I asked all MakeUseOf staff writers to pitch in and share some recommendations for their most uplifting, inspiring or funny websites to browse when you’re down, and here are a few awesome ideas. You might want to bookmark this post for later reference – some of these sites never get old.

TED

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It’s a collection of amazing talks by smart people about a huge range of subjects, and we’ve mentioned it many times before. The TED website lets you sort videos by various qualities, such as “informative”, “funny”, “beautiful” and others.

A TED talk is typically short, and if you pick the right one, it can be incredibly inspiring. Some will make you laugh outright, while others would make you think (and maybe realize there is plenty of hope in this world).

8tracks

When I need some carefully crafted playlist, 8tracks is where I go. This is a website which lets users create and share their own playlists (not for downloading, but for listening on the site). There are no annoying audio ads, it is completely free, and the mixes can be tagged and sorted in all sorts of ways.

Here’s a search showing mixes tagged happy, sorted by popularity. Or maybe you’re looking for something more mellow, in which case the Winter calm mix shown above might do the trick. Once you find a mix you like, you can bookmark it and come back to it later. 8tracks will shuffle the tracks when you listen to it again; they do this for a legal reason, but I actually like it because it lets me listen to the same mix several times without it getting too predictable.

Now that we’ve got some nice background music, let’s keep exploring.

Reddit

Reddit is an amazing website, curating user content from all over the Web. It’s a close-knit community with its own quirks (we’ve written about it before). It is a huge, sprawling website that can be tricky to start using. Fortunately, our resident Reddit expert, Dave, had several specific sub-reddits to recommend.

Above is just one image I found on the pics sub-reddit. Dave also recommends the Trolling Animals sub-reddit (contains some NSFW text), the funny sub-reddit, and the aww sub-reddit for images that make you go “aww”.

Warning – Reddit is incredibly addictive. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

The Oatmeal

The Oatmeal is a fantastic collection of comics, lists, and other fun stuff. It was recommended by our editorial overlord, Mark, and I would have to agree. The Oatmeal contains some really geeky comics (the above is from cat vs. Internet), all done up in a very cute, clean style.

We’ve previously included The Oatmeal in a list of 8 Awesome Webcomics You Don’t Want To Miss (it was the header image, even), so if comics is your thing, you may find other goodies on that list (and one more hiding further down this post, too).

Cracked

If you’ve got time for some videos but TED isn’t your thing, you may want to try Cracked. This somewhat-rowdy humor site creates its own videos, such as When Euphemisms Just Make Things Worse. It also features amusing articles and roundups such as 5 Awesome Vehicles for the Extremely Wealthy (And Insane). Cracked isn’t always family-friendly, but it can be pretty funny.

XKCD

xkcd is a web-comic of mythic proportions. If you’re a geek, you probably already know it, but it should definitely be a part of this roundup. In particular, the “Random” button which lets you skip between past strips is important. I could spend hours just clicking that button and reading the tooltips.

xkcd isn’t always good, but it very often is (and sometimes it’s even great). It’s not all “ha-ha” funny, either. Some strips actually make you think.

YouTube (Nyan Cat)

Nyan Cat is awesome, as Justin showed us all. While Justin’s post shows you how you can add Nyan Cat to your progress bars, you can also just watch the video like most people do.

In fact, YouTube has a lot of fun, inspiring and interesting content. I love original music, so when I’m bored or down I sometimes watch Pomplamoose videos, or Julia Nunes (also known as jaaaaaaa).

Ffffound

I wasn’t sure whether or not to include ffffound in this roundup. It’s not a “funny” website – rather it’s a curated image gallery, containing a lot of random, artsy stuff. Most of it is not funny at all, and some of it can even be gloomy or depressing. But almost all of the images are interesting, beautiful, or inspiring.

For me, scrolling through ffffound is like going into a museum exhibition. Lots of art, and the lack of context makes it all that more interesting. Again, this one may not be for everyone, but it inspires me.

Google Image Search

This is another one recommended by Justin. Justin says Google Images can be really good at cheering people up, if you know what to look for. He recommends using links to pictures of animals instead of emoticons. The results are frequently hilarious.

Google Images can also be nice for looking up pictures of stuff that you know will cheer you up (no, I don’t mean porn). For example, if you love cats, you can find about 60 million pictures of cute cat photos.

Bonus: No Website At All

I’d like to end off with a revolutionary idea. If you’re feeling down, I think one of the best things you could possibly do is go outside and take a walk. Yes, I’m serious. Even if it’s really cold outside, just force yourself to get off that chair, put on some warm clothes, and go outside. Don’t even take music with you. Unless you’re living in a really scary neighborhood, taking a few minutes to just stroll outside and look at the world can do wonders.

Your Turn

I’m guessing many people will bookmark this article and come back to it when they need it, so why not help them out in the comments? What are your favorite websites to visit when you’re down?

Image Credit: ShutterStock

Music can be entertaining, bring back memories, trigger strong feelings, distract, and comfort. Music creates moods because it betrays your brain and you can use this little trick in your favor. Apply music for your mood, in order to promote or change it.

Here are the 5 best websites that play music matching your mood or the mood you desire.

AUPEO!

AUPEO! was launched just over a year ago in Berlin, Germany. This explains the funny language on great parts of the website. However, the mood categories are pinned down in English, so you’re all set to go!

As you can probably guess by the screenshot, you can also play music you like by entering an artist you enjoy listening to. The stations are grouped by genre and are compiled by AUPEO!’s music experts. Within personal you can play your personal station, which is based on whatever you have previously listened to and requires that you sign up with AUPEO!.

MeeMix

MeeMix plays music you like. So it basically works like Last.fm or Pandora. You start a station by entering a song or artist, then you rate whatever MeeMix plays to you, and it will further refine its suggestions.

In addition to playing what you like, you can also push some sliders in the Mood Control on the bottom left to finetune the algorithm that picks the next song for you and plays music for your mood.

Moodstream

The start page of Moodstream has the following introduction:

Moodstream is a powerful brainstorming tool designed to help take you in an inspiring, unexpected direction. Whether you want images, footage or audio, or just need a stream of fresh ideas, tweak the Moodstream sliders to bring a whole new creative palette straight to you.

Moodstream is not only an audible, but also a visual experience. Getty Images has skillfully combined a clever interface with fantastic background pictures and animations. It’s a pleasure and I bet you’re ready for this!

You can select one of eight presets, including inspire, excite, refresh, intensify, simplify, or stabilize. You can also manually push the sliders to define your mood in various terms. Don’t forget to refresh the stream to activate changes.

A little drag is that Moodstream doesn’t play entire tunes, but only short snippets. However, you can add whatever you like to your Moodboard, save any combination of image/sound snippets, and play your board over and over again later.

Stereomood

Stereomood works on many different levels. You can use the inconspicuous search bar at the top and select music for your mood or activity. From the resulting playlist you can either play single songs or the entire list.

You can also pick a tag from the cloud and get a playlist with all matching songs.

A menu on the left reveals which songs with that tag are found in artist or mood categories. When you’re logged in you’ll see a like option and you can add songs to your library by clicking the plus icon. You can create custom playlists based on items you have added to your library.

Musicovery

Musicovery delivers the entire package. Pick genres, decade, and mood or dance-ability. The result is displayed in a visually inspiring cloud, which rapidly changes as you adjust your settings.

As a registered user you can like and ban songs. With a premium account you can also play any song you want from the playlist, play your favorite songs only, and all in hi-fi quality.

If you have a Mac, you can download a beta version of Musicovery and use it with your iTunes library. As a Mac user you might also want to try Moody. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, have a look at Moodagent.

What songs make you smile?

Image credits: 0GuaRDiaN0

Sleep disorders, behavior disorders, obesity, diabetes and so many other ailments produce physical pains and emotional reactions that many doctors can predict, but which most of us lack the medical training or expertise to understand. This is why, especially if you’re caring for someone who is mentally or physically ill, it’s so important to track and monitor health factors such as weight fluctuations, mood swings, sleep problems and more.

As the Earth gradually drifts further from the sun and the daylight hours begin to shrink, I would like to focus on an important online resource I discovered that can help you create a mental and physical fitness log to monitor and predict physical and emotional problems and get yourself or someone you love the help that they need before it’s too late.

Here at MakeUseOf, we believe in the importance of living a healthy life, which is why we’ve offered a number of articles with geeky resources that might help, such as the miVitals online system to store and share your medical information, Trusera – a health information social network, and iMedix – a health search engine. The application I’m going to cover today is an excellent online community called MedHelp, which offers a wonderful library of “trackers,” which are tools that can help you monitor every aspect of your health that you might be concerned about.

Tracking Your Mood With a Mental Fitness Log

MedHelp is a health conscious online community that, according to the website, has over 8 million members. The social community itself would require an article all of its own to review, but what I’d like to focus on are the free tools offered for free when you sign up that allow you to log dozens of mental and physical fitness factors. Having some personal experiences in the mental health field, there’s one particular tracker that I found extremely valuable and an excellent resource for anyone suffering from depression or other mood disorder – a mood tracker.

When you click on one of the mood trackers on the main MedHelp page and provide your sign-up information, you’re immediately presented the page where you can modify the particular tracker that you chose. You can customize the tracker depending what type it is.

You can set the tracker to be your own mental or physical fitness log or someone else’s that your monitoring, and you can also make it public – either to just specific friends or completely open to the world (it’s surprising how many people are willing to share their personal logs. You can configure the tracker to remind you to update your mood tracker daily, weekly or monthly (or never), and finally, you can set it so that it’s customized for a particular mood disorder such as major depressive or bipolar.

The major chart area is where you click to insert your log entries, and you can scroll from month to month so that you can see the history.

On your profile page, you’ll notice the community features on the menu bar at the top. You can add friends (or family) who can view your charts, add private or public journal entries, notes, photos and of course post to various message boards about health issues. When it comes to health, having a community to ask questions and share experiences is absolutely invaluable – especially when you’re going through a major medical health crisis. There’s always someone out there who has suffered through the same thing.

When you click the “Manage” button  at the right of the top menu on your profile page, you can add additional trackers to your profile. When you enter this area, get ready to be shocked by the impressive number of tracker apps that are available, including ones to track addictions, anxiety and panic attacks, baby health, cholesterol, diabetes, headaches and migraines, ovulation and even weight and exercise trackers.

Back to the mood tracker example, when you add a new item to the chart, you can choose the update based on what you’re tracking. In this case you can update what your (or your family member’s) overall mood was that day. Not only can you track mood, but you can keep track of a whole assortment of symptoms and other signs that something might be going wrong.

The items mentioned on these menus and screens hint that a doctor or some other medical professional put them together because they really do hit on the items that are relevant to what you’re trying to track.

If you want, you can even type a journal entry for the day to note an event or a situation that you want to remember later on when doctors or anyone else asks what might have caused a condition to worsen. As you enter data every day, you’ll notice a trend line developing on the large chart at the top of the tracker.

While you’re entering in your daily information, little details that may seem inconsequential all get accumulated into the big picture and the tracker shows you, in a graphical format, how all of these things – events, medicine, mental state and physical state – all factor into your sense of well-being. For example, how the change in season and shorter days has a significant negative effect on your mood (so you should plan a fall vacation!)

The MedHelp library of trackers include such a variety of tools that you could use it even if you’re perfectly healthy and just want to start exercising and losing weight. There’s a weight tracker, diet tracker and an exercise tracker that can show you what exercises and food have the greatest impact on your weight and how. Here’s the summary data for an obese, 220 pound guy who sits on his chair all day writing articles (why are you assuming that’s me?)

You can set goals, monitor progress, and troubleshoot your own health with mental and physical fitness logs for every aspect of your life. You can analyze, with real information and real data from your daily life, what works and what doesn’t. By tweaking your daily life – removing what you learn has a negative effect and adding what you learn is positive – you can transform your physical and emotional well-being.

Which of the tracker tools look like they may help you? Do you use any other tools to track and analyze your health? Share your feedback in the comments section below.

That is why I was not surprised to find web apps that touch on interesting subjects like motivation, life reflection, and planning for life’s goals.  Here are five fun, useful, and highly personal web apps that can help organize your life the cool way.

Lifemetric

Lifemetric is described as a “social experiment that aims to track the factors of our lives that shape our society.” This app helps you track the different aspects of your life as you rate them one by one including your mood, sleep, love life, work productivity, etc.

Lifemetric will then analyze the relationship between these aspects and generate a graph for you.  This app can tell you some interesting and insightful stuff like how much you get agitated with less sleep, how productive you are when you feel good about your love life, how much coffee affects your mood, and many more.  You can compare your graph with other members or you can view the results of the entire Lifemetric community. This app will help you learn a lot about yourself and find a balance in your life.

43things

43things is a web community based on setting and accomplishing goals. You can find like-minded people with different goals and read about their experiences. Your goals can be as simple as ‘finish one book a month’ to big-time stuff like ‘own and raise a dog’ or ‘finish my online graduate course’.

Once you list your goals, chances are there are people who are trying to complete the same goals and you can help each other achieve them. With collective support like 43things, big goals become more manageable.

HighxLow

HighxLow tracks your daily mood by using your Twitter account. All you need to do is tweet to @highiam if you feel happy, and @lowiam if you are in a bad mood. Highxlow will then track your mood and generate a “mood graph” for you.

After a few days of tweeting to HighxLow, you can view the graph and analyze why you may feel happy in some days, and sad in other days. You can also tweet to @cheeron to encourage your twitter friends when they are having a rough patch.

HighxLow is a neat app to find smudges of positive thoughts to help you get through the day.

Wesabe

Wesabe is not your old regular personal finances tracker. Its real strength is the growing community of supportive people that share advice and ideas to help you get more value with your money.

While it has the usual features like allowing you your accounts in one place, organize your transactions, and set spending targets, you can also learn a lot such as how to set financial goals, save on specific purchases, live frugally, and motivate yourself to accomplish your life goals.

Joe’s Logbook

Joe’s Logbook is a tracking tool and journal of personal goals and dreams.  Like any logbook, you can set notes everyday for each goal that you want to achieve and track your progress. Reward yourself with a checkmarks for small victories, or give yourself a red X if you encounter a setback.

The single-page interface allows you to track any area of your life like spending, diet plan, health, and other life goals with a simple scoring system. Joe’s Logbook interface makes it one of the niftiest personal goal applications in the web.

At the end of the day these are just tools to organize your life/lifestyle. They inspire, motivate, and give you a system to track your life and accomplish your goals. I recommend to try them out extensively and develop a habit to use them if you want these tools to work for you.

If you have your own set of “life tools” please hit me with your comments and share them with the MUO community. Cheers!