Posts by Category: Cool Web Apps & Sites

Cool web services and sites we really like.

Awesome March 10, 2009 posted by

Socialect – awesome global information wiki languishes with style

Socialect is proof once again that building a quality product is no guarantee of overnight success in an over abundant web world. The site provides local geo-tagged information on events, places, classes and groups all wrapped up in a stunningly designed social calendar and wiki metaphor. It’s a superb example of how to craft something valuable without ramming technology down your user’s throats. The first thing you do is define your location via the Google map on the front page,…


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Bookmark This! March 5, 2009 posted by

Hour Town – feature rich small business online scheduling

Hour Town is an online scheduling service designed for small businesses and upwards. It looks like a great way for small biz service professionals, like plumbers, dentists, teachers etc, to set up an inexpensive and efficient way for their clients to book time slots. What I particularly like about it is the way the designers have included a bunch of useful features which add value. For one thing, it copes with multiple members of the service staff, and gives each…


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Bookmark This! February 26, 2009 posted by

MyVishwa – earn money from social networking

MyVishwa is a social network with a difference. For one thing, it is the first that I’ve seen which is browser based, in that it runs within a Firefox windowed tab environment. It is also the first time I’ve come across a social network where you earn money from using it. Uh-oh I hear you mutter. The basic premise of the site is sound. You set up your social network based around different ‘circles’ of people, ranging from the inner circle of…


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Bookmark This! February 24, 2009 posted by

Winkbill – cute online invoicing service

Winkbill is a ‘simple online invoicing system’, which offers billing, contact management and online reporting to help you keep track of your financial flows. It comes with yer typical web service dashboard which in this case gives an overview of your invoice universe, and the interface is simple enough to be useful. The UI is also full of Ajax cuteness, which means you should spend less time waiting for the page to refresh and more time getting on with your business….


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Cool Web Apps & Sites February 23, 2009 posted by

JetPhoto Studio – freeware photo management for the Flickr generation

JetPhoto Studio is a free image management program which comes with a neat selection of features for editing, organising and enhancing your photographic library. You can use it to create screensavers, wallpapers and Flash powered web albums, as well as tweak EXIF data and add location information from GPS data (which integrates with Google Maps and Google Earth!). The program also has an automatic image calendar function which is very cool and will display your collection chronologically to make it easier…


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Cool Web Apps & Sites February 23, 2009 posted by

Pipl – scarily effective deep web people search

One of the scary things about social networks like Facebook et al, is just how much information we’re happy to upload for the world to see. So much for long term privacy, eh? Especially with tools like Pipl around, which scan through these networks to gather whatever information they can. Do a search for someone on Pipl and you’ll receive a shed load of information culled from just about every deep web source and social network in the universe. White Pages,…


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Bookmark This! February 17, 2009 posted by

TinyChat – cool ultra fast chat room maker

TinyChat. Click to create. Distribute room address. Start chatting. Cool. /tiny review  TinyChat is a free service that allows you to create a free chat room that is accessible by anyone with a browser. Simply create a chatroom from the homepage then send the link it gives to you to anyone you want to chat with. After you leave the chat room, all the chat data is gone, so its perfect for secure chats. Why would you use this? Its…


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Bookmark This! February 11, 2009 posted by

Pledgie – helping you to help others

Pledgie is a fundraising service which gives you all the tools you need to solicit funds from strangers. And friends. Sign up is free and setting up a campaign is easy. Give it a title, description and timeframe, throw in your Paypal address and currency of choice and launch. That’s it. You get a nice little running total badge which you can place on the front page of your blog or website to encourage donations, and if you’re feeling in…


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Cool Web Apps & Sites February 5, 2009 posted by

snitch.name – social networking white pages

snitch.name is one of the reasons I’ve become a little uneasy about the current obsession with social networks. The tool offers a very basic service, just enter in a name and it will find all the social networks where that person is a member. Sounds cool, but in the wrong hands…? Anyway I guess it’s a pretty useful thing if you’re one of those who can’t remember which of the 20 communities you’ve signed up to, or to find lost friends maybe, so I won’t be curmudgeonly….


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Bookmark This! February 3, 2009 posted by

The Freesound Project – neat database of Creative Commons sounds

The Freesound Project is a cool initiative by the Music Technology Group to create a huge library of free to use sounds and effects which have been created by the community. The idea is to produce a powerful go-to resource for anyone who needs to use a particular type of sound in their project. The sounds can be tagged, and there’s a useful voting system as well, so the better sounds are pushed up the rankings. A great idea and…


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Bookmark This! January 30, 2009 posted by

The dangers of social networking – Mr Calacanis’ very thoughtful post

Jason Calacanis has penned what I think is one of the most thoughtful and insightful posts on the current obsession with social networking and web relationships that I’ve read to date. If you are at all interested in the future of this small ‘chosm -which is what it is of course, very small in real terms – we call the Web, then I strongly suggest you read it. I won’t go on about it, but it’s a sobering viewpoint that we…


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Cool Web Apps & Sites January 29, 2009 posted by

Snackr – digest your bloated RSS feed one item at a time

Snackr is a slightly different take on RSS feed readers. Most people who use RSS probably a slightly overflowing feed, mine still hasn’t recovered from the holidays. Snackr takes your feed and displays it along your desktop, one item at a time. You can either add feeds individually or import your whole lot via an OPML file exported from your current RSS reader. Once you have set up your feeds you can move it around to dock anywhere on your…


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Snackr – digest your bloated RSS feed one item at a time
Bookmark This! January 29, 2009 posted by

Dynastree – your cute online family tree

Dynastree is a free online family tree maker. OK, so maybe we’re suckers for a hoppy poppy name and some cute little graphics representing relatives. Stranger still, this is apparently a European born clone site of Geni.com (which we love and have reported on before) which makes the whole thing kind of incestuous. OK so we’re reaching for the metaphor, but you get what we mean. Where it blows Geni away is in the range of countries supported (11) and languages…


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Cool Web Apps & Sites January 28, 2009 posted by

The Red Ferret Product of the Year 2008 – Software – Artisteer

Last year was the year of the CMS. By that I mean, it was the year WordPress came out of its shell and proved to the world that it could become as much of a mainstay of the Web as say, Paypal or Google. It’s for this reason that we’ve awarded Artisteer the software product of the year. This program, which lets you instantly create great looking CMS site themes, is not freeware, but the utility of the program is such…


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Awesome January 26, 2009 posted by

OpenStreetMap – open source mapping for all

OpenStreetMap is a fabulously ambitious project to map the world and provide it for free to everyone under Creative Commons and open source licences. This is especially important when you remember that sources like Google and Nokia maps are proprietary and have restrictive licenses which prevent unlimited use.   The astonishing thing is just how far they’ve got, from a cursory glance it looks as though most of the major parts of the world are already covered, and from the…


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