Carbonmade – Those of us working in the creative industries such as design, graphic design, styling, photography and other visual mediums will appreciate this free online portfolio service. As a visual professional, you need to provide solid work examples to lure more potential customers and to make a name for yourself. And what a better way to do so than by creating an online portfolio of your own, one that looks amazing and presents your chosen works in an easy, nice-to-look-at place. Carbonmade offers just that.

To get started, I suggest exploring some samples – my favorites are Bódis Árvai Tünde Photography and Bunny Pirates by the illustrator Meghan Stratman, respectively shown here below.

The free Carbonmade bundle allows a maximum upload of 35 images (which is more than enough for the average professional), and a paid track of $12 a month for those interested in showcasing photos, videos, flash projects and more, all ad-free. What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Google Crisis Response – Google.org initiated this blessed project back in 2005 (following Hurricane Katrina) to help hard-hit locations worldwide cope with the aftermath of natural disasters by making relevant information readily available for everyone, everywhere.

The recent earthquake and consequent tsunami in Japan forced the island country to come to terms with its worst natural disaster on record. The Google Crisis Response project gives you all you could possibly need in one easy page; comprehensive coverage along with real-time updates and latest news on the sitatuion in Japan; direct donations to the Japanese Red Cross using Google Checkout; detailed maps of the affected area; emergency phone numbers; people finder; current status (transportation, government warnings, blackout info) and much more.

Google’s Crisis Response project makes helping out fast and easy. Just imagine how helpful this could have been back in 2005 when New Orleans was in dire need of fast assistance. Please visit this project and help where you can. You would appreciate the same, God forbid you should find yourself under the circumstances Northern Japan communities are currently dealing with.

blufr – Rightfully described as “not your mamma’s jeopardy,” blufr is a cool trivia game where you are presented with a statement and you need to decide whether it’s true (“Way!”) or false (“No Way!”). Test your knowledge and intuition to see how well (and how how high) you score on this game.

blufr is brought to us by Answers.com, and it’s certainly refreshing to see an online trivia game that’s targeting a younger crowd than usual. There is also an iPhone app available (free on the App store), so you can play blufr on the go and never miss a question!

phraseup – If writing is not something you find easy to do, phraseup is a tool you should consider. It is essentially a sentence completion service that comes to the rescue when you have only a fraction of a sentence ready in your head. How does it work? Simply type in your incomplete phrase or sentence and put (*) where you’re short on inspiration. Hit the Complete button and see the magic happen before your eyes. Here’s an example:

For those of you interested in how exactly phraseup manages to offer appropriate completions, here’s an explanation: “Using a patent pending algorithm, phraseup* assists you with writing, by suggesting possible combinations to fill-in the words you can’t remember. Each suggestion is accompanied by definitions, synonyms and translations to other languages.” What an innovative concept! Writing just got a bit easier.

Sockroll – RSS. We all have it and read its feeds on a daily basis. Readers are great in terms of keeping us up to date on the latest posts and news from our favorite sites and blogs. But there’s no escape from telling the truth; most readers give a one-liner and stick to it, often at the expense of a fluid read. Sockroll counterattacks this issue, and I’m seriously considering ditching my Google Reader for good.

Presented in a newspaper-like layout, Sockroll offers a designated page for each of its categories (over 60 categories to choose from, including some non-mainstream ones such as Guy News, Programming, Religion, Weddings and loads more), listing posts in the order of publication time (most recent on top), and always including a visual item to accompany the post. Look for instance what Sockroll’s Fashion page looks like:

Another cool aspect of Sockroll is the interface’s appearance when reading a specific post. A semi-separate window opens up, showing you the full post in its respective site/blog page while keeping the Sockroll’s category page in the background. You can quickly close this window once you’re done and then go back to your main Sockroll page for more reads. Here’s what reading an Apartment Therapy post on Sockroll (on Home Design) looks like:

The end result is a pleasantly looking platform offering fluid reads and flexible skipping between topics. Plus, Sockroll takes the RSS subscription burden off of you and centralizes all the hot news of your chosen category in one place.

Top10 – Search from the hundreds if not thousands of Top10 lists available on this cute site, ranking just about anything you can think of. There are conventional, what-you-would-expect lists such as Top 10 Language Guides, but also surprising entries, such as Top 10 Austin Powers Moments, and this is just the tip of the Top10 iceberg.

Although browsing Top 10 lists other have created is entertaining -quite funny at times-there’s nothing like creating your own and mixing others’ lists! Don’t be shy now, do it now and add it to Top10’s list.

EcoSquid – If you have an old gadget no longer in use, you already know that throwing it to the garbage is not an option. So, what are some of the options out there? Selling and recycling, mainly. If you are looking for either or both, EcoSquid is your solution.

Claiming to be an impartial source of information, EcoSquid shows you which places would give you the highest value, and which have the highest service rating in case you’re looking to sell. In case your old gadget is beyond recovery, EcoSquid will direct you to reliable donation/recycling entities for you to consider. Either way, EcoSquid’s mission is to help you “prolong the life of your electronics or responsibly dispose of them.” Here’s why you should use EcoSquid:

Great job, EcoSquid team! We like!

This is an engaging guest post by the lovely Dan Fonseca, creator of the blog Synapses. In this intriguing post Dan talks about the speed at which we retrieve information online, and how this affects the Knowledge Gap theory.

When I think about my favorite characteristic about the Internet, I immediately think of its incredible ability to flatten the information/knowledge gap. Not to get critical and ideological too soon, but before the Internet was easily available, knowledge was often controlled one way or another. This by no means implies that there was no knowledge accessibility before the Internet, that would simply be silly. What I am trying to communicate is that one had to jump through a few more hoops to get it, and it required a little more effort on our part. Knowledge is power and it should not be a surprise that those with power often go out of their way to hold on to it and keep it exclusive. Those with knowledge use its power to mold society and often take advantage of those who simply do not know any better or have the means to combat the hegemony. This has always been the case until some force came around to challenge it, thus shifting power.

Throughout history we have seen technology disrupt power dynamics. Technological Determinism has always helped democratized information and with it power. Just think back to the Gutenberg press and its effects on the Catholic Church. The printing press helped to publish information quickly, helping diffuse new ideas across modern Europe. The rest is history you can find in textbooks or, actually better yet, Google.

What I am trying to communicate is that the advent of the Internet has done exactly what the printing press did back then, but to an enormous extent that we are still trying to comprehend. Think about it for a quick second. What is stopping you right now from searching whatever you wanted? From learning anything that interested you? Not much, maybe a poor Internet connection or questionable battery life, but apart from that absolutely nothing! That’s a pretty wild and empowering situation to be in, huh?

Though we have come a long way in our history, society is still one comprised of the “haves and the have-nots.” Dependent on socioeconomic factors, one’s life can play out very differently. Factors like: What neighborhood did you grow up in? What school did you go to? Are you attending college? These variables can have a huge impact on a life’s outcome, there is no questioning that. Sure, there is the “American Dream” but many say that is a myth. We are often given the cards and have to deal with them the best way we can. Though this remains true to some extent today, the Internet is challenging that situation.

With the Internet, anything is possible. Knowledge is everywhere, oozing from every crevice of the web. You can’t go to a single website without coming across incredible showcases of the meta-data that’s put to work. There are countless communities online looking to share and grow together and they only become stronger in numbers. Between YouTube and Wikipedia, one has the information to learn just about anything! We are now unbound by the previous constrains of other institutions on our intellectual betterment; we are rather held by our curiosity.

We live in a time that favors experience and ideas over backgrounds and test scores. It is time we all capitalize on that. That’s not to say we are all in an equal playing field (far from it), but the game has become more reasonable and fair.

The Internet, with all its beauty, has done something incredible to our age. We have the ability to share, connect, and learn without any ceiling built in. We are the only ones holding us back and if we take advantage of this, we -collectively, as a society- can become better, more equal, and ultimately happier. Long live the Internet!

“I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious” – Albert Einstein

*Dan Fonseca is currently a Communications student at Northeastern University in Boston and writes his very own blog Synapses. He enjoys thinking about the bigger picture and looks to bring people together in anyway he can. Dan loves his brie and sushi too. Oh yeah, he’s also proud to be from New Jersey so watch what you say 🙂

Long Bets – On a mission to “improve long–term thinking,” The Long Now Foundations‘ Long Bets is “a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.” Long Bets is all about taking responsibility and standing behind your own truth.

How does it work? First you must distinguish between ‘predictions’ and ‘bets.’ Making a prediction means stating a situation that would take place at least two years from now, followed by a supporting argument. You must include your name right next to it. This will be set in stone, meaning once you’ve stated your prediction or bet, you won’t be able to edit it at a later time. See a few examples below.

Betting (or the Long Bet) is counter-arguing an existing Prediction. Specifically, when a member challenges a predictor to a wager over their Prediction. It’s kind of like presenting a scientific theory to the academic community, and opposing individuals then attempt to refute it – only Long Bets concerns social and scientific predictions and bets.

Long Bets’ mind competition is thought-provoking, creative and stirs a much needed conversation between participants online. Any one can join in, but you will have to register first to do so. A big thumbs up for this intelligent website.

PostPost – Stay on top your network of Facebook friends by exploring the news feeds through a unique, newspaper-like medium, PostPost. Instead of going to facebook each time and scrolling down to see what your friends have posted, see the entire collection of real-time posts in a much more conformable way to digest all of that info.

This is what my personal Facebook newspaper looks like, using PostPost’s interface. As you can see, you can interact with, comment on and share each post.

I must say, it was a refreshing experience to be part of Facebook without actually going to the Facebook site. I honestly hope PostPost will catch on, but I doubt the vast majority of Facebook users would use an external site to keep track with Facebook posts, especially those created within their network of friends. It certainly is a nice try though. To learn more about PostPost, here’s an intro video.

The following is a guest post I wrote on behalf of All My Faves for Synapses, an insightful blog by the lovely Dan Fonseca.

In recent years, as the World Wide Web became mankind’s main communication channel, there has been an interesting shift in the predominance of textual content. More specifically, textual content in mainstream media has been increasingly gravitating towards a more visualized direction. This is not to say textual content or words are a dying breed. Rather, the visual evolution of content -in the form of animated videos, interactive maps and infographics- is emerging primarily in circumstances where complicated knowledge or data need to be understood in a fast and clear manner.

Below I will present several examples of recent visual content forms on the Web, showing how graphic based information achieves immediate understanding and internalization of ideas and processes. These exclude common practical iconizations used for daily routine efficiencies (signs, conventional maps, etc).

1. Visualizing Bloodtests

This example is a knock-out in terms of both aesthetics and functionality. Created by the talented team over at Information is Beautiful, Visualizing Bloodtests is the ultimate data-into-info example, and there’s no wonder why this visualization scored the 1st place in Wired Mag’s re-envisioning medical data design competition.
The original piece of content is a standard bloodtest data document. Doctors can make out what it means, but what about the patient whose blood was tested? It’s virtually impossible to comprehend what’s going on there, and this concerns someones’ life!

Now see the magic of infographics (thanks to Information is Beautiful), turning the incomprehensible document above into an easy to digest content:

2. GapMinder World’s Health & Wealth of Nations Interactive Graph

This interactive graph was created by GapMinder so as to “unveil the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics.” The Health & Wealth of Nations shows the changes in humanity’s lifespan and lifetime earnings over time, starting in 1800. It’s an amazing visualization that takes dry numbers of data and turns them into an engaging presentation that laypersons like you and me can understand easily. By the way, GapMinder’s software Trendalyzer  is so amazing that Google acquired it in 2007.
Click the screen shot below to go to the interactive graph’s page and hit Play.

3. Web Search – AllMyFaves.com

What does the phrase ‘Web search’ make you think of? Probably Google, right? There’s no doubt the search giant is excellent at what it does, and its efficient search algorithms had enabled the company to enter an already inundated Web search market back in 2000 and take it by storm. However, at the end of the day Google’s search service, however sophisticated it may be, is based on word indexes. You must type in key words to find what you are looking for, and then you must read each result entry to identify its relevancy to your search. The byproduct of this process is what has come to be known as “search fatigue.” Another byproduct is spam and malware hot spots, disguised as credible search results.

AllMyFaves.com has identified the shortcomings of standard Web search and offers an innovative alternative: icon-based gateway to Web navigation and site discovery. The AllMyFaves.com homepage lists all the most popular and practical categories relevant to most users, and each category displays the top 10 websites of that field in the form of the site or company’s logo. Based on the same premise of the infogrpahic, allmyfaves.com delivers quick access to information and services provided by familiar sources and brands, immediately recognizable by their logos.

In addition to the homepage you will also find AllMyFaves’ designated pages for Blogs, Business, Education, Entertainment, Games, Kids, Shopping and Travel. AllMyFaves’ recent tool, the Mini Faves, is a personalization tool inviting users to create their very own visual homepage that includes all of their bookmarks and favorites. Here’s my personal Mini Faves page as an example.

If you would like to create your own Mini Faves page and have all your bookmarks and favorites in one easy page, join AllMyFaves now.

To wrap things up, I think you will agree; visual information is taking a strong hold over the Web and for a good reason. In an era when information flows to and fro at incredible speed, we are bombarded with RSS feeds, news articles, emails and many other content forms on a daily basis. Thanks to visual aids such as infographics, interactive graphs and many other forms of content with a visual approach, making sense of the world just got a whole lot easier.

*Recommended links and sources: Cool Infographics, AllMyFaves.com, Infographics Mini page,
“Conventional Data is Boring. Make Way for the Infographic,” AllMyFaves Blog. Jan 20, 2011.

SPENT – Take the ultimate challenge of making it through the month with the little that you have left. SPENT is a compelling game (so to speak) on what it means to be one of the people Urban Ministries of Durham helps out. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that the experience is as real as it gets. Check it out and share with friends. I couldn’t last more than 10 days. What about you?