Techcrunch - 2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day

It’s time for my annual list of technology products that I love and use every day. This is the (wow) fifth year I’ve done this. Here are my previous lists: 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006. The scope of the list has changed over time. In 2006 it was just about websites. Now the list includes other web services, some desktop software and even a few gadgets.

These aren’t necessarily newly launched products (see Daniel Raffel’s post yesterday for a solid list of great new products). This is a simple list of the tech products that are an integral part of my day – work or play. Some have withstood the test of time and I just can’t live without. Others are newcomers that have captured my imagination.

I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them. There are now 24 products on the list.

Just three of these products have been on the list all five years: TechMeme, Skype and Wordpress. As I said last year, TechMeme continues to be the news aggregator I check multiple times per day to keep up on tech news (although Google News is becoming more important over time). Skype is the instant messaging and VoIP platform that I use most often at work and with friends. And Wordpress software powers all of our blogs.

I’ve added 13 new products to last year’s list: Android, Apple Magic Mouse, Dropbox, Evernote, Foursquare/Loopt/Gowalla, Google Docs, Google Voice, Kodak Zi8, MOG, Skitch and Spotify.

I’ve removed seven products from the 2009 list: 1-800-Free-411, Digg, Friendfeed, Google Reader, iPhone, MySpace Music and Zoho.

There are lot of products that I use daily that aren’t on the list for various reasons. My iMac and MacBook Pro and Droid phone, for example, aren’t on the list specifically even though all three products are exceptional. I don’t really have a browser preference, although I suspect Chrome will be on the list next year. And there are lots of websites and services, likePosterous and Amie Street, that I use regularly but just didn’t make my arbitrary cut. We also use Bit.ly extensively on the site for URL shortening, and EventBrite andAmiando for event ticketing.

Here’s my 2010 list of tech products that I love and use every day:

visit techcrunch  to see the products they love!

Filed under  //   Top Products   2000's   2010   products   techrunch  
 

30 top apps from Shakespeare to South Park

HIS GIRL FRIDAY app

His Girl Friday, a 1940 comedy starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, one of the classic films that can be viewed on the Joost app Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Columbia

MUSIC

1 Spotify (free to download, £9.99 monthly subscription) With more than three million UK users, this music streaming service lets you chose from over 6.5m tracks and listen to other users' playlists (including Aural Contraceptive, a playlist of Charlie Brooker's favourite passion killers).

2 REM (free)

A band that has always embraced technology (in 2008 they debuted their latest album on Facebook), REM have released an app that includes all the usual band-specific features – song clips, band/tour info – plus the facility to stream videos from their entire career. (Nothing beats "Everybody Hurts" on landscape mode.)

3 Classical Music Master Collection (£1.19)

Packed with 800 complete tracks (100 hours of music) by the great composers including Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Bach, this app, currently discounted from its original price of more than £600, is this year's biggest bargain.

4 Shazam Encore (£1.79)

Play a seconds-long sample of any song (off a radio, for example) and this app – one of the App Store's biggest hits – identifies it, before linking to iTunes and recommending other similar music.

5 Play Ligeti (free)

This interactive app from the ENO lets users explore (and compose their own discordant version of) the car horn prelude from György Ligeti's 1970s avant garde opera Le Grand Macabre.

6 London Philharmonic Orchestra (free)

Combining select LPO recordings (recent additions include Dvorák'sRequiem and Brahms's Hungarian Dances), with video performances, podcasts, concert info and links to iTunes, this app sets the bar for resident orchestras.

7 Lady Gaga iOKi (£2.99)

Typically pioneering, Lady Gaga lends her name and music to an exemplary karaoke app, through which you also have access to a complete karaoke library of tracks in every genre. Cue "Sweet Caroline".

8 Bachtrack for iPhone (free)

Search for classical concerts, ballets and operas by composer, performer, orchestra and location anywhere in the world months in advance and book tickets too.

9 Simplify Music 2 (£4.99)

With this app you can listen to your entire digital music collection from your home computer streamed live to your iPhone, and access the music collections of up to 30 friends.

EBOOKS

10 Stanza (free)

Offers access to more than 50,000 free ebooks (from Arthur Conan Doyle to Paolo Coelho), with the option to download the latest bestsellers should The Lost Symbol not have made it into your stocking this year.

11 The Red Apple (£0.59)

From Winged Chariot, which also published one of the first children's picture book for iPhone The Surprise, comes this beautifully illustrated tale by Feridun Oral of a rabbit foraging in the snow.

12 William Shakespeare Collection (£1.19)

Reason not the need to download this exemplary app, which delivers an enviable compendium of Shakespeare's 40 plays, 154 sonnets and six narrative poems to your pocket.

13 Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness (Soundtrack Edition) (£2.99)

This graphic novel biography of Cash's life, covering his 1956 sessions with Presley, 1968 concerts in Folsom Prison and 1990s comeback, boasts a feature to synchronise your reading with iTunes-purchased music.

14 A Book of Nonsense (£0.59)

This app of Edward Lear's 1846 collection of limericks reproduces the original whimsical ink drawings by Lear with each of the 112 witty verses.

15 Comics (free)

Along with iVerse and Dark Horse Comics, this must-have app for comics fans gives access to more than 70 free titles (including the made-for-iPhone comic Box 13, about the escapades of mystery novelist Dan Holiday) plus over 700 paid-for comics.

16 McSweeney's (£3.49) From Dave Eggers's publishing house, this app delivers exclusive content (short stories, films, interviews) from the likes of Spike Jonze, Miranda July and James Franco.

17 Bunny Munro (£9.99)

This enhanced version of Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro about a middle-aged drug-addled sex maniac comes with a synchronized audiobook voiced by Cave, videos of Cave reading and a soundtrack for the totally immersive experience.

FILM/TV

18 Joost (free)

Like the Babelgum app (through which you can watch all of Sally Potter's film Rage), this video app streams music clips, television episodes (such as Peep Show) and classic films (including Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and His Girl Friday starring Cary Grant).

19 Empire Movie Guide (£2.99)

Like Movie Genie (the app for online site Internet Movie Database), this is a must-have for film buffs with over 9,000 Empire magazine reviews, browsable by title, actor and director.

20 Charlie Chaplin: Short Film Collection Vols 1-5 (£1.19 each)

Turn your iPhone into a cinema with these five apps, which contain more than 30 short films by Chaplin including Mabel's Busy Day, The Masquerader and The Rounders, plus Chaplin trivia and film summaries.

21 Cartoon Classics (£0.59 each)

Starring Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Superman, Betty Boop and Felix the Cat, this series of five Cartoon Classics apps equips you with some of the best cartoons of the 40s and 50s for amusement on even the slowest bus journeys home.

22 South Park Avatar Creator (£0.59)

Embracing the anarchic spirit of the original series, this app lets you create your own South Park character – hair style, clothes, accessories – then save it to your contacts list as a friend or relative.

23 The Guardian iPhone app (£2.39)

We would say this, wouldn't we. But self-promotion aside, our recently launched app, giving you access to the best writing, image galleries and podcasts from the Guardian and the Observer, is a smart, user-friendly way of staying up to date while on the move.

MUSEUMS/ART

24 Love Art: National Gallery (£1.79)

Scroll through masterpieces by Da Vinci, Renoir and Rembrandt on this app, which contains high resolution images of more than 250 works from the National Gallery's collection as well as video and audio commentaries.

25 Yours Vincent: The Letters of Van Gogh (free)

From Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, this app breathes new life into the artist by dramatising his letters. Listen to audio readings and through videos and picture galleries see how his painting style evolved.

26 London: British Museum Guide & Audio (£2.99)

In addition to comprehensive visitor info, this app contains 60 minutes worth of audio commentary on many of the museum's key exhibits including the Parthenon sculptures, the Benin bronzes and the Rosetta Stone.

MISCELLANEOUS

27 iTheatre (free)

An essential resource for theatregoers with listings, reviews and secure booking for all West End shows. The comparable Edinburgh Festival app iFringe, containing maps that locate every venue, is nothing short of a godsend.

28 Google Earth (free)

With access to not only locations but also 3D models of buildings around the world (as well as photos via the Panoramio feature), this is still the best app for architectural enthusiasts.

29 TED (free)

This app streams inspirational talks from Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conferences round the world with recent speakers including Gordon Brown, Steve Jobs and Al Gore (though Malcolm Gladwell talking about spaghetti sauce still tops the bill).

30 Wikipanion (free)

Currently the best Wikipedia app available, this indispensable reference tool is as useful as the Oxford Dictionary of English app – which, at £17.99, is rather pricier – and will help you make mincemeat of any pub quiz.

 

TenYears: The Biggest Product Flops of the Decade

 

ten-yearsIt’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “TenYears” list.

We already did the biggest losers in the tech industry but why not talk about the biggest product flops? Here are a few of the biggest failures of the decade, starting with one monster release from a fairly well-known company.

Winner Loser: Windows Vista

Microsoft has had a hard decade. They made billions, sure, but they haven’t led in mindshare since Windows NT. Geeks flocked to Linux in the early aughts and LAMP now rules the roost when it comes to web servers. Their mobile offerings are roundly and regularly panned and their incremental fixes to products have frustrated users.

Speaking of incremental fixes, how about Vista? When the product launched on January 30, 2007 there was quite a bit of fanfare but no substance. I still remember standing in line to hit the launch party and then listening to Angels and Airwaves play their hit that year. Then Bill said something about burning DVDs and the rest was a blank. Vista disappeared, mostly because it wasn’t “Longhorn,” the long-awaited upgrade to Windows that would add a slew of server-side features. Businesses didn’t buy it and consumers didn’t want it.

Fast forward to 2009 and Windows 7 is on everyone’s lips and Vista is just a bad, bad memory. It wasn’t a horrible OS. It was just not enough to be worth users’ time.

Runners Up

OLPC

 

The One Laptop Per Child project was supposed to change the world. By sending cheap technology into developing nations, you would offer kids a ticket out of ignorance and poverty. Sadly, however, corporate infighting and the glare of reality made the sub-$100 laptop idea a failure.

Will we ever see something like the OLPC project come to fruition? Sure, but manufacturers will have to stop with the posturing and pony up some cash for the future.
HD DVD

 

Poor Toshiba. They were so excited about HD DVD a few years ago but then one day – one CES, actually – the entire product just went up in a puff of smoke. Competing high definition DVD standards were were silly and Sony’s deep pockets and connections won the day. But don’t count your laurels too soon, Sony: streaming and downloads will eat your Blu-Ray lunch with a quickness.
N-Gage

 

Admit it: when you first heard of N-Gage you wanted it to work. You wanted engrossing, good games on your cellphone. You wanted to go into a store and buy games like you’d buy Nintendo cartridges. You wanted EA et al. to amaze you.

Sadly, Nokia messed things up with garbage hardware then even more garbage service offerings. In the end, the side-talking N-Gage was a joke when it launched in 2003 and then the iPhone took over mobile gaming. End of N-Gage.
Filed under  //   Losers   Tech Industry   Ten Years   Vista   Windows  
 

Deviant Art Success!

The 100 Millionth Deviation on DeviantART Is A Gay Sex Story, But I’m Going To Show You This Arctic Unicorn Instead
by Erick Schonfeld on December 29, 2009

On deviantART, the site for anyone who thinks they are an artist, member submissions are known as “deviations.” The site’s been around since 2000, attracts 33 million monthly visitors (comScore), and just recently passed its 100 millionth deviation. It is, appropriately enough, a short story about gay sex.

I could quote from it, but it is more of a deviation from good writing than anything else. I might as well just show the “Blizzard” drawing above featuring some sort of black unicorn frolicking in the snow with an arctic fox. How should I put this? There are some creations which are better left in a drawer and maybe shouldn’t be shared with the world. Seriously, would you pay $150 for a print of this drawing?

I’m sure there’s some great art on deviantART among the 100 million submissions of drawings, photos, videos, and stories, but they are hard to find among the 99.9 million pieces of mediocrity which seem to fill up the site. It’s as though every kid from your high school art class who dropped out to draw dragons is on the site, telling the other drop-outs how amazing their art is. Some of it is so bad that it’s given rise to parody blog divineART, whose slogan is, “When art becomes visual pollution!”

But, hell, what do I know? Those 33 million visitors a month are enough to classify the site as mainstream (shhh, don’t tell).

Filed under  //   Art   Deviant Art   Gay Sex  
 

Xbox 360 laptop mod - Engadget Galleries

Media_httpwwwblogcdnc_gtegi
via engadget.com

http://www.engadget.com/photos/xbox-360-laptop-mod/#2558983 for more angles!

Filed under  //   MOD   gaming   laptop   x-box  
 

Technology in 2010

via guardian.co.uk

This is an interesting video predicting the events and key factors that will determine how we use and see technology in 2010. Visit http://tinyurl.com/y9rf3jw to see Technology in 2009.

 

Not Fair (Shorn Star Remix) *PREVIEW*

Not Fair (Shorn Star Remix) *PREVIEW*  by  ShornStar
via soundcloud.com

Filed under  //   Lily Allen   Music   ShornStar   remix  
 

Intel Are Producing top Notch Ads!

via youtube.com

 

Thank God I'm not that well off!

Call for universities to charge well-off students £30,000 a year

Former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee says poor have been subsidising the rich for too long

A leading economist has called for students from well-off families to be charged the "market rate" of up to £30,000 a year to go to university.

David "Danny" Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, said the "poor have been subsidising the rich" for too many years.

Writing in today's

"What is crazy is that people are prepared to pay all that money to send their kids to private school – almost £30,000 a year to go to Eton – but they are not prepared to pay the money to go to university," Blanchflower said. "Universities are strapped for cash and need more money. So you make the rich pay the market price and use that money to fund the poor."

The economist is a professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, an American university that is a member of the Ivy League. "People there pay $50,000 [£31,300] a year, the real price of education, and we are flooded with applicants," he said. "But there is financial aid for half the students. We have a 'needs-blind' system [with financial support for families who cannot afford the fees]. That is much more egalitarian than any UK university."

To those who object to charging the middle classes more for university, Blanchflower said: "The poor have been subsidising the rich. And now the rich are shouting because they are losing their subsidy – because they are paying £3,000 to go to Oxford and they should be paying £30,000." Under the system he was proposing, top universities might charge tens of thousands of pounds but others would ask for much less. Students would have to consider the cost against the potential rate of return.

At Dartmouth, Blanchflower claimed fees helped to "focus the mind", with students turning up to lectures, not dropping out and more likely to choose subjects that made them most employable. But while he called on the rich to pay more for university, he also lambasted the government for withdrawing so much funding. "I think for them to be cutting from education right now is nuts."

Ministers said they were unable to comment on Blanchflower's calls because a major inquiry into university tuition fees, chaired by the former BP chief Lord Browne, was under way. Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said it was "insulting" to suggest people should shoulder more of the cost during such tough times.

The National Union of Students warned that such a system could create a "financial gulf" between the richest and poorest universities. Aaron Porter, vice-president of the NUS, agreed in principle with the idea that those who reaped the benefits of university should pay. He said graduates could make contributions during their working lives depending on how much they benefited financially. "So the millionaire graduates that benefit subsidise the public servant graduates that don't."

Others gave a cautious welcome to Blanchflower's intervention. Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the

 

Skins is one American remake that could work

It's not the sex and drugs that makes Skins groundbreaking TV. Let's hope MTV's US version keeps some of the show's original spirit alive

Skins series three

Skins stars ... Naomi, Freddie, Effy, Cook and Pandora. Photograph: John Wright/amarang.com

Spoiler alert – don't read this unless you've seen series three of Skins in its entirety

MTV America is going to remake Skins, but they'll "preserve the authenticity" of the E4 original. Honest. Whisper "Remember theAmerican As If? Neither do we!" all you like, but with series creator Bryan Elsley on board to write and produce, there's a fighting chance that the Bristol-to-Baltimore exchange could succeed. And tonight's episode shows exactly what a good deal the MTV audience will be getting.

People talk about Skins as groundbreaking television when what they really mean is that it's explicit because it shows teenagers getting wasted and having sex. But that's only a small part of what makes it work. There's also the cartoonish silliness, filthy black humour and a tendency towards understated emotion that packs a weighty punch. Take tonight's episode (on Channel 4; it was on E4 in March). Effy and Cook are on the road to Bonnie and Clydesville, leaving them, like the central Effy-Cook-Freddie love triangle, off-screen until the big finale. The love story between Emily and Naomi is left to shine, and it does, with a relatively straightforward, teen-prom-movie blowout. Cheesy as it is, in the best possible way, it manages to completely upstage Freddie and Effy's brooding, thwarted love. Even writer Jamie Brittain was surprised at how popular the two girls became; he promised to focus on them far more in the new series to catch up with all the fan forum love.

Skins has form on its gay storylines – Maxxie didn't bother with any agonising soul-searching about his sexual identity - so it's no surprise that they handled it well. It's that, not the magic mushrooms or the sex-while-skiving, which makes it "groundbreaking" TV. Out of all the main characters, only Naomi and Emily have a happy ending. Before they get there they have the necessary drama, of course, but it's not so much about the usual suspects of prejudice or fear or angst, as it is the uncertainty of first love. So there's the real spirit of Skins, and if MTV preserves it, there'll be no need for mutterings about Kath and Kim orCoupling.