favorites

It's been two months since we mentioned the possibility of winning a PC for Digital Trends' Favorite Gaming Memory contest. The contest is now over and Thomas Anderle of Massapeque Park, NY is now a proud owner of an iBUYPOWER Video Pro System, and a $2,000 American Express gift card.

Thomas' video was chosen from 40 submissions, and over 800 people voted on Digital Trends in just 4 days. In total, the submitted videos generated more than 17,000 views.

Thomas' video Mega Man X Gaming Memory, depicts his and his friend Chris' two-week-long quest to beat Mega … Read more

Foam tips on earbuds, and sweet sound from players. To name but two. You may think that reviewing products for CNET would have me going gaga for gadgets, but in fact, I'm a bitter, jaded individual. I am extremely hesitant to drop my hard-earned cash on new technology, mostly because I live in constant fear that something newer and better is just around the corner. I sat on my dead iBook for well over three months waiting for new, cheaper MacBooks (only to be sorely disappointed--$999 for the previous generation, Steve?! Really?).

But that's not to say … Read more

For most people, browsing is an either-or proposition: they use either Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox. But I'm betting there's a bunch of people like me who find themselves spending time in both browsers, often simultaneously.

The problem is, my list of Firefox bookmarks bears no resemblance to my collection of IE favorites. It took all of about five minutes to solve this problem.

Move your IE favorites to Firefox Open Firefox 3 and click File > Import to start the Import Wizard. Choose Microsoft Internet Explorer and click Next. Uncheck all the options except … Read more

It's no secret we're Google Reader users here at Webware. We've got a Newbie's Guide for it, and wholly recommend it to folks who want a simple feed-reading experience. That said the product is not without its faults. Earlier today we got a pitch from a cool new service called Favorit that's definitely gunning to take some market share away from Google and other Web based RSS readers. The good news is that it's got a lot of things going for it that others do not.

First things first, Favorit does all the usual … Read more

This morning AOL launched myAOL, a group of three services wrapped up into one customizable page. MyAOL is made up of three services: myPage, a customizable start page akin to Pageflakes or Netvibes; Mgnet--an audiovisual mashup of news; and Favorites--which for all intents and purposes is a Web-based RSS reader. All three offer various ways of browsing, reading, and discovering news and Web content.

Since most users are already familiar with the concepts of myPage and Favorites, the real surprise here is Mgnet. This is one of the cooler things I've seen lately, and somewhat similar to Google's recently released Google News image browser. Users can pick out topics they like or are interested in, and Mgnet will pull up a small array of images linked up with story headlines. Clicking one brings up the story description in a separate pane, and users are able to vote it up or down (a la Reddit) as well as see related news stories (which are powered by Sphere).

In addition to providing stories it thinks you'll be interested in, Mgnet also keeps track of "what's hot," a small list of the most-clicked and voted-on stories. I found this more interesting than the actual AOL front page, since it's a little more visually stimulating. The one missing piece in this system is a way to see how user voting is affecting each story, something AOL will likely add later down the line.

Favorites is also impressive. As an RSS reader it's well-equipped. There's a fairly extensive listing of prepicked feeds from a variety of Web sites. There's also the option to add your own feeds, either with a straight RSS address, or by searching by URL. To keep track of your various feeds, you can set up folders, a little bit like Google Reader. You can also go in and reorder feeds with simple dragging and dropping. The one missing piece is a trashcan to delete feeds you don't want anymore, which instead is handled in a separate feeds manager.

AOL's got a pretty solid lineup of Web apps in one spot with myAOL. What it lacks in true originality, it makes up for in execution, as all three services are simple to use and feature-rich.

See more screens below.… Read more

CampusRank is a new service for ranking fellow college students, using a variety of yearbook-like categories. The service ties into Facebook, making use of the social network's application programming interface, so users simply log in with their Facebook account to begin voting. CampusRank launched quietly last week, and is making its official live service announcement tomorrow morning. The service is limited to just under 300 college networks, and does not allow private groups or company users.

CampusRank lets users choose from 34 categories to nominate friends for things like "Most Athletic," "Most Friendly," "Best Hair," and so on. And by friends, I mean that CampusRank won't let you nominate people from your school who aren't on your Facebook friends list. You can't even look them up--a major flaw in my opinion. To sort through the people who are your Facebook friends, CampusRank provides a quick list to scroll through. Once someone has been nominated, there's a ranking system where other CampusRank users can rate them on a scale of 1 to 10.

CampusRank is an interesting take on combining social democracy tools and social networks in one space. However, things get mired down by the friends list limitation and by requiring Facebook users to venture off-site to use the service, two things that need to change before the service can really take off. Screenshots after the jump.

Related: Mosoto, HotOrNot

… Read more