B@ TV – Be At TV is an online global community connecting venues, clubs & clubbers, artists & DJ’s and music fans. Be At TV features exclusive full length audio-visual sets from the world’s finest electronic music talent from venues across the globe. Watch your favorite DJ’s from four different angles. I am a big fan of electronic music myself, and this site most certainly delivers in terms of the unique experience it offers. I truly enjoyed it; it’s totally worth the one minute-long registration process. While browsing Be At TV, I came across the amazing Lisa Lashes – her music is nothing short of WOW.
Wise Bread – It seems recent financial news headlines are announcing the end of the global financial crisis. Whether this is a realistic ascertainment or not, I seriously doubt the average American will back away from his or her calculated mindset when it comes to spending. Wise Bread feels we should hold those dollar horses, and aims to help its like minded frugal-ish audience on the Web. So what is Wide Bread exactly? It’s a terrific finance blog with numerous practical tips and insightful articles that will help you save money and manage it wisely. If you think you can contribute your own positive frugal ideas, make sure you join the discussions at Wise Bread’s Finance and Frugality Forums.
Monopoly City Streets – What happens when a globally acclaimed board game and a sophisticated web application come together? Dynamite – in a good way of course! This absolutely amazing global Monopoly game allows users to play the famous game in the international web playground; users can buy and sell streets and property, interact with others and enjoy a most incredible interface and graphics. A most effective collaboration between the Hasbro corporate (makers of Monopoly) and Google Maps delivers nothing short of top notch entertainment. And don’t worry; registration is free and each new user receives $3 M dollars to play with…
The usual Monopoly game rules apply here so if you enjoyed playing the board game as a kid (or grownup), playing this colossal Monopoly will be a walk in the park. Needless to say, this game covers all developed geographic locations, so where there are streets, there are new opportunities for the Monopoly City Streets entrepreneur! The Initial user registration stampede caused a few server mishaps, so the game creators reset the entire database of accounts. If you’re trying to log in and don’t understand why you keep getting an error message, read this and re-register. To get you started (and hyped, I’m sure), check out this demo video.
Safety Graphic Fun – Safety Graphic Fun is a one concept photo blog, focusing on funny or ill designed (and consequently funny as hell) safety graphics. The site displays danger signs and safety graphics that are unique, even bizarre at times. And no, you won’t find any US danger signs here. Confused? Good. A guaranteed smile generator, Safety Graphic Fun will undoubtedly make you send many of the site’s links to friends and family. Below are some of my favorites. By the way, I really love this type of sites and I can only imagine how hard it is for a blog with just one simple concept to maintain its appeal through time. Other sites and blogs which have succeeded in doing just that are: Awkward Family Photos, People of WalMart and Passive Aggressive Notes.
LookBook.nu – This site of “collective fashion consciousness” is a straight forward, downright chic and glamorous site you should check out regardless of your sexual orientation. LookBook.nu offers real fashion inspiration you won’t find in any department store. Created by users for users, the LookBook database of models and apparel is made up of user submissions from all over the world.
You can connect to LookBook with your Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr login info, and after browsing the new sexy entries, you can “hype” the outfits or looks you were most impressed by – just click on the HYPE button on the left side of the photo. I’m already RSSed to this must site, and what I love the most about it is that you can submit your own photo if you think you have that special styling something… Here are my favorite submissions: Colorful, God Save the Queen and Again & Again. What are yours?
Brain Train – Take a ride on the Brain Train with five mind-bending mini-games! Do you have the intelligence of an Architect, Award-Winning Novelist or a Hotdog Vendor? For more terrific games, check out our Weekly Games, updated every Wednesday.
Spotify – I just love listening to music online, especially with such a variety of great web radio services on the Web (find the best ones on our web radio faveline). Nevertheless, many of the web radio services have yet to solve the annoying buffering problem, the unfortunate tampering with smooth and continuous play. Although this doesn’t happen very often, the sudden silence due to buffering can be a real bummer, especially when your favorite track is playing.
Spotify has hit the discontinuity nail on its head, and offers a seamless flow of high quality music. A peer-to-peer music streaming service that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums, Spotify offers a wonderful service and pulls through where others fail. Music on this site can be browsed by artists, albums or created playlists as well as by direct searches. The thing that makes Spotify so appealing in my view is its interface, which is friendly and fun to use. In addition, the iTunes ‘feel’ Spotify conveys may lead its users to assume it was developed by Apple which, of course, is not the case.
Unfortunately, the current version of Spotify is available only in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. For the sake of music lovers worldwide we can only hope the service will be open to more countries soon.
Bambuser – Bambuser is a terrific video application that allows you to stream your videos live from your cellular phone. How exactly? All you need is a 3G mobile device with a video camera and you are good to go. At first I thought the setup would be complicated and cumbersome, but to my surprise installing and setting up the Bambuser application was super easy. Log into your account and then access their mobile site: m.bambuser.com. Download and install the application and you can start broadcasting live.
Several months ago we reviewed Qik on this blog. It’s a site that offers the same technology as Bambuser’s. In that blog post I mentioned that it seems like great technology that is poorly executed. After giving Qik a second run today, I realized their quality of service is much better now than what it was at the time of my initial post about them. And yes, I think overall they’re better than Bambuser… If you are interested in this kind of service, I suggest trying out both before choosing the one that suits you best.
Blik – Blik is a line of truly innovative and super creative self-adhesive wall decals that were created by and for people who like to change their mind. It all happened “one night while Scott Flora, an architect extraordinaire, and food writer Jerinne Neils, were debating whether to paint or wallpaper their walls. They realized that neither option was really what they wanted. The problem was, what they did want didn’t exist. In addition, they quickly discovered that there were very few alternatives to this whole paint/wallpaper conundrum.” The result of that brainstorming night is Blik – a great alternative to wallpaper, paint or stencils. Within minutes, you can transform the look of a living or office space: choose your space, plan the design you’d like to make, and literally, just peel and stick. Below are the designs I liked the most (by the way, they also offer cool iphone skins).
This Day in Tech – “Events that Shaped the Wired World” is what This Day in Tech is about. It is Wired Magazine’s historical accounts of important technological inventions and developments that happened today, 20, 50, 100, even 500 years ago. If you’re not a Wired reader and into technology, shame on you! This is one of the world’s top publications in general, and technology related news resource in particular. This Day in Tech, one of Wired’s current 12 blogs (yes, these guys are serious), draws ‘forsaken’ tech moments of history into the 21st century spotlight. To give an example, here’s an interesting article on the 1846 invention of the first practical sewing machine, by Elias Howe on September 10 of that year.
Overall the idea behind This Day in Tech is pretty conventional. So why did this blog make it into our Weekly Faves lineup? Because as with any content produced by Wired Magazine, this blog is simply beautifully written, and the reader is always in for an especially pleasant read. With Wired Magazine, content is always king and it therefore deserves this AMF seat of honor. Click here to visit their other blogs, which are just as exquisite as the one reviewed here.
HealthBase – Let’s say you wanted to know more about a certain health condition or illness. What would you do? Google it, right? Well, that could help, but the millions of results could leave you overwhelmed and frankly, fatigued. If you’re familiar with the various online health resources such as Web MD, PubMed and Mayo Clinic, those places offer a decent solution as well. However, if you’re interested in getting a more panoramic view of the illness in question in terms of causes, symptoms, treatment, etc., HealthBase is your answer. The site is based on semantic search technology that runs your queries on trusted health resources only, delivering a comprehensive list of relevant details and information.
Check out HealthBase’s results for insomnia to get a good grasp of what these guys are about. Notice how they break down the number of information records according to each resource. Another cool feature HealthBase offers is a list of alternative medicinal treatments to almost any sought after condition. Another HealthBase example relates to the causes of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I was extremely content with the results, and I even learned that CFS is very real and can lead to broken marriages and wrecked careers.
Tasty Kitchen – Tasty Kitchen is a community-based food and recipe site where, as Ree, the creator and Pioneer Woman states, like-minded foodies are “able to tap into the bounty of tried, true, and tested recipes that exist in the arsenal of home cooks everywhere.” Ree, a gorgeous woman who is also blessed with the right palate and equipped with the cooking know-how, has done an excellent job in creating this extraordinary food site.
All of the featured recipes on Tasty Kitchen have been tried out by other cooks and are rated by other community members. With such an indisputable authenticity, and a huge selection of recipes (including gluten and dairy free listings), there’s something for everyone’s kitchen here. Unfortunately, the community’s current size is rather small, and so many recipes have only one or two ratings, but with this fantastic platform, I’m sure the number of shared recipes and ratings will increase in no time. Now back to food – some of the recipes I was most impresses by (or should I say, the ones that made my mouth water the most) are the Pesto Cheese Bread, the Pasta Vecchia Napoli, and the delicious looking Il Riso di Giovedi’ Sera.