Storytree – Family stories form an important part of a person’s identity – stories about love, friendship, childhood dreams, hardships, triumphs, and the ongoing journey that is life. Too often these stories remain unshared and are forgotten before they can be recorded.

The StoryTree team is dedicated to help you preserve your precious family memories and share them with the ones you love. As time passes, your captured stories come to represent a bond across generations and become invaluable to your family’s collective identity. Your family history has finally found a place to reside. To find some inspirations check out the Storytelling tips.

Thankuz – This free service makes it simple and fun to create and send thank you letters to whoever you wish. Choose a template, customize the text and appearance to your liking and make it your own. Saying Thank You means a lot – much more than you think. Thankuz makes it super easy and fast.

How to be a Retronaut – Tap into captivating time capsules in a variety of subjects, thanks to this super cool blog celebrating the wonder of history in digital form. The theme diversity of Retronaut makes it a genuinely encompassing experience in diving into the past right now, in the present. Discover rare photo collections of people and places in various contexts in Retronaut’s well-designed online time-machine.

See the two images below as wonderful examples. The first is an exceptional photo series from TIME magazine in the late 1950s, showing a photo shoot of Christian Dior in Soviet Russia. The second is a chic Polaroid of Sean Young and Rutger Hauer, the cast of Blade Runner (Ridley Scot film, 1982) took while on set. Click on the images to go to the full post and see additional photos.

Courtesy of www.seanyoung.com

Wunderlist – Not just another task management service, Wunderlist offers a powerful to-do and project list tool that has all the perks of today’s digital age. You can share your project notes and lists with whomever you want, have all the data stored in the cloud rather than on your computer, and Wunderlist’s mobile app (available for iPhone, iPad and Android), makes it possible to access, work on and manage all of your lists on the go. The web app is available to both Windows PC and Mac OSX.

When such great functionality is built so beautifully, it would be a sin not to give Wunderlist a try.  Here’s to much more productive to-do’s.

When it Drops – Where do you go to find out about the newest releases? Sure, there are great movie sites and blogs giving you the right heads up, even trailers, but what about the newest game or music releases? Instead of going to different places for each, When it Drops has all of these conveniently showcased in one pretty place.

As you can see, you can browse new releases of last week, this week, expected releases of next week and those to be released in two weeks time. The concept of When it Drops is so simple, and the site’s so beautifully designed that it would be silly to go anywhere else for finding what new cool movies, DVDs, music albums and video games are out. Each movie’s entry offers a link to its trailer and to buying tickets to see it at the cinema. Music and game entries offer direct store link to Amazon.

Here’s a sneak peak of the music albums that will be released on the week of July 11:

justWink – This cool app for the iPhone and Android lets you send customized greeting cards using your mobile. Add your personal touch with your own words rather than a tacky, ready-made phrase. Throw in a photo from your phone, and an actual signature to show you care. Choose from a variety of e-card themes including birthday, thank you, baby, wedding, friendship, even just because. Once you’re done you can send the greeting card via Facebook or email.

justWink’s interface is super easy to use, and it only takes a few taps to send your customized greeting card. See for yourself with this iPhone screenshot:

Style Me Pretty – This chic A to Z wedding spot is “a style savvy wedding resource devoted to the modern bride” that covers “everything from gorgeous real weddings to up and coming vendors and seasoned pros in the invitation, floral, fashion and photography industries.”

This Weekly Blog winner is loaded with inspiring and practical wedding day ideas which will certainly come in handy in taking some of the planning stress off of your shoulders. To give you an example, I went straight to Style Me Pretty’s Real Weddings section since I feel the best ideas come from tried and tested weddings. Here’s a wonderful gallery example, brought to us by the Utah Wedding at Conrad Ranch.

For more great wedding resources online visit our Wedding MiniFaves page.

DocsTeach – The National Archives are reaching out to teachers and educators across the country, offering an amazing collection of primary resources of historical documents and information. Moreover, DocsTeach invites teachers to browse and create classroom activities built around primary sources. DocsTeach is the perfect example of how drastically education has changed since the old blackboard school days. It is the perfect aid for the didactic confluence of fascinating history with engaging teaching methods.

Here’s an activity example I found on DocsTeach, The Settlement of the American West. Click the image below to get to the full activity.

Civil War 150 – It’s hard to believe, but America’s most influential war is a century and a half old. Thanks to the rapid flow of information online and the advancement of technology today, it’s possible to explore the American Civil War like never before. The History Channel offers an exciting interactive spot commemorating the Civil War, and invites you to discover unique relevant details. These include technologies and weapons used in battle, individuals of the time who made history, the five deadliest battles and much more.

The entire Civil War 150 interface is absolutely amazing, and it’s obvious a lot of time and thought have went into the design of this historical project. To give an example, see the beautiful infographic below of the weapons used during the Civil War. Clicking on each of the methods below will prompt another page with explanations and illustrations.

The History Channel’s Civil War 150 is a must for every American, young and old. Kudos, History Channel!

Planning a wedding always seems like a daunting, stressful task, with so many things to think about and choose. Since wedding season is almost at its peak this month and will last through October, we’ve decided to make the special event’s mission totally possible and easier for you: Here’s our Top 10 list of the absolute best wedding resources out there online. This hot list will show you where to get the best gift registry, where to find gorgeous invitations, and how to make your wedding look like a million bucks without exceeding your budget.

1. Project Wedding – Think of this site as wedding day central. It’s a comprehensive source on all things wedding and the site is a perfect first stop in your big day’s planning path. Aside from the obvious bride and bridesmaid dress designs and vendors, Project Wedding shares photos and inspirations from real weddings. You will also find lots of decor, wedding cake and beauty ideas on this site in addition to practical tools such as check lists, wedding websites and more.

2. The Knot – Perhaps the most familiar of the bunch, The Knot offers solid help on every possible wedding aspect you can think of. The colossal variety of topics might confuse you at first, but after a deep breath you’ll see The Knot truly provides a wealth of information and ideas. To start off, check out the ‘planning basics’ menu on the left (offering ideas and tips on wedding destinations, vendors, vows, songs and invitations, etc.). Once you’re ready for more hardcore planning, make use of The Knot’s gift registry page to pick your store (an adventure in and of itself).

3. My Wedding – Although this website might seem as a bit less comprehensive than the two above, its forte -free wedding sites- outweighs any content downsides it may have. Wedding sites have become huge these past few years, and for a good reason. In many cases the bride and groom’s family is scattered across the country, and although phone calls might do for keeping everyone updated, there’s nothing like a designated Web space everyone can visit anywhere with ease.

My Wedding offers a huge variety of website options neatly categorized by color and theme (green, outdoors, traditional weddings and more). If you’re thinking about creating a wedding website for your special event, My Wedding is your spot. Here’s the gorgeous example of Samira and Maxwell’s wedding site, created by My Wedding.

4. Martha Stewart Weddings – For those of you seeking an all-American, traditional wedding style, Martha Stewart’s designated online spot for weddings is a perfect resource to start with. Get all the event’s basics down and stay on top with all your check and to-do lists with Marth. One cute post I loved reading here is Good Things for Spring Weddings – great inspirations!

5. Macy’s Gift Registry – Although there aren’t any right or wrong gift registry choices, I think Macy’s is the best one in terms of both variety of products and the system’s ease of use when registering and adding gifts. Signing up to Macy’s registry service is super easy and quick, and you can start adding gifts in no time. Wedding guests checking in to buy will also find a swift and no-brainer process leading straight to the couple’s list. In short, I can only say that on my wedding day Macy’s will be my gift registry provider of choice.

6. Style Me Pretty – There’s nothing like peeping over at other people’s weddings pictures to see what works, what doesn’t and find new ideas. Style Me Pretty’s Real Weddings section is packed with tested strategies, approaches and features worth checking out before planning The Day. Browse the section’s various wedding styles, including Budget Beautiful, Contemporary, Do-It-Yourself Inspired and Vintage Chic, among others.  You should also explore Style Me Pretty’s vendors’ guide, DIY projects and wedding inspirations.

7. Once Wed – Dedicated to the to-be-wed folks who seek a non-traditional wedding, Once Wed is a brilliant resource for planning unconventional weddings that are “artistically innovative or effortlessly beautiful.” Created by the gorgeous Emily Newman, OnceWed is one of the only places online where you can find beautiful pre-owned wedding dresses and get lots of inspiring and creative ideas for your big day. Speaking of dresses, here’s one that caught my eye.

8. Wedding Invite Love – This amazing website brings together soon to be wed couples with graphic designers and studios all over the country, to make successful and beautiful invitations that suit couples’ needs and desires. Search for your favorite invitations vendor via a number of parameters such as price, nearest city location or style and a world of fabulous design will open up to you. Here’s an example of a beautiful design that’s well within the budget of any wedding, by The Letter Office in NY:

9. Wedzu – A site for the budget brides and grooms, Wedzu offers a saner approach to wedding planning, and offers a wealth of cool products for the indie-at-heart audience. From affordable yet absolutely fabulous wedding dresses to reception decorations and cute cuff links, Wedzu is all about making your wedding Etsy style (handmade, that is) while maintaining the event’s haute-couture look and feel.

10. Wedding MiniFaves page on All My Faves – This MiniFaves page dedicated to wedding planning and celebration is an abundant resource for all the big day’s different aspects. Find all the great websites listed above and many others in one place to make your wedding day the event you always wanted. Congratulations to all the newly weds and the soon-to-be married couples!

MSNBC Powerwall – The media giant MSN has come up with a refreshing, upbeat approach to present and talk about the day’s news figures, whether related to politics, culture, entertainment or business -the ‘power players’ of the day’s events. With a strong emphasis on visually pleasing interface, the Powerwall offers dynamic pages which create an orderly image dance once a particular story is chosen, allowing for the desired news story to catch the page’s central space.

What Powerwall essentially offers is a sexy one-stop place that gathers the hottest stories from the entire network’s news programs and channels. The end result is impressive, and as previously mentioned, nice on the eyes as well. Looks promising for now. Here’s what TODAY’s story (on video) about William and Kate coming to America looks like.

280daily – What happened to those hand-written diaries we used to keep as kids growing up? I had three of those during my teenage years, but once I became an independent, grown woman, those diaries went straight to the attic. 280daily invites us to revisit the personal diary tradition by offering a free and private documenting service where each day you can use up to 280 characters to describe your day.

As a default, you will receive email reminders of your daily 280 character summary at 4 pm, but you can change this of course in your settings. Since 280daily is optimized to mobile device using this digital documenting service will be a breeze on the go as well. There’s also an import to PDF option if you wish to immortalize your entries… Here’s a video explaining the full features of 280daily.