Windows only: Listen to your home music library from anywhere through your browser with web site JukeFly. Similar to previously mentioned streaming application Orb, JukeFly runs a small server on your desktop that scans any music folders you add to it and makes all of that music available through their slick web interface. With its extensive social features, JukeFly is actually a little more reminiscent of Anywhere.fm, the main difference being that Anywhere.FM actually stores your music on their servers, whereas JukeFly streams the music from your computer. Either way, add JukeFly to the list of worthwhile methods for getting to your music library no matter where you are. JukeFly
When it comes to reading feeds for a job or need-to-know informatoin, it’s hard to beat the (unofficial) reigning champions of the web and desktop, Google Reader and NewsGator’s (now free!) products. But sometimes you might just want to run through a lot of content quickly, with no read/unread stress to remind you of your email inbox. For that kind of browsing, Alertle, a new AJAX-based feed reader, might be just the right thing. It comes jam-packed with pre-sets in a range of categories, and it moves nearly as quick as Reader (even with seemingly wider support for embedded video and audio). Alertle doesn’t bother marking posts as read, so it’s more a tool for seeing what’s new around the web than hitting a goal. The big drawbacks are non-support of Internet Explorer and a hard-to-grok sign-up interface (check the upper-right corner), but Alertle makes for an interesting addition to the growing stable of worthy feed readers. Alertle [via Google Blogoscoped]
You already know how to set up an online “personal nerve center” (PNC), bookmarking, blogging, and scheduling tasks and calendar events from Gmail. But if web-only central storage feels too far away in the cloud for you, PNC user Steve Rubel details how to make a portable, offline version that you can sync to the cloud, take with you and back up as well using IMAP and Gmail. I like the idea of email as the central hub of one’s doings—heck, it already is for most of us—and IMAP in Gmail makes that even more possible.
How to Set Up a Portable Personal Nerve Center [Micro Persuasion]If you’ve come to know and love your OpenOffice.org platform, new online office suite Ulteo might just pull you away from Google Docs or Zoho, or even the upcoming Microsoft Office Live. Ulteo uses Java to re-create nearly the same interfaces as the deskop software’s word processor, spreadsheet, and database applications. While obviously geared toward OpenOffice enthusiasts, Ulteo can import and export to Microsoft Office and PDF files like its desktop brother. The beta webapp is accepting 15,000 users from North America and Europe at the moment; I got in this morning after fishing the confirmation email out of the spam bin. Ulteo requires a browser have both JavaScript and Sun’s Java Runtime environment enabled—Ubuntu users in particular might have to check their packages to ensure compatability.
Ulteo [via LH Australia]LaTeX is a word processing and typesetting application that gets shout-outs from our commenters whenever bibliographies or other academic documents are needed. Now non-experienced users can try out the LaTeX platform without downloading anything using MonkeyTex.com, a free webapp that lets you upload, write, and save LaTeX documents, as well as collaborate and export to PDF. Keyboard shortcuts and template creation also contributes to MonkeyTex’s usefulness, inside or outside the halls of academia. For a decent introduction to the commands and features of LaTeX, check out the PDF link at this site.
MonkeyTeX [via MakeUseOf.com]Zoho has taken the final steps toward full offline access by allowing users to both read and edit Zoho Writer documents offline and then sync the results back to their Zoho account online. A few months ago we told you that the web-based word processor Zoho Writer added offline access using web plug-in Google Gears, but at that time docs were read-only (meaning no editing). Again, Zoho’s impressive progress both in terms of offline access and their feature-rich word processor makes one wonder when Google Docs will catch up. If you can’t see much in the low-quality video above, check this one out.
Zoho Writer Supports Offline Editing [Zoho Blogs]The creator of early webmail success Hotmail (which was acquired by Microsoft) has unveiled a free suite of Office apps which he hopes will be a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Office suite. Called Live Documents, you can sign up to request an invitation to the private beta of this web-and-desktop suite here. There are a lot of good, free Office alternatives these days – from Google Docs to Open Office, so it will be interesting to see how Live goes.
Online productivity suite Zoho has rolled out a mobile version of its Creator webapp , which can make both basic databases and help forge customised interfaces and applications to use them. As the somewhat (intentionally?) cheesy promotional video shows, It could be useful for adding to office or personal projects and websites on the go, or for pulling up and presenting information from a non-sensitive database. Like other Zoho applications, Creator is free to use but requires an account sign-up.
Zoho Creator Mobile [via Office Tweaks]Presentations, the slide show component of Google Docs, has been updated to allow slides to be given custom background images and colourised. While there’s still no ability to save create constant self-made themes, it does bring Presentations one step closer to being a feasible alternative to desktop-based slide show creators. The update also makes it easier to select and move more than one slide at a time by Ctrl- or Shift-clicking and dragging slides around. Having been out for two months now, are you finding Presentations useful? Share your observations in the comments.
Customize the Background of a Google Presentation [Google Operating System]Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Skip the upload process and edit images entirely within your browser with the Picnik Firefox extension, a free download that adds right-click functionality to online image editor Picnik. Once installed, any website image can be right-clicked and sent to Picnik for editing, and entire pages—or just the visible portion—can also be grabbed. For those constantly grabbing screenshots or wanting to do a little cropping, rotation, or resizing before downloading, the extension eliminates the download-and-upload redundancy of online image editing. The Picnik extension is a free download and works wherever Firefox does.
Picnik Firefox extension [via CyberNet]
