Posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 by Shachar Pessis
The All My Faves’ underlining guideline is to bring you the best ten faves in each category. Having that said, we do acknowledge the Internet’s ever-growing and dynamic nature, as it just keeps renewing itself as time passes. In order to tackle this challenge we have created our Weekly Faves section. Updated every Monday, the Weekly Faves are our hand-picked sites for that week. These are the sites we were most impressed by and the ones we wish to pay forward to our users. The Weekly Faves that deem particularly popular by our users receive a permanent spot in their respective category or, as we call it, ‘faveline.’ On the last Monday of each year, our devoted team discusses the past year’s accumulated weekly choices, from which we select The Most Amazing Sites of that year. Below are the selected sites for 2008. We hope you will enjoy our top picks and that you will find our future Weekly Faves of 2009 just as enjoyable and interesting. In addition, we are currently developing a Weekly Faves voting system which will allow YOU, our users to be the sole selectors of this and upcoming years’ best sites. So remember to cast your votes!
Hulu – Hulu does not equal YouTube, since one cannot upload videos to the former. I would describe Hulu more as a free cable TV provider, which brings together a large selection of videos from more than 100 content providers, including FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and more. Users can choose from more than 900 current prime time TV hits such as The Simpsons, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Office the morning after they air, classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The A Team, Airwolf and Married…with Children, movies like Requiem for a Dream, Liar Liar, The Karate Kid I II and III, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Friends – the list goes on and on. With regards to the same overall issue though in a different angle, I advise you to check out Prime Time Rewind. It offers Hulu content yet with the added value of a visual browsing feature. Overall, I’d say Hulu is simply perfect. Well, 99% perfect, as it currently only caters to US users.
Blip.fm – If you are a twitter user, you can think of Blip.fm as twitter for music where instead of following what people are doing, you follow the playlists of other users and where you can share yours with others. If you don’t know what twitter is, think of Blip as a never-ending playlist that you and your friends create in real-time, and each ‘bliped’ song is accompanied by a user-generated comment. I, myself am an avid user of this service and to be honest, it has reduced my itunes usage almost entirely. As I see it this is the true essence of web 2.0 – combining music and social network. When Blip.fm was first launched, I blogged about it. I noted the site’s commendable concept but also pointed out its often poor execution. I contacted Blip.fm’s creators and asked them to keep it simple. I am happy to announce that today this service is extremely user- friendly and intuitive, although there is one thing they have yet to improve; using this service during the standard EST working hours of 9:00-16:00 produces many disconnections or buffering delays of the played songs, hence rendering the promised continuous play rather tottering. My guess is that their servers might be experiencing difficulties when there’s a high volume of users. Nevertheless, I LOVE Blip.fm and sure hope their servers’ capacity will increase in the future to accommodate the growing traffic they must undoubtedly encounter on a daily basis. Please Follow my blips as I would love to share my fave music with you.
EarthCam – Would you like to see the world but can’t afford to travel? In that case, this is probably the closest you’ll ever get to seeing what’s out there. EarthCam offers links to web cams all over the world. The web cams can be viewed by time zone, category or city parameters. Although I experienced some broken links, the ones that do work offer a wonderful medium for quenching one’s curiosity about foreign localities. We all like to peep every once in a while, so why not take advantage of what’s available? My fave web cams include Times Square and Puerto Escondido (Mexico).
DayLife – More news than ever before is available to us every day online. Yet finding and understanding the complete story can be difficult – too many sources and too much work. DayLife simplifies it by gathering news from thousands of news sources across the world and organizing it into a landscape of related stories, quotes and images of every perspective. This is definitely one of my favorite ways of consuming news. Be sure to check the photos discoveries section, where you can find breathtaking photos. All My Faves is seriously considering adding DayLife to the News Faveline, What do you think?
Fring – In the beginning, mobile devices were used only for voice communication. Then text messaging came along, followed by camera features. These days our mobile device has evolved into a mini computer. If you use any or all of these programs: Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM, you will discover that Fring offers the ultimate free mobile access to these applications. It gathers all the important and most used apps in one place. Setting it up is easy like one, two, three: enter your cell number, install the application and the rest is quite intuitive. I believe we are witnessing a cellular revolution. I have even made a free cellular call using Fring – all you need is a Wi-Fi connection at both ends and a cellular device. Can you imagine what will happen when the whole world becomes netted by Wi-Fi? I probably won’t even require the services of my cellular provider; a simple, cool and smart cellular device will do just fine. This is huge and I think it is here to stay…
IcanHasCheezBurger – I am allergic to cats (it’s true!). Nevertheless, I have no hard feelings towards cats, I actually love them but from a distance. That distance in my case is the web. IcanHasCheezBurger (I have no idea what the name means, ask them…) offers an endless source of lol cat pictures that will keep you laughing all night long. If you liked this, you should find the following ones as just as funny: Cute OverLoad, FAIL Blog, Roflrazzi and the brother site IhasAHotDog.
GreenDaily – The planet we live on is facing environmental challenges today like never before. So how do we connect the dots between our consumer lifestyle and environmental responsibility? I am glad you’ve asked. You can start with Green Daily – a nice, green wash-free, typical blog (with a hip, slightly humorous attitude) concerning keeping the planet as waste-free and sustainable as possible so it could offer a decent and healthy life for future generations. Want more? Check some of our previous green faves such as: Stuff, Carbonrally, VIROPOP, The Daily Green and Do the Green Thing.
Akinator – Akinator is a genius, I am serious! Akinator is the genie that reads your mind. He’ll ask you 10-15 questions about a famous character you choose beforehand (alive, dead or fictional) and by the end the Akinator will almost always guess the identity of your thought-of figure. Once he’d succeeded, you will receive the following announcement “Great, guessed right one more time! I love playing with you!.” The Akinator is a form of an Artificial Intelligence development. I tested Akinator’s skills numerous times and pushed my luck with trying not-so-famous characters, and dearest Akinator was always on the spot. It is remarkable, I tell you.
Where the Hell is Matt? – Matt is web 2.0. in manifest. He started doing a silly dance in front of the camera (just for his own sake) and the video quickly spread among and by users via what is called ‘viral distribution,’ gaining millions of views worldwide along the way. The nice guys from Stride recognized the potential of it and decided to sponsor additional dancing trips for Matt. The 2008 trip is by far the best one, and which brought Matt worldwide recognition as a dancer. This video won’t change your life but will, for sure, put a smile on your face. Matt has a nice point of view about life, make sure you check his About Us and his FAQ. Go Matt! Keep on dancing for the sake of human kind.
Plug Into Now – If you enjoy the AllMyFaves concept then you will, no doubt, love this website (I see a bit of resemblance). At first glance I didn’t really understand it, but apparently some things require more than just a glance in order to comprehend their essence and power. Sprint has labeled this site as ‘Plug into Now.’ I don’t really know if this is the best label to use, I would rather define it as “Earth and Humanity’s Control Room.” It has everything related to the human condition and Earth’s current status on it: from the world’s mood and the number of babies born to the amount of our planet’s consumed energy. Even YOU are calculated into the site’s presented statistics. Confused? Just enter the site and all will become clear. This is nothing but guaranteed enjoyment!
Penguin Diner – Penny the penguin has her flippers full trying to manage a bustling Antarctic diner! Help her keep the food hot and the customers cool by seating, serving and cleaning as quickly as possible. Remember: the happier the customers, the bigger the tips! This game reminds me of three things: Sushi Go Round, Zorba The Greek and Happy Feet.
More, not enough?? Check our The Most Amazing Sites of 2007! And in order to never miss a fave, make sure you subscribe through E-mail (on the right) or by RSS.
