With lofty rhetoric claiming it’s a next-generation multimedia browser, the RADUS webapp (pronounced “Ray-DEE-us” apparently) leaves much to be desired. But the Flash-based site does have one standout feature: You can create video playlists on-the-fly, watching videos in a panel on the left while searching thumbnails on the right and clicking to cue up in a queue. It’s great for quickly searching through multiple videos from YouTube, because after adding a few prospects into the playlist you can quickly click past any videos that aren’t relevant to what you’re looking for. Or you can just binge on Daft Punk videos. Since it plays directly from online sources, there’s no waiting for downloads like in Miro or iTunes. What tools do you use to kick back, relax, and watch a bunch of videos without having to reach for your mouse or keyboard every three to ten minutes? Tell us in the comments.
RADUS [via Download Squad and Webware]Free web-clipping tool Snipd, one of the 10 up-and-coming products that intrigued us at this year’s start-up conferences, has opened its doors to public sign-ups. The service works through a bookmarklet that puts mouse-over clipping icons on text, images, or embedded Flash, and stores all the content on a Tumblr-style page, though you can change the privacy settings for all or individual items. You also get RSS feeds for your public content, and text fiends may love that Snipd keeps the formatting on any copy you grab. Snipd is a free service that requires a sign-up. Read on for a demonstration video and screenshot from a Snipd collection page.
Got a bunch of scanned documents in PDF format but lack for good text-converting OCR software? Google is now indexing their text conversions of PDFs, which means anyone with access to open web space can let their monstrous servers do all the heavy lifting. The Digital Inspiration blog recommends putting your PDF files in a folder and creating a page that links to all of them. If you’re a bit concerned about dropping all that text into the public’s search results and you own your space, you can use Google’s Webmaster Tools to reign in what gets scanned and indexed on your site, although you should assume anything you put online can be found by those looking for it. Convert Scanned PDF Documents to Text with Google OCR [Digital Inspiration]
