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Wiki page for the informal "Cool Stuff on the Web" seminar
Organized by Ingmar Weber.
This not-for-credit seminar takes place more ore less every Friday from 15h30 (sharp!) to 16h00 in room BC 129.
Every Friday between three and five cool, trendy and hip web sites worth knowing will be featured.
The short (<10 minutes) presentations will include a live demo and lots of discussion with the audience.
Have a look at http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Cool_Websites for some websites which were covered in a similar seminar at MPII.
The list of the particular sites (along with the volunteers to present) for a given day will be announced on this page by Friday morning.
If you would like to present a web site (which does not have to be on the list below) just drop me a line at ingmar.weber@epfl.ch
It's a great way to get a bit of presentation practice in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere and it is a great preparation for the GSA Powerpoint Karaoke.
Suggestions of any kind are always appreciated!
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Currently, I'm too short of time to organize this event, at least on my own. If you want to help and have ideas for websites then please contact me.
Next session: ?
Topic: ?
-------------------------------
Other planned, future topics include:
Scientific Helper Sites (suggested sites: www.bibsononmy.org, www.connotea.org, www.arxiv.org, ...?)
Non-profit Sites: www.tree-nation.com, www.payitforwardfoundation.org
-------------------------------
Archive:
*** FIRST SESSION: Friday, October 26th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Alternative Web Search Engines" ***
yoople! (Ingmar) - Collaborative web search. Don't like the search results? Just change them yourself.
http://www.yoople.net/
Yacy (Ingmar) - The only P2P web search engine with which you can actually search the web (... at least the only one I know)
http://www.yacyweb.de/
chacha (Ingmar) - A natural natural language processing interface for search engines (... yes! 2x 'natural')
http://www.chacha.com/
shmoogle (Ingmar) - A search engine with an "interesting" ranking: It shows the 1000 top Google results in random order
http://www.shmoogle.org
powerset (Ingmar) - Powerset (still in private beta) tries to apply NLP techiques to automatically mine facts (= triples) such as "x beat y" (for a number of relations). So you can ask: "Who acquired X?" (Contact me, if you want to see it live.)
http://www.powerset.com
*** SECOND SESSION: Friday, November 2nd, 15h00 (sharp) - "Social Networks" ***
facebook (Marius) - Ok, this is hardly an insider tip, but there are always things (e.g. API + applications built on top of it) that many people won't know.
http://www.facebook.com/
librarything (Vojislav) - Books: sort of like a printed thesis, but more entertaining. Find out what other people have on their book shelves.
http://www.librarything.de/
hospitalityclub (Ingmar) - Do you enjoy meeting "locals" while traveling? Do you find hotel rooms too anonymous/expensive? Then join this club!
http://www.hospitalityclub.org/
APIs, meta-networks, profile aggregators (Wojciech + audience) - At the end we'll probably have some short discussions/mentionings of "meta" networks (such as www.ning.com), "meta" profiles (such as www.profilelinker.com) and "meta" APIs (such as the brand new [!!] http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial).
Read about the Google project here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/details-revealed-google-opensocial-to-be-common-apis-for-building-social-apps/
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/google-opensocial-api-launch.html
*** THIRD SESSION: Friday, November 9th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Web Advertising" ***
adwords (Ingmar) - How much does it cost to display a Google search ad for your name or a research topic? What if you click the Google ad for "cool stuff on the web" 10 times in a row? [Try this query on Google.]
http://adwords.google.com
adsense (Ingmar) - You have a great blog? You have a highly frequented homepage? How much money can you make by putting Google ads on your page? [How much does this crappy site make per month?]
http://adsense.google.com
*** NO SESSION on Friday, November 16th - (I was travelling) ***
*** FOURTH SESSION: Friday, November 23rd, 15h00 (sharp) : Free (and useful) databases ***
DBpedia (David) - DBpedia is a way go query Wikipedia as a database. It automatically extracts structured information from Wikipedia, such as (at the moment) title, abstract, the infobox data, geocoordinates, categories, images and links.
http://www.dbpedia.org/
freebase (David) - Freebase is a collaboratively edited database which wants to be "an open, shared database of the world's knowledge". A bit like Wikipedia, but with a database schema and an API to access the whole data.
http://www.freebase.com/
Google Base (Ingmar) - Google Base is another collaboratively edited database. Its main use is for small ads (similar to ebay), but you could post anything and the database schema is not restricted in any way. There's also an API to access the data.
http://base.google.com/
Powerset (Ingmar) - Powerset tries to use NLP to automatically extract facts from Wikipedia (and ultimately other sources). It got a lot of media attention and should probably be watched carefully.
http://www.powerset.com
*** FIFTH SESSION: Friday, November 30th, 15h00 (sharp) : RSS feeds ***
Google reader + some feeds (Ingmar) - Just to warm up, I'll quickly show the "usual" use of RSS feeds. In particular, I'll show how to use the Google reader to subscribe to news and blogs.
http://reader.google.com
changedetection (Ingmar) - Some interesting website (e.g., this one) doesn't offer an RSS feed? This webservice sends you an email whenever the site you're interested in is updated.
http://www.changedetection.com
dapper (Ali) - Dapper provides a point and click GUI to extract data from any web site that can be worked with and displayed via XML, HTML, RSS, email alerts, Google Maps, Google Gadgets, a javascript image loop or JSON.
http://www.dapper.net
yahoo pipes (Ingmar) - Rewire the web. Combine various RSS feeds (e.g., from base.google.com) in a fasion similar to Unix pipes. A simple, yet powerful powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. [This is one of the rare cases where even Google has to admit that Yahoo did something really cool ...]
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
[I used to think that RSS feeds were just for news and blog subscriptions ... but I was sooo wrong.]
http://websearch.about.com/od/dailywebsearchtips/qt/dnt0905.htm
http://timyang.com/wiki/doku.php?id=lists:thingsyoucandowithrss
*** SIXTH SESSION: Friday, December 7th, 15h00 (sharp) : Tools for Online Cooperation ***
scriblink (Michal) - Need some space to draw while discussing/chatting with someone for a cooperation? Just looking for a simple shared whiteboard online? Then this website is for you.
http://www.scriblink.com/
stixy (Michal) - Upload pictures, arrange for a collage, put some notes and comments and share the whole thing so that others can collaborate on it. Also offers calendar features for automatic reminders.
http://stixy.com/
sharedcopy (Ingmar) - Share a page. Any page. Put sticky notes & highlighted text on any webpage! Share by simply giving someone a URL. Web2.0 in action.
http://www.sharedcopy.com
Google Docs (Ingmar) - Google allows you to edit your Word, Powerpoint or Excel documents online, so you can access them from anywhere. Best of all: You have version control over your changes and you can easily share you documents with others online.
http://docs.google.com
Google Notebook (Ingmar) - Searching on the web for information for a certain project? Just clip all the information to your Google Notebook. You can then also share and annotate this information. Very simple user interface and far more useful than mere bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/notebook/
Other, related websites:
http://vyew.com/, http://www.writeboard.com/, http://www.diigo.com/, http://writewith.com/, ... (there are LOTS more ....)
*** SEVENTH SESSION: Friday, December 14th, 15h00 (sharp) : Mixed stuff ***
digg (Eda) - Social news users decide how interesting the submitted stories are. The more a submitted news/story gets "digged", the more it is shown among the top stories. Digg.com democratices the digital media by giving the submission and decision process to its users.
http://www.digg.com
loudtalk (Fabius) - Loudtalks is a little application, which allows you to talk to your friends or colleagues instantly with a single touch of a button. Think walkie talkie. It's faster than text chat and more convenient than calls.
http://www.loudtalks.com/
???? (Santa Claus) - Given that it is the last session before Christmas, we'll have a short, surprise Christmas special. :-)
*** EIGHTH SESSION: Friday, January 11th, 15h00 (sharp) : Web technology: bookmarklets, add-ons, imacros and greasemonkeyscripts ***
bookmarklets (Ingmar) - Bookmarklets are the easiest way to execute code "on somebody elses webpage". E.g., you search for something on Google, you click a link. Now where are your search terms on that page? With a single click (on the right bookmarklet) all your search terms are high-lighted.
imacros (Ingmar) - Every morning you open the same set of internet sites? You found a nice path/tour through your favorite sites? Just record it, re-use later or even send it to others. Also great for automatic testing of websites. [I planned to present this the last time, but then didn't get to it.]
http://www.iopus.com/download/
greasemonkey (Ingmar) - Suppose you want to write code to spice up the flickr or even gmail site. How do you deploy it? With a greasemonkey script! Kind of like a bookmarklet, but without that annoying "click" and with persistent storage.
http://www.greasespot.net/
addblock+ (Julien) - Another way to deploy your web technology is via a firefox add-on. An this is a particularly good one: Are you tired of advertisement on the Internet? You don't want to be profiled by online advertisers? Use AdBlock+, a Firefox add-on to black list them.
http://adblockplus.org/en/
*** NINTH SESSION: Friday, January 18th, 15h00 (sharp) : Chat, instant messaging, micro-blogging and all that ***
meebo (Ingmar) - Hooked on AIM, GTalk or MSN Messenger? This site allows you to log on to all of these services (and many more) at the same time, so you have all of your contacts in a single list. And you don't even need to install any software!
http://www.meebo.com/
twitter (Ingmar) - Micro-blogging: post short 140 character messages to the system and your friends will be updated about your status. Post/receive via a web interface, GTalk or even SMS. Hundreds of thousands of visitors every month and $5Mio in external funding, so there's got to be something behind it.
http://www.twitter.com/
gabbly (Rodrigo) - Would you like to chat with other people who are currently visiting the same web site as you? Gabbly creates automatic chat windows for any website, so that you can "talk" to other people with similar interests.
http://www.gabbly.com/
*** TENTH SESSION: Friday, January 25th, 16h00 (sharp), Room BC 010 : IPTV - who needs a tv when you have fast internet access? ***
joost (Ingmar) - What do you get when the Kazaa and the Skype founders join forces? An ad-sponsored peer-to-peer IPTV platform with exclusively legal content ... and $45 Mio of venture capital.
http://www.joost.com/
sopcast (Maciek) - The application software itself is certainly legal: It simply offers peer-to-peer streaming capabilities. The content that people provide via this network, well, come and see.
http://www.sopcast.com/
wwitv (Ingmar) - This site "only" offers a list of links to over 2,000 tv channels worldwide which all offer acess via internet streams to their programs. Watch live tv from Uruguay, Serbia or even Afghanistan. Also a great resource for learning a foreign language!
http://www.wwitv.com/
movielink (Ingmar) - What?? You're still renting your DVDs from a physical store? Ok, so you're using netflix. But then you're still using an actual DVD. Why not just dowload the movie legally, pay less and have it delivered faster?
http://www.movielink.com/
zattoo (Wojciech) - Similar to sopcast. [Details will follow.]
http://www.zattoo.com
*** ELEVENTH SESSION: Friday, February 1st 15h00 (sharp), Room BC 229 : Folksonomies and Collaborative Recommendations ***
del.icio.us (Slavisa) - The social bookmarking service. Have all your bookmarks in one place. Organize your own bookmarks with tags and find out which sites others bookmark. 2 million visitors per month ... so there's probably something to it.
http://del.icio.us/
citeulike (Adriana) - Which papers do people read, who read the same papers as me? Find papers tagged as 'distributed systems'. Which are the most read papers by a given author? - These are the kind of tasks/questions, you can use citeulike for.
http://www.citeulike.org/
stumbleupon (Ingmar) - This is the best service I know for discovering new things on the web. You specify a profile by listing some interests, and it then suggests cool/interesting sites to you, which have been suggested/rated by other users in the past.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
*** TWELFTH SESSION: Friday, February 8th 15h00 (sharp), Room BC 129 : Personalized radio and online music ***
reble (Ingmar) - Sharing music (or other files) with random people by copying is illegal. Sharing it with friends via streaming is legal.
http://reble.fm
last.fm (Ingmar) - You like salsa music? You like electronic trance? Whatever kind of music you like, just build you own radio station and find out what your friends listen to.
http://www.last.fm/
grammy.ru (Ingmar) - Russia: The largest country in the world and one with the least respect for copyrights. This server actually hosts thousands of mp3s ... and it would not last more than 24 hours in other countries.
http://www.grammy.ru/music/msearch.php?lang=eng
musicovery (Ingmar) - Choose a musical genre (latin, blues, rock, ...) and a mood (energetic, dark, ...) and this service will play music of your choice.
http://www.musicovery.com/
*** THIRTEENTH SESSION: Friday, February 15th 15h00 (sharp), Room BC 129 : Not only files can be shared ***
hitflip (Ingmar) - You don't need your old books or DVDs anymore? You could sell them on ebay, but you can also trade them for new ones. Just "flip" them.
http://www.hitflip.co.uk/ (Swiss site coming soon.)
inviteshare (Ingmar) - You have a spare invititation for some new Web2.0 service? You need an invite for some closed beta service? Just share the invitations.
http://www.inviteshare.com/
spott (Rodrigo) - I'll put your ad, if you'll put mine! - This idea, aka link exchange, is as old as hyperlinks themselves ... but it is being rediscovered. If you have a webpage yourself but you're too stingy to pay for an ad, then this might be just your thing.
http://www.spottt.com/
tipjoy (Wojtek) - A cute idea: people can leave a "tip" on your site, without paypal or anything. Once a certain sum accumulates you can donate it to a charity or convert it into an Amazon voucher.
http://www.tipjoy.com/
bugmenot (Wojtek) - Find and share logins for websites that force you to register.
http://www.bugmenot.com/
*** FOURTEENTH SESSION: Friday, February 22nd 15h00 (sharp), Room BC 129 : Internet + Telephony - There's more than skype! ***
jaxtr (Oana) - Jaxtr let's others call you on your phone, although they dial a local number - no matter where they are. The first call to you
is free. Nice side-effect: you don't even have to give out your telephone number.
http://jaxtr.com/
jangl (Oana) - Similar to jaxtr, but with green rather than orange as the main color.
http://www.jangl.com/
sonopia (Nevena) - With Sonopia you can become your own mobile phone service provider in about 15 minutes! They use Verizon's network in the US and they pass on some of the money they make from "your" network.
http://www.sonopia.com/
jajah (Ingmar) - You just enter two telephone numbers, and both numbers
will be connected for free for up to 5 minutes. The simplest way to make a short free phone call to anywhere in the world.
http://www.jajah.com/
peterzahlt (Ingmar) - Similar to jajah with up to 30 free minutes (ad-sponsored), but one number needs to be in Germany.
http://www.peterzahlt.de/
voipwise (Adish) - Does exactly what Skype Out does, but with considerably lower prices.
http://www.voipwise.com/
*** No session on Friday, February 29th (LSIR was skiing)***
*** FIFTEENTH SESSION: Friday, March 7th 14h00 (sharp), Room BC 329 : CMS and WYSIWYG HTML editors ***
opensourcecms (Rammohan) - The Wikipedia has a list of more than 70 content management systems. Even installing a small subset of them to try them out would take quite a while. This site simply grants you admin access for 15 minutes to any major CMS, so you can try it out yourself before deciding what to install.
http://www.opensourcecms.com/
joomla (Rammohan) - One of the big, free and popular open source CMS. You can also try it out yourself on opensourcecms.
http://www.joomla.org
googlepages (Ingmar) - Google gives you free webspace for 100MB with the domain: http://yourlogin.googlepages.com. A nice WYSIWYG editor is also provided. This is the kind of service I would reccomend to my mom: no need to worry about ftp uploads etc. and no need to know any html.
http://googlepages.com
wordpress (Ingmar) - This is one of the big free blog providers. If you just want to have some web space to put some pictures and text, managed by a nice CMS, then you should consider using a wordpress or blogger.
http://wordpress.com
ning (Parisa) - Want to start your own social network for a club or a society? Then make sure to check out ning! With ning you can have a simple social network up and running in less than 10 minutes. You can highly customize the look and feel of your network.
http://www.ning.com/
*** NO SESSION ON FRIDAY MARCH 14TH !!! ***
[I was travelling.]
*** NO SESSION ON FRIDAY MARCH 21ST !!! ***
[As to not upset the Easter Bunny.]
*** Friday, MARCH 28th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Fashion and other things I don't understand" ***
shareyourlook (Ingmar/Adriana) - There's a social network for pet lovers (http://www.anamigo.com/), for book lovers (http://www.librarything.com/), for car lovers (http://www.carsablanca.de/), so why not for fashion lovers? Share your look with others and get 'inspiration'.
http://shareyourlook.com/
fashionising (Ingmar) - And, of course, there's more than just one social network for anything. This second social network tries to be "upper class" and targets designers, models and photographers. E.g., you can upload your modelling or photographer portfolio to maybe then be "discovered".
http://www.fashionising.com/
loadmylook (Oana) - Do you get lost in your wardrobe? Do you wonder how your clothes could be combined in a stylish manner? Well, me neither, but if you do then check you this site. Upload a picture of yourself and of your clothes and then "try them on".
http://www.loadmylook.com/
taaz (Eda) - This is cute: You upload a portrait of yourself, you mark your lips and eyes and then you can then easily try out different kinds of makeup and hairstyles.
http://www.taaz.com/
fashmatch (Nevena) - Do you have sleepless nights because you're wondering which shoes go best with a green top? You can ask others at fashmatch and also make suggestions yourself for which combinations match best.
http://fashmatch.com/
friendfeed (Ingmar) - Finally, at least one "proper" website. It aggregrates information from your friends on Twitter, Flickr, Youtube or Yelp, so you don't have to miss a single message/picture/video posted by your friend. This site is currently hyped a lot (!) and might be the "site of the year" ... though I personally really "don't get it".
http://friendfeed.com/
*** Friday, April 4th, 15h00 (sharp) - "From prediction markets to crowd based innovation" ***
predictify (Ingmar) - Predict the future and get paid for being right. People can either post questions or "answer" questions, i.e., make a prediction. Essentially, it allows you to 'bet' on anything (though without paying), but online betting for money is illegal in most countries/states, whereas this "prediction market" is legal.
http://www.predictify.com/
buzz (Ingmar) - Yahoo's "Buzz Game" let's you "gamble" on the performance of certain search term, e.g. "Clinton" vs. "Obama". As online gambling is illegal, you can only win virtual currency ... and the respect of other buzzers.
http://buzz.research.yahoo.com/bk/index.html
xpree (Michal) - Prediction markets for enterprise - a betting interface that combines crowd based innovation, voting and prediction markets. The idea is to brainstorm as a community, vote on the ideas to rank them, then forecast key metrics using a market (cost to develop etc).
http://www.xpree.com
mob4hire (Michal) - Crowd sourcing for developers - you are developing a super-duper application for mobile phones but you don't have resources to test your application. Don't worry, there is Mob4hire - a bidding system for mobile application testing.
http://www.mob4hire.com
kluster (Michal) - Extreme crowd sourcing - Do want to develop a totally new product in 72 hours? Go to kluster.com, an online collaboration and decision-making platform. On the TED conference 2008 with the help of 1200 people around the world they set out to develop a product, but they didn't know what it would be. They got 208 ideas submitted in 24 hours, and managed to develop a working prototype in 72 hours.
http://kluster.com
*** Friday, April 11th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Cool Stuff for Mobile Phones" ***
[We might not cover all of these things, but most of them are quite self-explanatory and there's nothing "to show".]
potpourri (Ingmar) - This is just a small number of examples, what has been done with mobile phones.
In South Korea you can vote in the presidential elections by using your mobile phone. http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=79679 http://english.kbs.co.kr/news/newsview_sub.php?menu=2&key=2007092827
In many cities worldwide you can buy a bus ticket by SMS. http://www.google.com/search?q=bus+ticket+sms
Or a parking ticket (which can then be extended by sending another SMS). http://www.google.com/search?q=parking+ticket+sms
[Let me know, what the situation in Switzerland is or if you know of other cool use cases.]
google mobile (Ingmar) - You think you can only use mobile services when you have some data plan? Far from it! Google lets you access lots of information by simply sending an SMS to "GOOGLE". Translations of a word/phrase, directions to an address, the closest pizza place, sports results or your local movie schedule. Only "small" caveat: You need to be in the USA, in Canada, in China or in India to use these services :-(
http://www.google.com/mobile/
google maps mobile (Fabius) - If you have a data plan and (optionally) a GPS receiver then you have no more excuse to get lost or to be late.
http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/index.html
barcodes (Ingmar) - This is probably one of the "geekiest" ways to leave an "encrypted" message for someone: You just generate a 2-d Barcode with your message encoded. The other person then takes a picture of this barcode (with his/her) mobile phone and decodes it.
http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/create.jsp?terms=accepted
sbb (Ingmar) - The SBB offers an SMS timetable. Just send your point of departure, your destination and (optionally) a time of departure to a certian number, and you will get the train timetable by SMS. Oh, and if you think that printing your own train ticket is "cool", then you're soo yesterday. The SBB also offers to send you the ticket as an MMS.
http://mct.sbb.ch/mct/en/sms.html
http://mct.sbb.ch/mct/en/reisemarkt/billette/mobile-ticket/mobile-ticket-testbillett.htm
fring (Jacob) - Skype, MSN and other chat clients combined. Why not use your mobile phone to make, well, phone calls ... but using Skype
http://www.fring.com/
tomeraider/mobipocket (Ingmar) - The whole English Wikipedia takes, in compressed form and without the pictures, only 3-4 GB, depending on the format. So with a memory card you never have to leave your appartment again, without having the world's knowledge in your pocket.
ftp://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/wikipedia/mobile/ebooks/
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1237296
metro (Ingmar) - How to I get from A to B using the public transportation system in an unkown city? And how long will it take? This application will tell you which lines to take, where to change and how long the journey will take.
http://surf.to/metro
slovoed (Ingmar) - Your native language is not X, but you happen to find yourself in a country where X is predominantly spoken? Then why go anywhere without a dictionary in your mobile phone?
http://www.slovoed.com/
*** Friday, May 16th, 15h00 (sharp) - "The evil empire: Cool things from Microsoft" ***
skydrive (Adish) - 5GB of free online storage with possibilities to share everything with others. What ever happened to Google's GDrive, which was announced 2 years ago?
http://skydrive.live.com/
bird's eye (Ingmar) - Google Maps might have the "street view" for selected cities, but MS maps has the "bird's eye": pictures taken from a helicopter. From four possible directions.
http://maps.live.com/
asirra (Ingmar) - Are you sick of entering hardly legible sequences of letters and numbers to prove that you're a human? Then this test is for you! Just mark weather the animal shown is a dog or a cat.
http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/
photosynth (Ingmar) - Stitching pictures together to get a 360° photo is old stuff. But stitching pictures taken from different view points together to reconstruct a 3-D landscape is a lot cooler.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
live image search (Ingmar) - The most powerful image search engine I know. Let's you specify options such as "bw", "illustration" (rather than photo), "wide" (rather than tall) and much more.
http://www.live.com/?scope=images
tafiti (Adish) - Great, yet another search tool. Just what the world needed. - But this one is different, and it's certainly cool.
http://www.tafiti.com/
mesh (Adish) - The ultimate: "sync everything, everywhere". Your laptop, deskop, skydrive, phone, xbox, even your fridge, as long as it's running Windows. This is just MS's first step towards true cloud computing. Unfortunately, "mesh" is only available in closed beta at the moment - or if you have connections.
http://www.mesh.com/
wwtelescope (Ingmar) - Google Sky is supposed to be really, really lame compared to MS's worldwide telescope, which is supposed to be released "very soon".
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
*** Friday, May 6th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Hiding, Finding, Sharing" ***
bookcrossing (Ingmar) - Quote from Wikipedia: BookCrossing is defined as "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise". Quote from their site: Help make the whole world a library and share the joy of literacy.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/
postcrossing (Ingmar) - WP: Postcrossing is a project designed to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world. Participants who send a postcard should receive at least one back, from a postcrosser in another country. Over 1Mio postcards have been received so far!
http://www.postcrossing.com/
geocaching (Eda) - Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a GPS receiver to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value. Roughly 800k "players" worldwide!
http://www.geocaching.com/
cistes (Eda) - This is similar to geocaching, just without GPS co-ordinates. A "cist" is just another word for a "cache".
http://www.cistes.net/index.php
fon (Ingmar) - Share your WLAN with others and either make some money or profit from the WLAN of others when you're travelling. About 150k hotspots worldwide are available.
http://www.fon.com/en/
43things (Ingmar) - It's all about motivation. Share your goals with others, get encouragement, be "inspired" and give cheers in return.
http://www.43things.com/
alleine-kochen-ist-doof (Ingmar) - The amount of work required to prepare a meal for n people scales sublinearly in n. Therefore, it is socially optimal to cook in a group of people. [Unfortunately, the total time to eat n prepared meals scales superlinearly.]
http://www.cma.de/content/treffpunkt_cma/alleine-kochen-ist-doof.php
*** Friday, June 6th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Mixed Pickles" ***
viewdle (Ingmar) - A somewhat cynical colleague recently told me that "face recognition is the only solved problem in image processing". Well, at least it does indeed seem to be pretty well solved if this system can automatically detect and annotate faces in news videos.
http://viewdle.com/
instructables (Adriana) - How to construct a hydrophone (underwater microphone) out of things laying around your house? How to make a rain poncho out of a shower curtain? How to shave with a lighter? - All very well explained on this site.
http://www.instructables.com/
giftgen (Ingmar) - Looking for a gift? Select how much you want to spend, select the age group of the "victim", select his/her character (sporty, arty, geeky, ....) and off you go. E.g., get a Swiss army key for the next geeky b-day.
http://giftgen.co.uk/
tinysong/grooveshark (Ingmar) - Think "tinyurl" for shared music: Share any song via a simple URL. They are also hosting millions of songs (legally?) themselves. Impressive collection and very easy (and fast) to use.
http://tinysong.com/
http://www.grooveshark.com/
askwish - You wish, others dish (to deal out; distribute). Others wish, you dish. A nice way to "trade" favors and to turn wishes into reality.
http://askwish.com
*** Friday, June 13th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Web development and testing" ***
firewatir (Ingmar) - watir is a library for Ruby which gives you a "remote control" for your browser. Originally intended for automatic web application testing, it can also be used as a Web 2.0 version of wget/curl. Try crawling javascript enabled pages with wget/curl and you can fully appreciate the power of this tool.
http://wtr.rubyforge.org/
http://code.google.com/p/firewatir/
firebug (Jacob?) - Much more than just a simple DOM inspector for firefox. Over 5 million downloads.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
about:config (Ingmar) - If you *really* want to have access to options in Firefox, you don't bother going via "Tools->Options". Just type "about:config" in the address bar and you'll have access to options, which you didn't even know existed.
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/resources/how-to-guides/how-to-use-aboutconfig/
wave (Rodrigo) - Test the web accessibility of any web page: just enter the URL to test on their website. You will see a version of the page you're testing with all the potential problems clearly highlighted.
http://wave.webaim.org/
temper data (David) - The easiest way to monitor and change any HTTP requests sent from your firefox browser.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/966
*** Friday, June 20th, 15h00 (sharp) - "Webby Awards" ***
BEST HOME/WELCOME PAGE
http://www.lafilm.com/flash/index.html
BEST USE OF ANIMATION OR MOTION GRAPHICS
http://www.coca-cola.com/HF/index.jsp
SOCIAL NETWORKING
http://www.zannel.com/index.htm
ANIMATION
http://www.angryalien.com/
RICH MEDIA ADVERTISING: NON-PROFIT/EDUCATIONAL
http://www.trydrugs.net
BANNER SINGLES
http://62.151.22.210/festivales/esp/adidas/dibuja/roba_300x250_layer/
TRAVEL
http://farecast.live.com/?
SERVICES
http://www.blurb.com/
SELF-PROMOTION/PORTFOLIO
http://ff0000.com/
POLITICS
http://www.factcheck.org/
GUIDES/RATINGS/REVIEWS
http://www.yelp.com/
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
http://award.i-studio.co.jp/2007_sharp_d/en/
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
http://www.gettheglass.com/
** Friday, September 5: Goodies from the summer **
cuil - This is arguably the most laughed at search engine at the moment. Though their hyped launch was a fiasco, they still have some interesting ideas regarding web search and they deserve a second look.
http://www.cuil.com/
trueknowledge - To me this is by far the coolest search engine, I mean, answer engine out there. You can literally (!) ask something like "who was queen of england on christmas day 1975" or "can penguins fly".
http://www.trueknowledge.com/
photosynth - Now photosynth is open to everybody. Upload your pictures and construct a 3-D model of, say, your office.
http://livelabs.com/photosynth/
tineye - This is a content-based search engine where you can say "find more pictures like this one". Certainly useful to track "stolen" images.
http://tineye.com/
rottenneighbor - Are you thinking about moving? Want to find out, what the neighbors in your new neighborhood are like? Then look no further than here.
http://www.rottenneighbor.com/
** Friday, September 12: Getting Help and Helping Others **
getfriday - Do you have a busy life? Need help organizing things? Would you like to have your own secretary at an affordable rate? This site gives you a real, human "personal assistant" in India.
http://www.getfriday.com/
goodsearch - Would it not be great to get paid for your web searches? Sure, but would it not be even better if a charity got paid for them? Search the web as you normally would and some money goes to a charity of your choice.
http://www.goodsearch.com/
http://www.goodshop.com/ (similar thing but for most online shops)
gamertrainer - Sick of getting slaughtered in ego shooters? Want to actually get somewhere in WoW? Then get some professional help.
http://www.gamertrainer.com/
kiva - In 2006, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a founder of a microcredit organization to help the poor help themselves. With kiva you can lend small amounts of money yourself to people for whom this could be the start of a new life. (Thanks Krem!)
http://www.kiva.org/
gwap - Wasting lots of time with playing online games? Why not play some useful games and help computers with various difficult tasks, such as labelling images. (Thanks Hung!)
http://www.gwap.com/
** Friday, September 19: Cool Stuff from/with Google **
Street view - If you happen to live in a moderately sized city in America, then there is a good chance that Google Maps offers a "street view" - 360° images taken from a car driving up and down every single road. Oh, and who's car is that in front of the brothel?
http://maps.google.com/
lively - lively is a 3D chat portal, where you can design your own chat room to hang out with. Kind of like a mini-version of second life, by Google.
http://www.lively.com/html/landing.html
Google Experimental - Want to try out new Google interfaces? Then be part of their online "experiments".
http://www.google.com/experimental/
chrome - Google's new web browser. Most people have probably tried it by now. What's your impression?
http://www.google.com/chrome
Google Share: http://douweosinga.com/projects/googleshare
Kind of like a multi-object domain-specific version of http://www.googlefight.com/
Google Chat Bot: http://douweosinga.com/projects/googlechatbot
To be or not to be that is the question whether tis better to evaluate clinically and through noninvasive ... that's what you get when chatting with Google
Google command line interface: http://goosh.org/
's' for search, 'm' for more results, 'o' to open a URL ... (Thanks Sushanth!)
Friday, October 3
"As seen on techcrunch"
realscoop - Combine a lie detector using "leading voice analysis technology" (aka random number generator) with videos of political figureheads and you have realscoop.com.
http://realscoop.com/
come2play - Suppose you want to design a multi-player game, say tic-tac-toe, without worrying about the whole "multi-player"-stuff. Then this is the site for you. They give you an API and your game is ready to be hosted on facebook and opensocial.
http://www.come2play.com/
woome - Speed dating goes Web2.0. Have a 60-second webcam chat with a person of your preferred gender. Oh, and your chat might be posted on youtube later.
http://www.woome.com/
moderator - What what you ask a world leader? Suggest questions and vote on others' suggestions. Powered by Google.
http://moderator.appspot.com/
inquotes - Compare the quotes by famous politicians on topics of your choice. Quotes come from Google news and are then searched for your keyword.
http://labs.google.com/inquotes/
Friday, October 17
Topic: Searching and Learning
They describe their service as "Human-powered Search" and it feels like a mix between FAQ, a web directory and ordinary web search. 3 million unique US visitors last month means there's gotta be something to their idea ...
http://www.mahalo.com/
Search-by-humming has been around for years, but this is the first serious website using it I've come across. Now I just have to figure out if I'm so bad at humming/singing or if it's their technology...
http://www.midomi.com/
If you want to learn Ruby (e.g. to use with Watir), then be sure to check out this tutorial. You get a nice shell interface inside your browser where you can type ruby code, which is then interpreted.
http://tryruby.hobix.com/
You're thinking about doing some Flash programming but don't know how to get started? Then maybe try this tutorial. It first tells you where to get free Software to try and then takes you each step of the way towards building your own game.
http://www.kongregate.com/labs
Friday, November 7
Topic: Social, lazy and evil
wink - Wink is the largest people search engine online. It aggregates information from various social networks, from the Wikipedia and from other sites. They also offer a Google Co-Op option, where their results are integrated into your normal search results.
http://wink.com/
friendvouch - friendvouch allows you, in a sense, to sell out your friends (or rather their email addresses) to companies. You recommend companies and products to your friends, and if they end up buying something, you get a bit of money.
http://www.friendvouch.com/influencers/
themechanicalzoo - They are still in stealth mode (= private alpha), but they appear to combine a variant of Yahoo answers with a search in your own social network. This way you get answers from experts only a few hops a few from you.
http://www.themechanicalzoo.com/
bizspark - People who start smoking when they are young are unlikely to quit. And companies who get hooked on Microsoft products when they are still small, are unlikely to change to other software later. So the "bizspark" project offers Microsoft services and certain software for free (!) for up to three years to startups.
http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BizSpark/Pages/At_a_Glance.aspx
pluck - You're a lazy blogger? You're site does not have a lot of content, but you still want to attract (and retain) visitors? Why not use an automated system, which uses content from other sites, while keeping the visitors (and their ad revenue) on your site? Plagiarism goes Web 2.0.
http://ondemand.pluck.com/
Friday, November 14
Four giants and a dwarf
All (except the last one) of these sites have several million unique visitors per month and are listed in Alexa's Top 100. So they probably are worth knowing ...
RapidShare is a German owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users. Rapidshare is one of the world’s largest file-hosting sites with millions of files stored on its servers. [Quote from Wikipedia]
Traffic details: 2M unique monthly US visitors ("Compete"), ranked ~15 ("Alexa")
http://www.rapidshare.com/
Photobucket is an image hosting, video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website. It was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures. It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007. [Quote from Wikipedia]
Traffic details: 24M unique monthly US visitors ("Compete"), ranked ~32 ("Alexa")
http://photobucket.com/
Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name. Along with TimeWarner's Pathfinder.com, Go.com proved to be an expensive failure for its parent company, as web users preferred to use search engines to access content directly, rather than start at a top-level corporate portal. [Quote from Wikipedia]
Traffic details: 38M unique monthly US visitors ("Compete"), ranked ~39 ("Alexa")
http://go.com/
Rediff.com India, NASDAQ: REDF is a news, information, entertainment, and shopping portal. It was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi and New York City, USA. As per Alexa rating, Rediff is the No. 5 Indian web portal. It is the only India-based website to appear in the first 100 websites. [Quote from Wikipedia]
Traffic details: 500K unique monthly US visitors ("Compete" - but much bigger in India), ranked ~71 ("Alexa")
http://www.rediff.com/
Do you need an SVN repository for co-operations with people outside of EPFL? Then gives this (free!) service a try. At least for my own use it seems to be perfect.
http://xp-dev.com/app/
Traffic details: a handful of visitors per month - including myself.
Friday, November 28
Topic: Stumbled upon
archive - Want to know what google.com looked like in 1998? Want to know what *your* homepage looked like a few years ago? Then have a look at the internet archive. [This is a *must* to know.]
http://web.archive.org/
cl1p - If you need an easy to use, temporary online clipboard for yourself or to share with others, then give this service a try.
http://cl1p.net/
unnecessaryknowledge - Did you know that every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie? No? If you want to have more unnecessary knowledge like this, then check out this site.
http://www.unnecessaryknowledge.com/
letmegooglethatforyou - If you have not-so-computer-savvy friends who once in a while need a crash course in how to use Google, then this site might be good to put them on the right track.
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/
popurls - This is a nice aggregation of the things that are currently most popular on the web. Essentially, a combination of digg, Yahoo buzz and similar services.
http://popurls.com/
Friday, December 12, at 15h30 (sharp!) in BC 129.
Topic: Cool Stuff on the Web
A very nice keyboard-based interface to Google web search. This might actually become my new starting page.
http://keyboardr.com/
Who needs GPS to locate a device when you can simply triangulate using the Wifi spots that are visible to you? [US only ...]
http://loki.com/
Blackbird is a web browser aimed at African Americans, and (to my knowledge) the first web browser targeting a particular ethnicity.
http://www.blackbirdhome.com/
Yahoo is making its search index available to the public via an API, without those annoying limitations concerning number of queries, result placement or result reordering.
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/
You provide the content, Triond publishes it on a appropriate platform, you get 50% of the revenue created.
http://www.triond.com/
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Related links:
http://www.techcrunch.com/
http://crunchies.techcrunch.com/finalists/
http://radar.oreilly.com/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines.php
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500
http://blog.compete.com/topics/compete-top-10/
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