Snippets from PC Magazine

November 6, 2007

Bullzip PDF Printer
-Pros: simple PDF creation. Advanced settings for security and display via dialog box or from command line.
-Cons: Can't set initial zoom level for PDF files or translate Word comments to PDF annotations.

Pownce
-send invites, share files and videos
-pros: good interface. options for lightweight desktop with notification, private sharing.
-cons: no mobile posting or notification. No public page of posts.

Totalidea TweakVI
-configure hard drive details, CPU settings, and boot manager.
-pros: installs intelligently, provides scads of system information, makes configuration highly accessible.
-cons: somewhat costly yearly subscription for advanced versions.

Top 100 Undiscovered Sites
Info, Reference, and Search
-Aftervote (www.aftervote.com): search aggregator that combines results from Google, Yahoo and MSN.
-Footnote (www.footnote.com): has a deal with the National Archives to digitize and upload every document it houses.
-Hard to Find 800 Numbers (www.hardtofind800numbers.com): organizes companies alphabetically and displays phone numbers and hours of operation.
-Ninjawords (www.ninjawords.com): faster dictionary site.
-Uncyclopedia (www.uncyclopedia.org): nonsense presented with a straight face.
-Wikisky.org (www.wikisky.org): draggable space model with constellations highlighted, learn about distant stars, or see a model of the stars above you.
-Wink (www.wink.com): people-search engine that culls results from social-networking sites, followed by results from other sites where users keep public profiles, followed by results from the Web at large.

Health and Food
-Cork'd (www.corkd.com): helps you organize your cellar, user-generated reviews and recommendations.
-ExtraTasty (www.extratasty.com): search for drink recipes, share drink recipes, and talk to friends about drink recipes.
-Lumosity (www.lumosity.com): play games that have been tested and shown to improve memory, attention, processing speed, and even cognitive control.
-Menupages (www.menupages.com): menus and reviews for thousands of restaurants in NY, SF, LA, PHI, BOS, CHI, DC, and South Florida.
-Top Secret Recipes (www.topsecretrecipes.com): clones the secret recipes of popular restaurants.
-Who Is Sick? (www.whoissick.org/sickness): maps out illnesses, showing you who's got what and where.
-The World's Healthiest Foods (www.whfoods.com): info on how foods affect our health and can boost energy.

Lifestyle & Entertainment
-Dethroner (www.dethroner.com): men's magazine with topics like beer, meat, and danger.
-EXPN (www.expn.com): photos and videos featuring skating, surfing, motocross and the X games.
-FirstShowing.net (www.firstshowing.net): movie blog keeps you up to date on the hot gossip.
-Going.com (www.going.com): search local events by location, popularity and time.
-I Can Has Cheezburger? (www.icanhascheezburger.com): collection of pictures of cats that are captioned to hilarious effect.
-iminlikewithyou (www.iminlikewithyou.com): online meet-and-greet but you must "bid" on a particular user.
-I Watch Stuff (www.iwatchstuff.com): posts about film news, trailers, and clips.
-MeeVee (www.meevee.com): TV listing with personalized recommendations.
-MyPunchBowl (www.mypunchbowl.com): online party invitations.
-Skeptic (www.skeptic.com): videos, articles, and podcasts on controversial subjects.

Money & Career
-BullPoo (www.bullpoo.com): swap tips or stocks and talk money.
-Indeed (www.indeed.com): checks job sites, newspapers, and company career pages by keyword and location to fit your needs.
-Kiva (www.kiva.org): make small loans to deserving entrepreneurs world-wide.
-Rentometer.com (www.rentometer.com): compares your rent with the rest of your neighborhood.
-Trulia (www.trulia.com): real-estate advice and extensive home listings.

Music
-AllHipHop.com (www.allhiphop.com): record reviews, industry rumors, and editorial content.
-Amie Street (www.amiestreet.com): tracks start off free and go up to $0.89 as they catch on.
-Beethere.net (www.beethere.net): track your favorite artists and their tour dates.
-Imeem (www.imeem.com): social-networking/music-discovery site.
-Musicovery (www.musicovery.com): free music players asks you to plot your mood on a spectrum and then creates a chart of songs to fit that mood.
-SingShot (www.singshot.com): record to karaoke tracks, rate others' recordings, and enter your songs into contests.
-Slacker (www.slacker.com): Internet radio service with station browser, "heart", skip and ban options.

News, Politics & Government
-Guerilla News Network (www.guerrillanews.com): independent news organization.
-MediaStorm (www.mediastorm.org): multimedia stories that incorporate video, audio, photography, and personal essays.
-Tech President (www.techpresident.com): keep tabs on campaign sites, YouTube postings, etc.
-Topix (www.topix.net): local sections for thousands of towns and communities.

Reading
-Act-i-vate (community.livejournal.com/act_i_vate): "serialized graphic novels" by some of underground comics' brightest stars, including Haspiel, Bertozzi, and Goldman.
-copyblogger (www.copyblogger.com): blog about online marketing, with excellent tips and practical advice for online writing and blogging.
-Goodreads (www.goodreads.com): combines nosy fun of snooping through friends' bookshelves with the antisocial, shut-in joy of not actually having to go to their homes.
-Ironic Sans (www.ironicsans.com): sharp and clever blog with great ideas and musings on design.
-Librivox (www.librivox.org): audiobooks for free, featuring a collection of public-domain books read by volunteers.
-The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (fakesteve.blogspot.com): a uniquely Jobsian perspective to the insane media coverage of the Apple empire.
-Verbotomy (www.verbotomy.com): create words from meanings with daily challenges. The site provides a definition and you invent a verb (or Verboticism).
-xkcd (www.xkcd.com): drawings are simple stick figures, but the jokes are a source of nerdy glee.

Shopping, Classifieds, and Travel
-The Bargainist (www.bargainist.com): scours the Web for the best bargains, coupons, and free offers.
-Do My Stuff (www.domystuff.com): send your chore into cyberspace where businesses and individuals place bids: the lowest bidder wins.
-EuroCheapo (www.eurocheapo.com): hotel reviewers show you how and where you can save a buck.
-Roadside America (www.roadsideamerica.com): definitive resource for kooky, nichey, and downright bizarre landmarks.
-TheThingsIWant.com (www.thethingsiwant.com): service for creating shopping and wish lists lets you make sure your friends and family pick out the perfect gift for you.
-Ugallery.com (www.ugallery.com): helps college artists find recognition.
-Wikitravel (www.wikitravel.org): for the sheer amount of info, no travel site touches the user-generated content of Wikitravel.
-Yapta (www.yapta.com): enter your flright ino and the price you paid for your tickets, it will track the ticket price for your flight(s) from that point on. If the fare drops before you leave on your trip, the site will let you know the price difference and how to claim a refund or vouchers from the airline.

Download and DIY
-afreeDLL (afreedll.com): makes finding, downloading and restoring DLLs a breeze and all of the downloads are free.
-DaFont (www.dafont.com): almost 7,500 fonts uploaded by various users worldwide.
-DZone (www.dzone.com): developer's dream and much more - a vast network of user-submitted links to message boards, news, coding tricks, and more.
-Infected or Not (www.infectedornot.com): excellent and free NanoScan tool to ascertain quickly whether there's malware on your machine.
-InviteShare (www.inviteshare.com): free service lets early beta users share their invites.
-MajorGeeks.com (www.majorgeeks.com): free and paid apps and utilities for your PC that have been tested to recover, repair, protect, back-up, etc.
-OldVersion.com (www.oldversion.com): roll back to the good old days of products like Quicktime and AIM.
-ProgrammableWeb (www.programmableweb.com): keeps tabs on mashups and open APIs across the Web.
-Website Grader (www.websitegrader.com): submit your URL and it will give you some basic feedback on how your site is doing and in what areas it can improve.

Gaming
-Armor Games (www.armorgames.com): home of countless free Flash-based games, all playable on the web.
-K2xl (www.k2xl.com): watch dots, place cursor on dot, click mouse, watch chain reaction as dots explode. Repeat. The game is Boomshine.
-Kongregate (www.kongregate.com): flash-video game site driven by user-generated content.
-LikeBetter (www.likebetter.com): presents you with two pictures and you click on the one you like better.
-Line Rider (www.official-linerider.com): send a fragile, scarf-clad man hurtling down a steep, crudely drawn slope on a sled.
-Shacknews (www.shacknes.com): go-to spot for all gaming news.

Hardware News and Blogs
-All Things Digital (www.allthingsd.com): uses both text and video to dish on the hottest tech news.
-Anything But iPod (www.anythingbutipod.com): tracks the market for non-Apple audio hardware, software, and accessories.
-Everything USB (www.everythingusb.com): gadget blog dedicated to the one-wired-connection wonders that are USB computer peripherals.
-GoodCleanTech (www.goodcleantech.com): keep apprised of all manner of environmentally conscientious technology in illustrated, user-friendly format.
-iLounge (www.ilounge.com): industry news, hands-on product reviews, tips, tricks, downloads - everything you want to know about the iPod and iPhone.
-Phone Scoop (www.phonescoop.com): resource for mobile-phone users and enthusiasts with emphasis on news, reviews, and building a mobile-phone community.
-TechMeme (www.techmeme.com): hottest tech news stories on the Web.

Software and Internet Blogs
-AppScout (www.appscout.com): great place to find software tips and tricks, cool or useful web sites and applications, and the latest news from the world of web technology.
-Download Squad (www.downloadsquad.com): Engadget for software and web apps (owned by the same company).
-eHub (www.emilychang.com/go/ehub): Emily Chang manages to get wind of every web 2.0 app before the rest of the blogging world does.
-MakeUseOf.com (www.makeuseof.com): quick but comprehensive roundups of apps and sites in a given space.
-Mashable (www.mashable.com): blog devoted to covering MySpace, Facebook and their ilk, reporting on the exploding world of social networking apps and features.
-Uncov (www.uncov.com): bizarro equivalent of TechCrunch, mercilessly reviewing start-ups.

Video
-Dabble (www.dabble.com): aggregates video clips from major services.
-ScienceHack (www.sciencehack.com): video-search engine dedicated to the world of science. Every indexed video is screened and approved by real scientists.
-uLinkx (www.ulinkx.com): finds the most popular videos from across the Web and makes aimless video browsing fun and easy.
-Ustream.tv (www.ustream.tv): makes it easy to stream your footage live, as it's being recorded.
-VideoJug (videojug.com): "encyclopedia of everything".

Web Apps
-Bubbl.us (www.bubbl.us): helps you organize your thoughts into readable and colorful mind maps to print and to share online.
-Eyejot (www.eyejot.com): combines elements of email, voice mail, and video chat into one free streamlined solution. Lets you record a video message and email a link to your friends, who can click ont he link at their leisure, view your message, and reply via their own video messages.
-Media Fire (www.mediafire.com): free file-sharing and storage service that lets users upload unlimited files and images.
-Meebo (www.meebo.com): log on to all of your IM accounts at once, without installing software.
-Only2Clicks (www.only2clicks.com): set up a customzed home page with instant access to the sites on which you spend the majority of your time, along with previews of what's on their home pages.
-Picnik (www.picnik.com): Upload or import photos (from Flickr, Picasa, etc.), then use online manipulation tools to crop, sharpen, adjust exposure and color, etc.
-Remember The Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com): handy online list-making app.
-Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com): makes good-looking, easy-to-create wikis a reality.
-Zamzar (www.zamzar.com): convert anything (images, docs, YouTube videos) and have it emailed back to you in 4 quick steps without downloading anything.
-Zoho (www.zoho.com): typical stuff (word processor, spreadsheet, presentations) along with Creator DB, notebook, Wiki, and collaboration tool. Not all the modules are free (e.g. project manager and CRM).