Advocate's Studio

Clipping with Evernote and streamlining with Instapaper are great, but what if you want to snag the entire page in its native glory for easy, off line viewing? There’s a browser for that! Fresh WebSuction, a creation from the folks at Fresh WebMaster,  is focused on your need to download Web pages or content for viewing off-line. You can pull reference material, software files, online books, e-zines or news articles for later viewing. This can be very handy when you are about to lose your internet connection, as you board your flight to Denver. Simply navigate to the browser’s web site, enter the desired URL into the box, and away you go. The service claims it can download up to 50 files at the same time. If this sounds attractive to you, hit the link here to download your new off-line viewing browser.

Simple, but GOOD! Mergely offers a great little tool for comparing / merging two sets of text within your browser. Like the merge function in Word, but a LOT easier to manage. Head over to their site and you will be greeted with two side by side text editor windows. There aren’t a lot of buttons to mess with. Differences in text between the two panes are shown in red with a line through on the left and in blue on the right. Left is the original document and right is the “changed” document. Paste two different sets of text into each window, or type up text right into the boxes. No username or password required. Save your files, and send the link to the page to others for their input. The few buttons at the top allow you to replace left / right, swap left / right, clear text box, download file or search. The text is removed immediately after use, unless you save it.

Clearly this is directed at developers and can compare different sets of HTML coding for variations easily in the browser. It’s free, but requires and HTML5 friendly browser. It appears the creators have more plans for it, including multiple file, drag and drop, and cross browser file uploading, font and style settings and three way merging. Sweet!

What do you want for nothing? Shiny, slick and functional? You got it with Central.ly. Central.ly reminds me a lot of personal web page builders Flavors.me, About.me and Dooid, but it is really designed to promote a business rather than a person. Central.ly offers an incredibly simple website building tool – you simply add the business name, description, logo, and widgets you want to use, a background image, and color scheme and, Presto!, instant gorgeous web page. The single page links to other web sources for added info, such as Yelp reviews, Google Maps for directions, a blog hosted elsewhere, Facebook page, Twitter stream. You can set up a Contact page and integrate your MailChimp account as well. Use a central.ly/yourbusinesnamehere.com URL, or configure your own domain to work with Central.ly.

If you are starting up your business and don’t have a lot of time or money to invest in a web page, then Central.ly seems to have you nicely covered. Check out their demo video below to see how easy building your own website can be.

Sometimes browsing the Web feels a little like a game of “catch and release.” You happen upon interesting content, you consume it, and then you release it back into the wild. Invariably, at some point in the future, you may find yourself vaguely remembering having seen something once that might pertain to something you need to know right now, but you can’t quite put your finger on it ….

If you aren’t too fond of the circular file-like cycle of information consumption on the Web, then Zukmo might be your new best friend. At it’s heart, its a bookmarking system. But it’s clever-simple interface and deep functionality make it worth a look. The key functions of Zukmo are the ability to store, access, and share content. Content is culled from various sources around the Web to be stored in Zukmo’s one, centralized location. Create your account for free, drag the bookmarklet up into your browser bar, click it when you are on a page you want to keep and you can then retrieve it at your “My Zukmo” page, either via the bookmarklet link or at their website.  A very nice feature is the ability to import bookmarks from your browser and Google and sync with Delicious and other sources so that you can keep everything centralized. A very, very nice feature is the ability to add the bookmarklet to your mobile browser on your iPhone and iPad – where I do most of my reading anyway.

But it isn’t just about your Web bookmarks. You can also bookmark and upload local documents to My Zukmo, which then become part of the search universe within Zukmo. You can pull content from your Twitter stream, from Google Docs, from YouTube and Vimeo and from Slideshare and view them within Zukmo. The search function offers full text and attribute search across all of the stored content and streams and get back highlighted results, like a Google search. You can distribute out of Zukmo to Facebook and Twitter, by email, or all three at the same time.

When you save in Zukmo, the app uses a simplification process to improve readability, showing only the key content, without the usual Web page gobbledy gook. There is also an Easy Reader button on each entry, which essentially shows the substance in a printer-friendly format. Finally, you can use Zukmo as an automatic sharing hub to Facebook and Twitter, and access your content from any device, anywhere. Check out the sample screenshot of your My Zukmo page. Nice and clean:

Zukmo really offers an incredibly amount of storage service for free. Besides considering it for your bookmarking needs, the document add feature brings Zukmo closer to a cloud backup solution for a large segment of your own personal data. Not a bad deal for the price.

Yesterday was a day for Twitter competition. From the subject-based Subjot to the virtual clone Heello - the creation of Twitpic founder Noah Everett. Heello is pretty much the same sort of micro-blogging service as Twitter with little to distinguish it, right down to the color scheme. With photo sharing already enabled (what else would you expect from the Twitpic team?) and video sharing and check-ins coming soon, there really is nothing special about this new service other than the clean slate effect these services usually enjoy at their inception. But wait, there is one promised feature that is a little different from the current Twitter feature set and seems to leverage the desire to connect with others via locale and/or shared experience – Heello’s Channels. Channels will permit users to “group” around a subject or location in order to see “pings” (not “tweets”) pertaining to that shared interest. O.k., now that is a cool layer to the concept.

I think Heello might have a bit of an uphill battle – Twitter has had to labor long and hard to attract mainstream attention and it still struggles with how best to monetize its “free” service. Nonetheless, I have to tip my hat to the challenger – if for no other reason than the fact that competition makes for a healthy marketplace and a win for the users. Best of luck, Mr. Everett.