I don’t know about you, but since the dawn of social networking sites, I’ve managed to put a great deal of information about myself on the web. I have posted status updates on Facebook, tweeted, shared my location on FourSquare, instagrammed photos, pinned art to Pinterest, put my resume on LinkedIn and so much more. To sum up, I’ve generally managed to probably overshare a great deal of my life, and now that information is there and waiting for the next time someone searches my name.
With this tendency towards oversharing having become the norm, a growing number of sites are popping up which allow us to create and protect our overall online presence or “brand.” Vizify is a relatively new (still in public beta) site which allows you to create an interactive and visually appealing infographic landing page. The site connects with the social networks of your choosing in order to summarize and showcase the best of your (appropriate) online presence. Stay with me after the jump to learn more about this exciting new service and what I think about using it.
Social networking sites abound all over the Internet these days. That’s why, when a new social networking site and concept arrive on the scene, it’s always interesting to take a look and see how they will attempt to set themselves apart.
Evemi, a social network still in beta mode, is one of the newest sites on the scene. Rather than make connections based upon physical factors and already established connections, Evemi links you with others who share one or more of your interests. Traditional social networking tools, like location-based connections, are sure to become more of a focus as the number of users increases, but for the time being, Evemi is a unique new site. Stick with me after the jump to learn more about this interesting new site and what I think of it.
It’s a Friday night. You’re with a group of people – family, friends or maybe just you and your significant other. Regardless of who you’re with, if you want to watch a movie it can be quite difficult to choose a movie that you will all enjoy. Differing tastes, opinions and perceptions all play a role in ensuring that choosing a mutually agreed upon movie is going to be a difficult task. Luckily a new service called Foundd has come onto the scene.
Foundd is a web service which allows you to rate movies that you’ve seen. It then takes the ratings and gives you a watchlist based upon those ratings. This is pretty standard practice, so Foundd’s new and unique feature is the ability to create groups with friends who have also rated movies. The app allows you to find a movie that the whole group can agree upon just by clicking a few buttons. Stay with me after the jump to learn more about the service for just you and for your next movie watching group.
Junk email is simply a normal part of online life these days. As if spam wasn’t bad enough, we make our own lives harder by signing up for newsletters and social network updates through emails, which essentially becomes junk mail we’ve almost asked for.
Rather than doing anything about it, most of us just accept the reality that we’ll have dozens of unimportant emails to skim through each day. We check each one, just in case there’s some important info. We’re wasting our lives clicking on pointless emails instead of getting our work done. I, personally, am ready to wake up to just a few emails, rather than 37 junk emails sent the night before.
Luckily, there are two great new services that have really helped me cut down on the amount of junk email that I receive: Scoop and Unroll.me. Stick with me after the jump to learn how these two services helped take care of my junk email problem.
I’ve often needed to share a collection of images with others, to show off a project or get feedback. Unfortunately, the solutions I’ve tried haven’t been that good. I’ve printed images to make collections on boards that can be passed around the team members in a meeting. I’ve tried keeping the images on my computer, but then too many are forced to gather around a small screen. I’ve even tried a few different digital collections, but nothing has ever really given me a good opportunity to engage in conversations and share feedback.
Recently, however, I found out about a new web app called Marqueed which is made for this purpose and I couldn’t wait to try it out. Marqueed is a new, free web application made by a group of designers which allows teams to communicate visually, all online. It promises to be quite the useful application, but read on after the jump to learn more about how it works and how I feel about it.
Finding and choosing music to listen to is an easy task for a lucky few. For the rest of us, choosing music is often an annoyance. Whether you are tired of your collection or just don’t know what you’re in the mood to listen to, sometimes it’s good to step back from iTunes and let someone else do the heavy lifting. That’s where an app like Songza comes into play.
Songza labels itself a music concierge. It’s an online playlist based music application, full of playlists for different events, moods, decades and genres. Songza is 100% free AND audio ad-free, a rarity in the world of online music streaming. Read on to learn more about this new music application, like details on how it works and what I think of it thus far.
Getting feedback from clients on your mockups and partially completed projects can be a frustrating ordeal if you rely on email. Your client might not notice the email attachment, or they might not even be able to open it if they don’t have the same apps installed that you’re used to using, such as Photoshop. Then, you’ll be swamped in a torrent of Reply All emails, and the odds that something will be lost in the process are incredibly high.
Luckily for web designers (and other creative professionals as well), a number of services exist to allow designers to easily share mockups with clients online. QwikVu is a newer service that exists primarily for web designers to share their mockups and web designs in an online gallery. It aims to simplify the creative communications process, so let’s see if this is what you’ve been needing to make it easier to deal with your clients.
Goal setting is an incredibly important practice for our lives. We set goals in order to advance in our careers, learn new skills, pursue passions, get fit and much more. Unfortunately, keeping track of all the smaller steps needed to achieve goals is often difficult. Actually achieving all of the steps and thus the goal is even harder, without some form of external motivation.
That’s where the site WorkSimple comes in. WorkSimple is a social goal-setting and tracking application where users set goals and then share the goals with their peers. This creates a sense of accountability, allowing for the achievement of more goals. WorkSimple offers applications for both businesses and individuals, although this review is focused solely on the individual application. Read on to learn more about the capabilities of WorkSimple and what I thought of it.
Pinterest boasts an incredible number of users, but those of you who haven’t signed up yet might wonder exactly what Pinterest is good for. In fact, even those who have been using the service might wonder about some new ways in which Pinterest can be used. Luckily, Pinterest is good for a wide range of activites.
From home life to marketing to writing, Pinterest has a great variety of applications. It’s a simple app that might seem like just a passing far, but it actually can be a useful too even for real work. Read on to learn about just a few of the many ways Pinterest can be used.
Timelines are useful in many different ways, whether for a student project, as a teaching aide or simply as a way to visualize events that have happened in our lives. Unfortunately, many timeline tools are cumbersome and inflexible, making timelines a not easily viable option. Preceden, however, turns that totally around.
Preceden allows users to create timelines in a matter of minutes, with as much or as little content as desired. Timelines are easily organized and shareable, but can easily be kept private if needed. The timelines can be shared online or in physical form thanks to the features of Preceden. Read on to learn more about how the application works and what I think about it.
