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

Have you ever dreamed of being a well-renowned writer known all over the world for your excellent insight and vivid descriptions?  Maybe long desired to be an editor-in-chief of a prestigious newspaper?  Or fantasized about owning your own newspaper?   Now you can do all three!  Well, kind of.  A new website called Paper.li (still in alpha) organizes links you share on Twitter and/or Facebook into an easy to read newspaper style format.

Personal newspapers like this one from Brian Solis can include pictures, videos, as well as your own twitter feed.  Paper.li segments the links you’ve shared into different categories such as:  business, art & entertainment, politics, technology, etc, and then through proprietary means, surfaces the day’s most relevant articles and constructs your personal newspapers front page.  Another cool feature is that you can login and edit the titles of any article you want (that editor-in-chief dream just became reality!).  Also all of your previous “editions” are archived for you and can be accessed from your front page.

So what are you waiting for?  Get started and who knows maybe someday you can give William Randolph Hearst a run for his money (hey you gotta dream big right?).

If you’re like me and love to travel then I’m sure you can’t wait to take your next vacation either.  But the thing that always gets me (other than having the $$) is making all the arrangements.  It’s such a hassle.  Now I know there are some people who probably enjoy this, but I’m definitely not one of them.  So if there’s any way to make the process quicker and more efficient, I’m all for it.  With this in mind I happened to come across Oyster.com.  Right from the get-go I knew that the site just had “it”.  What exactly “it” is can be hard to pinpoint, and it can also vary from site to site.  However with Oyster (so named after the Shakespeare quote “the world is your oyster”) I believe it’s a combination of the new approach they’ve taken with hotel reviews and booking, combined with an excellent website.

What I like most about this site is the photos they take of the hotels they review.  They’re high-quality and haven’t been retouched.  The only drawback I can see is that as of right now the site only covers 14 destinations (within the U.S. and around the globe) but I’m guessing as they get more exposure, visits, and bookings, that this number will increase.

So next time you sit down and start making those travel arrangements, be sure to look up Oyster and check out some photos of that hotel you were thinking of staying at.

If you’re like most people, you sometimes have questions that the search engines are, at least at this point in time, unable to answer.  That’s where a new site called Quora comes in.  Quora is a Q&A site that has been able to attract participation from a lot of well-known and highly respected individuals across many disciplines.  They’ve joined the site to contribute to the community; to help answer questions that many people have been asking, and of course last but not least, to boost their personal or company’s brand awareness.  This is of course impossible to avoid, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  Having that accountability looks to be helping to reduce spam, which is always an issue on these types of sites.  However I’m sure to Quora and its members (btw it’s free to join) as long as the answers are open, honest, and genuine, the self-interestedness and spam that has plagued other sites will be able to be avoided here.

So give it a shot, if you’ve tried other Q&A site like Yahoo Answers, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the types of questions and answers that are being exchanged on Quora.  And who knows, maybe the answer to that question you’ve had has already been answered.  If not, Quora is a great place to start.

I’ve blogged about many websites since I started this blog back in August of 2008 but I have to say, this site is the only one that’s ever given me goosebumps.  I don’t know what it is about the site, maybe it’s the fact that the seemingly far-fetched futuristic sci-fi movies from the not too distant past seemed to be coming true before my eyes.  I know that probably seems overly dramatic, but after you check out the site I think you’ll understand my initial reaction.

The site is called Qwiki (pronounced quick-ee) which I think is catchy, memorable, and very apropos.  Essentially the site is a Wiki (similar to Wikipedia) but instead of having to read a lengthy scholarly article, Qwiki provides an experience that is similar to watching a video, but better.  Qwiki provides an engaging experience, that I think will revolutionize the way we consume information.

To begin using Qwiki simply type in a query that you wish to learn more about, and hit enter.  A female sounding computer generated voice will quickly begin speaking, and describing in detail whatever it is that you queried.  So for example if you type in “Apple Inc” Qwiki will quickly load the information and begin showing you a montage of relevant pictures, accompanied by the female voice, and the text of what is being spoken so you can following along if you’d like (I’m guessing this was also done for the hearing impaired).

I’ll tell you what; words don’t do the Qwiki experience justice.  You’ve got to see and experience it for yourself.  It’s such a great site that I was waiting for them to enter into their Beta but couldn’t wait any longer to share with you guys.  So even though the site is currently still in Alpha, you should submit your email address to join because trust me, it’s totally worth it.

There are a ton of sites out there dedicated to searching for the best deals on flights (read my previous post on Kayak) but what sets Hipmunk.com apart is the fact that it’s quick and easy to use.  Unlike some of the others where you have to input a bunch of info and click through multiple pages, Hipmunk shows all of the results of your search on one page.  You can also filter the results by: price, stops, departure time, arrival time, duration, and ‘agony’.  I thought the last one was interesting.  According to their FAQ page, ‘agony’ is “our way of sorting flights to take into account price, duration, and number of stops. There’s more to a flight than its price, so we provide this sort to give you better all-around results.”

I like that the site is easy to use and that you only have to enter in where you want to depart from and arrive at, and the dates.  This makes the whole process quick, and a lot easier than the other bigger more well known sites.  So next time you’re searching for a flight, remember to check out Hipmunk.

In an industry dominated so completely by one company (Google) it would seem to be very unlikely that any company, especially a start up, would be able to compete.  I mean even though Bing has dropped $100 million in advertising alone, they still haven’t been able to take away any market share from Google.  Nonetheless Blekko.com (still in beta) has decided to challenge the Mountain View behemoth that is Google.

There are several features that set Blekko apart from other search engines, the biggest being what they call “slashtags”.  This is basically a new way of searching that allows users to filter their results right there in the search query box.  For example let’s say I want to do a search on “Facebook” but I’m research online marketing strategies and would like to read some tech blogs that talk about marketing on Facebook.  I would simply type “Facebook /techblogs” and hit search.  Doing this search will return very relevant results such as Mashable, TechCrunch, and Wired.  And if users want to they can further filter by date, by simply clicking on or entering into the search box “/date”.  The other cool feature to note is a link under each result labeled “seo”.  Clicking on this will reveal lots of interesting/helpful information.

Only time will tell if Blekko will be able to compete with the big boys, but they do offer some very cool features which I think many users would find helpful.  What do you think; would you switch from your search engine of choice to give Blekko a shot?

This is actually the first time I’ve done a post on an app (although it can also be played on Facebook) and not a website.  With the explosion of smart phones and Internet capable mobile devices, I thought it was time that I started sharing cool, interesting, and/or fun apps that I come across as well.  I’ve always been a big trivia buff myself (Trivial Pursuit is hands down one of my favorite games) and so one day I decided to see if there were any good, and free, trivia apps out there (for the iPhone).  Out of the dozens and dozens, one in particular called QRANK stood out.

The graphics and interface are easily the best I’ve seen from a free app but what put it over the top was the original idea of the game itself (format, etc.) and then of course the questions too.  Now let me talk about the questions for a minute.  I would say this app is geared towards someone who is into trivia games and considers themselve a trivia buff.  I say that because most of the questions are on the medium to difficult side.  That being said though, I think the ‘Play Live’ feature makes it enjoyable for all audiences.

All around this has been the best (graphics, content, interface, & ease of use) free app I’ve come across.  If you have an iPhone and like trivia, I highly recommend downloading this app!

If you’re like the 99.9% of people in the world who like saving money and getting a great deal, then I think you’ll like this site.  ZingSale.com is a free service that finds great deals on products that are sold all across the web and will track the price and then alert you when it goes down by more than 10%.  From CDs and DVDs, to Toys, Apparel, Shoes, Jewelry and more, you name it and they will track it for you and send you an email if the price drops.

I really like the design of the site, it’s very clean and intuitive which makes it that much more of a pleasurable experience (on top of saving money!).  Also thought I’d mention, with Black Friday coming up, that they have a Black Friday Deals section where you can avoid the crowds and instead add a price alert for any gifts you are planning on buying.

ZingSale currently tracks the prices of over 350,000 products and on average saves users of the site 43% on their purchases.  Now that’s what I’m talkin about!

This social bookmarking website has elements taken from other similar sites (Digg, Reddit, Fark, etc.) while at the same time mixing in some newer social sharing features (Facebook, Twitter).  The design on the category pages is very clean and puts the focus on each story that users have “spotted”, which I like.  The homepage is a tad bit cluttered, but is still engaging enough for people to find a story of interest.  The ‘Livestream’ feature that runs along the right-hand side of the site is a really good idea that balances out the ‘Top Picks’ and ‘Editor’s Picks’, so that way users can have an unfiltered stream of info to choose from as well.

All in all, I think this site has what it takes to be added to the short list of social bookmarking sites that constantly fights for our attention.  There are so many funny, weird, crazy, and interesting stories out there…why not let Spotery.com do the work for you!

For those who still like to purchase things in an actual brick-and-mortar store, this site will make the process a little bit easier.  Basically Milo.com is a local shopping inventory search engine.  So let’s say you are looking for a particular pair of Nike tennis shoes.  You can go to Milo and search on ‘Nike tennis shoes’ and it will return the results for all of the stores in your area that currently have Nike tennis shoes in stock.  If you want to expand the area of your search you can, and you can also filter by price, rating, whether or not it’s on sale, and by particular store (e.g. Nordstroms).  This site seems like a real time saver, so it might be a good idea to pull up Milo first before wasting time (and gas) driving around town.

What do you guys think, does this site fill a need that’s not being met?  Next time you’re going to head to the store to buy something, would you first pay a visit to Milo?