Mint is a pretty scary-at-first, interesting online money management app. that connects to your bank account and retrieves all the information on a daily basis. It then puts into charts and analyzes it for you so you can see where you money comes from and where it goes.

Charting and alerts on fees are pretty cool.

So far, it’s a US only product and I wasn’t able to connect my Australian bank account to it. I’m hoping I can soon.

Mooglets is a cute engine that runs widgets for yet-another web homepage.

I think this app could have beaten Netvibes if it had the proper founding.

Unfortunately, the amount of modules is fairly low and the customization minimal.

Still, a cute alternative to Netvibes if you get sick of it.

Pros

• clear design
• simplistic

Cons

• lacks features
• lacks api
• lacks customization

RSS Mixer allows you to create a RSS feed out of multiple feeds.

It was created by Ideum.

The concept has already been seen with other products such as FeedJumbler, Feedshake and FeedBite.

I found that RSS Mixer is much better in many ways:

Pros

• instant creation
• no need to sign-up
• provides a web widget (to embed)
• provides a dashboard widget
• iphone integration

Cons

• you can already Mix RSS feeds with Netnewswire lite (or others) by putting your feeds into folders.

(Via Webware)

You want to reduce cost and staff? You want to fire those lazy developers? You want to do it all on your own and turn your idea into millions? Iceberg on demand is for you!

It’s this time of the year when we get, yet another amazing application, to build other applications (made for dummies). Is this a framework? No silly, you don’t even have to code!

It is quite unclear what they are selling, and it is quite unclear what you can make out of it. They surely make it sound like everything is possible though.

The link to the “KillerStartups” review of their product is a missing page… that’s never a good sign.

Also don’t look at their website source, you might get a heart attack.

In the Applications tabs, the first in the list is a Human Resources application: Manage all aspects of your hiring and firing using this application.

Wow, so cool. Does it include an email confirmation “YOU ARE FIRED” too?

Pros

• You don’t need a developer
• You don’t need any coding skills

Cons

• You get ripped off
• You get nowhere
• You understand you do need a developer

The last con might actually be a pro. My bad.

One thing is sure: like every iceberg, they will be melting soon, revealing clear water.

Pligg is a free open-source content management system that outputs sites just like Digg.

I am not sure if they should be taken seriously considering the big typo in their description on the home page. That said, their product seems to work quite well (besides a few interfaces glitches such as saying ‘OK’ in bright red).

Have a look for yourself and test it out. Now, all you need is 10000 visitors to start with.

Bubbl.us is a cute web application that helps brainstorming. You maybe familiar with the concept of mind-maps. I would also refer to it as a very simple UML diagram maker.

It takes about 10 seconds to be up to speed as it was designed to be really simple. It takes a bit of getting used to for the custom controls (when you roll over each bubbles).

You can generate structures such as organizational charts, development reference or plan your next holiday. If you are a bit geeky, you could use this application for nearly any type of planning.

The interface is cute but features quite unclear icons to: move, remove, link-to, change colour and add sibling/child.

The powerful use of keyboards shortcuts such as Enter to add a child and Tab to add a sibling make it really quick to prototype a structure. The moving around of bubbles is handled quite well, but you can easily waste minutes getting it to look okay.

An annoying error message “Your session expired” appears if you try to generate a new sheet in demo mode. I can see why this would happen as a developer, but there is obviously room for improvement in that area.

Nevertheless, Bubbl.us is a free application that does exactly what you need it to do in good fashion. Options like save to Jpeg or PNG, embed to HTML, print and e-mail make it a must have for daily use!

Vayama is yet another travel site! This one relies on Flash and is very graphical concerning your itinerary.

It features clarity, which is really rare for a website of this class. They say they get you the best deals, but I couldn’t tell you if it is true. Also the search speed was decent.

The flash engine seems to work really well, I have however noticed glitches when you use the calendar, which is HTML over the Flash. It tends to flick visually. That’s a known issue in the world of developers and it often requires trickery to get it to work properly. Therefor, I wouldn’t call that a big issue.

The application seems to do what you need it to do in good fashion. It has a clever feature, that, as an experienced user of these sites, I would call brilliant: it remembers the last search details you have entered. That is, your From and To as well as dates. Small details like these make a major difference to pick a site to book my next trip.

However, I can’t really judge the service or the staff as I haven’t dealt with them!

In the fast changing world of the internet, it’s important to keep track of what’s going on.

Here are the 5 apps that really got my attention recently.

Pownce - Share everything

Not only Pownce includes Digg’s master Kevin Rose, but it’s also a very promising app.

The basic idea behind Pownce is sharing, everything. At this stage you can send messages, links, files such as photos and events.

It’s currently under a slow expanding public beta (invite only).

Picnik - Powerful photo editing online

Picnik is not the usual Flex app. It runs a kick-ass set of features for images editing and it looks gorgeous.

Saffron - Beautiful UML Modeler

There has been a lot of buzz around Saffron. Pretty much any blog about Adobe AIR has featured it, yet it’s not even alpha! I think the screen grabs just look amazing and people are dying for a proper (free?) UML editor.

We keep in touch with Saffron and we hope for a public alpha, soon.

Warehouse - Comprehensive subversion browser

Their tag-line says it well: “Finally, A Web-based subversion browser that doesn’t suck.”

Warehouse supports multiple repository access, makes easy to manage users and brings the convenience of browser bookmarks to subversion. A bliss for regular or amateur subversion users.

Aviary - Take the artists online

Aviary is working on a set of applications that will bring “people who create” online. All types of artists will have access to creative tools, online.

The amusing part is that it’s with Adobe products that Aviary plans on reducing Adobe’s user list!

Keep in touch, subscribe to our RSS feed for fresh news and in-depth reviews!

Trippert.com. Who needs another travel shared blog?

The problem with these projects is that they all end up in some sort of me me me, how awesome was this place - post. There is nothing social in bragging about a place…

What does it really bring to people to share with others their experience of travel? Yet another one so happy about Thailand, and about a thousand others just licking their screen going “Sigh, I want to be there”.

Does this sort of business model has a long term view?

The second problem I see is the fact that they mostly end up as a repository of photos. They don’t give spicy details on how dodgy the waiter was, how hot the lifeguard was or how stinky hot the room was.

Is there really something social in travel photos? Do people truly describe the places, or is it just a mere I WAS HERE. What they really need is interviewing those people when they get back. The problem is, once they get back, there is not much point bragging about any place anymore.

Yet another Flickr with a big travel tag on the front.

64squar.es is a cute website where you can play chess with your friends or strangers. Its design is stripped down to the simplest and it seems to work really well.

It was developed by Parker Fox, an independent IT firm in the UK.

After losing considerable ground to Word Press among the grass roots blogging community, Six Apart has pulled out all the stops for the latest version of Movable Type. Version 4 is currently out as a rapidly progressing public beta. This screencast demonstrates some of the new fancy features of the entry editor including an integrated asset manager.

MT blog: What I Screencast Is What You Get

Wallpaper² creates wallpapers (oh, really?) patterns online. Choose your pattern size, put some black dots, submit and save your resulting image. This is in french only, but shouldn’t be too hard to understand for our english only speaking readers.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language.

Google states its framework is fully cross-browser compatible. It seems true, but the downside is the generated code is - to my opinion - a real mess (table design). This could be optimized to make CSS styling easier.

I have to skin this kind of application in the next weeks, I’ll let you know how hard it is!

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

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