Hulu: Stop Paying for TV

TiVo spoiled everyone, and officially killed television commercials. However, it's those ads that are solely responsible for bringing free TV shows (and current ones at that) to the world. If you haven't heard of Hulu yet, you will. Hulu launched last October and is the result of a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC.

Hulu isn't so much of an app as it's the next generation of entertainment media distribution hubs. Streaming free TV shows and movies has been around on the Internet for years now, however, it all has been an "off the books" sort of thing, and entirely illegal. To top off the shadyness, most shows you were able to find online might as well have been filmed with a cell phone camera from 1999.

A streaming TV show and movie savior has been delivered unto Internet, and it's name is Hulu. What ABC and NBC is doing with their shows on their respective sites, Hulu is doing with every show regardless of network. With no subscription required, Hulu brings you entire seasons of tons of current and popular shows for your viewing pleasure at a decent 320p, with the option to play at 480p.

The only downside is that about every 5-10 minutes a :15 second to :30 second ad will play, then normal programming resumes. But the site is exploding, check out the Compete stats:

So relax marketers, the :30 spot isn't dead yet, it's just changed locations. People don't mind sitting through a quick ad if it means they get to watch free TV. It really makes sense though, why would I pay $120 a month for TV shows that are full of ads? Someone is getting screwed in that deal. Hulu's business model puts the power back into the consumers' hands and provides a more balanced way of distributing premium content like TV shows.

While Hulu's movie selection is relatively sparse, it's growing wildly, so give it some time, and you'll have more than enough sweet films to keep you glued to your computer screen for an unhealthy amount of time. Oh, and for anyone who's seen the light, Hulu already has the entire series of Arrested Development.

So stop playing outside in the fresh air, and come watch some free TV on the interwebs.

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Flikr Related Tag Browser: Does What It Says

Recently, Friday's have been for data display apps that are more for aesthetic purposes than practical ones. Keeping with that trend, today Appify brings you a review and visual walkthrough of an app simply called "Flickr Related Tag Browser". The entirely flash based app coded by Felix Turner at Air Tight Interactive is phenominal.

It parses images that are the result of Flickr tag searches and displays them in a really simply way. The interface is quick, agile and ridiculously easy to navigate. Since this app is less about data visualization and more about image visualization, there isn't much display about a pictures relationship to another picture. However, it does display a ring of related tags that one can click through to other tags.

This video is best viewed full-screen, to the sounds of Saru "Waking Up":

I decided to stop rating data visualizers the same way as other apps because it's like comparing ninjas to pirates, two different realms entirely. However, with this app, I would like to see visual cues of how each of the tags relate to each other.

What's your favorite Flickr visualizer?

Stay tuned for a new app rating system, a five-part series on the best free project management utilities, and monthly recaps. Subscribe to the Appify RSS feed so you don't miss it.

Twistori: how are people on twitter feeling?

Last Thursday I reviewed an app called WeFeelFine which, in my eyes, is the new bench mark for creative data display. It is very apparent that there is so much out there, and now with the rise of certain technologies like RSS feeds, proper visualization allows one to harness individual streams of thought. When done properly, the effects can be mesmerizing, overwhelming, and touching.

Twistori is an homage to WeFeelFine that pulls phrases from twitter feeds that contain the words love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish. When a word is selected, sentences from countless unnamed twitter feeds flow in in large text. Essentially, this is all the application does.

This app is less about inter-relational data display, and more a pretty way to browse and see what people are saying surrounding whatever user-defined emotion. Check out the walkthrough, set to the sounds of Dosh "O Mexico":

Does the app fulfill its intended purpose?	10
How clean and simplistic is the UI?	10
Is the app forward thinking and innovative?	8
How re-usable is the app?	5
Overall	8.25

I am using WeFeelFine as a basis of comparison for pushing the limit of innovative data display, and because of this, I gave this app low re-usability/innovation scores. I think it's a gorgeous layout, and has similar emotional effects as WeFeelFine, but lacks the stunning visualizations. However, Twistori isn't about data comparison, it's simply just about streaming content centered around certain emotions, and for what it is, it accomplishes the task simply and beautifully.

Privnote: notes that self-destruct after being read

Privnote brings Mission Impossible's "this note will self-destruct in 3 seconds" to life on the web. Privnote allows a user to create one-time read-only notes that delete themselves after being read. Each note is given a unique URL that, when accessed once, will be forever lost to the sands of the Internet.

Privnote doesn't require a registration to use- which I'm always a fan of. This app's one added bonus is the ability to enter in your email address and have Privnote notify you once the note has been read, to ensure that your information gets into the head of it's recipient.

Does the app fulfill its intended purpose?	9
How clean and simplistic is the UI?	10
Is the app forward thinking and innovative?	8
How re-usable is the app?	6
Overall	8.25

As with most niche apps, like Mobaganda, this app has limited use potential. Yes, confidential information does frequently get exchanged on the internet, via email and IM and other various means, when it probbably shouldn't. Due to the fact that security is a risk here, I dug through Privnote's privacy policy to see how serious they are about a note's security. Privnote claims that things are pretty secure, and that notes are encrypted in the database, ensuring that not even their admins can read them. Also, you might have noticed that landing page itself is encrypted and verified byGoDaddy . It wasn't until I read their privacy policies that I began to feel slightly more comfortable with using this site for confidential information.

My one criticism would be that they should include some sort of data guarantee on their landing page, something to make users feel a little more comfortable. In addition, it would be nice to have this same service, only with the option to upload files and have them only be downloaded once, then destroyed.

WeFeelFine.org: A visual state of human affairs

Today I thought I would break the stream of reviews of apps that are for pure functionality only and head down the "just-for-fun" road.

Data display is an absolute art form. There exists a multitude of dynamic data in a relatively standardized format spread across the wide network array that is the Internet. More importantly, this data is generated by people, who- with their innumerably complex emotional spectrum- let the world know the intimate details of their day-to-day lives via blog posts, Twitter updates, comments, and various other digital mediums.

And it is with great pleasure and awe that I bring you a visual walkthrough of WeFeelFine.org by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. If you haven't seen this site, you've been hiding under a digital rock for the last (insert however long this site has been live here) months.

WeFeelFine is a graphical display of the state of human affairs and emotions. It aggregates lines of text posted by people from all over the world that begin with "I feel..." and displays them in a way that's exploratory and yet incredibly easy to digest. It correlates these "data points" (lines of text) with geographic location, gender, age and weather at the time of the post. On top of this, it also pulls in photographs associated with each one-liner.

The result is astounding. Each and every click leads to customized works of art that are, in their own respects, incredibly moving.

Here's the walkthrough- but for the full effect, you have to spend at least 15 minutes on WeFeelFine.org, walkthrough set to the sounds of Joey Fehrenbach's "Behold".

I feel bad having to rate this app, but for coherence purposes, I will.

Does the app fulfill its intended purpose?	10
How clean and simplistic is the UI?	10
Is the app forward thinking and innovative?	10
How re-usable is the app?	10
Overall	10

Though this application serves no objective purpose, it provides an incredibly humanitarian view of the world and what people are thinking, feeling, and doing. At times, the experience can be dauntingly depressing, invigoratingly uplifting, or dramatically odd and humorous. The purpose is a subjective one, and with all of the people in the world wanting their voices to be heard, WeFeelFine gives them that chance.

Guerrilla Mail

So I started out trying to think of which web application I should review first, and then it came to me: Google Apps suite. However, I wanted to show the apps in a state that is untouched by a user. This would 1. show a view of the app that a first time user would normally get and 2. I really didn't want to show everyone my personal documents, user names, and password lengths...

Which lead me to http://mail.google.com to begin an Appify Gmail account. However, I didn't want to use my current Gmail account and I instinctively went to a site that I frequent when I am in need of a temporary email address- GuerrillaMail.com. And it was at that moment that I realized my first review should actually be about this wonderful staple of an app.

Guerrilla Mail provides its users with a temporary email that self-destructs after about an hour. The best thing is that there's no password, no sign up, and if you return to the site after you leave/close your browser and you're still within the one hour time limit, Guerrilla Mail automatically returns you to the inbox you were originally designated.

Check out the walk through.

Does the app fulfill its intended purpose?	10
How clean and simplistic is the UI?	7
Is the app forward thinking and innovative?	9
How re-usable is the app?	10
Overall	9

A 9 out of 10 isn't bad for a simple web app. I'm almost pushed to say that this is a 10, but the only thing holding me back is the User Interface, it's cluttered. Put all of the things that a user doesn't absolutely need to access on a separate page, available within a one click reach. This way, if a user wants to know more, they can choose to get more, as opposed to having it forcefully spoon fed to them.

From a functionality standpoint, this app is king. A temporary email address is literally one click away if needed. And who doesn't love a site where no registration is required to use its features? Overall, GuerrillaMail.com gets the job done with near perfection.