Released awhile ago, SnapPages is a flash powered interface that allows you to share your hobbies/interests, organize schedules, and socialize with friends. They have three applications currently, including: Friend’s Manager, Calendar Manager, and Photo Manager. Each one of these applications has their own specific uses and functions nicely.

The first, and probably most in depth section is the Friend’s Manager. This area allows you to talk with friends in the form of “Gabs”. You can assign Gabs to your friends and enable whether or not you wish to allow them to invite others to the Gab. It’s more or less of a simple flash messaging system. There’s also a “Email Alerts” option which will automatically inform you by email if: you get a new friend request, someone accepts your friend invitation, you’re included in a Gab, or if someone replies to an existing Gab. You get your usual User Profile to edit; name, birthday, picture, hobbies, location, etc. Additionally, they have added a section called “Exchange” which categorizes all types of hobbies and interests: Auto, Finance, Books, Games, Jobs and many others. In these categories, you can create mini threads so that you can share all your favorites interests with your friends. A five star rating system has been implemented so that you and your friends can vote on what things are cool, and what things are not. You can sort them by name, date, friend or rating, as well as add “Opinions”, which are just comments on your Exchange items. If you want to, they’ve also added a print feature for the User Opinions. It reminded me of Delicious Library, a simple application for Mac users to categorize their interests in their own libraries.

SnapPages also includes a Photo Manager application allowing you to organize your screen shots and miscellaneous pictures. To start, you can create an “Album” to import your photos and other pictures. Each album can be set to public, private, secure, or friend-only. Secure requires for you to input a password to access it, the others have permission according to their name. You can add tags to the photos to help organize them for later use. While in your albums area, you can enlarge your photos by using the slider found in the upper right corner. They have included a mild photo editing section in the Photo Manager where you can rotate, crop, and/or adjust brightness. They have a few others setting to revise the lighting and other effects, but there isn’t many option currently right now. If you’re looking for some more in-depth online flash photo editing, head over to Picnik. You able to share your photo galleries with friends by selecting the particular album that you want to share and adding recipients along with an optional message. Lastly, there’s the download feature that simply let’s you download any of the photos you have in any of your albums.

The last section of SnapPages is the Calendar Manager. Each calendar that you create acts identical to the Photo Manager’s Albums in regards to their property settings: private, public, secure, and friends-only. You can color coordinate new calendars when you create them as well as changing their format from the normal month calendar, to a weekly or daily calendar format. You can add events to your calendars which will require you to specify a time, a place, and any further details you need for the events. They also give you the option to input a URL to an online map if you find it necessary for the event. You also can define whether your event is a repeating affair. If so, you can input the time span it repeats: day, week, month, or year. You can also add notifications to each event, which sends you a reminder prior to the actual event. They also give you the ability to add tasks to your calendars and set exact due dates for each project. Like I mentioned, they have the Share option just like the Photo Manager if you desire to collaborate or share certain calendars with friends. They’ve included a nice RSS feature which allows you to subscribe to your friend’s calendars and see their past and upcoming events. Overall, the Calendar Manager is a nice simple way of helping to keep yourself on track for things you need to get done. It’s not nearly as in-depth as something like Google’s Calendar, however for the average person, it’ll suffice just fine.

To be honest, I liked SnapPages. Though it didn’t bring anything incredibly new to the table, it laid out all the old stuff neatly and thoroughly. Since it was created in Flash, the animation helped give it a nice touch of fluency. Give it a try, it was fun to play around in it. They plan on continuously adding new features to SnapPages, so we can only hope for the best.

Adaptiveblue has recently launched the public beta of Blueorganizer, a Firefox extension designed to help you organize and bookmark content on the web. I’ve been testing Blueorganizer ever since it’s initial private beta release and it’s a pretty solid tool with functionality that lets you bookmark more then just websites. You can look at it as a product smart bookmarking tool where if you are bookmarking a book from Barnes and Noble or a CD from Amazon.com, Blueorganizer will know and format the bookmark specific to that product.

At start, the collection of products and websites that you are saving in your organizer will be saved locally on your hardrive, but if you create an adaptiveblue account, your collection will be stored online so you may easily access it from anywhere. Adaptiveblue takes advantage of Amazon’s S3 storage service allowing you to save your data online giving you possibilities with Blueoganizer including RSS feeds for your collection and website badges. That’s not all though. Blueorganizer is also a tool that allows you to easily buy, compare, and search about any product that you save in your organizer.

To get started, head over to Adaptiveblue and download the extension. Once installing and restarting your browser, you will see two new buttons in your Firefox navigation toolbar that look like what you see to the right. The left button allows you to bookmark, or “bluemark” as Blueorganizer calls it, and the right button lets you open up your collection. Let’s begin with opening your collection.

When you open your collection for the first time, you will notice that Blueorganizer has gone ahead and added some preset bluemarks for you to look through. This is to give you an idea of what you can bookmark and how searching and sorting is handled. You will see that bluemarked books, movies, electronics, music, and even toys will contain images along with extra options to claim if you own the item, buy, search, and compare.

On the top right of every bluemark is a wrench. This wrench is what Blueorganizer calls a context action tool which enables you to instantly find, shop, compare things on the web. This is a very handy feature. Picture this: There is a book that you have been wanting to buy, but you aren’t sure about purchasing it yet. So you bluemark it and use the search and tag options to search about the book and the author with Google, Technorati, or even Odeo for podcasts. You then look for related books that you may like as well and use the tags search tool. After reading more on the book and related, you decide to buy it. You go back to the wrench and click on the compare option to find the best deal on the web for the book and order it.

Let’s now take a look at the search and sorting functionality of Blueorganizer which you see on the top of the organizer. The searching is very basic where you can select the type of bluemark or collection (bookmarks, books, electronics, movies, music, toys, and video games - soon to be more), filter by tags, or search by text with results appearing as you type. The search is pretty standard but what I found to be more interesting was the sorting options, or what I like to call, “Smart Sort.” Depending on the collection type you select from the list, the sort button (on the right of the collection drop down box) will have different options to sort by. For example, selecting the book collection allows you to sort your bluemarks by author, history, popularity, rating, title, and even the year of the book. Or another example, selecting the Video Games collection will allow you to sort by manufacturer, platform type, popularity, and more. The sorting options are flexible to the collection and that really helps you narrow down on items. Although one sorting option that I did not see was sort by date added to the collection, which I would love to see because like normal website bookmarks, I like to view what I most recently bookmarked.

I think we’ve got the basics of using the organizer covered. Now lets look at actually saving bluemarks to your organizer. To bluemark websites and products, simply click the browser bluemark button for Blueorganizer which will then bring up a popup to enter details for the bluemark. But before I continue onto actually saving the bluemark, I want to point out one small but helpful feature with the bluemark button and the Blueorganizer engine. The neat thing with the bluemark button is that when you come across a page that Blueorganizer detects and can successfully grab specific information from (using Microformats - Supported Sites), like a book title and image or music album, it will add a dark blue dot in the middle of the button to notify you. Otherwise, bluemarking a site when the button doesn’t have the dark blue dot will just act as a normal website bookmark.

When the popup appears when adding a bluemark, you will see that if Blueorganizer was able to parse the website and it detected it being a collection type (books, movies, electronics, etc.), the title, image, and tags will automatically be filled in for you. Blueorganizer makes it to the point where the only thing you have to do is… nothing but click “Ok.” The only thing that won’t be filled in for you is the rating and buttons stating that you own the product or not. Any data, including images, that Blueorganizer can recognize out of its supported sites will automatically be added to your bluemark so you don’t have to worry about it.

Last feature I want to talk about is registering an account for your Blueorganizer (completely optional). There are three benefits that I see when you signup. First, creating an account will automatically store all of your bluemarks online securely (using Amazon S3 Storage) in turn letting you automatically synchronize your collections between multiple computers by simply logging in to your account. Secondly, you can publish RSS feeds for your collections so friends and family can easily track what products you are thinking of getting or what products you recommend. Lastly, when publishing your collections, Blueorganizer allows you to add widgets, or Bluebadges, to your website so anyone can see the latest bluemarks you have saved - great for product specific websites. All these features with screenshots can be found in the features overview at Blueorganizer.

Overall, Blueorganizer, is probably one of the best Firefox extensions I have used because of how feature rich it is, although it’s not for everyone. It’s target is more toward users who like to organize books, music, and other things rather then the average web surfer, even though it does support normal bookmarks. My opinion would be to simply give it a try and see how you like it. As for problems, I only ran into one while using the extension and that was when bluemarking a normal website that has a very long address (ie: MapQuest or some blog posts), Blueorganizer would go ahead and add “%20″ (which means a space) in the address at certain points of the URL, in turn making the link broken. Other than that, no problems really. Another issue to Blueorganizer is that it is a Firefox only extension which leads me to agree with Mashable’s idea of having a public website that users can showcase and share their collections, like Kaboodle. But overall, Blueorganizer is a great extension that certainly helps with organizing products and websites online that anyone into keeping collecting should try.

For more, read Sid Yadav’s review of Blueorganizer.

Pandora, known for its online music recommendation radio, has extended its offerings with Backstage, a service that allows listeners to search and learn about artists. In Pandora’s original state, you login and start listening to the online radio as new artist recommendations come in one after the other, but the only problem was that there was no easy way to learn about the artists. Now, while music plays in the Pandora player, users can access the backstage and search for results based on the artist, song, and album that they are listening to.

Searching an artist returns the artists full biography and discography, powered by All Music Guide, as well as a list of similar artists. Furthermore, users can narrow down into artists albums and listen to sample music, learn about the album, and even learn about individual songs from an artist. Users can also bookmark artists to their profile, create a radio station for recommendations, and purchase their music with the iTunes and Amazon buttons on the left of artist biographies.

This is a great move for Pandora. I’m a big fan of music recommendation services, such as Pandora and Last.fm, and until the recent launch of Backstage, Pandora didn’t have any real information to provide its listeners about the artists. Last.fm however has done this for quite some time, but in a more social manor where listeners can improve biographies, tag artists, and even view overall statistics of the artists activity on the service. I don’t know if Pandora is headed in this direction or not, but whatever the case, it is great to finally have a built-in resource to learn about the artists that are being recommended.

(Via Mashable)

Google has just released the new Google Video Store tonight, what the Google Video Blog calls, “the first open video marketplace.” Along with the addition of paid content, Google has also added more formats for downloading of videos. As usual, Google makes everything extremely simple for the user. You can easily find and purchase video for sale and find popular videos. I was also impressed to see Google providing download formats for Apple’s iPod Video and Sony’s PSP, along with regular downloading for Windows and Macintosh with the use of the Google Video Player.

Google now displays videos from the Video Store on the top of Google Video followed by popular and random videos. You can find videos from many sources, such as CBS shows, NBA, and Sony BMG including videos for popular shows: CSI, Survivor, NCIS, Amazing Race and Classics Including I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, and Twilight Zone. Google has also managed to get NBA to put their current season games on the web for the first time. There are also many more providers and source of paid content that Google will be using which are stated in Google’s press release, “Google to Launch Video Marketplace.” So lets get down to business. How much are you going to be paying for these videos? The CBS Shows seem to be selling at $1.99 per video, which really is quite small of a price. I have seen prices ranging anywhere from $0.99 cents to $10.00 dollars. You will also see that some videos don’t have a buy button, but rather a Day Pass button. Purchasing a video under Day Pass will allow you to download the video and have access to it for only 24 hours and can only be viewed while being online, which is reasonable.

Searching for videos is simple and there are some advanced methods you can use. The most basic one is limiting your search to titles. Simple put, “Title: ” in front of any title of any video and search. Google also provides some filtering options (above screenshot) for filtering videos for sale, for free, or by the length of the video.

And what about purchasing the videos? Purchasing is done directly through Google Video Store and you are not directed to any external sites. You do need a Google Account to purchase videos and if you do, you will just need to enter your payment information for the first time of making a purchase. Google even has a new Purchased Videos page so you can track the videos you have purchased.

Update: You can view some more Video Providers from the Official Google Blog.

PureVolume, a service created by Neubix of Unborn Media Inc., is my favorite source for music and has been since its initial release. It provided an easy way to find independent artists and allows you to download and listen to their music for free. They recently have released PureVolume v3 and have really done an amazing job. A new beautiful design, nice integration of Flash and Ajax, and on top of that, it now has social networking. You can signup as a listening and add bands and friends to your profile. You can maintain a blog and even create a photo gallery. Not only is PureVolume an excellent service for listeners, but also provides great exposure for bands - no matter the size of the band. I have found tons of bands from PureVolume and I can happily say that at least 50% of the music that I own has been found through the help of PureVolume.

If you are familiar with PureVolume, you will notice the new beautiful design consisting of simple gradients, dark colors, sIFR, and excellent implementation of Flash and Ajax throughout the site. But the main reason why I love PureVolume is because I can find music of any genre, signed or unsigned, listen to the artist through their Flash streaming music player (PurePlayer) and download the artists music for free if the artist has songs available for download. The service is free for listeners and bands, but if the bands want to step up their plan to PurePlus for a small amount, they are given more features, more space for storing music, and also given the opportunity to become a featured artist giving the band a large audience of new listeners that can hopefully boost their musical career.

Artists are given their own profile page that they can maintain their music, lyrics, photos, listings of upcoming shows, and even a blog. The main feature though that everyone loves though of course is the media player. Bands can upload mp3’s, group them by albums, and allow listeners to stream the music through the PurePlayer (screenshot above). If listeners like what they hear, hopefully they will add the band to their favorites, become a fan, buy the artists music, and maybe even spread word about the artist. I have PureVolume open all the time on my computer (it’s true, and I know my brother does too) and have certain bands that I listen to every day. You can open up the PurePlayer in a popup, which makes it a whole lot easier to browse around and still listen to the music. There are a few things though that I would love to see in the media player, although it may be asking for too much. Having the ability to add multiple artists to a playlist and have them play through the PurePlayer. At the time you can only listen to one band at a time, which I am happy with, but would absolutely love the ability to have a type of queue of artists to play.

I mentioned the use of Ajax throughout the service. You will see this nicely implemented when adding a band to your favorites, adding comments, or when viewing content. Content is layed out in tabs and to make the experience a lot quicker for the user, Ajax is used to grab the content of a tab when clicking it instead of refreshing the page. This is a great feature because you can now view other sections, like photos and the blog, while still listening to the music using the embedded PurePlayer. The old version of PureVolume did not have this so I was extremely happy to see the company take advantage of Ajax technology with their service.

So, what about the social networking that I mentioned? The whole social aspect is new to PureVolume but I think they definitely hit it off very well. When viewing an artist, you will see on the bottom right a container with the tabs, Fans, Friends, and Comments. Fans are listeners that have added the band to their favorites and Friends are other artists that are friends with the band you are looking at. This lets me see other people that like the music I like and see what other music they like. With the help of PureVolume allowing listeners to become fans, it makes the service even stronger when it comes to music discovery. Lets get a little more on the social side now, reaching to a point that compares with top social networking sites. Listeners can signup, add friends and favorite bands to their profile, maintain blogs and photo galleries, and comment on other friends profiles. Get friends, hear what kind of music others listen to, and meet people with similar musical interest.

Overall, I am loving the new version of PureVolume. I didn’t think their service could get much better, but clearly I was wrong. It is now a strong music and social community with over thousands of artist and music. Just a warning though that the new version of the site has recently been released and they are still battling server issues every once in a while. If you experience slow download times, small errors, or the server hanging, just give it some time and check back a little later. They are usually very quick with getting things sorted out. Otther than that, I am very happy with the service. As said before, I think it would be really cool to be able to set a queue or artists for the PurePlayer. Also, something that I would like to see is a feature that used to exist on the older PureVolume, the random artist button. On the old PureVolume, you were able to select a genre and then keep viewing random artists under that genre, but you can’t do that anymore on the new version and even though it’s such a small feature, it helps pass time looking for new music. A feature that I really like is in the Listeners area (need to signup), that if you enter your zip code, it will find shows in your area from the artists on PureVolume. It’s neat seeing all these artists showing up next to where I live and I am actually thinking of seeing one of them this month. If anyone wants to keep up with PureVolume’s news and developments, be sure to check out their Backstage Blog. That’s about it. Music and social networking in one. Excellent work, Unborn Media.

View PureVolume - We’re Listening To You.