Fancy the new “Fancy” Pinterest Rival?

I remember my first post about Pinterest, written a while ago, when the service hadn’t yet become the new passion for millions and how delightful it was to receive a confirmation of my personal account.

In case you didn’t know, Pinterest is a social service, which enables you to repost interesting, funny pics from the large accessible gallery of the site and add the fun photos yourself from any site you would like (all links are kept, so there’s no copyright infringement). Actually it works in the similar way you would add some useful files to your account at 4shared.com, selected among the data, previously uploaded by other 4shared users.

With some time having passed, I am now happy to present you with my, so to say, alpha-test of the fresh Pinterest Rival – Fancy, which is, actually, quite similar to its Pin-forerunner, yet has also got a number of its own essential peculiarities.

More reserved in the colorscheme of its interface, Fancy is seemingly more focused on attracting carrier-oriented people, who check the essential and necessary sites more frequently, than some cute animals, or something.

Some other design peculiarities go to the “Fancy It” button, which displays a popsickle icon. In this respect, I’d say it doesn’t look likewise stylish as the “Pin It” button, and I didn’t really get the idea with ice-cream (perhaps due to the fact that I loathe eating it lol).

As for available options, the service allows you to check the latest users’ Fancies, Fancy some of them and add personally found masterpieces. Unlike Pinterest enabling to add its Pin button to the browser, Fancy is offering to install the special Fancy Add-On (at least what I was shown in Chrome) to be able to Fancy interesting stuff on the Web and add it to your personal account at the site.

Moreover, there’s also a unique feature in Fancy, which hasn’t even been fully implemented by Pinterest – that is an ability to purchase some of the things you happen to browse in the gallery. In a simple example, it might be a leather jacket, the photo of which has been posted by one of the stores, or virtually anything else, as long as you see a “Buy it” button near the picture.

As for the general impressions about Fancy, I can’t but admit that the service has got all chances to compete with Pinterest in future. Here, the initial photo-reposting trend being one of the hottest ones now, I guess we might witness the rise of one more competitor in the niche soon enough as well.

Stay cool)
Andy

SendHub Messaging – Remedy or Contagion?

How often do you SMS your friends now? Perhaps, much less, than at least a few years ago, when social media and various messengers weren’t as popular as they are now. In fact, some of us have almost stopped using the SMS phone feature, having changed it to texting in other ways, or just making calls.

Nonetheless, despite the fact that many experts predict the future death of SMS’s, they are still available for usage with individual and business purposes. The latter case can, actually, be rather profitable for the company; otherwise I wouldn’t really notice the reasons, why the new service – SendHub, a relatively new startup, has already got so many clients.

The essence of SendHub is awfully simple: as long as you provide everyone in your potential contact base with your phone number (previously selected among versatile SendHub options) and any chosen keyword, each user sending the keyword to this very number will automatically be added to your contact list. In such a way, you’ll be able to send multiple SMS’s to everyone from the list and inform your clients about the news, updates or discounts in a faster way.

At first sight, the idea of SendHub is seemingly very convenient for an enterprise, as there’s no need to either collect the contact data or share the information manually. The automechanism will do it for you.

At the same time, there’s something quite illogical about SendHub, without any doubt. To start with, many of us (ok, many like me))) get irritated, when notice one more spam-SMS from the service, you’ve once shared your number with, like the restaurant or the taxi-center, for instance. You’d definitely sign out from it, but, unfortunately, there’s no “Unsubscribe” link, as in e-mail newsletters. SendHub, at the same time, presupposes your voluntary decision to sign up for being spammed even more, is it even logical? For users, like me, it’s far from any common sense, in fact.

In this respect, it seems almost impossible, how SendHub clients get their customers contacts and, thus, manage to use the service after all.

In a whole, though I always tend to wish luck to any new startup, which has got something creative in it, I somehow miss a more usual way to spread news among the users. E-mail notifications or just the separate news sections at your account, like they do it at 4shared, for example, are a much better way out. The latter seems even more awesome, as you check the messages/news box only, if you need to find out about something new, otherwise, the notifications won’t disturb you.

Stay cool and Happy V-Day to all who care about the holiday)

Andy

Ridejoy – Expansion of LifeStyle Sharing Opportunities

Within the current realities, the most essential trend we’re witnessing is, undoubtedly, the global integration and communication. In fact, it often seems that the world has eliminated its borders, at least in terms of information, spread and shared among various countries, cities and states.

Essentially speaking, we have already become more than accustomed to socializing via Skype, sharing our thoughts via Twitter, our photos - via Flickr, Tumblr or Instagram (I wonder why I’ve never written about it), our data – via 4shared, or any other file-storage service.

For now, apparently, we’ve got one more unique tool to socialize, and not only on the Web, but on the road trip (consequently, of course) as well. I’m talking about the newly-presented service - RideJoy, specifically designed to help people find the passangers or the drivers to organize the common roadtrip. As the authors claim, you won’t need to ask all of your friends (and prehaps, your friends’ friends) on FB, whether they’d share a journey with you, and you won’t need to travel alone any longer.

Well, to say, I was taken aback a bit at first, when I encountered RideJoy for the first time – it was, actually, rather hard to believe, that there had been thousands of similarly cheap and easy-to-use services before. That’s so, as the specific niche on the market it’s aimed to occupy is potentially very-very profitable, that is a great number of people would love to share a roadtrip with others. Well, there you go, we’ve now got RideJoy.

To start with, what I liked about the service is its incredible simplicity. You only need to enter the site of departure, place of destination and a desirable date to get the matching results. Moreover, it’s also simple and fast to log in via your FB or Twitter account and avoid the boring registration procedure. Excellent? Well, almost.

The thing is that as the service is rather young, it now only covers the West Coast of the USA, so if you live somewhere in the UK, or elsewhere, you won’t be able to use it. In addition to that, it won’t be suitable for conservative or cautious people, who still remember having been taught not to talk to strangers and aren’t interested in company of barely-known drivers or passangers.

At the same time, it might be considered a funny adventure option for those, who crave for something new and unusual in their lives. The only essential aspect they should keep in mind is the money, as with RideJoy most users prefer getting the payment, at least when they drive.

Stay cool)
Andy

ACTA – A new SOPA…or Worse?

Whereas the world celebrates the withdrawal of SOPA and PIPA for an unlimited period of time, there has appeared a brand new hazzard on the way, which can possibly have much more negative consequences, than the former one – ACTA.

ACTA (full title:The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) may be easily considered a potentially dangerous document, which, in fact, presupposes attacks on human rights, even though it has been initially created in a seemingly democratic country (the US).

Naturally, as “the road to hell is always paved with good deeds”, the declared purpose of ACTA is more, than noble. Namely, the authors of the mentioned document plan to stop the spread of illegal and pirate content around the world.

Undoubtedly, the aim of ACTA is by all means positive, but the offered methods to achieve this aim are scarier, than one can imagine. In particular, the Customs officers have received the right to check one’s digital storing devices (including laptops, mobile phones, music players, or flash drives) for illegal or pirate content, with a further right to detain the device and forbid the person from visiting the country.

In this respect, it doesn’t matter, if you store password-protected info, you’ll be asked to unlock all your files, and otherwise your visit in the country will be forbidden either. Is it a bad dream? Unfortunately, it’s not.

The thing is that 22 countries, including EU members, the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Marocco, Mexico and Switzeland have already declared their desire to ratify ACTA, and if they do, the human right for confidentiality of personal data will vanish forever.

I have been truly taken aback, having read about the document for the first time, mainly because there’s yet no social reaction against the violations it makes legal. On the other hand, the answer, here, is obvious – there’s no media coverage of the news that the document is almost in action for now.

Of course, having started surfing the Web, I managed to find ACTA official site and the relative Wikipedia page, but I wonder if I would ever find out about its existence, if I hadn’t happened to encounter some brief facts about it a few days before.

In a whole, what is absolutely irritating with all these SOPA, and, now, ACTA documents, is that the authorities don’t see the line between a desire to fight Internet piracy and the brutal violation of all basic human rughts.

The thing is that, it has become pretty clear already, that any respectful site can’t but implement strict house rules to maintain its reputation. Much because of that, even the large file storage services, like 4shared or even MediaFire have already established the detailed and harsh Terms of Use, which all sites’ visitors are obliged to follow.

So why all the fuss, dear officers? I’m sure that such documents as ACTA won’t only help stop the distribution of piracy content, but will also make the whole society furious. Do you need it, after all?

Stay cool. And attentive

Andy

MediaEverywhere by Polar Mobile – One More Win for HTML5

To start with, recollect in memory what you might have heard about Polar Mobile before.

Got it? If it’s nothing, then you’re a either a newbie in IT, or..Well, here I’m done with options, for Polar Mobile has already become an unbelievably famous player on the application development field recently.

With its numerous media clients being also more, than simply popular, like CBS Interactive and GQ, just to name a few, Polar Mobile has left many of its former rivals far behind, due to its incredible cross-platform app building solutions.

For now, the company is ready to open the new era in expanding its business – there has already been announced the upcoming appearance of specifically created content distribution engine - HTML5-based MediaEverywhere.

In this respect, Polar Mobile has got impressive expectations for MediaEverywhere, as the new product will definitely increase its client networking opportunities to a considerable extent. At the same time, there’s one more win to observe – one more win for HTML5, and one more proof that this very technology owns the future.

It’s not that somebody has had any more doubts about the cloudless perspectives of HTML5, on the contrary, the latest IT trends reveal that soon there’s be no company in the industry not using the language. Moreover, a large number of brands in versatile fields, including media portals or large cloud storages (namely, 4shared), for instance, are known to have been using HMTL5 already, so the technology is likely to rule the world pretty soon.

Anyway, MediaEverywhere is promised to be presented in public in the 1Q, 2012, and I’ll make sure to test the fresh service as soon as it’s available

So, let’s get ready to be impressed, guys.


Stay cool
Andy

Samsung Becomes the New Asian Tiger

The history of competition between Samsung and Apple is full of versatile disputes, arguments and lawsuits, many of which are still being in court.

Despite the fact, that the plagiarism issues have become almost the indispensible part of what the experts are talking about, when Samsung products are being mentioned in the talk, the company somehow continues its winning streak. And this can be easily proven, at least as far as Asian countries are concerned.

The latest news reveals surprisingly large popularity of new Galaxy smartphones by Samsung, especially in South Korea, where, as the surveys show, where you will definitely meet 1 Samsung Galaxy II S owner among 10 citizens. Shocking? Actually, rather predictable.

The thing is that Samsung, in fact, has all to become as famous as its biggest rival in Asia. The company’s smartphones are likewise functional and carefully designed as iPhones (ok, may be a little too much similar, but who cares) and, at the same time, pretty cheaper, than the latter. Moreover, you’d never find essential differences either in the look or between the features of Samsung and Apple tablets as well, with the former, again, being cheaper. Both enterprises turn out to be compatible with hundreds of useful applications, though here Samsung has got one advantage, when opted for including some useful apps, like 4shared Mobile as the default ones.

Futhermore, what Samsung posseses now, a so to say, secret weapon in the war is its Samsung Galaxy Note.It’s neither an ordinary smartphone, nor a tablet. It’s the middle, which somehow the company has managed to create Before Apple. Moreover, the device is really cutting-edge in its multifunctionality and style. Classy, elegant, and boy, even if you never really need it, you want to buy it, more than anything, as long as you take it in the hands.

All things considered, for what it takes, Samsung has, obviously, Already become the new Asian Tiger, and being so heavily-armed, perhaps, will soon increase its popularity all over the world as well.

Have you already ordered from Takeaway?

We’re mobile, we’re always on the move, and we demand convenience from every good and service we’re using. We do.

Undoubtedly, we’re keen on using a variety of apps for our smartphones and tablets, from photo editors to music players, like 4shared Music, etc., living our lives at a cruising speed.

And yet…and yet we’ve already turned out so busy with our routine that we tend to order, rather than purchase live most of the time. It may sound a bit controversial, but despite the fact that everything and everyone in the modern world is moving really fast, we mostly prefer to order, than to go and buy.

If to relate such an ambiguous tendency (I certainly wouldn’t dare decide, whether it’s good, or bad))) to an IT industry, it’s quite natural that the number of apps, aimed at helping people order is gradually increasing every single day.

Of course, the quantity doesn’t always presuppose the quality, but it’s true, that a number of order-oriented applications have managed to win the considerable popularity even in terms of constantly insensifying applications. Namely, I’m talking about Takeaway.com, having got 9 thousand restaurant-partners at a moment, which has recently acquired more, than 10million Euro from investors. Too much, as you would say?

I’d admit it’s absolutely predictable. With the service’s fame being spread more and more, and people’s desire to eat being eternal by all means; Takeaway.com has good chances to become the best of the best in its sphere, if the received money is used properly.

For now, it’s almost impossible to foresee, how the functionality and the diversity of options in the service are going to be developed, but hopefully, the app founders will never have a regretting thought that they once decided to launch it.

Getting back to our strange desire to order, I guess it won’t change in the nearest future, at least, and not because of the fact, as someone may suggest, we are to lazy to get out, but rather because we’ve got much more essential things to do. This is even inspiring))


Stay cool

Andy