Health messages for expectant mothers sent over the phone via texts. .

Expectant mothers who find themselves needing a little coaching to carry their pregnancy can now find that help in the form of timely text messages sent to their cell phones. The free service is from Voixiva a Washington based health non profit group who specialise in using technologies to solve complex medical issues.
The way the service works is very straightforward according to the New York Times: you send in a text message to the service with the word "baby" or "bebe" in Spanish to 511-411 then wait for the service to prompt you for for zip code and due date. From there and until a year after your due date, you will be getting reminders for things like taking your vitamins, going see your OBYG for a regular check up, etc.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Vudu to offer movies streaming directly into TVs and Blu-Ray players.

Vudu, the pionneer of movies on demand thanks to its set-top box by the same name, is abandoning the box all together in favor of direct streaming into your TV according to the New York Times. The new strategy is fairly simple and cheaper too.
Until now, if you wanted to watch movies through Vudu, first and foremost, you would have to buy the $150 stand-alone box and then pay every time you want to watch a movie. But the technology was slowly adopted resulting in poor sales of the device. Now Vudu want to go around that problem by offering its product as a feature and not a device. For that end, Vudu has teamed with manufacturers of devices like TVs and Blu-Ray players, to incorporate its technology as a built-in feature into the device therefore, allowing the possibility of streaming movies.
Right now, LG and Mitshubishi are the only companies offering the technology with the list set to grow this summer to include others like Sanyo, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba and Vizio.
The movies offered can be watched through three levels of quality: standard, high def and something called HDX which stand for higher hi-def.
To these three levels of quality correspond, three levels of pricing ranging from $4, $5 and $7.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Google Chrome operating system is unveiled.

Last Thursday, Google unveiled the underlying of its much anticipated Chrome operating system and the early reviews are generally good. According to the New York Times, the new operating system takes its clues from Google recently released Web browser by the same name. For that reason, it will not reside in users computers but rather in the "clouds", the catch name giving to the Internet in such cases. Already, most Internet users rely on cloud computing as the whole concept is called, to access a lot of things like e-mails, photo albums, maps etc. The Google Chrome operating system that was unveiled last week is an early version running on a netbook rather than more powerful PCs. It is at least a year from being offered to the public, and when that happens, it will certainly be restricted to the netbook category for a while. Regardless, the test version unveiled last week, showed an impressive boot time of seven seconds and according to the New York Times, people at Google are promising an even faster start up time once it goes in production. But for now, Google is not saying which PC manufacturer plan to built machines with the Chrome operating system.

For more, see NewYorkTimes.com

Radio Bookmark is a way to bookmark NPR programs for later listening.

Ever been in your car listening to your favorite NPR program only to be interrupted in the middle of it? Now you have a way to catch up with that same program later when you have time to listen to it, thanks to a device called Radio Bookmark.
The device itself is not new, it has been available for a while as a premium add-on to NPR subscribers only. It is now available for purchase for everyone from the manufacturer's online store, Radiobookmark.com/store for $39.99.
The device looks like a car's remote knob and the way it works is when you are getting interrupted in the middle of a program, you just push a button that will record the time at which that happened. Once you get home, you just plug the Radio Bookmark into your computer and according to the New York Times, "your browser automatically will go to the Radio Bookmark Web page to match up the time at which yo pressed the button against what was playing on preselected local station, and create a list of bookmarks for the programs you marked. After selecting a bookmark, you will be taken to your local station's Web site where you can replay the program."

For more, see NYTimes.com

How to make some photos on Facebook visible to only certain people?

If you have some pictures on Facebook that you would like to make visible only to a limited number of people, fortunately, there is a way to do just that. The place to start, would be the privacy settings on the site.
From there, these are the steps to follow according to the New York Times:
1-Go to the Photos section on your profile page and click the "See All" link to bring up a list of all your photo albums;
2-Click the "Album Privacy" link and go to the album you wish to restrict;
3-Select "Customize" from the drop-down menu;
4-Click the button for "Some Friends" and type the names of friends with whom you'd like to share these particular pictures.
Another way to do it is by choosing to display a limited version of your profile page to certain people.
Here are the steps to achieve that still according to the New York Times:
1-Click the "Privacy " link at the top of your profile page to get to the settings for adding select information to the limited version of your Facebook profile;
2-Once the limited profile is defined, click on the Friends link; viewership
3-Click on the Limited Profile on the right side of the screen to add the names of friends whom you want to see the censured version of your online profile.
All these features and many more privacy features like a new one called "Friends of Friends", are explained in details in the Facebook blog.


For more, see NYTimes.com

Playing Internet radio through Window Media player.

Music lovers who want to listen to their favorite radio stations online but without the extra steps of opening up their browsers and launching the right Web page, but instead want to listen in from Window Media Player, may be able to do just that.
It get even better because not only can they listen to their radio stations of choice from Window Media Player, there are other ways to bypass the browser as well. But without getting ahead of ourselves, lets start with the listening through the Window Media player.
According to the New York Times, "recent versions of Window Media Player let you listen to live streaming radio in a few different ways. You can add a stream you find yourself on a radio station Web site or select one in the Media Guide menu in Window Media Player."
From a radio station Web site, the thing to look for is the "Listen Live" or "Listen Now" buttons on their home pages with a link to listen to the live stream on Window Media Player. Or you can simply copy the live radio stream's URL and past in into the Media Player Open URL box; to bring up Window Media Player URL box, just type Control + U on the keyboard.
And if you have the Window Media Player11 version, "you can find also find radio stations by clicking the arrow under Online Stores Tab and choose radio stations from the menu" according to the New York Times.
From there, you can click on the link for Internet Radios where you can browse and listen to a collection of Online streams, still according to the New York Times.
Microsoft has a guide to listening to listening to Internet music radio with Window Media Player at Microsoft.com.
Another option is offered by Web sites like radiotower.com or shoutcast.com that aggregate Online radio stations from around the world and let you listen to the audio feed through your media software of choice like Window Media Player itself, or those sites players as well.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Fanbase.com plans to be the web's largest almanac of pro and college athletes, built by fans.

Sports fans who can not get enough of their favotite team or players, or who follow some not very popular sports, like high school hockey, have a new avenue to satisfy their devotion, thanks to a new Web site called Fanbase.com. The site goals' is to be a sort of a almanac of sports of all sorts, be it a team sport or an individual one, professional or amateur. Fanbase will work kind of like a Wiki where pages devoted to former or current players or athlets or teams will be created and fans as well as the players themselves would be encouraged to review and update.
According to the New York Times, Fanbase.com "hopes that current and former athletes and fans will visit the site and upload commentary and correct inaccuracies, just as enthusiasts provide much of the information in Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database. "
To make the site more engaging, Fanbase holds various trivias and contests and is trying to fill it with as much videos as possible from some of the most popular video sharing sites like YouTube and with users generated content, be it video, written or pictures. The site organize various contests and trivia
Fanbase also is making it easier for its users to stay connected with their friends on other popular social networks sites like Facebook.com
Still according to the New York Times, "Fanbase plans to expand over the next few months to include individual sports like golf, skiing and tennis. After that, it wants to get really obscure, adding pages for high school teams and athletes."

For more, see NYTimes.com

Pandora Online music radio application for Android phones is now available.

Already available for mobile phones like the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Pandora.com , the Internet radio streaming Web site is now available for download on phones running the Android operating system by Google.
In an article in the New York Times, it turns out that most people who download the Pandora mobile application, listen to the music by plugging their phones to speakers, either at home or in their cars.
The application shows ads that pops up at the bottom of the screen that listeners can choose to click on and watch while the music still play in the background, and when they decide to watch video or make a phone call, the music will stop.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Vark is a free app that provides answers to those nagging questions.

Ever been engaged in a ragging trivia battle with a bunch of your buddies but could not agree on any of the answers provided by anyone and wished that you have some sort of a referee at hand to provide the final answers? Well, like the ads said, there is an app for that, and it is called Vark available at Vark.com.
According to the New York Times, Vark is available free for the iPhone and works this way: You will need to go register at Vark.com and list your areas of expertise and your Facebook page because it will use your social network as well your friends' networks to assemble the widest circle possible. But still quoting the New Y0rk Times, it will work without a link to Facebook by sending your question to selected volunteers, experts in the field of your question. If you have signed up using your Facebook page, when you ask a question , only a handful of people in your network or your friends network would be asked to provide an answer
which usually arrives within five minutes via instant-message, e-mail or through the iPhone itself.

For more, see NYTimes.com

Plastic Jungle helps sell, donate or exchange unsused gift cards.

Nowadays gift cards have become very popular with people who use them as an easy option when the need to buy someone a gift, arises. But as popular as they are for the givers, that may not be the same for the recipients with 10% of them who do not redeem their cards or do it only partially. That makes the merchants that issue those cards the real winners in this exchange. If gift cards recipients have all kind of reasons not to use them in the past, now they have an option to take advantage of them by trading them for cash or for another card that they really want to use. A nascent trading market of second hand gift cards has sprung up in recent years, allowing owners of unwanted cards to unload them.
Plastic Jungle.com a California start up is one the companies that buys, sells or exchange unused gift cards for cash or a credit with Amazon.com. Plastic Jungle buys those cards at a discount ( about 8o percent of the original price) and resells them at a slightly higher price.
Beside Amazon.com, Plastic Jungle has partnered with Donors Choose.org, an non profit organization that match donors with schools around the country in need of supplies. In that partnership, gift cards owners can choose to do good with their cards by donating the full face value of the cards to needy schools through Donors Choose.org.
According to the New York Times, "the non profit organization will match the difference between the original balance on the gift card and what Plastic Jungle pays the donor “so that donors don’t lose a single penny when donating a gift card.”

For more, see NYTimes.com

Evernote is a new way to keep different files synched and searchable.

Have you ever dreamed of the possibility of one day being able to have all the important information from all kind of different sources accumulated as you go by your day, located in one place and accessible from any device you happen to be using at any given time? Well, that time is here with a new free web application called Evernote from a Montainview California start up by the same name.
According to the New York Times," the company offers a Web application that saves data you accumulate. You can use it to keep a wide range of information: meeting notes and voice memos, for example, or even photographs of wines consumed or recipes found in magazines. The information is stored on the company’s computers so all the data can be synchronized on every computer the customer uses — and on smartphones as well."
You can for instance "snap a picture of a business card with a smartphone like a Palm Pre or an iPhone and it shows up on the phone’s Evernote app — as well as on the Dell back at the office. It is searchable, right down to words in photographs." That way, if you type in “Samsung,” for example, every business card that you own coming from someone working for that company, will pop up.
To put it like the company CEO, it is like an universal memory drawer.
For the basic features, the service is free and can be downloaded at Evernote.com.
For people who find the service so useful and need more storage space or s0me extra features, they can ugrade to the premium level at a cost of $5 a month or $45 a year.


For more, see NYT.com

TwitVid, a free app for tweeting videos.

Smartphone owners wanting to use their mobile device to post a video to go with their tweets, now have options in the form of apps.
For instance, Blackberry users now can post short videos on Twitter from their phones using an app called TwitVid which is one of several such apps that are available on the iTunes App Store for a while.
According to the New York Times, TwitVid is easy to use. After downloading the free app, users will look for the "record" function then record their video, enter their tweet and hit send. From there, the tweet will appear as usual on users' Twitter page with a link to the video which stays st0red in TwitVid servers with no limit on the length.
Anyone with a camera phone can use the service without downloading the app by simply visiting the company Web site at TwitVid.com . Once there, users will be assigned to be used to send videos as an MMS or an e-mail with the video as an attachment with the tweet in the subject line. After that, it will post just like a normal tweet.

Texbook publishers to offer book rental option to students.

With college textbooks averaging $100 a piece, it is no secret that they represent one of the biggest expenses for college students who spend between $700 and $1,100 a year in that category.
This is not new considered the fact that a 2004 federal study found that textbooks prices nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004, rising an average of 6 percent a year or twice the inflation rate, according to the New York Times.
And as private companies have moved in to offer textbook rentals as an alternative to buying textbooks straight up, the nation leading textbook publishers have taken notice.
Just last week, one of them, Cengage Learning announced that it would start renting books to college students this year at 40 percent to 70 percent of the retail price the New York Times said.
With Cengage’s rental option, students will get immediate access to the first chapter of the book in e-book format, and can choose from a menu of shipping options for the printed book. At the end of the rental period, usually 60, 90 or 130 days, students can either return the textbook or buy it.
Other power houses in the textbooks business have jumped into the trend with Follett Higher Education Group, which manages more than 850 college bookstores, starting a pilot rental program this fall at about a dozen stores, including those at the State University at Buffalo, Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan, and California State University at Sacramento. The stores will offer about 20 percent of their titles for rent, charging 42.5 percent of the purchase price.


For more, see NYTimes.com

Facebook new privacy settings.

Faced with growing criticisms, Facebook is testing means that will give back users, more control over their data. To achieve that, Facebook is focusing on simplifying its privacy settings which count 4o different options spread over six pages.
The simplified privacy settings being tested right now among a limited number of users, consist mainly of "new controls that will allow members to specify which groups or individuals are able to see each text update, photo or video they post on the site" according to the New York Times.
Ultimately, the changes are meant to make people feel more comfortable in sharing data, knowing that they have control over who can and who can not see it. As for a general release of the new settings, no date yet has been set.

For more, see Businessweek.com

Glympse, a new easy way to share your whereabouts

If you ever been in a situation where you wanted to effortlessly and continuously share your whereabouts with someone or several others, this new mobile application called Glympse by Glympse.com , may be worth giving a consideration.

For now, the application only works with T-Mobile's G-1 phones and according to the New York Times, versions for the i-Phone, Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerrys and other portable devices, are on the work. Here are the basics on how the service works : You download the application from the Android Market which is the G1 kind of version of Apple's App Store.

From there, you can start sharing your whereabouts with anyone with Web-enabled phone or PC. Every time you want to do so, you begin the process by opening the application and enter the phone number or e-mail address of the person or persons you want to share that information. The length of time for which you can be tracked, is by default set at 30 minutes with the option to extend it.

Beside your actual location which is tracked by your phone's GPS system, you can include other information like your destination or your own message or one of the scripted ones.

The last step is to hit the "send" option, and there you are beaming your position or destination like an airplane to a to a control tower.

For more, see techcrunch.com