Ideal AJAX Desktop

…should have the following:

1. Word Processor (Writely)
2. Spreadsheet (Numsum)
3. Presentation ( anything out yet?)
4. Music (Pandora)
5. Instant Messaging (Meebo)
6. Calendar (30boxes)
7. Mail Client
8. Photos (Flickr)
9. Photo Editor (Pxn8)
10. To Do List (TaDa List)
11. RSS Reader (Newsalloy)
12. Blog Client
13. File manager
14. Storage (Omnidrive, Streamload)

all at one place.

Advertisement

Edgeio: Listings From The Edge

Edgeio, secretive startup by onetime RealNames founder Keith Teare and TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington was unofficially launched and Rob Hof has put his review here.

Few quotes from Rob’s article:

Edgeio is doing just what its tagline says: gathering “listings from the edge”–classified-ad listings in blogs, and even online product content in newspapers and Web stores, and creating a new metasite that organizes those items for potential buyers.

The way Edgeio works is that bloggers would post items they want to sell right on their blogs, tagging them with the word “listing” (and eventually other descriptive tags). Then, Edgeio will pluck them as it constantly crawls millions of blogs looking for the “listing” tag and index them on Edgeio.com.

Also, Edgeio sends a trackback to the blog, providing a way for the blogger to go to Edgeio and modify the listing, adding other tags such as “autos” and other data that will further help the listing appeal to potential buyers.

Mathew Ingram says it could become Craiglist 2.0

Songbird Launched

Songbird, one of the most eagerly awaited launches, has finally been launched. Songbird is a web browser and media player built on Mozilla (Firefox) engine. The media player is capable of playing multiple formats like MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA. Since the media player in addition to web browser, it can play, download audio files embedded into web pages. It can scan, watch folders and help you organise your media library. CD ripping and burning features coming soon.

Some screenshots from the Songbird website:

AJAX Calendars

Joel Solsky is not impressed with the new web-based calendars like Trumba, Kiko, 30 Boxes, Yahoo! Calendar, and Spongecell. Infact, he wouldn’t recommend any of them. He says his needs are probably wierd (are they?).

These are the things he is looking for:

• Enter flights. Many of these calendars only lets me enter things that start on 15 minute intervals, and flights are just not scheduled that way. Many of these calendars insist I specify the duration, which I don’t know — I know when the flight lands, but not the duration.
• Understand enough about time zones so I can enter a flight. Flights from New Zealand to Los Angeles arrive before they departed. It’s confusing but it’s true and if I can’t enter them properly on my calendar I’m back to typing itineraries in Word.
• Allow my assistant to enter appointments and see my schedule, although some things may be private. Many calendars have this feature.
• Notify me in advance of a meeting using some reliable mechanism. Surprisingly many of the hot new Ajax calendars omitted this basic feature because they’re web apps. At the very least, I’d like something to pop up on Windows, which means a downloadable widget, and an SMS message on my cell phone. Different meetings need different advance warnings … I need to be notified 3 hours before a flight at Kennedy but 3 minutes before a meeting in my office.
• Print out something reasonable that I can take with me before a trip listing my complete schedule for the trip. Some of my appointments have driving directions or complicated notes attached. I just want a list of where I need to be, when, and it’s surprising that very few online calendars can handle this.

Google: GBuy, Gmail Chat and BMW

Google is in the news for launching 2 new products and banning BMW.de for breaching it’s guidelines.

GBuy
Gbuy, a new online payment system would be launched which would be in direct competion with PayPal. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt says Google’s pending online payments service GBuy won’t compete directly with eBay’s PayPal, but eBay doesn’t believe him, according to this WSJ story.

Gmail Chat
Google has integrated Gtalk into it’s Gmail and now users can directly chat while writing/reading emails from Gmail. This concept is similar to Meebo which provides a web based interface to IM clients. Meebo can connect to YIM, AOL, MSN clients. Screenshot of the new Gmail-Gtalk can be see on TechCrunch here

BMW Banned
[BBC] Search giant Google has “blacklisted” German car manufacturer BMW for breaching its guidelines.  —  Investigations by Google found that BMW’s German website influenced search results to ensure top ranking when users searched for “used car”. More info on the BBC website here

Sharpcast: Synch Data Between Devices

Palo Alto start-up Sharpcast featured at DEMO 06 is a service which allows users to synch data between PC, mobile phones and other devices.

From the company’s website:

Sharpcast is developing a connected applications platform that will set new standards for consumer media and information management. The platform allows applications running on multiple computers, mobile devices and the web to work together seamlessly to dramatically simplify the way people access, share and back up digital content. It combines the richness and flexibility of software customized for desktop PCs and mobile devices with the benefits of web-based applications. The result is a best-in-class user experience for digital content management that takes full advantage of broadband wired and wireless networks.

More info on the company can be found here

Dozens of Web 2.0 companies’ logos

 Boing Boing writes:

Ludwig Gatzke has collected the logos of dozens and dozens of “Web 2.0” companies and laid out them out in a grid in a gigantic image-file he’s posted to Flickr. It’s pretty amazing — like seeing the thousand swooshes of the companies that used to populate SoMa lofts during the dotcom boom. Link

Update: Link updated

Downloadable Web 2.0 and AJAX Widgets

Max Kiesler has a list of best of the best downloadable Web 2.0 and AJAX widgets including contact forms, image galleries and more.

PXN8:AJAX Based Photo Editor

PXN8 brings the AJAXian goodness to photo editing something like Web-based Photoshop though not to full of its capacity.

PXN8 does basic photo editing very neatly like cropping, resizing, rotate and effects like red-eye reduction, sepia tone and more.

Battle Of The Memetrackers

Pete Cashmore (Mashable) and Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) have given a good insight into the Memeorandum-like startups. Both agree that Memeorandum is clearly ahead of the race (specially in topics of Tech and Politics)