Kwippy is another micro-blogging site that resembles both Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed. Kwippy is a convenient and easy way to stay connected with old friends and an even better way to make new friends - the social networking “goal”.
If you see a “Kwip” you like, it’s very easy to find out more about the author and to follow them. Kwippy allows you to interact and converse with short messages such as interesting things you find online or just letting people know what you’re up to or how you’re feeling. Also, the Kwippy commenting system promotes members to engage in conversations, making it a great tool for getting quick feedback or opinions from others.
Web 2.0 has enabled us to connect with people around the world easier than ever. Social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and Twitter have unraveled a new world and helped foster huge communities of internet users who work together when they are online.
Browzmi is a web app which takes things a step further and intends to make the basic process of casual surfing on the internet an interactive and engaging one, where you can have your friends see what you are surfing and vice versa. It’s simply exploring the web with your friends and getting involved in a healthy discussion about your likes and dislikes about a particular website.
Social search engines are a great way to search across many social networking sites at the same time. They make it easy to find new friends, old friends, people to network with, and people with the same interests as you. Below are three social search engines that you may find helpful in expanding your network or friend circle.
Whoisi is an easy to use search engine, currently in public beta, that allows you to find out what your friends are doing. The Whoisi search engine is unique because it’s public and can be edited by anyone, just like a wiki. Best of all, there is no sign up required and your friends do not have to participate on the site in order for you to keep track of them.
With all the social media sites available to us now, it’s very easy to go into social media overload. There’s no possible way that one can keep up with even 10 sites, let alone the hundreds that are created each month.
In order to keep up with the social media phenomenon, there are numerous aggregation sites & applications popping up on a regular basis. It seems like most people are now using FriendFeed to stay updated with things but what about the other social aggregators out there that are less publicized? Do you use any of them?
Yoono is a Firefox extension that works like a sidebar and lets you stay updated with friends and websites. You can stay connected with friends on social network websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Piczo, Flickr and Friendfeed. You can also talk to your friends using AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger using the widget. Yoono is a great extension if you want to save time switching between all the social network websites you use and keep less messenger programs running because of the built in instant messenger support. In a way Yoono is like Flock in the way that it keeps you connected with your social networks such as Flickr but I think Flock does a better job at it.
Amazon Gift Central’s motto must be “helping even the most gift-giving challenged people the opportunity to give great gifts year round!”
Many of us do not have ready access to malls or enjoy shopping for gifts for our friends and family members. However, Amazon Gift Central provides a clean, easy to use interface that prepares you to select great gifts for your friends and family members without the hassle of driving to a mall or taking hours and hours to find the “perfect” gift.
So far I have not been a huge fan of any social site. Don’t get me wrong, I love social sites like Digg, Del.ico.us, Flickr, Twitter and so on, but that list is one reason I haven’t used them much. I need to visit four different sites to manage myself, not to mention additional stuff like StumbleUpon, Youtube and some more I use. Even if I use desktop clients, I still need to download separate tools for most of these sites.
The internet, like anything else, goes through fads. Just like the rest of the world, those fads start at the top with celebrities and trickle down until no one really knows how they got started. Several weeks ago, some of the top names on the internet like Kevin Rose and Veronica Belmont began asking their friends to join them on a new site called Plurk. Slowly but surely, their regular fans on Twitter and Pownce begin to traipse over to Plurk, joining their favorite celebrities in birthing a new social network.
New media, social media, networking… who cares what its called? The fact is, for better or for worse, I find myself using it more and more these days. Profiles have always been a pain. Who doesn’t get sick of filling in details and interests and photos, but lately having an up-to-the-minute status message seems to be the in-thing.
Networks like Facebook and of course Twitter started it, and now everyone seems to be adding them in. MySpace now has numerous Facebook-like features including the current status message, newsfeeds and applications.
If you’re heavily addicted to Friendfeed, you will be interested in the Adobe AIR application which has just come out called Alertthingy. It shows promise and I quite like it but it’s not yet showing the major mojo needed to tear me away from my RSS reader.
Alertthingy is benefiting at the moment from a big wave of online hype and anticipation which has been surrounding the project for ages. The application, which sits on your desktop, basically acts like a miniature RSS reader and provides you with all the updates left by your Friendfeed contacts. It’s fast and works quite well.
The problem with having so many social networks is that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of them all. Plus it also becomes increasingly difficult for your online friends to keep track of you. So what’s the answer to this conundrum you ask? The answer is to aggegrate all your social networks into one feed which is then given the blindingly original name Friendfeed.
When I first heard of Friendfeed, I will admit I rolled my eyes and moved onto the next site. But gradually I was won around by the positive reviews that the site received so I went back for a second look. On my third visit, I made an account. Now I’m handing out my personal feed to anyone that wants it.
How many people out there have hundreds, if not thousands, of digital pictures stored on their computers accumulated over years that no one has ever seen? Me! Thankfully, I try to upload most of my pictures to free online photo sharing sites like Picasa and Flickr to at least get some return on the time I spent actually taking all of those pictures.
However, I noticed that not too many of my friends nor my family really care to wade through hundreds of pictures, usually the same scene, just a different angle, because it’s boring. That’s where photo slideshows come in handy. You can make yourself look pretty suave by creating fancy slideshows with customized music, titles, and more using some very easy-to-use and free tools.
Five highly-automated online services to help you out with your daily life and new year resolutions. Nothing complicated or time-consuming, only apps that truly deliver.
FINANCES
Mint - Get control of your budget and finances with minimal effort. Mint is a fully-automated, all-in-one online personal finance tracker.
Here are some of the things that Mint can do without your intervention:
If you are a college student living in a dorm, or sharing a flat with your friends, or do lots of borrowing and lending or simply not blessed with an amazing memory Billmonk offers something you may find useful. It is a free application that helps you keep track of things you borrow and lend. While mainly designed for tracking money transactions among friends, you can also track other things like books, movies, CDs and etc. As Billmonk states, Track Money and Track Stuff.
The way you can track moeny transactions is really well thought through and straightforward. Check out simple illustration of the service below:
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