Use Pip.io and totally define control on who sees your posts through a beautifully created UI.

Robert Scoble had recently interviewed Leo Shimizu, the CEO of a new social networking site called Pip.io.

I have decided to give the site a try and see if it’s the same ol’ same ol’, you know, social networking site.

Upon registration, you will receive a welcome email – yes they do that too.

Using Pip.io is going to change the way you communicate with your friends and family on the web! You can share conversations, photos and files, instant message, video chat, and much more – all in real time!

And you will be redirected to a really cutesy panoramic view which reminds me of logging in an online game.

A few minutes into the app and you can tell what to do first – setup your profile of course. It immediately sets my location.

So based on what I understood from the UI, I uploaded an avatar and proceeded to install applications. They have Facebook, News Reader , Twitter and Youtube. Not much.

I was able to add up Facebook and Twitter but was hesitating in adding up News Reader. I already have my Google Reader for that and can’t imagine adding up all my RSS feeds one by one. Maybe there’s an RSS feed for Google Reader? That is still have to know.

I stopped there since the next few things I saw were feeds from my Facebook and Twitter. For Facebook, it was actually limited to commenting on stream updates and I cannot LIKE which is what I usually do.

For the rooms at the sidebar, I have not put it to use since I am not sure if I will be enjoying that. I clicked on what I can within the application and I can say that I felt so lonely. Maybe because I didn’t import my contacts to search for those who have profiles but I doubt anyone has one.

Scoble was able to mention about privacy but I have not been able to put it to test since I do not know where to test as all of these were based on quick observations from someone interested but doesn’t know where to go next.

Again, I felt lonely using the app as I cannot explore and see other people’s profiles and I did not know where to go next as there were no quick tips or walkthroughs.

I am so not liking Magento right now. Yes, it’s supposed to be a “snazzy ecommerce platform” but I won’t blame this to learning curve. Nooooo. I have already installed WordPress and BANS for the FIRST TIME and didn’t encounter any problems whatsoever by just reading the freakin’ manual. Well, I know those are too easy to install. But then, this is a different case.

Been tinkering with this for almost a week now and it is getting on my nerves. Got errors importing the SQL of their sample data in phpmyadmin. That is why I cannot use the Downloader to install Magento. I am doing the Default Install instead to run away from sample data.

Transferring the files via FTP would leave me nail-less on every finger if I spend my time watching it trickle file by file. No, I won’t do that. My time is too precious. I have to leave my PC running and uploading the dang files. And only to find out later that it’s still NOT working! The internal server error 500 is still there happily looking at me. I change the permissions several times already and still it didn’t work.

My desperation even reached Twitter but no Magento person contacted me. Yes, I was expecting it to be like GoDaddy where their customer service is 5-stars! More on that later.

I will now see where oh, where did I go wrong. Any Magento experts there who want to end my hatred?

www.lijit.com

“Uh, I had an adrenaline rush. It’s very common. You can Google it.”- Edward Cullen, Twilight

Google has become a household (or office) term for “search”. Even conversations in the big screen can be quoted using such a term. Meeting someone who doesn’t know Google would be a once in a blue moon event. Think of “search” and without a glance I’m sure you would think of that six-letter word on white background with a textfield and two buttons below it.

But, as some bloggers may have noticed, Google is quite flawed. When doing a search, the tool would pick up all related links to sites related to those keywords entered. This is not what you want so you set it up to search only your site’s content and some other site that you entered away on the configuration. Still this is not enough.

This is where Lijit fills in the gap. This innovative search engine gives publishers the Lijit Wijit, a FREE plug-in component, to put on your site and give your readers a way to not only search your blog and your other sites but also search your photos in Flickr, your videos on YouTube, your bookmarks in StumbleUpon, or your content on Facebook.

These are some the benefits of Lijit as quoted from their site:
• Increase searches by 2.5 – 5x
• Engage readers and raise pageviews 5% or more
• Grab the 30% of your audience that you’re missing
• Use search stats to improve content targeting and uncover reader intent

FOR YOUR READERS
Lijit allows your readers to use your customized search engine that searches your blog, bookmarks, photos, blogroll, and more giving you the control over your readers and the opportunity to know the “how, who and what” of your site readers.

FOR PUBLISHERS
Lijit made sure that they are providing value back to their blog publishers. This is visible through the form of statistics that you can view on your Lijit account. You can see how many times you’ve been searched, about what, which of your results have been clicked, and much more.

As of December 10, 2008, they have released the latest version of their ad network. The theme of this release is to offer greater value and control for their publishers by offering transparent, flexible, and manageable search ad offering. This is by letting the publishers set their own prices and sell their own search ads.

FOR ADVERTISERS
Lijit gives you the ability to target the right people at the right time. You can build text ads using Lijit’s easy-to-use interface. Choose as many keywords as you want to target your ads and have your ads appear next to search results next to a site or set of sites that you have picked.

For an interview from Lijit’s CEO and co-founder Todd Vernon, you can watch this YouTube video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekxt5gnrwTA&hl=en&fs=1]

www.ideamason.com

IdeaMason is a knowledge management software. From its definition alone, you can derive that is a storage application for your ideas, sources, cited materials and research materials.

For an online article writer like me, my portfolio of work is organized as directories or folder on my local PC. This makes it hard to sift from one folder to another to look for an article that I wrote. It is also very difficult to manage status and progress of these articles since there is other option by to probably place it in a “Completed” or “Needs Research” folder.

IdeaMason offers to change this setup by managing all your portfolio items. Folders or categories are already placed and ready for you for the purpose of organization of your created documents. You can create new materials like either a new idea, quotation, thesis/abstract, summary or figure.

The work area that is presented to the user is a more familiar application like Word for easy text editing and formatting – a feature that is very useful for Windows platform users.

The one thing I found good was that you can create a composition. IdeaMason helps you do this by providing organization of though using the outline view. This is done by inserting an organizational element, either a part or chapter or topic or any other subtopic and them immediately adding an item under each outline.

Aside from that, documents created can be exported in formats that are commonly used like Word, HTML, RTF or XML. This makes it very convenient for writers or to blog article writers to easily use formats outside the application.

There are lots of additional features that a serious writer (or a student or someone from the academe) can use the application for and they are documented on their site for easier reference but the point being that you can organize your thoughts in this manner is already a big thumbs up from a not-so-advanced user like me.

Lots of reviews show user satisfaction for the product since it has been released for use. Reviews on the internet are from way back to 2006 and some items mentioned by those reviews have long been implemented on this application.

The important thing is to start using the application and get familiar with all the wonderful features that it has to offer.

http://www.fileride.com/

November 30, 2008 will be the last day for downloading the application. Then it will be in closed beta.

The FileRide application looks very good and sleek. For only 11MB of installer, it didn’t take much of my time to download the file and to finally install it on my PC.

After setting up my profile (actually I just setup my picture) I navigated my way through the fancy buttons that were presented to me. I was actually looking for the settings menu which probably let me customize the look and feel of the app but was dismayed to find none except the setting to play sounds and alerts.

The upper right corner had a blank box intuitively should be a search box and upon entering text, it matches up some items that were tagged as such. I was expecting much that it be the same as Google’s search – too many expectations though. I was given some Google results though that was of a different language.

On copying an image or a link or a file, it’s smart enough to detect that you have copied such and suggests you add it on FileRide.

As with most applications, I think it will take more navigation and more than a day to familiarize the app and the possibilities that it can offer.

http://www.suggestionbox.com/

(Article written for www.crowdsourcing.com)

Remember that fancy box labeled “Suggestion Box” that you caught a glimpse at your favorite restaurant the day they gave you bad, substandard service? Haven’t you wished you had a pen and scribbled your comments, questions or requests away? Or did you do such but was left wondering if your rants were even heard.

Forget about that old way of venting out and type in “suggestion box” in Google or, heck, just type www.suggestionbox.com on your favorite browser. Most probably it will direct you to an interactive suggestion system that lets you drop a suggestion about that restaurant you had dinner in. Of course, you have to have an account first before doing such because this would give you other benefits like keeping track of the progress of your suggestion whether it’s under review, for future changes, being implemented, or filed away.

If you are a business, don’t worry. You can create your own suggestion box on this site. This tool will come in handy for you to connect with your costumers aside from the fact that you can also find out what your competitors lack by stalking their suggestion boxes.

Oh, now you want to drop a comment or two for this site (referring to crowdsourcing.com), huh? Sure go ahead then. We’ll await your suggestions. ?

Skype call to Singtel, a cellular company of Singapore is VERY cheap indeed. The rate is similar to calling any U.S. number.

I got the chance to drop a call to Jade who’s been in Singapore for about 3 days now and she seems to be pretty well and is currently on a job hunt. I wish her well in her endeavors.

For all those looking for a way to contact people in Singapore, try Skype. It’s fast, cheap and very clear.

Skype should pay me for this advertisement. Hmph.

I am quite happy today! My mom has been asking me to call her cellphone for about six times already. I have been hesitant in dialing her number on our work phone but what the heck! I’m going to have a new camera by next month!

My surveys have all paid off and I had checked out all the rewards I had. It amounted to about $177 all in all. And for that, I asked my mom to buy a new digital compact camera for me. Of course, she added a few more dollars to buy the actual camera.

I’ve read reviews about the product and it was set to be out on April but as early as now, Mom was able to get one at BestBuy. I was so glad she was able to get one.. well that was after numerous calls, comparing between an SD850 IS (I admit I wanted this more) and her telling me to opt for a Panny (Panasonic) brand of camera instead.

I have asked Nadia, my Scorpio friend, on her model of camera. She said she has the IXUS 70. And guess what, this SD1100 IS is actually the IXUS 80 for Europe. =_= So there. We actually, almost have the same camera model. But what the heck!! I got a camera!! Woah!! I’m going to take lots of pictures!! Friendster!!