pages

The real Facebook-Twitter turf war: Marketers

On Thursday night, Facebook announced that it's launched its first official Twitter app--sort of. In a post on the company blog, Facebook announced that updates to "fan pages," public profiles for celebrities, brands, organizations, and what-have-you, can now be sent out through Twitter.

"Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who've created Facebook Pages often want to share a status update, a photo or an event with as many of their supporters as possible," the post by Facebook employee Michael Gummelt read. "Celebrities may want to share personal news or charities … Read more

The 404 394: Where The 404 gets a 404

On today's show, it's the last day of the Becks Beer sponsorship, so we end on a high note. Joining us in the studio again is Caroline McCarthy, bringing her wit and charm, and we also have Timothy Geisenheimer, who always has something clever to say. So apparently, CNET broke during today's live stream, which is why some people are getting 404 error pages when they visit our Web site. Today's Audio Draft is sponsored by Becks Beer in Conjunction with Last.fm, a subsidiary of CBS Corporation, 5000 XP GTS, is a rising European pop-rock star, Paolo Nutini.

After featuring mostly Indie bands, we're going to bring in some pop from across the pond. Paolo Nutini has a surprisingly sultry yet mature voice for a boy of only 22 years old! Trust us, you'll get knocked off your feet when you hear a dulcet voice come out of what seems to be a skinny Scottish kid. On today's show, we feature two songs from his album Sunnyside Up. The first is "Coming Up Easy", which is a nice tune about waking up in the morning to your significant other. Rounding out the show, we finish with "Candy," a slow-going song about getting some "sweets" from your lover before they leave. Yes, Paolo Nutini is "geting-down" music.

The Semi-Weekly Audio Draft has become so popular that we're going to list our previous picks so you can find the great, new musicians we're featuring here on The 404:

Paolo Nutini Koufax Why Priscilla Ahn Mayer Hawthorne The Hold Steady Grizzly Bear Matt Pond PA The Twilight and the Sound

On top of some great music, we have some great stories on today's show. At the top of the show, we discover the coolest invention ever: the dissolvable bikini! We wonder why it took so long to create this! All this is courtesy of Tim Geisenheimer's German descendants. It might be something you should give your date if you live in New York City! According to Forbes.com, NYC is the best place to live for singles. Caroline really disagrees, but that probably has to do with the fact that women in their 20s outnumber guys by a heavy margin. Wilson loves this, but bemoans the fact that a lot of these ladies are always trying to find the next best one.

In more technology-related news, AT&T and Barnes & Nobles have announced free Wi-Fi in their coffee shops. Sounds like a great idea at first because we've all hated paying $12.95 for an hour of Internet access, but imagine all the start-ups and college students crowding what used to be a nice place for conversation. Also, Twitter and Facebook are coming to Xbox 360, while we don't really have any interest in Twittering while we're playing Resident Evil 5, we kind of hope we can hook up with other gamers through Facebook Connect. Finally, there is a movement that we can all jump on! David Pogue's campaign to bring back the "BEEP", rather than the freakin' 15-second long voice mail message that we all love to hate. If we can call you from our phone, we know how to leave you a message!

EPISODE 394 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video

Read more

Yahoo launching front page open to others' content

A significant redesign is finally coming to the Yahoo.com home page, one of the most well-traveled destinations on the Internet, and the company's search page will follow suit starting next month.

Yahoo plans to let people in the United States start selecting a new, more personalized version of the home page beginning Tuesday afternoon. The revamp lets people select basic applications to use not just Yahoo sites, but also others' such as eBay, Facebook, and Twitter, said Tapan Bhat, Yahoo's senior vice president for consumer experiences.

These applications are available on the left side of the page … Read more

Facebook debuts 'fan box' tool

Here's something new from Facebook: the "fan box," which is a new tool for celebrities, brands, products, companies, and other entities with Facebook "fan pages" to effectively embed their Facebook presence into their Web sites.

That means that if you go to the Web site of a participating brand, like Coca-Cola or Lance Armstrong's Livestrong nonprofit, you'll see a widget that lets you add that brand as a "fan" on Facebook, which subscribes you to its updates, as well as a feed of updates and an array of profile photos from … Read more

WYSIWYG Web design

Sandvox is an easy-to-use, WYSIWYG tool for creating Web sites. It's perfect for less technical users who don't want to edit HTML but do want an attractive site that ranks well in search-engine results. This app's intuitive interface is organized around a straightforward toolbar on top and a site outline on the side. You can drag and drop images, text, and even movies, and you can see what your changes look like in real time while you're working. More experienced Web developers might feel constrained by Sandvox's simple, code-free workflow, but Web design novices will … Read more

Web site downloader

PageNest Free Edition offers users an opportunity to download entire Web sites to their computer. While the navigation of this program is occasionally confusing, the results are great.

The program's interface is tangled and confusing, but ultimately not impossible to manage. Its very plain layout leads to some confusion, especially when attempting to download a site. However, if people are willing to experiment with the options, they will soon understand this program's quirks. In addition, there is a comprehensive Help file available to walk users through most options. Once we learned how the program was to function, we … Read more

Yahoo considers another home page redesign

Yahoo is testing another redesign of its home page, emphasizing news feeds and applications as well as search results.

The company is testing the most recent design with certain users, and while it's somewhat similar to Yahoo's current look and feel, it is a bit of a departure from the most recent plan for a redesign shared by Yahoo in March, as noted by PaidContent.org. For example, the new design calls out the top 10 search results at a given time in the upper right-hand corner of the site, a box that appears at the absolute bottom … Read more

Babylon brings translation to your desktop

The ancient city of Babylon was a crossroads of cultures and languages, and the program Babylon makes good on its linguistic heritage. It can translate 31 languages from your desktop, offers a huge gallery of glossary add-ons, and gives direct access to Wikipedia results in 20 languages. In addition to deeper language libraries, the latest version introduces a new, streamlined interface, single-click document and Web site translation, and a new language detection-feature that recognizes languages without user input.

Babylon translates individual words and phrases on the fly by highlighting and right-clicking or using a hot-key combination that can be adjusted … Read more

Weave your Web in style

RapidWeaver occupies a middle ground between entry-level Web design applications like iWeb and the big-gun programs intended for Web design professionals. You still get access to higher-powered features (especially with the use of plug-ins and code snippets), but RapidWeaver is never daunting, focusing on simplicity over flexibility. You get all the tools you need to quickly create attractive, relatively complex Web sites--including easy integration of blogs, images, and video--without any coding and using a visually appealing interface that's so intuitive you'll barely have to crack a manual.

RapidWeaver offers a fast, sensible workflow, giving you many possibilities for … Read more

WebReview makes your browser's history, start page smarter

WebReview is a new extension for Firefox that attempts to make your start page smarter, and more suggestive based on past browsing habits. If you've used Google's Chrome, or have been keeping up with Mozilla's latest efforts to change what users are seeing when they first fire up their browser or open a new tab, the idea behind WebReview is the same.

When you install WebReview in Firefox (which for now is the only browser this extension runs in) it will give you four different sets of links. Like Chrome it will tell you both the last … Read more