Mocavo – Discover your family’s rich history with Mocavo’s ancestors and genealogy search engine. As opposed to other family history/tree sites such as Ancestry.com and Geni where you can upload family members and trace your ancestors, Mocavo scans all the genealogy sites on the Web to give you results for your ancestor inquiry. Think of it as Google Search for ancestry…

Do Lectures – The Do Network believes that people who Do things -meaningful and life changing things- can inspire others to change the world. Every year, the Do Network invites inspiring Doers to come and tell their story in the hope of motivating you to go out and Do as well. These are the Do Lectures.

If Do Lectures reminds you of TED, that’s not a coincidence. Both aim to inspire people to do things and bring positive change by sharing amazing stories. An example of a fascinating Do Lecture is the one below by Phil Parker, talking about pursuing the impossible or, Why the Words You Say to Yourself Matter (click the image to go to the video).

Sophia – Classrooms in the Web 2.0 era have radically changed and now, not only does technology serve as a didactic aid, but also high connectivity and information accessibility of the digital age make traditional teaching and learning methods virtually obsolete. Sophia is a godsend resource for both teachers and learners seeking not only to spice up conventional education, but also to enhance educational success of each and every learner.

As the site’s About Us explains, “Sophia is a social teaching and learning platform that taps the teacher in all of us and enhances the learning process by providing access to a wealth of knowledge, help, instruction, standards-aligned content, and expertise available to learners everywhere.” Find teaching aids and learning material in an abundance of fields, from applied sciences and mathematics to humanities, English and literature and visual arts, just to name a few.

To give you an example, here’s the learning packet (highly rated of course) in biology, explaining the topic of enzymes.

Zapd – This wonderful app offers an amazing free service. Create your very own website using Zapd’s system of templates and styles, add your mobile pics and voila, you are now the proud owner of a website. Zapd allows you to do all this on your iPhone, and the entire process from start to finish is fast, simple and fun.

Each website or “Zap” you create is automatically adapted to the device you used to make it, which means Zaps can be done via your iPhone, PC or tablet. And you can create as many Zaps as you wish, which is a great tool to use for simply sharing your interests and experiences, but also for special events such as birthdays, party invites, weddings and many more. Want to see some examples? Check out recent Zaps users have created.

To be honest, I’m surprised Zapd offers their sweet bundle of site creation for free. In other words, you’d better get this app now and start expressing yourself online! To learn more on how to use Zapd, see this intro video.

Quirky – Now these guys mean business. Quirky offers a mighty innovative platform where anyone from the global online community can pitch an idea for a practical, life-ameliorating invention, or a radical improvement of an existing product. Quirky handles the actual product development and marketing aspects, which pushes forward amazing ideas and makes them a solid, retailer-sold reality.

Quirky’s framework is so brilliant, they produce a new product every few days, and users are invited to take an active part in products’ development. Depending on their level of participation, contributing community members earn hard cash from the products’ sales in stores. Here’s more on how Quirky works.

My favorite part of Quirky? The Shop. It’s where you can buy many of Quirky’s manufactured products that make life so much easier, induced by people like you and me who shared their great idea. That’s where I found these two amazing products. The first is Weigh To Go, a multi-functional travel accessory whose compact form packs a digital scale, identification tag, and built-in lock to prevent theft. Available for presale ($33).

The second cool gadget I’d like to share is called Splash Stacks, a cushioned mat set that is easy on your knees when bathing a baby or a pet in the tub. Instead of kneeling on hard bathroom floor tiles Splash Stacks is the perfect alternative ($39.99). This product is in production.

BookDaily – Where do you go to learn about new interesting  books? NY Times’ bestsellers list? That’s a good start. But there’s now an even better way to tap into book discovery via BookDaily.

BookDaily lets you find great reads by giving you access to the entire first chapter of each featured book (over 80,000 titles!) via email. The obvious added value is that you can actually ‘taste’ the book before deciding to buy it. Sign up to start exploring the books on 1st chapter-basis, and get regular updates on your preferred genres and publishers. The BookDaily platform also offers book reviews by other readers like you, and weekly columns from credible sources.

When it comes to books, I’m more of a sci-fi fan, and I gave BookDaily a try to see if they have my personal must read for August, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Sure enough, I found it and was immediately offered to read the first chapter. Why, thank you very much!

Google Advisor – The search giant is now on yet another do-gooder mission: To help us better manage information online, and this time, in the personal finance arena. Google Advisor seeks to facilitate finding financial offers from multiple providers, comparing them side by side, and applying online. You can use Google advisor to compare recent offers of mortgages, credit cards, Certificates of Deposit as well as checking and savings accounts.

Once again, we see the magic of Google in simplifying otherwise complex processes to help us make better decisions. In today’s shaky economy Google Advisor is a financial bliss you should take advantage of.

SwipeGood – The ingenious idea behind SwipeGood makes the entire process of giving a whole lot simpler. The service rounds up the purchases you make with your credit or debit card to the nearest dollar, and donates that loose change to an organization of your choice.

Once you register your credit/debit card, you don’t need to do anything else aside from simply carrying on with your regular routine. The passive giving approach -while having full access to the transactions and donations reports via SwipeGood- makes charitable donations effortless and wonderful! As a SwipeGood member, you have full control over your contributions: you can set a monthly donation limit, pause the SwipeGood process at any time, and choose between 748 different organizations to give to.

Signing up is super quick and easy, and once you add a card to the SwipeGood service, you can start helping your choice of organizations instantly. What a great idea! We loved it.

Runtastic – Here’s a powerful fitness app that offers a bundle of sweet features. Runtastic offers the GPS-via-mobile, exercise logs and stats features, but so do most fitness apps these days. Where Runtastic really shines is in its real-time cheers from Facebook friends joggers, cyclists and hikers receive while out, pushing their bodies to the fitness limit.

Added Runtastic perks include finding tracks and routes in your area, tracking your weight, and sharing your progress on Facebook and Twitter, among others. Many will also be happy to learn Runtastic offers apps that work with Garmin sport watches. Runtastic is available on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows 7. So next time you go out for a run or a ride, rethink your app usage. Runtastic is a personally rewarding app that really pays off to use.

iPhone screenshots

TaskRabbit – Our hectic weeks these days don’t leave much time for those small errands we need to do, and we end up putting those off for the weekend, right? No more. TaskRabbit is a sweet community of reliable runners who willingly (and for a reasonable fee of course) run your errands, deliver supermarket purchases or whatever else you need done, for you.

TaskRabbit works by matching task posts and background-checked runners able and ready to do the task. When posting a task, the user will specify how much he or she is willing to pay for it, and commits to that sum. This way, runners know beforehand what’s the compensation, and the system will make sure the runner is paid once the task is closed (complete) by its creator. Want to meet some of the TaskRabbit runners? See them here.

The TaskRabbit service is currently offered in Boston, NYC, Orange County CA, San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, although more locations will be available soon including Chicago, Portland and Seattle. Want to become a TaskRabbit runner yourself? Click here. TaskRabbit is a terrific idea – we loved it!

Groupon Getaways – If you’re a happy Groupon camper and love their daily deals, you’ll love the company’s new collaboration with Expedia, Groupon Getaways.

FastCustomer – Forget about those long minutes on the phone, waiting for a customer service representative to pick up on the other end and help you out. FastCustomer is a pain killer mobile app that takes out the hold from calling companies.

FastCustomer offers a free, 1-click process by which the company’s customer service rep calls you, not the other way around (the app has over 1600 companies in its database). This way you are ridden of the costly and annoying hassle of waiting for an actual person to talk to you. In addition, the app automatically saves these calls on your mobile’s recent calls list for simple future use.

What I like about this free app, aside from its obvious anger elimination aspect, is that it helps the companies you’re trying to reach in the first place, as well. Happier customers are better and more loyal customers. It’s a win-win situation. Available for the iPhone and Android devices.