blogs especially and there are lots like me who do the same. So, today I thought of putting down the names of some of the blogs i end up reading the most. I cannot put them in any particular order. Each one of them is superb and each one of them has a flip side too.

• Gigaom – The quality of posts is what makes Gigaom different the others blogs that  i am about to put up. They may not be the fastest people to break a news, but that is not their job too. Om Malik is the best tech writer by a long way.With more than 130,000 subscribers, I never forget to read their posts. Follow Gigaom on twitter. And, oh yes, donot forget to follow Om Malik on twitter.
• TechCrunch – By far the most followed Internet Technology blog, TechCrunch has off late become the upcoming technology news blog along with Mashable. Arrington leads from the front, sometimes being far too opinionated in favor of Google. With a total of 4237,000 subscribers, it is must entry into your RSS feeds. Follow TechCrunch on Twitter. Follow Arrington on Twitter.
• Mashable – They call themselves the social media guide but cover other technology stuff with the same vigor as others. Off late, they have been the fastest to cover the upcoming technology news. Their war with TechCrunch in which they kept writing off Nexus One(other than their own poll in which the Users outvoted the iPhone against the Nexus One) against Arrington who kept praising the phone was a must follow. You don’t really need to subscribe to them if you follow them on Twitter.
• Engadget – Engadget is more about the gadgets, but what is the internet without the devices which powers it. Exceptional coverage of the Nexus One and the new multitouch implementation by Apple have been their high points in the recent past. Follow them on Twitter. This one must make its way into your RSS feeds.

This is the part 1 of my posts about the technology blogs you must subscribe to. I have a few more coming up in the next part of the coverage.

Find me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Find Microreviews on Facebook and Twitter.

So what is Threadsy : In bold terms, its an effort at something, Google failed at. Remember Wave – Google’s much hyped (and failed) integrated real time online communication game changer.!! Google tried integrating various elements of online communication in Google Wave, which probably got too much for an average user to handle. The interface was creepy, with functionalities only quarter developed in the beta-launch.!! So is threadsy better.? Well if not better, at least far more organized with a much cleaner user interface and not half developed/integrated features. Threadsy for beginners combines your multiple email accounts, twitter, Facebook and IM at one place. You dont have to sign in differently for them and switch tabs. You just have to have a Threadsy private beta-invite [can be found at the bottom of the post], sign up at Threadsy, enable IMAP option in your mail settings and you are good to go.!!

How well does it give a feel of the actual accounts :

Well, you can pretty much do all that you do in your mailbox or from your Facebook/Twitter profiles. All messages directed at you (in mail or @replies in Twitter) are put together in one stream called the ‘Inbound’ column at the left. And pretty much all that you follow on FB/Twitter are streamed into the column on the right called ‘Outbound’. You can access all your IM accounts too at the bottom bar (all you need is a Mebo account). Every single operation that you do from your inbox has been smoothly integrated, majority of what you do on Twitter : post/RT/favourite/@replies have been integrated as well. Similarly for Facebook pretty much everything has been integrated too : like/comment/post/inbox/profile viewing. One very good feature that comes across is the bio page of a particular user that comes up in the unbound section when you click on one of his messages in the inbound section.

Verdict : Threadsy shows promise. No wonder then that it broke into the Techcrunch50 finalists.

Where does it lack, or can improve :

Our personal/professional communication and networking doesnot exactly end at emails, FB and Twitter. All professionals today own a professional networking profile (say on LinkedIn), are a part of many other social networks like Orkut, Myspace, even a youtube channel. And even amongst what Threadsy has to offer (emails/FB/Twitter), improvements can totally be made.

Emails :  From a personal experience I found out that sometimes some messages simply do not show up on  your email inbox in threadsy (to be truthful this has happened just one single time.!!). Also there is a little delay that can be observed in the timings between say a message arriving in your mail inbox and your Threadsy inbox.

Twitter : No complaints here.!! All messages (tweets/@replies/DM) are captured and without delay. A good feature is that you can see the tweetpics inline. Just one little thing – older tweets of  the day are a little difficult to see. I didnt see a straightforward way to read the older tweets at least.

Facebook : Again updates/inbox are well captured. Older updates are a little difficult to see.

Overall, Threadsy has offered a good consolidated amalgamation of your regular and major communication clients at one point. The interface is well organized and clean. With time as it comes out of private beta and goes for a real launch the User will have much more at his disposal and probably in a better coordinated and feature laden way.

TEAM Microreviews wishes Team threadsy all the very best in  their efforts.

Note : 10 Private beta invites available : http://bit.ly/4APKQk

Similar upcoming products in line are Silentale and Zood. Keep tuned in for them.

For more on tech product reviews, pls contact ArchieIndian and Aditya Prakash. Mail them here and here.

Follow me on Twitter. Follow microreviews on Twitter. We are on Facebook too. Mail us here.

User comments are solicited.

Let me put it in simple terms, the way CrowdFlower put it before the audience at TechCrunch50. There are certain mundane and yet time intensive tasks in large companies which may range from removing spam comments on their blog to analysing sentiments about their products on the Web. CrowdFlower provides you a scalable workforce which can take up this task. Quiet a concept, I must say and the business plans seems crystal clear.

So how does this work?

• Say a large company identifies a task which requires LAAS.
• The administrator of the task  goes to Crowdflower, fills up a simple form and he is ready to go.
• Crowdflower calculates the amount of effort required per unit of the work and fixes the price accordingly.
• Crowdflower even lets you choose your channel of work.
• You can choose Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, their labour force or a facebook application where people earn virtual currencies by performing tasks.
• At the end of the task Crowdflower does a quality control  check and gives the task performer a performance check report card.
• Workers with higher ratings can get hired by Crowdflower.

A very simple concept and yet very powerful. On being asked if they fear getting copied all over the place, they say they have a huge history of workers and how they perform the tasks. According to them others do not have this advantage, but I am not so sure. For me its a good idea but the business plan needs to get better. I was just wondering if the mechanical labour in this case can be students who can earn pocket money by doing these tasks for an hour a day. But it has to be real money and not virtual. A small piece of advise to Crowdflower from my side —  Guys,  you will be copied and people will give real money for performing tasks right from the outset. When money comes in, quality also comes in.

You can watch their presentation here.