Stop Being A Click Zombie With Qazzoo

How many hours do you spend online looking for that awesome pair of shoes you saw on TV the other day? How about when you’re looking for your dream house in your dream neighborhood? How about when you’re searching for that new sick action figure of your favorite supervillain? These days, consumer search takes a lot of time and energy just to find exactly what you are looking for and you can find yourself easily lost in endless ads and other distractions. The same can be said if you are a business. It can take a lot of money and effort in reaching your target market. A new consumer search engine called Qazzoo aims to eliminate the need for endless searching for both consumers and business owners.

How Does Qazzoo Work?

Qazzoo essentially just asks you, the consumer, what you need, where you are, and other helpful information about yourself. Then it lets businesses respond with offers that meet the consumers’ needs. Basically, Qazzoo makes it quicker and easier for consumers and businesses to find each other online.

That Doesn’t Sound Like A Search Engine To Me

It’s not your traditional search engine where you input a search term and you go through hundreds of search results. Qazzoo just asks you to fill out your profile with as much information as you are comfortable with and that would be the basis of how businesses find you. This service is not meant to replace the good old fashioned search engines, though. It is meant to complement it. While you search actively for the products, properties, or services that you want, your Qazzoo profile is there to attract different offers from businesses who think that they can offer you what you are looking for.

What’s A Click Zombie Anyway?

A click zombie is you when you are spending endless hours rummaging through social media posts from your favorite brands and companies, advertisements found on different websites, and other traditional ways of how businesses promote their products and services. These strategies, while effective most of the time, come with different distractions that may bring you to an endless parade of links to click, making you forget what you’re looking for in the first place.

How Secure Is It?

Since consumers are required to give as much information about their lives and preferences as possible to make it easy for businesses to determine what they can offer buyers, there is surely a question of security. Qazzoo makes sure that the consumer is totally in charge of their profiles so they can add or omit certain details at any time.

What Can It Do For Businesses Exactly?

Qazzoo lets business owners search, select, and connect with consumers who are looking for products and services that they are offering. This means on top of placing expensive ads and implementing elaborate social media campaigns to spread the word about their services and products, they can also reach the exact people that are actually interested in what they are offering.

The Bottom Line

Qazzoo offers benefits for both consumers and businesses as it makes the connection between the two entities easier to establish. However, it may not be welcomed with open arms by people who are not comfortable putting a lot of their personal information in a profile that is openly searchable by businesses even if it is secure.

What’s New in Dropbox?

If you have been using Dropbox, the most popular cloud file sharing service around, for a while now, you would now that it has been constantly churning out new features every so often. One of the biggest developments started in December of last year with the introduction of the new Dropbox app for Android devices.

It was followed up in February with the feature that lets Android users to automatically upload photos from their smartphones to Dropbox. More recently, the changes have come to the Dropbox website itself. If you haven’t been using Dropbox regularly or if you haven’t used it at all, here’s a little rundown on what’s new with the service and maybe you’ll change your mind and use it again.

Dropbox Android App 2.0

The latest version of the Android app is optimized for the latest version of the Android platform, Ice Cream Sandwich. Along with this capability to support ICS is a bunch of new features such as bulk upload, file renaming, Favorites, and single-tap access to actions. While these features can’t really be considered new additions to the Dropbox service itself, they are valuable improvements in the Android app’s usability. The app is now definitely more efficient thanks to the ability to rename files, upload multiple files, and single-tap access to file and folder actions.

Camera Upload

Photos saved on your smartphone can now be automatically uploaded to Dropbox whether you are using a Wi-Fi connection or your data plan. Photos are uploaded in their original size and quality so you can preserve them in the cloud without diminishing their quality. There’s no issue in privacy as well since all uploaded photos are placed in a private folder in your Dropbox account named “Camera Uploads”. And if you’re wondering if you can finally view your photos in an easier way with better quality, that would bring us to the new Dropbox website.

A Prettier and More Powerful Website

The previous Dropbox website was already clean and intuitive, but now it looks and works better, giving users a generally more comfortable and more efficient experience. The Action Bar is the most notable improvement on the site as it sits on top of your screen and offers you all the tools you need to manage your files. These tools are also available in the new right-click menu.

A new thumbnails feature and built-in photo viewer now make viewing and managing your photos easier and much more fulfilling. The photo viewer lets you view photos and videos using your entire browser screen so you’ll get to experience their beauty and awesomeness at the largest size your browser can allow.

As for usability, the Dropbox website now has drag-and-drop capability and keyboard shortcuts, as well as click-dragging. These new features make managing your files easier and faster, a real treat for people who have a lot of stuff on their Dropbox account.

The Bottom Line

Not everyone will find Dropbox and similar services appealing for one reason or another, but for people who are using Dropbox, these new features and developments are definitely welcome additions to their daily lives.

Say Hello to Facebook Messenger for Windows

Facebook Messenger for Windows has been ready for download for a couple of months now but most of us are still unaware of its existence. Its download link was leaked late in 2011 and it took Facebook 3 months or so to get rid of existing bugs and test the application before publicly announcing that the application is ready to be downloaded.

What is Facebook Messenger for Windows?

Simply put, it is a desktop client that lets you chat and send messages to your Facebook friends without the use of that pesky web browser. This means you can move around on your desktop and use other applications and still get easy access to your Facebook chat windows without switching back and forth form your web browser.

In addition to chat and private messaging, Facebook Messenger also gives you notifications of new comments, tags, and more just like what you get on the Facebook website. The latest updates from your friends can also be viewed via the ticker. It’s like a mini Facebook right on your desktop that eliminates the need for you to constantly open your browser to see if there are new notifications or updates.

What operating system does it run on?

For now, only users of Windows 7 can install and use this application. The Facebook Messenger team is currently working on a Windows Vista version. No such luck for users of Windows XP and earlier version of Windows, though. Tough.

Does it require a separate login if I’m already logged in to the site on my browser?

Initially, no. You will be logged in to Facebook Messenger the first time you use it, that is of course if you are already signed in to Facebook.com. After this first use, your login sessions for Facebook Messenger will be different from your Facebook.com sessions.

Can I view notifications, messages and items on the ticker on Messenger?

No. Clicking on notifications, links to messages and items appearing on the ticker will open pages on your web browser. Make sure you’re logged in to Facebook.com to get a seamless Facebook experience across your desktop and Facebook.com.

Does Facebook Messenger have the same features as Facebook.com Chat?

Unfortunately, no. Group chats and video calls are still not supported by Facebook Messenger for Windows. Editing settings and limiting chat visibility are also features that — for now — is stuck in Facebook.com. These settings can still be applied by changing them on Facebook.com, which means your privacy settings and other preferences that you have set on Facebook.com will also be applicable to your Facebook Messenger application.

Installation

Installing Facebook Messenger only requires you to download the installer and that’s it. There’s actually no installation wizard or preferences to set.

The Bottom Line

While people who are always on Facebook.com (spending hours and hours on it without closing their browser) may not find Facebook Messenger for Windows compelling enough to install on their desktops, people who aren’t as obsessed probably will. It has a lot of room for improvement if it wants to be a legitimate desktop messenger application but for now, it can settle for a really efficient way of staying on top of Facebook without actually being on Facebook.com.

Stay On Top of All Your Social Media Interactions with FanMix

For social media enthusiasts, tools that help you manage multiple accounts are life savers especially if your reputation and even your business depend on engaging people and participating in social media conversations. We already have these tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. However, managing multiple accounts and keeping up with multiple conversation threads are two entirely different things. For the latter, we now have a tool for it and it’s called FanMix.

What in the world is FanMix?

FanMix is a web-based tool that lets you create, track, and participate in social media interactions across multiple networks. From a single dashboard that looks a lot like your email inbox (particularly Gmail), you can respond to people on different networks, keep track of all your conversations, and of course, start new ones.

The Gmail inbox-esque design of this tool goes beyond the look of your Gmail inbox — it actually acts like your trusty old Gmail inbox with a Priority Inbox feature and the ability to actually be integrated with your Gmail account.

Whether your interacting with people on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or all three including the Facebook pages you are an admin of, you can now be on top of every conversation and interaction you have in one clean, intuitive, and familiar user interface.

Is FanMix limited to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn?

For now, yes. You can only connect your FanMix account to these three networks. However, more social networks can be added in the future to give you a truly extensive reach in your social networks.

How does it work exactly?

Simply put, all the conversations you are a part of are collected and made accessible via the FanMix interface. Like Gmail, the system learns how you interact with certain conversations and people, and eventually, it will become smarter as it predicts which conversations should be included in your Priority Inbox in which ones will be left in your boring old regular inbox.

Responding to different conversations does not require you to switch between accounts as FanMix already knows where messages come from. This means you can immediately respond to questions and comments on any of your social networks without worrying about switching accounts as FanMix knows which of your accounts it should use in posting your response. For people who are addicts to social media interactions and people whose jobs depend on keeping tabs on multiple social interactions, this is a truly efficient tool.

Signing Up and Setting Up

Signing up for this service is pretty easy as you only need to provide your preferred login details and your name. Once your account is created, you can connect the networks you want to connect to FanMix. The tool will then pull your past interactions across your chosen networks, placing old ones in your Archive and the newer ones in your inbox. New interactions will be added to your inbox as they happen.

The Bottom Line

It’s hard to find any disadvantage in FanMix because as a social interaction tracking and management tool, it does pretty much what you want it to do. It makes social media enthusiasts’ lives easier and to top it all off, it is absolutely free.

Will the New Zynga Platform Make Your Facebook Feed Quieter?

For a lot of us, endless game updates on Facebook from our very own friends can get quite annoying especially if we’re not playing those games with them. Updates on high scores, people leveling up, and people asking for help can overwhelm any Facebook feed and it usually forces some people to filter out some of their game-loving friends. The announcement of the new Zynga Platform brings us hope that these updates will finally cease, but will it?

The Zynga Platform

Within a few days, Zynga.com will be launched as the newest hub for social games featuring tried and tested popular social games such as Farmville, CityVille, Zynga Poker, Words with Friends, CastleVille, and more.

Some of the features that will complement these games include player profiles and the live Social Stream. Player profiles do not just give you an idea of who your friends are on this platform, but also who among them are more likely to help you out in tending to your virtual farm or city. These player profile include a helpfulness score that gives you an idea of who is more likely to help you out when you need more poker chips.

The Social Stream feature gives you the ability to play with your friends in real time and it also lets you discover new friends, just in case your old ones suck at helping you out in your virtual farm. On top of these two major features, players can also chat with their friends live as they are playing their favorite game.

What does this mean for Facebook?

While there is a threat of users leaving Facebook to play Zynga games on the new Zynga Platform, that is only applicable for people who are only on Facebook for the games. With 12% of Facebook’s revenue depending on Zynga’s omnipresent social games, it is very likely that Facebook’s revenue will receive a massive blow once players migrate to the new platform. How massive is anyone’s guess.

What does this mean for people who want a little more peace and quiet on their Facebook feeds?

It’s unlikely that game updates will totally cease to exist on people’s feeds, but there is a big chance that it will significantly drop once the Zynga Platform establishes itself as the premier destination for social gaming. It’s going to be a little bit quieter in the Facebook front, but not totally quiet.

Opening the Doors to Game Developers

One group of people who will most likely benefit from this development is game developers. Zynga is opening up their new platform for game developers to give them the chance to reach a set of audience that is passionate about social gaming. MobScience, Sava, and Row Sham Bow are among the first developers to have access to Zynga’s zCloud infrastructure and analytics.

The Bottom Line

If you’re the kind of person who hates seeing game updates flooding your Facebook news feed, there is hope. Finally, there is a chance that you can browse your Facebook feed without having Zynga game updates shoved down your throat. Don’t expect the Zynga Platform to totally take all of you your game-crazy friends away from Facebook, though.

Enter Your Very Own Web Control Room

If you’re a business owner and you rely on several web services to monitor your growth and progress, you will probably reach the point where opening individual websites and different dashboards would seem too much. These overwhelming odds can put more stress on your already hectic day. Don’t worry though because the Internet gods have heard your pleas for assistance and conjured Web Control Room.

What is Web Control Room

Web Control Room is a free service that gathers vital information that you need to monitor your business from multiple services that you would otherwise have to check out individually on a daily basis. With a 1-page summary for your different tools, you can get a clean and easy to peruse report on the different aspects of your business which could include the number of people opening your newsletters, the number of people visiting your website, your server uptime, and more.

What are the services supported by Web Control Room?

While still on its beta stage, Web Control Room already has support for 7 different systems:

  • Google (Search, Feedburner, and Analytics)
  • MailChimp
  • Klout
  • Pingdom
  • Xero
  • SiteUptime
  • AWeber

The service is working on adding more systems to its supported list but for now, you can already get a total of 9 different 1-page reports in one place.

What kind of reports do I get?

Instead of just pulling data from different systems, Web Control Room actually presents this data in a more useful manner. Using charts with different colors, you will get to view the important pieces of information you need in a clean and easy to understand interface. Instead of analyzing every single bit of available data from the service you are using, you’ll get to see what matters most in improving your business by way of concise visuals.

How can I access Web Control Room?

You can of course access your Web Control Room by going to the website using your trusty old web browser on your desktop or laptop computer. However, it would be very convenient if you can also access it via your mobile phone, right? That’s exactly what you can do thanks to the mobile version of Web Control Room. There’s no app to download and install. You just need to use your smartphone’s web browser to go to the Web Control Room website and it will automatically serve you with a mobile version of the standard web interface. This mobile version lets you view your reports in an easier and more comfortable way.

Signing Up and Setting Up

It’s obvious that the focus of this service is ease of use. It’s clean interface and dead simple process of signing up and setting up reports make the whole experience only take up a few minutes of your time. You can sign up using your Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts if filling out a small form is too much work for you. Adding reports is just as simple as you only need to fill out a few fields to set up the services.

The Bottom Line

Web Control Room has a lot of room for growth and right now, it’s not as essential as it promises to be. However, once it brings in more services, it could potentially be one of your everyday business essentials.

Pinterest for Men

We’ve all seen the facts, observations, statistics, and outright claims that Pinterest, for all intents and purposes, is still considered a website for women. Even with the site skyrocketing in popularity, men generally still can’t get into the whole pinning thing. Everybody notices that and a few enterprising entities took it upon themselves to create basically Pinterest clones but marketed to manly men. Meet Manteresting and Gentlemint.

Manteresting

As the name suggests, this is a site for interesting man things. Before you jump to conclusions, this site is safe for work and it is not about the man things you are thinking about. In their own words, Manteresting is where you get inspired by awesome content, share manly things with the community, and view what other members are posting. Does that remind you of a website that rhymes with Winterest?

Like Pinterest, you collect things from all over the Internet and curate them in your very own page. However, instead of pinning things on boards, you nail them on workbenches. It is the clone-iest clone of a popular site you can find. There’s nothing here in terms of functionality that is radically different than Pinterest. The only thing that sets itself apart from Pinterest is the content itself.

Gentlemint

Like Manteresting, Gentlemint aims to focus its content more on manly things. Instead of things like pretty little dresses, endless photos of shoes, and quaint little houses, Gentlemint brings you content like bacon, sports, and Ron Swanson. In terms of functionality, it’s pretty much the same “pin/nail stuff on boards/workbences” process found in Manteresting and Pinterest.

The Difference

Other than the cleaner and smoother interface of Gentlemint, the only obvious difference between the two manly Pinterest clones right now is that Gentlemint is still in closed private beta while Manteresting has opened its doors wide open for everyone from day one. Manteresting actually addresses this issue in the manliest way possible: a message that states “Invites are lame! Get started today.”

Their Advantage Over Pinterest

It all comes down to type of content, which depends entirely on the preferences of its users. Pinterest users have already established the type of content on the site which is obviously affecting how possible new users see the site. For men who want to get into the whole pinning craze, there’s a good chance that they would get turned off by the really feminine content on Pinterest and turn to other services like Manteresting and Gentlemint to provided the awesome content they are craving for.

Their Disadvantage Under Pinterest’s Iron Rule

Manteresting and Gentlemint, unless they offer something new and different, will eventually lose their steam. Once men figure out that Pinterest does not necessarily have to be a girl thing, they will eventually warm up to it just like how women warmed up to Facebook after it was dominated by men for a few years.

The Bottom Line

For now, Manteresting and Gentlemint are basically gender-bent clones catering to the obvious fact that the majority of Pinterest users are female. It would be interesting to see if they can move beyond that and become something more than just Pinterest for Men.

Discover Who’s Tracking You With Mozilla Collusion

No matter how careful we are and how savvy we are with our web browser’s privacy settings, it is inevitable that we will come across a website that will track your web browsing activities. Even the most trustworthy sites do this. It’s all about marketing research and there is no escaping it. It’s not all bad, though. Online data tracking does have its benefits but it doesn’t mean we can’t eliminate the disadvantages without getting rid of the benefits. If you’re using Mozilla Firefox, you can do exactly that with Collusion.

What is Collusion?

Collusion is a Firefox add-on that lets you see all the websites tracking your activities on the World Wide Web. It creates a spider-web-like graphic representation of third parties tracking your movements across the web in real time, giving you an idea of how you are being tracked by simply clicking links and checking out content without you even realizing it.

How do I install Collusion?

Like any other Firefox add-on, you can download and install Collusion by going to its add-on page and clicking the Install button. You will be guided every step of the way and you can take comfort in the fact that there are only a few steps in installing a Firefox add-on. Unlike most Firefox add-ons, though, Collusion does not require you to restart Firefox once it is installed. You can proceed to monitoring who’s tracking you immediately after installing this add-on.

How can this help me exactly?

With Collusion still being in its early stage of operation, there’s not a lot you can do with it except see who’s tracking you. That doesn’t mean that this benefit is not important. Once you know who is tracking you, you can now determine whether you want these entities tracking your every move or not. There are other tools out there that you can use in tandem with Collusion to deal with entities that you do not want tracking you. One good example of these tools is TrackerBlock.

TrackerBlock gives you total control over online tracking. You can set cookie blocking, persistent opt-out cookies, Do Not Track signals, and complete control over HTML5 and Flash. Collusion is there to tell you that someone’s tracking you, TrackerBlock is there to tell you what you can do about it as well as actually let you do it.

It’s Just the Beginning

Collusion is still not in its full version yet but when it reaches that stage, users will be able to contribute to a larger cause by opting in to a global database of online tracking data. This global database will be used by researchers, journalists, developers and other people to get a clearer view of how data is being tracked and used on the World Wide Web.

The Bottom Line

Most of the websites we use on a daily basis can’t be considered harmful even if they are tracking our activities. It’s all part of their legitimate and lawful businesses and as consumers, we should expect to get involved in some kind of marketing research in one way or another. However, it would be best if we are aware that we are participating in this type of marketing research. Collusion gives you that choice and it is recommended that you take it.

How to View, Enable, and Disable Your Google Web History

In a week’s time, Google will implement its new privacy policy which allows the search giant to gather, store, and use your personal information. This means Google can effectively build a permanent profile of you which can include your age, gender, and of course, what you’re searching for on a daily basis. That means your embarrassing searches on sexy celebrity photos will be preserved permanently. Of course, as scary as this new policy may sound, it also has its advantages.

With Google tracking your searches and the links you’re clicking on search results pages, it can build a profile on your preferences. This involves personalized search predictions as you are typing, results and recommendations tailored specifically to your preferences, and search the full pages that you have already viewed.

How to Enable Web History

To get in on this profiling action, you can simply go to the Google homepage or whichever Google service that currently sports a link to your Google account on the upper right of the page. Click on your account name and then click on Account Settings.

On the Account Settings page, scroll down to the Services section and click on “Go to web history”.

From the Web History page, you can now enable the profiling feature by clicking on the “Turn Web History on” button. Google will ask you to enter your password and once you do, Web History will now be enabled.

How to View Web History

Once Web History is enabled for your account, you can view the searches you’ve made by going to your Account Settings page and clicking on “Go to web history”. Alternatively, you can go straight to http://www.google.com/history by entering it in your web browser’s address bar.

You can disable Web History but your searches can still be tracked by Google, although the data would be anonymous. If you want your search activities not associated with you, you can simply turn off Web History.

How to Disable Web History

To disable Web History, you just need to go to the Web History page. Again, you can do so by passing through the Account Settings page and scrolling down to the Services section for the “Go to web history” link or you can go the faster route which is going directly to http://www.google.com/history. Once there, click on the “Remove all Web History” button and that’s it. Doing this will delete all tracked searches in your Web History page and it will also pause tracking until you enable the service again.

The Bottom Line

No matter what your stand is about this new Google privacy policy and Web History feature, know that you always have the choice to limit how much of your search activities Google is tracking. You should also realize that logging out of your account will not completely stop Google from tracking your search activities as it can use your IP address to personalize search results on your computer.

For now, how Google will exactly use tracked information about your search activities is still not fully known, so if you’re one of the paranoid types, keep Web History disabled for now.

TrapCall Review

Whenever you receive a call, you always don’t know who’s calling and that can get annoying. If you’re paranoid, it can get pretty scary too. It doesn’t always have to be like this because you can use services like TrapCall to unmask blocked calls. What this means for you is that you will always know who’s calling. Even if the number is not in your contacts list, you will still feel a measure of comfort because you will at least see the actual phone number calling you.

What are the benefits of using TrapCall?

Aside from always knowing who’s calling you, TrapCall also lets you blacklist callers who are harassing you as well as record your incoming calls. It gives you more control over who calls you and how you receive calls. This added security in your daily life gives you the opportunity to live a normal life without the hassle of unknown callers who can be rude and worse, threatening. Another great benefit of this service is that you don’t need to install any kind of software and you can use on any type of mobile phone.

Who would even call me and block their phone number?

You would be surprised at how many of your friends could turn into unwanted ones. There’s also a big chance of one or more of your exes would be hankering for your love every now and then. These people plus other annoying ones like telemarketers who can’t take a hint could get a hold of your number and when that happens, it could be open season on your phone. It could happen to anyone so a service like TrapCall can be considered an extremely useful tool in keeping these annoying people at bay.

What are the features of TrapCall?

TrapCall unmasks blocked or restricted phone numbers that are calling you. If the first and last names, as well as the addressm are available, it can also be viewed thanks to this service. When stalkers and other annoying people call you expecting you to have no idea who they are, you will actually have the chance to see their complete number as well as their full name.

When you already know who these annoying callers are and you don’t want them to call again, you can also use to TrapCall to block them. Blacklisting unwanted callers means whenever they call you, they will hear a recorded messages that says your number is already disconnected. That should keep them from ruining your day.

TrapCall goes beyond dealing with annoying calls. The service also lets you record incoming phone calls which you can then access by logging on to your TrapCall account. This type of feature is a first in the mobile phone field, so this would also be your chance to experience the next step in mobile telecommunications.

TrapCall also has the ability to transcribe voicemail messages. You can now ready your voicemail messages via SMS which means you can check your voicemail messages without being too obvious, which is good especially if you’re in a class or a meeting.

How accessible is the service?

Your TrapCall account can be accessed on any device, giving you easy and efficient account management no matter where you are. You can also access your recorded voicemails as MP3 files by going online. While it sounds like TrapCall is accessible everywhere through every type of device, but there are exceptions, particularly in terms of mobile carriers. If you are on AT&T, Verizon, T Mobile, Sprint, MetroPCS, Rogers, Fido, Bell or Telus, you can use TrapCall with no problem at all.

Which mobile platform does TrapCall run on?

You can access TrapCall via apps on iOS, Blackberry and Android devices. Each of these apps vary slightly from the others, but generally, they offer the same TrapCall features that make you sleep better at night.

What are the pricing options for this service?

TrapCall offers three different plan packages:

  • Bug Trap ($4.95 per month) – This plan includes Caller ID Unmasking and Blacklist Unwanted Callers
  • Mouse Trap ($9.95 per month) – This plan includes the features in Bug Trap plus 10 voicemail transcriptions, missed call alerts, and name and address caller ID.
  • Bear Trap ($24.95 per month) – This plan includes the features in Mouse Trap plus the ability to record incoming calls.

TrapCall is a pay-as-you-go service which means you can cancel your subscription at any time.

The Bottom Line

TrapCall grants us what we’ve always wanted ever since we started using mobile phones — the ability to know who is calling us and the chance to do something about it. From students to professionals, having TrapCall’s features at their disposal on a daily basis is priceless. It’s not just about security, either. TrapCall’s features let users handle incoming calls in a more efficient manner, and all of this can be achieved without downloading or installing anything on one’s mobile phone.