Zeus of the ‘NetReviews of the Coolest Sites on the Net

With so many websites out there on the ‘net today sometimes it’s difficult to find cool websites that cover topics and fall into categories that you’re interested in (which is probably why your reading this blog!).  That’s where StumbleUpon can help out.  Users fill out a quick info page, selecting which categories they are interested in, i.e. music and movies, art and history, sports, etc., and then download a toolbar where they can then ‘Stumble’ through the internet.

Using the toolbar, users can randomly surf the internet by clicking on the Stumble icon.  Websites are chosen at random using the categories previously selected, (filled out in the initial info page) which are then pulled from the pool of sites given a thumbs up by fellow Stumble users (a thumbs up is given to websites that users think are interesting, and that other Stumblers would like).

From the toolbar users also have the ability to share a website with friends, read reviews of the website that were left by fellow Stumblers, along with other advanced options, including the ability to Stumble only certain categories like music or sports for example.  With so many cool features, StumbleUpon’s toolbar is one of the few that’s definitely worth downloading!

Imagine combining all of your photo albums, scrapbooks, home videos, and correspondence all in one easy to access spot.  Well imagine no longer.  Lifesnapz.com is a free to use site that lets its users chronicle the events of their lives, and share those events with the people closest to them.  Users of the site fall into one of three categories: Group Founder, Full Member, or Read-Only Member.  The difference between them being Group Founder’s and Full Member’s have full editing and invitation privileges, while Read-Only Members can only view events and add comments.

Members, who have the privileges to, can add photos which can be uploaded from photo sharing websites flickr.com or picasa.com, and videos which can be uploaded either from youtube.com or vimeo.com.  This site has many cool features, but the coolest is probably the timeline (see example below).  This feature is an excellent way of visually looking at events in chronological order, which makes finding specific events much easier.  There is also a zoom filter option which let’s group members search for events by a certain increment of time (i.e. 1 month, 6 months, 10 years, etc.), to be able to narrow down their searches even further.

With the ability to have a virtual history of your life’s events available to view and share with family, and friends, LifeSnapz.com has hit upon something unique that could someday propel them to become a very popular social website.