Communication in today’s computer networked world comes in different forms and most of us have use more than one: e-mail, Facebook, IM, RSS feeds, etc. Many times, we have multiple accounts. I know I do! Checking them all can be daunting or at least near impossible as more of them gain more real-time streams.

Startup Threadsy aims to consolidate this comm into a single web-based client. I had a chance to test out Threadsy and found a slick app, that unfortunately was pretty ‘busy’ due to the number of streams that it tried to consolidate. But that’s no fault of Threadsy.

I set it up to check 1 e-mail account, Facebook and Twitter. Threadsy does what we all do – prioritize. In their case, they prioritization translates directly to screen real estate. Email takes up more space than my Twitter feed, although Twitter direct messages come through in my larger consolidated feed, which I like.

You can reply to messages directly from the Threadsy interface, although I did notice there was no way to mark an e-mail as spam.

Threadsy is great for people who want to simplify, but I’m not about to give up the power I have with Gmail, or Facebook’s interface. I already (at least subconsciously) prioritize my different communication streams, and like the separation I have. In time, if an app (or perhaps Threadsy) can incorporate that power and ‘learn’ from my usage how I prioritize streams, then perhaps I’ll switch.

I’ve got 10 invites that I can send out, and am posting them to my Twitter account. First come, first serve.

PCmover by Laplink is a software migration utility that helps you move your programs, files and settings from your old PC to your new PC, and your old PC can be a WinXP box and your new PC can be a Windows 7 machine.

By now if you’re in the market for a new Windows PC, you should be thinking Windows 7, because Windows XP is nearing end-of-life, and you don’t want to be running a computer that never gets security updates.

There are multiple editions of PCmover, including the in-place PCmover Upgrade Assistant which will upgrade your 1 machine. To migrate data from 1 PC to another, you will need PCmover Home at a minimum. There is also an edition geared for netbooks.

Buy now!

More info from the manufacturer
Price: PCmover Upgrade Assistant: $9.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

We thought we’d follow up our last post about online language learning site, Livemocha, with some more educationally-themed sites. As geeks, we’re always trying to learn something new, so it seems pretty appropriate.

Another more general online learning site is eduFire, which does include language education, but a host of other subjects particularly in business & technology. Their primary form of teaching is by video. Some of their classes are free, while others are premium starting at only $5 per video.

If online learning isn’t quite your thing, or perhaps you need more tactile and in-person education, find a class in your area. TeachStreet helps learners find and get matched up with teachers. Membership is free.

Looking to make that backpacking trip to Europe you’ve been talking about for years, but would like to learn some of the languages first? Take a look at online language education site, Livemocha, which has a number of free online courses in 36 different languages as well as more advanced, premium courses.

Livemocha takes your native language into account when determining how to ‘teach’ you.

PS> You may learn the language well enough not to need these translation glasses!

With the recent update to Google Docs that allows users to not only create documents, but to upload existing ones, there are a few companies that are taking advantage of that to spawn new services. One such company is Memeo.

Memeo Connect is a desktop application for Macs and PCs that syncs up your Google Docs to your desktop. This is perfect for the road warrior who likes to work on docs while flying, or the company that wants to reduce bandwidth usage, and improve the responsiveness of working on docs.

Memeo Connect costs $9/user/year, and seems to be geared to small companies. However, Memeo would be well served to offer a free version for personal use, as they can probably get an uptick in sales from individuals who like it enough to push for their employers to adopt it.

Remember the Sleeptracker which tracks your sleep patterns based on your movement through the night? Well, they’ve got some competition in the form on an iPhone app called Sleep Cycle.

It uses the iPhone’s built-in gryoscope in a similar manner to the Sleeptracker. However, we’re doubtful of its accuracy as compared to the Sleeptracker because you have to place your iPhone somewhere on your bed, whereas you wear the Sleeptracker right on your wrist. Depending on how good/bad your bed is at transmitting motion, then Sleep Cycle is going to vary in its results.

We’ll give Sleep Cycle the win for the much better price ($0.99) although you do have to buy an iPhone first!

Buy now!
More info from the manufacturer
Price: $0.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Mozilla Labs has just released Weave 1.0 and (so far) it rocks for sync’ing up my Firefox installs on different computers. Weave is actually a lot more than just a synchronization tool, but that’s the first service to come out of the project.

So what’s the point of it? Let me paint you a picture: I’ve got desktop and laptop computers that I run Firefox on, and it’s a pain to have to re-implement, transfer and/or update settings, tabs, history, bookmarks, etc. whenever any of those changes on 1 or the other. Weave now takes care of that for me automatically.
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One of our great readers sent in this set of 7 pieces of free software that you can, and in most cases should, use to protect your PC laptop. Most of these also apply to your desktop as well.

I happen to use most of these and recommend them as well. At a minimum, you should be using antivirus, a firewall and backups.
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Plug your SD memory card with digital photographs into Honestech’s FOTOBOX, plug the FOTOBOX in your PC and the FOTOBOX application runs you through a quick wizard and quickly creates a slideshow complete with effects.

You can transfer the finished product to DVD, YouTube, your iPod or save on your computer. That’s it!

Honestech makes the excellent VHS to DVD product (VHS to DVD Deluxe) that we reviewed previously.

Buy now!
More info from the manufacturer
Price: $52.25
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

While cleaning up some old bookmarks today, I ran across a company that was acquired by Twitter which lead me to one of the owners Twitter’s feed. The last item in the feed then pointed me to a brilliant web experiment called Readability which is a arc90 lab experiment that provides a bookmarklet that you simply copy to your modern web browser’s toolbar. As you surf the web and find an article really worth reading, click on the bookmarklet and the article reloads in a reader friendly interface providing options to return to the original page and email or print the article. Read the rest of this entry »