CNET recently posted up the 2009 Webware Top 100 and I just wanted to highlight some cool webapps! (Images are from CNET Webware)

JamLegend

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the game Guitar Hero, this is similar in the idea, but online style complete with social networking features like profiles, commenting, and a easy to use interface.

Xmarks

A browser plugin that enables you to sync bookmarks across computers as well as discover new websites though your bookmarks. Also handy as a bookmark backup tool.

Digsby

This program connects together your online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, etc.) in one program.

Elance

An online system to hire  (basically outsource) people and manage these connections. The website also handles the money as well which is convenient.

Tripit

It combines all your travel info (which you forward to it by email) in an organized location and provides additional information to help your trip go more smoothly. There is also an iPhone app for Tripit.

Interested to see the rest of the top 100? Go to http://www.webware.com/100/.

So, as NASA is always doing awesome things, I wanted to explain about their recent successful landing on Mars of the Phoenix Lander. This robot was launched on August 4, 2007 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The goal of the mission is to find any evidence of water and to see if there is a “habitable zone” in the ice and soil of Mars.

The Phoenix itself is a static (non-moving) robot with a robotic arm, a bunch of cameras, a gas analyzer, and a microscopy, electrochemistry, and conductivity analyzer. These together are the tools to find signs of a place where live could have existed on Mars.

The Launch of the Phoenix Robot on a Delta 7925 on Launch Pad 17-A

An Artist’s Rendition of the Phoenix landing on Mars

What is cool about this particular Mars robot is that the mission is more “Web 2.0″ like. The mission has many cool videos, a Twitter feed (yes, that thing where you say what you are doing), and obviously a website and blog. But nonetheless, it goes to show how quickly new things catch on. You can check out their site at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/ and the Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix. The NASA site about it is at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html. There are also a bunch of videos on the Phoenix Mars mission at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/videos.php#edl_hud

On board the Phoenix is also a mini-DVD. On the DVD is content for future Martian explorers with sci-fi stories, art about Mars, and names of more than a quarter million people on Earth.

This mission is the first robot in the polar region of Mars, the sixth landing on Mars, and the third successful static lander on Mars. And obviously, NASA has much more planned for the future.

Well, Earth Day passed about a week ago, and I never got a chance to write a post. So here is the post I was supposed to write on April 22, 2008.

All of us have to type up documents and often times, we have to print out multiple copies for others to review and then that person has to edit them and print them again. The paper used in this process could easily be saved by online document apps.

Google Docs Screen-shot (From Wikipedia.org)

I know many of you, the readers, use Gmail. Did you know that Google also has a office suite online? And amazingly enough, it is called Google Docs. It is simple and easy to use. And one of the most shining parts of it is that you can collaborate with others on one document. Save paper, eliminate multiple copies, and best of all it is free! Included in the program is a word processor, spreadsheet editor, and even a presentation creator. All you need to use it is a Google Account, and go to http://docs.google.com/, so try it out. The interface is simple, quick, and clean. The experience is really enjoyable.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace (From ZDNet.com)

There are also many other apps online that help you accomplish this. Microsoft has the product Office Live Workspace. This integrates the Microsoft Office Suite with the internet. But the thing about the app is that you can’t actually write and edit on the site. But you can share, comment, and upload your document to the site. If you have Microsoft Office, I would recommend installing the plugin into Office. I personally don’t like having to have to go through so much to work on a document. I like how on Google Docs, everything is just there for me, or a collaborator, to go and work on it.

Zoho (From Wikipedia.org)

Zoho is currently one of my favorite online office apps (But, I do mainly use Google Docs because I can easily collaborate with my peers since many of them also have Google Accounts). It does a very good job making Microsoft Office users feel at home. The interface is much like Office (not the 2007 version) and is fast and easy to use. This is the most filled app with almost everything you can think of. It has the typical word processing and spreadsheet apps. But it also has a wiki creator, a database maker, a people manager (I have not tried this yet), and a few more. I would highly recommend trying this one out.

ThinkFree (From LifeHacker.com)

ThinkFree is another online app. I actually just found out about this one. Although this isn’t my favorite, it is still pretty good. The main thing that I don’t like about it is that it is slower than Google Docs or Zoho. It uses Java to run the editors and the loading times are just too long for me. But the product is well bundled with a easy to navigate interface, again similar to Microsoft Office, like Zoho, but is much, much more alike (look at the screenshot and you’ll see). It even has the whole ruler thing and a toolbar with the File, Edit stuff. It comes with apps similar to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Another app for notes is also coming soon. In Firefox, I have an issue with it in that the bottom toolbar is slightly cut off by Firefox’s own toolbar, but I’m not sure if it is the same for IE.

But if you have to print out drafts, please do it on the back side of another paper. This way we eliminate the cutting down of trees and help reduce waste. Of course, for a final draft, print it out on clean sheets of paper.

So those are the four main apps for online office work. If you already have a Google account, I would say to go with Google Docs. If you have Microsoft Office and would like to easily upload things onto the net, you could try Office Live Workspace. For an “at home feeling” for Office users, you can go with Thinkfree. But for an all purpose, easy to use program, go with Zoho. But the choice is up to you. All of them are free for personal use and allow you to bring your office docs online. Please leave a comment on which one you prefer, you own thoughts, or if you have another service you would like to mention. Again, Happy Earth Day and continue to keep our Earth clean and alive.

As most of you probably know, I am a very environmentally conscious person and I would do almost anything to help stop Global Warming. To know more about how to slow climate change, you can check out one of my previous posts for “Blog Action Day” (See here). But I just found out about a cool website called Breathing Earth that allows you to see the approximation of C02 emissions as well as the birth and death of people around the world, by country. It is a flash animation (done very well) with notification of death, birth, and when a country releases 1000 tonnes of CO2. The site also tracks the statistics from when you started watching the presentation. I hope this presentation gives you a good idea on what is happening on our “breathing planet” and that you’ll enjoy watching it too. Please spread the news about Global Warming and what people can do to stop it. And as always, I hope that you, the reader, will also try and prevent our planet from being destroyed by humans.

From Green-Blog.org

I recently stumbled (with StumbleUpon), this cool presentation (complete with music) by YTMND education council about the future! Although the graphics aren’t the best (no crazy Flash animations), the content is really good. It gives you an idea of what is to come. The site also gives you some thoughts to evaluate about life and Earth in general. Here is a link: http://thefutureofourworld.ytmnd.com/. I hope you like it!

I don’t have an iPhone, but I can say this is a pretty crucial part in the “iLife” of the iPhone. Apple also released the news that they will be providing an “App Store” (No more “jailbreaking”) as a part of the iPhone firmware. Here a developer can sell apps for free or for a price. If you are selling it, you get to keep 70% of your earnings and 30% goes to Apple. Otherwise, if your app is free, you don’t have to pay Apple anything. You will be able to download apps in June of this year.

iPhone App Store Icon/Logo

For now, you can download the SDK at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/
for free. Apple also gives you the option of joining their “iPhone Developer Program” which for individuals is $99, and for enterprises $299. This program will allow you to have access to a bunch of resources on their site and “code-level” support from Apple engineers.

Also, Apple has set up an “iFund” (ooh, very creative name. Just like the others iPhone, iPod, iMac, in other words, “i” EVERYTHING) which will fund 100 million dollars to iPhone developers (not one, obviously), and is managed by KPCB. Other than that, I don’t know much more about it. It also will act as a way for more people to get into developing iPhone apps which will not only make Apple happy but also iPhone users. But not only that, it’ll cause more people to buy the iPhone and use it.

So if you are one of those iPhone owners, you should be excited as this means you could play backgammon, Spore (yes, that intriguing life form game), or do whatever else you want (if you know how to code) and what others want.

For more info. check out CNET’s iPhone SDK Articles (here) and Apple’s iPhone Website (here). Remember, Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out on Sunday and if you go to Gamestop, they’ll be having a midnight release of the game and I might go to it.

The line between desktop apps and web apps are blurring. Adobe is one of the companies leading in the development of these desktop-like web apps. This is an open source platform based off of Adobe Flash. (Err, what else, it is from Adobe!) You can download the Flex SDK to develop web apps on any IDE (Integrated Development Environment) such as Eclipse. Adobe is also offering a program called Adobe® Flex® Builder™ 3 which you how to pay for. But if you are a student or educator, you can get it for free. (See here)

Adobe Flex Logo. Image from the English Wikipedia.

There are many apps already out there made with Flex. This includes a cool program called Pikeo, a photo sharing website. Complete with animations and transitions. Another one is similar to FotoFlexer, called Picnik. This one has many tols to edit photos and it even has an auto-fix feature.

Picnik, an online photo editor! Image from http://www.bollyball.com/

One of my favorite Flex apps now is Scrapblog, and guess what it does. Hmm….. Oh online scrapbooking! It includes a wide variety of photo editing tools and also the functionality to make quick and easy online scrapbooks with transitions and background music. And you don’t even need to sign up to start making online scrapbooks!

Scrapblog, and online Scrapbooker. Image from http://www.longworthblog.com/

Well, that’s it for now. You can also check out some other Flex apps at the Flex Showcase. There is no doubt that I’ll be reviewing more Flex apps as they come. So stay tuned!

I’m sure during this holiday season, you’ll be taking many photos. But not all of them may come out perfect, so you’ll want to do some editing. One way is by doing them locally on you computer with something like Picasa. As you can see from the title, we won’t be talking about editing locally but online.

FotoFlexer
(From http://www.makeuseof.com)

Recently, I stumbled oven something called FotoFlexer. This is an online image editor that is both free and has many features including the basic cropping and red eye fix, but you can also add Effects (“Painting”, “Sketch”) or turn your photo into a greeting card. Another great feature in FotoFlexer is layers, a feature not commonly found online. This is extremely useful in combining photos together. Also, a feature called “Smart Resize” is also very useful. Instead of the normal fashion of cropping, the program removes the parts in the photo with the least “action”. This way you can keep all the important parts while getting rid of parts of things like the sky or water. You can also put a “mask” on top of things you want to preserve, so faces won’t come out disordered. This feature can also make photos larger by copying repetitive parts like the sky.

With the advanced features, the application can sometimes lag or be slow, but mostly it works fine. The website also gives you a few sample photos to try out their editor.

I’ll probably post more to my blog over the Winter Break! Happy Holidays!

A search with Tafiti (Image from: WikiHow)

Tafiti is a Silverlight (“Microsoft’s Flash”) based research tool. It uses the Live search engine to power its results. On the right side there is a place where you can save pages for later reference, and you can stack them to for similar topics, you can also label the groups too, so you remember which stack is which. You can also save these to a Live Space or email it to others.
You can select what you want to search for from the little circle thing on the bottom left side. A nice feature is that you can easily “filter” the results (adding a second search term) by using the box at the top right corner of the results page.
A cool thing you can do is that you can change the results into a 3d “tree view” giving you a web like view of the results that you can rotate.
The thing with Tafiti is that although it is cool, it isn’t that useful as it uses the Live engine which isn’t that good. If Microsoft comes up with an app that will allow you to use any engine and integrate services and sites like Wikipedia and Digg, it could be a great tool.

So, have you noticed something?

Of course you have! Today over Labor Day with not much to do, Funknowledge got a face lift! I really hope you like the title of the Blog. I made it on Paint.NET with various letters from different logos. The “F” is the Fedora logo, the “u” in Fun is from the Universal Studios’ logo, the “g” in knowledge is part of GE’s logo, and the funny cut off “g” in blog is from Samsung’s logo (the edge of it). Obviously the “B” in Blog is the Blogger logo!

In addition to the title update, the scheme has changed too. I’ve used the previous one for about a year now, so why not change it to a different one!

Also, something that is more hidden. The Funknowledge Network has a new part! Now when you click on “Our Website” it goes to a similarly titled website (With the cool looking letters) on Weebly. This is the OFFICAL site, not the Googlepage, and definitely not the Awardspace one (which isn’t even continued anymore).

It has only a few things on it, but the best part of it is the “Tech Info” section. The article here are right now all from the Funknowledge Blog, with some revisions to suit the needs of an informational database. There probably are some parts not quite right, but it’ll be a good place to look for info on the latest tech. Some articles are not on there yet, so in the meantime, search my blog with the newly added Google Search feature for the article you are looking for!

If you have any comments, suggestions, or ideas contact me at funknowledge@gmail.com or submit it at the Survey on either the website or here (Also located on the sidebar after “Subscribe to my Blog!”. I’m not sure how well these forms work, so I might not receive your feedback, but I’m working on it!