Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

At last, a browser toolbar that’s unobtrusive and useful!  Trustpilot has introduced a new toolbar that warns users if an E-tailer is reliable or not.  Search results are given a check mark in green, orange, or red.  Green means the site has a high rating and many positive reviews, orange means the site has an average rating, and red is a sign to stay away—the site has mostly negative reviews and lots of user complaints.

Trustpilot gives its ratings based on reviews and media stories it collects from the web.  At the present time, it claims to have over 1 million reviews and stories. The download is quick and free and is unobtrusive.  Keep reading for more details about this helpful toolbar.

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Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Downloads, Web Apps, Websites

Ahh, don’t you just love it when sports and technology collide and form something new and amazing?  I certainly do.  Whether it be watching the Superbowl in high definition on a big screen TV, or catching the latest baseball news on podcasts; technology always makes sports better.  FanDome, just launched today (October 1, 2008), is a new website that aims to provide sport fans all the news, videos, and opinions they desire.

FanDome is a website created by two sport fanatics, Ricky Joshi and Karim Motani, who first embarked on this idea together at Dartmouth College.  Both of them loved sports, but often found it hard to find the news they wanted unless they were located in that specific area.  They wanted to find a site that covered all things sports, instead of searching many, many websites. They soon decided to make a website themselves, one which contained all sorts of news regarding every team of every sport.

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Sections: Video, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Online Music/Video

Do you remember a couple of years ago when Gotuit came out with “SceneMaker?“  It was all new and amazing back then.  It let people take videos from platforms like YouTube, and then cut scenes from it, and tag them with metadata and stick it on a Gotuit (and eventually any other) page.  Although people could edit videos before this, it was never with quite the same precision and tagging ability that SceneMaker offered.

Now Gotuit is teaming up with Pixsy to bring you the ability to search through videos by scenes.  How?  Keep reading after the break.

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Sections: Video, Accessories, Content, Computers, Software / Applications, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Websites, Online Music/Video

In days past, photographers had to rely on their memory to answer the question “where did I take this shot?“. Not so any more. Geotagging is fast becoming popular in the days of digital photography. By definition, Geotagging is the process of adding a form of geospatial geographical identification metadata to your images. It can also be added to other media like websites or RSS feeds. This metadata almost always consists of latitude and longitude coordinates; although it can sometimes also include things like altitude, bearing, or even location names depending on how specific you want to get.

Geotagging can also be useful if you are looking for location-specific information. For example, you are trying to find images taken near Red Rock Canyon. You simply enter the latitude and longitude coordinates into a Geotagging-enabled image search engine. There you go! These same search engines can also be used to locate location-based news, websites and more.

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Sections: Communications, Accessories, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Imaging, Accessories, Digital Cameras, Web, Downloads, Websites, Google

If you were busy updating your Twitter this morning, you might have noticed that the service was running a bit slow. That’s because the creatures inside the Twitter are currently mulling over the possibilities of adding advertising to the site, weighing their options, which are actually pretty much “advertise or die” at this point. You might not realize it yet but Twitter has helped everybody with their service except for itself. Because aside from the occasional round of VC funding (the last of which was on July 2007, at $5.7 million), Twitter has never really made anything off their wonderfully addictive online service. Its only option may be to put ads on its site, which would in all certainty become the topic of many a debate since users have so far been using it 100% ad-free. For 2 years now, actually. So while I personally won’t mind having ads on Twitter, since there’s quite plenty of free space on the sidebars anyway, I think a lot of people would still find it hard to kick the habit of twitting in an ad-free Twitter. How about you? How would you feel if Twitter suddenly placed paid ads on its pages? Add your answers in the comments!

Via [TechCrunch]

• New toolbar warns users of unreliable E-tailers.
• Live.com goes social
• Vlingo does more than voice dialing on the iPhone

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Websites

Facebook continues to prove that it’s a social network like no other by using a new user-powered translation engine for their site. They’re going to use this to add 22 more languages to Facebook so that it will be accessible to more people across the world. Currently, Facebook is only available in four main languages: English, French, German and Spanish. This move will no doubt add to the site’s overall visibility and accessibility.

As mentioned previously, the translation engine will be a user-powered, so if you’re interested in contributing to Facebook’s expansion, you may do so by going through the simple application process here. You need to be a member before you can actually see that linked page, so if you’re not, don’t forget to sign-up.

Via [TechCrunch]

• Vlingo does more than voice dialing on the iPhone
• Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T temporarily free
• New .tel domain opens up

Sections: Web, Web 2.0, Websites

Trend Micro is reporting that within hours of the news that popular actor Heath Ledger had been found dead in his New York apartment, several malware sites appeared at the top of search listings for the words “heath” and “ledger”. Users visiting these sites are redirected to another site, which prompts them to download an ActiveX “update”. The update is fake and instead begins a series of malware downloads. Researchers believe this latest malware attack is related to the suspected hacking of a Czech ISP’s servers. This isn’t the first time cyber criminals have used newsworthy events to spread their malware. Last month’s assassination of Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto also spawned a flood of malware sites. The criminals have caught on to using events people are likely to do searches on and then use Search Engine Optimization to get their malicious sites at the top of search results.

Read [TrendMicro]

• Gadgetell Review: TeleNav Shotgun
• T-Mobile G1 now in White and why it will sell like hotcakes
• Gamertell Review: Android games and apps roundup for the T-Mobile G1 phone

Sections: Computers, Security, Web, Websites

An anonymous programmer going by the name “John Wane” has claimed to have cracked Yahoo’s CAPTCHA software. CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) software is used by most major websites, including Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, and others, to prevent automated systems from creating thousands of accounts to send spam with. Everyone’s seen it. When you register on a site, you’re presented with an image containing a jumbled “code” and you must enter it correctly to continue.  “John Wane” posted code for a decoder he claimed could get around that step and has an accuracy rate of 35%.

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Sections: Web, Websites

Ever read a city guide or tourist brochure when stuck for somewhere to go and thought “sounds good, but it can’t be that good” well trustedplaces.com is a web site on places, bars, restaurants, shops, attractions etc that you can trust.

Why? Because it is written buy you, your friends, the people that live in the area. Nothing is better than a local recommendation, or advice from a friend that knows your tastes. What better way to find out about a place than to ask the locals. This is a great example of a social networking site actually doing some useful.

Via [Pocket Lint]

• New toolbar warns users of unreliable E-tailers.
• Gotuit and Pixsy team up to offer a higher level of video searching
• Fandome launches new fan friendly sports website

Sections: Web, Websites

This is really pretty pointless but fun at the same time which probably describes the majority of the gadgets in the world. Stopped Clocks is a Web site dedicated to profiling all the stopped clocks around Britain. The way it works is the general public submits the picture and information and the site lists them all. Totally pointless and useless, but at the same time amazingly addictive and fun.

It must be cool as Yahoo ran a program called Finds which is aimed at celebrating the “innovative, humorous and useful sites on the web” and Stopped Clocks has been nominated, so if you have some time on your hands why not pop over and take a quick look - you will be surprised just how long you spend on the site - it is as if time stood still!

Via [Pocket Lint]

• New .tel domain opens up
• Study shows Internet good for teens
• Google’s “Lively” is gonna be dead

Sections: Web, Websites