11 posts tagged “top sites”

Via Techcrunch, I found out about Senduit.com. It's a competitor to Yousendit, Sendspace, Mediafire, and other Web based file sharing programs. The main difference is its utter simplicity. What you see below is pretty much what you get. No registration, no seizure inducing flashes, no waiting to get your file. And you decide how long you want the link to last. It could not be easier.

Senduit

Once you upload your file, here's what you see:

Senduit link

And when you download, it starts immediately, and there's only one advertisement (they don't do it for free).

Senduit_download

Neat. 

This post attacking Virb raises a number of stinging, and I think legitimate, criticisms of the nascent, would-be Myspace killer. In his post titled "10 Reasons virb sucks big time," Michael Kamleitner gives voice to a number of misgivings I've had myself:

• virb is not open - in fact it’s way more sealed up than Myspace ever was. virb currently supports external flash-content from YouTube, Google and a few other approved popular service only. compare that to the widget-ecosystem which has emerged around Myspace for the past 2 years. bidirectional content syndication from and to social networks might turn out crucial. it will be exciting to see Myspace’ anticipated/dreaded policy shifts in 2007.
• virb is hard to syndicate - I haven’t found a single RSS-feed yet. not even on my personal blog (c’Mon, even myspace offers RSS-feeds, though without full content)
• virb ain’t valid - agreed, virb’s code is lightyears ahead of Myspace’s, but does it validate against current web-standards? not really.
• virb is poorly communicating itself - I was suprised that virb isn’t using the merits of blogging to communicate with its userbase.
• virb is a silo - there is currently no way (i.e. API) to get data out of a virb-account (except of course by content-scraping). since social networking is almost commoditized (check People Aggregator or Ning) by now, and most users have realized they want to be part of numerous networks instead of one monolithic, this is probably a bad move.
• but most of all: virb is a lonely place (currently only 35 users based in Austria). sure, it’s kinda unfair to compare a service just started with Myspace’ community of +100mio users. but in the end, size-of-community is exactly the key-feature of any closed down, centralized social network as is virb or Myspace.

        (ok, that was only 7 issues, sorry for cheating on the headline )

Excepting the ridiculous criticism of Virb's small size, I think some of these criticisms are dead on, and I love Virb. The two biggies for me are the lack of support for additional "approved" flash services & the lack of communication with users. Yes, Flash widgets have their security issues, but Virb has been less than proactive about approving additional sources, and most widgets in wide use on Myspace (e.g., Twitter, Slide) are safe as milk. A cynical user might wonder whether Virb is just worried about cannibalizing their own offerings. For example, how likely are they to approve Last.fm widgets, when Virb offers their own competing feature. Their reluctance is not entirely unsurprising, but Virb isn't going to compete with Myspace by offering less flexibility.

Much of the skepticism might be alleviated if Virb had a conventional beta blog that addressed user questions regarding upcoming functionality. There is a group on Virb that solicits user feedback, but I've seen nary on official Virbster writing in response. Communication with users of a new service is paramount if you want to retain their tenuous loyalty. As big a Virb fan as I am, I still think Facebook is better, offering more useful features and excellent communication with readers.

Okay, but does Virb really suck? Nah. This list of features literally counts the ways in which the site is better than Myspace. And Virb is still new enough that users are willing to give them a pass while they roll out additional features and functionality. But they need to be careful not to spoil the honeymoon.

___________________

EDIT: Turns out Virb does have a group for its developers. But they're not really using it to talk about what's happening at Virb. Actually, they're not using it at all.

Scrapblog just relaunched today with a ton of new features. There are lots of blogs writing about it, but I'm not going to spend much time telling you what it is or what it does. Just look at this short video. It looks pretty amazing.

Do you use Firefox? Do you use del.icio.us? Have you installed the new del.icio.us bookmarks manager for Firefox? I am not talking about the original extension that merely added two little buttons near the address bar. I'm talking about a new extension that largely (but not completely) replaces your current Firefox bookmarks system. A few months back, a few of my pals said they didn't know what del.icio.us was really for. They'd bookmark something and never go back there again. To people who signed up for del.icio.us and said, "okay, what now?" the new Firefox extension will seem like a revelation. This simple little add on blows up your archaic browser-based bookmarks (essentially unchanged since 1995), and delivers a pimped-out, 21st century Internet engine.

I should preface this by saying this review is kinda for people who already know what del.icio.us is. If you don't, read this first, then continue.

Okay?  First, del.icio.us makes the old bookmarklet a part of your browser. This becomes the default interface for bookmarking a site in Firefox. It looks similar to the java bookmarklet, but it does something extra. It saves your bookmark on the internet AND in your browser. This interface allows you to tag your bookmark (so you can find it later), and decide whether you want to share it or keep it private. If you choose, you can also share it with people in your del.icio.us network.

Save

So now, the bookmark is accessible in a more meaningful way, on a toolbar in Firefox. This toolbar is more flexible than your old bookmarks toolbar (which, by the way, hasn't been deleted; it's still there). In the del.icio.us toolbar, you can choose to view bookmarks individually, or sort them by tags. Here's an example of my bookmarks in the "tags view" sorted by my favorite tags.

Tags

Here, your individual bookmarks are available in dropdown menus. If you wish, however, you can choose to view your bookmarks individually in the toolbar. Just click the del.icio.us logo on the far left, and choose "bookmarks view." You can further choose to view either your most recently viewed bookmarks, or your most visited bookmarks.

Favorites

This is a major improvement over Firefox's default display. Your new bookmarks toolbar is constantly changing. It's either going to show your most recent additions, or it's going to adapt to your changing Internet habits. Remember, if you're surfing sites you don't want others to see, simply edit that bookmark so that it's private.

Private

If you choose not to make it private, it can be seen by other people. Below, you can see how your bookmarks look on the site. A private bookmark will have a red message next to it that says "not shared."

Private2

If you edit a bookmark on the del.icio.us site, your changes will be syncronized with your browser. So no matter where you make your changes, you only have to do it once.

Finally, the whole point of del.icio.us is that it enables you to save many more bookmarks than will fit in your toolbar and access them from any computer. If you're on a computer at work, simply access the del.icio.us Web site and search for it, either using your tags or a text search.  You can do the same thing from inside your browser on your main computer.  Press ctrl+B and start typing. The search engine will find both tags and bookmarks using the text you've entered.
 

Search

My pal Jac asked me to put together a list of my 25 favorite/most useful Web sites.* Of course, I agreed, being the Internet dork that I am. I had planned to put together a list of each site along with a short blurb describing the sites and explaining why I liked each one. Very quickly, I realized my planned post was quite a chore and would take me much longer than I anticipated.

In the interest of time, I've posted a quick reference list below. The sites aren't in any particular order, but I have grouped them together in a few rough categories.  In the future, I'll write about each of these sites in more detail. These posts will be tagged top sites on my Vox blog (and the sites below are tagged on Del.icio.us), so you can find them easily. Some of these services I've already written about, and I'll update the tags accordingly. I've written little or nothing about most of these, but I encourage you to check them out anyway.

Please, if you have a question, or you think there's a site better than the one I've listed, let me know. I'm interested to see what you think.

1. Google Reader
2. Netvibes
3. Yahoo! Pipes
4. Flickr
5. Snipshot
6. Meebo
7. Twitter
8. Del.icio.us
9. Scrapbook
10. Google Docs and Spreadsheets
11. Scribd
12. Digg
13. Metafilter
14. Google Calendar
15. Remember The Milk
16. Virb
17. Facebook
18. Vox
19. MeeVee
20. Emusic
21. Allmusic & Allmovie
22. Metacritic
23. Pandora
24. Last.fm
25. MediaFire

Coming Soon

These sites aren't open to the public yet, but both are pretty compelling. To see why, click on the links and view the demo videos.

• Zoho Notebook
• iScrybe

Duh

These are Web sites you should already know about. If you're smart, you're already using them.

• Gmail. The most storage, POP3 access (for both Gmail and other accounts), integrated chat, lightning fast search, filters and labels that are easy to set up. It's the best e-mail you can buy. Only it's free, even the "premium features" Yahoo! and Hotmail make you pay extra for.
• Netflix. There is no other way to rent movies. True, my account is on pause, but that's only because I don't have time to watch movies. If I did, I'd be using Netflix.
• Craigslist. Before I'd buy or sell anything on Ebay, I'd look here. I check the musical instruments listings EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
• YouTube. They're getting attacked from all sides, but this is still the best place to find online videos. Viewers who want a reliable place to find Comedy Central & VH1 clips are better served by using iFilm (Be aware that the site may soon be rebranded as the online home of Spike TV).
• Wikipedia. Andrew Morgan alerted me to the a swell Wikipedia feature the other day. Set your homepage to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random, then every time you open your browser, you'll be treated to a randomly generated entry on Wikipedia.

Remember my last post on this service? Well, I've got a few updates. First, the IM function appears to be working again, which means you can now post to your micro-blog from within AIM or YIM or Gmail chat. If you've got Twitter on your IM, you also receive updates on your IM.

My second item is a bit more interesting. Suppose you're surfing around on the net, and you find a Web site (or photo or video) you want yr pals to look at. A new service called TwitThis allows you to instantly create a Tiny URL and post the link to Twitter. Here's an example.  Your friends would receive the update on their IM service, or on their phone (if they so elect). You know how some people post links on Gchat? Well, this works in much the same way, except that it reaches other people who are on AIM or using their other service. You can read more here.

So why am I bothering you with this? Well, I think Twitter is interesting, because in the next few years, our phones are going to become a lot more useful. For some people, getting a link on their current phone might not make much sense. But if you've got a Sidekick or a SmartPhone (or an Apple iPhone), a tiny link can open a full-featured Web page. Twitter is awfully good for people with cutting edge phones. But Twitter works pretty well even if you never use it on your phone. That's because you can send messages to your pals without leaving your Gmail chat or AIM or whatever. Some of us already do this with our status updates on Gmail. Twitter does the same thing, but with more functionality and more reach.

Okay. That's it. You can find me here. Launchabomb, Brownlee, and Carrie, are on there too, but aren't too active.

_____

UPDATE: Courtesy of Lifehacker, here's a link to a simple Twitter "HowTo."

As you know, I'm your pal that tries out all the new Web sites. Some are too boring or too useless or too buggy to mention. But sometimes I find a site that's worth mentioning. That's when I share them with you. If I'm your pal on Gmail chat, you probably noticed the link to Twitter. So here's what's up with that.

In a nutshell, Twitter wants to be your micro-livejournal; a second tiny blog that you can update from your IM, phone, or the Web. Instead of boring people with long entries, you just put in one or two sentences (up to 140 characters) that tell your pals where you are or what you're up to. You can send (and receive) updates from your instant messenger, including, AIM, Yahoo, and even Google/Gmail Chat. If you want, you can also send and receive messages from your phone. Thankfully, this can be easily switched off. Basically, it's like Dodgeball with more features and fewer annoyances. A few Twitter features stand out for me:

• First, like Livejournal, you can view your own blog, or you can see all your friends' updates on one page. Yours are also mixed in there. Here's mine "with friends." As you can see, I have a scant few friends. I managed to get Carrie to sign up, but she was too hung over to figure out how the IM worked.
  
• Second, you can create a "badge" that you can put on your Myspace page or your blog. This actually replicates the instant update feature that Facebook has and Myspace doesn't. You can see my badge at the right. Note that this badge uses Flash, not Javascript, so that it can work on Myspace. A more feature-rich Javascript badge is also available.
  

The core reason to have Twitter is the ability to just dash off updates by typing into Gmail chat or AIM. If you've got this enabled, all your pals will see your update instantly as long as they're online OR they've got their phone. Naturally, you might want to avoid flooding your pal's phone with updates about your cat. Also, you can direct messages to only one of your pals. For example, I can type "I'm stuck at school" using my laptop, and my girlfriend (an no one else) will see it on her phone.

Recommended internet! A++++++. Would post again.

______

UPDATE: Twitter's still a bit flooded with traffic after all the SXSW hype it received. So it's a bit slow, and the IM feature isn't working right now. I expect them to fix those problems shortly. I should also note that the service has received some criticism for being a one trick pony.

Personally, I think I like the fact that it does only a few useful things, and doesn't clutter the interface with ads or crap that I don't need. What it does well is let you keep in touch with people without having to surf the Internet or even be near a computer. And I think the following observation might be true for a lot of people:

What’s interesting to me about Twitter, though, is that it actually reduces my craving to surf the web, ping people via IM, and cruise Facebook. I can keep a Twitter IM window open in the background, and check it occasionally just to see what people are up to. There’s no obligation to respond, which I typically feel when updates come from individuals via IM or email. Or I can just check my text messages or the web site when I feel like getting a big picture of what my friends are up to.

______

Another update: This article compares Dodgeball to Twitter. Like me, he also compares Twitter to Facebook.

Lots of people already know about Pandora. This Web casting service from the Music Genome Project lets you choose a song or artist as a starting point. Then, it plays a stream of similar music, much of which you've never heard before. I've been a big fan for quite some time, and I don't think there's a better way to discover new music that you'll actually enjoy.

Except maybe now there is.

I'll explain. Pandora's open API has given developers an opportunity to mix and match music services. For example, Pandora.fm is a mash-up of Last.fm and Pandora. You can listen to Pandora as you normally would, but if you input your Last.fm account information, the songs you hear are submitted to your Last.fm playlist. You can also "tag"  the songs as you submit them. Unfortunately, my experience with the site has been mixed. More often than not, my songs don't actually submit to Last.fm. Since that's kinda the point, it's tough to recommend the site. But try it out. It might work a little better for you than it did for me.

A Pandora mash-up I've had better luck with is the Emusic/Pandora hybrid. Again, Pandora works as it normally does: pick a song or band, and you hear similar tunes. In addition, Emusic runs a search for the artist, album, or song that's currently playing and finds it on Emusic. This is pretty useful if you find an unknown artist you like and they turn out to be on Emusic. It doesn't always work. Sometimes, there isn't a match. This is usually because the artist isn't on Emusic. But sometimes, the Artist is on Emusic and the search turns up something completely unrelated. For example, when Pandora played Sonic Youth, I got an album called "Dumbdown" by Idiotchild. That didn't make much sense because there's plenty of Sonic Youth on Emusic. Normally, though, it pulls up the appropriate artist.

Emusicpandora

Finally, Pandora has added some personal features that allow you to bookmark your favorite songs and artists as they play. You can even add your friends and see what radio stations, songs, and artists they've been listening to. It's not the fanciest thing you've ever seen, but it's supremely useful given Pandora's core purpose You can find my Pandora profile here. But don't get too attached. Royalty rates for Webcasters are going up dramatically, and Pandora is signaling that the new rates may be too much for the service to bear.

Pandora

One thing I used to hate about blogging or posting photos I found on the internet is that I'd have download the photo, save it, maybe crop or re-size it, and then upload it again. I say used to because you now there are few tools that make it a lot easier to grab a Web photo and save it to Flickr.

For a while, I used a Firefox add-on called Uploadr. With this plug-in you just right click and save it to Flickr. But you couldn't edit the photo before saving. A new Firefox plug-in, Snipshot, improves on this idea considerably by adding a ton of great editing options:

• One-click import from any web site (including Flickr) with our bookmarklet
• Save to a free permanent URL at WebShots or to your Flickr account
• Save as GIF, JPG, PDF, PNG or TIF
• One-click enhance improves most images
• Basic editing tools like crop, rotate, resize
• Basic image adjustments like contrast, brightness, saturation, sharpness and hue
• Unlimited undo and redo (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y, or ⌘Z and ⌘Y on your Mac)
• Nondestructive editing—we always work from the original
• Edit big pictures—up to 10 MB, or 25 megapixels (5000x5000 pixels)
• Import PDF (first page only), EPS or SVG

A few of you (I'm looking at you, Jacob), should find this incredibly useful. Enjoy.

_________

UPDATE: A few more great things about this tool I want to point out. First, you don't have to install any plug in at all. As the first bullet above suggests, you can use the bookmarklet. When you click, it shows you all the pics on a given page and allows you to choose the one you want to edit and import. Also, you don't have to save it to Flickr (or Webshots). You can also save to your desktop. Finally, you don't have to register to use this tool. Go to the Web site, install the plug-in or save the bookmarklet, and it works perfectly.

One of the best free tools I've seen in a long time.

Virb

Virb is a new site that's competing with Myspace head on. That's right. They're not making widgets for you to put on Myspace. They're not giving you code to help you spruce up Myspace. Instead, they've built a new site from the ground up. Their ambition? To be a better Myspace (and Facebook and Last.fm). They don't just want to compete, they want to win.

They're not doing it piecemeal either. Today, they opened the site up to the public and nearly everything is working right now: fully customizable profile pages, video and photo sharing with generous upload limits, separate pages for bands (with beautiful flash players), interoperability with 3rd party widgets, blogs, and robust search functionality. A full list of features, including some that are coming soon, is available here.

I could write all day about this site, but I'll start small. Here are five things the company seems to have done right the first time, right out of the box. Note that I'm not going into much detail. That will have to come later, in future posts.

1. Perfect balance. Virb has managed to what many have thought impossible. Make a feature-rich, coherently-designed site that is also super customizable. They wanted to build a site that avoided much of the ugliness for which Myspace is notorious, and yet they knew people wouldn't accept a competitor that didn't let users tinker with their, uh, spaces. Well, Virb is gorgeous and "dripping with AJAX." It has a ton of features Myspace users have begged for, and yet it gives users considerable power and discretion in building their (much more) beautiful pages (e.g., here, here, here, & here).  That's not to say you can't still build an eyesore. But there's one more thing: Virb lets you "turn off customization" for individual pages when a pal has simply gone overboard in tricking out their page. Genius!
2. Plays well with others. First, you can sync with Flickr. Hallelujah on that alone. But that's not where it ends. They allow users to create custom modules, which retain the general size of the disparate modules on the site, but which also allow you to insert your own HTML code or third party widgets from approved sites (e.g., You Tube, Google, Brightcove, Revver, Vimeo, Odeo, Metacafe, Veoh). Like Myspace, they don't let users insert Javascript. But flash-based widgets seem to work okay. Finally, they're planning to let users import their own blogs via RSS. That feature isn't live yet, but it's hugely important if they want to attract new users weary of Myspace's "lock-in" mentality.
3. Not afraid to borrow ideas. Some of Virb's best features appear to be cribbed from other sites, and that's a very good thing. For example, Virbtunes is an iTunes plug-in that logs your tracks as you play them and posts them on your profile page. It works just like Last.fm. It doesn't have Last.fm's enormous feature set, but it's already smart enough to identify bands who have a Virb profile and provide an autolink to their page. Another useful feature comes from Facebook: after you log into Virb, your homepage displays your "recent friend activity." Whenever your friends add photos, videos, blogposts, or songs, a notification shows up on your homepage. It's very similar to Facebook's mini-feed, but it avoids some of the controversy that feature spawned. Virb doesn't tell you about interactions among friends.
   

   Recent Friend Activity
4. Media isn't an afterthought, it's Virb's central nervous system. Take a look at Virb's home page, and their pages for video and music. Everything about the site says it's built to run on media. That image transfers to the content and features on the site. Virb is going after Myspace's core competency in music. Hard. The site's founders, Unborn Media, previously brought you PureVolume, a kind of Web 2.0 version of MP3.com. Now, bands can get a Virb site that ports over a killer feature set from PureVolume. The resulting artist pages are so pretty, we're not sure PureVolume is even necessary anymore. Take a look at this page for Bloc Party, or this one for Finland's Day Eleven, and you'll see what I mean. A lot of bands are going to flock to Virb. Bands like The Decemberists, Mastodon, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, and The Hold Steady are already on Virb at launch. Users don't get left out. They can add as many as 15 songs from different artists to create their own custom player. And as for Video, Virb is the first site I've seen to launch WIDESCREEN video that can be embedded anywhere. And with the click of a button, you can dim the rest of the screen for maximum enjoyment. Are you starting to get amazed?
5. Search and you shall find. Virb makes it easy to find what you're looking for. Myspace veterans know that's not a small thing. Virb has a speedy search function that crawls the whole site and returns results in discrete categories (e.g., people, blogs, music, video). Tagging is actively encouraged, and damn near everything can be tagged, including your friends. This fixes one of my biggest complaints about Myspace: once you had about 200 friends or more, it became impossible to find them again. While Virb doesn't let you search your friends (yet), you can tag them any way you wish, and then filter them accordingly (e.g., work, school, home, golfing buddies). This is made easier by the fact that Virb allows you to keep Organizations and Bands separate from your "People" friends. This is what social media is all about: finding people, sharing information, and staying in touch.

I'm not saying Virb is perfect. They're still adding features and tweaking the service. It's still in beta for chrissakes. A massive influx of users could still crash their servers. And even if everything goes right, they've still got to overcome the significant network effects advantage Myspace enjoys. Are people really going to bother with another social network, when they've invested so much into Myspace? Who knows. But I like Virb a lot. And they've got a good unofficial motto that I'm going to adopt.

I'm moving to Virb. Who's coming with me?

P.S., I'm starting a new Virb group on Vox. If you like Virb, join up!