Google has developed FriendConnect as an easy way to take friends from social networks (eg., Facebook, Plaxo) with you to sites without previous social networking functionality. FriendConnect allows site owners to embed code into their sites to display the social networking FriendConnect apps in an iframe. The closed beta is available now, we’ve registered and hope we get picked!

There’s a lot of information, images, video and audio out there to keep track of…  it can become quite daunting.  So, I was happy when our “find everything” co-worker found Evernote.  Evernote is a desktop app and an online repository for all the things you want to remember.  There’s some great drag and drop functionality for populating your different notebooks, which are the organizational metaphor. There’s a good demo on the front of the site.  One bit of functionality that’s quite exciting is text and handwriting recognition, or the ability to take photos of objects (notes, tickets, etc.) or scan in written information and the Evernote search will look within the content of the image itself.  

I have downloaded the desktop app for my MacBook Pro and all seems to be working.  However, I also tried to sign up for an online account. The Evernote servers bear the load of much of the functionality, so the desktop app without server support is not fully functional.  So, that text recognition search I’m so excited about trying is not possible.  The online version of Evernote is in beta and I still haven’t gotten my password mailed to me.  I have come to expect my login info to be waiting in my inbox minutes after I click submit. Not the case, it’s been FOREVER…or actually 48 hours.  

So, I love the idea of the app but I don’t love the wait to play with it. However, when I start to get cranky about my ever-futile sync button spin, I gaze at the site design.  That helps!

Alpha now but we’re excited about the Beta version of these web based, designer focused apps, A.viary. The icons are pretty and the Flash is fun in a Froot Loops kind of way. Is this why Adobe pushed web-based Photoshop Express?