Orangeinks

Mixx Launches Mixx Communities

Social media news aggregator Mixx recently launched “Mixx Communities.” It’s a Mixx extension where users can create a niche community site under the wings of Mixx. Members can contribute to the community by submitting their stories like they would normally on the larger Mixx community.

The created Mixx Community will be given its own subdomain. Community administrators can create their own niche topic tabs. This will enable content filtering for a smaller niche community. They are also allowed to customize the look and feel of the community site that they created. Administrators can personally brand their community site and insert their own logo, edit color schemes and post editorial content. They are also given the option to monetize their site by placing an Adsense unit (Shared revenues).

This is a great step for Mixx, offering its members to create their own niche social media community and earn a buck in the process. It’s like a BlogSpot for social media. Any member of Mixx can set up his/her own community. The setup process is quite easy that even a non techie person can create and customize a community in just a few minutes. Gathering members for the community is always the hardest part. Administrators can invite their Mixx friends to join in their newly created community and they can also send invitations by email.

With Reddit going opensource and Mixx making this community offering to its users, it would be interesting to know what Digg will come up with.

Tags: mixx, mixx communities, News, social media

The PodiPodi Website Enhancement Tool

PodiPodi is a very cool way of adding non intrusive user interface enhancements to your websites. It is an experimental project in human-Machine Interaction inspired by Enso, a command line interface for desktop systems developed by Humanized, Inc. PodiPodi is a widget developed in JavaScript which allows you to easily add features without redesigning your blog or website.

I just received an invite from PodiPodi and got a chance to test their service. I must say that this particular enhancement widget is very impressive. It looks great and what I like about it is that it doesn’t interfere with the browsing. It gives the user the power to choose if he/she wants to use it or not. It will only load a service only if initiated by the user. The widget is customizable and can be done in your PodiPodi account. The owner can select which additional services he wants to add in his website.

How it Works:

Once the plugin is installed, just click the PodiPodi button or simply press Shift+Spacebar. A command line interface will appear and the user can immediately use the additional services that the owner added. Just type help on the PodiPodi command line to get the list of commands and services available for the particular site. I installed the widget and it’s already running at Orangeinks so that you can test it here.

Below is the list of service enhancements available (and coming soon) in PodiPodi.

• Info: Show additional information about the website
• Calculate: Calculate the result of a simple
mathematical expression.
• Send a comment: Visitors of the site can send messages to the web owner
• Tell a friend: Visitors can send messages to their friends and tell them about the website
• Sitemap: Show the site map of the website for a better navigation
• Flickr: show web designer’s pictures posted in Flickr or search for photos on Flickr
• Friends: Show your friend sites
• Google Web Search: make possible to perform searches through Google, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Google Images Search: make possible to perform searches through Google Images, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Yahoo Web Search: make possible to perform searches through Yahoo, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Yahoo Images Search: make possible to perform searches through Yahoo Images, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Youtube Search: make possible to perform searches through Google Videos and YouTube, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Weather (coming soon): get the weather of a specific location or the city specified by the owner of the website
• Wikipedia (coming soon): Search wikipedia for specific contents

PodiPodi has been tested and works great in the browsers listed below:
Firefox2, Firefox3, Safari 2,Opera 9 and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 (in IE6 no rounded corners yet, probably never…)

The service is still in private beta. If you want to try it in your websites, you have to register as a beta tester for PodiPodi.

Tags: podipodi, website enhancement, widget

Firefox Read It Later Bookmarking Add-On for Offline Reading

Read It Later is a Firefox extension that allows a user to bookmark and save pages for later reading. Even though that I would still prefer an online bookmark service, Read It later is quite a useful piece of application for your Firefox Browser if utilized properly.

How to Use:
After downloading Read It Later and installing it, you can use it like any normal bookmarking plugin. Just click the Read Later button to bookmark a page you want to read later. After reading the bookmarked page, you can Mark it As Read and it will automatically be removed from your list. If you happen to really like the page you are reading and save it for later, you can easily add it to your online bookmarking service in just one click. It lists popular online bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Digg, reddit and Stumbleupon. You can also choose to add the page to your Firefox Bookmarks.

It Gets Even Better:

The newest version of Read It Later is designed for Firefox 3. They added a simple check button which lets you bookmark an URL by simply pressing the check button. To mark as read, just remove the check on the URL and it will disappear from your list. This makes the add-on a lot easier to use.

Another Useful Feature:

There is another feature that I find particularly useful in Read It Later. The Read Offline feature lets you download your entire list for later reading. Just put a check on the page you want to bookmark and access the Read Later menu. You will see there a link saying “read offline” this will automatically download the pages in your entire list. If you have a rather large list, then it may take a while for the download to finish. It might be a good idea to properly manage your list before proceeding with the download. The downloaded list will be available for you to read even if you’re offline. This can be quite useful for users using mobile computers.

This Firefox Add-on tip was contributed by Nishadha of RumblingLankan who made a comment about it on the LaterThis post. Thanks Nishadha.

Tags: add-on, bookmarking, extension, Firefox, Plugin

Have Comic Strip Fun with your Photos in PikiStrips.com

PikiStrips is a free web service that allows you to create a comic strip from your photos. The service is pretty basic and simple and can be done in a few easy steps.

After registering to PikiStrips, you can immediately start creating your personal comic strips from your photos or images. Just select a comic strip layout. Edit border, background and colors. Upload a photo from your hard drive and position it to the comic strip cell of you choice then just drag speech bubbles and effects in the strip.

You can share your created comic strips with your friends. You can also order digitally printed Apparel, Mugs, Mouse mats, Posters, and Puzzles from PikiStrips. What is even better is that they ship worldwide.

This is a fun tool for creatively producing comic strip stories from your photos. It’s quick and easy to use. The only thing that concerns me is the search Flickr feature. You have to search and enter keywords in order upload a photo from Flickr. Personal Flickr account integration would be a useful feature for the service. Since most Flickr users don’t place tags in their photos, users will have a hard time searching for their images in PikiStrips. You’ll end up having to download your photos from Flickr and upload them from your hard drive.

You might also want to check out Comiqs. It’s a comic book creation service which allows you to create an embeddable comic book from your photos.

Tags: comic strip, comiqs, pikistrips, web service

Photoshop: How to Add Sunlight in Image

A few quick steps in adding a sunlight or sun ray effect in your photos using Photoshop.

Tags: effects, Photoshop, sunlight, tutorial, video

inSuggest: Get Bookmark Suggestions Based on your del.icio.us Taste

inSuggest is a service which gives you suggestion based on your delicious bookmarks. It will go over your bookmarked links in your delicious account and make bookmark suggestions that you might enjoy. It’s pretty much like Stumbleupon, the only difference is that inSuggest displays the links to the websites that you might probably like based on your delicious tags.

This is quite a useful tool for del.icio.us users for finding sites that might interest them based on their current bookmarks. Non del.icio.us users can also join in the fun just by entering a random del.icio.us username. There is no need to register to use this service. Just enter your del.icio.us username or someone else’s username to start using inSuggest. It will automatically generate personal recommendations for you based on the tags saved on the account you entered. I entered my account and it produced quite interesting suggestions for me.

inSuggest also have a Flickr and Website suggestion feature. If you own a website, you can also suggest it to inSuggest users who might find your site useful.

This is an interesting new service for discovering new sites based on your del.icio.us taste and others’. You might want to check it out just for fun and see how it goes for you.

Tags: bookmarks, delicious, inSuggest