There are a lot of nifty websites out there. Sites that promise to connect you with new people in new and exciting ways. Websites that promises to deliver tiny nuggets of data that not only did you not know you needed, but once discovered you will not be able to live without. Sites that promise to deliver on umpteen promises that the internet had, so far, failed to deliver upon.
Of course, most of these sites lose their slick gloss in about a month and then you forget all about them. Until, that is, they are sold to another company and start bombarding you with pointless and annoying ads until you drag your browser back one last time to attempt to close out your account (in vain of course, that functionality usually doesn’t work).
Looking back at my bookmarks, I see many of these sites. Sites like Weekendr, Plazes, and URL123 to name the few that I can remember. There was a day when I giddily sent links to all of these out to my friends, encouraging them to sign up.
A few of these sites have stood the test of time, becoming even more useful as time goes on. I’ve decided to sing the praises of the few, those sites that somehow avoided running out of money or becoming overrun by noisy newbies.
The Last.fm service will compile a personal music chart of all the music that you listen to, it will also try and recommend new music that it thinks you might like. You download a plug-in for your music player and this plug-in tracks the songs you listen to and sends the information back to Last.fm. The data on your listening habits is collected, compiled, and cross-referenced with everyone else’s listening habits. It works a lot like Firefly did way back in the day.
In addition to the charts, they also provide a pretty nice internet radio service. You can listen to a radio station that plays songs Last.fm thinks you might like, songs of people who like the same sort of music as yourself (neighbors), or you can explore different genres. There’s also the requisite batch of social networking extras: people can recommend songs to you, you can track what your friends listen to, etc.
When I signed up with this service, it was called AudioScrobbler and it was one of the ugliest sites on the internet. The radio component was exceedingly flaky and played almost nothing but high-frequency nail-on-the-chalkboard type noise. In fact, the only component that worked at all was the charts. They were dense and difficult to read, but full of interesting information. For a while it looked like they might implode, but they’ve managed to shake it off and hold it together. New features consistently improve the utility of the site and the ads are not overwhelming. I have yet to receive any spam from Last.fm. Check it out, the charts are just the sort of thing I could waste hours on.
The odds on you being unfamiliar with this site are slim, but still, this is one I’ve stuck with. Del.icio.us lets you keep track of all of your bookmarks in one place. You can recommend links to friends or keep track of the links your friends are bookmarking. I’m one of those people that bookmarks a lot of pages, having a way to sort and manage these bookmarks is something I find to be really and truly helpful.
This is another hugely popular site and you probably know at least one person who keeps pestering you to sign up. Flickr provides a place for you to keep all of those photos that you’ve been taking. You can keep track of photos that you’re friends take or join a photo group interested in pictures of Talk Like a Pirate Day or crap people throw away.
All my vacation photos end up here. Links are sent to family and friends, and there’s no bandwidth limit. What more could you want?
Flock is a web-browser based on Firefox that pulls together social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and photo sites like Flikr and bends them to it’s web-browsing will. Every bookmark you make in Flock gets added to your del.icio.us account (or one of the other bookmarking sites). It provides a handy blog entry editor and you can pull in photos from a photo site like Flikr and stick ‘em right into your blog entry. How cool is that?
For me, this site was the last piece of the puzzle that actually got me using del.icio.us regularly. All of the sudden, I didn’t have to remember to use the icky little bookmarklet thingy to get a bookmark into del.icio.us. Every bookmark I make just ends up in there, I’ll never have to lose a bookmark again!
Shelfari is a pretty new site, I don’t think they’ve been around for very long. They provide a place where you can keep track of all the books that you’ve read or are reading. You can keep track of books that friends are working on and post opinions on this or that book. They also have some groups you can join and chat with like-minded readers.
I love to buy books and hate to throw them away, so I have quite a few. Being able to browse through them all in one place is something I find to be really nice. I’ve created a couple of book groups and I’m hoping that people join and help me find some new authors. But even if that never pans out, Shelfari is already providing a useful service.
43 Things provides a place where you can post personal goals and keep track of your progress. Other people working on the same goals can post little stories about how they’re doing and the whole thing is supposed to help keep you on track and help you actually accomplish some of these things. There’s a whole suite of related sites: 43 Places for places you’d like to go, 43 People for people you’d like to meet, and All Consuming for things you’d like to buy, see, read, etc.
Much to my surprise, 43 Things has managed to keep me thinking about some goals that are just for fun or happen to be more long-term. Unlike work stuff, I didn’t really have a good place for keeping track of things that I would want to do, or places that I’d like to go. 43 Things provides a web-based nook for storing this stuff and also sends me and e-mail every so often to keep it on my mind.
There are a couple more I could post, but this entry is long enough! If there are any useful sites that you belong to that you’d like to share, post about them in the comments.
