Archive for January 2009
Up
Here’s a trailer for Disney/Pixar’s upcoming film Up. It’s about an old man who suddenly flies into the air, and his house is hanging by a truckload of balloons. He joins a young wilderness scout and goes on adventures. It isn’t really a “trailer”; it doesn’t really tell us the plot. Anyway, enjoy. Up comes out this spring.
Songsmith
Songsmith is a program from Microsoft, but the part I want to focus on is their promo advertisement. It plays out like a musical out of Disney or something. Here’s the storyline:
A father must make a jingle to advertise glow-in-the-dark towels, but he can’t think of anything. Luckily, Songsmith is there to help! (Of course.) The man’s daughter shows him how to use Songsmith, and pretty soon, everybody is using it! (Of course.) And they’re all one big haappy family! Awwwwwww!
The tech news blog TechCrunch calls it “the worst promo ad ever”, but I’d probably call it that and the cheesiest promo ad ever. Here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/v/3oGFogwcx-E&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&border=1
And I have a song of my own. It’s not very good, but here it is:
I bet you will never guess
The computer the girl is using
To make her brand-new songs.
Well gue-ess what–it’s a Mac!
And that is just plain wrong.
The stickers couldn’t cover it up! Songsmith only works on Windows anyway! (And it’s available for a 6-hour trial download here.)
(Note: Just because the promo ad is cheesy, it doesn’t mean that the program itself is a failure. It looks like it would be a fun little program.)
Webs.com
This post is tagged “Cool sites”, and wouldn’t you know it, Webs.com allows you to make your own website.
All you have to do on the homepage is enter a site address you want, and pick a password. Then click on the green button. Once you’re done filling out all the fields, you get to pick a template. There are about 7 pages of templates to choose from, and each template has different color “schemes” as well. Once you’re done with that, you pick the Webs.com package that you want. There’s a “free” option, which is really nice. (You won’t get your own domain name (like http://www.mysite.com) and your site has ads on it (but only one at the top), but it’s a decent plan.)
Then comes the fun part: editing your site! Webs.com has a pretty neat page editor, and when you visit it for the first time, there’s a little “wizard” that helps you design your perfect website. You can change the font, change the colors, use bolds and italics, add HTML and more. You can even add “widgets”, which are things that you can place on your site, like multimedia, communications, games and more. Have fun!
Evernote
If you’ve wanted to remember short little snippets of something on the web, but don’t want to have to remember all those web links, Evernote may be for you. You can highlight some text, click on the Evernote button and just add it to your Evernote account. Then, you can view your account. It displays all the things you’ve saved. Pretty neat, huh?
Evernote also has a Windows and Mac computer program. It functions the same way as the Evernote browser plug-in. You can search through all your stuff using keywords. Evernote will narrow it down to your search. Evernote can even recognize handwritten text.
To start, you’ll need an Evernote account. It’s free to get one. Enjoy!
There’s also a video on YouTube that explores more of Evernote. Here it is!
http://www.youtube.com/v/i_ncr1Ee9e8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1
Yelp
If you’ve ever wanted to get reviews of places but don’t know where to look, Yelp may help you out. Yelp offers user reviews of restaurants, hair salons, malls and even doctors and dentists. All you have to do is type in the place and where it’s located. I could enter in the type of place (like “hamburgers”), or I could enter a specific place, like “McDonalds”. Then just type in the location of where the spot is. You’ll get honest reviews from Yelp users. Some are good, and some are bad. If you want, you can write your own review as well, although you’ll need a (free) account to write one. Yelp also has an iPhone application if you want to search on the go.
Some of the reviews may have an amount of foul words in them. I only recommend the site, but don’t take into account the “personalities” of the reviews.
Evite
If you have a party coming up, then why not make it easy by sending out online invitations? You may remember me talking about a similar, but more feature-packed service called MyPunchBowl. In fact, MyPunchBowl is Evite’s biggest competitor.
Evite allows you to send online invitations to your party guests. They’ll get an email with all the details. It has a “theme” and a picture to go along with it that you customize when you make the invitation. Your guests can say “Yes” or “No”. The evite comes along with an RSVP number so your guests can call you if they have any questions. They can even add comments. The site also has great party ideas, too.
To make invitations, all you need is an Evite account. It’s free to sign up. Have fun!
Popcorn Bytes 