Wednesday, March 25, 2009

iStopOver Locates Rooms For Rent

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re comfortable staying at a stranger’s home while travelling, iStopOver is a service that connects travelers with locals renting rooms—at rates well below local hotels. The service functions much like a hotel search engine, you enter the city and the dates you’ll be visiting that city and iStopOver returns the available rooms for rent. You can check out pictures of the location, see it on a Google Maps mashup, the available price, and if the room has been rented consistently even see ratings from previous visitors. Everything is handled by iStopOver, including the transfer of money between parties. When you arrive at your selected location you give the owner a code which they use to tell iStopOver that you’ve arrived. If things aren’t like they promised you can leave without ever “checking in” and iStopOver will refund your money.Perusing the listings in New York yields a surprising bounty of really nice accommodations for prices radically better than any hotel would charge for the same accommodations. The site will list prices in Australian dollars, but there weren’t any Australian listings when we checked. Is it worth the savings to stay in a stranger’s home? Sound off in the comment below with your opinion. iStopOver [via Mashable] More »

Evernote Web Clipper Makes Full-Page Grabs Easy

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Evernote, our favourite free non-paper note-taking app, just made it easier to stash entire web pages in your extended cloud brain. The Web Clipper too now includes a checkbox for “Clip full page,” and it remembers if you like to do that sort of thing on your next click. Evernote also responds to users who get a bit tired of typing in their credentials every few days, extending the Web Clipper’s cookie memory to a week (assuming you don’t wipe out your cookies sooner). How does Evernote’s bookmarklet play into your note-taking system? Evernote More »

Close’n Forget Removes All Traces Of The Site You’re On

9:30PM Kevin Purdy | Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Close’n Forget, one of the runners-up for Mozilla’s Best Firefox 3 Extensions, has updated to, well, actually work more often, erasing any site’s cookie/history/AwesomeBar evidence from Firefox with one button click. We’ve never featured Close’n Forget as its own download ’round these parts, but, then again, back when it made an appearance in the awards round-up, a handful of commenters were saying it just wouldn’t close a tab, or wasn’t offering enough customisation. A few bug fixes and updates later, and Close’n Forget seems to really do its intended work. After installing, right-click your toolbar and hit “Customize” to add its tiny X icon to your button array, or right-click any page to get a “Close and erase cookies for current site” option. If you want to go deeper than just that page’s cookies, check out Close’n Forgets privacy-plus options: More »

TheSOCExchange.com.au Lets You Sell Anything For An Annual Fee

4:30PM Angus Kidman | Despite various local attempts, virtually no-one has succeeded in taking on eBay in the commission-based selling business, but alternatives keep popping up. TheSOCExchange.com.au differs in its charging model: rather than paying when you list or sell an item, you pay either $1 a month or $10 a year and can list as many items as you like. Listings in some categories are a little sparse, but if you have a lot of stuff to sell and want an eBay alternative, it could be worth checking out. If you’ve had a good (or bad) selling or buying experience on the site, tell all in the comments. TheSOCExchange.com.au More »

Fumzup Helps Choose Credit Cards And Bank Accounts

3:00PM Angus Kidman | Getting minimal interest rates on credit cards and maximum rates on savings accounts makes good financial sense, but ploughing through bank sites is a tedious task. Fumzup automates the process of finding credit cards, savings accounts and term deposits by letting you specify key features you like using the familiar tag cloud approach, ranking the importance of those features, and then showing relevant products. There seems to be a good selection of major banks and other institutions on offer, and the interface is mostly straightforward, though the process of ranking features could be a little better designed. For a somewhat similar take on choosing real-world goods, check out My Perfect; for a more conventional search of finance products, look at previously mentioned Mozo. Fumzup is free to use, requires registration to save results. Fumzup More »

eBay Discussion Board Change Stirring Controversy

1:30PM Angus Kidman | Next week, eBay Australia is planning a relaunch of its discussion boards, which will include new personalisation options and some other technical policies. However, the change will also see a number of changes to discussion board policy, including a likely ban on general (non-eBay) discussion on any of the forums. Unsurprisingly, that proposal has proved unpopular with many longtime eBay users, who argue that the change is yet another example of eBay putting short-term profit ahead of community development (an issue that regularly flared during last year’s abortive attempts to make PayPal compulsory). Do you think eBay has the right to control what gets discussed on its site, or is it going to far? Share your thoughts in the comments. More »

Google Translate Now On Main Google Dropdown

10:30AM Angus Kidman | Google Operating System points out a minor but useful change at Google: its Translate option is now available from the main ‘More’ dropdown on the home screen for most international Google home pages (including google.com.au), so you can translate simply by typing a phrase in the search box and selecting ‘Translate’. With that said, the language detection still doesn’t always work (in the example pictured, Google identified the phrase as French but offered back the identical phrase as the translation into English), but it does save a few steps. For another novel way to use Google for translations, try using Image Search instead. Google Translate, Added to the Navigation Menu [Google Operating System] More »

Win A BlackBerry Bold

9:00AM Kym Weathersten | As any company can attest, the key to success is in knowing your consumer. Which is why BlackBerry have asked us to run this small survey. It’s rather straightforward, and all completed surveys will go into the draw to win a BlackBerry Bold valued at $985. [BlackBerry survey] [Terms and Conditions] More »

Vodafone To Expand 3G Coverage In May

9:00AM Angus Kidman | Vodafone’s mobile broadband offering has always been appealing in price terms, but its 3G coverage has lagged relative to many of its rivals (except for 3, which it’s now in the process of merging with anyway). However, that could improve shortly. Suzanne Tindal at ZDNet reports that Vodafone’s 3G coverage is due to expand to around 20 major regional centres — including capitals Hobart and Darwin — at the beginning of May, and should be available to 94% of the country by the end of August. That’s not quite as comprehensive as Telstra’s Next G offering, but it remains (and is likely to remain) considerably cheaper. May date for Vodafone 3G bush launch [ZDNet Australia] au, communicate, 3g, broadband, vodafone, More »