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are reaching out to teachers and educators across the country, offering an amazing collection of primary resources of historical documents and information.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.

Creative Criminals – This cool Weekly Blog winner scored lots of attention and therefore made it into this week’s Weekly Faves lineup. Creative Criminals is a website created by Rindert, Bert and Sander “who all have links to the advertising world.” This means the ads you will see here (in both poster and video forms) are filtered, top-notch advertisements from all over the world that are bound to impress and call to action. Want an example?

Here’s an innovative ad concept by a natural insecticide company in Thailand:

Company: Shieldtox
Agency: Euro RSCG, Bangkok
Country: Thailand

Porsche Everyday – When a powerful brand wants to increase exposure even more online, in a way that’s part seductive, part informative, what does it do? It creates a sexy website that doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. That is exactly what Porsche Everyday is about: an interactive, media-rich website offering close encounters with the luxurious sports car.

Explore videos and stories of proud Porsche owners, see the various models and even build your own.  Although this website’s main purpose is advertisement, Porsche did a great job at maintaining the famous car’s prestigious reputation.

Trover – Our app pick for this week appeals to the sharing enthusiasts out there. Trover is “a social network that lets you share discoveries with friends and fellow explorers in a fun, visual way – all based on your location.” Although some users don’t appreciate the Trover-Facebook connection (you must grant Trover access to retrieve your Facebook account info in order to enjoy the app), it’s a fun interactive social tool to enjoy wherever you are, based on photo geotagging.

Want to share the cool bar you’re at with the world? Take a pic, share it with the Trover community and users will immediately know where the bar is located. Share whatever you’re doing at any given place, or find what other points of interest and activities Trover users have shared. Go ahead and give this app a try and don’t forget; sharing is caring.

Askives – Part Q & A, part archive, Askives offers an answers hub for questions of all sorts, and users can comment on all of Askives’ answers.

This service has lots of great things going for it, including a large and diverse Q & A topic base (including who, what, where, how and why), beautiful design and simplicity. However, after taking Askives for a serious test drive, I feel there’s lots to be done to improve this ambitious website. First, who is behind this site? No About Us section can be found, and even Askives’ Terms of Use is not yet linked to any relevant content.

Secondly, I’ve had more irrelevant than relevant answers to questions I’ve submitted. Askives sure looks great, but when it comes to the bottom line, Yahoo Answers and Quora offer much better service. Sorry, Askives team.

The Museum of Me – Intel invites you to create and marvel at a remarkable visualization of your Facebook account (including friends, photos, Likes, locations and more) in this amazing video made up of and about you. Sign in with Facebook and grant access to the Museum of Me. Once the data is uploaded you will see a two minute video encompassing your Facebook social life in a museum exhibition form.

The end result is commendable and compelling, and you can share it on Facebook of course, as well as upload it in album form to your account and wall. The Museum of Me is a nice visualization of your Facebook account that aims to make your social circles come to life, but it’s cute at best. Let’s not forget who’s seeking fame here, right?

Scobleizer – Tech geeks, welcome! Scobleizer is the creation of Robert Scoble, a former ‘technology evangelist’ at Microsoft and an avid tech blogger keen on writing about and sharing stories concerning today’s technology movers and shakers. Even if you’re not an engineer or tech professional, Scobleizer can be an eye opener in terms of its content and perspective.

To give an example, check out the video below Robert Scoble shared in his post Ford demonstrates how Wi-Fi can save your life.

TOUT – This week’s chosen app, TOUT, offers real-time video status updates posting from smart phones. As opposed to Twitter, TOUT is about “Life as it Happens” in full color, sound and motion.” The short video updates are called Touts, and offer a much richer feed of info, unlike written status updates on Facebook or Twitter.

As you can see in the image above, one of Tout’s most famous users is Shaquille O’Neill who, as TOUT claims, announced his retirement exclusively via the application on his mobile phone. Other popular users on TOUT are worth exploring and following as well. There’s no doubt video status updates are more interesting than textual ones, but I seriously hope TOUT will be successful where other video micro-blogging tools such as 12Seconds have failed. Currently TOUT is available on the App Store and will soon be available for the Android and iPad as well.

To learn more about TOUT, watch this video.

SugarSynch – File sync and online backup provider SugarSynch is making Dropbox look a bit weak. SugarSynch offers sweet file storage and sharing (including large-sized files) using the cloud. Dropbox has been, up to this point, the leading provider of file backup that’s automatically synced on multiple devices, but their free track only allows for 2 GB. SugarSynch, on the other hand, offers more than twice as much – 5 GB of space for free plan users. What other features make SugarSynch stand out? You can backup and sync any folder on your computer, upload files via email, share folders with permissions and passwords, publish photos to facebook and many other perks you won’t find elsewhere. In addition, SugarSynch works with Android, Blackberry, Symbian and of course iPhone and iPad. For the complete list of comparison, click here. I’ve already signed up for the free 5 GB file storage plan. What about you? To learn more watch the video below.

The Next Web – With over 100 thousand Facebook fans and millions of unique visitors each month, The Next Web is undeniably one of the most prominent technology resource out there. The site started out as a spin-off to The Next Web Conference, and soon became an authority on startups, Internet and culture in and of itself, with the added value of offering an international perspective.

The Next Web provides insightful news stories on a number of topics including gadgets, the World Wide Web and its cultural by-products, design and development, entrepreneurship and many others. The posts are well-written and to the point, which I can’t say about other leading tech blogs. My personal favorite section is The Next Web’s Lifehacks category, which is filled with productive tips and tools for startups and entrepreneurs. That’s where I found the post Getting Started with LinkedIn by Alex Wilhelm.

Correlated – Statistics can be quite entertaining, especially when bizarre relations are made between odd facts. Correlated is all about finding those weird yet entertaining correlation between two unrelated phenomena. I suggest diving right in to fully understand what Correlation is about, and for that purpose I’ve included two examples:

I bet you never thought these were related, did you? To explore other funny correlations and to take part in future ones, visit Correlated and vote in the green colored poll on the right side of the site’s homepage. In case you were wondering, this is how Correlated works out the statistics.

Hidden Heroes – What would life be like without, say, thermal flasks, light bulbs or even baby pacifiers? It’s almost impossible to imagine and indeed, these and many other mundane, widely used -obvious- objects have made our life much easier. Vitra Design Museum has collaborated with plastic-based multipackaging systems supplier Hi-Cone to give the daily objects -the ‘hidden heroes’- we all take for granted the thanks and respect they deserve.

The beautiful exhibition is physically showing at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, but also online, on this website. At the homepage, pick a number of products and click Enter Exhibition. This will prompt a visual continuum where each of your selected products gets a page of its own with historical background, designer info and product use details.

To give an example, see the product page of the Thermos Flask, patented in 1903. Interesting, isn’t it?