Phras.in helps you decide which of two words you should use

Filed under: Text, Utilities, Education

Here's something that I do all the time: when I want to know how to use a certain word or phrase, I just google it. And when I'm trying to decide on one of two options, I just google them both and see which one is more common, or how it works in a sentence. I use it a lot when I translate ("do people really say that?"), but I also use it when I just write in English.

And now, Phras.in lets me do the exact same thing, but I can do it in style (or is it "with style"? Exactly!) and a great deal faster. So, I just type the words "in style" in the top text box, and then I type "with style" in the bottom text box. By the time I'm done typing, I can see that "in style" got 43.4 million hits, while "with style" has only 23.5 million hits. The search is live, and it's super-fast; there's no Enter required. And clearly, "in style" wins.

But maybe I'm not sure, or I want to see how they're really used. I just have to hit the big Contextualize 'em button, and I get a whole bunch of Google results that show the phrases in their natural habitat.

It even works in Hebrew, so I guess it can handle pretty much anything that you throw at it (anything Google can handle, that is). It's very, very useful!

Phras.in helps you decide which of two words you should use originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 24 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Minimalist Profile? Facebook Knows About You, Too [Facebook]

Even if you keep your profile bare, Facebook can infer your interests from your friends' interests—and target ads towards you, according to a recent patent application. More »

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This Action-Filled, Pam Anderson and Dev Patel-Starring Short Film Was Shot On a Nokia N8 [Video]

On a hair-raising morning commute, Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel encounters a gun-toting traffic cop, ninja bankers, and... Chuck Bass. It's eight minutes of slick, silly fun, and it was shot entirely on a smartphone. More »

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Sports Camera Mount for Extreme Cylindrical Action

Have you ever needed to attach “your digital camera to cylindrical objects in extreme conditions”? Perhaps you find yourself cold and shivering in a torrential downpour, Thermos in one hand and umbrella in the other, yet desperate to snap a picture whilst you sip your hot beverage?
With the Flymount, you can do it all, and [...]

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Zune annual subscriptions now available, cheaper than Spotify

Filed under: Audio, Microsoft

I installed Zune for the first time today (wow, it's pretty!) -- but that's not the news! Here's the news: you can now grab a 12-month subscription to Zune for the price of 10 months. It's $150 for the year (a saving of $30!) or £90 if you're from the motherland. Spotify is currently £9.99 per month, with no 12-month option.

This lower price point, when accompanied with the continued roll-out across Europe, means that Zune may soon rule supreme on both sides of the Atlantic. Don't forget that you can download 10 free songs per month with Zune, too! And there's certainly no denying that the Zune desktop app is both more attractive and feature-rich than Spotify's.

I don't know which service currently has more subscribers, nor do I know the specifics on which service has the most tracks available in a given territory -- they both tout 'over 10 million', but I'm sure it varies from country to country. It certainly would be nice if this is the beginning of a price war, though. $15 per month is certainly a good deal, but $10 would be an even better deal.

Zune annual subscriptions now available, cheaper than Spotify originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Adobe Air, Flash Demonstrated on RIM PlayBook Tablet

Maybe Flash on a tablet isn’t as bad as Steve Jobs says it is. That’s what Adobe and Research In Motion want you to think after watching the video below.

Taped at Adobe’s MAX conference this week, the segment shows the BlackBerry PlayBook running media apps coded in Adobe Air, which is based partly on Flash. [...]

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Nikon's Android Photo Frame Converts 2D to Glasses-Less 3D for a Monthly Fee [3D]

Nikon's Android-running digital photo frame probably won't make it out of Japan, but unlike most frames the NF-300i actually sounds pretty cool. It converts any image from 2D to 3D, with the 3D visible to glasses-less eyes. More »

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Apple now offering free iPad engravings

Apple is now offering free iPad engravings, just in time for the holidays. Apple have always offered free ?personalised? iPod engravings, however, this marks the first time Apple have unveiled the same laser-engraving program for the iPad. Like iPod engraving, the iPad engraving is available at no additional cost and you can add up to 2 [...]

Apple now offering free iPad engravings is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Phras.in helps you decide which of two words you should use

Filed under: Text, Utilities, Education

Here's something that I do all the time: when I want to know how to use a certain word or phrase, I just google it. And when I'm trying to decide on one of two options, I just google them both and see which one is more common, or how it works in a sentence. I use it a lot when I translate ("do people really say that?"), but I also use it when I just write in English.

And now, Phras.in lets me do the exact same thing, but I can do it in style (or is it "with style"? Exactly!) and a great deal faster. So, I just type the words "in style" in the top text box, and then I type "with style" in the bottom text box. By the time I'm done typing, I can see that "in style" got 43.4 million hits, while "with style" has only 23.5 million hits. The search is live, and it's super-fast; there's no Enter required. And clearly, "in style" wins.

But maybe I'm not sure, or I want to see how they're really used. I just have to hit the big Contextualize 'em button, and I get a whole bunch of Google results that show the phrases in their natural habitat.

It even works in Hebrew, so I guess it can handle pretty much anything that you throw at it (anything Google can handle, that is). It's very, very useful!

Phras.in helps you decide which of two words you should use originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 24 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bookify is a Web-based tool for making your own portfolio, wedding or cook book

Filed under: Photo, Utilities

Blurb, the king of self-published coffee table books, has just launched a new Web-based tool: Bookify. The downloadable desktop app Blurb BookSmart still exists -- and it's still the preferred tool for complex book layouts -- but for speed, ease of use and convenience, Bookify is now the thing to use.

The road to glossy, self-published narcissism begins by simply selecting the size and shape of your book. Next, you import some photos. You can either upload them from your PC, or import them directly from Flickr (support for Picasa and Photobucket is missing, for some reason). Then the fun (and hard!) bit begins: layout. I couldn't begin to explain all of the layout options available to you -- there are lots -- but fortunately there's a tutorial tour that walks you through most of it.

Once you're done laying out the book, typing text, designing the cover art and generally playing the role of a perfectionist, ordering your new Blurb book takes just a few clicks. It won't be cheap -- but from the Blurb books that I've seen, you do get what you pay for.

Bookify is a Web-based tool for making your own portfolio, wedding or cook book originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Calm Down, Hippies: What San Francisco needs to Learn from the Valley

Something culturally strange is happening in San Francisco. I'm not talking about the "let your freak flag fly," live-and-let-live vibe for which the city is famous. I'm talking the growing cultural rift between the city and Silicon Valley, despite the obvious geographic overlap. If you drew a Venn Diagram between San Francisco hipsters and people who work in and around the Web industry it'd look like a more shoved-together version of the MasterCard logo. While many of the largest technology companies of the last few decades'--like Apple, Cisco, Oracle, eBay, Yahoo, Google--were based on the peninsula, Web 2.0 has unabashedly been centered in San Francisco. Go to any hipster, grungy bar in San Francisco. Ask the first five hoodie-wearing people you see what they do, and you can be sure at least two say they work for a startup. And if your next question was "How big are you guys?" no one would flinch... and each of them would try to pad the answer. Big is good in startup land. Getting big, fast is what separates startups from small businesses. Doing that over-and-over again, decade-after-decade is what separates the Valley from nearly anywhere else. And yet, when it comes to the non-Web, brick-and-mortar retail business in San Francisco an ugly, self-righteous, vitriolic hate is emerging against anything successful enough to have more than one or two locations.

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Daily Crunch: Stand Guard Edition

Windows Phone 7: Solid Platform, Sorry Future A Camera For Every Budget Shogun 2: Total War: The Closest You?ll Get To Actually Being A Samurai Colorware Is Now Doing Its Thing With The iPod Touch 4G The Stemie ? You?d Be Nuts To Ride Without One It?s Photography Week At CrunchGear

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Ebook Readers Will Love To Hide Inside These Sturdy Imitation Books [Cases]

Based on my experience, the Pad and Quill cases are the toughest of all the gadget cases which imitate Moleskine notebooks. And now there are finally Kindle 3 and Nook versions. More »

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Scriptish add-on brings legacy-free Greasemonkey to Firefox 4

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

I depend upon certain Greasemonkey scripts. They're not just for prettying up the Web or making it less distracting; I even have some home-brewed scripts that I use right here in Download Squad as part of my writing process. Not having access to these scripts is one of the key things that's kept me from making the switch to Firefox 4.

Enter Scriptish. According to its author, Erik Vold, Scriptish removes a lot of the legacy code that's been holding Greasemonkey back, and it utilizes everything that Firefox 4 has to offer.

Scriptish is not compatible with anything older than Firefox 4. Vold says he created the add-on due to the slow pace in which Greasemonkey development has been moving and some of the decisions taken by its developers:

"The trouble I found while trying to contribute to GM is that the maintainers don't really want to alter the code base, they're actually seem [sic] to be fine with doing the minimum necessary and bug fixing for the rest of the future, at least that is how it seemed to me after writing quite a few patches which were rejected, either outright, or by degradation (meaning I would have to basically redo everything, on crappy architecture, because they've sat on their hands for so long)."

So, there are definitely some politics at work here. When I tried using my home-brewed script with Scriptish, I couldn't get it to work. Maintaining a Greasemonkey fork is a big responsibility, so here's hoping that Vold is up to the job. Better yet, here's hoping that he gets some help from the community (and that my script starts working!).

Scriptish add-on brings legacy-free Greasemonkey to Firefox 4 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clue helps you find out what's memorable about your page

Filed under: Developer, Utilities, web 2.0

One of the first things you learn about writing for the Web is that you have an incredibly short amount of time to make a first impression; it's usually said to be around three seconds. So, if you've grabbed your visitor's interest or managed to get your message across within those three seconds, you did a good job.

But how do you know if you did? Clue is a new Web app from the fine folks at Zurb that can help you find out. It works like a memory game: feed it with a URL, and Clue generates a "memory page."

When you send someone a link to that "memory page," they're shown a screenshot of your site for a few seconds (I didn't actually count, it may be more than three), and then they're asked to name five things that are memorable about the Web page. These are just five keywords.

After answering, the user is taken to a results page where they can see what everyone else answered. That's right - the page is wide-open. Of course, you can see the results, but everyone else can, too. Another catch is that the test only works for 24 hours.

Still, this is a fantastic tool, and it's one that I plan to keep in mind the next time I need some feedback on a Web design.

Clue helps you find out what's memorable about your page originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spy Night Vision Digital Camcorder for Kids

Julie tells me I’m crazy because I start Christmas shopping so early, and I’m a little panicked because I’m actually getting a late start this year.� I found this great gift idea for kids while I was looking for toys.� This little Spy Night Vision Digital Camcorder from Young Explorers�has a 1.8″ preview screen, cables [...]

Filed in categories: Audio, Video, TV Gear, Kid Gadgets, News

Tagged: digital camcorder, Kid's gear, night vision camcorder

Spy Night Vision Digital Camcorder for Kids originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 18, 2010 at 2:00 pm.

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Shocker! CVS Lookbook e-reader reviewed, sucks

Well, we didn't exactly have high hopes when we got first glimpse at the CVS LookBook from a leaked flier, and our lowered expectations have now been satisfied. The Digital Reader has taken the thing for a spin and, as it turns out, it's an ever so slightly modified version of the Literati that scored its own terrible review just a few weeks ago. The $150 CVS version suffers the same issues, including a complete inability to read e-books downloaded to SD card or copied onto internal memory. Also, battery life is poor, performance is slow, the margins are off, and there's no web browser. Positives? Well, it has physical buttons for page turning and... yeah. With the Kindle just a click away at $139, it's hard to see anyone wanting the LookBook, you may be tempted while picking up your 'scripts.

Shocker! CVS Lookbook e-reader reviewed, sucks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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