SOMEWHAT FRANK

Spreed News Helps You Speed Read News

There is so much news content being produced by both mainstream and social media outlets these days that it harder than ever to get through all of it. Taking an academic approach to productivity and literacy Spreed News recently launched to try and help you read through your news faster, thus saving you time.

Simply Manage Email Like SMS Messages

I have written about email management a couple of times (here & here) and yet I still struggle to keep both my professional and personal emails uncluttered. So I am always looking for suggestions as to how to handle such a large bulk of email. Nonetheless, I just noticed an article by Mike Davidson which references to sentenc.es, a low-fi solution to email overload.

What is sentenc.es? Sentenc.es puts some rules around replying to your emails. Instead of replying to every email you receive with long-winded replies why not just pretend you are sending an SMS message and put some length parameters around your replies. Though it probably sounds like a joke, I think it actually is a good idea. You can choose from any of the sister sites at two.sentenc.es, three.sentenc.es, four.sentenc.es or five.sentenc.es depending on how brief you want your replies to be. It's so simple yet it might actually work - if you stay discipline that is.

New myAOL Startpage Is Coming Soon

So you want to organize all your stuff on the web in one place? A new myAOL is coming soon. The current myAOL is solely a feed reader that offers some recommendations. The new myAOL offers a personalized homepage experience with some additional bells and whistles.

Aside from an Ajax customizable homepage with drag and drop widgets to give quick click and go access to content and applications, myAOL also offers a few additional pages as part of the first time experience. The additional pages are called Mgnet (pronounced Magnet) and Favorites. myAOL Mgnet is an image driven content discovery and recommendations engine which offers a fun new way to find new videos, images and stories on the web. myAOL Favorites, recently highlighted by TechCrunch, offers feed reader integrated with a solid bookmarking product making it easy to manage and share all your favorite feed updates and places on the Web.

I am the product manager for myAOL and I just posted the video (shown above) on the new myAOL Blog. It provides a sneak peek at the product. Check out what Mike Arrington from TechCrunch has to say about the new myAOL.

Vyew: Save & Widgetize Collaborative Work Sessions

Vyew, a Berkeley, California browser-based collaboration and conferencing platform start-up, offers a feature-rich virtual workspace for collaboration. Originally launched as SimMeeting, in September 2004, Vyew was renamed in October 2005 to and has continued to improve its web conferencing tools and first-of-its-kind asynchronous collaboration capabilities.

Vyew recently launched out of Beta and today introduced version 2.5 which improves the tools and Vyewbook functionalities which help to organize and share your collaboration sessions. Interestingly, Vyew has created "Vyewlets" which are read-only widgetized versions of a VyewBook. They can embedded outside of Vyew on blog posts, Web sites, social networks, and any online page.

Vyew is currently offered for free with light advertising served within the application. If the ads bug you and you want a business version subscription prices starting as low as $6.95 per month.  For additional information on Vyew, check out one of the fine Vyew demos.

Bottom-line: Vyew for a free to low-cost online virtual collaboration suite with group collaboration capabilities and widgetized sharing capabilities.

Gradefix Helps Students Plan Study Time

Gradefix is an online tool that aims to help students with getting better grades by auto-generating an appropriate study schedule based on a student's availability.  A student simply enters all of their homework, readings, quizzes or exams and Gradefix does the rest. Gradefix uses a set of patented algorithms to look at how much time the student has available and then Gradefix calculates the optimal schedule for completing the tasks. Gradefix color-codes each class automatically as well as categorizes each task by task type with the letters "R" is for reading, "H" is for homework, "Q" is for quiz study, and "E" is for exam study. For more details on how to use Gradefix check out this instructional video.

In testing Gradefix, I found the application simple to use with a clean user interface as shown below. Gradefix makes it easy to print out a set study schedule as well as enables users to set up email reminders. Recently Gradefix also offered the ability to receive tasks list in RSS format. Currently Gradefix does not appear to offer a mobile component. It might be nice to start by offering the ability to send SMS text message task reminders.

Gradefix is free for up to 10 tasks and $5 per month for unlimited tasks. For more information on the product check out the Gradefix soapbox.

Bottom-line: Gradefix gives students a hand with task management by creating a study schedule for them based on their availability.

Empressr For Slick Online Presentations

Empressr offers the unique ability to create, share and store Flash-based slide presentations online with ease. Empressr aims to impress by offering the ability to incorporate rich media features, like streaming video and animation into an online presentation. Empressr has incorporated an easy to understand set of steps to help users create crisp looking presentations without prior knowledge of Flash technology. Empressr is free to use and store up five presentations on its secure servers and premium options are available additional presentation storage space. Finally, Empressr presentations use addressable URL to offers users the ability to share presentations with easy.

Empressr is easy to use and offers a great solution for anyone looking to create solid presentations without purchasing PowerPoint or other types of presentation creation software. The only negative I could see was that you cannot currently export your Empressr presentations for offline use. This could be troublesome in the case that a conference hall or other venue does not have an Internet connection. However, it appears Empressr understands this concern and is looking to address this issue with future enhancements.

Bottom-line: Empressr is an online application that allows you to easily create, share and store presentations. Take Empressr for a test drive for yourself here.

8apps Suite Of Productivity Tools

8apps, an online suite of productivity applications, recently was launched by Tokyo-based jonkenpon. The current suite consists of three applications which are all in private beta but will be released with time and as new applications are released. According to co-founder,  Jon Yongfook Cockle, the goal of 8apps is as follows:

"I’m hoping that in 8apps, I can provide a suite of 8 applications that provide both an indispensable function and a simple, easy-to-grasp user experience."

The current applications in the suite are called Handshake, Orchestrate and Blueprint have been briefly highlighted in this article.

The backbone of the 8apps suite is an application called Handshake which is a professional social network for users to make new contacts, strengthen existing relationships. It is more a contact management system that is integrated into the rest of the 8apps products as any contact in Handshake becomes accessible in the other applications.  The network enables users to weigh in on their contacts skills which creates an interesting profile graph as shown in the right rail of a profile.

Orchestrate helps you to keep track of your “to do” list or simple tasks. It offers the ability to color coat various lists for better organization. Lists can also be shared with contacts from Handshake.  Orchestrate was well received in its initial release and was previously mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.
 
Collaborate with Blueprint as it allows users to brainstorm online by interacting with a number of individuals from Handshake without forfeiting control of the process. The project manager can control the look and feel of the layout by dragging and dropping items around the board.

Maybe it is the name, the inviting interfaces, or simple productivity apps but something about 8apps reminds me of 37signals. Nonetheless, I look forward to the official launches of these and other 8apps products to the masses.

For more information check out this article on jonkenpon which offers two screen-casts explaining the applications in more detail.