currently in. Your location is ascertained based on your IP address and if you find that the location information isn’t accurate enough, try changing it manually or use the map to pin point the exact location.

Category : Discovery
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Not Required

Twitaholic

Twitaholic

Twitaholic ranks people based on the number of their followers and the frequency of their tweets. If you are looking for discovering or follow high profile and the most prolific Twitter users, head over to Twitaholic.

Category : Discovery
Complete OAuth Sign Up : NA

Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter provides incredible insights and statistics of Twitter accounts and tracks over 14 million accounts. The app also offers a variety of widgets and buttons that lets people showcase their Twitter influence. For more in depth stats and to gain more followers, they have a premium plan as well.

Category : Analytics
Complete OAuth Sign Up : NA

Twellow

Twellow

Twellow is a discovery service with a twist. It operates more like a traditional online Yellow Pages app rather a straight up discovery service. Accounts are listed into categories and sub categories (a whole lot them actually) and you can discover accounts from the entire spectrum of the longtail. The user interface is designed poorly though.

Category : Discovery
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Not Required

Twit Cleaner

Twit Cleaner

Despite having a trashy user interface, Twit Cleaner is a pretty cool web app. It analyzes the Twitter accounts that you follow and informs you which ones are actually useful and which ones aren’t. I personally loved the listing of accounts based on the frequency and originality of their tweets.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Not Required

Twuffer

Twuffer

To be a Twitter ninja, it might be necessary to tweet round the clock. That’s where Twuffer comes in to rescue. The app allows you to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule them at intervals of your choice.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

Twtpoll

Twtpoll

Feeling democratic or looking to know the opinion of other before making a decision? Try Twtpoll. From simple Twitter polls to full fledged surveys the web app is capable of running an opinion campaign. Besides the free plans, Twtpolls has a lot of premium plans for power users.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

Twittercal

Twittercal

Twittercal is a web app that connects your Google Calender and the Twitter account. The app might come in handy when you are planning an event for your company or the next BBQ for friends and family.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

TwitterDMer

TwitterDMer

Need to quickly DM people with personalized messages? With Twitter DMer, you can now make each of your direct messages unique by specifying specific user details to use. Stock DMs are impersonal and might put off people, so use the app with caution!

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : No

Twittad

Twittad

Got a huge following and looking to find a way to make some money off them? Twittad helps businesses and individuals to send targeted @replies to accounts who mention specific keywords, key phrases or consumers tweeting near your business. Now I know where those spam mentions come from!

Category : Monetization
Complete OAuth Sign Up : No

BubbleTweet

BubbleTweet

140 characters of text is not cutting edge enough for you? Amaze your followers by sending them short video replies and messages using BubbleTweet. From their web app, you can also check out the videos made by others.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

GroupTweet

GroupTweet

GroupTweet turns a standard Twitter account into a group communication hub where members can post updates to everyone in the group using direct messages. When the group account receives a direct message from a group member, the web app converts it into a tweet that all your followers can see.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

Just Tweet It

Just Tweet It

Just Tweet It is a great place discover like minded people to follow on Twitter. Their directories are comprehensive and users can upload their own accounts into relevant categories for discovery.

Category : Discovery
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

TweetBeep

TweetBeep

TweetBeep is a personal Twitter digest. With this app you can keep track of conversations that mention you, your brand, your company, or a keyword and receive hourly email updates.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Np

Twittonary

Twittonary

The Twitter Dictionary shortly known as Twittonary, is the place to go if you cannot comprehend Internet jargon and lingo. Users can submit their own words to improve the database too.

Category : Utility
Complete OAuth Sign Up : Yes

Share Your Thoughts!

Which one is your favorite Twitter app? Do you use better alternatives?

As our list of reviews makes clear, the market for project-management apps is not an empty one. From the ever-popular Basecamp to free, open-source solutions such as TeamLab, project managers are not lacking for options.

Which is why, as one of our writers wrote recently, when it comes to project-management apps, “it’s less about how many features the app has and more about its usability and interface design.”

On that note, let’s see how Doolphy stacks up against the competition.

Overview

Doolphy's Dashboard

Doolphy is “an online project management tool that helps you to plan, check and control your company projects and all their associated tasks.”

With several pricing plans, Doolphy can be used to manage one project or 100 projects, and it includes features for task delegation, time tracking, expense reporting, user charts, file sharing, and project reports.

Getting Started

The account-creation process for Doolphy is quick and basic. Choose what kind of account you’d like (ranging from a free account all the way up to the enterprise level), give them your email address, create a password, tell them what country you live in and how you heard about them, then just confirm your email address through the email they send, and you’re ready to start your first project.

How Doolphy Stacks Up

Creating a project

I said above that, because of feature parity, the major selling point for project-management apps has to be its usability and design. Unfortunately, when I went to create my first project on Doolphy, I ran into my first red flag.

How Doolphy handles creating a project

It’s not that the design is ugly or that that process is cumbersome. It’s that neither the design nor the process suggests that Doolphy is trying to one-up the competition.

My response to its usability and design is subjective, of course, and maybe it’s not fair to critique what amounts to a standard web form. But compare Doolphy’s form to the “create a new project” form in 37Signal’s Basecamp, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Don't get excited. This is 37Signals.

Basecamp makes creating a project simple. Just name your project and tell them who has access to it. That’s it. The design of their form is basic, of course, but it’s the usability of it, the process of it, that sets it apart.

Competitiors 1. Doolphy 0.

Adding a Task

The detailed forms continue when you start adding tasks to your project. To be fair, comparing Doolphy’s process to Basecamp’s might be like comparing a combustible engine to a bicycle, since the competitive advantage of Basecamp is what its developers DON’T include in the application.

But what if we compare Doolphy’s task-creation process to, say, the task creation in Flow.

Here’s how Doolphy asks you to create a new task.

9 different fields in Doolphy.

Not only does Doolphy ask you to complete nine different fields before you create the task, but the form itself looks…pedestrian.

Here’s how creating a task looks in Flow, and I think you’ll agree that the difference is striking (there’s a reason why our review of Flow highlights its sex appeal).

Are you sure that's a web app?

Flow asks its user to fill out five different fields, with the option for more. Doolphy, as I said above, asks for nine. While Doolphy’s form fields are just as optional as Flow’s, the fact that Flow hides the complexity of the options is to its credit.

But more than just comparing the number of form fields, we have to compare the look and feel of those designs. With Flow, you can tell that the developers have put a lot of time and effort into making sure that their app looks and feels like a desktop application. But when you look at Doolphy’s form, you have wonder if the company even has a designer on staff.

Competitors 2. Doolphy 0.

Getting the big picture

Another area that reveals how little expertise Doolphy seems to have put into the usability and design of its application is the calendar feature.

A well-designed calendar should give the user a big-picture view of every task in the project. You should be able to scan the calendar to understand what has happened, what is happening, and what needs to happen. If the calendar wants to go the extra mile, it might even tell you who is responsible for what, and whether certain deadlines have already been met. And if it really wants to kick some butt, the calendar will not only sync itself with deadlines and delegations, but it will also let you create new tasks without having to click back to the task page.

But if easy-to-scan is the basic goal, and interactivity is the added bonus, then Doolphy’s calendar fails on both fronts.

Can you make heads or tails of that?

Compare Doolphy’s calendar to the one offered by Apollo, a project-management app we reviewed at the start of the year.

What a calendar should look like

Competitors 3. Doolphy 0.

I don’t mean to pick on Doolphy. I really don’t. But if it’s true that web apps in the project-management category succeed or fail based on their usability and design, then someone needs to make it clear that Doolphy still has a ways to go.

What I Like About Doolphy

I don’t want to come across as a curmudgeon, however. Doolphy does have some nice things going for it. While I don’t necessarily like the look and feel of the app, I do like how you can track your project budget and time, how you can generate a variety of reports (even more if you pay for the app), and how the dashboard includes progress bars on each task to tell you where everything is in the process.

Doolphy's nice dashboard

In fact, if Doolphy was the sole app in the category, I’d have no problem recommending it as a useful tool for both amateur and professional project managers.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately for Doolphy, the project-management category is flooded with apps that are better designed, easier to use, and more friendly to look at. It offers a rich feature set that would be helpful to any project manager, but with prices ranging from free to $134/month, a decent product comparison should probably lead a project manager to choose elsewise.

Sometimes it seems like it can be more difficult to run the business end of a job than to actually do the job. Keeping up with your expenses, rates and services, clients, and invoices can be a full time job in itself. The good news is, there are many great apps that can help you keep track of your invoices and the info you need for them, so you won’t have to worry about it.

One great invoicing app we’ve reviewed is Invoicera. Invoicera lets you bring your clients, services, products, and more together in a simple invoicing app, so you’ll spend less time billing and more time getting your work done. It’s a handy tool for freelancers and businesses of any size.

One of Invoicera’s best benefits is its reasonable prices for the hosted application, so you can scale your account as your business grows. Or, if you’d rather keep your invoicing data on your own servers, Invoicera recently launched a new self-hosted version of Invoicera. This lets you take advantage of Invoicera’s app while still keeping your billing data internal.

Best of all, we’ve got 5 free 6 month Invoicera Business accounts to giveaway to our readers. With this, you’ll be able to create unlimited invoices for unlimited clients with up to 4 other people in your team. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment below and let us know how you’d put an Invoicera account to use in your business. The contest will close at midnight CST on Tuesday, June 21, 2011, so make sure to get your comment in quickly!

Please Note: Envato staff or people who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

Twitter is a much loved social network. But it is one of those very few uber popular crowd favorites that sees hardly any new feature additions. Twitter team isn’t known for pushing updates and new features at the appropriate time. Unlike Facebook where something exciting is introduced every other week, Twitter updates usually show up once in a blue moon.

That’s exactly why I was surprised to a see a whole lot of new features roll in these past few days, one after another. From an in depth search option to photo uploading and a new follow button for websites, there is a feature targeting every user group. Let’s check them out!

Twitter Photos

Uploading images is a long awaited feature. Since it wasn’t available, users were forced to use third party apps like Twitpic and Yfrog to share their images. Both these services have garnered sizable traction and revenue and were taking some sheen out of Twitter’s brand and popularity. So this doesn’t come as a surprise feature. However, the interesting thing to note is that the service isn’t powered by Twitter’s own infrastructure.

Images are uploaded and served from the severs of the popular image sharing and upload service Photobucket. But, it isn’t necessary to have a separate account at Photobucket to upload images and the images aren’t cross posted at their service as well. This feature is slowly being rolled out to everyone and currently works with the web app and not in the official mobile apps.

Advanced Search

Twitter didn’t have a search option at launch and was the case for a long time before it acquired the third party Twitter search engine Summize. Till now the search feature was pretty bare bones and mostly relegated to searching for words in the tweets. But I must admit that I was blown away by the comprehensiveness of the newly launched Advanced Search options.

Twitter Advanced Search

Now you can search not only for tweets, but also can choose to search with or eliminate multiple keywords ala. Google Search. People search option in the same page helps you find accounts based on their account names and mentions.

Searching based on the mood of the tweets is a cool new addition. By searching for smilies like or , you can try to ascertain the pulse of the Twittersphere. You can search for Tweets including question marks too.

Place Search

Searching for tweets based on location is a fun feature you should really try. Tweets that have geo location information are searched and the search radius can be narrowed down to the exact distance that you have in mind.

Follow Button

This one is a very late addition, but is a very useful indeed. It does a better job than the Facebook Like button. It’s not easy for you to discover the Twitter accounts of your favorite reporters, athletes, celebrities, and other personalities. With the Follow button enabled, you can now see the tweets of the celebrity along with a option to follow them in as simple as a single click.

Follow Button

The best use case I could see from the launch partners was the implementation at IMDB. Being a movie buff, I always had the problem of discovering not only the accounts of my favorite stars, but also to determine the legitimacy of the account. Now, it’s just a walk in the park!

A lot of popular blogs and websites have integrated this functionality and if you are looking forward to add this to your own web page, head over here to get your embed code.

Automatic URL Shortener

URL Shortener

Short URLs are a major source spam in Twitter and often they tend to contain malicious links. Links in your tweets will now automatically be shortened to 19 characters with Twitter’s own t.co service.  As an added perk, all shortened URLs will be cross checked with the database of malicious URLs to ensure that all links stay clean. Nice!

Share Your Thoughts!

Do you think these new additions make Twitter more engaging and useful? Will you dump the familiar Twitpic or Yfrog in favor of the built in photo upload option?

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting W3Counter. The developer describes W3Counter as a free, hosted, easy-to-use website analytics solution for answering the key questions about your website: who’s your audience, how they find your site, and what interests them.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Real-Time Pulse Dashboard in W3Counter

See top referrers, searches, and more in W3Counter

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version of W3Counter:

1. Totally free web stats for most websites and blogs.
2. Over 30 real-time reports tell you everything about how visitors use your website.
3. Spy on the visitors on your website right now and see where they came from and what pages they’ve viewed.
4. Add widgets to your site to easily share your web stats.
5. Over 100 counter styles to choose from, from simple badges to real-time visitor counts on your site.

Requirements: Administrative access to your website
Price: Free; Pro Account available with extra features for $9.95/month
Developer: Dan Grossman

Google, in association with Samsung and Acer, is launching the new Chromebooks today, a set of notebooks that run Google’s cloud-based operating system. If you’ve already seen all the coverage of what exactly the Chromebook is, including on AppStorm, you’ll know that a Chromebook has no local storage, and all applications are in fact web apps, just like the type we review here.

The Chrome Web Store is, as Jarel Remick explains, a marketplace for web applications that puts regular apps into a marketplaces with ratings and reviews. If you’re a new Chromebook user (or, anyone who’s started using the Chrome browser), today’s review might help you in choosing which apps should be your first install and could be the ticket to replacing a traditional computer.

 

Google Docs

If you’re looking to get any generic productivity done – such as word processing and spreadsheeting – Google Docs is the best option for you. Docs is Google’s own productivity suite that features word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools of mediocre quality. They aren’t that fantastic, but they certainly do the job well.

Now, one of the biggest concerns for the Chromebook is what if you’re out of WiFi range and you end up with no 3G service? Luckily, Google has plans to bring offline functionality to Google Docs soon which should be of a massive help to those who need a reliable machine.

Price: Free

 

MobileMe

Editor’s Note: And what a change a couple weeks can make since this article was originally written. Apple has now decided to kill off their MobileMe services in lieu of iCloud. Additionally, it’s now uncertain if iCloud will only offer email services for native apps, or if they will offer rich web apps as before. For now, looks like Google remains the king of the hill for email.

MobileMe is Apple’s own service of email, calendar, online storage and device tracking web applications. If you’re not a fan of Google’s version of these services, Apple offers a better looking version for consumers willing to pay $100/year for the pleasure.

MobileMe has it’s own email, calendar and contacts clients alongside a storage service, named iDisk, and “Find my iPhone”, a service for tracking/wiping/locking iOS devices that have been lost or stolen. Of course, MobileMe has a beautiful online facade, but it’s oriented for use on native clients on any other platforms you use, like your iPad or iPhone.

Price: $99/yr – now discontinued

 

Aviary

Unfortunately, there’s no Photoshop or GIMP available for the Chromebook so owners will have to look into online alternatives if they want to do any image editing. Obviously, the same power of these native tools is not available, but there is some relief in the light apps available online. Anyone who’s looking to blur, sharpen, crop or otherwise lightly edit their images can do so in the Aviary web application. Simply upload your image, manipulate it with the sixteen tools available and then redownload.

If you feel like doing a little more advanced editing, the Phoenix editor features much more advanced tools including layer editing. It’s still not Photoshop standard, but as good (if not better) as other medium-power apps like GIMP.

A lot of people edit images, but Aviary does have homes for slightly less popular editors like audio editor Myna. This set of tools are quite frankly amazing and will feel very much at home on your new Chromebook.

Price: Free

 

TweetDeck

It’s hard to ignore the juggernaut of social media with one of 13 people in the world (over half a billion people) being on Facebook alone. Other countries have their own popular social networks, and it all adds up to an enormous market for apps like TweetDeck. If you didn’t know already, TweetDeck is a Twitter client that organises your social streams into multiple comments.

Don’t let the name fool you, however, as TweetDeck also monitors your Facebook and Foursquare feeds making it more of an aggregation tool than anything allowing you to conserve the time you waste freely on them.

Price: Free

 

Google Talk

Chromebooks come equipped with a webcam that’s ideal for video chat. Naturally, Google released one of the first Chromebook-oriented web apps that runs on it’s Google Talk service, allowing Chromebook owners (and anyone using the Google Talk service on any platform) to text or video chat.

Of course, Google Talk is not limited to just intra-Chromebook conversation. A Chromebook user can text or video chat with another Google user on their PC, their Phone or wherever.

Price: Free

 

JayCut

JayCut isn’t on the Chrome Web Store, but I couldn’t find anything of equal standard to compete with JayCut on there. We can all find ourselves needing a video editor at some point, whether it be to edit together the trailer for our hit movie, or just to string together some holiday snaps.

The light editor that is JayCut is based in an iMovie-ish interface, completely online where you are invited to upload clips and edit them together on a real timeline with overlay text and some backing music.

Price: Free

 

Rhapsody

Nope, Apple doesn’t care for you cloud-based citizens of the web just yet which means there’s no iTunes for you. As is the nature of the Chromebook, your music needs are most likely only going to be fulfilled if you decide to stream your music. Of course, Rhapsody is a major contender with ten million songs available on demand.

You may get some idea of having local-ish storage on your Chromebook as Google rolls out it’s music service that’s currently in beta, should you have a large music collection on another computer. Otherwise, you might have another option as Apple prepares it’s own online music service that’s apparently due to be integrated into one of our earlier mentions, MobileMe.

Price: $10/month after free trial

 

Picasa

While Mac owners enjoy the benefits of iPhoto’s photo management tools, those using a Chromebook must resort to a web app. In this case, you might find it convenient to share your time with Picasa, Google’s photo management tool.

Picasa’s online site features the ability to upload photos, organise them into albums and even play slideshows full screen. When you combine this right into your Chromebook, you should feel right at home when showing off your snaps from your vacation to New York, or when presenting images of your new offices to your shareholders.

Price: Free

 

New York Times

Most of us like to know what’s going on in the world, and turn to media organisations to help fulfil our desires. Already publishing applications for major mobile platforms like iOS and Android, the New York Times have a Chrome Web Store-listed app of their own that reorganises their website into a grid of stories, with filterable sections.

Of course, if you don’t feel like the New York Times is your news source of choice, there are also Chrome web apps for the Huffington Post, USA Today and NPR, plus a bunch of RSS apps that allow you to tailor your news.

Price: Free

 

Calculator

The calculator is a simple utility, but most within reach of a computer or a smartphone will opt for a soft, virtual one over the traditional device. Obviously, a Chromebook will lack some of the built-in accessories that a Windows or Mac PC has but the abundance of free replacements offer some resolution.

It’s quite simple. The calculator does calculating and nothing else, making it so straightforward that you need to install it.

Price: Free

Conclusion

I’ve been writing this roundup with the aim of finding replacement web apps to cover the tasks the native apps that reside in my MacBook Air’s dock undertake. Of course, you will never (or at least, not in the short term) get the power of Photoshop or Final Cut in a web application but these are some of the compromises you make when you invest only $350-$400 in a notebook.

As a secondary computer, though, a Chromebook can be a great choice and hopefully these apps restore some faith in an entirely cloud-based operating system. We’re interested to know your thoughts about the Chromebooks. If you’ve picked one up today, or plan to buy one in the near future, let us know what you think of it!

These days we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to online file storage/sharing solutions. There’s something to suit every user’s needs, from a photographer sharing an occasional image online (CloudApp) to the design studio sending across large files to their printing facility (YouSendIt), to the startup company road warrior who needs all his files in sync wherever he goes (Dropbox). It’s great that we have so many options but it’s also overwhelming at times.

Fluxiom aims to be the choice for professionals who need to store large files of a variety of types, be able to find and organize them easily, and quickly share them. It also allows users to receive files securely and makes sure they’re all in order. Is it right for you? Let’s take a peek and find out.

Overview

Fluxiom has been around for a few years now but has been updated over time to meet users’ changing needs. The first thing you’ll notice about Fluxiom is that it works mainly as a webapp and is far more suited as a file sharing solution than an online backup tool. With its detailed thumbnail view, desktop-like file handling experience and professional sharing options, it’s great for users who need to show their work to clients and collaborate with co-workers. They offer top-notch storage for your data in high-end data centers with redundant and off-site backups so your files are in good hands. Plus, uploads and downloads are quite fast.

Fluxiom's informative homepage

The app relies greatly on tags – you’ll need to tag your files in order to filter and share them. Other features include a dropbox to securely receive files, RSS feeds and multiple users on some plans.

Getting started

You can choose from five different plans when you sign up, including a 100 MB free-for-life plan. The plans differ in capacity (10 GB – 1 TB). Basic, Pro and Infinity plans allow you to create as many users as you like, while the 10 GB Solo plan is good for one user only. Registration is painless and you can try a free 30-day trial of any of the plans on offer.

You can upload files of any size and file type. Uploading on the webapp restricts you to one file at a time. If you want to upload more than one file you’ll have to zip them all up and then upload the zip file – which isn’t very user-friendly. As an alternative, the site offers simple desktop uploader software for Mac and PC, which allow quick and easy drag-and-drop upload of multiple files. These allow you to add and queue files for upload. The Mac app looks fine but the Windows app UI could use a bit of polish.

Fluxiom's uploaders for Windows and Mac

Getting your flux on

The fun begins once your files (called assets) are uploaded. The webapp will show thumbnails of each asset with their extensions so you know what each of them is at a glance. There’s a bar at the bottom for actions and a bar at the top for accessing the app’s sections, file search, and file filters (by type, status or tag). This interface is similar to a desktop file manager – move the slider to change the size of thumbnails, Ctrl/Cmd+Click or Shift+Click to select multiple assets.

The Assets View on Fluxiom

Besides thumbnails, you can also preview over 100 file types including Microsoft Office, Adobe CS, and video file types; image previews even feature EXIF data. However, there are some limitations here which are rather strange: You can’t preview MP3 files; with Word (DOCX), Powerpoint (PPTX) and PDFs, you can preview only the first page/slide.

A DOCX file preview on Fluxiom

The main strength of Fluxiom is to allow you to recognize, organize, find and share your files. The first thing you should do with your assets is tag them. The tags system feels a bit like Gmail‘s Labels feature. The menu bar on top features all your tags as filter buttons – clicking on any of them brings up the assets with that tag while hiding the rest.

Adding tags is a bit cumbersome – you’ve to first switch to the Manage Tabs screen by clicking the button on the right in the top menubar, then add tags, switch back to the Assets view, select assets and then assign the tag to them. One would expect this basic process to be easier. Furthermore, this process is mandatory if you want to share files.

Tagging files is cumbersome on Fluxiom

Sharing is achieved by creating Stages, which are mini-sites where you can share multiple files with friends, family or clients. To create a stage, you’ll need to have all the assets you want on it tagged with the same tag (e.g. website files june 2011). This means you can’t put assets with completely separate tags (e.g. website images and website layouts) on the same stage – you’ll have to add a common tag to all assets you intend to put on a stage. Again, not as simple or intuitive as I’d have liked. If you still choose to use stages, though, you’ll find a nice touch in that they are automatically updated when you add files to that tag. You can invite users (Fluxiom will send out an email) when you create a stage, and even add more users anytime later, or revoke their access whenever you need to.

Creating a Stage to share files on Fluxiom

Fluxiom also provides you with a dropbox where people to whom you give the link can upload files you can review and accept. This works well enough. There’s also customizable branding, wherein you can change the logo, account name and gradient above the top menubar for when visitors view your stages. Lastly, there’s a good search engine that can also search within files.

Conclusion

Fluxiom has some strengths as an online storage/sharing app but feels way too clunky for me to consider using seriously. I appreciate the approach they’ve taken to cater to professional users but it should have been easier to use and far more flexible. Mandatory tagging, single-tag stage sharing and single-page document previews feel archaic. I also found myself having to think through steps just to carry out simple functions like tagging.

There are several great alternatives out there: Huddle, while more focused on collaboration, keeps file sharing professional while making it easy to get things done; Box offers many of the same features with a simpler, friendlier interface. Even though I appreciate some of its features, I wouldn’t be thrilled about having to use Fluxiom. There’s a great app in there somewhere but at present, it’s in hiding. If you’d still like to check it out, take the free plan or the 30-day free trial for a spin.