Posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 by Shachar Pessis
Glassbooth – The 2008 United States presidential elections have reached their final countdown. If you still haven’t decided which candidate best represents your personal agenda, you might find that Glassbooth is the perfect election tool for you. Glassbooth connects you with the presidential candidate that best represents your political beliefs. How does it work? First you will be asked to rate the relative importance of a set of issues. Then you will be asked a set of questions on those issues. Finally, find out which candidates you most closely align with and why. If you are still weighing the possibilities, check out our Presidential 08 FaveLine.
The Daily Beast – The Daily Beast is Tina Brown‘s newest venture. Tina says that “The Daily Beast isn’t another news aggregator. It will sift, sort, and curate the web everyday, reporting original content along with links to other sites’ content.” They are as much about what’s not there as what is. The original content is brought to you by a diverse group of contributors including: satirist Christopher Buckley, historian Sean Wilentz, former McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, Project Runway’s Laura Bennett, the former editor of Al-Hayat Salameh Nematt, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, Nick Ciarelli, the founder of Think Secret and many others. It is refreshing to see the transition of old media veterans such as Tina (she previously acted as editor of The NewYorker) into the new online media. So why is Beast noteworthy? Let’s just say the beast knows its way around the jungle, and baby, it sure is a jungle out there – Welcome to the Jungle!
StockTwits – Around July 2006 Twitter was launched as a micro blogging platform. Their simple manifesto was to allow anyone who wishes to do so, to express what they are doing at that very moment, in 140 characters or less. Since its launch many websites have created services that offer complementary applications to the existing Twitter service. One of these is StockTwits, which is an open community-powered idea and information service for investments. With StockTwits you can follow traders and investors or contribute to the conversation (remember to add the $ sign before discussing a ticker) and build your reputation as a savvy market expert. The service takes financial related data – using Twitter as the content production platform – and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc. Will this service help you make better investment decisions? I am not quite sure this is where you will find all the right answers. Nevertheless, I don’t think you will get the right answers from the so called “experts” either. But hey, give it a try, you have nothing to lose. Writers tip: Invest responsibly. Don’t margin trade. Instead, invest only up to 20% of your capital – the rest should be kept in your savings account.
Eventful – Eventful helps you figure out what exciting stuff you’d rather be doing. Get notified when your favorite band is coming to town, learn what’s going on in your city today, this week or this month, and share those events with your friends and family. In addition, you can also rally up with other users to create new events. This includes everything from day-to-day events to political events near by, to even requesting bands to play in your town. I have joined a group that demands from Robbie Williams to schedule a concert in NYC. BTW, Yahoo! offers a similar service called Upcoming. Between these two (Eventful and Yahoo!) you are no longer entitled to complain about being bored or about not knowing that Janet Jackson and LL Cool J are performing on November 1st at Madison Square Garden, RIGHT?
Ignighter – Do you sometimes wish dating was as fun (and as easy) as going out with your friends? That makes the two of us. Ignighter offers an out-of-the-box solution: group dating. It’s all about hooking you and your friends up with someone else and their friends. Unlike conventional online dating where your profile reflects you personally, Ignighter group profiles represent you and your friends as a whole. So team up with your single friends, create an appealing group profile and start hunting. Group dating is definitely less awkward and probably more enjoyable than one-on-one encounters. In the worst case scenario you can always split with your friends and laugh about it over drinks…
Slash Gear – Dedicated to highlighting the latest and greatest in personal technology, SlashGear covers everything from cutting-edge tech gear to the latest digital lifestyle trend. Distinctive, informative and fresh, SlashGear keeps bringing you device information and reviews as well as thought-provoking commentary. If you want to stay on top of the latest tech and gadget news, you should also check out Switched, Gizmodo, Engadget, EngadgetMobile, TUAW, Download Squad, Joystiq, Xbox 360 Fanboy, Wii Fanboy and Yahoo!Tech. Did I miss a major online gadget player? If I did, please contact me about it and I might feature it on our next Weekly Faves.
Scribd – Scribd is the equivalence of YouTube for documents.The idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers, documents only they can read. Scribd unlocks this information by putting it on the web, and by doing so they are pretty much redefining file searching, uploading and sharing. As I was writing this review, I couldn’t come up with anything special to search for, so I randomly searched different keywords such as: love, Warren, chords and mother. These are my results: How to tell if a guy loves you, 9 investing secrets by Warren Buffet, Unconditional love of a mother, and Nothing Else Matters chords. If the privacy issue concerns you, you will be glad to know that Scribd offers two access levels to documents: “public” and “private”. When you mark a document as private, it is immediately hidden from Scribd’s search index, search engine bots and all document listings. Private documents are accessible through a secret URL that you can either keep to yourself or share with (selected) others.
Shidonni – Shidonni is an amazing way for kids to express themselves creatively. They will LOVE the interaction that this site provides. Shidonni offers a virtual universe where kids and their parents can be innovational by creating their own imaginary worlds and animals, playing games and interacting with friends. The site is simple enough for kindergarten pupils to use but will keep even 5th grade students intrigued. Should we add Shidonni to our kids favorite page?
WellMedicated – Andrew Lindstrom has been designing websites as a hobby for many, many years. However, categorizing him simply as a web designer would be a gross understatement. Wellmedicated, run by Andrew, is a design resource where he shares theories, thoughts and findings on many design topics. Whatever your profession or passion is, you will find his articles fascinating, informative and mainly inspiring. My favorite ones include: Inspiration Roundup, 50 Inspiring Vintage Advertisements and The importance of a Little R&R. Enjoy!
BoomBot – Blast and bounce your way to the exit on each level using all manner of fun explosives. Can you make it through all 50 levels? Good luck. Writers tip: Make sure you play this game with sound, it is totally a blowing experience.
