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:
Fiverr – Simply put, Fiverr is the place where people show what they’re willing to do, buy or sell for $5. Sound weird, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought at first, but when you really think about it, Fiverr is a genius concept, and the large number of active users attests to this.
It turns out a lot of people are willing to do quite a bit for just $5, from personal greeting card creation to sending you hi-res photo of any text you want, just to name a few. Here’s a cool, high-rated offer for just $5: SOS Elite Media will create an impressive kinetic typography moving text video for you for, yes, just five bucks. How does Fiverr work, exactly? Here’s how:
BranchOut – Although many are amazed Facebook hasn’t made a move to buy LinkedIn yet, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t leverage your network of friends on the world’s No. 1 social network right now to your own career’s advantage. BranchOut has put its foot in the Facebook-jobs door and offers easy job search using nothing more than your Facebook account.
Once you sign in via Facebook connect, grant the application access to your account and create your job seeker’s profile. BranchOut offers easy LinkedIn profile import which is a huge perk. Get relevant job offers, see your connections, learn what’s new in your professional network (instant updates), and even endorse your friends. BranchOut is a great idea that is well-designed and executed. Give it a try if you’re thinking about making a career change using more than just job listings and LinkedIn.
Well – As with most of the NYTimes.com blogs, this one about health & wellness is also a superb source of content. Well offers engaging posts on a number of relevant topics including food, pets, exercise and personal achievement, the science of fitness, and “Patient Voices.” Well has a commendable size of active, responsive readership that likes to comment on the blog’s interesting posts and further elaborate the discussion.
One particular post I found intriguing on Well is Tara Parker-Pope’s A Dual Portrait of American Fatherhood, discussing the radical changes in the paternal role of today’s America, compared to pops’ levels of engagement a few decades ago (just in time for Father’s Day). Well is a last week’s Weekly Blog winner and a personal favorite for both my mind and soul. Enjoy.
Newspaper Map – In today’s age of influx of people, communities and nationalities to and from every location, physical borders are now becoming more obsolete than ever before. The result, as NY Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman so eloquently explained, is that “The World is Flat.” Newspaper Map brings a whole new meaning to this very concept through the World Wide Web by offering an online reading room for every possible newspaper from virtually every possible country.
Using pinned locations on Google Maps, Newspaper Map offers a visual interactive interface by which you can search, browse and select newspapers from different locations worldwide in different languages. Each newspaper’s language can be translated (using Google Translate of course). This means you can virtually read any newspaper the world has to offer. Once you pick a pinned location, the site will offer a list of translation options so you can read the newspaper regardless of its language of origin. See an example below.
Friedman had it right. The world is flat alright, and we might as well benefit from its ever-increasing connectivity and flow of information. Newspaper Map is a great productive concept we should use to learn better what’s going on in different parts of the world, places and communities hidden to us until now.
BillGuard – This new service aims to be the dead-serious watch dog for your credit card bills, calling itself the ‘Antivirus’ for credit card bills. What does it do, exactly? “BillGuard scans your card activity for hidden charges, billing errors, forgotten subscriptions, scams and fraud, and alerts you via email when your attention is required.”
BillGuard truly is a personal finance savior, and it’s particularly essential to those owning more than just a few cards and finding it hard to keep up with it all. Another cool BillGuard perk is that in addition to its automated transaction scan for errors and hidden fees by over 100 tests, it also scans the web to see if other people have posted complaints or flagged certain transactions and merchants. This ‘people power’ makes the BillGuard community a watch dog in and of itself. All for one and one for all, so to speak.
To learn more about BillGuard and how it works, watch the video below.
TestQ – This well of knowledge and career quiz site is brought to us by Monster, the job search company. TestQ is packed with various quizzes that help you make better decisions, see what career fields suit you best, and it can even help you decide what to major in at college.
Although the idea of having a website dedicated to quizzes might constitute a huge turnoff to some, scratching beneath TestQ’s surface reveals a most valuable job and career resource worth exploring every now and then. I actually found that I liked taking quizzes… My personal favorite here was What Motivates You?
NoiseTrade – What a sweet music site that offers a helping hand to both artists and music fans! NoiseTrade offers artists a sexy and practical web spot for them to showcase their music, and fans can listen to the music and even download entire albums for free! The sound quality is amazing, which is an added bonus and a valuable part of the NoiseTrade bundle.
Artists are welcome to sign up and set up their page, even create their own widget which can be added to any online venue they may have. Fans don’t sign up -they simply start enjoying the great music on NoiseTrade instantly. Here’s the page of The Vespers, one of the most downloaded artists here on NoiseTrade. Listen to them and you’ll see why!
xoJane – It’s always refreshing to find a genuinely great online source for women that’s well above the Glamour-Cosmopolitan standard. xoJane is a sophisticated, witty and downright helpful resource for women seeking a regular place to visit for bona fide tips on fashion & beauty, tech, relationships and other topics.
If you’re looking for wishy-washy content with ‘drive men crazy’ innuendos, xoJane is not for you. If you are, however, into boldly written content that hits the nail of women’s issues on its head, xoJane is THE place to go to. I’m already subscribed and loving it! Here’s a post I found totally right on: Riding in Cars with Insanely Windy Hair: Two Creative Solutions by Anya.
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.
iMeet – Promising your very own personal meeting room online, iMeet is here to make video conference calls as enjoyable and effective as they can possibly be. Aside from worldwide accessibility and multiple device compatibility, iMeet allows for conference video meetings made up of up to 15 people, and whenever someone speaks, you will know exactly who it is as their cube will start to glow.
Although this is a paid service (offering free trial), it’s free for the people invited to the meeting. Other perks iMeet offers is social media stuff such as bio and pics, chat, privacy options, background customization and other sweet ‘make it my own’ features. iMeet has gained lots of attention from the tech community, apparently for a god reason.
So, is it worth checking out? Oh yeah. Looks amazing, offers a rewarding bundle of perks and features and it does the job.
Cut Out + Keep – With over 11,000 Likes to date, this site probably does something right. The craft site offers a colossal collection of make-it tutorials, from hats and jewelry to tea strainers, furniture and accessories. Think of Cut Out + Keep as the Etsy how-to hub.
The vast number of categories and sub-categories seemed overwhelming at first, but once I found something interesting, I decided to share. Actually, I think I will be making this Cat Hammock next weekend.