Vevo – YouTube joins hands with Universal Music Group to create a special venue for premium music videos. What does this mean exactly – isn’t this what YouTube does anyway? Well, not quite. As reported by the New York Times, “the agreement, which also includes the licensing of Universal recordings for use in user generated videos on YouTube, is the latest of many efforts by YouTube, which is owned by Google, to place more professionally produced content in front of its huge audience, and in turn earn more money from advertising.”

This is all nice and dandy, but not really fair; Vevo is offered to US users only, excluding all other countries. The funny thing is, international users can still view many music videos on YouTube regardless of their geographic location, so Vevo isn’t that appealing at the moment. The same scenario was played out by Hulu, which is just as outrageous in my book. Content shouldn’t be restricted to certain locations, especially in this day and age of digital communication that’s already made the world flat over a decade ago.

CosmoLearning – Imagine an institution where educational courses, lectures, quizzes and notes are not only free of charge, but accessible to and by anyone with an Internet connection. CosmoLearning took this vision and made it into reality by significantly elevating the “quality of homeschooling, teaching and student excellence, helping educators and self-learners alike anywhere in the world.” Creators Gab and Rafa (siblings) started this wonderful site as their answer to the lack of a central and coherent location of educational resources in the science field. CosmoLearning is a most positive outcome of an extremely resourceful initiative of two siblings seeking to improve the educational quality of student learning all over the globe. Great job guys!

Holiday Toy List – When we listed the Amazon Toy List on All My Faves last year, I tried to decipher the origins of the gift-giving custom, so I won’t discuss it again. I would rather talk about what defines Toys. According to Wikipedia, “A toy is an object used in play. Toys are usually associated with children and pets, but it is not unusual for adult humans and some non-domesticated animals to play with toys.” Having this concept in mind, I expected to see conventional toy items in this year’s Amazon toy list for the holidays. Well, it seems this year the e-commerce giant is focused solely on people, offering numerous toy ideas to children from the baby to Big Kids stages, which pretty much includes everybody. Good luck with your holiday gift hunting, and I wish you an especially Happy Holidays season.

Bizmore – When AllMyFaves first aired three years ago, it was a one page website. Since then we expanded to more countries and provided theme specific pages such as entertainment, kids, blogs, education, shopping, travel and weekly faves. You might wonder where our designated Business page is. Although the idea of creating such a page did come up in several team meetings, we never received an explicit request for a Business page from any of our users as of yet. Do you think we should create it? Would you find it helpful? Let us know.

If we did have a business page, Bizmore would definitely be there, under the Advice or Blogs favelines. So what is Bizmore about? It’s “an online business advice community that helps people build their businesses and succeed in their careers. Whether you work at a startup, a small business or a large corporation, you can quickly find practical answers to your business questions from peers and industry experts.” Sounds useful, doesn’t it? I was impressed by the post The Key to Understanding Gen Y Employees? Their Parents. This article made me fall in love with the quote: “Don’t be just a painter, become an artist.”

YouTube CountDown – If someone were to ask me, “If you could have access to just one website of your choice, which one would it be?”, I’d have to say it would be allmyfaves.com -not only because I am one of its Co-Founders- but because it truly is the website of websites. If AllMyFaves didn’t exist my answer would be, without a doubt, YouTube. Speaking of the Google-owned video website, I admire their Newyears CountDown page. It’s a list of the year’s most memorable videos. Between December 1st and 31st, YouTube adds a new memorable video on a daily basis to determine 2009’s absolutely best videos. It sure does deserve a daily visit.

Even though I do appreciate the videos they chose, I disagree with one of their picks (you should know YouTube doesn’t disclose of the manner by which videos are selected). For the best stop-motion video, YouTube picked Eye Popping Post Its, which is great – no disagreements there. However, I do think Her Morning Elegance is much better, and it’s not on the list. I discovered an interesting fact about this: while the Post-It stop-motion video received a little over 3,000,000 views, Her Morning Elegance received three times more exposure, with over 9,000,000 views.

This doesn’t make sense – how come the latter isn’t listed? For the record, there are still ten more videos that will be added to the list by the end of the month, so maybe I am just jumping to conclusions and ranting for no reason. I certainly hope I’ll be disproved because if I’m right, something is rotten in the state of YouTube. At any rate, I’m positive you’ll appreciate the two videos below.

What The Movie – If you’re into flaunting your cinematic knowledge, now there’s a swanky new online venue for you to do it, while giving your two cents on your favorite motion pictures. What The Movie offers ‘name the movie’ style quizzes by showing you a random snapshot, invites you to rate movies, share your reviews and see what others rated, etc. In addition, users can also score some memorabilia by scoring high on quizzes and participation. Just imagine how student participation would rise all across the country if schools were to use the same incentives…. And if you really think you know your way around the history of film, let’s see you nail the title of this legendary classic – see picture below.

The Oatmeal – The very thought of learning new facts or understanding why certain human phenomena exist can bore us to the extent of simply aborting the mission altogether, and preferring to indulge in some serious mind-numbing TV time. But if we were to throw attractive comics, witty humor and engaging content into the mix, the didactic experience would get a whole different meaning. Such is the case with The Oatmeal, where short, funny and pleasant facts about life and the world are presented in an intriguing way. Don’t believe me they can pull it off? Just check out their take on Beer and the use of the Apostrophe and you be the judge…

Autocomplete Me – Before talking about this website, we should first get the Google AutoComplete concept down. When you type a word into the Google search box, Google “helps” you by offering top-down style suggestions of relevant real-time searches (i.e., automatically completes your key words), thereby speeding up the overall search process.  Does Autocomplete Me offer a better version of this service? Far from it – it makes fun of it.

Autocomplete Me has taken up the task of presenting all the funny, hilarious, out of context auto-completes Google suggests – some of which might be offensive to some people, so keep that in mind. To give an example, typing in the phrase: who stole m – was auto-completed by who stole my dead husband. If you ever bumped into an awkward auto-complete and would like to share it, you can suggest it here. By the way, a good way of keeping track with all the words of wisdom of Autocomplete Me would be through their facebook fan page – I am already a fan.

Sim Air Traffic – Have you ever dreamed of running an airport, sitting at the control tower and deciding which plane should land and when? Now you can with Sim Air Traffic, where you are the airport supervisor. Be careful not to crash any planes or it’s game over! We are reaching the end of the year, so it is time to choose the best games of 2009, check here and submit your votes. Hurry up – you can vote until December 27th.

All My Faves 2009 Holidays Special – Time flies so quickly – I remember vividly last year’s Holidays season as if it were yesterday. When we reach this time of year most of us are focused on two things: showing our loved ones how much we love them (with opulent dinners and holiday gifts), and nailing down those New Year resolutions. To help you out with both missions (and many others, see below), check out our Happy Holidays page, where you’ll find not only great holiday gifts at affordable prices, but also mouth-watering recipes and solid New Tear resolution aids. Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanza, we have something for everyone.

The Happy Holidays page is a comprehensive “Holidays Central” so to speak, offering many goodies for this time of year. Our devoted team has prepared the A lists of the Holidays’ best and most relevant products, websites and information resources to transform your holiday ‘to-do’s into a piece of cake -both for you and your family. Find this year’s best selling books, DVDs and Blu-Rays, dinner inspirations, travel deals and loads more. In addition, if you can’ find what you’re looking for on our Holidays page, you might want to explore our Amazon Bestsellers and Top Auctions on eBay pages. Happy hunting!

Techland – Techland offers “the latest in nerd news, gadgets, culture and games.” Is there something new here? Not really; it is a tech/gadgets related website just like Engadget and Gizmodo. So why are we featuring it on our Weekly Faves? Because despite Techland’s familiar feeling, its content presentation is well executed. Posts are a blend of technological concepts and terms with wittiness and an amusing approach. Also, Techland’s color of choice is a huge hit in my book. Another reason Techland got a Weekly Faves spot is that it’s a new site on the scene. But rest assured, the Techland team has been swimming in the tech pool for quite some time, and it simply relocated from Nerd World to Techland.

As you know, we feature ten new Weekly Faves every week, and at the end of the year our team chooses the most amazing sites of that year (see which sites rocked in 2007 and 2008). This year the AMF team will publish its list of top 40 websites the company was most impressed by, and you, the users, will be invited to place your votes and select the absolute top 10 that made 2009 stand out – so stay tuned. In the meantime, you can enjoy Techland’s vote of the Top 10 Gadgets of 2009.

A Story Before Bed – Bedtime stories are cherished moments for both parents and young children. It’s an essential bonding experience which brings hearts and smiles together, on that comfy and dim lighted bed. Imagine creating the very same experience of bedtime stories, without the bed or frontal proximity between narrator and child. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But A Story Before Bed allows us to do just that, by offering a remote access-like modus operandi for putting that little bundle of joy to sleep.

How does it work? If you’re a loving grandmother who can’t make it to your grandchild’s bed, simply pick a book from the website’s library, record yourself reading the story out loud using your webcam (recording both audio and video), preview your recording and send it to your grandchild’s home. Your creation can then be played as many times as desired, thus accurately imitating the ‘story before bed’ feeling both you and your little loved one crave. Although payment is required for completing the process, you only pay when you’re content with your recording. At any rate, this is an excellent compromise between today’s modern hectic lifestyle, and the traditional way of showing you care – feasible thanks to the digital age and wonderful execution of A Story Before Bed.