Released quite recently by Oddcast, Voki is a free animated avatar designed to assist with more “personal” uses rather than its corporate sister, Sitepal. I recently stumbled on this site/software through another corporation’s site I visited; although it could be annoying sometimes, Voki is definitely an interesting web software.

Voki was first designed to appeal to bloggers and myspace users. As I just mentioned already, it is supposed to be used on only personal websites (which Herb’s Blurbs is, technically speaking); if you are a corporate customer you might want to consider investing $10/month into its more sophisticated sister Sitepal.

I would describe Voki as an animated avatar – although it is so much more. I could describe it as a welcomer, a website guide, but oh well. Voki’s actually not too hard to use – although I think it’s much better to simply register for it in order to save your Voki avatar. It’s got a pretty numerable variety of features – everything that I expected to have; and a bit more.

Well, to start off, you can customize your Voki character; there are a myriad of options for you to choose between! From more “classic” humans to “random” animals, you can decide on what character to use – of course, you should take into consideration the appropriateness of the situation. The character’s heads are also very changeable – from height, to length, to nose size, and mouth size (and colour), there are all sorts of variations. You can choose to dress him/her/it into the funkiest of clothes, although I do think the choices might be a bit limited, Voki is still in it’s Alpha stage.

After the character customization, the most interesting part – making it talk. You can import a preloaded .mp3 file, record using a mic live, type up what you want the character to say, or (for all who don’t have microphones and hate the preloaded voices like I did), you can call in by telephone to record your voice which is a feature I think is amazing. I first tried typing what I wanted my Voki to say, but unfortunately, the voices are very mechanical (to say the least). They are also limited to very regular words, and couldn’t say the word “blog” for example. So, I decided on recording live; I don’t really have a sound studio, so I saw no point in recording a .mp3 first. The recording was easy, but it had a limit of sixty seconds which should be more than enough to welcome your guests. But, don’t expect to tell a (long) story with the Voki (by voice anyway). According to a friend, the Voki service took longer than expected to upload a .mp3 file – presumably, a song. I can say that’s kind of disappointing to hear, but there will be plenty of time to remedy these changes. I have not tried the telephone service yet, but I do think I can safely assume that it’s pretty similar to the mic-recording experience but perhaps with no time limit (or a longer one).

Then, the more minor changes; the third stage requires you choose a background. This can be an uploaded background from your computer, or one of the included default ones. There is a decently-sized selection of a variety of different backgrounds to choose from – there are also (interestingly enough), animated backgrounds.

The last option is to customize your player; the border surrounding your avatar. This really disappointed me – even though I had expected less professional options, I could only choose one that looked halfway decent. The rest are very useful, but only for personal uses. There are a lot of selections that are quite comical, but we are here to make a tech statement, not to milk a cow!

The most unexpected part; the mouth movements are synchronized to the speech! I think it’s pretty amazing what the Voki avatar can accomplish – it actually seems halfway realistic (well, for an animation).

Overall, I think Voki avatars will be an excellent selection to the internet – especially for personal use. As for me – I’m not sure whether or not I will use it yet…perhaps in the near future. It’s not that I don’t like it, because I really do, but I’m just not sure whether it belongs to my blog. If you’re looking for a way to greet your web site’s visitors though, I suggest you take a look at Voki avatars. I would post an example of an avatar I created in the same post, but there were some layout issues which I had to fix. It will be in the post below this one!

Well, apparently I got it to work. Click the pink triangle to play it!

Get a Voki now!

Wow, a quick makeover really impressed me; Pageflakes’ once caterpillar of a GUI has morphed into a beautiful butterfly. With preloaded themes, and options to create your own theme, its a wonder how Pageflakes finished this upgrade within a good half day. With that said, asides from the quite major GUI change, there’s really little difference in how Pageflakes works.

First thing I checked, and was pleased to see was that deleting a page is now much simpler of a process; there is now just a regular close button. It’s a much simpler and intuitive move, especially when compared to the previous more “complicated” method.

Navigation has changed a bit too; prior to this upgrade, the links leading to customizations were in regular words; now, all these links can be accessed via a click of the Pageflakes orb logo. In my humble opinion, it’s a very nice move, and it has definitely paid off. Kind of reminds me of a simpler version of the Microsoft Office Ribbon though…not that it’s a bad thing, mind you.

The themes now include a background in the body of the page as well as a header graphic; it seems a bit more powerful than before. However, sometimes, it can be quite overwhelming. I decided to stick with a plain Aqua theme, for now.

There are now also many more preset layout options; Pageflakes will automatically resize your columns for you! I decided this was a good thing, as it added a nice touch to my own page.

As I’ve said for the umpteenth time, asides from the major GUI upgrade, there really isn’t much difference; however, I thought that Pageflakes was already pretty decent in terms of everything. The GUI upgrade I would consider a definite plus! Well, what are you waiting for, go try Pageflakes now!

This isn’t so much a take, as it is an update; I awoke this morning to find Pageflakes had been replaced with an inanimate sign. Apparently, it’s going through an upgrade; oh boy, take 2 here we come!

Ah, it’s nice to see that something great in the name of music blossomed on the internet.

Although Last.fm is far from new, it’s still evolving; compared to the last time I logged on, it’s stats are a lot more based in real-time, it’s radio program has evolved, and certain features are now just for “subscribers”. Last.fm describes itself as “the social music revolution”; a couple of years ago, I would’ve been skeptical. Now, I can see it’s grown into just that!

I first re-discovered Last.fm when I was exploring the world of internet radio. My friend had recently introduced me to a station called Hot108 Jamz, but after a while, I realized I wanted something more diverse. I enjoyed listening to some of the radio stations streamed through iTunes and Windows Media Player, but I grew tired of those as well. I found myself switching stations frequently; I figured it was way too often. I wanted more; perhaps, a music explorer which would grow to suit my tastes.

As I grew more and more desperate, my ever tech-savvy uncle introduced me to Pandora. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize the service was restricted to the United States; and therefore I had no access to it, as I have live in Canada. However, he left me with a back-up site: Last.fm!

What is Last.fm? Well, Last.fm is essentially a music exploration service; it requires that you download its audioscrobbler plug-in to record the songs you play, and helps you to meet people with similar music tastes. There is a plug-in for each respective media player (one for iTunes, one for Windows Media Player, one for Winamp, etc.). It doesn’t matter how many media players your computer has; Last.fm will automatically detect and install a plug-in for each respective one.

Last.fm also has its own software, which is essentially a smart radio; you type in the name of your favourite artist(s), and then generates a playlist based off the artist’s genre. If music is playing in a media player on your computer (such as iTunes or Windows Media Player), it will also display a biography of the artist in a frame on its software. When playing music through the Last.fm software, you can choose to “love” a song, or “ban” a song (which ensures the Last.fm radio will never play that song again).

Last.fm has a huge database of information about artists; biographies as I mentioned, and now including a few videos and whole lot of user-posted pictures. Unsurprisingly, Last.fm also records information on which of its users listen to that artist, and displays it in the listeners tab. It also has a list of similar artists (measuring in order of genre similarities), which is excellent for music exploration! Last.fm also contains a vast amount of information of upcoming concerts about an artist; did I just hear somebody call out “convenient”?

Wait, didn’t I mention something about a “social music revolution”? And, that it is. On the Last.fm website, you are given an option of importing an email contacts list, so you can encourage other friends to sign up. Frankly, I’ve never been a fan of these “encouraging emails”, as they kind of tick me off; they’re usually for social networking sites that I’ve already avoided joining. Needless to say, I decided against it, and went into the now old-fashioned method of just asking around.

Last.fm also has what I would consider a pretty interesting feature; it would record the songs you played, but then it will now also display users with similar music interests to you (known as “neighbours”). If your heart’s desire is to meet people with similar music tastes, look no further; and, the “neighbour” feature only gets more accurate with every song listened to (not too great for now though; however, considering they usually took a week to update, I’d consider it somewhat of an improvement).

The forums on Last.fm mainly contain support and development subjects; however, there is a “News” section and “General Discussion” forum. However, for a “social music revolution”, I do believe that the forums could focus more on the community while still recieving feedback on support and development issues.

Last, but not least, Last.fm is a Godsend for up and coming artists; almost anyone can choose to upload their own songs onto Last.fm. I do remember a few of my friends uploading their own .mp3 files onto Last.fm of modified Linkin Park songs, just as a joke. I was actually surprised that it worked!

I remembered being prodded by my cousin to sign up a year or so ago, but the plug-ins slowed my old machine down, and I grew sick of that horrible radio that played the worst songs ever (now I wonder if maybe I just listened to the worst type of music ever?). Last.fm has definitely matured into a much more user-friendly website/software, and I can’t say that I’m still a skeptic.

I highly recommend that you give Last.fm a try. Take a look around, and who knows, you might be fond of it, and grow to even love it!

Sick of that boring ol’ MSN default home page? I was, too. And now, Pageflakes is there to remedy that.

Pageflakes is part of a new wave of websites; it is a personalized web page which is capable of delivering RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndicator). Of course, that’s just a really vague description; in reality it can deliver live news, give you a new comic strip of your choice everyday, give you the weather, save notes that you type up, and much, much more. Asides from its RSS abilities, it can also broadcast podcasts, allow you to play simple games, and a lot more. Move aside, MSN. Heck, move aside, Toronto Star.

Pageflakes focuses on you. Or me. Or whoever the user happens to be; and I like that! The material on its website can be modified to suit the user’s needs, which is what it needs to survive in this new web. And you can take it with you everywhere you go, as long as you register on its website. Alas, if you have a laptop you might not have that problem, but it’s still a convenience for many users.

Pageflakes is pretty user-friendly; deleting a page turned out to be surprisingly tough though (go to share, then delete page). It’s a minor problem, and besides, all websites have its flaws (err…most of ‘em anyway).

Pageflakes also has an RSS reader integrated into it. Wait, what’s an RSS reader? An RSS reader is a program that is capable of receiving live news feeds called RSS feeds. Not all websites have RSS feeds though; a website will have a bright orange RSS button; click on that, and copy and paste the URL from that page into your RSS reader to add a feed. Anyhow, usually, these RSS readers are standalone programs, so imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized that there was a RSS reader that could be available via any web browser. Now, that’s convenient!

Pageflakes is a decent addition to the web; I highly suggest taking a look and playing around with the “flakes”, which are little programs that do simple tasks, such as calculate or save notes, or even play games (they’re much like “gadgets” at live.com). Heck, before you know it, Pageflakes will be set as your homepage too.