Punchfork – Another look & click recipe site, Punchfork collects the Web’s best recipes in virtually any category you can think of, and showcases them elegantly on the homepage. Moreover, Punchfork uses social media channels to find out what’s hot in the cooking world right now, and shares that on their site. Punchfork’s visual approach is, as I’m sure you would agree, much more rewarding and helpful in recipe search online.

Search recipes by ingredients, or by user ratings, and Punchfork’s browsing filters can adjust your search to include blogs, trends, recently added recipes and more. To see what a chosen recipe page looks like, here’s one that is perfect for these hot summer days: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream by Serious Eats. Each recipe page allows you to go to the original site or blog’s recipe post.

Memrise – This vocabulary builder is unlike anything I’ve seen online thus far. I visited Memrise thinking I will use it to freshen up the advanced French vocabulary I learned back in college, but I soon found myself learning Mandarin. Memrise is a fast, easy and above all, enjoyable way to learn a new language and to enhance the ones you already speak.

What’s so special about Memrise? The team behind this innovative tool has mastered the science of new knowledge acquisition (especially the kind that’s involved in learning new words) to ensure long-term retention stays above 90%. How? Contributing users fluent enough in a given language give word association tips, and share their way of remembering what words mean. Association, according to science, is the best knowledge and memory retention method. Here’s a solid example of Memrise’s magic, showing how to remember the Mandarin word for Man.

The Memrise magic doesn’t stop there. By using a Farmville-like seed planting and greenhouse growing bait, the system gives you incentives to come back later and practice what you’ve learned. Even the quiz questions are built in a way that helps you remember the new vocab words better. I seriously believe Memrise is a must in every classroom across the country. Well done, Memrise team!

Loosecubes – Looking for an inspiring workspace or seeking to rent out your extra studio or desk? Loosecubes is an inventive community that pairs people who own extra work space with those who need it, and has thus far connected people in 357 cities in 48 different countries.

All community members must follow the oh-so-reasonable guidelines, just like the ones you would find on the global accommodation community AirBnb.com. Connecting to Loosecubes via Facebook means you get recommendations for work spaces from people you know. Moreover, the site’s system takes care of the entire reservation and payment process so you don’t have to worry about it. Loosecubes is a personal favorite and comes highly recommended! Here’s a gorgeous looking space available for coworking in East Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York (NY). To learn more about how Loosecubes works, click here.

Worldtime Buddy – A most productive web-based app, Worldtime Buddy is particularly helpful to business professionals communicating with different cities and countries in different time zones. With Worldtime Buddy you can easily and painlessly schedule meetings between Los Angeles, Sydney and Paris without forcing anyone in these locations to stay late at the office, or worse, wake up super early, to attend that video conference call.

To make a time zone conversion or to set up a meeting between different zones, pick your desired locations, pick a date and time and save it via Gmail, Google Calendar, add to Clipboard or add it to an existing meeting. It’s simple, easy to use and does the job!

Gojee – This recipe site -named after the funny looking berry from southeastern Europe and Asia- stands out from conventional recipe sites for a few obvious reasons. First, from the first moment you enter Gojee, all you see are large, hi-res, mouth-watering photos. Second, the site shows you (as opposed to merely ‘finds’) curated recipes depending on what you crave and what you currently have at home, while the system eliminates what you hate or can’t eat. The free style recipe search is also available if you must.

Whatever recipe you fall in love with can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or via email, and you can also mark it as a favorite. Who curated and tested these to-drool-for recipes? Meet the savvy cooks and foodie bloggers behind the scenes.

Dragon Dictation – This iPhone app by Nuance Communications is a dream come true to many busy professionals, and there’s no wonder why it’s currently one of the most recommended (and free) apps by major tech blogs and news sites. With Dragon Dictation you simply say whatever you need done, whether it’s an email, a Facebook status update, text message, a to-do task or a call to someone. The app will do it for you, fast. This app was created by a “voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text content.”

Dragon Dictation is revolutionary in its field, and it offers an easy solution to busy businessmen and women on the go, with the added hands-free bonus. Currently free for Apple mobile products, available at the App Store. This is amazing stuff!

About.Me – We all have multiple accounts scattered all over the Web. There’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, video sites, blogs and others. About.Me offers you an elegant and sophisticated yet simple way to show yourself off to the world online, whether for personal reasons, professional, or both.

Create your personalized About.Me page and use it to lure people into your provided links. Throw in some nice pics, well-written bio and other content you feel is important, and voila, you have it all in one pretty page. See Sean Duffy’s About.Me page as an example (click the image to see the entire profile).

It looks amazing, doesn’t it? For many other profiles go here. To start creating your own sexy profile that shows you off, sign up to About.Me right now. To learn more about the About.Me service, watch this video.

Prizes.org – Sign up with your Facebook or Twitter account, post a question or a task and offer whatever reward you feel is fair. Prizes is a peer-to-peer Q&A platform where users post inquiry contests others take part in, which means both sides have to gain from this cool service. This site offers an upgraded version of the answers concept, which is why I believe Prizes.org has a serious chance of exceeding Yahoo Answers in terms of honest assistance (as opposed to “lol” and such answers you usually get in such places).

Svpply – Back in December I talked about a cool tagging site called Nuji, where users roam around the Web and tag things (can be fashion, interior design and more), share their finds with others and find inspirations from other users’ tagged items. Svpply offers the same overall service, with additional slight improvements. With Svpply you can filter ‘finds’ by selecting product category, gender and price.

Follow users who have the same taste as you do, and get you-centered product recommendation, plus the direct path to buying that dress, sofa or artwork. To start off, why not explore the site’s Editor’s picks?

Happy hunting.

In today’s digital world, automation is for the most part a good thing, even great, since it means that less time and effort are required to achieve the desired result. But when it comes to Web navigation and content consumption (whether in text, video or other media form) at work, at home or anywhere else, automation in the name of productivity can be a deterrent.

Search fatigue is becoming a widespread downside to the world of online search, and SEO-savvy spammers and marketing freeloaders try to grab your attention on that very first results page, under the pretense of offering valid and useful content…

Decide – Don’t you just hate it when you buy say, a digital camera you have been craving for a while, and a week later you find out the price dropped by $50? Decide.com is here to help you make smarter purchases of electronics by letting you know if now’s a good time to buy that laptop, camera, game console or any other gadget you’re after.

Decide.com uses sophisticated prediction algorithms that make rational forecasts of price drops and new model releases to help you make smarter purchases that actually save you money. Decide.com also comes in a mobile version (not an app per se) so you can make better choices while in the electronics store.  Here’s a glimpse of what Decide.com looks like when searching for a Samsung digital camera (which I’ve been dying to get):

I’d better check out the new model first before making the purchase. How else would have I known about this? Thanks, Decide!

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.