Gizmodo: Web apps

Sungevity Web App Makes Installing Solar Panels a Piece of Cake

Elaine Chow — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:30:00 EDT

Eco start-up company Sungevity is launching a new web application on Earth Day (three days away, people!) that will take the guess work out of solar panel installations. Enter your address on Sungevity's website and satellite-imaging software will zoom in on your home, calculate your roof's dimensions, select the right sized solar arrays and calculate how much money you'll save on energy costs.

Once you place an order, the site will ship one of five off-the-shelf prepackaged solar arrays and dispatch an installation crew to your door. An on-line database tracks local building and permit requirements and sends the necessary forms to you for you to fill out.

This is great news for everyone who has ever wanted to jump on the solar bandwagon, but was afraid to because of the headaches that come from any large home project. The system will also help make everything cheaper, since half of a solar system's costs are from installation hassles.

Unfortunately, the service is limited to California addresses right now, but if business is good, we could probably count on a nationwide roll-out in the near future. [Green Wombat via Wired]

Glide wins the race to work around the iPhone's ...

Matt Buchanan — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:22:18 EDT

Glide wins the race to work around the iPhone's crippled Web 2.0 support—word processing ahoy. [InfoWeek/Yahoo!]

iPhone Web 2.0 Standards Support Sucks

Matt Buchanan — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:43:59 EDT

Steve Jobs: "Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable." Yeah, they're going to have to create them since the iPhone's current support of "Web 2.0" standards, in a word, blows.

No Java, Flash, full AJAX (the cinchpin of innumerable Web 2.0 apps) or streaming support severely limits the Web 2.0 (or even just regular Web) sphere the iPhone can work in. Sascha Segan over at Gearlog put it through a gauntlet of popular Web 2.0 apps, and needless to say, the browsing experience was far from ideal, EDGE pokiness (or not) aside.

Wanna edit docs using iZoHo or Google Docs or Spreadsheet? Don't plan on it—the keyboard doesn't spring up. Fill in the glaring IM client omission with Meebo? Shnope. It'll load and you can look at it, but that's about it. The list goes on.

So what are developers doing? They're not so much developing for the iPhone as they are developing around the iPhone. For example, Glide and RemoTV have both said they're working on iPhone-specific versions of the apps, and they're undoubtedly not the only ones, given the size and relative affluence of the market chunk they'd be missing out on.

As it turns out, there's a big difference between having to figure out innovative ways to shoehorn in current standards and apps and actually innovating new ones.

iPhone: Poor Compatibility with Web Apps [Gearlog]

Top Five iPhone Apps of the Moment

Jason Chen — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 20:03:18 EDT

Here are the top five most useful iPhone apps we've come across so far.

• iPhone AIM Chat: No iChat? Use Web-based iChat. AIM only.
• The Gas finder app and OneTrip shopping list: Save money and time
• Digg: An interface to browse digg. Great until Digg makes an iPhone-friendly version of their site.
• Chess: No games on the iPhone means this bandwidth light app will occupy you on the bus, plus make you look like a pseud-intellectual if you play this instead of Bejewelled.
• LivePhone: Look up Xbox Live profiles. Great for gamerscore nerds like us. Ok, me.

Tracking Shot: Free and Easy Pic 'n' Music Editing

Charlie White — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:18:21 EDT

Want to put together a quick and tasteful photo/music sequence? At Tracking Shot, upload some photos and a song, and the free Flash-based web app automagically mixes up a pictorial montage for you, syncing up your pics with the beat of your music. Tell it which pics are more important, select a few key areas of your photos for zooming, and it's off and running. Then, it's up there on the site for all to see.

Who needs those expensive and difficult-to-use video editing applications when you have Tracking Shot? I'm starting to wonder what can't be done with Flash on the Web. Give it a try—you'll be surprised how a good piece of music can trump up even the most trivial pics. – Charlie White

Photo and Music Editor [Tracking Shot, Via Lifehacker]