Setting up a forum is very fast and simple. Just set your forum URL when you register and fix your board settings in the admin panel. The admin panel gives you quick access to forum functions, themes, and thread categories. You can also install cool plugins to enhance your forum.

Vanilla has an intuitive set of features for such a simple program. Users can bookmark discussions, read activity feeds of other users, and create private conversation threads. Vanilla also has a Facebook-like function where you can post random thoughts and musings in your profile. Premium features are also available such as login integration to your website.

Features:

• Free, quick, and simple forum setup.
• Control your forum from the admin panel – manage themes, add plugins, add categories, set user roles and permissions, and more.
• Post and share what you are up to in your activity feed.
• Users can bookmark their favorite discussions, send private messages, and view profiles of other users.
• Optional premium features are also supported.
• Similar sites: Forumotion and Omgili.

Check out Vanilla @ www.vanillaforums.com

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You can keep conversations publicly open to everyone or keep them private to a group of friends or colleagues. The privacy settings of each conversation can be easily controlled according to you needs.

Using the site is easy, just sign up for an account, type in your message, add emails of participants and click send. Nurphy will then deliver a link of your conversation to people you’ve selected. They can reply to your messages through Nurphy website, using their iPhone or directly from their email.

Demo video:

Features:

• Easily start group conversations and share with others.
• Create as many conversations as you want.
• Clean design and user friendly interface.
• Keep you conversations open to public or private to a group of people.
• Privacy settings of each conversation can be easily controlled according to you needs.
• Free, registration required.
• Similar tools: Tgethr, Re:Subj and Phuser.

Check out Nurphy @ www.nurphy.com

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• Re:Subj – Easy Online Group Discussion Tool
• tgethr: Simple Email Collaboration Tool
• ShareFlow: Online Group Messaging and Collaboration
• Chatterous : Reach your Friends Everywhere (IM, eMail and Mobile)
• CC:Betty: Easily Organize Your Email Attachments Online

RiledUp! features a fluid design that makes engaging into long debates easy. Users can start a debate by posting the debate title and a brief description (including rules and guidelines). Then, the user specifies two opposing positions to create the basis for discussions.

Once a new debate is posted, others can join and choose a position. Users are required to write their points supporting their position and other users can defend and attack each argument by replying to points given. Users can also vote up and vote down each comment.

Debates topics range from the serious to the humorous and silly. All in all, RiledUp! is a fun way to, well…. get Riled Up!

Features:

• Popular debate categories include books, games, history, politics, religion, and sports.
• Add each user as your friend or enemy.
• Automatically keep track of your enemies and allies.
• Users can vote your profile up/down for your authority score.
• See how you rank in the community.
• Search debates by tags.
• Vote on specific positions within a debate.
• Similar tools: ChinSwing and TalkShoe.

Check out RiledUp @ www.riledup.com

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The most standard function is on the homepage is to post your dreams, as you can see in the screenshot above. This is then recorded on your profile if you have one (you can post dreams anonymously if you like). You can also use your dream blog to blog about your dreams on you profile.

The community on SawLogs is a good one. The ‘Discussion’ section acts as a kind of forum area where people’s dreams are posted and then the community analyses them and comments on your dream. From reading through the comments there are definitely some experts on there who know what they’re talking about.

Also, the dictionary section acts as an index of dreams and informs you as to what certain themes or events in dreams could mean. This is a little sparse on content at the moment but as it’s user-generated I’m sure it will soon grow.

If Sawlogs doesn’t help you then make sure to check out another MakeUseOf article covering best websites to analyze dreams.

Check out SawLogs @ www.sawlogs.net (by Dean Sherwin)

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It works by the user (i.e. you) asking the community a question. Then, people will read your question which is displayed on the homepage and in a series of categories. They will then vote as to whether it is normal with the real-time result being displayed at the top of the questions page.

People can also comment on a question that doesn’t have a straight forward yes/no answer to give advice or to convince you that there’s nothing wrong. The community is active and buzzing with witty remarks and sound advice.

Submitting a question is easy once you’re registered. Other than that, there is no need to register if you just want to see what’s normal/abnormal with other people and vote on questions. A great website to seek help and it’s addicting!

Features:

• Vote on people’s questions.
• Search and browse site.
• Submit a question yourself.
• Add and receive comments.
• Vibrant community.

Check out IsItNormal @ www.isitnormal.com (by Dean Sherwin)

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• Yahoo Answers: Biggest Q&A Community on The Web
• Omgili: Search Forums & Discussion Boards

Features

• Create interactive message boards.
• Add message boards to your website.
• Real-time chat and discussion.
• Post text, images, files, videos, tasks and polls.
• Send posts via email and get reply notifications.
• Easily embeddable via widget / API.
• Similar sites: WallWisher.

Check out Pindax @ www.pindax.com (By Abhijeet from Jeet Blog)

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• Zoho : Feature-rich Web-based Office Software
• Yanobs : Web-based Notepad
• WebNote : Quick and Easy Note Taking
• WallWisher: Online Noticeboard Maker
• Voxli: Group Voice Chatting Made Really Simple

Features :

• Easily start group discussion online.
• No sign up, only emails required.
• Add or reply to messages through your email.
• Cool features like threaded comments and private inboxes.
• No need to go through the old emails to reply to a comment. Keep a track of the whole discussion.
• Similar website: Phuser.

Check out Re:Subj @ www.resubj.com (by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog)

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• Nurphy: Group Conversations Made Easy
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• Voxli: Group Voice Chatting Made Really Simple

When it come to Omgili it’s a search engine for searching forums, discussion boards mailing lists and pretty any kind of online message boards. It analyzes and differentiates between discussion entities such topic, title, replies, date etc., and sorts search results accordingly to get you the most timely and relevant information.

Furthermore, Omgili has a couple of additional services like

- Omgili Buzz: daily overview of most popular discussion topics
- Omgili Q&A: searches only Q&A sites.

Features:

• Discussion boards and forums search engine.
• Omgili indexes millions of online discussions from over 100,000 boards.
• Additional Omgili services: Omgili Buzz, Q&A, TV Shows and more.
• Site also available in Hebrew and Japanese languages.

Check out Omgili @ www.omgili.com

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Works simple, just drag its bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and use it whenever you want to see Twitter discussions about the webpage you’re currently on. Users don’t need Twitter account to read the messages, only to submit messages.

When reading messages about the specific page you can also click on “this site” tab to see what people are saying about the site itself.

Features:

• See Twitter discussions about any page and website.
• Works via simple browser bookmarklet (no login or signup required).
• Works with Firefox, IE and Opera browsers.
• Paste code snippet onto your site to let users see discussions about your site.
• Twitter login needed to write messages.
• Free and easy to use.

wwwitter demo video:

Check out wwwitter @ www.ittering.com

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• TweetVolume: Compare Popularity of Words on Twitter
• TweetAlert: Track Twitter Searches & Trends
• TweetAlarm: Get Custom Twitter Alerts Via Email
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Furthermore, the site lets you search for polls, browse by them by category, view featured polls, meet and interact with other users.

Features:

• Create free polls online and get votes from people across the world.
• Add pictures, audio and video to your polls
• Search polls and browse them by category.
• View popular and featured polls.
• Filter polls option to narrow down your poll selection.
• Similar sites: KwikSurveys, Ask500People and Poll Everywhere.

Check out PollsBoutique @ www.pollsb.com ( by Srikanth AD from DiggitLive)

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• Vorbeo: Free Instant Poll Creator
• Quibblo: Create & Take Fun Quizzes And Surveys
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Phuser can be used to discuss topics, plan events, send news letters, share files and photos and many other things. You can create up to 5 Phuses (group discussions) with your free account (You can always sign up with a new email address to create more) and you are in total control of who comes to your phuse and who gets kicked out.

Main features of Phuser include:

• Group discussion site with private spaces for discussions and dialogues.
• Share photos and files easily through your phuser.
• No hassle of registration or signing up (only group initiator needs an account).
• Keep track of discussions by email updates.
• Add or remove people from your discussions.
• Send mass updates to people on your phuse via email or sms.
• Search within your phuses using keywords.
• More info on how phuser works.

Check out Phuser @ www.phuser.com (Contributed By Tehseen Baweja from Ijaar.com)

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CircleUp proposes an easy solution. You simply compile the question through their website, select the people it should go to and it handles the rest. You on the other hand can follow-up on the progress from their website.

How It Works:

1. Sign-up and create your free CircleUp profile.

2. Enter the question and provide all possible answers.

3. Select the group (or Circle) to whom you want to send the question. You can either select one of the contact groups (work, clients, soccer team, etc.) or individual email addresses.

4. Send your question.

5. Shortly after every group members receives a message (via email, SMS, IM client etc.) with the link where they can respond to and comment on the question.

6. All reasults are accumulated and organized on the one web page which can be shared with the group.

Features

• Ask questions to several people and get all replies sorted and organized on one webpage.
• Import contacts from AOL Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Plaxo, Outlook or other sources.
• Organize contacts into groups (Circles) and send questions to Circles.
• Share answers page with the conversation participants.
• View who havent’s respondend yet.
• Export results to a spreadsheet, convert to PDF document or print them out.
• Get a ‘Daily Result’ email delivered to your inbox once a day.
• Additional Tools: Ask questions directly from your NetVibes page, Outlook Toolbar, iGoogle page, etc.
• …

[Video] CircleUp Introductions and Demo

Check our CircleUp @ www.circleup.com

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Feature Overview:

• File a ripoff report (incl. proof picture) against any company you want. Update the progress of your report as you’re working on resolving the issue.
• Browse through over 280,000 reports filed by annoyed consumers against companies of all sizes over a variety of issues. Check out if the retailer you’re doing business with is reputable.
• Top Rip-off Links: Browse top ripoff companies by name.
• ‘Consumer Tips’ section: Learn about Protecting Your Identity, Telemarketing Fraud, Advance Fee Loans, Credit Service & Credit Card Offers, etc.
• For companies: If someone files a report against you, you can file a rebuttal to explain your side of the story.

Check out RipOff Report @ www.ripoffreport.com

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From ChinSwing: “We’ve combined features of podcasting, text forums and live voice chat to create a whole new way to talk.”

Chinswing Features

• Create your own discussion page or join existing one.
• Record favorite discussions in full or partially.
• Add favorite discussions to your Watch list or follow-up via iTunes or any other Feedreader.
• Browse ongoing conversations by Topic (Spirituality, Business, Tech, Entertainment, Art, Health, Lifestyle, Science, Nature, and Culture) or by recently updated.
• Got Problems? Drop by ChinSwing help section OR check out ‘Getting Started’ page.

ChinSwing Video Screencast

Check out ChinSwing @ [http://www.chinswing.com]

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TalkShoe Features

• Create group podcasts with up-to 250 active participants and unlimited number of listeners.
• Participants can join via telephone, Skype, or directly from the TalkShoe website.
• Request-to talk queuing.
• Who is talking indications.
• Record live episodes and store them on Talkshoe.
• Integrated chat room for live text messaging.
• Use TalkShoe widget to embed podcasts to your blog or website (displays recorded, upcoming and live episodes).
• Browse recorded shows by categories (News, Music, Business, Comedy) and type (live, recorded).
• Explore more features and details here.

[Video] TalkShoe Virtual Tour

Go to TalkShoe @ (www.talkshoe.com)

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